Paranormal
The Washington Post chronicles the evolution of a new way of doing … well … something. Suppose we refer to it as ‘force’. The role of applying force has gradually moved from the Armed Services to one of the President’s aides accountable only to him. “Targeted killing is now so routine that the Obama administration has spent much of the past year codifying and streamlining the processes that sustain it.”
They’ve created an assembly line for ‘direct action’. Drones and other targeted hits, once regarded as a temporary expedient to strike at fleeting targets have now become a mainstay of President Obama’s whateveryoucall it on whomeveryoucallit — a permanent activity without without a regular or accountable institution . At the heart of the process is the management of a database called the “disposition matrix”.
The Obama administration has touted its successes against the terrorist network, including the death of Osama bin Laden, as signature achievements that argue for President Obama’s reelection. …
Less visible is the extent to which Obama has institutionalized the highly classified practice of targeted killing, transforming ad-hoc elements into a counterterrorism infrastructure capable of sustaining a seemingly permanent war. Spokesmen for the White House, the National Counterterrorism Center, the CIA and other agencies declined to comment on the matrix or other counterterrorism programs.
“Is it’s like your lawn mower,” said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA analyst and Obama counterterrorism adviser. “You’ve got to mow the lawn all the time.” And the mower-man is John Brennan.
The “playbook,” as Brennan calls it, will lay out the administration’s evolving procedures for the targeted killings that have come to define its fight against al-Qaeda and its affiliates. It will cover the selection and approval of targets from the “disposition matrix,” the designation of who should pull the trigger when a killing is warranted, and the legal authorities the administration thinks sanction its actions in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and beyond….
What was once a disparate collection of tactics — drone strikes by the CIA and the military, overhead surveillance, deployment of small Special Forces ground units at far-flung bases, and distribution of military and economic aid to threatened governments — has become a White House-centered strategy with Brennan at its core…
When operations are proposed in Yemen, Somalia or elsewhere, it is Brennan alone who takes the recommendations to Obama for a final sign-off.
War is now effectively made from the White House. This may confuse some in America who know that despite Libya, despite operations across Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and Southwest Asia are convinced that the Obama administration is not actually at War, nor has ever started one, since that is a power reserved to Congress, but is only engaged in some piddling ‘kinetic military action’. Still, the Washington Post writes “the concentration of power in one person, who is unelected and unconfirmed by Congress, does not sit well with critics.”
The similarity been killing people and killing people is altogether too close to completely banish the thought that Obama may be prosecuting war out of his Blackberry with the help of Brennan, who according to the Post found his career was over until he joined Barack Obama’s campaign. The two recognized in each other strategic soul mates and believe they have found a ‘model’ for managing terrorism. Critics think they have only found a way of spreading it.
However that may be everyone now wants to get into the act. Some sources quoted suggest CIA want their own killer robots. “CIA Director David H. Petraeus is pushing for an expansion of the agency’s fleet of armed drones, U.S. officials said. The proposal, which would need White House approval, reflects the agency’s transformation into a paramilitary force, and makes clear that it does not intend to dismantle its drone program and return to its pre-Sept. 11 focus on gathering intelligence.”
And why stop there? How about Homeland Security, the EPA, Post Office and the DMV? The pacifist movement has made the word “war” — with its uniforms, rules, declarations of hostility and even victory — so unpalatable that it has made mass assassination by a Star Chamber seem absolutely enlightened. This is what is called progress.
Having created the “disposition matrix” the bureaucratic struggle in Washington is now over who controls this list; who can add to it; who can make their own. “We didn’t want to get into the business of limitless lists,” said a former senior U.S. counterterrorism official who spent years overseeing the lists.
At first glance it seems as if the administration has scored a coup by abolishing war through the brilliant expedient of calling it something else, reducing it to an innocuous bureaucratic exercise of power (“kinetic military action”) and allowing para-military — oops, parakinetic — operations to proliferate. Lena Dunham would be impressed, especially by the manner in which Congress has conveniently been taken out of the loop.
But although the administration may not be interested in strategy, strategy remains interested in it. Missions such as deterring Iran remain the province of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines. And the State Department, though without its “disposition matrices” as of yet is busily dealing with all kinds of people who would once have been called operators.
This creates many cracks through which a variety of things can fall through. Recently British newspapers reported that Her Majesty’s Government refused an administration request to use UK facilities in the Med for contingency planning on a raid in Iran ironically citing their own lawyers.
The British government rejected U.S. requests to use military bases in the United Kingdom as part of a build-up in the Gulf, citing legal concerns that a pre-emptive strike on Iran would violate international law, The Guardian reported.
Citing unnamed U.K. officials, the Guardian reported that the United States has made informal requests for access to British bases in Cypress and British territories in the Atlantic and Indian oceans as part of contingency planning for Iran.
But British ministers have responded with legal advice from the U.K. attorney general’s office that says Iran does not currently represent “a clear and present danger.”
As a result, providing assistance to U.S. forces potentially involved in a strike on Iran would violate international law, according to the Guardian.
The Syria war — or whatever you want to call it — is spreading into Lebanon. And the State Department, after backing the current Hezbollah supported Lebanese government, is now backing the March 14 movement after abandoning it in the first place.
You can zig and zag all you want without the media noticing if you’re a man on the Left. Being progressive means you never have to zay you’re zorry.
The Americans at the Benghazi consulate may have also fallen through the cracks. The New York Times reports “that he and top military commanders ‘felt very strongly’ that deploying American forces to defend against the fatal attack last month on the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, was too risky because they did not have a clear picture of what was happening on the ground.”
Mr. Panetta was at the White House for a regular meeting on the afternoon of Sept. 11 as the first reports of the attack unfolded, an American official said. By that evening Mr. Panetta had consulted with General Dempsey and General Ham and had ordered a number of American military forces in the region to move closer to Libya.
Defense officials say they did not receive a request for military support from the State Department as the attack unfolded.
Yet another finger is pointed. Doubtless it will be repointed and round and round it goes. Hillary’s ambassador may have been doing something for someone against someone. And when the crisis came it just all too confusing to an administration run on such a mesh of intersecting authorities.
Benghazi illustrates the problem of the President having the authority for everything and the responsibility for nothing.
The problem with fragmenting the war function by calling simply it something else is that it does not absolve the President from pursuing its imperatives; what used to be called strategy and unity of command; identifying a center of gravity and creating a roadmap to achieving it. ‘Mowing the lawn’ is not a substitute for horticulture; just is part of it. As Lidell-Hart once put it, “in peace we concentrate so much on tactics that we are apt to forget that it is merely the
handmaiden of strategy.”
The Obama administration’s new stealth wars seem to be vulnerable to counterattacks by the enemy along the administrative boundaries. But then al-Qaeda could actually be thinking of where they want to end up where perhaps the American commander in chief has not.
Belmont Commenters
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It is naive to think that anyone in this pit of vipers will do more than point fingers. However there is no need to pinpoint or distinguish the “gunman” from the “wheelman.” They are all equally culpable-”if you run with the pack, you get credit for the kill.”
From BigPeace:
1. It is now known that the U.S. had two drones in the area — both of which were filming the attacks, sending back feeds in real time, and at least one of the drone may have been armed.
2. Reports also indicate a Specter gunship, probably an AC-130, was in the area for backup. The gunship could have swooped in and not only leveled the playing field in the match between 50 attackers vs a handful of security personnel, it could have thrown the attack decisively in favor of the security personnel.
3. The security personnel in Benghazi had painted a laser mark on the attackers outside the consulate. This mark would have made possible a response by the drones or the AC-130 routine had they been allowed to zero in on it. The member of the security team who was on the roof of the consulate, spraying machine gun fire down on the attackers, continually asked for backup from the AC-130. It never came.
And then there is this from TigerDropping.com:
The information I heard today was that General Ham as head of Africom received the same e-mails the White House received requesting help/support as the attack was taking place. General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready.
General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.
The story continues that now General Rodiguez would take General Ham’s place as the head of Africon.
I found this story when I got home after hearing this story.
quote:
________________________________________
President Barack Obama will nominate Army Gen. David Rodriguez to succeed Gen. Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command and Marine Lt. Gen. John Paxton to succeed Gen. Joseph Dunford as assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced Thursday.
________________________________________
http://www.stripes.com/news/obama-to-nominate-army-gen-rodriguez-to-lead-africom-1.193564
So if the rumor over TigerDroppings is true and Obama has relieved the two commanders that attempted to bring in military units into Benghazi to help on 9/11/12…..Words fail. Impeachment would be too good for the Obama.
Is there anyone anymore who believes BHO has America’s interests uppermost in his thinking?
Unelected aides close to Dear Leader?
Just wait until it becomes uncomfortably clear that Valerie Jarrett was directing communication flows and making decisions in the White House the night those men were left to be slaughtered.
“Benghazi illustrates the problem of the President having the authority for everything and the responsibility for nothing.”
I don’t understand why Congress is apparently powerless to reign in President Obama. I appreciate there is no American Parliament with the daily opportunity to directly question the ruling Prime Minister in the house. Nor does Congress have Parliament’s ability to bring down the ruling Government at any time. Even so isn’t there some way for the U.S. elected representatives to prevent “a Star Chamber for Assassination” as wretchard describes it? If they can’t prevent it isn’t there some way for elected representatives in the U.S. to dismantle it?
I’m probably just ignorant of the fine points of the U.S. system. Could someone explain where are the checks and balances in a case like this? Or does it all depend upon lawyers?
What I find hard to understand is the reluctance of the administration, Congress and the military/intelligence community to come forth and state boldy in a public forum that a state of war exist between the United States and a group of persons known and unknown. Enumerate the actions that brought this state of affairs. Describe the criteria that defines this group then throw the challenge, are you with us, against us or are neutral. At least that will get this into the open and we won’t have this Byzantium state of affairs where no one is responsible for the actions taken and define where authority exists for actions to be taken.
Aggh, I hate bureaucrats. I really hate flag officers who think the armed forces are there for anything other than to kill people and break things.
Yes thats Evil
Good point on Jarrett-haven’t seen her lately beside her boy-toy. The beauty of a Romney win will be the circular firing squad that forms immediately and the tell-all books exposing this freak show. He may not make it till January.
Predictions:
1. Moochelle will have no more use for this loser and will leave him;
2. Obama, exposed as a laughing stock, and no longer desired or needed by Hollywood, the Late-Night shows, Oprah or pro athletes and too proud, selfish and lazy to pound nails into Habitat houses, will end his days as a choom smoking pariah.
There have been hints from the beginning that the Ambassador, in the mold of Lawrence of Arabia, was possibly running guns to MB selected Jihadis. And just like Solyndra, with the US governement picking “winners”, this is developing into a far more profound and far-reaching debacle.
I support a much more bloody and robust response to Islamic Jihad… But we now kill all the sources of intelligence because “torture” is just too heinous to contemplate by the liars and hypocrites of the Left. To make up for it, Obama and his arrogant POS troll John Brennan, must rely mainly on advice from our friends, the Saudi Arabia, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Turkey and Jordan. under Obama, the USA has been transformed into a fancy hitsquad for the Jihad filth behind the Jihad filth… Offing their enemies, and arming our enemies. Bush2 was bad enough, blind enough, naive enough with his “winning hearts and minds” — but under the hideous Obama, our national calamities are falling around us like an avalanche. It will be decades (if ever) when we pull ourselves out of this geopolitical tailspin…
Obama is a failure in life and a bigger failure in his term as President.
Given another four years he will become a DICTATOR.
If this happens there will be an insurrection. I will be a part of it.
It was obvious from early on that the administration was lying about the video, and I speculated on why. I got it wrong (I think); I was thinking about negotiations about basing for attacks on Iran. Instead it looks like they were trying to cover up gun-running via Turkey and the Turks probably didn’t want their role revealed.
Just for a thought experiment, suppose there were some adults in State and the Pentagon (it is not necessary to assume any in the White House) who knew what was happening and considered the loss of 4 Americans less important to national security than some other activity that we don’t know about.
Can you think of any activities that would demand such tight cover that we’d let the ambassador die rather than rescue him and break the cover?
I have to confess ignorance here. I don’t know enough about what’s happening in Libya and Turkey to make realistic guesses. I hadn’t put two and two together about gun-running, for example, but more knowledgeable people did.
It’s easy to come up with wild ideas (loose nuke, “Man Who Never Was” to feed false info to Iran, etc) but I’d rather be tethered to reality.
If there was good faith actions by our officials, what was being hidden?
Well!
Now that I know that idiot Brennan is in charge, what could possibly go wrong?
I was worried Ostupidhad was the one in charge. Or maybe Sandy Berger. (Archives office: a lot of your stuff is apparently missing.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57541136/historical-treasures-missing-from-national-archives/
It’s probably in Sandy’s attic. Or socks. Or a nearby jobsite, but don’t look there!)
THAT had me worried.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_O._Brennan
This is the jackass who advised Clinton, which lead to 9/11 and which got us into this mess, in the first place. “Aw. Dem Ayrabs is merely misunderstood. Deep down, they’re OK!”
He’s also the guy who, when some CIA guy had a hit on Saddam all arranged, he ordered him back to Washington and put him under arrest. Even though he had ordered him to do exactly that.
He’s not partisan. He’s just an idiot. An ass-kissing idiot.
Another reason GW is an idiot. He hired him, too.
Thanks, GW, compassionate a-hole.
I can’t believe any of the gunrunning scenarios being put about – altogether too much 007 stuff for the gang of morons and cowards in the White House. Who would entrust a tricky job like that to a career diplomat? Ridiculous. Why go hunting for arcane plots when we’ve seen this pattern before? It’s the Obama way – stall and hope that *something* turns up to get him out of a jam. That’s what he did during the oil spill in the Gulf. It’s what he always does. Make a quick decision? Not likely. Just wait another hour, things will settle down…another half an hour, they’ll get tired of fighting and leave…just another 10 minutes…until he’d pissed away the lives of 4 men. Besides, if they sent in help, some swarthy troublemakers would very likely be killed, and Obama didn’t want to risk protesting Libyan crowds just a few weeks before the election. A few dead Americans was a small price to pay to avoid that embarrassment.
I am profoundly distrustful of any central control like this. It is deceptively easy to think that this ability to whack someone at a distance can control a situation on the ground. I see a few serious problems.
Simply put, Washington can not know what is happening on the ground. Mistakes then can become catastrophic errors with serious repercussions.
It never ends. There is no defeat or even strategic goal. Terrorists lose when their support dries up. This strategy encourages support.
Easy to circumvent. A few bad guys in Pakistan becomes quite a few in dozens of countries. This may be what has happened in Libya. Off the radar, but even more deadly.
Breeds a stupidity in US military and civilian circles when it comes to the armed forces. May be evidenced by Obama’s comment about horses and bayonets. It is one weapon system open to reactive strategy among many.
Open to abuse and neglect.
Wasn’t Kennedy enamored with this newfangled CIA being able to whack people? Created more trouble than solutions. Makes whacking the potus more probable as well.
2. Tarnsman.
So where is Gen Ham?
And what does he say?
McCain? Graham? Bueller? Bueller?
REZKO, OBAMA, AND THE NADHMI AUCHI RAILROAD LINKING CHICAGO, WASHINGTON, AND BAGHDAD (Part 3 of 3)
http://illinoispaytoplay.com/2012/10/26/rezko-obama-and-the-nadhmi-auchi-railroad-linking-chicago-washington-and-baghdad-part-3-of-3/
”Just wait until it becomes uncomfortably clear that Valerie Jarrett was directing communication flows and making decisions in the White House the night those men were left to be slaughtered.”
Isn’t it in Woodward’s latest book where it says that Jarrett dissuaded O from the strike on Ben Laden for three consecutive months until finally, in an oh-so-bravura (!!) act of courage he decided to go ahead on his own (and now can’t stop bragging)?
And, yes #13, I immediately had the same reaction (esp just having read Killing Kennedy), ie the Persians give somebody an armed UAV, break it down, ship it in cargo containers, smuggle it into, say, Tijuana, wait until the prez is in LA, then let ‘er rip!
Valerie Jarrett is the queen bee of the White House, the Machiavelli to Prince Barack, an evil presence lurking in the dark corners, an unelected Czarina who runs the White House and the country in the interest of the radical left and Obama’s equally radical leftist whim. But not even queen bees reign forever, and the whole rotten hive will be gone at noon on January 20, 2013.
Now every hive has its queen bee
And this queen’s name is Valerie
And like the queen she has her drones
Who bend to her imperious tones
Her drones are there to give assist
With pruning down the killing list
It matters not where they may hide
The drones will find them and decide
That since it is the queen bee’s wish
The name on file will join the fish
The White House runs at her command
Her merest wish a queen’s demand
She has the stones some others lack
A will of iron unlike Barack
Whose interest in his job is nil
And who will be POTUS until
That blessed January day
When we will heave a sigh and say
The queen is dead forever more
We’ve kicked the hive and slammed the door
We’ll air the place now they are gone
And show Barack, her willing pawn
That he’s gone too, our big mistake
Goodvbye you sob’n snake
It would seem that the actions of the administration are so outrageous that they are confident (or gambling) that they will never be held to account. This implies that that they are counting on surviving the election.
This further implies that they have confidence in their control over the election results inasmuch as polls convey otherwise.
A mystery to me is why there is no public inquiry into who is controlling the media.
It’s dominance over the narrative is key to the impotence of congress.
A congressional investigation could reign this in. Ditto for a Supreme Court interdiction. That they have not done so is very telling.
It’s only a small step from targeting terrorists to targeting uncooperative foreign heads of state. And then, only another small step to targeting political adversaries.
Until this becomes a runaway train, I doubt that anyone will raise much of a stink.
t @ 2: General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready.
jj @ 14: So where is Gen Ham?
Excellent question. Also where was this rapid response unit?
And will any of this be discussed on the Sunday shows tomorrow.
–
Back on the official topic, with all the problems it involves the drone war against the jihadis is just so perfect, I’m willing to forgive a lot. The real problem is if it’s all run out of the White House it doesn’t scale, we’re only doing some fraction of what we should be doing. Maybe a large fraction, but even so it can be overwhelmed.
As perhaps is exactly what happened in Benghazi, if that’s what you’re hinting at.
Here’s some more about Benghazi; ( from Streiff @ REDSTATE)
“An important fact is buried here.
Predators don’t just magically appear on the scene. They have to be launched and they have to have a mission when they are launched. A Predator UAV has a range of 675 miles with a max speed of 135mph. The UAV almost certainly had to have been launched from the US facility at Signonella in Sicily.
This means that the UAV was launched over three hours before the attack began and the operation order issued some time before launch. This implies that hours before the attack was launched there was sufficient concern about something in Benghazi that a UAV was tasked to be on station.
The administration is also fond of referring to the attack being at night. While that is true, what they are trying to do is create the illusion that the attack happened in the middle of the night in Washington. It didn’t. The attack began around 2pm EST, right in the middle of the duty day with everyone who was needed to make the required decisions on hand.
President Obama met with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Vice President Biden in the Oval Office at 5 p.m. ET, a little more than an hour after the onset of the attack. The Pentagon began moving military assets:
– Eight from Special Operations were sent from Tripoli.
– A “FAST team” (Fleet Anti-terrorism Security team) of Marines from Rota, Spain, were sent to guard the Embassy in Tripoli.
– A Special Operations force was moved from central Europe to Sigonella Air Base in southern Italy, just 480 miles from Benghazi.
– F-16s and Apache helicopters remained parked and unused at Aviano Air Base in northern Italy.
– Two Navy destroyers already in the Mediterranean Sea were moved off the coast of Libya on the day of the attack but were never used.
Asked why the U.S. military did not do more, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday the first rule in such a situation is not to deploy troops into harm’s way unless there is a clear picture of what is happening.
One doesn’t know what to make of Panetta’s statement. You never have a “clear picture” of an evolving combat operation. This is what Clausewitz referred to as “friction” and the “fog of war.”
Okay, we know that this Administration has lied through it’s teeth from the gitgo about this attack. Streiff seems to demolish pretty convincingly Panetta’s excuse as well. It’s just not plausible and frankly treasonous for SECDEF or POTUS to refrain from rescuing Americans when you have military assets readily available as they did. Now Streiff also kinda implies that the Administration knew the attack or some attack was coming because how did the two drones magically appear so fast? Or if they could get slow moving drones there in time, why not a rescue team?
The longer this Administration stonewalls about Benghanzi the more horrid and incriminating the details get that finally emerge. And I’m sorry- those who want deride those as “tin foil hat nutters” for speculating treasonous activity on the part of this administration really at this point don’t have a leg to stand on. Something very bad went down here. We can only speculate at this point what is was, because we are not getting anything from “official sources” that even remotely resembles the truth.
I have to agree with Dr. Mabuse at # 12.
This is all-of-a-piece with the pyschodrama that is Obama.
The veneer of Tough Guy that he projected during the debates, the reality of his passive, female dominated persona, and his core need to be the Hero of the Muslim World all played into this.
Obama is run by his irrationality. Belmont Club is populated by the most astute of rationalists who are wracking their brains trying to make sense of a senseless situation.
As pointed out by previous posters, this incident is one of many where Obama chose to dither, beginning with the opportunity to take a kill-shot at the Somali pirates, continuing with the Gulf Oil spill, the decision on the Afghanistan surge, and the killing of Bin Ladin.
The backstory on these major turning points is that Obama could not make a decision, and waited until others or events pushed him into it. This is the third incident requiring a decision of the use of force in which Obama has not been decisive.
Does anyone here have confidence that in a truly existential situation that Obama could be counted on?
He is passive and run by women.
In addition, he is truly Not One of Us.
He never occupied that category of TWANLOC. He did not grow up with the Pledge of Allegiance, the Fourth of July, the Pilgrim’s Thanksgiving, Little League, Summer Camp, or the Black Church.
He attended a Muslim School as a child in Indonesia, gravitated to the radicals at Occidental College, roomed with Pakistanis while at Columbia and joined a Church as a political move.
His first foreign policy initiative was his Cairo Speech where he offered himself as their liaisson peacemaker with those Other Americans. A poster has referenced Lawrence of Arabia. I would be surprised if he doesn’t see himself in that same light. He wants to be a Hero to the Muslims, not an Ugly American.
So he did not react to Ambassador Chris Stevens as a member of the extended American Family as you or I would. He was just a tool that was expendable, not someone who it was worth moving Heaven and Earth to save. It was more important to Obama to not harm a hair of a Muslim in Benghazi than to send in American forces to save one of our own.
u @ 21: UAV almost certainly had to have been launched from the US facility at Signonella in Sicily.
Nosir, not if we have CIA bases inside of Libya, which has a lot of open desert good for not much else, or for that matter could be just a couple of hangers on an old Libyan military base, no longer much being used by the Libyan military, if any.
‘Is there anyone anymore who believes BHO has America’s interests uppermost in his thinking?’
BHO should be expanding US military power not diminishing it. How else will he be able to rule the world?
#5 stevesmith
How to explain it? OK, in our system of separation of powers and “checks and balances”; it is possible under our Constitution for the Congress to either impeach any Executive Branch official or to cut off the funding for any activity. Plus they have investigative power to force the Executive Branch to cough up any information demanded. And, in theory, with the exception of members of Congress being privileged on the floor and en-route to and from; all officials of all branches of the government are subject to the law and to prosecution for violations.
Now that we have a precis of the Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales version, let us look at current reality.
1.) We have not had a Constitutional budget; originating in the House of Representatives, passed by them, sent to the Senate and either passed or amended by them, returned to the House where amendments are accepted or rejected, and any differences sorted out by a Conference Committee, the results accepted by both Houses, and sent to the President for signature or veto [all before the new fiscal year starts] for four years.
Funding is by concurring resolution and temporary fixes. Congress no longer has authority over spending, because one House has chosen to make it so. And no one is accountable in the absence of a Budget.
Budget [and all] bills have to be passed by both Houses. Our Constitution mandates that all spending bills originate in the House of Representatives. For the last two years the Senate has been held by the Democrats and the House has been held by the Republicans. The Senate has simply and consistently refused to bring any House Budget bills up for a vote. That leaves concurring resolutions and other unaccountable temporary fixes the only way to keep the government going. For Obama’s first two years, the Democrats held both Houses of Congress, and still did not pass constitutional budgets, because that let the Democrat held Executive do as it would.
Our Congress has lost the power of the purse. I believe that you are a Brit [correct me if I am wrong], so to compare you might have to go back to Charles I. The Executive continues to collect existing taxes, and it is making up the difference by having the US Federal Reserve Bank [theoretically independent but functionally part of the Executive Branch] electronically ‘print’ money to buy government bonds that fund our almost unlimited spending. And under fractional reserve banking the Federal Reserve uses the bonds to collateralize yet more ‘printing’ of several times the bonds to buy more bonds. ad extinctio
2.) The investigative power is dependent on the submission of the other Branches to the warrants and subpoenas of the Legislative Branch. Such subpoenas are now routinely ignored by the Executive.
3.) Further, our Executive Branch controls the Justice Department. There is no crime heinous enough to get our Justice Department to charge any politically connected individual or group for any crime.
4.) In addition, the Executive Branch has assumed a wide range of emergency powers, and matters that are normally handled by legislation are settled by Executive Order with no reference to the Legislative and Judicial branches, or the will of the people. Once again, see the later Stuarts.
5.) That leaves only the power of impeachment. All bills of impeachment have to arise in the House of Representatives. If passed, they are equivalent to an indictment on the charges. The trial is in the Senate. Getting the Democrat Senate to bring up a bill of impeachment to a vote against any Democrat is even less likely than them bringing up a Budget bill for a vote.
6.) Add to that the fact that both the Democrats and Institutional Republicans are allied in corruption. The current pay for a Member of Congress is $174,000 per year. Regardless of party, if you are not a millionaire when you enter Congress, you are a multi-millionaire after a term or two. Any attempt to bring the other party to account is going to end up harming your own personal balance statement. Plus, about 10% of the Institutional Republicans are ideological Democrats or are mere toadies to power and wealth. The Institutional Republicans will not stand up to the Democrats as a bloc.
7.) Our Judicial Branch is no haven for the rule of law and Constitution. The regime has some hold on our Chief Justice, who suddenly reversed his vote on the constitutionality of “Obamacare”. In his re-written opinion, he ruled that the Constitution could be violated by Congress so long as it was phrased in terms of a tax.
If you want a comparison, consider the position of the Roman Senate at the rise of the Empire. They had the power, but feared to use it until it was too late.
And assuming you are British, please don’t feel too superior to us. Your own Parliament is just as powerless, albeit in a different way. Rise in government is largely by connections. When was the last time that HMG was denied money, power, or authority in any question? And we are only a few years behind you in the use of functional rule by decree or regulation.
This election is, literally, the last peaceful chance to try to regain the Constitution. Romney is not my first, second, or third choice. But he may slow or stop the fiscal bleeding and the accumulation of power by the all-powerful State. I expect I will be fighting him for his failures to do enough along that line. But if Obama wins again [assuming that we do have elections in 10 days, and the votes are honestly cast and counted (the incidences in Leftist election fraud are coming out already)]; we can look forward to economic collapse and the end of any pretense of government under our Constitution.
If this attempt fails, it is a battle not the war.
Moving back to Wretchard’s original point; the regime is especially adept at avoiding individual responsibility and accountability for their actions. And at bending words to fit opposites of what they were written to mean. Glibness outweighs substance.
Targeted assassinations of enemies outside the laws of war, or even our own laws; is as you put it, “whateveryoucall it on whomeveryoucallit”. It is not that evil thing called “War”. And if there is any retaliation, it surely will be upon those expendable folk in flyover country, and not on any of the important people.
To the regime, that is not war. But you can bet your candy-coated Equus africanus asinus that they will be screaming that it is “WAR!” and that we have to rally around them, if a hair on their privileged heads is disturbed.
I am not of the Judeo-Christian faith, in any of its many variants. But two Old Testament verses come to mind. Hosea 8:7 and Lamentations 5:2.
Subotai Bahadur
The “Fog of Kinetic Military Action” doesn’t have much of a ring.
“Panetta’s statement. You never have a “clear picture” of an evolving combat operation.””
Then what about the long-standing notion of “run to the sound of guns?” We (supposedly,anyway) train our forces to lean forward, to try to take charge of a developing situation.
F*cking democrats — always centralizing everything.
re: congress invisible. #5(#25)
The most important contest this election is for the Senate. Without something close to a supermajority we’ll have a replay of the early GWB years where the Senate extorted concession after consession in return for allowing him to pursue his agenda, and especially his response to 9-11. And given the behaviors then and now (when lacking a supermajority) the dems don’t even need a majority to do the same to Mr. R.
25. Subotai Bahadur
Thank you for your detailed response. I am actually a refugee from Britain.
I escaped first to the U.S. for five years and loved it, then got a good job in Western Canada, fell in love with this place too and have been a Canadian citizen for many years. So North America is my home – came from somewhere far away across the ocean, love the U.S. but love Canada more.
There are advantages and disadvantages to both Parliamentary democracies and the U.S. Republican system. I don’t claim that either one is better because both can be sabotaged by corrupt or malign politicians and bureaucrats. However the Parliamentary system through a formal daily question period does allow direct questioning of the Prime Minister by elected representatives of the opposition, loyal or disloyal (hello Bloc Quebecois) and hence very public daily in-your-face confrontation. This isn’t the case with Congress where only the media seems to have that opportunity.
Our Prime Minister can’t govern without presenting a budget that must achieve a majority vote. If he can’t do that then his government falls. He can centralize power by weaselry as in your system but I think it is easier for our elected representatives to start a fuss than it seems to be for yours.
As you say there’s a Sunday School version written up for all democratic systems but once we dirty humans get involved pure thoughts and deeds get thrown out the window.
25. Subotai Bahadur
Great summation. I always look for your comments. Thank you.
Wretchard, thanks for highlighting this. The cited article states it is the first of three parts. No one will believe these last 12 years – and hopefully, it will only be these 12 and not 16.
Re the whereabouts of General Ham – I thought I read he was in Hawaii (via tigerdropping.com perhaps?) Relieved of command in the middle of a firefight in the AOR. …
Micromanagement of military (oops, Kinetic) operations from the White House; where have we seen this before? Referring to the air operations over North Vietnam, President Johnson said, “Those boys can’t even hit an outhouse without my permission.”
What could go wrong?
Dr. M@12,
Understandably, you don’t address the reason this level of coverup was sooooo necessary. Why relieve a Gen. trying to send help? At first it seemed to be a “hit,” orchestrated by who knows who. Now, I see it somewhat differently.
Could it be that it was intended for Stevens to get kidnapped, then exchanged? Why else hold off any rescue? Why else would the bad guys have delivered him alive to a hospital, after his 4-5 hour ordeal? Did Stevens resist capture too vigorously?
Others have speculated here and elsewhere; but none of us can/have offered a hideous enough set of circumstances to justify such blatent lying by so many members of the regime, about what went/is going down. And their actions since!(?)! It’s got to be bad, really bad.
Otherwise they’d just admit they are being stupid.
32 – It has been speculated here I believe that what Obama was hoping for was just what you described: a hostage situation so that he could either “ride to the rescue”, i.e. a dramatic rescue by Special OP forces, or prove that he was calm and cool, negotiating the successful release of our Ambassador and appear as the peacemaker. Either way, in the Obama cabal’s way of thinking, that would turn the tide of the election and win a second term. Remember, before Benghazi Obama was losing to Romney in the polls on every question except Foreign Policy. I think our Intel picked up hints of the planned attack, which is why the drones were on station on 9/11/12. Obama went to bed on the 11th smug in the belief that his planned October foreign policy coup was in the bag only to wake up to find that Ambassador Stevens was in a body bag, along with three other Americans. The Obama cabal panicked and they attempted to cover their tracks. Being stupid they bungled their cover-up and now we have the drip-drip going on. The leaks that are coming out are from no doubt the career military and CIA who are in CYA mode. They know it is bad, really bad. Like I said if any of this is true and comes out Obama will be lucky if impeachment is the only thing he faces.
As to General Ham I for one find it very strange that he is being quietly replaced along with General Dempsey a month after the attack. No reasons given for the replacements. Funny how the MSM isn’t even curious. It all stinks to high heaven. Being a career officer General Ham is probably being the good solider. Or perhaps the general is biding his time. Like the Friday before the election. Would that be sweet.
Panetta tells us all we need to know. They didn’t have certainty that it wouldn’t go wrong so they left 4 men to die. It was a conscious decision to not take the risk. The risks were not men’s lives, that was already a given. The risk was to have a political problem.
A few years ago someone started shooting in a college in Montreal. The news reports describe the police response teams arriving and immediately running into the building to confront the shooter. That was operating procedure; setting up a perimeter to contain the situation just meant more deaths.
The situation was out of control and the only reaction that would make a difference would be to put well trained well armed people in place to take control.
This is exactly what I referred to above where drones make people stupid. You have months to identify and track someone, with multiple levels of decision makers to agree, the you whack them at you leisure. The enemy figured out the profound weakness. A day where a distracted decision maker cannot by temperament respond quickly enough. The only obstacle was two guys on the ground, very well trained and obviously provisioned who held their ground killing 70 or so of the enemy.
I can’t help but think that the “horses and bayonets” comment was extremely revealing.
Here’s just another take on Benghazi:
http://www.noquarterusa.net/blog/73784/was-iran-behind-benghazi/#more-73784
From Larry Johnson’s noquarterusa blog:
“Let’s start with the fact that the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi was not a “Consulate.” Although that term has been widely used in the aftermath of the attack, I ask you one simple question–WHERE WERE THE CONSULAR OFFICERS? A CONSULATE is a place where foreigners go to get visas to visit the United States. The U.S. Diplomats who process those requests/applications are known officially as “CONSULAR AFFAIRS” Officers. There were no REPEAT no Consular Affairs officers detailed to or based in Benghazi.
So what we had was a diplomatic mission that appears to have been set up solely for the purpose of providing Diplomatic cover to the CIA operation, which we now know, was operating out of the location known as the “Annex.” What was the CIA doing?
The cover story circulating is that CIA was buying up and destroying “manpads.” A manpad is a nifty nickname for a hand held surface-to-air missile like a Stinger or SAM. The press has reported on this:
A joint military-civilian team made up of U.K., French, U.S. and Libyan personnel have been in country since last August helping to track down the large numbers of weapons left by Gadhafi’s regime.
The U.S. government estimates Gadhafi’s forces had about 20,000 MANPADS in their armory at the time of the regime’s collapse, raising fears that the weapons could fall into the hands of terrorist organizations.
But those manpads were never a serious threat.
Why? No NATO aircraft were fired on with manpads during the short war to oust Qaddafi. If such weapon systems were as plentiful and operationally ready as the public story tries to pretend, then we would have seen the NATO planes regularly engaged. They were not.
So what was going on at that annex? There are reports out of Syria that one of the rebel forces fighting to oust Bashir Assad are manned by Libyans. What if the CIA base in Benghazi was a recruiting and training center for fighters who were then sent to Turkey and on to Syria? Any evidence for that? Here is CNN in July of this year:
Their war for freedom in Libya may be over, but almost a year after they won the battle for the Libyan capital, a group of fighters have a new battlefield: Syria.
Under the command of one of Libya’s most well known rebel commanders, Al-Mahdi al-Harati, more than 30 Libyan fighters have made their way into Syria to support the Free Syrian Army rebels in their war against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Al-Harati, who commanded the Tripoli Revolutionary brigade — which was the first group of rebels to enter the Libyan capital last August — has been in Syria for months leading some of his former men and Syrian military defectors who have joined his “Liwaa al-Umma” or “The Banner of the Nation” brigade.
Guess who Ambassador Stevens was meeting shortly before his home came under attack? Turkey’s Ambassador to Libya. What in the hell is Turkey’s Ambassador to Libya doing in Benghazi? How about inspecting the training facility and coordinating with the U.S. Government on the movement of Libyan fighters from Libya to Syria via Turkey?
Iran, who supports Syria’s Assad, has a very effective intelligence organization. Once they learned that Libya was supplying fighters in Syria, do you think there is any chance that they (the Iranians) would want to shutdown that operation? Iran and Libya do have a history. Iran, for example, is believed to have paid Libya to carry out the bombing of Pan Am 103. Iran still has intel operators on the ground in Libya.”
I don’t know if any of this is true. But let’s say Larry Johnson is on to something. Does this mean we were arming and training Islamic radicals to fight in Syria?
Is that why the CIA had the facility in the rebel stronghold of Behnghazi?
So is that why we didn’t want to rescue the CIA personnel there- because it would come out that we were training Islamic radicals? Or was it because we didn’t want to acknowledge a direct military engagement against Iran?
32 geoffgo “Could it be that it was intended for Stevens to get kidnapped, then exchanged? Why else hold off any rescue? Why else would the bad guys have delivered him alive to a hospital, after his 4-5 hour ordeal? Did Stevens resist capture too vigorously?”
I could sooner believe that theory than the gunrunning one. It has that half-baked, cockamamie dilettante air that I’d expect from President Amateur Hour. The sort of thing he and his clique would consider “brilliant” because they never ask themselves “What could go wrong?” when one of their brainwaves hits. For one thing, the fakeness of the plot would have appealed to such pathological liars. But I have some problems with it. The whole sorry debacle was witnessed by the White House because although it was night in Benghazi, it was only afternoon in Washington. Once the Americans started shooting back, it’s not possible, as Tarnsman suggests that “Obama went to bed on the 11th smug in the belief that his planned October foreign policy coup was in the bag only to wake up to find that Ambassador Stevens was in a body bag, along with three other Americans.” He knew that people were dying (Stevens might have already succumbed to the smoke inhalation) and he STILL went to bed, leaving the situation unresolved. It sounds to me like he literally went and hid under the covers.
If it was a cunning scheme to set up a staged kidnapping, is it possible that the White House tried to pull it off without any communication with the other side? If you’re staging a play, do you really leave half the cast without a script to follow? I guess it’s possible; the Obama gang is vain enough to believe that their superbrain plot could manage both sides without the terrorists even knowing they were being manipulated. Still, it looks as if the terrorist attack was well-planned. How did the Obama gang know that it was going to happen so that they could piggyback on it? And why didn’t they just give orders to Stevens that in the event something happened, he should yield quickly to avoid violence?
I don’t believe we’ll find that there was anything deep and significant about this incident. As Joan at #22 said, (agreeing with me, and now I return the compliment by agreeing with her!) this is just Obama’s psychological profile working itself out in the predictable way. We’re all trying to hammer stray incidents into something meaningful, but there is no meaning to it. Obama deals with the world the way a bum who’s won the lottery does; when all the money’s gone a year later, do we search frantically for evidence of Swiss bank accounts and secret investments? No! It’s gone, squandered on nothing, because that’s what bums do. This is what Obama does – fritters away money, prestige, reputation, and now lives on NOTHING.
Dr. Mabuse;
Thank you and have a Good Day!
Joan
The Stennis Strike Group commander is being replaced. Could it be he didn’t do something. Or could it be he wanted to do something and when told to stand down he let his emotions get away from him.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/27/navy-replaces-admiral-leading-mideast-strike-group/?test=latestnews
“5. stevesmith
“Benghazi illustrates the problem of the President having the authority for everything and the responsibility for nothing.”
I don’t understand why Congress is apparently powerless to reign in President Obama.”
A very long time ago I read an analysis of the making of the US Constitution (I forget the reference, sorry). The part that struck me the most was that the Founders provided the Presidency far more potential power than they intended or realized. It took a dictator wannabe to fully exploit this deficiency although I clearly remember VP Cheney pushing for expanding the scope of Presidential power. The scope waxes and wanes depending on which Party holds the White House and which the Congress, naturally (I’m sure many here remember the “Imperial Presidency” of Richard Nixon).
It is a conundrum. You could modify the Constitution to more explicitly reduce the scope of Presidential power but could you anticipate a situation where a powerful executive was vitally necessary but unavailable? If you recognize this you then must recognize that the Gov’t was made for a moral people. There’s the rub.
Related-if you haven’t read Delong’s “Ending Big SIS” you really should. It could be the manifesto of the Tea Party.
More on Benghazi from Frank Gafney:
The evidence suggests that the Obama administration has not simply been engaging, legitimating, enriching and emboldening Islamists who have now taken over or are ascendant in much of the Middle East. Starting in March 2011, when American diplomat Christopher Stevens was designated the liaison to the “opposition” in Libya, the Obama administration has been arming them, including jihadists like Abdelhakim Belhadj, the leader of the al Qaeda franchise known as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
Once Qaddafi was overthrown, Chris Stevens was appointed as the ambassador to the new Libya run by Belhadj and his friends. Not surprisingly, one of the most important priorities for someone in that position would be to try to find and secure the immense amounts of armaments that had been cached by the dictator around the country and systematically looted during and after the revolution.
One of the places in Libya most awash with such weapons in the most dangerous of hands is Benghazi. It now appears that Amb. Stevens was there – on a particularly risky day, with no security to speak of and despite now-copiously-documented concerns about his own safety and that of his subordinates – for another priority mission: sending arms recovered from the former regime’s stocks to the “opposition” in Syria. As in Libya, the insurgents are known to include al Qaeda and other shariah-supremacist groups, including none other than Abdelhakim Belhadj.
Fox News has chronicled (http://video.foxnews.com/v/1913235018001/) how the Al Entisar, a Libyan-flagged vessel carrying 400 tons of cargo, docked on September 6th in the Turkish port of Iskenderun. It reportedly supplied both humanitarian assistance and arms – including deadly SA-7 man-portable surface-to-air missiles – apparently destined for Islamists, again including al Qaeda elements, in Syria.
What cries out for further investigation – and debate in the remaining days of this presidential election – is whether this shipment was part of a larger covert Obama effort to transfer weapons to our enemies that could make the Iran-Contra scandal, to say nothing of Operation Fast and Furious, pale by comparison?
Investigative journalist Aaron Klein has reported (http://www.wnd.com/2012/10/this-is-what-benghazi-consulate-really-was/) that the “consulate in Benghazi” actually was no such thing. He observes that, while administration officials have done nothing to correct that oft-repeated characterization of the facility where the murderous attack on Amb. Stevens and his colleagues was launched, instead they call it a “mission.” And what Klein describes as a “shabby, nondescript building” which lacked any “major public security presence” was, according to an unnamed Middle Eastern security official, “routinely used by Stevens and others to coordinate with the Turkish, Saudi and Qatari governments on supporting the insurgencies in the Middle East, most prominently the rebels opposing Assad’s regime in Syria.”
We know that Stevens’ last official act was to hold such a meeting with an unidentified “Turkish diplomat.” Presumably, the conversation involved additional arms shipments to al Qaeda and its allies in Syria. But it may also have involved getting more jihadi fighters there. After all, Klein reported last month (http://www.wnd.com/2012/09/sources-slain-u-s-ambassador-recruited-jihadists/) that, according to sources in Egyptian security, our ambassador was playing a “central role in recruiting jihadists to fight Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.”
It gets worse. Last week, Center for Security Policy Senior Fellow and former career CIA officer Clare Lopez observed (http://www.radicalislam.org/analysis/arms-flow-syria-may-be-behind-beghazi-cover) that there were two large warehouse-type buildings associated with the so-called “consulate” whose purpose has yet to be disclosed. As their contents were raided in the course of the attack, we may never know for sure whether they housed – and were known by the local jihadis to house – arms, perhaps administered by the two former SEALS killed along with Amb. Stevens.
What we do know is that the New York Times – one of the most slavishly pro-Obama publications in the country – reported on October 14, 2012 article that, “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar al-Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster.”
In short, it seems President Obama has been engaged in gun-walking on a massive scale.
The “Fast and Furious” program demonstrated emphatically that our present administration, including its CEObama and mouth-piecEric Holder, scruple not at all against providing weapons in mass quantities to Murderous Thugs… Without bothering to inform the national governments whose people will be slaughtered and intimidated into submission with those weapons…The people whom the criminals are always most likely to murder are those in a society most ready to stand against crime and lawlessness – principled government officials, police, soldiers, and citizens who defy the thugs.
On other occasions when one nation has supplied weapons to a criminal organization in the territory of a neighboring nation, so that its society will be disrupted by the violence enabled by those weapons, the injured nations have justification under international law to declare war and seek other methods of relief and reparations.
Our OWN government actively promoted this prolonged atrocity that inevitably resulted in the murders of HUNDREDS of people. These bureaucrats cannot be so STUPID as to be surprised at this result; they HAD TO KNOW this would be precisely the outcome of their cynical actions. Our own legal tradition uses the phrase “Depraved Indifference” to describe this mindset and the actions and omissions committed.
Keep in mind that testimony and depositions make it abundantly clear that NO ATTEMPT WHATSOEVER was made to track the weapons or to prevent their crossing into Mexico. This had nothing to do with tracking weapons, nor in identifying “mules” or “straw” purchasers. There is no defense of it as an aberration or mistake or misunderstanding. Our own government instructed those dealerships to ignore standing regulations and intentionally allow purchasers to acquire weapons to carry them into Mexico.
It was a deliberate operation that went on for many months, involving a number of gun dealerships in a number of cities, and THOUSANDS OF MILITARY GRADE WEAPONS.
In the months before these gun running crimes came to light, there were scores of public statements by Secretary of State Clinton, Attorney General Holder, and President {}bama asserting that “most of the guns involved in Mexican Drug crimes had been supplied by criminal U.S. gun dealers violating U.S. law.”
The absurdity of these assertions, easily shown to be counter-factual, taken with the blatant criminality of the “Fast & Furious” operation – AND the administration’s open attempts to GIVE THE UNITED NATIONS control over its citizen’s constitutionally protected right to possess firearms – all tend to confirm the analysis that the {}bama administration was attempting to manufacture a false rationale for imposing far more rigid controls on citizen’s gun rights.
Meanwhile, {}bama has BRAGGED about taking personal charge of the lists of people to be killed by weaponized drones, even U.S. citizens abroad. He’s made it a campaign point to show how macho and determined he is, to counter charges that he has a weak stance in foreign affairs.
If they will do these things to their own citizens and to foreign nationals the LEFT has for decades insisted have the same rights as U.S. citizens, it becomes impossible to discount ANY evil this administration may undertake to further its incomprehensible schemes.
{}bama blandly claimed that U.S. involvement in the Libyan adventure was to protect Libyan citizens from Mean Old Mouammar Ghaddafi.
Horse
Shit.
We were there for no other reason than to ensure the continued flow of Libyan Sweet Light petroleum to the European refineries that have NO capacity to refine the Heavy Sour (i.e., tarry & sulfurous) petroleum they would otherwise have to import.
But the idiots in the government tell us all the Muslims in Libya have to LOVE us and be grateful that we Liberated them from Ghaddafi.
IMPEACH OBAMA NOW.
My apologies for being late to this party.
The seriousness of the assault on the Armed Forces and the Rule of Law by the Obama cabal is still slow to sink in for many. My own mother refuses to believe saying, “But why wouldn’t he send help if he could? It sounds crazy.”
For about 2700 years Western Man developed a set of institutions and codes that governed how to have a government that was both effective and legitimate with sufficient authority to serve the nation’s needs but under enough control so as to safeguard a reasonable degree of liberty. Just where to draw the lines and how everyone, Executive Legislator Judge or Noble/Peer/Commoner/Subject/Citizen, would behave was debated over time by Aristotle and Hobbes and Locke and others. In addition a complex system, a whole culture, was developed governing the institution of Force. Transforming it from the personal expression of a passing savage to a disciplined tool able to both serve the interests of the community, acting under the direction of the Executive but under the regulation of the Legislature and for the benefit of the citizenry. It took millenia to perfect a tool so powerful and yet not threatening to the society that supported it. The entire set of rules both written and customary regarding uniforms and ranks and expectations of responsibility were developed to keep it disciplined and effective.
In four years Obama has torn it to shreds. Many commentators have blandly assured us repeatedly that no matter what the military would serve as the repository of some true America that would keep its oaths and ride to our rescue. I never saw that first because, all the “foreign and domestic” aside, that is not their job and the restraints and discipline were designed to prevent that. More important because I saw that the Left did see the institution of the military, with its codes and rituals and restraints, as a threat that they would work tirelessly to weaken. We have just seen a purge take place. No no one can trust the person next to them. Every officer must wonder where the loyalties of their superior and their subordinate and the person sitting next to them in the wardroom are.
If Obama gets back in, my guess is that the needed ballots are being placed in car trunks in Ohio and Wisconsin now to be discovered late on Tuesday November 6th’s evening or Wednesday, then the advance of our enemies will proceed in a somewhat orderly albeit destructive fashion. Israel will face an existential threat alone. If Obama fails then I will expect to see turmoil and desperation as Russia and China and Iran and all the other thugs, both foreign and domestic, seek to smash and grab while the getting is good. We may be facing a very bloody holiday season.
I did comment on this OT on the “Two Narratives” thread, with a request to move to a new thread.
1. Italy shows the world how to discipline a government. Berlusconi gets 4 years for corruption.
2. The lid comes off on Benghazi. Romney was smart not to press it during the debate. He let Obama hang himself knowing the truth would come out.
We now know that forces were available and pleas for help were not just ignored but denied.
Not just no but Hell No. You march into the Gates of Hell to save your people. Maybe you take care not risk to much if it could be a trap but you grab your socks and go. Panetta should be charged with Negligent Homicide. Petreaus should be grilled like a cheese sandwich by Congress.
Dr. M@36
Perhaps…
Amb. Stevens was locked in a “safe room” similar to a cell. The terrorists torched the buiding, sure that would cause Stevens to come out. Suppose they couldn’t get in, or Stevens refused to get out.
Just askin’
It is difficult to imagine a set of circumstances so bad that would cause a US (our) regime to say and act as they have/are. W/H, DoS, military, Intel and FBI.
Delaying engagement of the attackers from every source could only benefit the attacking forces if they held a very valuable “hostage.” IE, not endangering the hostage becomes first priority in a “kidnapping.” In effect the delay only permitted/insured the attackers success. But it was botched. Why?
Let’s remember that those two extraordinaryly courageous ex-SEALS weren’t supposed to be part of this op. (snatch?) They were expected to follow orders and stay put. They weren’t supposed to be there at the mission returning fire, appearing as if from nowhere. They had to run on foot from the annex in violation of two direct orders to stand down. They were a huge tactical surprise!
Apparently they heaped tremendous damage on the attacking force, which was not part of the op plan either. Those taking credit for the attack are said to have been mightily p*ssed at the destruction wrecked by just two men.
Here’s the worst. These heroes were “lasing” the enemy positions FULLY EXPECTING HELP WOULD ARRIVE. Otherwise, why would they bother, in the middle of a firefight? So, since they knew that everybody upstairs already knew the of the attack, they were fully expecting that the drones or “Spectre” would rain down death on the attacking force. Never happened, for hours and hours. You know they were wondering were the relief was, as they fought to the death. Realizing they’d been betrayed.
This abject coward in the White House needs to be arrested and imprisoned immediately.
Why: Treason, dereliction of duty, delinquency, abuse of office, interference with criminal investigations, obstruction of justice, collaboration with enemies of the nation, Hell, throw in animal abuse and selling adulterated food products. This man cannot get through a 24-hour period without FINDING A NEW WAY TO SCREW THIS COUNTRY.
Treason is an acute situation; the immediacy of the crimes, especially by the highest office holder in the government, calls for instant arrest, NOT the slow-motion deliberations and political compromise of the impeachment process. Impeachment’s meant to address those smoldering sneaky schemes that only make sense after a truckload of incriminating but complicated memos and transcripts get dissected and unredacted and re-constructed from the shredder.
This is one man and his pusbag crew trying every day to find some new artery to nick and bleed the country white.
Every minute he’s allowed to continue in office puts this country and its allies deeper in the sewage leaching pond.
There must be some law enforcement organization with the authority. Doesn’t the House of Representatives have a Sergeant-at-Arms that can just put handcuffs on the guy and march him to the little cell they have for time-outs?
Sure, while you’re at it, impeach the SOB.
“…the Guardian reported that the United States has made informal requests for access to British bases in Cypress…”
Maybe we should have asked for access to the ones in Juniper instead?
Good Lord.
So nobody else can come up with any possible justifications either?
I can envision a complete foul-up in Benghazi, where already very tight ROI joined up with a “very sensitive stuff going on so don’t budge” predisposition, and the highest levels assumed somebody else was taking care of business. But then the lying is entirely political, and the arrest inexcusable. (Not that the video maker had any business still being in the US anyway.)
But I know there’s a lot going on I don’t know about, and I was hoping that the chain of command would only close ranks for real problems and not stand for this kind of political CYA. I already know Obama’s the worst president we’ve had around here since Jefferson Davis. I’m starting to get a little picture of how political (not necessarily Dem/Rep) the upper echelons are.