Sunday, March 9, 2014
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Exclusive - Benghazi Victims' Families Demand Boehner Haul CIA Official Before Select Committee
5 Mar 2014
A coalition of military community leaders, conservative movement leaders, and the Benghazi victims’ families are demanding that Speaker John Boehner take “immediate” action against a former acting CIA Director accused of misleading Congress on the Benghazi scandal. Citing recent reporting from Fox News’ Catherine Herridge, investigative work from conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch and the findings of a recent Senate Intelligence Committee report, they wrote to Boehner on Wednesday morning that, “We now know that there is compelling evidence that former Acting Central Intelligence Director Michael Morell has made false and misleading statements to Congress.”
Writing about the Senate report, Herridge published a series of articles over the course of February that detailed how Morell allegedly misled lawmakers. Morell told Congress that the now-infamous misleading talking points that claimed a protest resulting from a YouTube video led to the attack—not Islamic terrorism—had been shared with the White House ahead of Susan Rice using them, but were not asking for White House input. Emails later released by the Obama administration “showed otherwise,” Herridge wrote in one such report.
“This issue demands your immediate personal attention,” the signers of the letter, including Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith’s mother Pat Smith and uncle Michael Ingmire, and security officer Tyrone Woods’ father Charles Woods, wrote to Boehner.
Woods and Smith, along with security officer Glen Doherty and America’s ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, were killed in the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi. This Wednesday letter to Boehner represents the second such letter Smith’s family members and Woods’ family members have signed on to with conservative and military leaders in recent months. In early January, they called on Boehner to install a select committee. A bill to establish a select committee introduced by Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) has been cosponsored by more than 75 percent of the House GOP conference.
Although Boehner has not established a select committee, top House officials have signaled they are focusing on the investigation since the letter was sent, the authors write.
“We were pleased to see that our letter of January 6, 2014 may have persuaded you and your various committee chairs investigating the Benghazi attacks to make some limited efforts to promote information gathered through the uncoordinated work of the House,” they wrote. “But the establishment of the Internet website, ‘The House Republican Investigation of Benghazi’ only highlights the inadequacies of House efforts to date. Most Americans, in addition to a large majority of your party’s caucus, demand a full and complete investigation of this terror attack. Mr. Morell’s statements and conduct appear to have materially contributed to confusing and misleading the Congress and the American people. Susan Rice’s latest rounds of lies about Benghazi on the February 23, 2014 edition of Meet the Press illustrate the contempt that this Administration has for your committees’ investigation to date.”
Boehner has resisted efforts to install a select committee to investigate Benghazi. Instead, he says the five House committees currently investigating—Oversight, Judiciary, Foreign Affairs, Intelligence and Armed Services—are doing enough.
In response to that first early January letter, Boehner spokesman Michael Steel said that the concerns that the ongoing House investigations are ineffective are unfounded.
“House Republicans are committed to finding the truth about what happened in Benghazi and why the White House failed to level with the American people,” Steel said then.
But the families are now renewing their call to Boehner to create a select committee “now,” one that is “fully resourced with staff and subpoena powers – to conduct a thorough, coordinated investigation.”
One of that committee’s actions, once Boehner installs it if he does, they say, should be to compel Morell to testify before it. “Mr. Morell must be compelled to appear before Congress and explain his statements and conduct,” they wrote. “Even if he invokes his right not to testify under the Fifth Amendment, then the Congress must pursue, through a Select Committee, the many unanswered questions and apparent Obama administration cover-up of the terror attacks that cost the lives of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and Security Officers Glen Doherty and Ty Woods.”
They added in their letter that there are many “other Benghazi-related questions that remain unanswered,” as well and called on Boehner to “act now” because “the public trust is now before” him in the face of “gravely disturbing evidence of possible criminality and abuse of public office.”
In addition to the victims' family members, other letter signers include retired Navy Admiral James Lyons, retired Navy Admiral Jerome Johnson, retired Army General Frederick Kroesen, retired Air Force Lt. General Tom McInerney, retired Army Lt. General Jerry Boykin, former Rep. Allen West (R-FL), Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly, Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton, Special Operations Speaks’ Col. Dick Brauer, Veterans for a Strong America’s Joel Arends, Secure America Now’s Allen Roth, Ginni Thomas of Liberty Consulting, David Horowitz of the Freedom Center, and a whole host of other leaders from the conservative movement and military community.
Big Government
Sunday, February 9, 2014
The Final Constitutional Option
February 9, 2014
By Robert Berry
Having been dormant for centuries, a potent section in the U.S. Constitution is now in the minds and on the lips of a new generation of reformers who are determined to keep the nation out of an abyss. As America stares hard at the darkness ahead, the new reformers have begun to popularize this forgotten constitutional provision that might well become Official Washington's undoing.
The problem, which hardly needs stating, is that the federal government has become the very monster the founders anticipated. Quite likely, the beast we face is far beyond anything that could have been imagined by the founding generation. Even today it is hard to adequately comprehend the omnipresent and, thanks to the NSA, omniscient federal menace that overhangs every aspect of life in 21st-century America.
The founders' concern that power would be consolidated at the federal level is dealt with in Article V of the U.S. Constitution.
Author Mark Levin, in his blockbuster best-seller, The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic, based his ideas for reform on this less well-known means by which amendments may be proposed -- a process that entirely outflanks Washington's fixed fortifications. Levin cogently argues that attempts at reform from within Washington are futile.
Obviously, what is needed is a way to trump the Beltway ruling class from without.
Enter Article V, which prescribes the amendment process. Article V establishes the amendment process as a two-phase affair: proposal, followed by ratification of three fourths of the states. The states have no way to ratify that which has not first been proposed. From the beginning, the states have relied on congressional super-majorities to do the proposing.
But the founders knew that Congress would be loath to propose anything that would limit federal power, so they included a way for the states to propose amendments in an ad hoc assembly Article V styles as "A Convention for Proposing Amendments."
The idea of using the amendments convention assembly has surfaced from time to time in U.S. history -- most recently in the 1980s, with the movement to propose a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA). The effort peaked with 33 states passing resolutions -- just one shy of the required two-thirds of state legislatures, which would have compelled Congress to issue a call for the amendments convention.
That's when the effort took a bizarre detour -- into oblivion.
The BBA advocates of the 1980s, including then-President Reagan, were decidedly of the political right. The last thing anyone in the movement expected was for "friendlies" from elsewhere on the right to object to the idea in near hysterics as a plot to render the Constitution null and void. The unlikely opponents, while not necessarily opposed to a BBA, condemned in no uncertain terms the use of the amendments convention to propose it. It quickly became evident, from the critics' rhetoric, that they had conflated the Convention for Proposing Amendments assembly with a so-called plenary (full authority) Constitutional Convention.
BBA advocates attempted to clarify the difference between the types of conventions by pointing out that, as sovereigns, the states have never needed permission from the Constitution to call an actual Constitutional Convention. Indeed, the only reason to invoke Article V would be to self-limit the convention's authority to "proposing amendments," as the assembly's name indicates.
Even more restrictive was the scope of the states' resolutions, which sought to limit discussion to the consideration of a single amendment -- a BBA. The argument was that, during the amendments convention, if a majority of the states, each represented by a delegation of state legislators, voted for a BBA, the proposal would be transmitted to Congress and then to the states for ratification -- just as every other amendment proposal in U.S. history.
The BBA advocates argued that if the delegates were to propose anything other than a Balanced Budget Amendment, Congress would be barred from forwarding the proposal to the states.
The critics would have none of it.
In appeals to the public, the critics insidiously left out any mention of the ratification process by three fourths of the states -- the implication being that once the proceedings began, there was nothing that could be done to hold it back when, inevitably, extreme elements moved to dissolve the Constitution. When challenged on this, the foes weaved the assertion into their conspiracy theory, adding that the out-of-control assembly would simply declare its own sovereignty and dispense with the ratification process altogether!
As preposterous as this notion was, the accompanying slogan was more effective: "We don't need a new Constitution!" Gobsmacked, the BBA proponents could only look on as state legislators made for the tall grass. One by one, states began rescinding BBA resolutions.
As a postscript to this sad chapter, it should be noted that by the late 1980s, the national debt had just topped $2 trillion. An effective BBA at that time could have stopped the bleeding that, by any objective measure, has become an existential threat.
The Professor
In 2009, an academic from the University of Montana was surveying opportunities for research. Of particular interest to Professor Robert G. Natelson were areas of constitutional scholarship characterized by a scarcity of research, poor research, or, optimally, both.
Intrigued by the vestigial Convention for Proposing Amendments mentioned in Article V, Natelson was
struck by the paucity of modern-day scholarship on the topic despite an abundance of original source material.
Quietly, he set to work.
Before long, Natelson had acquired nearly all of the journals of founding-era conventions. This was added to his existing collection of material from each state's ratification convention as each considered whether or not to approve the proposed 1787 constitution. A picture of early American convention tradition began to emerge.
Casting a wider net, he pulled in over 40 generally neglected Article V court decisions, some of which had been argued before the Supreme Court. In a series of publications, Natelson churned out his findings (here, here, and here), which surprised many -- including himself.
The research quickly became the gold standard of scholarship about the process, known formally as the "State-Application-and-Convention" method of amending the Constitution.
Natelson held that, far from being a self-destruct mechanism, the founders meant for the process to be used in parallel to the congressional method as yet another "check and balance" within the framework of the newly constituted federal government.
Most importantly, Natelson drew a strong distinction between the assembly mentioned in Article V and the oft-mentioned Constitutional Convention. For this reason, he is quick to correct anyone mistakenly referring to the Convention for Proposing Amendments as a "Constitutional Convention."
Natelson's research trove smashed the conspiracy theories of the 1980s and has become the intellectual base of the resurgent Article V movement that has been joined by Levin and other prominent reformers. When the history is written, it will record that this was the moment the Article V movement achieved critical mass.
The new reformers would do well to press on with the case for state-initiated amendments and ignore the tired conspiracy theories of the past. Having been marginalized to an almost comic degree, the foes of yesterday have been effectively dispatched.
When a battle is won, it is wise to move to the next battle, for the waiting opponent is formidable and lives on Capitol Hill.
Robert Berry writes about economic and constitutional matters and is the author of Amendments Without Congress: A Timely Gift from the Founders and Constitutional Coup: America's New Lease on Liberty. Bitcoin address can be found here.
American Thinker
By Robert Berry
Having been dormant for centuries, a potent section in the U.S. Constitution is now in the minds and on the lips of a new generation of reformers who are determined to keep the nation out of an abyss. As America stares hard at the darkness ahead, the new reformers have begun to popularize this forgotten constitutional provision that might well become Official Washington's undoing.
The problem, which hardly needs stating, is that the federal government has become the very monster the founders anticipated. Quite likely, the beast we face is far beyond anything that could have been imagined by the founding generation. Even today it is hard to adequately comprehend the omnipresent and, thanks to the NSA, omniscient federal menace that overhangs every aspect of life in 21st-century America.
The founders' concern that power would be consolidated at the federal level is dealt with in Article V of the U.S. Constitution.
Author Mark Levin, in his blockbuster best-seller, The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic, based his ideas for reform on this less well-known means by which amendments may be proposed -- a process that entirely outflanks Washington's fixed fortifications. Levin cogently argues that attempts at reform from within Washington are futile.
Obviously, what is needed is a way to trump the Beltway ruling class from without.
Enter Article V, which prescribes the amendment process. Article V establishes the amendment process as a two-phase affair: proposal, followed by ratification of three fourths of the states. The states have no way to ratify that which has not first been proposed. From the beginning, the states have relied on congressional super-majorities to do the proposing.
But the founders knew that Congress would be loath to propose anything that would limit federal power, so they included a way for the states to propose amendments in an ad hoc assembly Article V styles as "A Convention for Proposing Amendments."
The idea of using the amendments convention assembly has surfaced from time to time in U.S. history -- most recently in the 1980s, with the movement to propose a Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA). The effort peaked with 33 states passing resolutions -- just one shy of the required two-thirds of state legislatures, which would have compelled Congress to issue a call for the amendments convention.
That's when the effort took a bizarre detour -- into oblivion.
The BBA advocates of the 1980s, including then-President Reagan, were decidedly of the political right. The last thing anyone in the movement expected was for "friendlies" from elsewhere on the right to object to the idea in near hysterics as a plot to render the Constitution null and void. The unlikely opponents, while not necessarily opposed to a BBA, condemned in no uncertain terms the use of the amendments convention to propose it. It quickly became evident, from the critics' rhetoric, that they had conflated the Convention for Proposing Amendments assembly with a so-called plenary (full authority) Constitutional Convention.
BBA advocates attempted to clarify the difference between the types of conventions by pointing out that, as sovereigns, the states have never needed permission from the Constitution to call an actual Constitutional Convention. Indeed, the only reason to invoke Article V would be to self-limit the convention's authority to "proposing amendments," as the assembly's name indicates.
Even more restrictive was the scope of the states' resolutions, which sought to limit discussion to the consideration of a single amendment -- a BBA. The argument was that, during the amendments convention, if a majority of the states, each represented by a delegation of state legislators, voted for a BBA, the proposal would be transmitted to Congress and then to the states for ratification -- just as every other amendment proposal in U.S. history.
The BBA advocates argued that if the delegates were to propose anything other than a Balanced Budget Amendment, Congress would be barred from forwarding the proposal to the states.
The critics would have none of it.
In appeals to the public, the critics insidiously left out any mention of the ratification process by three fourths of the states -- the implication being that once the proceedings began, there was nothing that could be done to hold it back when, inevitably, extreme elements moved to dissolve the Constitution. When challenged on this, the foes weaved the assertion into their conspiracy theory, adding that the out-of-control assembly would simply declare its own sovereignty and dispense with the ratification process altogether!
As preposterous as this notion was, the accompanying slogan was more effective: "We don't need a new Constitution!" Gobsmacked, the BBA proponents could only look on as state legislators made for the tall grass. One by one, states began rescinding BBA resolutions.
As a postscript to this sad chapter, it should be noted that by the late 1980s, the national debt had just topped $2 trillion. An effective BBA at that time could have stopped the bleeding that, by any objective measure, has become an existential threat.
The Professor
In 2009, an academic from the University of Montana was surveying opportunities for research. Of particular interest to Professor Robert G. Natelson were areas of constitutional scholarship characterized by a scarcity of research, poor research, or, optimally, both.
Intrigued by the vestigial Convention for Proposing Amendments mentioned in Article V, Natelson was
struck by the paucity of modern-day scholarship on the topic despite an abundance of original source material.
Quietly, he set to work.
Before long, Natelson had acquired nearly all of the journals of founding-era conventions. This was added to his existing collection of material from each state's ratification convention as each considered whether or not to approve the proposed 1787 constitution. A picture of early American convention tradition began to emerge.
Casting a wider net, he pulled in over 40 generally neglected Article V court decisions, some of which had been argued before the Supreme Court. In a series of publications, Natelson churned out his findings (here, here, and here), which surprised many -- including himself.
The research quickly became the gold standard of scholarship about the process, known formally as the "State-Application-and-Convention" method of amending the Constitution.
Natelson held that, far from being a self-destruct mechanism, the founders meant for the process to be used in parallel to the congressional method as yet another "check and balance" within the framework of the newly constituted federal government.
Most importantly, Natelson drew a strong distinction between the assembly mentioned in Article V and the oft-mentioned Constitutional Convention. For this reason, he is quick to correct anyone mistakenly referring to the Convention for Proposing Amendments as a "Constitutional Convention."
Natelson's research trove smashed the conspiracy theories of the 1980s and has become the intellectual base of the resurgent Article V movement that has been joined by Levin and other prominent reformers. When the history is written, it will record that this was the moment the Article V movement achieved critical mass.
The new reformers would do well to press on with the case for state-initiated amendments and ignore the tired conspiracy theories of the past. Having been marginalized to an almost comic degree, the foes of yesterday have been effectively dispatched.
When a battle is won, it is wise to move to the next battle, for the waiting opponent is formidable and lives on Capitol Hill.
Robert Berry writes about economic and constitutional matters and is the author of Amendments Without Congress: A Timely Gift from the Founders and Constitutional Coup: America's New Lease on Liberty. Bitcoin address can be found here.
American Thinker
Tuesday, January 14, 2014
The Benghazi Transcripts: Top Defense officials told Obama it was an ‘attack,’ not video or protest
January 14, 2014
So it is even worse than we thought, and what we thought it was impeachable. And Hillary was culpable as well. She must be stopped in 2016.
Minutes after the American consulate in Benghazi came under assault on Sept. 11, 2012, the nation’s top civilian and uniformed defense officials – headed for a previously scheduled Oval Office session with President Obama — were informed that the event was a “terrorist attack,” declassified documents show
Did the NY Times know that this story was about to break? Is that why they peddled that piece of fiction claiming that al Qaeda had nothing to do with the jihadi attack on our people and our consulate? It was a stunning and unrecoverable blow to a compromised and dying institution.
Not one week after the September 11th attacks on our consulate, Obama stood before the world at the UN and said,“the future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam.” Obama said this knowing that the murder of our people and the attack on our consulate was in the cause of Muhammad. It. is. devastating.
The day after the attacks, Obama schooled us on mandatory adherence to the sharia:
Obama strode to the Rose Garden to comment on the loss, taking pains in his statement to say: “We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.”
Off topic but related, the Obama administration targeted the reporter of this story. The Justice Department monitored and spied on James Rosen. The Washington Post reported the level of intensity: the Justice Department labeled Rosen a “co-conspirator”.
Imagine naming a reporter for doing his job. But Muslim Brotherhood groups named actual co-conspirators in the biggest terrorist funding trial in American history (like CAIR, ISNA, ICNA et al) remain at large, just like the Benghazi slaughterers.
“The Benghazi Transcripts: Top Defense officials briefed Obama on ‘attack,’ not video or protest,” James Rosen, Fox News, January 13, 2014
Minutes after the American consulate in Benghazi came under assault on Sept. 11, 2012, the nation’s top civilian and uniformed defense officials — headed for a previously scheduled Oval Office session with President Obama — were informed that the event was a “terrorist attack,” declassified documents show. The new evidence raises the question of why the top military men, one of whom was a member of the president’s Cabinet, allowed him and other senior Obama administration officials to press a false narrative of the Benghazi attacks for two weeks afterward.
Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time was head of AFRICOM, the Defense Department combatant command with jurisdiction over Libya, told the House in classified testimony last year that it was him who broke the news about the unfolding situation in Benghazi to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The tense briefing — in which it was already known that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens had been targeted and had gone missing — occurred just before the two senior officials departed the Pentagon for their session with the commander in chief.
According to declassified testimony obtained by Fox News, Ham — who was working out of his Pentagon office on the afternoon of Sept. 11 — said he learned about the assault on the consulate compound within 15 minutes of its commencement, at 9:42 p.m. Libya time, through a call he received from the AFRICOM Command Center.
“My first call was to General Dempsey, General Dempsey’s office, to say, ‘Hey, I am headed down the hall. I need to see him right away,’” Ham told lawmakers on the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation on June 26 of last year. “I told him what I knew. We immediately walked upstairs to meet with Secretary Panetta.”
Ham’s account of that fateful day was included in some 450 pages of testimony given by senior Pentagon officials in classified, closed-door hearings conducted last year by the Armed Services subcommittee. The testimony, given under “Top Secret” clearance and only declassified this month, presents a rare glimpse into how information during a crisis travels at the top echelons of America’s national security apparatus, all the way up to the president.
Also among those whose secret testimony was declassified was Dempsey, the first person Ham briefed about Benghazi. Ham told lawmakers he considered it a fortuitous “happenstance” that he was able to rope Dempsey and Panetta into one meeting, so that, as Ham put it, “they had the basic information as they headed across for the meeting at the White House.” Ham also told lawmakers he met with Panetta and Dempsey when they returned from their 30-minute session with President Obama on Sept. 11.
Armed Services Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., sitting in on the subcommittee’s hearing with Ham last June, reserved for himself an especially sensitive line of questioning: namely, whether senior Obama administration officials, in the very earliest stages of their knowledge of Benghazi, had any reason to believe that the assault grew spontaneously out of a demonstration over an anti-Islam video produced in America.
Numerous aides to the president and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly told the public in the weeks following the murder of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans that night — as Obama’s hotly contested bid for re-election was entering its final stretch — that there was no evidence the killings were the result of a premeditated terrorist attack, but rather were the result of a protest gone awry. Subsequent disclosures exposed the falsity of that narrative, and the Obama administration ultimately acknowledged that its early statements on Benghazi were untrue.
“In your discussions with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta,” McKeon asked, “was there any mention of a demonstration or was all discussion about an attack?” Ham initially testified that there was some “peripheral” discussion of this subject, but added “at that initial meeting, we knew that a U.S. facility had been attacked and was under attack, and we knew at that point that we had two individuals, Ambassador Stevens and Mr. [Sean] Smith, unaccounted for.”
Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, a first-term lawmaker with experience as an Iraq war veteran and Army reserve officer, pressed Ham further on the point, prodding the 29-year Army veteran to admit that “the nature of the conversation” he had with Panetta and Dempsey was that “this was a terrorist attack.”
The transcript reads as follows:
WENSTRUP: “As a military person, I am concerned that someone in the military would be advising that this was a demonstration. I would hope that our military leadership would be advising that this was a terrorist attack.”
HAM: “Again, sir, I think, you know, there was some preliminary discussion about, you know, maybe there was a demonstration. But I think at the command, I personally and I think the command very quickly got to the point that this was not a demonstration, this was a terrorist attack.”
WENSTRUP: “And you would have advised as such if asked. Would that be correct?”
HAM: “Well, and with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta, that is the nature of the conversation we had, yes, sir.”
Panetta told the Senate Armed Services Committee in February of last year that it was him who informed the president that “there was an apparent attack going on in Benghazi.” “Secretary Panetta, do you believe that unequivocally at that time we knew that this was a terrorist attack?” asked Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla. “There was no question in my mind that this was a terrorist attack,” Panetta replied.
Senior State Department officials who were in direct, real-time contact with the Americans under assault in Benghazi have also made clear they, too, knew immediately — from surveillance video and eyewitness accounts — that the incident was a terrorist attack. After providing the first substantive “tick-tock” of the events in Benghazi, during a background briefing conducted on the evening of Oct. 9, 2012, a reporter asked two top aides to then-Secretary Clinton: “What in all of these events that you’ve described led officials to believe for the first several days that this was prompted by protests against the video?”
“That is a question that you would have to ask others,” replied one of the senior officials. “That was not our conclusion.”
Ham’s declassified testimony further underscores that Obama’s earliest briefing on Benghazi was solely to the effect that the incident was a terrorist attack, and raises once again the question of how the narrative about the offensive video, and a demonstration that never occurred, took root within the White House as the explanation for Benghazi.
The day after the attacks, which marked the first killing of an American ambassador in the line of duty since 1979, Obama strode to the Rose Garden to comment on the loss, taking pains in his statement to say: “We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.” As late as Sept. 24, during an appearance on the talk show “The View,” when asked directly by co-host Joy Behar if Benghazi had been “an act of terrorism,” the president hedged, saying: “Well, we’re still doing an investigation.”
The declassified transcripts show that beyond Ham, Panetta and Dempsey, other key officers and channels throughout the Pentagon and its combatant commands were similarly quick to label the incident a terrorist attack. In a classified session on July 31 of last year, Westrup raised the question with Marine Corps Col. George Bristol, commander of AFRICOM’s Joint Special Operations Task Force for the Trans Sahara region.
Bristol, who was traveling in Dakar, Senegal when the attack occurred, said he received a call from the Joint Operations Center alerting him to “a considerable event unfolding in Libya.” Bristol’s next call was to Lt. Col. S.E. Gibson, an Army commander stationed in Tripoli. Gibson informed Bristol that Stevens was missing, and that “there was a fight going on” at the consulate compound.
WESTRUP: “So no one from the military was ever advising, that you are aware of, that this was a demonstration gone out of control, it was always considered an attack -”
BRISTOL: “Yes, sir.”
WENSTRUP: “– on the United States?”
BRISTOL: “Yes, sir. … We referred to it as the attack.”
Staffers on the Armed Services subcommittee conducted nine classified sessions on the Benghazi attacks, and are close to issuing what they call an “interim” report on the affair.
Fox News reported in October their preliminary conclusion that U.S. forces on the night of the Benghazi attacks were postured in such a way as to make military rescue or intervention impossible — a finding that buttresses the claims of Dempsey and other senior Pentagon officials.
While their investigation continues, staffers say they still want to question Panetta directly. But the former defense secretary, now retired, has resisted such calls for additional testimony.
“He is in the president’s Cabinet,” said Rep. Martha Roby R-Ala., chair of the panel that collected the testimony, of Panetta. “The American people deserve the truth. They deserve to know what’s going on, and I honestly think that that’s why you have seen — beyond the tragedy that there was a loss of four Americans’ lives – is that the American people feel misled.”
“Leon Panetta should have spoken up,” agreed Kim R. Holmes, a former assistant secretary of state under President George W. Bush and now a distinguished fellow at the
Heritage Foundation. “The people at the Pentagon and frankly, the people at the CIA stood back while all of this was unfolding and allowed this narrative to go on longer than they should have.”
Neither Panetta’s office nor the White House responded to Fox News’ requests for comment.
Atlas Shrugs
Monday, January 6, 2014
Exclusive--Benghazi Victims' Families, Conservative Leaders to Boehner: Install Select Committee Now
Three family members of the victims of the Benghazi terrorist attack and scores of conservative and military leaders are kicking off 2014 by demanding that House Speaker John Boehner install a select committee, Breitbart News has learned exclusively. U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and security officers Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed during the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11, 2012.
In the letter to Boehner, which was delivered on early Monday afternoon and provided exclusively to Breitbart News, Sean Smith’s mother, Pat Smith, and uncle, Michael Ingmire, along with Tyrone Woods’ father, Charles Woods, joined the call for a select committee to investigate the Benghazi scandal. Other notable signers include former Rep. Allen West (R-FL), conservative leader Ginni Thomas of Liberty Consulting, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton, retired Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, Freedom Center president David Horowitz, and scores of other military and conservative movement leaders.
“We write to express our grave concern over the failure of your House of Representatives to extract the truth from the Obama administration concerning the attack on our diplomatic and intelligence facilities in Benghazi, Libya; and, the brutal deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, U.S. Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and security officers Ty Woods and Glen Doherty,” the coalition wrote to Boehner.
Specifically, a House select committee on Benghazi would be similar to the Watergate select committee formed in the U.S. Senate during the scandal that took down President Richard Nixon. It would be a focused committee with members from both the Democrat and Republican parties and staffed with the proper resources to conduct a thorough investigation of the matter. Thus far, Boehner has had five separate House committees investigating the matter that have not succeeded. He has also publicly opposed the creation of a select committee, saying he does not think it is necessary.
There is currently a bill in the House of Representatives, H. Res 36 from Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), that would create such a committee. It has, including Wolf, 179 cosponsors according to the Library of Congress, well more than the majority of the House GOP majority--which is 232 Republican members strong. Yet, despite the overwhelming support from the House GOP conference, Boehner continues to refuse to allow a vote on the installation of a select committee to investigate the Benghazi scandal and continues to block efforts to bring the bill forward.
Now that this new coalition is stepping forward, Boehner may end up facing enough pressure to force him to create the committee.
The letter's signers are demanding Boehner install a select committee to investigate what happened. They argue that Boehner’s unwillingness to create an official investigative body has benefitted President Barack Obama’s administration, as it has taken advantage of the lack of focus in House investigations.
“To date, five (5) different committees of the House have conducted separate hearings, uncovering information in a piecemeal fashion lacking professional investigators,” the coalition wrote to Boehner. “The five committees’ efforts are disjointed and uncoordinated. The Obama administration has benefited from that dysfunctional process to hide the truth."
"Hardly any Obama administration witnesses have testified – publicly or privately," they continued. "You have resisted repeated calls for the creation of a select investigative committee with subpoena authority. It appears that you are satisfied to allow that state of investigative incoherence and ambiguity to continue. The last public hearing by any of the five committees was held in September – four (4) months ago."
"The families of the dead who fought valiantly to protect the mission and their families, the survivors, and the American people deserve better from you and your Members of Congress," the letter explained. "They deserve the absolute truth from their government. Your failure to get the truth and hold public officials accountable increases the possibility of other repeat attacks and additional failures to defend Americans abroad.”
The coalition argues that Boehner’s idling through the investigative process has led to things like a recent New York Times story which claimed that al Qaeda terrorists were not involved in the attack but that the attack was sparked by the YouTube video.
“On Sunday, December 29, 2013, the New York Times published a story concerning the Benghazi attacks that directly contradicts the sworn testimony of witnesses who appeared before various committees,” they wrote. “Besides the obvious New York Times editorial and political objectives of inoculating Hillary Clinton and her 2016 presidential campaign from further criticism of her failures as Secretary of State, the story contradicts objective truth and established facts in a way that confuses the public."
"Your inaction and failure to lead on the Benghazi investigation directly contributes to the repetition of lies; a lack of accountability from responsible government officials; and the political advancement of persons who seek to continue to ‘fundamentally transform’ the Constitution and our country," they accused. "The New York Times recent publication proves the Benghazi story is not ‘going away.’”
The group further argues that while Ahmed Abu Khattala, “a ringleader of the attack,” has “granted long interviews to reporters in Benghazi cafes,” the Obama administration’s federal law enforcement agencies have “done nothing.” Because of Boehner’s lack of willingness to aggressively investigate the terrorist attack, the coalition argues that no one has been held accountable. “Nearly 16 months after the terrorist attack, the American public has no accountability and no plan of action from House leadership,” they wrote. “The public is subjected to undisputed disinformation from a White House who calls the terror attack a ‘phony scandal.’"
"While the White House repeats false and misleading information, you continue to ignore claims, documented by Rep. Frank Wolf, of intelligence officers being intimidated with multiple, punitive polygraph examinations and harassing non-disclosure agreement demands," they claimed. "If Benghazi is ‘phony’ why are intelligence officers being threatened not to speak and subjected to polygraph exams? Why do you stand by passively?”
The coalition also questioned whether Boehner is holding up the investigation because he may be culpable for knowing certain pieces of information about the scandal. As Speaker of the House, Boehner is a member of what is called the “Super 8” in Congress. Other members include House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA); Senate Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV); Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY); House Intelligence Committee Chairman and ranking member Reps. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), respectively; and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and ranking member Saxby Chambliss (R-GA). Because of their seniority in Congress, the “Super 8” gets briefed on intelligence matters in a much more intensive manner than other members.
The coalition questions whether Boehner has “guilty knowledge” on Benghazi because of that, and wonders whether a complete investigation into Benghazi would jeopardize Boehner’s political future as Speaker of the House.
“Some analysts believe your inaction and passivity towards getting to the truth concerning Benghazi is because you were briefed on the intelligence and special operations activities in Libya as a member of the
‘Super 8,’” they wrote. “You may possess ‘guilty knowledge.’ We recall how then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi developed a form of ‘amnesia’ concerning a documented briefing she received on so-called ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ – later termed ‘torture’ for political purposes."
"Are you in the same position as your predecessor?" they asked. "Are you dodging a legitimate, thorough, coordinated investigation of Benghazi because it will damage your political position as Speaker?”
The coalition noted because no select committee with subpoena power has been installed, some members of the House GOP conference have taken to submitting Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to attempt to get information about Benghazi out of the administration. “You should be embarrassed that members of Congress, and your own party, are forced to file Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with Obama administration agencies to get basic information about the Benghazi issue,” the coalition wrote to Boehner.
“What a sad and pathetic statement about the operations of House standing committees looking into this tragedy that FOIA has become the last resort of even Republican Members seeking the truth!" the letter stated. "Are you concerned that the scattershot and untimely efforts of the various committees may actually be doing more harm than good at documenting facts? These are all examples of Republican leadership failures. How are you accountable?”
The coalition continued by criticizing the efforts of Rogers, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and one of Boehner’s right-hand men: “Rep. Mike Rogers and the Intelligence Committee seem to act as defense counsel for the Obama administration,” the coalition wrote. “A recent Intelligence Committee weekly update note stated as fact that no arms shipments were being run from Libya, and that no intelligence officers were being coerced not to speak. There is substantial evidence to the contrary on both counts."
"Why does Rep. Rogers parrot the discredited falsehoods of the so-called ‘Accountability Review Board’ (ARB)?" they accused. "Conflicting accounts, testimony and evidence need to be investigated – not dismissed or ignored. Don’t those contradictions and questions compel you, on behalf of the American people, to take any action to resolve the matter and get to the truth?”
The group asked Boehner why there “was thundering silence” from his office when Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) sent him a letter on Nov. 6 outlining outstanding unanswered questions about the scandal. “You have an opportunity to show strong leadership and resolve a national disgrace perpetrated by specific public officials,” they wrote. “You are failing.”
“Your reluctance to lead and resistance to create a Select Committee on Benghazi must end,” they wrote.
“More than 75% of all House Republicans – with the conspicuous absence of those in leadership or committee chairmen – have cosponsored Rep. Wolf’s Select Committee bill. Few bills in this Congress demonstrate such overwhelming support from Republicans."
"Additionally, the bill enjoys the support of national security advocacy groups, and the Wall Street Journal editorial board, among many others," they noted. "We urge you to bring the bill to the floor for a vote immediately to start effective oversight on this critical national security matter immediately. We have waited long enough. Your approach is not working.”
Specifically, the coalition demands that the select committee must complete its investigation before the end of the 113th Congress, which concludes at the end of 2014.
“Mr. Speaker, we call upon you to act now and create a Select Committee on Benghazi to investigate all aspects of the United States involvement in Libya, to include, but not be limited to the attacks of September 11, 2012,” they wrote. “It must now also include the protracted cover-up the American people, the families of the fallen and those with loved ones serving overseas have endured."
"The new committee must have subpoena power, capable staff and Members from both parties who are committed to finding the truth, not playing politics," the letter continued. "The Committee must be staffed with new, professional, qualified and experienced investigators. It must have resources to conduct a thorough, comprehensive investigation and issue an exhaustive report before this Congress adjourns.”
The full list of coalition letter signers includes: Adm. Jerome L. Johnson, USN Ret., former Vice Chief of Naval Operations; Lt. Gen. E.G. “Buck” Shuler, Jr., USAF, (Ret); Lt. Gen. Richard D. Lawrence, USA (Ret); LTG William G. Boykin, USA (Ret); Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, USA Ret, Chairman, Stand Up America; Maj. Gen. Carroll D. Childers, USA (Ret), Ranger; Maj. Gen. Thomas F. Cole, USA (Ret); Maj. Gen. Richard M. Cooke, USMC (Ret); Amb. Henry F. Cooper, Former Director, Strategic Defense Initiative; LTC Allen B. West (US Army, Ret) former Congressman, FL; Capt Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62, USN (Ret), Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress PAC; Debra Burlingame, Co-founder, 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America; Elaine Donnelly, President, Center for Military Readiness; Dick Brauer, Col, USAF (Ret), Special Operation Speaks; Tom Fitton, President, Judicial Watch; Allen Roth, Secure America Now; Joel A. Arends, Veterans for a Strong America; Ginni Thomas, President, Liberty Consulting; Catherine Engelbrecht, President, True the Vote; Anita MonCrief, Black Voters Alliance; David Wallace, Restore America's Mission; Dr. James Pollock, Maj., USAF (Ret), OIF VETx2, SOCOM, Wounded Warrior Congressional Advocate; John J. Molloy, Chairman, National Vietnam & Gulf War Veterans Coalition; James C. Harding, Col USAF (Ret) National Spokesman for Veteran Defenders of America; Diane M. Sendlenski, Veteran US Air Force, Special Operations Speaks Coordinator; John G. B. Howland, Publisher, USNA-At-Large; Katherine Cornell Gorka, Executive Director, The Westminster Institute; Paul Caprio, Executive Director, Family Pac Federal; William L. Walton, Chairman, Rappahannock Ventures LLC; Sandy Rios, Director of Governmental Affairs, American Family Association; David Horowitz, President, Freedom Center; Peter Thomas, Chairman, The Conservative Caucus; Rear Adm. Hugh P. Scott, MC, USN (Ret); Rear Adm. Bill McDaniel, USN (Ret); Rear Adm. John A. Moriarty, USN, (Ret); Rear Adm. Robert B. McClinton, USN (Ret); Rear Adm. Don G. Primeau, USN (Ret); Brig. Gen. Michael Neil, USMCR (Ret); Brig. Gen. Francis Hughes, USA (Ret); Brig. Gen. John Zierdt, Jr., USA (Ret); Brig. Gen. Michael T. Byrnes, USA (Ret); Brig. Gen. William A. Bloomer, USMC (Ret); Captain Kenneth Rauch, USN (Ret); Captain Peter A. Hewett, JAGC, U.S. Navy (Ret); Captain James Knight, USN (Ret); Captain Roger W. Barnett, USN (Ret); Captain Gregory Streeter, USN (Ret) USNA ’58; Col. G. Huntington Banister, USA (Ret), and former Acting Director, Selective Service System, 1994; Col. S. Badiner, USMC (Ret); Col. Gregory G. Raths, USMC (Ret); Col. Joseph V. Potter, USAF (Ret); Col. Rob Maness, USAF (Ret), U.S. Senate Candidate 2014, R-Louisiana; Dan Bongino, 2012 Republican Nominee for US Senate, MD; Lt. Col. Ken Benway, USA (Ret); Lt. Col. Dennis B. Haney, USAF (Ret); CDR Randolph J. Horhutz, USNA '61, SC, USN (Ret); Everett Woolum, CMSGT, USAF (Ret); Gregory J. Rose, USNA ’73; Thomas Corboy, USNA, ’61; Anthony R. Papandrea, USNA ’61; Raymond H. Clary, Jr., USNA ’65; John W. Slagle, U.S. Navy Aviation veteran (Ret) Special Agent U.S.B.P. Anti-Smuggling Unit; Sarah Folger White, Former Presidential Commissioner; Dick and Patricia Schermerhorn, Appleton, WI; Lee Boyland, Author, former military officer, entrepreneur, nuclear engineer; Susan Creed Percy, Advocate for Military Families; Dave Hollenbeck, retired CA Highway Patrol; Paul F. Wirtz, Military family, OH resident; John Lillywhite, U.S. Citizen; Gene Andrews, U.S. Citizen; Mrs. Nancy Olbert, Supervisor Criminal Advocates, Daytona, FL State Attorney Office; Dr. Frank Ingels, Military Defense Consultant, MSIC/TETRA Office; Robert M. Trent, Senior Special Agent, USINS and former Marine and Vietnam combat veteran; and Kelly Monroe Kullberg, Christians for a Sustainable Economy; OH resident.
Big Government
Saturday, January 4, 2014
Ice and Cold: Global Warming Believers are Today's Climate Deniers
Just this week we had dozens of Global Warming-believing scientists, who specialize in researching ice melt in Antarctica, run into a helluva lot more Antarctic ice than their research told them would be there. So much more ice that their ship and three ice-breaking rescue vessels were stuck in ten feet of it for days (two of the vessels are still stuck). As I write this, the big news of the weekend is a cold snap across much of the country with temperatures reaching 20 and 30-year lows. And yet, despite all of what should be good news, the
Granted, more ice in one area of a vast South Pole is not empirical proof that all is well in the Antarctic, but it is a great way to call attention to the fact that according to NASA, "In late September 2013, the ice surrounding Antarctica reached its annual winter maximum and set a new record."
Who is anti-science now?
The chief of today's Climate Deniers is President Obama, whose second term will end up being "all about Climate Change." Despite all this good climate news, Obama still intends to circumvent Congress and use the Tyranny of the Bureaucracy to strangle the kind of industries that create solid middle class jobs. But don't worry, while Obama is killing good-paying energy jobs he will be rescuing us from income inequality that good paying energy jobs would help to solve.
There are all kinds of reasons not to believe in Global Warming -- the cover-ups, the media bias, the outright lies; the science just being plain old wrong; the absurdity of using a hundred-or-so years of data on a planet billions of years old; the oh-so bizarre coincidence that the only solution to the "crisis" is to check off every item on the Marxist wish-list; the fact that Global Warming Believers live their lives like the rest of us instead of preparing for imminent catastrophe…
And let's not forget the oily shift in branding from Global Cooling to Global Warming to Climate Change…
Well, now we can add to this list the fact that the very good news of unexpected Antarctic ice, and a return to the kind of winter weather we experienced before this Climate Change hysteria began, hasn't so much as made a single Truther pause for just a moment to wonder aloud if this might be good news.
Instead, they are ignoring the science to double down on their denial and partisan bitterness.
Big Government
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