The Regime and its sycophants have proven over and over again, they’re not serious about leveling with the American people about Benghazi. After sending out Susan Rice to all the Sunday talk shows five days after the attack to spin a not believable yarn about what happened, and then again, eight months later, make the same mistake by sending out yet another stooge, to spin wildly and unconvincingly for the Regime, they havs proven once and for all, that they really have no interest at all in telling the truth and frankly little respect for the intelligence of the American people..
In this excellent video by Ben Howe for Heritage, their never-ending mendacity is laid bare for all to see. Benghazi: Demand the Truth:
Contrary to the election-time narrative that “al-Qaeda is on the run,” defeated by the Obama Administration, President Obama and his staff are now pleading ignorance across the board. Pfeiffer’s problematic media appearance could fit into an emerging narrative that the Obama Administration may have been more incompetent, than Machiavellian in its handling of the Benghazi terrorist attack. Administration officials spoke to CBS News on condition of anonymity, proffering the line that bungling, ignorance, and inexperience may have been at the root of the debacle that left four Americans dead in Benghazi.
The Regime sent White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer to appear on all five major Sunday morning news shows in an all too obvious attempt to do damage control after an exceptionally bad week of exploding scandals. He did this by going on the offense against Republicans, and alleging that all inconvenient facts were “irrelevant.”
“Irrelevant” was Pfeiffer’s refrain: “The law is irrelevant” on the IRS scandal, he told ABC’s This Week; it’s “a largely irrelevant fact” where Obama was during the Benghazi attacks, he told Fox News Sunday; it’s also “largely irrelevant” who edited the Benghazi talking points to create a misleading picture of the attacks.
On Meet the Press, he told host David Gregory what the Republican playbook is: because they “lack a positive agenda” they’re trying to “drag Washington into a swamp of partisan fishing expeditions, trumped up hearings, and false allegations.”
“We’re not going to let that happen”, he assured Gregory. “The president’s got business for the American people.” I guess since he was on NBC, he figured he could get away with such hyper-partisan spewage.
But he had a harder sell on CBS with Bob Schieffer, who recently referred to the Regime as “Dumb and Dumber”.
Pfeiffer dropped the same exact rhetorical turdball on Schiffer, “This is the Republican playbook, here, which is, when they don’t have a positive agenda, they try to drag Washington into a swamp of partisan fishing expeditions, trumped up hearings, and false allegations.”
Schieffer told Pfeiffer his response reminded him of how the Nixon White House responded to Watergate, lol. Not exactly the reaction he was hoping for.
Schieffer also noted toward the end of the interview that the decision to send Susan Rice to go on the Sunday shows with the incorrect talking points was basically a “PR” stunt. And he asked a question that a lot of us have had, ” Why did you do that? Why didn’t the Sec. of State come out and tell us what she knew, and if she knew nothing, tell us, ‘we don’t know, yet.’ Why didn’t the White House Chief of Staff come out?”, he continued. “And I mean this as no disrespect to you, but why are YOU here today? Why isn’t the White House Chief of Staff here to tell us what happened?”
Yikes, this one did not go smoothly at all.
On ABC’s This Week, host George Stephanopoulos asked Pfeiffer about the controversy surrounding Benghazi talking points. Pfeiffer had no answer as to why the talking points showed more extensive changes than Jay Carney claimed, last November, so he went on the offensive, arguing that Republicans owe UN Ambassador Susan Rice an apology.
There are hacks, toadies, lackeys, flunkies, and yes-men – and then there are guys like Jay Carney and Dan Pfeiffer who are in a class by themselves.
Behold the audacity of mendacity.
On Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace reminded Pfeiffer that Obama didn’t really talk with Secretary Clinton, Secretary Panetta, or Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the night of 9/11/2012. “He was talking to his national security staff,” Pfeiffer insisted without naming names.
Asked about whether the president entered the Situation Room, Pfeiffer says, “I don’t remember what room the president was in on that night, and that’s a largely irrelevant fact.”
Pfeiffer then argues that Wallace’s questions about the president’s handling of the Benghazi terror attack are “offensive.”
“The premise of your question”, he huffed, “is that somehow, there was something that could have been done, differently”….
Why yes. That’s exactly the premise of his question. And there indeed were things that could have and should have been done differently, as an administration official who was part of the Benghazi response told CBS News, last week, regarding the Foreign Emergency Support Team: ”I wish we’d sent it.”
The list of mea culpas by Obama administration officials involved in the Benghazi response and aftermath include: standing down the counterterrorism Foreign Emergency Support Team, failing to convene the Counterterrorism Security Group, failing to release the disputed Benghazi “talking points” when Congress asked for them, and using the word “spontaneous” while avoiding the word “terrorism.”
The Foreign Emergency Support Team known as “FEST” is described as “the US Government’s only interagency, on-call, short-notice team poised to respond to terrorist incidents worldwide.” It even boasts hostage-negotiating expertise. With U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens reported missing shortly after the Benghazi attacks began, Washington officials were operating under a possible hostage scenario at the outset. Yet deployment of the counterterrorism experts on the FEST was ruled out from the start. That decision became a source of great internal dissent and the cause of puzzlement to some outsiders.
Thursday, an administration official who was part of the Benghazi response told CBS News: “I wish we’d sent it.”
There were no mea culpas coming from Pfeiffer, however because the Regime thinks they have a way out of Benghazi culpability. Carney and Pfeiffer have both made a big deal about the so called “doctored emails” which he blamed on Republicans, but there is no evidence that a Republican deliberately doctored any emails. We don’t know who Jonathan Karl’s source for the emails he released were, but we do know that the source had seen the original emails but was not permitted by the White House to make copies of them.
…quoting verbatim a source who reviewed the original documents and shared detailed notes:
“We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”
The source was not permitted to make copies of the original e-mails. The White House has refused multiple requests – from journalists, including myself, and from Republican leaders in Congress – to release the full e-mail exchanges.
The differences in the two versions are being taken by some as evidence that my source sought to intentionally mislead about the extent of State Department involvement in changing the talking points. The version I obtained makes specific reference to the State Department, while the version reported by CNN references only “all of the relevant equities” and does not single out State.
The White House that’s blaming Republicans and accusing them of “fabricating” emails could clear all of this up by just releasing the original emails. They have chosen not to do that. Instead, they’re adding to the cover-up. Jay Carney should be very, very careful with future actions. Up to now his statements have been excusable as doing his boss’ bidding. Accusing people of fabricating evidence in an ongoing investigation is a very serious charge and could open him up to charges of his own, perhaps obstruction of justice or something along those lines.
This line of attack is a Media Matters standby, by the way – find one flaw, one discrepancy that can be blamed on the enemy (Republicans) and use it to shoot down their whole argument. Because there was a discrepancy between some of the talking points that were released, and the White House version, the White House is now somehow totally exonerated? That’s the Empire’s story, and they’re sticking to it.
Chris Wallace agreed to disagree, but should have followed up with – how about telling your boss to release all of the emails, then? He missed a huge opportunity, there..
You can watch Utah Congressman Jason Chaffetz respond to that interview, here.
Trey Gowdy appeared on Fox and Friends Weekend to talk about the scandal eruptions.
He noted that there’s a an Oversight and Reform hearing scheduled for this Wednesday, which should be awesome because there are some firebrands on that committee (Gowdy of course, chief among them.) His message on the House responses to scandals, so far – be patient. Congress has to be disciplined in how they go forward. But they are determined to get answers.
The one area where Pfeiffer feigned outrage at someone besides Republicans was the IRS scandal, which is killing the Regime from a PR standpoint. So Pfeiffer pretended that the very idea of the IRS targeting the very ”teabaggers” his boss and media flunkies have been demonizing for the last four years is horribly offensive to them.
OMG, this is such an outrage, there’s no excuse! Who ever heard of such a thing?! That was just awful awful awful bad stuff we would never condone…
It’s as if suddenly the tea party conservatives who have been *cough* victimized by two rogue agents in Cincinnati *cough*(who btw, Obama heroically vowed will be “hunted down” and brought to justice just like the Benghazi terrorists) are beloved citizens the Regime wants to protect. It’s really touching how shocked and offended they are about this. And how eager they are to get to the bottom of it.
On the Sunday shows today, White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer sought to discredit criticism over how the infamous Benghazi talking points were scrubbed of references to terrorism by focusing on the differences between how ABC News described a single White House email and its actual text:
Here’s the evidence that proves the Republicans are playing politics with this: They received these emails months ago, didn’t say a word about it, didn’t complain, confirmed the CIA director . . . right after that. And then last week, a Republican source provided to Jon Karl of ABC News a doctored version of the White House email that started this entire fury. After 25,000 pieces of paper that were provided to Congress, they have to doctor an email to make political hay, you know they’re getting desperate here.
The incorrect versions – and they were inaccurate quotes – were not generated by GOP operatives. They were extracted by ABC’s Jon Karl from notes taken by attendees at the original meeting when the White House refused to initially allow anyone to have copies which could have been used for full referencing. ABC went with the notes, being the closest thing anyone had to an official record, and the GOP worked off those notes. But even then, the “doctoring” wasn’t nearly as significant as the Democrats are making it out to be.
You know what’s scary? High officials at the White House approved of Pfeiffer’s talking points, Sunday.
“But if you read through all these e-mails, you see that everyone in the government is saying, ‘Oh, let’s not tell the public that terrorists were involved, people connected to al Qaeda. Let’s not tell the public that there were warnings.’ I hate to show, this is one of the documents with the editing that one of the people in the state department said, ‘Oh, let’s not let these things out.’ And I have to go back 40 years to Watergate when Nixon put out his edited transcripts to the conversations, and he personally went through them and said, ‘Oh, let’s not tell this, let’s not show this.’ I would not dismiss Benghazi. It’s a very serious issue.As people keep saying, four people were killed. You look at the hydraulic pressure that was in the system to not tell the truth, and, you know, we use this term and the government uses this term, talking points. Talking points, as we know, are like legal briefs. They’re an argument on one side. What we need to get rid of talking point and they need to put out statements or papers that are truth documents. Okay, this is all we know.”
Take that White House spinmeisters:
Meanwhile, hacktastic Jay Carney on CNN, last night, proclaimed that the emails proved that the White House was right all along, and that Republicans were perpetuating a “faux controversy.”
But Hicks is then ordered not to meet with an investigative congressional delegation — the first time in his 22-year career he had been so ordered. And when he speaks with them nonetheless, he gets a furious call from Clinton’s top aide for not having a State Department lawyer (and informant) present. His questions about the Rice TV statements are met with a stone-cold response, sending the message — don’t go there. He then finds himself demoted.
What were the American people fed? Four days and 12 drafts later, a fiction about a demonstration that never was, provoked by a video that no one saw (Hicks: “a non-event in Libya”), about a movie that was never made.
The original CIA draft included four paragraphs on the involvement of al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorists and on the dangerous security situation in Benghazi.These paragraphs were stricken after strenuous State Department objections mediated by the White House. All that was left was the fable of the spontaneous demonstration.
That’s not an accretion of truth. That’s a subtraction of truth.
Obama Drama - TheBlazeTV – The Glenn Beck Radio Program – 2013.05.15:
Donald Rumsfeld – TheBlazeTV - The Glenn Beck Radio Program – 2013.05.15:
Dana Loesch v. Leslie Marshall Debate IRS Scandal on Sean Hannity – 5-16-13
Listen to the shamelessly hacktastic Jay Carney try to spin the Benghazi talking points release into a “victory” for the administration, calling the concern over the WH lies a ”faux controversy” drummed up by Republicans: Piers Morgan Grills Jay Carney About IRS, Benghazi: Has This Been ‘Your Toughest Week’ Ever?
ABC’s Jonathan Karl reports on the Obama Administration’s Release Benghazi Emails:
Glenn Beck dove into the IRS and Benghazi scandals, today, with conservative bloggers and activists who have been attending BlogCon 2013 in the audience. The conservative conference, hosted by Freedomworks and the Blaze,started on Saturday afternoon and ended on Monday afternoon. This year’s event focused on giving bloggers the tools needed to turn the media on its head, move outside our echo chamber, and be on the offense for a change.
Beck started his TV show, Monday, calling out the Regime for all their lies on Benghazi.
He went on to hammer the Regime for the scandal that broke Friday: The Obama IRS has been targeting conservatives, and lying about it.
At approximately 2:20, a pan of the audience in the above video shows your blogress in the second row in a black shirt, seated next to Doug Ross, (who unfortunately suffered some discomfort, this weekend at the hands of some of the female bloggers in attendance. Those of you who are morbidly curious can check out his blog later this week for the gory details.)
Another segment featured some local conservative activists whose groups have been targeted by the IRS, but that one is not up, yet.. Among their shocking allegations was the revelation that one of the groups was targeted for an audit as early as the Fall of 2009.
On NBC’s Meet Meet the PressSunday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa announced that the Committee will formally ask the Benghazi Accountability Review Board co-chairs, Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Mike Mullen, to submit to bipartisan depositions with Committee investigators. The Oversight and Reform Committee is interested in hearing the co-chairs’ response to assertions made by career State Department officials that the ARB report and process was flawed and let senior officials off the hook.
Before the House Benghazi hearing, last Wednesday,Joseph Di Genova, who is representing State Dept. Whistleblower, Mark Thompson declared that the hearing would indicate that the Accountability Review Board conducted by General Pickering and Admiral Mullen would prove to have been a cover-up- “one of the worst jobs ever done in the history of governmental reporting” partly because they didn’t bother to interview the Sec. of State for their report.
After today’s interview, Ambassador Pickering told Chairman Issa that both he and Admiral Mullen would accept the invitation.
“There are three distinct areas that haven’t been answered. First of all, a full understanding of why urgent requests repeatedly for more security before the attacks were denied. We’ve had statements that it wasn’t about money, but at the same time, people are asking for more security – they got less. The British ambassador has two assassination attempts and yet we keep a facility that was not able to withstand even a few minutes of attack. Then, those seven hours while the attack was going on: Was the response correct? Could it have been better? Why wasn’t – why weren’t things at least tried or revved up to be tried? Those are important questions. And then afterwards, how could you change talking points twelve times from what seems to be relatively right to what seems to be completely wrong.”
Issa on Next Step in Investigation:
“On Monday, I’ll be sending Ambassador Pickering a request for a deposition. We’re going to want to go through at length how the ARB reached its conclusions, who it interviewed, and why we believe there are shortcomings .. We have one witness who says I wanted to be interviewed and I wasn’t. One of the questions that came out of our hearing, Gregory Hicks – the acting ambassador – has not been allowed to look at the classified ARB report even though he is the foremost authority on at least what was happening in Tripoli and what the communication was.”
[After the interview, Ambassador Pickering told Chairman Issa that both he and Admiral Mullen would accept the invitation.]
Pickering Declines to Defend White House on Dishonest Account of Events:
David Gregory: “The Press Secretary to the President, Jay Carney, said back in November … this is what he said:”
Carney (video): “The White House and State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of these two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because consulate was inaccurate. Those talking points originated from the intelligence community, they reflected the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened.”
Gregory: “We know that’s not accurate. We know that, in fact, the State Department, Victoria Nuland was involved in removing from the talking points previous warnings about security and references to a terrorist group – an extremist group – being involved in the attack based on what was being reported on the ground and by intelligence. Is the Administration guilty of playing politics with terrorism?”
Pickering: “With full respect, the Accountability Review Board was there to look at the question of security. We did not examine talking points after the fact. It was not in our remit.”
If you were a journalist reporting on Benghazi whistleblower Gregory Hicks, wouldn’t you find it interesting that he was a Democrat who voted for Barack Obama twice?
Someone at NBC News didn’t according to Hicks’s attorney Victoria Toensing who disclosed the spike job to NewsMax host Steve Malzberg on WMAL radio Saturday
VICTORIA TOENSING: By the way, Mr. Hicks is a Democrat. He voted for Hillary – I’ve yet to announce this – he voted for Hillary in the primary and Obama twice. You know what? NBC spiked the story where I told it before the hearings. It’s just amazing what the press is still trying to do to cover this up
I’m sure Petraeus is fuming after Carney threw him under he bus on Friday.ABC Report: Petraeus’ Reaction To Revised Benghazi TPs: “I Would Just As Soon Not Use Them” (May 12, 2013)
Lady Macbeth may have been one of literature’s most famous villains, but at least she had the guilty conscience to eventually try and wash the blood off her hands.It is doubtful that Hillary Rodham Clinton will start hallucinating bloody spots on her palms during the book tour for her upcoming 14-million-dollar tome or compulsively washing her hands during the 2016 campaign.
If she does make it into the White House, it is even more doubtful that she will wander it in a nightgown crying out for the blood that can never be washed away. Real life villains are more likely to ask what difference it makes; the solipsistic query of the sociopath to whom the feelings of others are abstract things.
“The order to actually engage troops in a rescue operation has to come from the president unless it’s a military facility and then the commander has certain authorities. But it has to come from the president to put troops in harm’s way. Now, in that case, because we don’t know enough of the details, that could have come from the commander from the Africa command who told them to stand down. But play that all the way out, who told him not to allow them to… You are under attack, we are going to be there. That was the whole point of it. And so to say that we didn’t know enough, I don’t buy that. I think that is incredible and I think someone needs to be taken to task over it.”
One day after accusing the media of acting as President Obama’s “scandal condom” on the Benghazi story, The Five’s Greg Gutfeld was at it again, this time calling MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow and Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert “media hacks” for their highly critical commentary on Fox News’ coverage.
“People died, but what difference does it make?” Gutfeld said sarcastically, echoing Hillary Clinton’s infamous Benghazi hearing question. “The story will probably die, like the four in Benghazi with the lapdog media standing down, making these so-called journalists co-conspirators in the Benghazi cover-up, and that’s comedy when you’re winning.” He summed up the position of Maddow, Stewart and Colbert like this: “They refuse to actually cover the story. Instead, they want to cover people who care about the story, because then that kind of absolves them from having to deal with the ugliness.”
Bill O’Reilly brought on Bernard Goldberg tonight to analyze how much the media has covered Benghazi in the aftermath of yesterday’s big hearing. O’Reilly noted how Fox News gave it the most coverage, the nightly newscasts gave it a few minutes of coverage, and MSNBC pretty much ignored it. Goldberg said that MSNBC ignoring the story basically makes the network no more than a “public relations firm” in the employ of President Obama and the Democratic party.
O’Reilly cited statistics showing that Fox News covered the hearing live for almost two hours, CNN for roughly fifteen minutes, and MSNBC for absolutely no time at all. He pointed out that all of the network newscasts led with the big news story from Cleveland, but the CBS Evening News had the most coverage, clocking in at almost five minutes. The morning shows had similarly minimal coverage.
There are times, not many thankfully, when I get depressed, brought down by the sorry evidence that we live in a country fixated on shiny objects. This is one of those times.
A jury in Phoenix has found Jodi Arias guilty of first-degree murder. That’s not what gets me down. What I find so depressing is our collective fascination with trivia, with anything that we can follow without having to actually think.
By 2012, the major media had become so comfortable with Clinton lies that not a single one among them pointed out the grotesque irony of having an unrepentant sexual predator keynote a Democratic Convention whose theme was the “Republican war on women.”
So accustomed had Hillary grown to having her lies glossed over that she grew increasingly indignant even at the timid questions Congress threw her way at the January 2013 Benghazi hearing.
When asked by Senator Ron Johnson about her version of events, Hillary exploded in an outburst destined to be at least as famous as her “vast right wing conspiracy” jeremiad.
Said Hillary, summing up the state of public integrity in 2013, “What difference at this point does it make?” Say what you will, but as recently as January that was a legitimate question.
To be sure, Benghazi will damage Hillary, at least in the short run. But come the Iowa Caucus in 2016, look for the media to champion version 2.0 of the “Comeback Kid.” They have too much emotional equity invested in Hillary to do otherwise.
Charles Krauthammer called State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell’s response to the Benghazi Hearing “pathetic.” Ventrell told reporters earlier today, ”We don’t believe that new information was necessarily presented that hadn’t been already either entered into the public record through congressional testimony or investigated by the ARB or otherwise looked at.”
Thursdays With Michelle Malkin – Benghazi Whistleblowers Speak Out – Fox & Friends – 5-9-13:
Mark Levin says that Hillary Clinton was NOT made to take the oath back in January when she appeared before a House committee to testify on Benghazi and he says it’s a disgrace and a crying shame.
“What difference at this point does it make?” Secretary Clinton responded in January to questions about the nature of the Benghazi attack. “Let’s put this behind us,” Secretary of State John Kerry complained last month. Last week, White House spokesman Jay Carney dismissed press inquiries about the attack by saying, “Benghazi was a long time ago.”
But many more questions remain. Here are a dozen:
Why was the State Department unwilling to provide the requested level of security to Benghazi?
Were there really no military assets available to provide relief during the seven hours of the attacks? If so, why not? During the attacks, were any military assets ordered to stand down?
If the secretary of defense thought there was “no question” this was a coordinated terrorist attack, why did Ambassador Susan Rice, Secretary Clinton, and President Obama all tell the American people that the cause was a “spontaneous demonstration” about an Internet video?
Why did the State Department edit the intelligence talking points to delete the references to “Islamic extremists” and “al Qa’ida”?
Why did the FBI release pictures of militants taken the day of the attack only eight months after the fact? Why not immediately, as proved so effective in the Boston bombing?
Why have none of the survivors testified to Congress?
Why is the administration apparently unaware of the whistle-blowers who have been attempting to tell their stories? Is it true that these career civil servants have been threatened with retaliation?
Did President Obama sleep the night of September 11, 2012? Did Secretary Clinton?
When was President Obama told about the murder of our ambassador? About the murder of all four Americans? What did he do in response?
What role, if any, did the State Department’s own counterterrorism office play during the attacks and in their immediate aftermath?
Why was Secretary Clinton not interviewed for the ARB report?
And why, if all relevant questions were answered in the ARB report, has the State Department’s own inspector-general office opened a probe into the methods of that very report?
“If any of the brothers were a Republican, this news would have been trumpeted by the mainstream media as tangible proof of the Republican War on Women — a narrative invented by Democrat strategists and maintained by the media in a successful effort to defeat Republican candidates in the 2012 election cycle.
“However, when a real act of war on women is perpetrated by a Democrat voter in the manner that even the most zealous Democrat strategist couldn’t have dreamed up in their worst nightmares — involving abduction, imprisonment, rape, torture, malnutrition, beatings while pregnant, and killing babies — the media doesn’t think the party affiliation is relevant.”
– Oleg Atbashian, American Thinker, “Ariel Castro, Cleveland Kidnapper, Is a Registered Democrat”
That all Democrats have rape dungeons in their basements;
or
That every resident of Cuyahoga County is a sexual predator.
These are illogical inferences, and quite possibly harmful stereotypes. Some violent sex offenders might sue you for libel if you accuse them of being Cuyahoga County Democrats.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The Missouri Legislature sent the governor a bill Wednesday that would expand gun rights and declare all federal gun regulations unenforceable, in a response to President Obama’s push for gun control legislation.
The Republican-led Legislature passed the measure hoping to shield the state from federal proposals that would ban assault weapons and expand background checks. But the U.S. Senate’s defeat of a background check expansion three weeks ago did nothing to assuage the fears of Missouri Republicans who pressed forward with their legislation.
The Missouri House voted 118-36 Wednesday to send the bill to Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon. The Senate passed the measure earlier this month.
This is huge. ICE Union president Chris Crane was invited on the Mark Levin Show tonight to explain how the Obama administration is cooking the books on immigration enforcement. What he said was pretty shocking.
According to Crane, ICE agents can no longer make street arrests of people they suspect to be an illegal aliens, illegal alien gang members or illegal alien criminals, despite having the authority to do so by laws enacted by Congress. He says they are under orders to wait until the illegal alien commits a crime, gets arrested by law enforcement and booked into a jail before they can even intercede.
Then they must wait until the illegal alien is convicted of 3 or more criminal offenses before they can put them in deportation process.
When it comes to cooking the immigration books, Crane says the record number of deportations that the Obama administration touts is a complete fraud. He calls it a shell game, saying what really happens is illegal aliens caught crossing the border by the Border Patrol and then sent back across are now added to ICE’s numbers of deportations, thus inflating the numbers immensely. Crane said last year over 50% of the deportations in ICE’s numbers were from those the border patrol agents caught and sent back across.
In reality, Crane says they now have the numbers to show that since 2008, the actual number of ICE deportations has plummeted since 2008.
White House spokesman Jay Carney cautioned that he could not immediately respond to live testimony from the committee but went on to say that the administration remained unsure of the identity and affiliations of the attackers, noting that Ansar al-Sharia had taken credit for it on Twitter but then later recanted.
“What I can tell you is that it was the assessment of our intelligence community that the attacks were participated in by extremists,” he told reporters at a regular daily briefing. “That’s what I’ve said. That’s what Ambassador Rice said. She said on that Sunday that extremists were involved. What we didn’t know is what their exact affiliation was.”
“As you know, with regard to this group, there was a claim of responsibility, then there was a disowning of responsibility. So anybody who pretends to have known all the facts instantly is just mistaken,” he continued. “And it is always the case that things like this require careful investigation.”
Of course, that didn’t stop Jay, or his boss, or Hillary from making some very definitive statements about Benghazi for days and weeks after the attack.
On September 14, Jake Tapper asked Carney if the anniversary of September 11 might have been a good time to have extra security around diplomat and military posts.
After assuring us that they are always very vigilant on anniversaries like 9/11 (no they’re not), Jay said, but “let’s be clear….these protests were in reaction to a VIDEO that had spread to the region….”
Jake: “In Benghazi?”
Jay: “We don’t know otherwise. We have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack.” (Yes they had) ”The unrest we’ve seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that many Muslims find offensive, and while the violence is reprehensible and unjustified it is not a reaction to 9/11 or US policy.”
More Jay from Sept. 14 repeating the youtube video drumbeat, “the unrest in the region has been in response to this video”. …”the cause of the unrest was a video…”
Reading from his script, he said “We reject its contents, we find it both disgusting and reprehensible/ America has a history of religious tolerance and has respect for religious beliefs, and that respect goes back to our nation’s founding.”
Jay Carney on Sept. 19, argued that they didn’t have evidence that it was a pre-planned attack. “Bad actors” had come on the scene of a protest armed with RPGs and mortars. “We prefer to have an investigation…”
The reporter, clearly not buying it, said, “so a random crowd that had come together with their heavy weapons – got insulted by the film, and decided to – you know – blow up…”
Carney doubled down with, “there has certainly been precedent in the past where bad actors - extremists who are heavily armed who have exploited situations that have developed in order to attack Americans…”
This is the 19th of September now, mind you, and he’s refusing to admit the obvious because that would reflect badly on the regime.
Jay Carney October 10, 2012: Benghazi Terror Attack: Jake Tapper Presses Jay Carney on WH Misstatements on Consulate Attack:
Note how everything that they knew the night of the attack was “still under investigation”. Note also how much faith Carney was putting into the Regime’s ringer “Accountability Review Board” that was looking into the attacks.
“Given the fact, that so much was made of the video, that apparently had absolutely nothing to do with Benghazi, there wasn’t even a protest, didn’t President Obama shoot from the hip?” Jake Tapper asked.
Carney responded that it was a moving picture, and some people were trying to politicize a situation that shouldn’t be politicized.
“There was a lot of talk about the video….” Jake persisted.
On November 9, 2012, Jake Tapper asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney if and when the White House is going to put out a detailed “tick-tock” surrounding its response to the Benghazi attacks.
Note, Jake asked a specific question about Obama’s actions and whereabouts on 9/11 and Carney launches into a long, defensive answer about “the investigation” that was taking place.
Carney fell back on the Regime’s boilerplate: “Nobody is more interested than the president in making sure the facts are collected, we find out exactly what happened, that we bring to justice those who killed 4 Americans and that we take measures to ensure that what happened in Benghazi does not happen again.”
“We’re never going to get a tick tock” complains one of the reporters.
“That’s not at all what I said”, Carney huffed.
Dec. 20, Carney Gets Testy Over Benghazi Questions:
Here, Carney took a question from Fox News’ Ed Henry, and got huffy at the idea that anyone higher up than a few low level State Department flacks should be held responsible. “What are you suggesting, Ed, Carney demanded, the disgust and contempt dripping from his voice. Based on the holy Gospel according to the ACB report, some reporting turned out to be wrong, Carney sneered, clearly alluding to Fox News.
As Keith Koffler noted at White House Dossier, yesterday “there is no mention in the report of the what Clinton or Obama did related to Benghazi.”
In fact, Obama isn’t mentioned at all in the document, and Clinton only once – in the context of her appointing the Review Board. There is no suggestion that Clinton or Obama were interviewed or even examined by the investigation.
What’s more, Accountability Review Boards are part of statutory State Department process that is not legally permitted to investigate the president.
It’s not even clear that an Accountability Review Board is permitted to probe the Secretary of State. The purview of a Review Board covers “employees” of the State Department who could be subject to discipline by the Secretary of State, who presumably would not be tasked to discipline herself.
Yet Carney Wednesday suggested the Review Board report exculpated Clinton.
From the briefing:
Q So the White House is confident that Hillary Clinton acted appropriately throughout this process?
MR. CARNEY: We are. And I think I would point you to the Accountability Review Board and what –
Q Which didn’t –
MR. CARNEY: I think I would point you to the report the put out. I would point you to what the two heads of that board, Ambassador Pickering and Admiral Mullen — each highly praised by both sides of the aisle for their long, distinguished careers — put out in a statement this week: “From the beginning of the ARB process, we had unfettered access to everyone and everything, including all of the documentation we needed. Our marching orders were to get to the bottom of what happened, and that is what we did.”
Again, this is an unsparing report done by two career professionals, nonpartisan career professionals, that contain within it very serious recommendations, found shortcomings that needed to be corrected, and the State Department acted immediately on that.
Apparently that answer satisfied the reporters in the room. Koffler reports there was no follow up question.
Call 202-225-3121 and ask for the Speaker’s office. Tweet him @SpeakerBoehner and @EricCantor as well. Be polite and firm: Set up a Select Committee now to follow up on today’s shocking testimony.
Set aside the disgraceful actions of the broadcast MSM today in not covering the riveting testimony of Greg Hicks, and set aside even the shocking conduct of the Administration on the night of 9/11/12 and during the days, weeks and months following.
The MSM is almost exclusive hard left and almost completely committed to the defense of President Obama and former Secretary of State Clinton. With a few, honorable exceptions they will ask no hard questions and conduct no follow-up, and of course the senior levels of the Administration are beyond shame and no “Deep Throat” is likely to emerge from their ranks.
But Speaker Boehner and the GOP control the House and they can almost instantly set-up a Select Committee to follow up on the shocking testimony today. The transcripts of my interviews with Stephen Hayes and Eli Lake will be posted here later, but it is enough to say that there were many extraordinary revelations made today and a great number of serious questions rasied which need to be asked and answered, quickly.
Via the Daily Caller, the five most essential, damning minutes from today’s hearing. And Jordan does an expert job framing them. The money line, when Hicks is asked whether he’d ever been told before not to meet with a congressional delegation: “Never.”
I won’t slow you down with further comment. None is needed — except this: Cheryl Mills is no run-of-the-mill State Department apparatchik, even among the top tier. She’s been one of the Clintons’ right-hand men for decades. She worked in Bill’s White House legal office, then as counsel to Hillary’s presidential campaign, then became chief of staff at State when Hillary was appointed secretary. If she’s the right-hand man, what other conclusion is there than that Hillary’s the one who wanted Hicks to keep his mouth shut when meeting with Chaffetz?
One last point, per today’s theme of ghettoized media. As I say, these five minutes are obviously the biggest news to come out of today’s hearings (so far). Note that, then note tomorrow how many news outlets spend any time on them vis-a-vis other ancillary issues from the testimony. For instance, Politico’s lead story as of 2:45 ET is … “Benghazi hearing gets emotional.”
Update: As of 3:30 ET, Hicks just told the panel that he was “effectively demoted” after challenging State’s leadership about its handling of Benghazi. Of course he was. How else could they discredit him later?
Rep Trey Gowdy Masterfully Asks Questions of Benghazi Witness Greg Hicks w/Beth Jones Damning Letter
Rep. Meehan Q&A – Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage
Rep. Gosar Q&A – Benghazi: Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage
Gregory Hicks: State Dept told me not to talk to Congressman Chaffetz about Benghazi:
At today’s Benghazi hearing, Hicks revealed he was told by State that he should not talk to Congressman Chaffetz. Lawyers from State prior to Chaffetz’ visit in Benghazi told Hicks not to speak with Chaffetz.
Jason Chaffetz Emotional Plea To Not Let Benghazi Be Whitewashed By History
You’ll notice that I haven’t included a single video featuring Democrat questioners. That’s because their purpose at the hearing today, was not to help find the truth, it was to protect the regime, and that’s what they did albeit very clumsily at times.
It’s on. As the White House grapples with a growing backlash over its Libya lies and lapses, President Obama’s apologists are gearing up for battle. Put on your hip-waders. Grab those tar buckets. Get ready for Operation Smear Benghazi Whistleblowers.
Whistle-blower Thompson told it was ‘not the right time’ for special FEST team to deploy in #Benghazi crisis
As we count down the minutes before the Oversight and Reform hearingat 11:30 am, Eastern, here’s something to whet our appetites.
Rep Trey Gowdy was a guest on the Hugh Hewitt Show, yesterday, and he had several very interesting things to say, primarily regarding Gregory Hicks, Foreign Service Officer and former Deputy Chief of Mission/Chargé d’Affairs in Libya at the US Department of State.
H: And I really do put a lot of hope in you guys. One of the things I want to hear from Mr. Hicks, and you tell me whether you think this is a valid inquiry, is whether or not he feels that the President, the Vice President, or the former Secretary of State, former Secretary of Defense, have lied to the American people in statements that they’ve made. He can’t obviously prove that, but his subjective impression would go a long way towards generating interest, because he’s the guy who knows most closely, doesn’t he, what happened?
TG: He did. He was the highest ranking person in Libya once the ambassador was killed. And of course, he remained there, I can tell you, that he will come closer to being able to speak to the Secretary of State, because that’s in his line of command. I can tell you that there are going to be exchanges that he had with the Secretary of State’s chief of staff, which are troubling at best.
HH: Wow.
TG: And I can tell you beyond any reasonable doubt that he was devastated by what Susan Rice said. And you know, if Hillary Clinton’s defense needs to be, ‘I was so out of it and not doing my job that I never talked to a Greg Hicks or anyone else, or Susan Rice, didn’t prepare her before she went on the five Sunday talk shows’, then that’ll just have to be her defense. Don’t blame me because I was absent at the switch. I don’t think that’s going to bode well for her future ambitions. But I know he can say, and will, that Susan Rice’s Sunday morning talk show directly contradicted the evidence the president of Libya, Christopher Stevens’ dying declaration, and negatively impacted our ability to find out what happened. Now if that’s not enough to infuriate our fellow citizens, I don’t know how much better we can do.
— – -
HH: Well, I can guarantee you a few things. One of them is he isn’t going to listen to me. But on Page 11 of that joint special report, Trey Gowdy, that the five committees put together, if you read it enough times, things stand out. These lines appear. “Ambassador Stevens traveled to Benghazi on September 10, 2012, to fill staffing gaps between principal officers in Benghazi, and to allow him to reconnect with local contacts. He also planned to attend the establishment of a new American corner at a local Benghazi school.” Now it’s September 11th in a war-torn, insecure compound that has been the subject of numerous attacks by violent, local jihadists. He does not take adequate security with him. Mr. Hicks can speak to what he was doing there. Will that come up tomorrow?
TG: Yes, sir, and Hugh, let me tell you this. Suffice it to say there’s more to it than what you just read. And yes, it will be dealt with. It’s important to know the chronology you just set out. It’s important to know whether that chronology was altered, and if so, why. And it’s important, I think, to have the background on what he really was doing in Benghazi. And that may implicate one of the three folks you have previously asked me about in the administration.
HH: Now the next thing I wanted, that is pregnant, and I heard it, and one of the things I was just going to say, you’ve got to listen to when the answer is pregnant. Which of the three do you think it may implicate?
TG: Yeah, it would be the one that is not the current president, but her husband was.
HH: Okay, got it.
——
HH: All right, then Jake Tapper, this one you will. Jake Tapper began the show today, and he made an appeal. He said look, if you’re a whistleblower, or if you know something about this, come to me, come to Bret Baier, come to the media, because the media will add credibility to the investigation that Republicans can’t bring to the table. What do you make of that?
TG: That’s true. Unfortunately, that’s probably true that the media is more widely regarded than House Republicans. I would also give anyone listening to your show that is contemplating that, I would simply tell them this. The family members are going to be there tomorrow. And if you can look at a widow, or a sister who’s lost her brother, or parents who have lost children, if you can look them in the eyes and you have information that can give them peace, and more importantly, hold your government accountable, and you say silent when you know that Darrell Issa and others are going to protect you and give you counsel, and make sure you’re not retributed against? I don’t see how anyone can sit there with knowledge and be quiet when what they have to say can not only bring truth to government, but also bring peace to people who are suffering. So whether they go to the media or whether they come to Darrell, or whether they go to Elijah Cummings, I don’t care where they go. If you have first-hand knowledge, you should come forward. It is the moral thing to do.
HH: Now last question, Trey Gowdy, on July 13th, 1973, Alexander Butterfield told Senate investigators that there was a taping system in the White House. He didn’t go public with that until his Senate testimony three days later on July 16th. And of course, it shook the United States of America. On the Richter Scale, you’ve read the depositions, so you know what is already gone to staff, and what may come out tomorrow. On the Richter of Senate and House hearings, where is tomorrow’s?
TG: Well, I’ll answer that question this way. My fear over the weekend was that a lot of the information that I thought would be most interesting tomorrow has already been released. So I went to staff, and I went to others, and said with any jury trial, you have to save something back. You have to be interesting on the day of the trial. And I have been assured, in fact, I know, because I’ve seen it myself, there’s going to be new, provocative, instructive, dare not use the word explosive, but there’s going to be information that comes out tomorrow that whether people have been so desensitized to government lying to them that they don’t care anymore, I cannot speak to that. But if you’re interested in Benghazi, there is going to be enough new material tomorrow to make you absolutely livid that it’s taken eight months for us to get to this point.
“There is only one person who can say, stand down,” Gen. McInerney began in answer to Lou Dobbs question about the team of forces who were prepared to fly out of Tripoli. “And that is the President of the United States.”
“For us to deny forces to go to the aid or our people – we never leave people behind, Lou”, he continued. “And that’s where the dereliction of duty comes in and it permeates the whole command and control system. To say we couldn’t get the airplanes down there, we couldn’t get approval for air space….that doesn’t matter, Lou…you take action and you move out. I’m actually ashamed of the way our military responded – not the men and women, but our senior leaders – and it’s disgraceful, McInerney concluded.
Senator Lindsey Graham spoke with Greta Van Susteren of Fox News, last night about Benghazi and the importance of finding out the truth about what happened there. Graham said there should be bipartisan support for finding out what happened to these brave people, and why the story told by Washington was so wrong.
MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell interviewed Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) about tomorrow’s Benghazi hearing.
She pushed the Accountability Review Boards version of events in Benghazi, on Sept. 11, 2012 but Chaffetz countered, ”the ARB report is really questionable”.
“Do you want to call Pickering and Mullen and others involved in that process and ask them why they didn’t pursue those leads?” Mitchell asked
Chaffetz answered that they have invited them to “chat” since the ARB was released.
“They’ve refused every outreach we’ve made to chat with them – sit around a table, ask and pepper them with questions, they just refuse to do it. We’d do it in a bipartisan way – they just refuse to do it,” he said.
Chairman of the Oversight and Reform Committee, Darrell Issa was a guest on Megyn Kelly’s Fox Show, this afternoon…
Chairman Issa takes to Fox News to discuss the expected testimony of three State Department whistle-blowers who will be testifying at Wednesdays Oversight hearing.
Yet in the 10:00 p.m. hour Washington, D.C. time on Sept. 11, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a written “Statement on the Attack in Benghazi” that said: “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious belief of others.”
That statement–which also said that an unnamed State Department officer (later revealed to be Information Management Officer Sean Smith) had been killed–was released while what was in fact a series of terrorist attacks was still unfolding in Benhazi. In the course those attacks, which lasted more than seven and a half hours, four Americans were killed, including Smith and Amb. Chris Stevens (who died at the U.S. State Department’s mission) and Woods and Doherty (who died at the CIA Annex).
At Monday’s briefing, CNSNews.com asked: “That statement was put out before former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods died in Benghazi. Who specifically told Hillary Clinton that there were some people blaming this on inflammatory response to–inflammatory material on the internet? Where did she get that idea at 10 p.m. on September 11th?”
Ventrell responded: “Look, these are issues that have been looked at in great detail, that have been answered in great detail to the Congress, to the American people, and you’re asking about something that is many months prior. And we’ve been very clear, and the ARB has looked at all of these issues and done so in great detail.”
The dam seems to be breaking on the nearly eight-month-long cover-up concerning the deadly jihadist attack on Americans and their facilities in Benghazi, Libya.
Here are some reasons to believe the moment of truth — or, more accurately, the moment for truth — is finally arriving: The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is scheduled to hold a potentially explosive hearing Wednesday. The Weekly Standard has obtained an official timeline showing White House and State Department skullduggery with respect to the administration’s very first briefing to Congress that suggests a deliberate effort to mislead the public and its elected representatives.
In addition, there are now indications that despite reported intimidation by the Obama administration — long-silenced witnesses are determined to reveal what they know. At the instigation of Rep. Frank R. Wolf, Virginia Republican, and with encouragement from more than 700 special operations veterans and family members of those lost in Benghazi, some 135 legislators in the House of Representatives and three U.S. senators are calling for a special investigatory committee. (To join the appeal for such a select committee with full subpoena powers, visit EndtheCoverup.com.)
To be sure, Team Obama seems as determined as ever to defy efforts to ferret out the truth about Benghazi. In this, they have been aided by the failure of Congress to date to mount a single, concerted investigation of what led up to, happened during and took place after the attack.
Well, that depends. Does she want to be President of the United States?
Quite a lot of news about Benghazi today. First, Vince Coglianese reports:
As the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya raged on for more than seven hours, a team of U.S. special forces in Tripoli was blocked from flying in to attempt a rescue, according to a top American diplomat who was in the region.
In previously secret testimony given by Gregory Hicks — the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya — to congressional investigators last month, Hicks revealed two possible courses of action that could have saved American lives that night: allowing U.S. special forces to enter Benghazi and flying a fast-moving U.S. military aircraft over the scene of the attacks…
There’s “no question” someone from Hillary Clinton’s circle – if not the former secretary of state herself – was involved in the “cover-up” of any missteps by the administration following an attack on a U.S. consulate last Sept. 11 in Benghazi, Libya, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., told CBS News on Monday.
“If Hillary Clinton is not responsible for the before, during and after mistakes… it’s somebody close,” Issa told CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes on Monday. “There certainly are plenty of people close to the former secretary who knew, and apparently were part of the problem.”
Ahead of a hearing on Benghazi in Issa’s committee this week, Fox News reportedthat Mark I. Thompson, the deputy coordinator for operations in the State Department’s counterterrorism bureau, will testify that Clinton attempted to cut out the bureau from communications about the attack. Such charges would likely cripple not only Clinton’s pristine record as secretary, but also the chance that she’ll decide to launch a presidential bid in 2016.
The fast-tracking of Nakoula’s jailing was highly irregular. Among other things, I’d like to see the Congressional investigators get Nakoula’s prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Dugdale — and perhaps his boss, U.S. Attorney André Birotte Jr. — under oath about communications from the White House or the Justice Department regarding this case.
Because what it’s looking like is that Nakoula was targeted and jailed so as to provide a scapegoat/villain in a politically motivated cover story that the White House knew was false. If that’s the case, it’s extremely serious indeed, and in some ways more significant than whatever lapses and screwups took place in Benghazi. I’d also be interested in hearing from Nakoula’s attorney, Steven Seiden, about any threats made by the government to secure a plea deal.
If there’s an impeachable offense anywhere in the Benghazi affair — and at this point, I’m not saying there is — it’s more likely in what happened with Nakoula than in the problems abroad, which by all appearances are simple incompetence, rather than something culpable. Railroading someone in to jail to support a political story, on the other hand, is an abuse of power and a breach of trust.
The answer isn’t as obvious as you might think. Or, rather, it’s exactly as obvious as you think, but the left will of course attempt to claim that any number of persons might have given this order and we’ll never know who they were so oh well let’s move on to something else.
We have known for a long time – and the MSM is going to have to finally reckon with the fact – that the “video” narrative was a fraud, a political construct to cover ass, protect campaign talking points, and misdirect accountability for the four deaths in Benghazi. The Susan Rice spectacle has been pounded on over and over, and rightfully so, but there’s one nuance that needs to be shoved repeatedly into Hilary Clinton’s face:
Hilary pushed the fraudulent video narrative while standing over the caskets of Ambassador Stevens and the other three murdered Americans.
The optics on this alone should haunt her for the rest of her sad, pathetic, cravenly political life. I’ve transcribed her comments, and also have a link to the full, unedited video of the memorial service below.
Clinton comments occur from 16:25-17:45
“This has been a difficult week for the State Department and for our country. We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing do to with. It’s hard for the American people to make sense of that, because it is senseless, and it is totally unacceptable. The people of Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia, did not trade the tyranny of a dictator for the tyranny of a mob. Reasonable people and responsible leaders in these countries in these countries need to do everything they can to restore security and hold accountable those behind these violent acts. And we will, under the president’s leadership, keep taking steps to protect our personnel around the world.”
Hume, speaking on Tuesday’s broadcast of “America Live,” said there is no feasible way for her to escape any responsibility since she had to be involved in the crafting of the talking points that came out after the attack that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including then-U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
“There’s really no way for her to escape responsibility for this if this testimony does what we all expect now that it will do,” Hume said. “Of course, over the years in Washington I’ve seen many a hype hearing fail to live up to expectations. But if it does live up, there’s no way I think she can escape this. I think she recognized from the start that this was trouble. I don’t think it was an accident that Susan Rice, the U.N. ambassador, who was kind of an unusual choice, was the person who went out on the Sunday shows to recite those talking points. I think then-Secretary Clinton knew that the talking points were shaky.”
Sean Hannity took a call from a member of the military who claimed to be the camera operator for the Predator drone mission over Benghazi on the night of September 12, 2012. The caller, who identified himself as John from Iowa, said he knew immediately that the Regime was lying about what happened, but due to non-disclosure agreements was prevented from saying anything. He said when they started observing the consulate, it was already under attack and on fire. He remembered seeing a crowd of dozens if not hundreds of fighters outside the consulate and noted dryly, ” if this was a protest, it would have been a protest for all ages.” They soon were asked to monitor the CIA annex where they were to make sure no one was trying to break into it, not that there was much he could do about it, because of the Status of Forces agreement we have with the host country where he was located. “We were not allowed to be armed, that night”, he said.
He said, since the live video in Benghazi was being disseminated to multiple agencies throughout the world, and the State Dept surely would have been alerted.
I’m transcribing this next part exactly as stated:
“We had a supportive unit that we were working for in that region that told us to go there. It was known prior to us even taking off from the location we took off from which I can’t name, that ‘hey, you’re going to be going to the consulate because there are reports that something might go down or is going down.’ So…it was already known in my mind - hours before.”
Hello Darrell Issa? Why has no one from your committee contacted this man, or requested these videos?
Sharyl Attkisson at CBS News reports that an eyewitness on the ground at Benghazi was refused repeated requests for help.
“We relied on Washington for dispassionate assessment,” one eyewitness told CBS News. “Instead, they [Washington officials] were asking us what help we needed. We answered: ‘Send reinforcements!’ “
But they were told immediate help wasn’t available.
Mark I. Thompson will make the allegation that Hillary Clinton “tried to cut the department’s own counter-terrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making” as they responded to the Benghazi attacks.
Thompson is a former Marine and the current deputy coordinator for operations in the agency’s counter terrorism bureau. He will appear before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday to testify about the Benghazi attacks.
CBS News is reporting that Benghazi witness Greg Hicks told congressional investigators that ”a team of Special Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command South Africa.”
Hicks also reported that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were prepared to board a C130 from Tripoli before the attack on the Benghazi annex. Gibson received a call saying “you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now.’ And so they missed the flight … They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”
Hicks, who did not appear on the show but whose reactions were featured based on transcripts of interviews with Issa’s committee, said he was stunned by what UN Ambassador Susan Rice claimed on five different news shows on Sep. 16. When she appeared on Face the Nation, she followed an interview with the President of Libya who claimed he had “no doubt” it was a terror attack. Moments later, Amb. Rice contradicted him and claimed a spontaneous protest was more likely.Acting Ambassador Hicks watched the Sunday shows and said he found this contradiction shocking. “The net impact of what has transpired is the spokesperson of the most powerful country in the world has basically said that the President of Libya is either a liar or doesn’t know what he’s talking about,” he accused. Hicks added, “My jaw hit the floor as I watched this…I’ve never been as embarrassed in my life, in my career as on that day.”
Hicks believes the stunning failure of diplomacy on the Sunday news shows explains why it took the FBI three weeks to gain access to the Benghazi site. The U.S. had effectively humiliated the Libyan President on national TV. That decision, he believed, probably compromised our ability to investigate and track down those responsible.
Since the day after the attacks, Democrats and the media have treated Benghazi as an unfair political attack by Republicans, rather than a legitimate national security crisis in its own right.
Media coverage in the fall focused on Republican Mitt Romney’s response to the attacks, rather than Obama’s actions as commander-in-chief. When questions were raised about whether Obama had lied to the public about the attacks, the media covered Obama’s tracks, with CNN’s Candy Crowley intervening in the second presidential debate to defend the president, and CBS News suppressing damning footage of the president until shortly before the election.
With Obama safely re-elected, the goal is now to protect Hillary Clinton. Last week, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) called upon Speaker of the House John Boehner not only to retract, but to apologize publicly for, an inter-committee report that suggested Clinton had ignored requests for additional security in Libya.
On MSNBC, a channel that serves as the mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, Rev. Al Sharpton–who also serves as an informal White House adviser–described the Benghazi investigation as the “new vast right-wing conspiracy,” a reference to Clinton’s claim, as First Lady, that Republicans were merely out to target her husband and that he had not committed any wrongdoing in the Monica Lewinsky affair that led to his impeachment.
Though there are undoubtedly some political motives present, Democrats’ claims are largely a projection of their own political agenda in Benghazi, which has remained consistent from the start: to shield the party and its leaders from responsibility for a major terrorist attack on American sovereign territory.
And right on cue, the WH does it’s best to discredit the whistleblowers:
Via WFB,this is so lame. Especially the un-freaking-believably stale talking points he throws in at the end. Good God almighty, enough already.
Well, here’s an interesting way to respond to the Benghazi scandal, back in the spotlight again this week as whistle-blowers prepare to testify before Congress that the government always knew the assault on the consulate in Libya was a planned terror attack and not a spontaneous protest in response to an anti-Muslim video posted on YouTube. Alex Seitz-Wald at Salon is pre-blaming conservativesshould the scandal fail to take off:
The charges seem potentially damaging and the accusers credible, but those trying to fan flames of scandal have so embarrassed and discredited themselves by pushing bogus story lines on Benghazi that it may be hard for the media and American people to take any new allegations seriously. For instance, the last time we saw a “Benghazi whistle-blower,” it was an anonymous Fox News source, but he seemed to know so little about basic special operations that military analysts called him a clown and an embarrassment.
Okay, that’s one. Any others? It appears not.
Washington Free Beacon: Redacting the Truth:WaPo factcheck ignores State Department Benghazi stonewall:
The U.S. Department of State is withholding information from congressional committees about who saw an April 2012 cable denying additional security at the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, according to the House Oversight Committee.
The compound was later overrun in a terrorist attack on Sept. 11 that claimed the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
The office of Rep. Darrell Issa (R., Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton knew that the State Department denied an official request from a U.S. official in Libya for more security at the compound, citing her signature on a cable denying the request.
“The cable itself states ‘signature’ next to Clinton’s name and some of the names of those who participated in the process of clearing and approving the cable viewed by Congressional investigators were inexplicably redacted by the State Department. On multiple occasions, Congressional investigators objected to these redactions and requested un-redacted documents, including this cable. State Department has still not complied with these requests,” wrote Issa spokesman Frederick Hill in an email.
Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler ignored the State Department’s stonewalling in an article that appeared in Monday’s print edition titled, “Issa claim about Clinton’s name on Benghazi cable is absurd.”
Nice try, but Hillary’s 2016 prospects grow dimmer by the minute.
JAMES CARVILLE: I think he is the most talented and fearless Republican politician I’ve seen in the last 30 years. I further think that he’s going to run for president and he is going to create something. I’m not sitting here saying he’s going to win, and I think Senator DeMint is right. I’ve listened to excerpts of his speech in South Carolina. He touches every button, and this guy has no fear. He just keeps plowing ahead. And he is going to be something to watch.
And a lot of Republicans feel this way, George, and you hear this a lot: “If we only got someone who was articulate and was for what we were for, we would win elections. And we get these John McCains and these Mitt Romneys and these squishy guys that can’t do anything.” Well, there’s one thing this guy is not – he ain’t squishy, not in the least.
As the conversation continued and others on the panel said that other conservatives such as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fl.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) will likely also run in 2016, Carville added:
CARVILLE: Ted Cruz is going to eat their lunch. That guy, I’m telling you, he will out debate. I am just saying, he is a talent. I’m not rooting. I’m really sincere here. We watch him, he does things, I mean when he started talking about William Travis in South Carolina and the Alamo, this is a guy, and you go, “This guy is something.” Now I don’t agree with him. I think he’s out there. But I’m telling you, he’s more talented than all of these other guys.
Legendary Republican operative Chip Gerdes died of a heart attack, this morning. He was 43 years old – the same age Andrew Breitbart was when he died, a little over a year ago. I’d only met him a few times, but what a character! I had the good fortune to have lunch with him and a few others at CPAC, a couple months ago. He was a ”behind the scenes” Republican operative who was very effective at what he did and his absence will be deeply felt in Republican circles…
Left to right: Chip Gerdes, Dana Loesch, Andrew Breitbart
The first rule of Chip Gerdes was, nobody talked about Chip Gerdes. In a world of political fame-junkies, nobody was so deliberately anonymous as the man whose Twitter handle was @TookieW.
That handle was, of course, an inside joke about Tookie Williams, one of the Left’s cop-killer heroes, and Chip Gerdes was in a sense a sort of inside joke: A shadowy behind-the-scenes operative who was well-known to all the people who really knew what was going on, but who made a point of being completely unknown to the larger world.
Today Chip is being fondly remembered by his friends who would never have dared to write his name in public while he was alive, lest they accidentally let slip the closely-guarded secret of his existence.
Chip was a “black ops” guy, a disciple of the legendary Republican operative Roger Stone. He was adept at research and organizing, but his specialty was the kind of no-fingerprints political trickery that some people have termed “ratf*cking.” Knowing how Chip worked, you never trusted that any “coincidence” in politics was actually coincidental, because you realized that whatever mischief Chip did on the GOP side, there were professional ratf*ckers doing the same kind of thing (and probably worse) on the Democrat side.
When the WeinerGate scandal broke, one of the first phone calls I made was to Chip Gerdes: “Did you do this?”
“No, swear to God, man — this is legit,” Chip said. “I mean, yeah, we all knew Anthony had this problem weeks ago, but it’s the real deal. Dude hit the wrong button trying to DM a meat-Tweet to this girl. I’d love to tell you it was us, but it wasn’t.”
Basic tenets of economics dictate that when you tax something, you get less of it. That’s why it’s incomprehensible that the U.S. Senate is moving to raise taxes on one of the brightest sectors of our struggling economy.
The Internet is a thriving ecosystem of entrepreneurial freedom that should be protected and nourished. It has allowed new businesses to compete in the national marketplace in ways that would have been impossible 15 years ago, and it empowers consumer choice. But tax-hungry politicians view the Internet as yet another source of revenue to bail out their big-spending governments.
The misleadingly titled Marketplace Fairness Act is a job-killing tax hike, plain and simple. It is, in effect, a national Internet sales tax, which would hammer the little guy and benefit giant corporations.
Senators who vote for it are voting to impose audits, compliance costs, lost wages, and inefficiency on small businesses in every state. And they are potentially crippling an engine of new job creation at a time of economic struggle. This bill will not create jobs; it will not create new opportunities; and it will not create the economic growth our country needs and our people deserve.
William “Bill” Talley aka @Political_Bill on Twitter … is a convicted sex offender who has managed to delay going to prison through evidentiary appeals. During that time, he has emerged as a progressive voice on Twitterand even briefly enjoyed board status in a prominent netroots startup. …
Talley was arrested for possession of drugs and hundreds of sexual images of children in August 2005. …
Questioned directly, Talley has denied the charges are true, even though he actually pleaded guilty to possession of child pornography. …
Adult film actress Grace Evangeline was angered by online advocates of accused Boston bomber Dzhokhar, so she used her womanly wiles to get the founder’s phone number and posted it on the internet.
There are always those degenerate elements of society that swarm to commiserate and sympathize with the worst criminals out of some perverse sense of self-importance animated by a savior complex. But it takes a special kind of moron to come to the defense of Dzhokhar Tzarnaev, the suspected terrorist bomber who killed 2 Americans and maimed dozens in Boston.
That special moron has a name, and it’s Troy Crossley.
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) weighed in on the DHS ammo controversy this weekend.
Inhofe told Aaron Klein that he believes the Obama administration is attempting to “dry up” the ammo market from gun-owning citizens. World Net Daily reported:
U.S. Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., says he believes open purchase orders from the Department of Homeland Security to buy over 1 billion rounds of ammunition are part of an “intentional” effort by the Obama administration to “dry up the market” for gun-owning citizens.
“We have in this country the Second Amendment that preserves the right to keep and bear arms,” Inhofe told radio host Aaron Klein, “and the president doesn’t believe in that.”
You have to feel a little sorry for Robert Redford, don’t you? He just released a feature film asking audiences to reconsider their harsh feelings about the Weather Underground, which set off bombs, killed police officers, and robbed banks for more than a decade of domestic terrorism, but who were just misunderstood people acting on their deeply-held beliefs about justice. Unfortunately for Redford, a couple of misunderstood kids did the same thing at the Boston Marathon ten days after the film opened. So far, Redford’s paean to leftist terrorists and murders has grossed only $3.5 million since its limited April 5th opening, and in the last two weeks, its wide distribution has only made $1.9 million:
In the eight days since NBA player Jason Collins announced he was gay, the news media have covered the story in 2,381 places. But in the first eight days of the trial of Dr. Kermit Gosnell and his “House of Horrors” abortion business, the media covered the story in 115 places, meaning that Collins’ “gay” news received more than 1,970.4% more news coverage.
That’s not a coincidence. That’s a clear choice not to cover a story.
