"Lies, scandal and politics: Benghazi"

Remember that classic statement of high moral indignation from the President during the second debate? About how outrageous it would be for anyone to suggest that he, or anyone else in his administration, might even consider the possibility of misleading the American people about terrorist attacks for the purpose of political gain?

Yeah. Right.

Danielle Pletka:

Luckily, Reuters now tells us what really happened before the President hit the Rose Garden on 9/12: Within minutes of the attack the day before, the White House received three emails. Here are the three subject lines for those emails, which spanned a couple of hours from the beginning of the terrorists’ move:

Email one: ”U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” and the notation “SBU,” meaning “Sensitive But Unclassified.”
Email two: “Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi”
Email three: ”Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.”

Bottom line? Barack Obama was willfully and knowingly lying to the American people. Why? To protect the meme that he had al Qaeda and affiliates/sympathizers like Libya’s Ansar al Sharia on the run.

"Act of Terror"

How wrong was Barack Obama, and Candy Crowley to bail him out the other night?

American Crossroads: "Act of Terror"

When did Obama label consulate attack "terror"?

It's sad to praise someone for just doing the bare minimum in their job requirements, but CBS news is so in the tank for the left in general, and the Obama campaign in particular, and has been for so long, that it's shocking to see a news story like this from them.



Obviously, Barack Obama lied repeatedly the other night, but it's still shocking to see CBS, of all people, actually report it...

More Libya...and Yemen...

Eric Cantor:

The American people need to understand why the Administration assessed the attack grew out of a spontaneous protest even though State Department officials in Libya apparently never reported any protest at the consulate facility in Benghazi. The American people need to understand why the Obama Administration didn't send additional security assets to Libya and Benghazi despite increasing reports of terrorist activity and evidence of weak Libyan government control. The American people need to know why it has taken the Obama Administration so long to secure FBI access to the site of the terrorist attack in Benghazi. The American people need to know whether the Obama Administration recognizes that the war on terrorism is not over, and whether appropriate steps are being taken to prevent the next attack before it occurs. And the American people need confidence that the Obama Administration is taking the appropriate steps to secure other facilities while bringing those responsible for these attacks to justice.

Speaking of that last point, we have another story breaking this morning:

A masked gunman assassinated a Yemeni security official who worked for the U.S. Embassy in a drive-by shooting near his home in the capital Sanaa on Thursday, officials said. Yemeni officials said the killing bore the hallmarks of an attack by the al-Qaida offshoot in Yemen, but it was too early to determine whether the group was behind it. The assassination resembles other attacks recently that have targeted Yemeni intelligence, military and security officials. Those attacks are believed to be in retaliation for a military offensive by Yemen's U.S.-backed government against Yemen-based Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), which Washington considers the most dangerous offshoot of the global terror network.

Will Ryan hit Biden hard on Libya scandal?

Byron York:

Though much remains unknown about the Libyan debacle, it is known that Ambassador Stevens and his staff feared terrorist attacks and asked for more security; that the State Department denied those requests; and that after Stevens and three others were murdered the administration, from the president down, spread an untrue and misleading explanation for the attack. Serious questions remain about the administration's behavior in the Libya episode, and a vice presidential debate seems as good a place as any to air some of them.

Serious questions indeed...


York doesn't think that the Romney campaign is going to go hard at Libya, though.

Aide's comments, plus silence on trail, suggest Romney believes Libya story is moving on its own, doesn’t need push from the campaign.
— Byron York (@ByronYork) October 11, 2012

An Incriminating Timeline: The Obama Administration and Libya

Another reminder of the Obama administration's peculiar relationship with the truth, as the hearings take place on Capitol Hill. This one, from The Heritage Foundation...

New evidence shows there were security threats in Libya in the months prior to the deadly September 11 attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. Despite these threats, the State Department left its personnel there to fend for themselves.

And when the terrorist attack did take place, the Obama Administration peddled the ridiculous story that an offensive, amateurish, anti-Islam YouTube video was to blame in order to avoid characterizing the murders of four Americans as terrorism.

Not only did the United States have an ambassador, and three other staff, killed in an entirely forseeable (and forwarned) Al Qaeda attack on 9/11, the administration spent two weeks peddling the ludicrous fiction that the attack was a "spontaneous" reaction to an internet video, and even condemned the filmmaker, who was then arrested, ostensibly for parole violations, but really for exercising his free speech rights in a manner disapproved of by the President.

But hey, he doesn't like (or maybe even understand) Governor Romney's tax plan, so that makes Romney the "liar"...

U.S. ambassador to Libya killed in Benghazi attack

Reuters

The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff were killed in a rocket attack on their car, a Libyan official said, as they were rushed from a consular building stormed by militants denouncing a U.S.-made film insulting the Prophet Mohammad.

Gunmen had attacked and burned the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, a center of last year's uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, late on Tuesday evening, killing one U.S. consular official. The building was evacuated.

The Libyan official said the ambassador, Christopher Stevens, was being driven from the consulate building to a safer location when gunmen opened fire.

"The American ambassador and three staff members were killed when gunmen fired rockets at them," the official in Benghazi told Reuters.

The US consulate is United States sovereign territory. That is an attack on the United States. An act of war.

What are we - and by we, I mean, of course, the Federal Government, the "only thing that we all belong to," the "things we do together," under the Commander in Chief - going to do about it?

You know, other than apologizing for offending Muslims with our freedom of speech.  Oh, and attacking the Romney campaign for having the nerve to comment on it...

"I don't care. Obama is Awesome..."

One of the fantastic things about the internet is the way that individuals can make little bits of brilliance available to everyone else. Brilliance like this Libya vs. Iraq debate...



I laughed out loud a couple of times. To quote Homer Simpson, "it's funny 'cause it's true..."

NY Times: Bush middle east policy vindicated

Ok, they didn't put it that way. But I will.

What the Times said was Libyan Arms Pact Reduces Qaddafi’s Power

In late 2009, the Obama administration was leaning on Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and his son Seif to allow the removal from Libya of the remnants of the country’s nuclear weapons program: casks of highly enriched uranium.

Meeting with the American ambassador, Gene A. Cretz, the younger Qaddafi complained that the United States had retained “an embargo on the purchase of lethal equipment” even though Libya had turned over more than $100 million in bomb-making technology in 2003. Libya was “fed up,” he told Mr. Cretz, at Washington’s slowness in doling out rewards for Libya’s cooperation, according to cables released by WikiLeaks.

Today, with father and son preparing for a siege of Tripoli, the success of a joint American-British effort to eliminate Libya’s capability to make nuclear and chemical weapons has never, in retrospect, looked more important.

And why was that effort successful? Does anyone else remember this?

It received little notice at the time, but in an interview with the British Spectator in September, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi (search) said Qaddafi had told him in a phone conversation that "I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid."

I do. Libya is one of the collateral benefits of Iraq, and it's been obvious for a very long time. Back in 2005, when Chuck Hagel decided to hop on the "rush-to-defeat" bandwagon, I made this comment about what had happened in Iraq:

2 1/2 years ago, Saddam Hussein was in power in Baghdad. He was paying the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. He was providing a haven for some Al-quaeda members. He was shooting at US and British planes that were enforcing the UN no-fly zones. He had the largest army in the middle-east. He was taking UN Oil-for-Food money and preventing aid in the form of food and medicine from reaching his oppressed citizens. Now he's gone, his armies are gone, his sons are gone and the Iraqi people have elected a representative government that's making progress towards a democratic constitution. The influence of the actions in Iraq has caused changes in behavior - positive changes of behavior - in Syria and Lebanon and Libya.

So, yeah, I'm going to say "Bush policy vindicated."