Sleight of Hand
Reports the FBI has still not started investigating the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi half a month after it occurred suggests that they’re really not going to. The real crime of interest is not the murder of Ambassador Stephens but something else. While the ambassador’s death was tragic it may have been incidental. Collateral. The real objective of the Benghazi attack may have been US intelligence operations in North Africa and the Middle East.
“It’s a catastrophic intelligence loss,” said one U.S. official who has served in Libya and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the FBI is still investigating the attack. “We got our eyes poked out.”
The CIA’s surveillance targets in Benghazi and eastern Libya include Ansar al-Sharia, a militia that some have blamed for the attack, as well as suspected members of al-Qaida’s affiliate in North Africa, known as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb.
These would have been the second set of eyes they got poked out. According to Michael Scheuer, former head of the Bin Laden search unit, the “Arab Spring” dealt a major blow to US intelligence efforts in the region because it disrupted the CIA’s ability to render suspects to Arab intelligence services.
“The help we were getting from the Egyptian intelligence service, less so from the Tunisians but certainly from the Libyans and Lebanese, has dried up – either because of resentment at our governments stabbing their political leaders in the back, or because those who worked for the services have taken off in fear of being incarcerated or worse.
“The amount of work that has devolved on US and British services is enormous, and the result is blindness in our ability to watch what’s going on among militants.”
Scheuer it will be recalled advocated US custody of detainees in the aftermath of September 11 because it was receiving bum information from the detainees tortured by the foreign intelligence agencies. With the decomissioning of Guantanamo it was back to that high minded and humanitarian mode of questioning that Bush wished to reduce but which Obama caused to restore: rendition.
But he screwed that up too and some capability was probably being rebuilt from the ground up, perhaps by using militias and other subnational units in the role that Arab national intelligence agencies formerly performed. The Independent was one of the first to suggest that intelligence assets had been targeted in the Benghazi attack.
The US administration is now facing a crisis in Libya. Sensitive documents have gone missing from the consulate in Benghazi and the supposedly secret location of the “safe house” in the city, where the staff had retreated, came under sustained mortar attack. Other such refuges across the country are no longer deemed “safe”.
Some of the missing papers from the consulate are said to list names of Libyans who are working with Americans, putting them potentially at risk from extremist groups, while some of the other documents are said to relate to oil contracts.
CNN found Ambassador Stephen’s diary among the Benghazi ruins suggesting that none of the bad guys were interested in it or they would have scooped it up already. None of the attackers has been publicly describe as having been captured. They’re not hanging around the ruins of the the Benghazi consulate, which is probably a dry hole now, waiting for the FBI to spot them.
One of the reasons why the administration clung to the story that an anti-Muslim video sparked the attack for so long was because it could not admit to itself the more catastrophic alternative: that the attacks on the embassies were part of a big counterintelligence operation against the US. James Clapper apparently came to the reluctant conclusion some hours after the attack that it was his bailiwick not Hillary’s which was in the crosshairs.
Shawn Turner, spokesman for Clapper’s office, said that in the immediate aftermath of the attack, U.S. agencies came to the view that the Benghazi attack had begun spontaneously after protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo against a short film made in California lampooning the Prophet Mohammad.
Turner said that as U.S. intelligence subsequently learned more about the attack, “we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists.”
If Benghazi were an offensive counerintelligence operation then Clapper’s admission is is a half-truth at best. The organizations which mastermind such things are other intelligence agencies, only a handful of which would have been capable of carrying out something on this scale. Neither the rag-tag militias nor the remnants of al-Qaeda would have been able to do it. But some Arab intelligence agencies, or Iran’s or the ISI — might. If so then the attack may not have been masterminded by “al-Qaeda”, but it was for the benefit of al-Qaeda.
The whole thrust of what Roger L. Simon has called “Benghazigate” — an organized pattern of lying to lay the blame on the wave of attacks on an unknown video producer has been designed to avoid answering two questions:
1) who masterminded the attacks;
2) what help did they have from persons inside the United States.
These questions are probably being asked in parallel and explain the involvement of the FBI, whose remit is domestic counterintelligence. The FBI is probably not asking “who killed Stephens”. It is probably asking who knew where the safe house was? Who knew what the contingency plans were? And above all, when did you first hear about what must have been the cover story, the anti-Mohammed video. Answers to either or both of these questions would open a whole can of worms.
The biggest possible can of worms would be that the CIA had its “eyes poked out” to prevent it from seeing some dangerous operation that is even now hatching in the intelligence shadow of the ‘Arab Spring’: the possibility that there is something out there which has to be kept secret from US intelligence. How better to do it than to disrupt a major center of US intelligence operations in the area?
So it’s better for the public to think that an unknown video producer was the cause it all. The alternative, explanation: that the enemy intelligence agencies destroyed the CIA’s efforts to recover from the ‘Arab Spring’ and that America is now flying blind in the Middle East would be a hard thing to admit.
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They control the horizontal and the vertical.
As I state in Rogers thread:
A. the Muslim Brotherhood is firmly in control of Egyptian media
B. an Arab dubbed version of the trailer for “The Innocence of Muslims” suddenly was shown on MB controlled Egyptian TV two days prior to the 11th anniversary of 9/11.
So using “Innocence of Muslims” as pretext, coordinated terrorist attacks commenced against US agencies across Islam two days after MB controlled media deliberately inflamed the world of Islam.
Do not adjust your TV sets. The MB is in control. Though it is clear that the trailer served as mere pretext, the concerted attacks prove a well connected network of MB controlled media, of course MB imams, and millions of MB operatives across the planet work in cooperation to ‘control’ events.
From Maclellan at Antietam to Hitler and Overlord, the best intelligence is useless if the CIC is unwilling to believe it or too conflicted to act on it.
Islam is rising, bit by bit they are building the Caliphate, one office and one country at a time. Eventually they will find a Caliph to rule and the war they have been waging on the west for more than a generation will suddenly flame up and take all of our “Inteligence” by surprise. Our navy, with its ships fuel bunkers filled with french fry grease, will probably take the first blow.
God help us, Allah surely won’t.
The whole scene must now be so full of holes and even more easily corrupted loyalties and personality conflicts, it could be any number of combinations. Scheuer’s sense of lost cooperation though must be at least a little absurd – Libya provided useful intelligence? Seriously? Rendering al Qaeda members back to an armed camp in the Maghreb that used to host IRA hardcores is probably not that useful a service. Lebanon? The state intelligence service run by Syria and Iran for 20 years after having been substantially co-opted by Soviet Bloc services during the long civil war?
Maybe the best question to begin with is this: what immediate conflict would be best served by a coordinated al Qaeda, Muslim Brotherhood operation using the Egyptian US Embassy protests as a public relations “inspiration” for the Libya strike against US eyes and ears and operations in Arabia?
I think the only obvious answer is Syria. And the Benghazi strike is probably aimed not only against the US but also against NATO, which must have set up a nice, friendly hub in Libya after having provided to much assistance and support to the new government against Kaddafi. Perhaps that’s why the US consulate had such little protection: they thought the natives were “our guys.”
But as you say, these sorts of operations are planned and carried out by enemy intelligence organizations. If the attack supported Syria, who supports Syria? Certainly al Qaeda would not want to prevent the US from offering so much to the Syrian guerrillas. Hezbollah? Russia? Iran through some other means? There were reports of IRGC in Lebanon the other day that that government was forced to respond publicly to. And Egypt did meet with senior IRGC recently.
Events such as the push against militias within Libya, including today’s mass weapons hand-in, suggest that the US was right to believe in our hosts there. Somehow I doubt that a putatively al Aqaeda attack there was designed to push Libya more formally towards official Islamism. There are reports that Egypt may move against Libya in order to benefit from energy there while its own economy is close to collapse. But their situation is deteriorating so rapidly nothing but a coup there or an outright invasion would harness that funding soon enough, and in that case they would possibly face international sanction – unless of course Morsi’s meeting China signals the latter’s agreement to buy from Libya/Egypt under a coup or invasion scenario….
Another thing to consider is What if we have lost Iraq? What if the Libya campaign created the friendliest intelligence site for the US in the Middle East outside Israel? So what if this blow is bigger than we think, particularly viz. Syria?
October 7 is the 441st anniversary of the Battle of Lepanto. Pick up any modern history book and this civilizationally significant battle is billed as a Christian victory. It was not. This was post Reformation. It was a Catholic victory.
Queen Elizabeth did not send ships to fight with the Muslims against the Catholics, although it was taken up and considered, but she did supply the Muslims with cannon and other implements of war. Then, as now, some Western leaders care infinitely more about breaking the Catholic Church and furthering their own personal interests than they do about the fallout from Islamic conquests, even to themselves.
And the Pope has cast his arms abroad for agony and loss,
And called the kings of Christendom for swords about the Cross.
The cold queen of England is looking in the glass;
The shadow of the Valois is yawning at the Mass . . .
Queen Elizabeth furthered Muslim interests from pure malevolence. King Barack can still claim ignorance but even that condemnable veneer is wearing thin.
Knowing some of wretchard’s back story I trust his analysis.
(Here is hoping that someday our host writes his story for the world to see.)
Knowing this is probably true makes the complicity of Obama and Hillary even more damning. Who do they really work for?
I don’t have any special insight other than that provided by the open-source facts. But if the analysis looks right to you, thinking independently, it the facts persuade you by their own weight, then maybe the analysis as presented is true. Not because I say so, but because it is.
What follows is speculation. If the British networks survived then perhaps they were behind the strikeback on militias reported in the Washington Post.
The goal would have been to capture documents and people who might shed light on the question of who is behind the attacks. It may simply be a coincidence, but Britain has suddenly taken front and center in Syria with an offer to reach a diplomatic solution if Iran ended its support for Assad. The Washington Post reports:
This sounds like an offer an olive-branch to Iran if it will sell out Assad. By dealing with Iran the Brits will not be so dependent on the Saudis and Gulf powers to craft an end-game in Syria where the MB doesn’t take over or is at least forced to share power with other bearded hard men.
Is this also Hillary’s stance? Or is she in no position to object now that her chess pieces have been wiped from the board? Are the British taking advantage of the momentary US setback to push their preferred policy in Syria? The Churchill bust may be laughing right now.
I don’t know but it bears thinking about.
The other possibility is that if the Syrians were behind it then the Benghazi/Cairo attacks are a precursor to another unknown op. Their role is to blind US intelligence for long enough for another Syrian operation to succeed. The probable goal of such a future operation would be to humiliate President Obama, something so ugly even the New York Times can’t spin it. You might think of it as Assad’s Watch on the Rhine — his Ardennes offensive.
Either way, the Benghazi operation is linked to some bigger strategic outcome which we can only guess at.
Isn’t Scheuer one of those who went truther?
Along the line of what I posted on the Benghazigate thread, I find it impossible to care. Just exactly what secrets are there to be had, in Benghazi, that al Qaeda sends their operatives there for the waters?
Were they motivated by outside agencies, even Iran? Maybe. If so I hope we retaliate, but we don’t have much of a history of retaliation against Iran going back to 1979.
So just what’s new here?
I also think that Michael Sheuer is a complete nincompoop. Our intelligence has been grievously compromised all along, to wit, 9/11 and the long series of catastrophes that have befallen us since, from “winning hearts and minds” to nation building in the sewers of Islam.
I think in a historic irony, the Arab spring will ultimately prove salutory for the West. As the vast majority of Muslim fascists drop their mask it is harder and harder to conceal their real intentions. The Saudis should have been plastered with bombs after 9/11. But because of “intelligence assets” of the West, who scrupulously divorced Islam from the rising tide of terrorism and Arab dysfunctionality, we never saw the forest of Islamic fascism for the trees of separate terrorist groups.
Even today, our leaders still trip over themselves to assure that it’s not Islam, but AQ here and AQ there. AQ was just the first Arab terror outfit which had the balls to live up to its creed. Others will follow. Why? Because there’s only one way it can go when Muslims take their Islam seriously. Terror, Jihad, and mass murder.
My thesis all along has been simple: The terror of 9/11 is simply the inevitable outcome of a re-invigorated Islam. After a century of funds pouring into the moribund coffers of Islam, global Jihad and global genocide were the inevitable outgrowth. Until we strangle the funds which are gradually restoring and empowering Islam’s rapist, terrorist, totalitarian and genocidal nature, we will continue to see all the sequellae of terror and chaos. The old-think of our broken “intelligence” brought us 9/11 and everything we see unfolding since. they all failed and still fail to see this inevitability. Well, reality will simply mug us all in the coming years. In the end, the bloodshed will be unprecedented. I just hope we have the guts to do what will prove necessary once it’s no longer possible to pretend. Had we never admitted millions of Muslims into the West, this would have been far less destructive. But because they are here in their millions, we hve lost a great deal already. I just hope we figure it out before it’s too late.
Regarding the “Innocence of Muslims” video:
As I recall the timeline of events, on Sept. 11 a mob besieged the U.S. embassy in Cairo and raised the al-Quaeda flag. The State Department issued a public apology for the video, which nobody in the U.S. had even seen or heard of.
Within hours, the Libyan consulate was attacked and four people were killed, including the U.S. ambassador. This was a organized, coordinated terrorist attack and was clearly planned in advance. It had nothing to do with mob violence. Yet the Obama administration insisted that the video was to blame.
Since then, there have been protests, demonstrations, and riots by Muslim mobs in countries all over the world, and they are explicitly citing the video as the reason.
That’s nonsense, of course. They are merely using the video as a pretext. A major Muslim goal is to intimidate Western countries into passing anti-blasphemy laws which will criminalize the criticism of Islam.
There must be hundreds of videos on the internet of people burning Korans in their backyards, not to mention Ann Barnhardt’s legendary one using strips of bacon as bookmarks. Why this particular video?
Apart from the intelligence effects that Wretchard cites, the whole thing seems mighty fishy. This is increasingly looking like a false-flag operation to me.
Gulf Oil Emirs Are Bankrolling Matt Damon’s Anti-Fracking Film
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/09/gulf-oil-emirs-bankrolling-anti-fracking-film.html
Wretchard, I’m starting to think that it’s not that Obama voters and the Obama-loving Media is ignorant about what the Brotherhood wants for the West, and if Obama is complicit or not (he is).
They DO know. And they PREFER letting the Muslim Brotherhood win, over the idea of allowing “The White Man” to be in charge ever again.
Following up on @ 10:
Wretchard, keeping it in the whole hall of mirrors thing, what if the Huma Abedin thing was ginned up to distract people from actual, serious infiltration of the U.S. government by Middle Eastern intelligence agencies and their ‘non-governmental’ partner the Muslim Brotherhood? It’s kinda like ‘look over there, there’s that idiot Michelle ‘Tailgunner Joe’ McCarthy libeling poor Huma and her Weiner of a disgraced Jewish Congressman husband! How god-awful!’ while all those MBO invites to the White House, the scholarships for young Obama thru Valerie Jarrett’s Dad, whether Samantha Power and other advocates for R2P have or expect to collect paychecks from the Persian Gulf countries in the future — go unnoticed. Ditto for the Egyptian foreign minister (again, not the most reliable source) swearing up and down when assailed by the Muslim Brotherhood on an Egyptian TV show in 2010 that, ‘Obama swore to me [during his 2009 Cairo visit] that he was a Muslim, his father was a Muslim, and he will deal with Israel soon’. A lie from one notorious liar (he did after all lie about being ‘Kenyan born’ on his bio for years, as proven by Breitbart.com) repeated by another liar?
I’ve seen on Twitter many fierce denunciations of Russia for backing the Assad regime and contradicting U.S. Syria policy. But is it really OUR policy or is it Qatar and Saudi Arabia’s policy that the Russians and Allawites are resisting? And if our Middle Eastern policy can be co-opted by the Saudi/Qatari/UAE lobbies, who’s to say foreign or transnatonalist interests haven’t captured our China or Russia policies either?
Morton Doodslag: “Do not adjust your TV sets. The MB is in control. Though it is clear that the trailer served as mere pretext, the concerted attacks prove a well connected network of MB controlled media, of course MB imams, and millions of MB operatives across the planet work in cooperation to ‘control’ events.” Yes, it’s like we’re living in the prequel to that novel ‘Prayers for the Assassin’ where Muslims actually do take over the US after successfully blaming multiple nuke attacks on Israel.
The attack on the embassies came roughly in the same time period as the assault on the Marine Harrier base in Afghanistan. The timing may have been coincidental, but taken together they would have had the effect of a “Tet style” offensive on a Republican President. It would have seriously harmed the re-election chances of anyone but Obama.
He seems impervious to that style of public relations attack. By some unspoken agreement the press has decided to pretend that nothing has happened. In fact David Brooks praises the President for acting like nothing of the ordinary has taken place. He goes even further by saying the catastrophes in the Middle East are an indictment of — Romney! — you guessed it.
So the word is out. It’s patriotic to protect the President. No matter how he screws up, it Romney’s fault. This will make it impossible, to the extent the media can manage it, for any foreign intelligence agency to embarrass the President. The media may regard this as a highly patriotic act of genius, but other descriptions may occur to you.
Hmmm Read Wretchard’s post backwards so that cause and effect are in their proper order.
……………
Cause:
The whole thrust of what Roger L. Simon has called “Benghazigate” — an organized pattern of lying to lay the blame on the wave of attacks on an unknown video producer has been designed to avoid answering two questions:
1) who masterminded the attacks;
2) what help did they have from persons inside the United States.
These questions are probably being asked in parallel and explain the involvement of the FBI, whose remit is domestic counterintelligence. The FBI is probably not asking “who killed Stephens”. It is probably asking who knew where the safe house was? Who knew what the contingency plans were? And above all, when did you first hear about what must have been the cover story, the anti-Mohammed video. Answers to either or both of these questions would open a whole can of worms.
Effect:
Reports the FBI has still not started investigating the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi half a month after it occurred suggests that they’re really not going to.
………..
Conclusion:
The Obama white house and likely the state dept are likely at odds with the intelligence community. The former is seeking to obstruct the the latter wherever they have the power to do so as to avoid any embarrassing disclosures.
If Julian Assange was still up to his old tricks, would we have learned the truth of this sooner? Would it have changed anything?
4. Peter Boston
The better historical analogy is the penetration of the US government by the Russians during FDR’s presidency; and the penetration of the US government by the Chinese during the Clinton years.
Here is a google search of “white house” “muslim brotherhood”
http://bit.ly/Owl7I2
So Brooks is slowly descending into Andrew Sullivan territory, at the minimum being a good dhimmi to the neo-liberal caliphate.
As to the synchronicity, what with 9/11 being on the calendar and all, and the war against Islam only 1500 years and counting, mebbe. The point about that which jumps out at me is that it would have made a fine time for Stephens to stay home rather than go to the poorly defended consulate in jihad central, if he had only checked the date, if only he had valued safety above duty, as the case may be.
FWIW I’m curious what the Harriers were doing there anyhow, were they being used in VTOL modes or just STOL? How were they more useful there than some F-16s a hundred miles further away and presumably safer? I’m just wondering if they were put there to use up anyway, what with the F-35 VTOL’s so close, more or less, making them at least somewhat less of a loss than might seem at first glance.
This is probably a good time to remember that Obama’s Harvard education was paid for by a Saudi oil billionaire.
http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2012/09/26/walking-back-the-skein/
Wretchard wrote: “…explain the involvement of the FBI, whose remit is domestic counterintelligence”.
Not necessarily. It is also the responsibility of the FBI to investigate overseas terrorist attacks targeting Americans, for example the African embassy bombings.
Things to look for in Libya, money, oil, weapons, and intelligence records/dossiers that the Mad Duck had accumulated. Kind of like a Walmart for terrorist with everything going at massive discounts.
15. Kitsune “If Julian Assange was still up to his old tricks, would we have learned the truth of this sooner? Would it have changed anything?”
You don’t think Julian is one of them? Of course he is… He’ll be back right on cue.
“7. Josh
Isn’t Scheuer one of those who went truther?”
The problem Josh with the American Right by and large maintaining the holy temple of holy writ over the official account of 9/11 is that it excludes the possibility of Pakistani or Saudi intelligence involvement — an ironic outcome considering that many Righties motives are to sincerely prevent what they think is an ‘anti-American meme’ from spreading. The irony is even two of the 9/11 Commissioners themselves were not satisfied with their findings. If I think the Saudis or Pakistanis were running the hijackers and even waived off the FBI saying 15 of the lads were their guys, does that mean I hate America? Do I hate Dubya because I think he or more likely some of his advisors were not willing to invade a nuclear armed state in Pakistan or invade the biggest oil producer on the planet which had hundreds of billions of dollars invested in this country? And would Americans occupying Mecca and Medina or even setting foot within two or three hundred miles of it have been giving Bin Laden what he sought, uniting all Muslims in holy rage against America the infidel desecrator of the two mosques?
David Brooks said : “[Obama] reacted with calmness” to the ME meltdown…
No, Obama panicked like the coward and traitor that he is.
“The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.” In that dispicable phrase Obama sought to salvage the big lie that he was winning the WOT. He betrayed America — and tossed free speech into the flames. He sought to appease vicious bigots and intolerant Muslim fascists. He used his bully pulpit to mislead America and the world, and to scapegoat a single individual. He blamed others when the fault lays squarely with him and his administration.
These attitudes by the Left and his palace guards in the media establish a gaping rift that is wide and unbridgeable between those on the President’s side, and all the rest of us. I do not want to be in the same nation with such craven scum and traitors.
nuj @ 22: it excludes the possibility of Pakistani or Saudi intelligence involvement
Oh, I quite agree with that, we know it was Saudi money and citizens in any case, and that Bush looked away from that as much for his old family ties with the Sauds as for any other reason. But you know that is NOT where the “truthers” focus their attention. What I recall of Scheuer is that he seemed to be one of the good guys at first, and then went slowly batshit, so I stopped listening and erased his entry in my head, leaving just that note. So if he suddenly went sane again or tripped over an actual truth, I’d be very slow to acknowledge it. I wish him the best, though his cure be beyond me.
I would as happily supported nuking Riyadh as Tora Bora, as a prelude to discussing the issue further.
In a moment of candor, President Obama reveals to Joe Biden the real reason for the lack of security at the Benghazi consulate.
“You’ve got the gift,” Joe Biden said
“As some say, sleight of hand
But I see something else at work
I see a great command
Of stagecraft and an actor’s skill
At making folks believe
That what they see is but the truth
While you of course deceive”
“You’ve caught a glimpse,” Obama smiled
“A glimpse, however brief
The trick is not to fool the folks
But strengthen their belief
In me as I the chosen one
Play out my little game
That sees the world against us now
While I get little blame
Now listen Joe, the Arab Spring
Was never what it seemed
I waved my wand and said Shazam
And somebody got creamed
And now our consulate’s aflame
And we’ve lost both our eyes
And coming fast and coming strong
Is one great big surprise
That we won’t see until too late
I won’t say who’ll get hit
But let me say unknowingly
That you have done your bit”
“Well I dunno,” Joe Biden squirmed
“If something’s coming down
You’ll pardon me if I leave now
I’m getting’ out of town”
Morton @23: FWIW, a column by Diana West
http://www.dianawest.net/Home/tabid/36/EntryId/2252/The-Anti-Blasphemy-Anti-First-Amendment-President.aspx
The juicy bit is that under Sharia law, slander “includes anything Muslims perceive to reflect badly on Islam and its prophet, including the truth. In other words, any negative fact about Islam and Muhammad is, under Islamic law, deemed ‘slander.’” But then, a Constitutional scholar like President Eye Candy would know that, so it must be that he doesn’t want the future to belong to us.
If there were a coordinated series of attacks in Egypt Libya and AfPak, as seems clear, then there must be evidence. We are talking about an operation vastly larger than 9-11. The list of possible suspects is short. China, Russia, the US, France and Britain have the reach. Does India or anyone else? Could the Mossad pull off an operation this large?
Consider a hypothetical. Proof is found that the FSB, acting through Iranian assets, pulled this off. What would or should we do? Sometimes the evidence of where more evidence is, is where a suspect refuses to look.
Wretchard@13
So, Obama, I think his task is reasonably clear — just be calm, stay calm, whatever that British slogan [is that] we’re all repeating now,
If you can keep your head when everyone else is losing theirs, you don’t understand the situation.
Perhaps we are not seeing the forest because of the trees.
There is a tendency to focus solely on the actions of a few individuals, e.g. Obama, Clinton, Rice, etc. and see only their misdeeds or covert agendas.
But I would argue that whole institutions are failing us in extraordinary fashion.
The MSM no longer even attempts to conceal its blatant, in-your-face bias and disinformation complicity.
The Federal Reserve is destroying the dollar in broad daylight.
Executive Branch malfeasance is breathtakingly broad and bold, e.g. Fast & Furious, Keystone Pipeline, Obama phones, record foodstamp and welfare bribes, etc.
The Judiciary is AWOL, or worse. The Supreme Court has no problem twisting itself into a pretzel in order to sustain Obamacare; and yet, despite numerous court challenges regarding Obama’s questionable past, not a single judge will allow discovery.
The Legislative Branch is impotent at best and complicit at worst.
The Republican Party pathologically refuses to say the King-has-no-clothes.
The house is on fire and we are focused on voting out the culprits, but there may not be much left in the ruins when the sun comes up next January.
@#29 (TomA) :
Remember what Bill Ayers said back in the 70s.
25 Million People Must Die.
And that was back with 1970s population levels.
That would be closer to 100 Million Today.
These people need a massive amount of people to die in order to implement the sort of system that they’re working toward.
And everyone who doesn’t support it is afraid to believe that there are people who don’t know them, but still want them DEAD in the name of their ideology.
They can’t even comprehend the concept of somebody wanting them dead.
And that’s why they won’t fight back.
As Bill Whittle pointed out in one of his eloquent essays, in the 20th century more people were murdered by their own governments than died as a result of external aggression. In other words, tyrannical governments used bureaucrats to organize mass murder operations against their own subjects. In some cases, the reason was the government’s fear of political un-reliability and resistance. In other cases, it was simply to terrorize and intimidate the rest into docility. People were rounded up and imprisoned, or just rounded up and murdered immediately. Some governments styled their work “re-education” and forced their people to do slave labor on starvation rations till they dropped dead.
Do you really doubt that a man and his stooges who have deliberately delivered thousands of high-powered military-grade weapons to drug cartels will hesitate to use lethal violence against domestic adversaries they’ve already labled as potential terrorists?
(It may help you come up with the right answer to remember that the DRUG CARTELS have already murdered TENS OF THOUSANDS of people.)
The President’s statement (see 23.) is not craven cowardice.
It is a declaration of war- AGAINST US.
Have skimmed two dozen posts. True, we are speculating about the true reason for the Benghazi armed with little evidence, but solid logical analysis:
* The attack on the consulate “safe” house was likely coordinated by outside interests with a larger “intelligence perspective” in focus, and probably larger goals than Islamic revenge. The timing, force level, and target make this likely a strategic attack.
* I doubt this was an Al Qaeda operation. Supported by Al Qaeda operatives, perhaps, but it doesn’t really fit the A.Q. M.O.. They either hit and run or snatch and grab. Hitting the consulate and then ambushing the safe house isn’t their style.
* If they knew the location of the safe house, why not capture the Ambassador and as many high-value targets as they could. Certainly, the operatives knew that Consulate security was weak (i.e. they are not blind). Why not secure the safe house in advance of the Consulate evacuation (or after the convoy had left the Consulate)? As I recall reading the accounts, the belligerents had complete control of the safe house for at least 4 to 12 hours. There were no forces chasing them from the scene. That no American was captured tells me that the intelligence disruption of the action itself was the goal of the operation. Much like coming across a robbery-murder crime scene where the victim still has his wallet with $50,000 and his flashy $24,000 Rolex on his person. “So, you say the motive was robbery, eh??”
* Speculation about WHAT the operation was covering for is, well, fairly enlightened. I feel like a fool for not thinking of this the day of the attack. We are so conditioned to think of the Muslim “extremists” as unthinking primitives (analogy that comes to mind are the Apache American Indians of 1880), that it’s easy to accept that this was done by “… some Islamic nuts …”. How about Spetsnaz? Not literally, but perhaps operatives of that caliber. Directed mortar fire, with the first three rounds on target with deadly accuracy? GPS directed fire, perhaps? Not by Hajji.
Obama’s political appointees are WAY out gunned mentally – on this op. I doubt that they’ve caught up yet. After four years of Bozo running the show, is anyone surprised that America has experienced, or may soon experience, Pearl Harbor II?
Aside: When I was still in the U.S. Navy and a unit Commanding Officer in 1994, I had the misfortune of attending a mandatory briefing by some Clinton appointee, either a Deputy CNO or Deputy SECDEF level, I can’t recall. This guy was supposed to be an ex-special operator/commissioned officer, but was entirely too effeminate to visualize leading an operation. I can’t even recall the subject anymore, but it was clearly a political indoctrination session. (I left the Navy to IRR status in 1995, and that garbage was part of the equation.)
My point is that 3-4 years is about what it takes in a democracy for the political appointees to thoroughly corrupt a military institution. The guys running the show now at the Flag/General/DDO levels are NOT the guys that ran it from 2001 to 2009. They are Obama’s guys. The culture is Obama’s culture, and the priorities his also. And just as Clinton’s Deputy AG crippled the CIA and FBI’s counter-intel operations by making any coordination between them illegal, thus greatly facilitating 9/11, you can be certain that Obama’s folks are doing the same kind of thing now.
To quote Obama’s Pastor, “Chicken’s coming home to roost … ” indeed!
I’d like to add to the speculation with this:
Our ambassador to Libya was openly gay. If he cultivated a lover in Libya, it is likely that lover is the mole who advertised the location of the ambassador’s safe house.
Many young men from Libya, Egypt and Lebanon ply traveling expatriots with their charms. Many nurture serious affairs, but just as many are seeking the opportunity to leave the country, enjoy moments of wealth, or are just joy-riding, dating with no goal except to entertain his self for another day, week or month.
I fear ambassador Stephens fell into a common trap. My friend James took a Libyan lover – he was extraordinarily beautiful, spoke good english and was the son of a wealthy diplomat. The two globetrotted for about two years, with the Libyan man paying all the bills. But, one day while traveling in Hawaii, James’ boyfriend disappeared like a fart in a wind-storm. The hotel bill was left unpaid, the BMW and the driver were gone and no forwarding address was left. James never saw him again.
Something our globalized elites seem to miss is that a man with too much money and a eurail pass can approach that lonely, detached animal that we call a “man without a country.” In that man’s heart, where he should hold a compass, there is only a hollow, empty core. This hollow leads the transnational, dissociated individual to devalue human attachments, ignore national imperatives, and to sell out easily and cheaply (the rolls of foreign students at America’s universities and colleges contain legions of examples).
I think this tawdry fact infects the Benghazi terrorist attacks, and further complicates America’s progressives’ analysis of it. Does Hillary’s state department dare determine (as Ike’s did during the Cold War) that gay diplomats represent too high a danger of intelligence breach for homosexuals to serve on the front lines?
No…the statement stirs up too much cognitive dissonance for the Progs’ academic supporters to stand. Another reason for the movie to take the blame.
Seems the children in charge have handled the situation in just the manner expected…
You know it wasn’t the lack of men to fight the hordes that resulted in the fall of the Roman Empire. It was that the men who could fight didn’t care to sacrifice their lives for the insanity and immorality of the children in charge.
The family tree from which I am sprung started by my forefather dropping his kit and climbing over Hadrian’s wall and taking his Scottish wife with him.
We are finished when the hard men refuse to stand at the breach ready to do battle. That day is nigh!
Stay Frosty!
“Consider a hypothetical. Proof is found that the FSB, acting through Iranian assets, pulled this off. What would or should we do? Sometimes the evidence of where more evidence is, is where a suspect refuses to look.” FSB is domestic, SVR is the external intelligence agency of the Russian Federation. But who’s counting?
#36 Not Uncle Joe
With all due respect #27 Blast From the Past can be excused for not being up on the names of the various Intelligence Organs of the State. Most Americans aren’t. Indeed, given the close ties between the GRU – Glavnoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravleniye and their Spetsnaz branch; as conjectured above, the strike may have had certain military advisors. But no one has mentioned Major General Sergun’s forces, even though they are Russia’s largest foreign intelligence organization.
Despite differences in nomenclature, BftP’s main point is well taken. “Sometimes the evidence of where more evidence is, is where a suspect refuses to look.” Our current regime is refusing to look at it at all.
“To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time.”
#35 Well, well, well looky here…
Agreed. Parallel with the refusal to fight for a corrupt Empire, there was the fact that most Roman cities in Gaul were not taken by storm, but opened their gates to the “barbarians”; whose laws, taxes, and customs were less onerous than Rome’s.
Just out of curiousity, was that ancestor going north or south?
Subotai Bahadur
SB 37,
Thanks for the support. I shouldn’t have been that sloppy. Fact is that is what happens when I have a life or at least a lousy job, and try to comment from my Bberry.
Subotai Bahadur @37
I read somewhere that that very dynamic was one of the reasons Islam achieved such rapid expansion in its early days.
I guess plenty of peoples back in the day were so diminished by their rulers that they really hoped for some fundamental change.
Funny that.