The Benghazi Attack Dogs Obama and Clinton

While Washington is on vacation, new disclosures about the Benghazi attack on American diplomatic personnel last September are keeping very much alive a disastrous failure of security for US diolomats that the Obama administration is seeking to bury by calling it a "phony scandal." Fox News has reported that at least five CIA employees have been forced to sign new nondisclosure agreements aimed at discouraging them from leaking their stories to the media, even though they had signed such agreements prior to the attacks. CNN reports that some CIA operatives are being required to take frequent, even monthly polygraph tests in an effort to uncover who may be talking to the media or Congress about the attacks on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that took the life of US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Former CIA operative and CNN analyst Robert Baer said it is highly unusual for agency employees to be polygraphed more often than every three or four years. CNN has reported that according to communications it has obtained, one insider states: "You have no idea the amount of pressure being brought to bear on anyone with knowledge of this operation." CNN is also reporting that dozens of Americans were in Benghazi on the night of the attacks and are "being intimidated into staying silent." According to CNN, a source told it the number was 35, with perhaps as many as seven wounded, but it is not clear how many Americans in the city were working for the CIA. Only losses suffered by the State Department have been reported to Congress. Some in Congress have speculated that US agencies in Benghazi were secretly helping to move missiles out of Libya through Turkey and into the hands of Syrian rebels. The State Department has claimed it was only helping the Libyan government destroy old or damaged weapons. If CNN's report is correct, the CIA is at minimum trying to hide its unauthorized weapons deliveries to Syria from Congress, something that CIA agents might otherwise want to reveal. Congress should press for information. Republican Representative Frank Wolf, whose district includes CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., is disturbed by the lack of information and the pressure to silence CIA operatives. "I think it is a form of cover-up," he said. He has gone to the floor of the House several times to ask for the establishment of a select committee to probe the Benghazi affair. In another action, Representative Steve Stockman, a Texas Republican, said on Thursday he plans to force a vote in Congress on creating an investigative body. And House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, a California Republican, has issued two subpoenas to the State Department for documents related to the deadly assault in Benghazi. He said he wants all documents the State Department gave to an independent review board headed by former diplomat Thomas Pickering and retired Admiral Mike Mullen, and all documents related to interviews conducted by the board. Fox News has also reported that some Congress members believe that while the government is making efforts to keep Benghazi personnel silent, not enough progress has been made in tracking down those responsible for the attacks. Although the US Justice Department has just filed sealed charges in New York against several people in the Benghazi affair, including Ahmed Abu Khattala, allegedly the Benghazi leader of Ansar al-Sharia, an Islamist militia group that advocates strict Sharia law, none of the officials would discuss the specific charges against Khattalah in the sealed complaint. But in a recent CNN interview, Khattalah acknowledged being at the Benghazi mission after the attack but denied any involvement. He also told CNN he had not been questioned by Libyan authorities or the FBI in the investigation and that no one from the US government has contacted him. US law enforcement officials said it was not unusual for the FBI to not interview defendants in a case while they collect other evidence. The investigation is led by agents from the FBI in New York and has included some members of the Washington field office, who have traveled to Libya to interview hundreds of witnesses, officials told CNN. ~~~~~ Dear readers, Republicans have accused the White House of not increasing security before the Benghazi attack, of botching the response to it and of misleading the public for political gain less than two months before the November 2012 presidential election. The Benghazi attacks involved scores of militants using rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons. Five days after the attacks, US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice went on five Sunday morning talk shows, working from talking points that were heavily edited largely at the request of the State Department, and said the assaults began as a peaceful protest against an anti-Moslem film and that the protest was later "hijacked" by militants. The administration later acknowledged, however, that the attacks were the work of a possible terrorist group affiliated with al-Qaida and not a reaction to the video. Rice is now President Obama's national security adviser. Since the Benghazi attacks, the White House has come under steady attack from Republicans, particularly by Senators Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and Kelly Ayotte. The senators, members of the Armed Services Committee, have repeatedly said that the administration, the State Department, and other federal agencies barred those who worked in Benghazi from testifying before Congress. There is one person who could shed light on much of the Obama administration's actions during and after the Benghazi attack. Hillary Clinton. She must be subpoenaed and made to answer questions directly instead of allowing her to engage in the theatrical posturings that she used the last time she appeared before Congress in order to avoid answering truthfully or, in the alternative, put herself in danger of lying.

Senator Harry Reid Is a Blundering Fool

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has once again proven that he is familiar with racist comments - because he seems to let them tumble from his lips rather often by American standards. Yesterday on a National Public Radio interview in Las Vegas, Reid said he hopes Republicans who oppose the president do so "based on substance and not the fact that he's an African American." Reid, who is a Nevada Democrat, lamented Republican filibusters and claimed opponents do everything they can to make Obama fail. He recalled that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, said during Obama's first term that his most important goal was ensuring Obama wasn't re-elected. (Wake up, Senator Reid - EVERY Republican's goal is to prevent the re-election of Democrats - and vice versa. Did the GOP call you a religious "racist" because you tried to keep Mormon Republican Mitt Romney from being elected? ) Senator Reid continued : "Here we are seven months into his second term and nothing has changed....It's been obvious they are doing everything they can to make him fail. And I hope, I hope, and I say this seriously, it's based on substance and not the fact that he's an African American." NO, Senator Reid, the GOP is not racist, as you are. The GOP opposes Obama's programs - when one actually emerges from the fog that has submerged the White House since 2008. And the GOP will continue to oppose the tax-and-spend attitudes of Obama, and you and your Democrat colleagues on Capitol Hill until you come to your senses and begin to help the GOP dig America out of its fiscal mess before it is too late. But to get back to the Reid interview, Reid's comments went unchallenged by the program's moderator, but not by Newsmax contributor and conservative African-American columnist Clarence V. McKee, who said there was no reason for Reid to raise the race issue during the interview. “It’s been typical for the last 3½ years whenever he’s [Obama] criticized the first thing they yell is ‘race or racism,’” said McKee who held several positions in the Reagan administration as well as the Reagan presidential campaigns. “For the Senate majority leader to stoop that low and go into the racial gutter is disgusting.” He said Reid’s comments were tantamount to “liberal, elitist, racism.” McConnell's office referred a request for comment to Senator Tim Scott, a black Republican from South Carolina, who said Reid's remarks were offensive and asked for an apology. In 2010, Reid apologized for comments he made about the president’s race during the 2008 presidential campaign. Reid described then-Senatior Obama as “light skinned’’ and “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.’’ In his 2010 apology, Reid attributed his private description of Obama to a “poor choice” of words. “I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words,” he said at the time. “I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African Americans for my improper comments.’ In his radio interview, Reid also criticized members of the tea party, comparing them to anarchists who helped spark World War I. He said that while modern anarchists don't resort to violence, they do not believe in government and rejoice in its troubles."They have the same philosophy as the early anarchists," he said. "They don't believe in government. Anytime anything bad happens to the government, that's a victory for them. It makes it very difficult to get things done." ~~~~~ Dear readers, as President Reagan would have said, "There he goes again." Senator Reid, tea partiers are not anarchists. They are hard working middle class Americans who understand something that you and your Democrat Party fail to comprehend -- that America is in a horrible fiscal black hole caused by your Democrat policies. Tea partiers are trying to change how things work in Washington and to save America from your efforts to kick the can down the road until it falls off the fiscal cliff, and America with it, and tea partiers are using a time-honored mechanism. It is called the constitutional right to free speech, peaceful assembly and voting. Think about it, Senator Reid. Voting. That is not anarchy. It is the opposite of anarchy. It is the exercise of the fundamental right of every American to vote for the candidates and parties he or she prefers. Got it, Senator Reid? Constitution. Racial equality. Voting. America.

Obama's Foreign Policy Blunders Multiply

There have been few weeks so much about President Barack Obama as this past week. Let's consider the trail he has left behind. ~~~~~ (1). Last week on Friday, the American government issued a worldwide travel warning for US tourists and closed 19 US embassies in the Moslem world because of what was called a serious but non-pinpointed terrorist threat. Many European governments followed the American lead. As last weekend rolled toward Monday, the threat was announced to be focused in the Arabian Peninsula, either as target or as perpetrator. Yemen took charge of its part of the problem, with the help of US drones, and by mid-week, Yemen said it had eliminated a current threat to oil and gas fields in its territory, adding that it was not certain that this was the same threat America was talking about. Some US and European intelligence experts began to ask if Obama had overreacted and whether the very public announcement had actually compromised the US intelligence gathering systems in the Middle East. Then, Thursday night, the US announced the closing of its Lahore, Pakistan, consulate because of a serious threat not related to the earlier worldwide warning, according to rhe Obama administration. And, except for a five-minute chat with the host of an American late-night comedy show, the world has had very little explanation from the President. (2). Obama unceremoniously and suddenly pulled tbe plug publicly this week on a scheduled summit meeting wirh Russian President Vladimir Putin that had been sheduled in September at the G8 meeting in Moscow. The first White House explanation was that the President was angry with Putin's decision to grant temporary asylum to the American who had stolen intelligence information and released it after fleeing US jurisdiction -- the Stockton affair. Later in an obvious scramble to recover the diplomatic gaff, the President and his spokesmen said there were other outstanding issues to be resolved at lower levels and the decision to cancel was not just because of Stockton. President Putin quickly seized the diplomatic high ground, without mentioning Stockton, saying he held no grudges and would not resort to reprisals. (3). President Obama made it known that he had asked Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham to go to Egypt and try to find a compromise to calm the waters between the Morsi Brotherhood faction and the military that had ousted him from the presidency. Obama apparently forgot to mention to McCain that "coup" was a forbidden word because it could trigger the freeze of military and other aid to Egypt under American law - because McCain, at his first Cairo press conference called the military ouster a coup. The US State Department scrambled to say the official position of the Obama administration is that there is no need to use the word coup in reference to the "transition" now underway in Egypt. ~~~~~ If, dear readers, when you try to follow what's going on in the White House this week, you get the feeling you are on a roller coaster or a rodeo broncing steer being tossed about from pillar to post - give a thought to President Obama. He must want to pull the bed covers over his head and stay there until 2016. But, things like this week's fiascos happen when you have no foreign policy, have no advisors capable of creating foreign policy, and are arrogant enough to believe that you are above the need for foreign policy because you are an Immortal sent by Zeus to smile upon us poor human beings.

Judge Rules to Allow Major Hasan to Continue with his Defense Strategy

The military court martial trial of the military officer accused in the 2009 shooting rampage at Fort Hood took a new turn yesterday. Many experts had already been surprised by US Army Major Nidal Hasan's decision to act as his own lawyer, something very rare in military trials. Then Hasan made an opening statement of less than one minute in which he stated that the facts would show that he was the killer. Even though acting as his own counsel, Hasan has a team of court-appointed lawyers whose role is to advise him by answering his questions about how to proceed with his personally developed defense strategy. The team of defense lawyers, led by Lt. Colonel Kris Poppe, has determined that Hasan is trying to guarantee himself a death sentence, saying they believe he is trying to convince jurors to convict him. After only one day of testimony, the lawyers said, they couldn't watch him fulfill a death wish. While the defense legal standby team cannot easily prevent Hasan from seeking his own conviction, the lawyers are faced with a question of legal ethics of major proportions. Lawyers are under a professional oath to protect the rights of clients and Poppe told the presiding judge on Wednesday that Hasan's strategy "...is repugnant to defense counsel and contrary to our professional obligations." Poppe told the judge he and the other standby lawyers want to take over the case. And if Hasan is allowed to continue on his own, they want their roles minimized so Hasan can't ask them for help with a strategy they oppose. The judge had to decide what to do, knowing that any decision will be scrutinized by a military justice system that has overturned most soldiers' death sentences in the last 30 years and last executed a soldier in 1961. Hasan faces a possible death sentence if convicted of the 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder. Richard Rosen, a law professor at Texas Tech University and former military prosecutor who attended the first two days of trial, said, "I think whatever she [the judge] does is potentially dangerous, at least from the view of an appellate court." Rosen and other experts said that if the judge allows Poppe and Hasan's other standby defense attorneys to take over, the judge could be seen as having unfairly denied Hasan's right to defend himself, a right guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. But if she lets Hasan continue defending himself, she could be depriving him of adequate help from experienced attorneys. Another law professor who is an expert in military justice said, "The worst thing that can happen would be to retry the case all over again....At the end of the day, the defendant has the absolute right to decide who's going to represent him, including deciding to represent himself." When Poppe noted that Hasan didn't object to any jurors during jury selection, the judge suggested that Hasan could simply be following a different strategy to ensure he'd have more jurors, knowing that only one juror has to vote against a death sentence for him to be spared. "Some would think that is a brilliant strategy," the judge told Poppe. Experts agree, saying that Hasan declining to cross-examine most witnesses - especially victims who survived the shooting - wasn't necessarily a bad move, explaining that questioning victims could merely have angered the jurors. The trial resumed Thursday morning with the judge giving her decision on defense counsel requests. ~~~~~ And, dear readers, the defense attorneys have had their request denied. The judge sided with Hasan on Thursday, saying it's clear the standby attorneys simply disagree with Hasan's defense strategy. This decision may possibly be appealed by the Poppe standby legal team, as a matter of procedure, arguing that the judge's ruling will have a serious impact on the trial outcome. They will have a high hurdle to jump to get an appellate hearing during the trial because they are in essence challenging, without explicitly stating it, the determination that Hasan is mentally competent to stand trial. The bizarre twists in the Hasan trial continue.