Wednesday, October 31, 2012

No Men in The White House

October 31, 2012
By Richard F. Miniter


 Between e-mail revelations and whistle-blower testimony, the Band-Aid is very painfully being pulled off the Obama administration's Benghazi disaster.  And as in any management failure, we have two ways to look at the issue -- long-term and short.  In the short-term view, we learn something about the quality of our actions -- i.e., was the right or most proper decision or sequence of decisions made based on the facts known at the time?  But the benefit of the long-term view is that it may reveal failings in the way we organize ourselves for these occasions and, by extension, the likelihood of such a thing happening again.

It's this long-term view of Benghazi which is so disheartening because it so obviously illustrates how we're set up to produce ever more situations similar to this one, wherein our people not only die expecting help, but die several hours after they had fixed a targeting laser on the mortar position which would eventually kill them.  More tragedies wherein we have to listen to a political operative like Leon Panetta reference some completely fictitious military maxim that you never send a force in without knowing exactly what's happening on the ground.  More calamities where what we don't hear is that someone like General Petraeus, who is supposed to be a soldier, ended his career by refusing to abandon his men -- indeed, wherein not even one man in the White House Situation Room, in uniform or not -- not one diplomat in the loop at State, not one senior CIA official, not one Naval officer offshore, not one serving general in the multitude of American commands in Europe would sacrifice his career in order to save them.

All this comes about because we have established -- indeed, raised to the order of religious dogma -- Max Weber's fanciful notion that in a bureaucracy, decisions should proceed as high as they can up the chain of command before being made.  Indeed, apparently, doing this somehow improves the quality of the decision.  

In consequence, the head honcho, Barack Obama, for however long he remains in office, and his successors get to decide everything -- whether or not Navy snipers can pull their triggers and rescue Captain Richard Phillips from pirates in the Indian Ocean, whether to launch Osama bin Laden's elimination inside Pakistan, or even whether or not a soldier shot down in front of a U.S. Army recruiting station by a jihadist trained in Yemen gets awarded the Purple Heart.  Everything and anything of any consequence.

This is a very un-American idea which doesn't, over the long term, provide political cover, doesn't enable a fluid situation to be managed, but only breeds pusillanimity in the ranks.  It fosters the caveat that "it's not my decision to make, not my responsibility -- it's the guy farther up the food chain.  So whatever happens, it's not my fault."

It also entails delay, which is all by itself often fatal in these instances.  Of course, we claim that delay is overcome with technology, by, for instance, streaming live video feed right into the White House.  But can Barack Obama make a better tactical decision than the man on the ground?  Usually he cannot.  The argument that he can is often couched in terms of intelligence, the concept that he has a superior strategic vision because he has access to more information.  Fine -- but what that means, especially in a president who skips his intelligence briefings, is that he has to gather that information.  That is, call a meeting or let his national security chief do so, and so there is that delay again.  In fact, these meetings in the midst of a crisis always entail delay, because these well-fed types in thousand-dollar suits ordering coffee from the hovering 

White House steward are often lawyers, and lawyers typically counsel delay.  But mostly they aren't the ones being shot at.

And so you get the phenomenon where the entire chain of command begins to focus on passing on only the information they believe will shorten the delay.  For example, the debacle in Somalia (Black Hawk Down) during the Clinton years can be laid at the door of the command having to submit their operational plan to Washington for approval.  Why?  You've got professional soldiers educated and trained and obviously thought worthy of promotion from second lieutenant during those careers up through the Army's many rank levels of increasing responsibility, and they're on the spot.  Can't they be trusted to plan and then execute a company-level operation?

The answer was no, and what they were forced to do was submit a detailed operational plan to Washington identical to one that had been nitpicked, adjusted, and agreed to before in the hope of having it approved in some timely fashion.  But of course, this act in itself entailed great risk, because doing the same thing over and over again in exactly the same way is a recipe for disaster when faced with an observant enemy.

And it was a disaster.  Brave, tough men carried through, but it was a disaster.

In his book Leading From Behind, my son (also named Richard) reports from sources inside the administration that the bin Laden raid was itself delayed three times, perhaps because political adviser Valerie Jarrett wouldn't advise the president to go ahead with it.  But why should it be a White House decision at all?  The president should have told the ground commander to get bin Laden whenever he could and let it go at that.  The several months' period of delay during which bin Laden could have moved would have been avoided.  We saw the same criminal delay in Carter's abortive Iran hostage-rescue raid.  We see it in the eternal waffling over Iran.

Yet isn't the American way to make the decision at the lowest level possible and then back those leaders on the spot, no matter what the outcome, as long as it was evident that they were trying to do the right thing?  

Isn't it the American way to trust our people?

We wouldn't tolerate any other approach from our local police.  In fact, if they don't act on their own, they're liable to charges of cowardice.

Similarly, every commander of every ship, every post, every infantry company everywhere should have the authority and the requirement to defend himself or rescue our people without first having to ask permission, in triplicate, on the right form, with all the Ts crossed, countersigned by ten levels of command.  Indeed not to have such a system of trust in place is in itself cowardice.

As to the matter of the short term, the Libyan debacle itself had more than enough yellow-belly soup sloshing around in it to paint the White House, Foggy Bottom, and the upper echelons of the CIA a bright canary, but the answer to the fundamental question of why it happened is the fact that we still have the same organizational structure, and way of thinking, which brought us Black Hawk Down.

Interestingly, when we examine the question of why the particular decisions about Benghazi were made the way they were, we have to dismiss the idea of politics.  These people can't think that fast, and nobody in the White House those first few hours could have seen how it would play out.  For all they knew, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's subordinates might have been covering the Obama administration in glory, and the Chicago rule is, after all, "never let a crisis go to waste."

Instead, what must have happened is that the unfolding crisis struck an elemental force in the White House.  

Some mindset which wouldn't book any contradiction, and it's not that difficult to figure out whose mind harbored that set.  Take Barack Obama's iron determination never to offend the Muslim world -- never, that is, to underscore its weakness by making another boots-on-the-ground war in some part of it.  He said as much on his original "apology tour" in Cairo; he demonstrated it in his abandonment of Iraq and via his determination to withdraw from Afghanistan -- not because it's a "worthless piece of dirt," as Colonel Ralph Peters so aptly described it, but simply because it's in his mind morally correct to do so.  You can see it in one Ramadan dinner after another at the White House, his enthusiastic bowing, his description of the Muslim call to prayer as the most beautiful sound there is -- but most vividly, you see it in his refusal to allow American forces to participate in the aerial bombardment of Gaddafi's failing dictatorship.

Because Obama is determined upon an American realignment towards the Muslim world.  In fact, if he has one fixed foreign-policy idea, I suspect that this is it.

So much so that the question of whether such a realignment is more a matter of perception than substance is unimportant.  The question of whether or not it will lead to future gain is unimportant.  The question of whether it will lead to greater security for Israel or Christian minorities in the Middle East is unimportant.  

Even the cruel fate of our people in Libya isn't important.  Instead, what is important in Obama's mind, what is the only issue of importance, is his deeply rooted conviction that he has to prove himself to these people.  

That he owes them this gift.

And everybody in the White House knows that.  Knows they can't dispatch a U.S. Marine infantry company from offshore to our ambassador's rescue, know they can't allow former SEALs in the CIA to launch a rescue mission or Delta Force people positioned in Italy to fly in.  Knows that under no circumstances can they authorize anything except an anonymous drone looksee, because boots on the ground can't be tolerated.  Not by the big boss upstairs in the family quarters busy packing for Vegas.

So the White House had to pretend that there was no military target.  No armed and organized force to hit back against or drive off the scene.  Simply a spontaneous mob incited once again by America's endless intolerance, manifested this time by some obscure video disparaging the prophet.

Yet how embarrassed and chagrined the sycophants in Barack Obama's Situation Room must have been by the heroics of two American former SEALs who disobeyed orders twice repeated, rescued whomever they could from the besieged consulate, and then died defending them.  But how embarrassed and chagrined we should be at the leadership which let them die rather than stand up to Barack Obama.  Because if the people among that leadership had but half the courage of those two Navy SEALs who disobeyed direct orders and saved the Americans at the consulate, Obama, with only weeks to go before his hoped for re-election, would have folded, because he is not a brave man himself -- only clever and calculating.

Indeed, what Benghazi teaches us is not only have we a faulty system of command, but that there aren't any men in Barack Obama's White House.  Except of course those enlisted Marines he has in dress blues holding the doors open for his friends.  They could have told him what to do and where to get off.

Richard F. Miniter is the author of The Things I Want Most, a former U.S. Marine, and a local chief of police.  He can be reached at miniterhome@aol.com .

American Thinker

America Discovers the Republicans

October 31, 2012
By J.T. Hatter

Obama decided early in his re-election campaign to destroy his opponent, Mitt Romney.  The Democratic Party's mud-slinging ads, and the mainstream media newscasts, relentlessly painted Romney as an evil conservative who looks down on the 47% of Americans who receive government benefits.  Romney was a wealthy industrialist who outsourced American jobs, a greedy capitalist who murdered a steelworker's wife by taking away her health insurance, a tax-evader, a bad Mormon, and a racist.  Furthermore, he was waging war on women, on the middle class, on Social Security and Medicare, and on the planet.

Obama pumped in huge sums of money, carpet-bombing swing states with negative advertising.  The combined Obama campaign/mainstream media onslaught gave Americans a generally negative opinion of Mitt Romney.

But then something very strange happened.  The polling started to detect a slight trend towards Romney.  

Nobody in the Obama camp could understand it.  They couldn't believe it.

Last month, Barack Obama was leading in virtually all of the national polls and was confident of a win on November 6.  This month, the American people are telling the pollsters that they like the Romney/Ryan ticket better.  Romney now has a slight lead.  The Obama camp and news media suddenly find themselves in frenzied, panic-stricken, damage control mode.


Peering through the Muck

What happened to the mainstream media's drumbeat that Obama's re-election was in the bag?  Had the multi-media left-wing disinformation campaign lost its punch?  After enduring weeks of blitzkrieg negative advertising, the American people finally got a peek at the Republicans.  And they liked what they saw.
Kevin "Coach" Collins had this to say:
Have you seen some of those anti-Romney mud-slinging TV spots? If so, you'll be glad to know that Barack Obama's attack ads are not only falling short of their goal of tearing down Romney's character, but according to one survey are actually energizing Republican enthusiasm to vote against Obama.
Despite the torrent of negative attack ads, the American people wanted to see for themselves who Mitt Romney was and what he was all about.  The more people saw, the more they liked the man and his vision for America.  Romney has a five-point plan that is coherent and makes sense.  He comes across as a very decent fellow.

After a stellar first debate in which Romney roundly trounced Obama, making Obama look like a little child wearing Daddy's shoes, followed up by two more debates in which he looked presidential and held his own against the surly, dissembling Obama, many Americans decided that Romney is the man for the job.

Josh Jordan (National Review) wrote a piece titled "Romney's Not-So-Secret weapon: America Actually Likes Him," in which he said:
You might not know it from the day-to-day coverage, but America is warming up to Mitt Romney. A difficult primary left Romney bloodied by his primary opponents, and before he could establish his general-election footing Obama's campaign began a relentless assault on Romney's character with tens of millions of dollars of ads.
Americans might have warmed up sooner if they hadn't had to endure the punishing "day-to-day coverage" by the mainstream media and the Obama attack ads.  Stuart Rothenberg (Roll Call) said it this way:
After spending the summer defining and discrediting Romney in key states and nationally, the Obama campaign now finds itself facing an opponent who, in just 90 minutes, erased much of the image that David Axelrod and David Plouffe created in a series of negative ads over the summer.
Romney's new image and positioning in the race - moderate, reasonable and focused on problem-solving - make him a far more acceptable alternative than he once was, and that has made it easier for voters to focus their attention during the final month of the campaign on the president and his record, which remains mixed.
Barack Hussein Obama has always run his political campaigns to exploit racial, economic, religious, and political divisions.  The main thrust of his current political campaign is to demonize his opponent, not run on his track record.  Obama is playing his Chicago game.  The GPO has just released a graphic showing that Obama's October campaign ads were 73.3% purely negative, compared to 36% for Romney.  But Mitt Romney endured the mud-slinging, the lying, the misrepresentations, the race-baiting, the attacks on his faith and his personal and professional life.  He took it all and endured, smiling the whole time as he waited patiently for his turn.

Dawn's Early Light

Romney is American to the core, and people sense that.  In contrast, Obama is the first anti-American president, a globalist whose goals are to bring the USA into the fold of international socialism and to right the imagined wrongs of an oppressive state.  Romney wants to improve the lives of all people, or at least as many as he can.

Obama callously divided this nation after promising to bring it together and heal its divisions.  Romney actually has a record of uniting disparate groups and working positively with a Massachusetts legislature that was 84% Democrat.  He was a very successful governor in a state that is notoriously hard to govern.  He has a proven, fantastically successful track record in business.  Obama has never held a real job, run a business, made payroll, or ever held an executive position.  Not one.  He scooped ice cream at Baskin-Robbins and worked on a newsletter.  The rest of his life has been as a community organizer or in politics. 

 Obama's origins and family history have largely been kept secret from us.  Mitt, Ann, and their five boys look like a living Norman Rockwell painting -- quintessentially American.  You know they believe in America and all it stands for.  Not so with Obama.

Even the New York Times ran a generally favorable piece on Romney entitled "Romney as a Manager: Unhurried and Socratic."

Americans like Mitt Romney.  They trust him.  But most of all, Americans are coming to see --despite the inescapable disinformation to the contrary -- that Romney genuinely loves America and believes in her founding ideals: personal responsibility, limited constitutional government, religious freedom, and the free-enterprise system.  He has demonstrated exceptional understanding and capability in all four areas.  

What a refreshing change.

The Ryan Bump

When Romney announced Paul Ryan as his running mate on August 11, that sealed the deal for many.  But the media and the Democrats vehemently denounced the selection.
Obama has a great deal of personal animosity toward Ryan, who worked diligently to defeat ObamaCare.  

The media have echoed these ill feelings.  Michael Tomasky (Daily Beast) wrote that Romney's VP pick of Paul Ryan was a "terrible, stunning choice."  Andrea Mitchell (NBC), a leading Obama spokesman, wasted no time in her attack: "This is a base election. This is not a pick for suburban moms; this is not a pick for women."  Candy Crowley (CNN) claimed that unnamed Republicans felt "trepidation" that the pick "looks a little bit like some sort of ticket death wish."  The media recognized the threat to their ideological standard-bearer and went on the attack -- and, in doing so, even further alienated themselves from the American public.


Paul Ryan was an astonishingly good choice and one that greatly impressed the citizenry.  Most voters considered the choice much better than the one the president had made.  Ladies wholeheartedly approve of 

Ryan and have been rallying to his side.  Ryan singlehandedly eliminated the so-called gender gap, taking millions of votes away from the Obama camp.

The liberal media largely denied that Ryan shifted the poll numbers at all, but many pollsters recorded a decisive bump soon after the August 11 announcement, especially among independent/undecided voters and in swing states -- where they hurt Obama the most.  Obama enjoyed a 5- to 7-point national lead, but Ryan's pick quickly closed the gap, bringing a surge of much-needed momentum to the conservative camp.  

Romney smacked one out of the ball bark with Ryan.  And patriotic conservative Americans cheered.  

Romney's picking Ryan -- and Romney's increasing likeability -- changed the political fundamentals, and we now have a tight race.

Decision Time

Americans have had the full measure of Barack Hussein Obama.  He may have 35% or 47% of the vote sewn up.  He will retain his hardcore yellow-dog Democrats and many of those who are dependent on government welfare programs.  But there are those of us who are convinced that the USA cannot survive another four years like the last.  We number at least half of the electorate -- hopefully more.

When decent, honest working people look at Obama, and then look at Romney, there is no hesitation to point to Romney as their choice to lead them into the future.  America's future does not belong to international socialism or to the collectivists who want so desperately to "fundamentally transform" our nation.  This nation's future depends on rediscovering our founding principles and values, fighting to preserve them, and teaching them to our children.  This hard work is necessary in this election and all future elections -- otherwise, we are lost.

Ronald Reagan once said:
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.
Despite the massive, mud-slinging, negative campaigning by the Obama administration, and the pervasive mainstream media anti-Romney propaganda, the American people have discovered Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.  And they like them.  The majority of American voters believe that Mitt Romney is the last best hope to save the USA.

J.T. Hatter is the author of Lost in Zombieland: The Rise of President Zero, a political satire on the Obama administration.  J.T. can be reached at jt@jthatter.com.

American Thinker

The Miscalculation of the American Left

October 31, 2012
By Steve McCann

 
 As the 2012 election season winds down to a merciful end, the Obama re-election cabal is in a state of shock and panic at the very real prospect that they and their anointed "messiah" look headed for a monumental defeat.  Such a defeat may well change the political landscape in the United States for many years to come, thanks to Barack Obama.

The American left, the Obama campaign team, the Democratic establishment, and much of the mainstream media are stunned and surprised by the depth of reaction to the exposure of a vapid Barack Obama during the three presidential debates.  Revealed to the world was a man who could not live up to the well-crafted image of one of the most adept, well-liked, and intelligent politicians in American history.  Once deflated, this image could never be rebuilt.  Obama's performance was indicative of an unprepared and unqualified president unable to defend his four years in office or present a cogent plan for the next four.  

Further, the Euro-socialist policies eagerly pursued by the Obama administration and the Democrats in Congress, which in the hallowed halls of academia and liberal think-tanks always succeed, not only have failed miserably to rescue the economy, but are being soundly rejected by the majority of the populace.  

They, unlike the insulated elites, are experiencing the real-life consequences of these actions, in a global and domestic landscape of turmoil, indecision, and uncertainty.

As the members of the American left look to the horizon, they are beginning to focus on the very real prospect that what they have strived to achieve over the past fifty-plus years has begun to unravel.  In great part, this is because they chose as the face of the movement someone whose only qualifications were skin color, an ability to read a speech and live up to a celebrity persona, and a studiously ignored youth and young adulthood steeped in 1960s radicalism.  The left relied solely on image rather than substance, and because of racial guilt as well as presenting Barack Obama as a "moderate" bent on hope and change, they succeeded in winning the presidency and control of Congress.

The left had assumed since the president had garnered over 69 million votes in the 2008 election (53% of the votes cast) that the American people had given him and his party a free hand to transform the country.  

Never mind that the votes Mr. Obama received accounted for only 30% of the voting-age population in the country, and forget that many voted for him thinking he was the moderate he proclaimed to be during his campaign for president.

It is apparent that the Progressives; their figurehead, Barack Obama; the leaders of the Democratic Party; and the so-called intellectuals on the left  have little or no understanding of why the Euro-socialist utopia they envision will never be accepted by the American people.  Had these elites gotten beyond their own sense of superiority and God-given right to lead, they would have understood that the basic nature of the American society is unlike that of any nation in the world.

Throughout the history of mankind, strong centralized governments have dominated those societies whose makeup was primarily of a single ethnic group and who had little or no history of independence or popular uprisings (e.g., Russia, China, various Arab countries).  So too for modern-day Marxism or socialism -- those nations in today's world living under various manifestations of socialism mostly are similarly formulated.  A docile and willing public is essential for the acceptance of an authoritarian government.
In 1782, a French immigrant to the United States, Michel Guillaume Jean de Crèvecoeur, in his notable essays, "Letters from an American Farmer," wrote of his newly adopted country:
What then is the American, this new man?  He is either a European or the descendant of a European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country...Here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world.
The population of the country has increased nearly a hundredfold since those words were first written 230 years ago.  The "new race of men" now includes those from all corners of the world, and their labor and posterity have in fact caused great changes, for the better, in the world.  It has become a source of pride in American families to trace their ancestry and celebrate the courage and determination of their forefathers -- be it that they came on the Mayflower, by steerage to Ellis Island, or through the suffering and perseverance inherent in forced servitude.

These pioneers injected into a uniquely American character a fierce desire to be independent and free, to be the final arbiter of one's success or failure.  There resides deep within the soul of this country a profound mistrust of a powerful central government; this trust stems from the firsthand experience of these immigrants, voluntary and involuntary, from whom virtually all Americans today descend. 

Over the past sixty-seven years, as the United States became the wealthiest and most powerful country on the face of the earth, another trait unique to the American people came to the fore: a genuine sense of generosity and fair play.  All were willing to accept the notion that the individual (and the government to a much smaller degree) should help those in need and give the downtrodden a leg up.  

Unfortunately, this characteristic has been exploited by those on the left who desire to transform the country into a socialist utopia (governed by them, of course).  The stratagem used was to foster guilt for one's success, substitute government for individual charity, and declare as rights those things that only government can insure.  As long as the future of the nation did not appear to be in real jeopardy, and as long as the nation could, on the surface, afford this spending, many simply chose to drop out of active participation in governance, while others, in smaller numbers, chose to accept the largess.  

While far too many have succumbed to a dependence on government largess, this does not mean that the basic character of the American people, as instilled by those Americans' forbears, has changed to become amenable to a massive central government controlling all aspects of their lives while jeopardizing the futures of their children and grandchildren.

The Obama administration and the Democratic Party have, by unbridled spending and headlong drive to control the day-to-day activities of all Americans, at last awakened those who chose to sit on the sidelines and merely observe while assuming that the country was too big and rich to fail.  

Now, even many of the least involved citizens have begun to realize that the nation has embarked on a path that will bankrupt the country.   It is now apparent to a majority that the survival of a great nation depends in its ability to remain master of its destiny and that that capability is now in question.

In this election, the people are rising to the challenge of overcoming what the left has attempted to achieve over the past fifty years.  This is something never anticipated by them, Barack Obama, and the Democrats.  

The legacy left to Americans by their forbears will not be betrayed; it is, after all, who we are.

American Thinker

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

You don’t mess with the CIA


 You know who doesn’t like getting thrown under the bus? The CIA. You know what the CIA does when you try to throw it under the bus? They get even — quickly, quietly, and with fatal consequences.

That seems the most logical explanation for the torrent of information pouring out this week (unless Hillary Rodham Clinton — also thrown under the bus by President Obama — is scrapping any chance of ever running for president again and is simply setting the whole administration on fire, along with her legacy as secretary of state).

The main lesson from Watergate (after the no-brainer that you should never hire a guy named “Tricky Dick”) was this: The Cover-Up Is Worse Than The Crime. For some reason, Professor Obama seems not to know this crucial lesson. Or he’s just arrogant enough to say, “Well, that doesn’t apply to someone as brilliant as moi.”

Make no mistake, though: There is a massive cover-up under way in the White House. Nothing else can explain the endless contradictions over the attack that left the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans dead. The White House has already had to rewrite the entire narrative once, holding a late night conference call with reporters just before a House hearing two weeks ago in which State Department officials told a whole new tale: There was no “spontaneous” protest over some anti-Islam video posted on YouTube. Instead, there were dozens of heavily armed terrorists who poured over a 9-foot-high fence covered with barbed wire to attack America on 9/11.

Last week, Mr. Obama told another bald-faced lie when he declared at the presidential debate that he had termed the attack “terrorist” in a Rose Garden address the next day. He did no such thing; in fact, the White House and State Department took nearly two weeks to acknowledge it was a terrorist attack (all the while pushing the spontaneous protest and video canards).

This week’s deluge of contradictions, though, is far worse. Communications among top officials — including those in the White House Situation Room — suddenly appeared (thanks CIA!). The first, titled “US Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack,” said “approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador [J. Christopher] Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four COM [Chief of Mission/embassy] personnel are in the compound safe haven.”

The last of the released emails said: “Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.” In case you’ve never heard of them, Ansar al-Sharia is an anti-Moamar Gaddafi group made up of former rebels from the February 17 Brigade that demands the imposition of the strict Islamic Shariah law and is willing to murder to achieve its goals — what one might otherwise call a “terrorist group.”

By week’s end, still fuming over the whole thrown-under-the-bus thing, the CIA appeared to strike again, this time by leaking more information heavily damaging to the White House — and the man in charge of the Situation Room, the president. “Sources on the ground in Benghazi” told Fox News that “an urgent request from the CIA annex for military backup during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command — who also told the CIA operators twice to ‘stand down’ rather than help the ambassador’s team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.”

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods and two others ignored the absurd order — Americans were under attack — swooped into the consulate and evacuated those stranded there. Mr. Woods and another former Navy SEAL would die seven hours later in mortar attacks.

What’s more, the sources told Fox that “at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested backup support from a Spectre gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights.”

No help was sent, even though quick-strike teams were poised an hour away in Italy.
Charles Woods, the father of Tyrone Woods, was incensed. “Apparently even the State Department had a live stream and was aware of their calls for help,” he told a radio show. “When I heard, you know, that there’s a very good chance that the White House as well as other members of the military knew what was going on and obviously someone had to say, don’t go rescue them. Because every person in the military — their first response [would be], ‘We’re going to go rescue them.’ We need to find out who it was that gave that command — do not rescue them.”

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, getting rolled by the CIA, looked the fool with his lame excuses, saying they didn’t have enough “real-time information” to send military forces to respond. “The basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on.” Wasn’t there a live stream in the Situation Room? He called criticism “Monday morning quarterbacking.”

But the CIA wasn’t finished with him or the White House. In one last flourish at week’s end, CIA spokesman Jennifer Youngblood said, “We can say with confidence that the agency reacted quickly to aid our colleagues during that terrible evening in Benghazi. Moreover, no one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate.”

Game, set, match. The White House sought to divert blame, set up fantastical red herrings like spontaneous protesters (armed with mortars and RPGs!?) and anti-Islam videos posted on YouTube. But the CIA doesn’t like taking the fall for mistakes by the president and his top aides, and they get even quickly, quietly, and with fatal consequences.

• Joseph Curl covered the White House and politics for a decade for The Washington Times. He can be reached at jcurl@washingtontimes.com.

Washington Times 

'Courage was Lacking for Benghazi'

October 30, 2012
Clarice Feldman

There has been some suggestion that the President's hands were tied in dealing with the 9/11 attack in Benghazi because we had no forces and equipment available to assist the trapped men. Retired Adm. Ace Lyons, former CinCPacFlt takes issue with such a defense:

"The Obama national security team, including CIA, DNI, State Department and the Pentagon, watched and listened to the assault but did nothing to answer repeated calls for assistance. It has been reported that President Obama met with Vice President Joseph R. Biden and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta in the Oval Office, presumably to see what support could be provided. After all, we had very credible military resources within striking distance. At our military base in Sigonella, Sicily, which is slightly over 400 miles from Benghazi, we had a fully-equipped Special Forces unit with both transport and jet strike aircraft prepositioned. Certainly this was a force much more capable than the 22-man force from our embassy in Tripoli.

"I know those Special Forces personnel were ready to leap at the opportunity. There is no doubt in my mind they would have wiped out the terrorists attackers. Also I have no doubt that Admiral William McRaven, Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, would have had his local commander at Sigonella ready to launch; however, apparently he was countermanded -- by whom? We need to know.

"I also understand we had a C-130 gunship available, which would have quickly disposed of the terrorist attackers. This attack went on for seven hours. Our fighter jets could have been at our Benghazi mission within an hour. Our Special Forces out of Sigonella could have been there within a few hours. There is not any doubt that action on our part could have saved the lives of our two former Navy SEALs and possibly the ambassador.

"Having been in a number of similar situations, I know you have to have the courage to do what's right and take immediate action. Obviously, that courage was lacking for Benghazi. The safety of your personnel always remains paramount. With all the technology and military capability we had in theater, for our leadership to have deliberately ignored the pleas for assistance is not only incomprehensible, it is un-American."

American Thinker

In Their Own Words: Obama's Effect on Military Families

October 30, 2012
By Elise Cooper

President Obama seems to have a disregard for those defending America.  Recently, on Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, he commented on the death of three Americans and Ambassador Chris Stevens: "... it's not optimal."  The mother of Sean Smith, a Foreign Service officer and one of the three killed, reportedly responded to the president: "My son is not very optimal. He is also very dead. It was a disrespectful thing to say[.]"

That is how many families feel about the president's attitude toward those who have died serving their country.  Billy and Karen Vaughn spoke with American Thinker about their deceased Navy SEAL Team Six son, Aaron, and their views on this administration's rules of engagement policies.

Aaron Vaughn was one of thirty U.S. service members, including 22 members of SEAL Team Six, killed when the helicopter they were traveling in was downed on August 5, 2011, in Afghanistan.  This was the largest loss of life in the history of naval special warfare.  At the time of his death, Aaron left behind a two-year-old son, a two-month-old daughter, his wife, and his parents.  He became a SEAL in 2004 and joined SEAL Team Six in 2010.  He was one of the few SEALs to get his name on the "First Time Every Time Wall," an honor for those SEALs who passed every test on their first try.

Aaron's mother wanted Americans to know that he had received numerous decorations, including the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star.  She asked American Thinker if she could "tell you about my son, since I don't want people associating him with just a name.  There was a purpose to his life.  Even after becoming a SEAL, he maintained that calm, quiet spirit.  He loved his family and his country, and he was humbled as well as honored to be able to serve his country.  We didn't think he would ever achieve his goal of becoming a Navy SEAL when he drastically injured his knee.  Yet because he was determined, he put himself on an exercise program right out of high school to develop the muscles around his knee."

Billy and Karen Vaughn wonder if their son had to die on that August night.  They are furious with the Obama administration over the rules of engagement.  Although there is nothing that can bring their son back, they are speaking out now to make sure their voice is heard.  Karen told American Thinker, "Someone needs to speak out, since those soldiers are the ones being damaged the most, and they have no voice in these rules.  Soldiers and their families cannot speak out, or they will face consequences.  Since our son died, we feel it is our duty.  Every parent that we are engaged with feels the same way.

"We have not gotten any blowback whatsoever.  In fact, we get e-mails every day thanking us, and telling us their child who is in Afghanistan supports us.  What we are hoping to do is to scream out loud enough so that American citizens will learn and then get on board.  The policies of this administration are getting our soldiers killed."

American Thinker asked Billy and Karen to describe the events leading up to the night Aaron died.  They point out that then-Secretary of Defense Gates kept telling this administration that there should be no operational details made public about the Osama bin Laden raid.  Yet, from the president on down, this administration took a victory lap.  Karen was furious as she watched all the information coming out, and she thought, "Oh my G-d -- he is going to get them killed.  The president endangered the lives of our warriors by promoting himself.  Then Aaron called and told us that intelligence was receiving chatter that we were all being targeted: the SEALs, their parents, wives, and children.

"After getting off the phone, my heart went into my mouth.  Because of the decisions of this administration, families have to start watching their backs; that is our reality.  After hearing of my son's death, I thought that this administration had put a target on my son's back about ninety days after Osama bin Laden was killed.""

Billy felt that this administration has tied the American warriors' hands behind their backs.  He was in Afghanistan while Bush was president, but on his second tour of duty, in 2010, he became angry because of what had changed.  Billy said that Aaron always said, "Our enemies understand force.  They hate us, but they also fear us.  They only respect power."

Why was Billy so angry?  Before 2011, when SEALs took Afghan commandos on raids, the Aghans were not told of any mission details until they arrived at the destination.  The reasoning behind this is obvious: they were afraid that the enemy would be waiting to ambush them.  But starting in 2011, the Afghan national army, police, and security ministry were required to be involved in the planning, intelligence, and pre-op.  

Furthermore, Billy wants Americans to know that the official report stated that the Afghans had the flight route of the SEAL helicopters that night, and he believes that this contributed to the ambush.  "They knew that the Taliban's new strategy was to infiltrate to get information where they would be able to wreak havoc on American forces."

Billy is disgusted at the rules of engagement, which prevented immediate retaliation.  There were other helicopters that were prevented from firing on the position where the RPGs came from, because the Taliban was standing on top of a building.  Billy's reaction: "The American helicopters were not allowed to take out the Taliban even though they just killed thirty Americans.  We have it in writing that the remaining helicopter pilots knew exactly where the shots came from.  This is the height of insanity."

Billy and Karen have agreed to be a part of Veterans For A Strong America's ad -- not for political reasons, but to change this ridiculous strategy.  Karen believes that "[t]his is not about politics; it's about human beings who are being sacrificed on an altar of narcissism and idiotic ideology.  Since this president has no intention of changing this ideology, he must go.  We need someone who has a concern for our warriors, and I am absolutely convinced that President Obama does not have the best interests of the American soldier.  This president is very dangerous.  He is getting our soldiers killed while he is sitting in his Oval Office, riding around on Air Force One, or playing golf endlessly.  If you want to call it political, go ahead."

Billy and Karen want Americans to know that Aaron wanted to make a difference in this world.  They are hoping for a change in leadership from the commander-in-chief to the generals in charge.  If Governor Romney wins the presidency, they want to meet with him to voice their concerns on how to protect American troops, since it is obvious that the current president "is not doing what it takes to protect our soldiers, our allies, and our security interests around the world with this ridiculous strategy."

American Thinker

Obama on Hurricane: 'We Leave Nobody Behind'

30 Oct 2012


  Today, during a non-campaign campaign stop at the Red Cross, President Obama told the nation something his administration obviously didn’t believe during the seven-hour attack on our consulate in Benghazi (and a nearby annex) on the night of September 11, 2012: That when an "American is in need… we leave nobody behind":
This is a tough time for a lot of people; millions of folks all across the Eastern Seaboard, but America's tougher. And we're tougher because we pull together, we leave nobody behind, we make sure we respond as a nation and remind ourselves that whenever an American is in need, all of stand together to make sure we're providing the help that's necessary. 
You can watch the moment in the video embedded below.
That's a beautiful sentiment, Mr. President, but where was it when the cameras weren't rolling; when your government heard three plaintive pleas for assistance from Americans under attack and with help reportedly close enough to make a difference?
Hurricane Sandy has been a study in Barack Obama's leadership in a time of crisis, and not one that reflects well on the President. When reelection politics demand Obama remove himself from the campaign trail and head back to the White House to "monitor the storm," he did exactly that.
But when those same politics demand Obama downplay the murder of four Americans in Libya by blaming a terrorist attack on a YouTube video and then jetting off to Vegas for a fundraiser the same day he learned of the murders, he did exactly that, as well.  

Facebook Censors Navy SEALS to Protect Obama on Benghazi-Gate

30 Oct 2012

 
 Over the weekend, Facebook took down a message by the Special Operations Speaks PAC (SOS) which highlighted the fact that Obama denied backup to the forces being overrun in Benghazi. The message was contained in a meme which demonstrated how Obama had relied on the SEALS when he was ready to let them get Osama bin Laden, and how he had turned around and denied them when they called for backup on Sept 11.

I spoke with Larry Ward, president of Political Media, Inc -- the media company that handles SOS postings and media production. Ward was the one who personally put the Navy SEAL meme up, and the one who received the warning from Facebook and an eventual 24 hour suspension from Facebook  because Ward put the meme back up after Facebook told him to take it down.

Here's what Ward told me:
We created and posted this meme on Saturday after news broke that Obama had known and denied SEALS the backup they requested. 
Once the meme was up it garnered 30,000 shares, approx. 24,000 likes, and was read by hundreds of thousands of people -- all within 24 hrs. On Sunday, I went into the SOS Facebook page to post something else and found a warning from Facebook that we had violated Facebook's Statement of Rights and Responsibilities with our meme. So I copied the warning, put it on the meme as as caption, and re-posted the meme to the Facebook page.
Along with the re-posted meme, Ward put a link to the Facebook "feedback comment" inbox so visitors to the SOS page could send a message to Facebook if they were as outraged over the meme being jerked down as he was.



Ward said Facebook pulled the re-posted meme down within 7 or 8 hours and suspended the SOS account for 24 hours.

In other words, Facebook put the Navy SEALS in timeout in order to shield Obama.

How low can you go?



Big Peace

Monday, October 29, 2012

Benghazigate: Chapter Two

By on 10.29.12


 What more does anyone need to know than that Americans are under attack before ordering a military response to suppress the attack and possibly rescue our people?

Even if the initial response isn't exactly what you'd want it to be, even if you don't have every asset available that you might in a perfect world, isn't it your duty -- whether you're a lowly second lieutenant or the Secretary of Defense -- to do everything you can as quickly as you can?

Of course it is, at least unless you're President Obama and his minions. His two principal flunkies -- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta -- had a lot of options on September 11 during the seven-hour attack on our Benghazi consulate and the CIA house about a mile away. According to a Fox News report based on several sources, the people under attack pled with the CIA for help three times during the attack and all three pleas were refused. Team Obama did nothing to save their lives.

The accuracy of the Fox report is easily derived from other facts. One element of proof that the requests were made -- by people under fire -- comes from Panetta's whining. According to a Reuters report, Panetta said there wasn't enough information to responsibly deploy forces to Libya during the attack. "You don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on, without having some real-time information about what's taking place."

Really, Mr. Secretary? Let's set aside the fact that one or more drones were over the consulate during the attack, sending back the information Panetta says he needed. But the drone issue begs the question: Panetta cannot really believe that sending armed aircraft from our base at Sigonella, Italy -- about 350 air miles away -- wouldn't have given him both the capability of suppressing the attack and whatever other information he thinks he needed. Panetta's whine is as evasive as his actions were treacherous.

President Obama was apparently so fearful of offending some Islamic mob that he preferred to let our people be killed than send a couple of F-18s from Sigonella to Benghazi. Flight time -- for fully armed aircraft at about 0.7 or 0.8 Mach -- is less than an hour. The attack went on for seven hours. If the fly-guys busted Mach, they could have been there in about a half hour. Plenty of time to pop a sonic boom over the consulate which -- as we've seen in Afghanistan many times -- is enough to send the terrorists running. And -- if there wasn't time for the first flight to be armed -- it would have been able to recon the situation and give the time for fully-armed aircraft to arrive about fifteen or twenty minutes later.

Obama's fingerprints are all over this refusal to come to the aid of our people when they were under attack. The CIA -- implicitly confirming the pleas for help -- denies that anyone in its chain of command rejected any such request. The specificity of the CIA denial gives us another proof that the requests were made, but it carries a second aspect of responsibility for the failure to send help. CIA Director David Petraeus must have passed the requests up the chain of command and someone higher than him -- the president is the only one higher than a cabinet member -- denied the requests.

Clinton has to have known what Charlene Lamb -- her head of embassy security -- knew during the attack. (Lamb testified at a 10 October congressional hearing that she was in real-time contact with the consulate during the attack.) So must have Petraeus, because his CIA operators -- former SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glenn Doherty among them -- were making the pleas for assistance and asking permission to rush to the consulate's defense. Woods and Doherty were told to "stand down." As Fox reports, the two apparently ignored the orders and rushed to the consulate to help. Unable to find the ambassador, they withdrew to their CIA outpost, which then came under attack. Both were killed there.

President Obama is still fumbling and lying about the whole incident including the refusal of the pleas for help. In a Denver TV interview on Friday, Obama ducked questions about the Benghazi incident twice. He's also saying that he ordered support for the consulate personnel as soon as he heard about the attacks.

Why, then, weren't the available forces deployed immediately to save American lives? If no one in the CIA chain of command refused aid, the failure has to be Obama's. No one else could have denied the real-time requests.

Charles Woods, father of Tyrone Woods, said that those who denied the requests for help murdered his son. Woods's anguish is understandable. His son was a hero, and paid with his life for Obama's failure to send military force to attack the enemy that was attacking him.

Naturally, Obama and his minions aren't owning up to their treachery and the media -- except for Fox News -- are burying the story.

The Washington Post and the New York Times -- both of which have endorsed Obama -- aren't reporting the story on the rejected pleas for help. ABC, CBS and NBC aren't either.

To its credit, CBS did break the story last week on the State Department emails that show Obama's administration knew that the Benghazi attack was made by terrorists, not some mob distracted from a protest against an anti-Islamic video. The other big liberal media -- i.e., most of the major media -- gave little or no coverage to the CBS scoop.

As huge a scandal as the Benghazi incident is, it's not possible for it to become an issue in the election unless Mitt Romney makes it one. So far, he hasn't and he isn't likely to in the final week of the campaign.

Don't expect to hear much about Obama's conduct of the Benghazi incident before the election or after, if he is reelected. The effect of Obama's refusal to come to the aid of people under attack is best understood by the terrorists still walking the streets of Benghazi, and their allies around the world.

American Spectator

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Benghazi, Libya—Biopsy From a Malignant, Failed Presidency

By Kelly OConnell


 Whatever happened to Barack the world’s smartest leader and incomparable statesman? Those days are gone forever. Instead, it would be impossible to catalog the staggering list of ill-advised, mistaken, foolish, naive and utterly inane decisions by Obama and his administration. So, instead—let us use a single Obama catastrophe, the events of Libya—to critique and symbolize his failed tenure. This is reasonable because every bad Barack habit and evil instinct is represented in this new American disaster.

In the November 2012 presidential election, America is given an opportunity almost no other country suffering under tyranny is offered—the chance to wake-up and toss out a despot before he fatally damages our noble Republic. Let us pray Americans will cast aside sentimentality and act as true patriots and save America from a crafty and utterly immoral, power-mad demagogue. For if Libya is not a wake up call for the average American, we may not be able to stop the implosion. But we must believe we can halt the rot if we act now.

I. Benghazi


It is obvious now that a tremendous and sadly avoidable tragedy struck Americans in Benghazi, Libya on the anniversary of 9/11. Has such a deadly lack of leadership ever emanated from the White House? Further, what impact will such brutal official indifference make upon the American psyche if this event is not harshly sanctioned at the voting booth?

A. Benghazi 9/11 Overview


Here is a brief description of what we know: US Ambassador Christopher Stevens traveled from Tripoli to Benghazi, Libya. Nervous over rising unrest in this Muslim African Mediterranean nation, Stevens asked repeatedly for more security but was refused. On the day of the attack he’d asked again. He was attacked after dark, and seven hours later he was dead, along with three others. And it now appears the US had notice of the event, time to respond, and resources within reach to mount a counter-assault. What is not clear is why the American military was not sent in to save our Ambassador. (The time-line of the attack is well laid out at Powerline. (Benghazigate: The state of the story)

B. Benghazi Obama Problems


But let’s recall some of the more unsavory elements of the Benghazi charade. The killing of Stevens occurred on September 11, 2012 after 9 pm. As we now know, the attack was prep-planned terrorism, not the result of any video protest, as the White House (WH) initially claimed. The assault pitted a large group of terrorists against a few Americans and some Libyan security guards, who fled almost immediately. Four Americans were killed.

After much WH disinformation, we now know a great deal of damning information about what actually happened (key video): The fight raged for 7 hours; the WH knew there was no video protest; Ambassador Stevens asked repeatedly for more security, including the day of the attack; the WH had a live feed for 5 hours of the firefight; there was a CIA safe house 1 mile down the road; A nearby US base was 480 miles away—Sigonella Naval Air Station in Sicily, Italy; Former Navy SEALS at the nearby (1 mile) CIA annex asked three times if they could help Stevens and were told repeatedly to “stand down”; several agents finally volunteered to aid Stevens and ended up dying; that a Delta Force Team, designated a secret tier-one counter-terrorism team, was at Sigonella, at most 2 hours away; a US Military AC-130h-Specter Gunship was already in Benghazi but not sent to rescue Stevens (gunships mission: “close air support, air interdiction and armed reconnaissance”); that a strike was organized, the terrorists located, but the mission canceled when Barack did not have the nerve to pull the trigger.

It is undoubtedly worse than Obama simply turned his back on cornered American citizens in a foreign land, knowing undoubtedly they would die. But that Barack did so without any compelling reason—except political—is beyond evil. Only a moral monster would have made that decision when it was within his powers to possibly save them with almost no effort of his own.

II. Libya: Muslim Spring


Without Obama’s Muslim Spring policy, Benghazi probably never would have happened (Muslim Spring being the new American approach to using foreign rebels to wage war for liberty against dictators with American backing). So how did Barack’s Muslim Spring conversion take place? Actually, and against all of Barack’s claims of being a guileless freedom fighter—it was originally all about money, oil and power.

Europeans wanted Obama to join anti-Gaddafi forces during the rebel uprising to help defend their oil interests, as Libya is Europe’s biggest supplier of petroleum. Barack did not want to be left out, seemingly standing for nothing again while mouthing empty cliches, as he had been before in Iran.

Typically, after what Barack felt was a successful campaign to oust Gaddafi, he took credit for the strategy.

This is a longstanding habit (noted when he rode other legislator’s bills in the Illinois senate, despite having nothing to do with them). Writes one journalist in June 2011:
From Washington, the enthusiasm of the French for intervention in Libya is seen with a mixture of relief and puzzlement. The Americans do not want the job and are happy that someone else does. Indeed, President Nicolas Sarkozy’s willingness to intervene helped close a dangerous gap between the world of “values,” which would call for direct American intervention against Muammar al-Qaddafi, and the world of “interest,” which impelled President Barack Obama to restraint.
While Americans are relieved by France’s display of determination, they cannot refrain from expressing a sense of bemusement: Do the French really know what they are up against? What has happened to them? We know what war means, but they seem to have forgotten! Indeed, France and the United States seem to have switched roles from just a few years ago.
Sadly, Barack takes his own brand of “leadership” so seriously, and with the novelist’s joy for embellishment, that soon Europe’s Libyan intervention became another seed of his genius. Obama’s fiction of Libyan leadership was glorified in Vanity Fair in a silly panegyric called Obama’s Way. One weirdly effusive excerpt notes how Barack decided how the Libyan war would unfold:
A decision Barack Obama had made, more or less on his own. The president’s decision reached forward into the impersonal future—Qaddafi would be killed, Libya would hold its first free elections—but it also reached back into the personal past, to the things that had made Obama capable of walking alone into a room with a pencil and walking out a bit later with a conviction….He was especially alive to the power of a story to influence the American public.
He believed he had been elected chiefly because he had told a story. Now the United States had forged a broad international coalition to help people who claimed to share our values rid themselves of a tyrant.

III. Bad Habits & Evil Intentions

 

A. Lessons of Barack—Leaderless


What can we learn about Barack just from his Libya fiasco? There are many lessons, actually. And they all lead to the realization that Obama is a typical Marxist—dishonest, unethical, and utterly ruthless. First, when it comes to crises—Obama is a reactor, not a true leader. For example, it took France to push him into action against Gaddafi, which he then characteristically claimed showed him to be the majordomo. Yet—if he really was a principled leader, unafraid to stand up to a bully—then why no action when Iran’s people protested the faked elections, rioted and were murdered?

The Obama’s Way article went so far as to claim the profound Barack deferred to philosophers and statesmen in framing his response:
Obama asked his speechwriters to dig up for him writings about war by people he admired: Saint Augustine, Churchill, Niebuhr, Gandhi, King. He wanted to reconcile the non-violent doctrines of two of his heroes, King and Gandhi, with his new role in the violent world. These writings came back to the speechwriters with key passages underlined and notes by the president to himself scrawled in the margin.
But instead, fraudulent Barack was again simply Leading From Behind. This is the only type of “leadership” with which Barack feels an affinity.

B. Cowering & Heartless


Second, as Libya has now come apart, Barack reveals his real persona. This is the uncaring, craftily ambitious, inexperienced yet know-it-all poseur. But, when storm clouds mount he is so unnerved by making big decisions he sprints to the sand to bury his head. This can be seen the way Obama reacted to the Gulf Oil Spill. His most memorable maneuver, after lecturing oil companies on safety, was golf. Bill Clinton offered more leadership suggesting we nuke the offending undersea oil gusher.

C. Hypocritical & Soulless Politician


Third, Obama’s loss of nerve and decision to call off a military strike that could have taken out the Benghazi insurgents, and instead—just letting Americans die an agonizing, lonely death—is the most quintessential aspect of the story. This is because it reveals Barack as he truly is inside—an immoral, gutless, unfeeling, selfish, hypocritical, overly ambitious and hideously uncaring person. Obama ONLY cares about what he personally finds valuable, which obviously does not include individual Americans, or any random human beings.

D. Bizarre Shrunken Adolescent POTUS


We must admit in passing how weird it is to watch Barack devolve from his 2008 pseudo-statesman routine into his new disrespectful, perverted and immature persona. Undoubtedly this suits him better as it cuts closer to the bone.

IV. Why Obama Bailed on Benghazi


How about a few suggestions as to Obama’s motivations in Benghazi? Why would Barack not give his ambassador Chris Stevens security when he repeatedly asked for more and apparently danger grew daily?

Because this would go against Barack’s adolescent king-of-the-world fantasy which claimed he came in peace to heal the earth.

But when the WH and Pentagon could see live video that our ambassador in Libya was getting murdered, why wouldn’t Barack go in with military when he had the means easily within reach? And why would he cancel the military response after it was organized? Most probably because he believed it could escalate into something huge which would go against his peace-maker narrative. This would imperil his upcoming election.

Instead, Obama decided to sentence 4 men to execution, betting he could cover up the small murder by blaming it on another—Barack’s MO—with a hack video. He expected the media would undoubtedly help him with the coverup—as they subsequently tried—and sweep him back into power. But since this failed, all bets are off.

A. Moral Caner of Pragmatism


Ultimately, Benghazi is a triumph of Barack’s famed pragmatism, where only the outcome matters, and anything that helps achieve the goal—like murder by abandonment, in this case—is considered ethical.

Conclusion—Obama’s Choices: Lose or Be Impeached


Barack is a self-centered, utterly unfeeling, revolution-seeking drone who cannot be bothered with the hard work of genuine leadership. And as terrifying as it sounds, he is a typical Marxist leader who wants to “save humanity,” but finds individuals not important enough to consider. It’s no wonder Barack’s White House loves Mao, a possible role model for crazy, unthinking and ideologically-driven tyranny from the man who murdered 77 million of his own countrymen. Or perhaps Vlad Lenin, first dictator of the USSR is his example, who said—“Any cook should be able to run the country.” Marxists have no respect for democracy, republicanism or capitalism.

Whatever the purpose of Barack’s presidency, he must face the decision of getting beaten at the ballot box in November 2012 or being impeached. Yes America, it has finally come to that after Barack’s murderous high treason!

Canada Free Press

'Stand Down': U.S. Had Two Drones, AC-130 Gunship, and Targets Painted in Benghazi

27 Oct 2012 
 



  Reports indicate two drones and an AC-130 gunship were in the area when Benghazi was attacked, yet their resources were not used. This runs completely against the current explanation coming out of the White House, which is that Obama did everything he could once he learned of the attack.

You'll remember that in the second presidential debate, Obama said that as "soon as I was aware the Benghazi consulate was being overrun, I was on the phone with my national security team." The not-so-subtle intimation is that Obama was stepping up to the protect the U.S. personnel who were in Libya. And in the wakes of their deaths, which weren't "optimal," we have been assured that stronger action wasn't taken stronger because those options weren't available.

Sec. of State Leon Panetta gave us another version this same excuse, saying: "The U.S. military did not get involved during the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi last month because officials did not have enough information about what was going on before the attack was over."

There are three huge problems with the excuses Obama and Panetta are making.

1. It is now known that the U.S. had two drones in the area -- both of which were filming the attacks, sending back feeds in real time, and at least one of the drone may have been armed.

2. Reports also indicate a Specter gunship, probably an AC-130, was in the area for backup. The gunship could have swooped in and not only leveled the playing field in the match between 50 attackers vs a handful of security personnel, it could have thrown the attack decisively in favor of the security personnel.

3. The security personnel in Benghazi had painted a laser mark on the attackers outside the consulate. This mark would have made possible a response by the drones or the AC-130 routine had they been allowed to zero in on it. The member of the security team who was on the roof of the consulate, spraying machine gun fire down on the attackers, continually asked for backup from the AC-130. It never came.

Obama says he was doing everything he could, and Panetta says we didn't react more strongly because we weren't sure what was going on. Yet we now know two drones were sending back video of the attack in real time, and at least one of those drones may have been armed. We also know a massive AC-130 gunship could have been used for backup as well, but it was not. And we know that security was begging for backup and even marking targets with lasers for the drones and/or gunship so they could make quick work of the attackers.

Yet Obama chose not to respond, and that's the bottom line.

Big Peace