http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/331892/benghazi-obama-emerges-fog-war-bing-west#

At Andrews Air Force Base, on the return of the remains of the four Americans killed in Benghazi, September 14, 2012

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Comments

Bing West

Our ambassador to Libya was killed in our own consulate in Benghazi on the night of September 11. For the next six weeks, President Obama repeated the same talking point: The morning after the attack, he ordered increased security in our embassies in the region.

Suddenly, on the campaign trail in Denver on October 26, he changed his story. “The minute I found out what was happening . . . I gave the directive,” he said, “to make sure we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to do. I guarantee you everybody in the CIA and military knew the number-one priority was making sure our people are safe.”
Notice the repeated use of the present tense, implying that he gave the order during the attack. Mr. Obama met with his national-security team, including the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at 5:00 p.m. Washington time. For over an hour, the consulate staff had been constantly reporting that they were under assault by terrorists and Ambassador Chris Stevens was missing in action. In the White House, group-think leads to the mistaken assumption that the attackers are a spontaneous mob.
An hour after the attack has begun, the president orders the CIA and the military to do “whatever we need to do.” Yet the CIA and the military do nothing, except send drones overhead to watch the seven-hour battle. A CIA employee and former Navy SEAL, Tyrone Woods, twice calls for military help. He has a laser rangefinder and is pinpointing enemy targets, radioing the coordinates. The military send no aircraft to attack the designated targets. Special Operations forces standing by, 480 miles away — less than a two-hour plane ride — are not deployed.

Secretary of Defense Panetta later explained that this passivity was in keeping with a rule of warfare. “A basic principle,” he said on October 25, “is you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on — without having some real-time information about what’s taking place.”

Rarely has a spontaneous mob so thoroughly intimidated our nation. And so much for sending our squads out every day in Afghanistan on patrol, when they don’t know what’s going on. The next time a platoon is told to take an objective, some corporal will say, “SecDef says we don’t have to go into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on.”
Apart from the questionable philosophy of turning battle into a poker game where all cards are face up before anyone places a bet, Mr. Panetta ignored the fact that the former SEAL on the ground was giving real-time information to everyone listening in at least eight operations centers (the embassy in Tripoli, State, White House, Pentagon, CIA, Special Operations Command, Africa Command, and the National Ops Center).
The SecDef and the president have issued contradictory explanations. Either Mr. Obama ordered the Secretary of Defense to “do whatever we need to do,” or he didn’t. And either the secretary obeyed that order, or he didn’t. And he didn’t.

It is also not clear whether the SecDef countermanded the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who is the direct military adviser to the president. Did the president as commander-in-chief issue an unequivocal order that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs received but chose not to execute? Or did the chairman reply that he would do nothing?
Yet the general in charge of the Africa region has allegedly said he received no directive from Washington to dispatch military aid. Members of the mutual protective society of generals are offering the bizarre defense that our Africa Command could do nothing because it has no military assets; it’s some sort of ghost command. Even if that is true, the most powerful nation in the world has sufficient forces and flexibility to send fighter aircraft over a consulate in flames, or to land some troops at the secure airport east of Benghazi. After all, our embassy in Tripoli, 400 miles away, sent an aircraft with six Americans to fight in Benghazi. But our base in Sigonella, 480 miles away, sent no help.
If General Dempsey had concluded that the U.S. military should do nothing, he would have reported his decision not to act back to his commander-in-chief before the latter went to bed to rest up for his campaign trip to Las Vegas the next day. After all, the ambassador was still missing. And brave Tyrone Woods was to die in a mortar attack five hours later. President Obama would naturally be more than a bit interested in why the military and the CIA did nothing after he explicitly ordered them “to make sure we are securing our personnel.”
Surely it is in the president’s best interests to release a copy of his order, which the military would have sent to hundreds in the chain of command. And if the president did not direct the NSC “to do whatever we need to do,” then who was in charge? When the American ambassador is attacked and remains out of American hands for over seven hours as a battle rages — and our military sends no aid — either the crisis-response system inside the White House is incompetent, or top officials are covering up.

— Bing West, a former assistant secretary of defense, is co-author with Congressional Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. Dakota Meyer of Into the Fire: A First-Hand Account of the Most Extraordinary Battle of the Afghanistan War.

and....

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=213277

Obama The Traitor: The Hits Keep Coming

The lid isn't going to stay on this much longer folks.
First, we have this with General Ham, who apparently had a rapid-deployment force ready to go into action when he learned that the consulate was under assault. Then:

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.

Got that? It appears from this report that he was placed under armed arrest for attempting to rescue our people.
But it doesn't stop there; apparently General Ham is not the only member of the armed forces who attempted to respond as one would expect from Americans at-arms:

The Navy said Saturday it is replacing the admiral in command of an aircraft carrier strike group in the Middle East, pending the outcome of an internal investigation into undisclosed allegations of inappropriate judgment.

Inappropriate judgment eh? Like, perhaps, deciding that he was going to go do his job when our people were under attack through an act of warby belligerents?
There isn't much that's "inappropriate" in my view under such circumstances in terms of rapid response, but the CIC (that would be Obama) apparently sees things differently.
Remember, ladies and gentlemen, we have a military that is under civilan control. That means you and I are the final arbiters of what is and is not permissible military action, not the other way around. We, and not they, make that decision.
The questions you must now ask yourself as we come into these next couple of weeks, culminating in the election, are:

Are you are going to remain silent and by doing so consent to the murder of four in Benghazi? If this is unacceptable to you then it is yourduty as an American to do something about it. What you choose to do about it is of course up to you, and I urge lawful actions, not lawless ones, but the fact remains that our military structure means that you, and not they, are ultimately in control.
- It appears that there were assets in the air that could have responded; are you going to remain silent knowing they were there and refuse to demand the public identification of the person or persons who refused to use them? It appears now that our men had designated the mortar team that was firing on them with a laser targeting device. Such an act never takes place unless there are assets in the air able to hit what's been designated as the target and everyone else in the area can see the emission of energy used to "paint" the target. We therefore know, assuming the reports of that "painting" are accurate, that some form of aerial fire support was available and was intentionally not used. Again, you must decide if this is acceptable conduct.
- The predicate to all of this appears to have been the giving of heavy munitions to militants that may have been related to or connected with (or may have actually been!) Al-Qaida, which then "leaked" beyond where the people who gave those munitions intended them to go and be used. Is it acceptable that our government gave heavy weapons to a publicly-sworn enemy of our nation? There are multiple credible reports that the reason the Benghazi safe-house was hit was because the CIA was attempting to recover those weapons through what amounted to buying them back (that is, bribery.) You must once again decide whether or not giving heavy weapons to known and declared enemies of the United State is acceptable under any circumstances, and if not, what you intend to do about it.
- This is not the first time we have armed belligerents on purpose; is that acceptable? Specifically, "Gun Runner" or "Fast and Furious" armed belligerent Mexican Drug Lords when then used some of those guns to shoot a United States citizen. They also, it must be presumed, used them to shoot a lot of innocent Mexican citizens. The key question here is when we as Americans will have had enough of this crap -- it didn't start with Obama, but he sure as hell has taken to a new level of art. Back during the Iran-Contra days we indicted and convicted 11 but then sat back while George HW Bush pardoned all of those who didn't manage to beat the charges on appeal. Isn't that nice?
We have a lot of serious problems in this country folks. Our economy is in the toilet, we have a central bank that is entirely out-of-control and a Congress that refuses to enforce the law that governs its operation (and has serially refused to do so for 100 years), we apparently are arming people who are sworn enemies of the United States and we sit back and we blow Saudi Arabian Kings who demand that the UN trash our First Amendment (and incidentally, Mr. Abdullah, go perform an anatomically-impossible act) instead of declaring him an enemy of our nation, never mind the obvious and well-documented monetary ties between his country and Al-Quaida, not to mention the 9/11 hijackers.
Some of our political candidates would like to argue over things like gay marriage, smoking pot and abortion, or promises to hand out more and more money to people in exchange for their vote. Others still would like to argue over whether one religion is superior to another. Others will bleat about how a vote that is not cast for one man is in fact a vote for another, although this is trivially proven to be mathematically false.
This is all small-ball and mental masturbation folks if, as is allged, a bunch of MANPADs that our government handed to Al-Qaida connected people start being used to shoot down airliners or our economy blows up as a consequence of unbridled, rampant deficits and QE-to-insanity.
We had damn well better wake the hell up as a body politic because if we don't you're going to wake up one of these mornings due to a GE Turbofan engine coming crashing through your roof, on fire and in pieces, and that will just be the beginning of a nightmare that will not end for years. This assumes that we don't find ourselves in the middle of WWIII with mushrooms sprouting as the fruits across our "magnificent" plain. That was the ultimate "solution" to the Depression and I'd rather not do it again, especially in a world where the loser can and probably will play "push button vaporization of your nearest city" rather than go down with a whimper.

Don't tell me that Romney is going to fix it, because I've heard exactly nothing from him on any of these matters thus far that leads me to believe he would do anything other than turn his head and, if the **** got really thick, pardon Obama and everyone in his chain of command that ultimately was brought up on charges over this crap exactly as George HW Bush did.

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=213240

Reckless Disregard And Traitorous Orders by Obama

The hits just keep coming....

Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command -- who also told the CIA operators twice to "stand down" rather than help the ambassador's team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

Stand down?
You can't be serious.
As I noted a few days ago it appears that our "purpose" in maintaining that "safe house" in Libya was that we had thousands of MANPADs -- man-totable anti-aircraft missiles -- "loose" over there, and were trying to find them and basically buy them back (read: bribery.) Therefore, we knew damn well that the so-called "annex" in question was a high-value target to anyone who had a stick in their ass about America, as it contained both weaponsand lots of money -- two commodities in high demand in that part of the world.
At least three men, including two now-dead ones, ignored the order to stand down and attempted to defend the consulate. They died defending American soil despite orders to not do so. Worse, during the attempted defense they managed to get a laser designator on the people firing on the annex and yet they couldn't get anyone to put ordnance on that location.
So exactly who refused help?
It is looking increasingly likely that the person responsible for this is President Obama himself, personally.
David Petraeus has said this:

Breaking news on Benghazi: the CIA spokesman, presumably at the direction of CIA director David Petraeus, has put out this statement: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ”

But clearly, someone did issue a "Stand Down" order (that was ignored.) Who was it?
There's only one person left: President Obama himself.

Facts are funny thing -- they eventually lead to inescapable conclusions, no matter how hard you'd wish they didn't, as potential explanations for various events are examined and discarded.
It now appears that we have a President who not only intentionally put our men and women in harm's way without appropriate defensive measures butwhen they came under attack he literally ordered them to die rather than defend them.
Are we as American going to sit for this outrage or will we call it what it is?

and here is a problem - why didn't they use the Predators - and don't think for a second they weren't armed ..... and now we know one of the brave souls had a laser painting where the mortars hitting the Ambassador's compound were located..... this just stinks to high heavens.... and playing dumb isn't going to cut it.....

Democrat Sen. Udall, who sits on the Intelligence Committee, won’t tell Chris Wallace if the drones above Benghazi that day were armed:

Gingrich: Obama canceling campaign trips due to hurricane but didn’t after Benghazi?

http://www.businessinsider.com/obama-approval-rating-gallup-50-percent-state-2012-10

( which coincides with Benghazi Gate NOT going away - if anything it has become a larger issue since the conclusion of the Debates. )

Obama's Approval Rating Has Collapsed In The Past 3 Days

Brett LoGiurato | Oct. 27, 2012, 1:58 PM | 334 | 2

President Barack Obama's approval rating has fallen to dangerous lows for historical precedent on re-election in just the past three days, according to Gallup's rolling three-day average.

Gallup's daily tracking poll today — which also showed Obama losing 51-46 to Republican nominee Mitt Romney among likely voters — puts the president's approval rating at just 46 percent.

That's a staggering 7-point swing from Wednesday, when Obama's approval rating sat at 53 percent. And it marks Obama's lowest point since late September.

Obama's disapproval rating, meanwhile, jumped to 49 percent. That accounts for another 7-point change since Wednesday, meaning the total swing has been 14 points. The disapproval rating is the president's highest since mid-August.

A lot of this could be statistical noise, considering such wild swings without any major-moving events in the past few days are extremely rare.

* * *

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2012/10/gosh-which-could-it-be-either-fox-is.html

( Right now , the White House and the President must be hoping Hurricane Sandy provides a big distraction from the ongoing Benghazi debacle.... )

GOSH, WHICH COULD IT BE? "Either Fox is making stuff up, or the administration is lying through its teeth"

Rick Moran deconstructs the latest Benghazi-gate revelations and finds only one possible scenario: the White House is lying.

The CIA is denying. The Pentagon is denying. And now the White House is denying that anyone refused to send help to our embattled CIA and State Department personnel engaged in a seven hour running firefight withmore than 150 jihadists.

It just doesn’t get any lamer than this:

The White House on Saturday flatly denied that President Barack Obama withheld requests for help from the besieged American compound in Benghazi, Libya, as it came under on attack by suspected terrorists on September 11th.“Neither the president nor anyone in the White House denied any requests for assistance in Benghazi,” National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told Yahoo News by email.

Why was this so hard for President Obama to say on Friday when asked a direct question about assistance to Americansunder fire?...

...How do we know that the White House is lying about denying requests for military assistance from our beleaguered diplomats? Consider: If a news story is published basically accusing the President of the United States of standing by while Americans were killed, shouldn’t the reaction from the White House be a little more indignant? A little more agitated? Perhaps a lot angrier?

All of these denials point to one of two conclusions; either Fox News is making stuff up, or the administration is lying through its teeth. There is no other possible explanation.

And I would note the extraordinary detail in the Fox article, including specific communications between the various locations in Libya and national security people in Washington. If Fox is making stuff up, someone has a pretty vivid imagination.

Jennifer Rubin observes that the Benghazi cover-up now has three distinct facets, none of which have been suitably addressed by the administration.

The Benghazi debacle has three parts: how we neglected security while al-Qaeda was building a presence in Libya; whether the administration tried to mislead the public as to the nature of the attack; and now whether the administration denied pleas for help from operatives on the ground at the consulate.

Daniel Gardner goes further, labeling the president a "coward and a disgrace":

Obama was meeting with national security leaders when the attack in Benghazi went down. Unclassified documents reveal he received emails directly from Benghazi within minutes of the beginning of the attack, staff in Benghazi were in real-time contact with the State Department, and two drones overhead in Benghazi showed Washington exactly what was happening on the ground there.

Unclassified emails reveal three requests were made from Benghazi for help, and all three requests were rejected with orders to “stand down.” Special Forces troops were available and within two or three hours could have saved at least two of the four who died at the end of the seven-hour attack.

Obama literally watched the seven-hour battle refusing to send troops to save Americans…or, he didn’t care to watch or to intervene. Regardless, he didn’t care enough to save American lives when he had the opportunity.

The mainstream media is not even covering this story, but is [instead] parroting Obama’s talking points...

And all of this misdirection, all of the lies, all of the cover-ups detract from the simple truths of heroism that have been all but ignored by antique media:

A short distance from the American compound, two Americans were sleeping. They were in Libya as independent contractors working an assignment totally unrelated to our embassy. They also happened to be former Navy SEALs. When they heard the noise coming from the attack on our embassy, as you would expect from highly trained warriors, they ran to the fight. Apparently, they had no weapons, but seeing the Libyan guards dropping their guns in their haste in fleeing the scene, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty snatched up several of these discarded weapons and prepared to defend the American compound.Not knowing exactly what was taking place, the two SEALs set up a defensive perimeter. Unfortunately Ambassador Stevens was already gravely injured, and Foreign Service officer, Sean Smith, was dead. However, due to their quick action and suppressive fire, twenty administrative personnel in the embassy were able to escape to safety. Eventually, these two courageous men were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers brought against them, an enemy force numbering between 100 to 200 attackers which came in two waves.But the stunning part of the story is that Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty killed 60 of the attacking force. Once the compound was overrun, the attackers were incensed to discover that just two men had inflicted so much death and destruction.

As it became apparent to these selfless heroes, they were definitely going to lose their lives unless some reinforcements showed up in a hurry. As we know now, that was not to be. I’m fairly certain they knew they were going to die in this gun fight, but not before they took a whole lot of bad guys with them!

Consider these tenets of the Navy SEAL Code: 1) Loyalty to Country, Team and Teammate, 2) Serve with Honor and Integrity On and Off the Battlefield, 3) Ready to Lead, Ready to Follow, Never Quit, 4) Take responsibility for your actions and the actions of your teammates, 5) Excel as Warriors through Discipline and Innovation, 6) Train for War, Fight to Win, Defeat our Nation’s Enemies, and 7) Earn your Trident every day.

Thank you, Tyrone and Glen. To the very last breath, you both lived up to the SEAL Code. You served all of us well. You were courageous in the face of certain death.

And Tyrone, even though you never got to hold your newborn son, he will grow up knowing the character and quality of his father, a man among men who sacrificed himself defending others. God bless America!

*****

and....

http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/26/local-news-reporter-grills-president-obama-on-libya-bullshitter-remark/

( Gloves coming off as President grilled over Benghazi killings , Solar energy / DOE giveaways and Bullshitter remark regarding Romney... note the President's talking point responses , non answers , nonsensical answers to the questions)

Local news reporter grills President Obama on Libya, ‘bullshitter’ remark

In an unusually direct and at times tense interview with Denver local news station KUSA, President Barack Obama on Friday admitted on two occasions that he doesn’t know whether the administration denied requests for military assistance by the U.S. Embassy in Libya when it was besieged on Sept. 11.

“Were the Americans under attack at the consulate in Benghazi Libya denied requests for help during that attack? And is it fair to tell Americans that what happened [in Libya] is under investigation and we’ll all find out after the election?” anchor Kyle Clark asked at the top of the interview.

“The election has nothing to do with four brave Americans getting killed and us wanting to find out exactly what happened,” Obama replied. “Nobody wants to find out more what happened than I do. But we want to make sure we get it right.”

“Were they denied requests for help during the attack?” Clark asked again, referring to reports that the U.S. military could have intervened before militants killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. (RELATED VIDEO: Father of slain Navy SEAL accuses White House of murder)

“Well, we are finding out exactly what happened,” Obama repeated. “I guarantee you that everyone in the State Department, our military, the CIA, you name it, had number one priority making sure that people were safe. These were our folks and we’re going to find out exactly what happened.”

WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH KUSA’S KYLE CLARK:

Clark then focused the interview on stimulus spending.

“In a national address, you touted the stimulus money going to Abound Solar – a Colorado company connected to one of your billionaire fundraisers,” Clark began. “Now, as you may know, Abound Solar is out of business and under criminal investigation. The jobs are gone and taxpayers are out about 60 million dollars. How do you answer critics who see Abound Solar as Colorado’s Solyndra – a politically connected clean energy company that went under and took our money with it?”

At that point, beginning to sense the interview would take on an aggressive tone, Obama laughed nervously.

“Well, Kyle, I think that if you look at our record that these loans that are given out by the Department of Energy for clean energy have created jobs all across the country. … And these are decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy, they have nothing to do with politics.”

Clark ended with one more question about what he claimed was the president’s apparent hypocrisy.

“Mr. President, you’ve called for more civility in our nation’s political conversation – and much has obviously been made about the tone of this race. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, you called Governor Romney a ‘bullshitter.’ What did you mean and why did you choose that word?”

“You know, this was a conversation after an interview, a casual conversation with a reporter,” Obama said. “The basic point that I’ve been talking about throughout this campaign, is people know what I mean and they know that I mean what I say and what I care about, who I’m fighting for and you know a major issue in any election is can you count on the person you’re putting into the Oval Office fighting for you having a clear set of convictions that they believe in.”

The uncomfortable interview was unusual, given that the president rarely allows the press the opportunity to ask him tough questions. According to ABC, a university professor found that Obama has been less accessible to the media — both at informal press pool events and press conferences — than his predecessors.

In some ways, the Friday interview resembled the widely publicized grilling Vice President Joe Biden received in 2008 at the hands of a local Florida news anchor. (RELATED VIDEO: Biden asked whether President Obama is a Marxist)

In that interview, which took place just prior to Election Day in 2008, Biden also laughed off many of the anchor’s aggressive — and, according to many observers, loaded — inquiries. At one point, an exasperated Biden remarked, “Is that a joke?” and “I don’t know who’s writing your questions.”

I think we now know that Benghazi was the October Surprise - just not the surprise the WH thought it would be.....So , when does Sec of Defense Panetta say he gave the " Stand Down " Order and resign to protect the President ? Or did that " Stand Down " Order come from elsewhere ( Hillary - but simply ask how she could do that and under what authority ? Did Obama give the Order or de facto President Val Jarrett give the order ? )

here comes the WH defensive moves .....

http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2012/10/was-africom-general-replaced-for-his-efforts-to-save-benghazi-security-officials/

Obama Administration Replaces Top Generals Following Benghazi Disaster

General Carter Ham

The latest rumor making the rounds is that Barack Obama replaced General Carter Ham at Africom after the general made a move to help the US security officials at the Benghazi consulate and annex. Ham was replaced by Gen. David Rodriquez on October 18.
Tiger Droppings reported:

The information I heard today was that General [Carter] 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 Africom.

Sure enough Obama nominated Gen. David Rodriguez to replace Gen. Carter Ham as commander of U.S. Africa Command.
The Stars and Stripes reported:

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.

Both appointments must be confirmed by the Senate.

Rodriguez is the commander of U.S. Army Forces Command and has served in a “variety of key leadership roles on the battlefield,” Panetta said.

He’s “a proven leader” who oversaw coalition and Afghan forces during the surge in Afghanistan, and “was the key architect of the successful campaign plan that we are now implementing,” Panetta said.

In announcing Ham’s successor, Panetta also praised the work Ham has done with Africa Command.

“Gen. Ham has really brought AFRICOM into a very pivotal role in that challenging region,” Panetta said. “I and the nation are deeply grateful for his outstanding service.”

More…
The Obama Administration also relieved the admiral in command of an aircraft carrier strike group in the Middle East, Rear Adm. Charles M. Gaouette. It is highly unusual for the Navy to replace a carrier strike group commander during its deployment.
The Stars and Stripes reported:

The Navy said Saturday it is replacing the admiral in command of an aircraft carrier strike group in the Middle East, pending the outcome of an internal investigation into undisclosed allegations of inappropriate judgment.

Rear Adm. Charles M. Gaouette is being sent back to the USS John C. Stennis’ home port at Bremerton, Wash., in what the Navy called a temporary reassignment. The Navy said he is not formally relieved of his command of the Stennis strike group but will be replaced by Rear Adm. Troy M. Shoemaker, who will assume command until the investigation is completed.

It is highly unusual for the Navy to replace a carrier strike group commander during its deployment.

Ace of Spades says the move to replace Rear Adm. Charles Gaouette is likely not related to Benghazi.

and......

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/10/navy-replaces-admiral-leading-mideast-strike-group-because-of-ongoing-investigation/

Oct 27, 2012 8:27pm

Navy Replaces Admiral Leading

Mideast Strike Group Because of

Ongoing Investigation

In an unusual move, the Navy has replaced an admiral commanding an aircraft carrier strike group while it is deployed to the Middle East. The replacement was prompted by an Inspector General’s investigation of allegations of inappropriate leadership judgment.

Rear Adm. Charles M. Gaouette, the commander of the USS John C. Stennis strike group, is being returned to the United States for temporary reassignment.

In a statement the Navy said it had approved a request made by Vice Adm. John W. Miller, the Commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command, to temporarily reassign Gaouette “pending the results of an investigation by the Navy Inspector General.”

The statement said Gaoutte would return to the carrier’s home port of Bremerton, Washington.

A Navy official familiar with the circumstances of the investigation said it involved allegations of “inappropriate leadership judgment” and stressed it was not related to personal conduct.

The Stennis group arrived in the Fifth Fleet’s area of operations on Oct. 17 to replace the USS Enterprise, which was on the final deployment of its 50 years of service. The allegations are recent and were made within the last couple of weeks.

The Stennis returned to Bremerton in March from a seven-month deployment to the Middle East. In July the Pentagon ordered the carrier to deploy in August — four months ahead of schedule — so a two-carrier presence could be maintained in the Middle East after the Enterprise finished its deployment. The other carrier strike group currently operating in the Fifth Fleet is the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Gaouette’s Chief of Staff, Capt. William C. Minter, will lead the strike group until Rear Adm. Troy M. Shoemaker arrives to take command “until the matter is resolved.”

and.....

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/reagan-defense-official-if-obama-really-gave-the-order-to-secure-libya-personnel-theres-a-paper-trail/

REAGAN DEFENSE OFFICIAL: IF OBAMA REALLY GAVE THE ORDER TO SECURE LIBYA PERSONNEL, ‘THERE’S A PAPER TRAIL’

Posted on October 27, 2012 at 10:05am by Madeleine Morgenstern
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A former Department of Defense official said Friday that if President Barack Obama really gave an order to secure U.S. personnel when the consulate in Libya came under assault, there will a paper trail to prove it.

Francis “Bing” West, who served as an assistant secretary of defense under President Ronald Reagan, told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren that the president’s explanation about his actions when the U.S. mission in Benghazi was attacked should be easily verifiable.

“President Obama today said that he gave an order to everyone while the attack was going on to do everything they could to secure the personnel,” West said. “Now that’s really big because that means that those who were turning down [former Navy SEAL] Ty Woods when he was asking for the help were going against the orders of the president of the United States.”

Woods was one of four Americans killed in the Libya assault. Obama on Friday wouldn’t answer directly whether pleas for help on the ground were denied during the attack, telling KUSA-TV, “the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to.”

“A chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff doesn’t take an order from the president when he says ‘do everything’ and not put that in writing and send it out to the chain of command,” West said. “If that actually happened the way President Obama today said it happened, there’s a paper trail and I think people reasonably enough can say, ‘well can we see the order?’ because hundreds of others supposedly saw this order.”

“But if there is no order then people have to ask some very basic questions, ‘what the heck happened?’” he said.

http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=213240

Reckless Disregard And Traitorous Orders by Obama

The hits just keep coming....

Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command -- who also told the CIA operators twice to "stand down" rather than help the ambassador's team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.

Breaking news on Benghazi: the CIA spokesman, presumably at the direction of CIA director David Petraeus, has put out this statement: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ”

But clearly, someone did issue a "Stand Down" order (that was ignored.) Who was it?
There's only one person left: President Obama himself.
Facts are funny thing -- they eventually lead to inescapable conclusions, no matter how hard you'd wish they didn't, as potential explanations for various events are examined and discarded.
It now appears that we have a President who not only intentionally put our men and women in harm's way without appropriate defensive measures butwhen they came under attack he literally ordered them to die rather than defend them.
Are we as American going to sit for this outrage or will we call it what it is?

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/petraeus-throws-obama-under-bus_657896.html

6:05 PM, OCT 26, 2012 • BY WILLIAM KRISTOL

Breaking news on Benghazi: the CIA spokesman, presumably at the direction of CIA director David Petraeus, has put out this statement: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ”

So who in the government did tell “anybody” not to help those in need? Someone decided not to send in military assets to help those Agency operators. Would the secretary of defense make such a decision on his own? No.

It would have been a presidential decision. There was presumably a rationale for such a decision. What was it? When and why—and based on whose counsel obtained in what meetings or conversations—did President Obama decide against sending in military assets to help the Americans in need?

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/obama-did-not-deny-requests-help-benghazi-aide-182415488--election.html

( White House throws Panetta and the Generals under the bus... )

Obama did not deny requests for help in Benghazi: Aide

By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 3 hrs ago

President Barack Obama talks with supporters after arriving in Manchester, N.H. for a campaign stop Saturday (Winslow Townson/AP)

President Barack Obama talks with supporters after arriving in Manchester, N.H. for a campaign stop Saturday (Winslow …The White House on Saturday flatly denied that President Barack Obama withheld requests for help from the besieged American compound in Benghazi, Libya, as it came under on attack by suspected terrorists on September 11^th.

"Neither the president nor anyone in the White House denied any requests for assistance in Benghazi," National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor told Yahoo News by email.

Fox News Channel reported Friday that American officials in the compound repeatedly asked for military help during the assault butwere rebuffed by CIA higher-ups. At a press briefing one day earlier, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, asked why there had not been a quicker, more forceful response to the assault, complained of "Monday-morning quarterbacking." Panetta said he and top military commanders had judged it too dangerous to send troops to the eastern Libyan city without a clearer picture of events on the ground.

The "basic principle is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on; without having some real-time information about what's taking place," he said during a joint question-and-answer session with Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff General Martin Dempsey.

"As a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, General Ham, General Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation," Panetta said. General Carter Ham commands the U.S. Africa Command.

And the CIA has denied that anyone in its chain of command rejected requests for help from the besieged Americans.

But Weekly Standard Editor Bill Kristol, in a post published Friday, doubted Panetta's explanationand said the fault must lie with Obama himself. "Would the secretary of defense make such a decision on his own? No," Kristol wrote. "It would have been a presidential decision."

"He's wrong," said Vietor.

On Friday, Obama himself forcefully denied deliberately misleading Americans about the attack in Benghazi, which claimed the lives of four Americans including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

CORRECTION 3:26 p.m.: An earlier version of this post confused the timing of the Fox News Channel report and Defense Secretary Panetta's remarks. Panetta's remarks came before the Fox report, not afterwards.

and.....

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/10/26/video-obama-ducks-questions-on-why-help-wasnt-sent-to-benghazi/

Video: Obama ducks questions on why help wasn’t sent to Benghazi

POSTED AT 7:29 PM ON OCTOBER 26, 2012 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

“We’re going to gather all the facts,” he says, echoing Hillary’s plea to let the investigation play out until, oh, say, mid-November at the earliest. Simple question: Why does he need “all the facts” about Benghazi to find out (a) whether anyone at the consulate called for help during the attack and (b) if so, who in the chain of command denied that request? He could find that out with 10 minutes of phoning around and then spend another 10 firing the people involved — assuming, of course, that it wasn’t The One himself who delivered the thumbs down on the calls for help. Problem is, there’s only one thing he really cares about, and that thing wouldn’t be well served by an admission 10 days out from election day that his administration screwed up badly enough in Benghazi to warrant canning people. So he’s playing the “all the facts” game. Estimated arrival of all the facts: 11 days from now.

Clark pressed again.

“Were they denied requests for help during the attack?” he asked.

“Well, we are finding out exactly what happened,” the president again said. “I can tell you, as I’ve said over the last couple of months since this happened, the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very clear directives. Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to. Number two, we’re going to investigate exactly what happened so that it doesn’t happen again. Number three, find out who did this so we can bring them to justice. And I guarantee you that everyone in the state department, our military, the CIA, you name it, had number one priority making sure that people were safe. These were our folks and we’re going to find out exactly what happened, but what we’re also going to do it make sure that we are identifying those who carried out these terrible attacks.”

Two things worth noting there. One: In claiming that he needs to “find out exactly what happened,” he’s professing ignorance about the distress calls. Remember that if/when it comes out later that he had earlier notice than we thought. Two: The first “directive” makes it sound like he’s blaming someone else for not informing him sooner so that he could send the help needed. Is that a reference to the CIA? If so, David Petraeus is prepared for it: Per Bill Kristol, he just threw Obama under the bus.

CIA spokesperson Jennifer Youngblood said, “We can say with confidence that the Agency reacted quickly to aid our colleagues during that terrible evening in Benghazi. Moreover, no one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. In fact, it is important to remember how many lives were saved by courageous Americans who put their own safety at risk that night-and that some of those selfless Americans gave their lives in the effort to rescue their comrades.”

If CIA didn’t give the order to stand down, who did? Panetta? In that case, why is the Secretary of Defense being called on to make a snap decision on a sudden military intervention in the middle of an international crisis? To put it differently, if O’s excuse is that no one gave him a heads up while this was going on — for hours — why didn’t he get that heads up? “The ambassador is under siege by jihadists in Libya and his security detail is requesting assistance” sounds exactly like the sort of thing you’d get in the fabled 3 a.m. phone call. How come someone other than O took the call, if that’s what in fact happened? Was he busy with something more important, like a fundraiser in Vegas?

His alleged ignorance isn’t limited to the distress calls, either:

President Obama today said that he had not been aware of the requests for additional security made by security officials in Libya before the deadly attacks on U.S. diplomatic posts in Benghazi.

“I was not personally aware of any request,” the president told radio host Michael Smerconish. ”We have an infrastructure set up to manage requests like that but we’re going to find out what happened. Ultimately though any time there is a death of an American overseas I want to find out what happened because my most important job as President is to keep the American people safe.”

It sure is odd how thoroughly uninformed he seems to have been about what was happening in Libya, which is supposed to be a key part of his reelection foreign-policy credentials. In fact, after you watch the video of his interview with the Denver station, listen to the call Rush Limbaugh got today from someone claiming (convincingly) to be a special ops planner. He insists that Obama would have, or should have, been informed within minutes once the Situation Room got a message that Stevens was in peril. If that’s true, then it defies reason to think O wouldn’t have also been informed immediately once Americans at the consulate were requesting military help. The caller thinks maybe Obama gave the thumbs down because he was afraid of another Desert One-type failure happening and branding his administration Carter redux right before the election. Could be, but I think the success of the Bin Laden raid has immunized him on that to some extent. Another possibility is that O didn’t want to send American troops in with guns blazing for fear of a backlash in Libya specifically or across the region generally. That would have also complicated his reelection narrative: Supposedly, helping to topple Qaddafi has earned us goodwill among devotees of the Arab Spring; having a gunship hovering over Benghazi blasting away followed by protests among our new Libyan friends would have cut the knees out from under that storyline. The thing about the distress calls is that even the “best-case scenario” — that Obama wasn’t in fact told until it was too late to help — is proof of catastrophic dysfunction. If that’s how O’s going to play it, pleading ignorance to cover his own ass, okay, but then let’s some some people get fired. Tomorrow.

http://theulstermanreport.com/2012/10/26/white-house-insider-emergency-all-call-at-obama-white-house/

WHITE HOUSE INSIDER: Emergency All Call At Obama White House

by Ulsterman on October 26, 2012 with 34 Comments in News

This brief update just came from Insider:

Got word an all-call went out at the WH A.M. today.

That means they are doing what’s called “huddling”. Has to be related to the Benghazi news now hitting. Have good source in Chicago saying their office is acting very odd today as well. Can’t say if this will break out all the way now, but we are getting very close to an all out WH red alert scenario. Not there yet but very close.

Significant activity from Ruemmler’s office over the last 24.

In this situation there will likely be 1 of 2 responses from WH.

-Highly controlled briefing response. Attempt explanation, then hope story gets buried over weekend and race to election day.

-Announced resignation of someone inside administration. President apologizes for mistakes by some in his administration. Thatdeal could be under negotiation at this very moment.

Second scenario not as likely. Not yet. But the Ruemmler activity makes me believe there’s more damaging information out there to the administration on Benghazi than has already come out today. They are trying to assess what will and will not get out to determine response. To have a potential scandal of this magnitude so close to an election is unprecedented. Priority for them will be to insulate the president. Got to try and cut that off. Get someone inside go public and point the finger at Obama.

Now I do what I do best.

http://theulstermanreport.com/2012/10/26/obama-white-house-goes-into-information-lock-down/

Obama White House Goes Into Information Lock Down

by Ulsterman on October 26, 2012 with 13 Comments in News

With mounting questions surrounding the Benghazi Massacre, and Barack Obama’s consistent slide in the national polls, the administration has not held a press briefing at the White House since October 10th – this from the most “transparent” administration in America’s history…

White House Kills the Briefing Room Lights

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has apparently been pulled from the podium of the White House Briefing Room, as President Obama’s political advisers seek to control their messaging as much as possible and avoid unforced errors.

Carney, the public face of the “openness” White House, has not briefed from the podium since October 10. It’s the only time he has appeared there this month.

Obama’s travel does not explain Carney’s failure to brief. The press secretary generally submits to questioning before the cameras when the president is at the White House, and Obama has spent three days there in addition to October 10 – October 12, October 19, and today, when Carney is again not scheduled to brief. LINK

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2223747/CIA-agents-Benghazi-twice-asked-permission-help-Ambassador-Chris-Stevens-bullets-flying-twice-told-stand-down.html?ITO=1490

CIA agents in Benghazi twice asked for permission to help Ambassador Chris Stevens as bullets were flying and twice were told to 'stand down'

Revelations shed new light on the effectiveness of the CIA at Benghazi and the level of support they were given
When the CIA annex come under attack the field agents were denied a request for military help despite a counter terrorism team being two hours away in Italy
There was full communication between operatives on the ground and headquarters - with the ability to laser guide drones, planes or special forces to enemy targets

By JAMES NYE

PUBLISHED: 14:37 EST, 26 October 2012 | UPDATED: 16:08 EST, 26 October 2012

It has been claimed that CIA agents on the ground during the deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi twice asked for permission to help Ambassador Chris Stevens and twice were told to stand down.

Furthermore sources present during the deadly six-hour assault have said that a desperate last request for military assistance once the CIA themselves came under attack was denied, even though elite counter-terrorism units were only two hours away.

And it has been claimed there was full communication between the CIA annex in Benghazi and the U.S. military, casting further doubts on the Obama administration's assertion that there wasn't enough information to deploy forces - deepening the crisis over their handling of the attack on September 11th and its aftermath

The lethal assault which led to the death of Ambassador Stevens and three other U.S. citizens began at 9.40 p.m. as the U.S Consulate came under fire from hostile Libyan forces.

According to Fox News, ex-Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, who was part of a small team at the CIA annex about a mile from the consulate, asked his superiors if he could go and assist the embattled diplomatic compound.

However, they were told to 'stand down' and according to sources who spoke to the news channel were told to 'stand down' again after asking for a second time to help Ambassador Stevens and his staff.

Ignoring these orders, Woods and two others heroically made their way to the consulate which by now was ablaze and began firing on the attackers.

The quick reaction force which Woods was part of helped an evacuation of the main building and recovered the body of State Department staff member Sean Smith who had died in the initial attack.

However, the team from the CIA annex could not locate Ambassador Stevens and returned to their own base at around midnight where they came under attack themselves.

Immediately calling for assistance from Sigonella Air base in Italy which is two hours away, it is claimed that two separate special operations teams and air support were told to wait - despite the gun battle raging for four hours.

It is not known who denied the request for help for the CIA operatives on the ground at Benghazi.

If true these claims will radically change the perception of the field agents who were operating on the ground in Benghazi.

Previously criticised for providing inadequate security for the consulate staff, the new information shows intelligence operatives repeatedly tried to assist and in fact were denied their own requests for outside help.

Refuting the Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's claim yesterday that there simply wasn't enough information to responsibly deploy forces to Libya at the time of the attack, sources on the ground claim that communication was open throughout the attack.

Indeed, one member of the CIA team who was on the roof of the annex was in possession of a laser to guide aerial targets including drones and repeatedly requested backup from a Specter gunship to take out an attacker firing mortars.

According to sources familiar with the situation, the operative had visual contact with the Libyan mortar team and in addition was able to pinpoint positions from where the consulate attackers were firing from.

Yesterday Leon Panetta claimed that he and General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Carter Ham, head of the U.S. military's Africa Command, felt they couldn't 'put forces at risk in that situation.'

'This happened within a few hours and it was really over before, you know, we had the opportunity to really know what was happening,' said Panetta.

Furthermore, Fox News has learned that there were two military surveillance drones above the skies of Benghazi during the attack which would have been able to relay real time visuals of the assault to U.S. officials in the White House situation room and the Pentagon.

Tyrone Woods and another former Navy SEAL Glen Doherty were killed by a mortar shell at 4 a.m. Libyan time, over six hours after the attack began and just one hour after relief from an American Quick Reaction Force sent from Tripoli had arrive.

This new information comes as President Barack Obama's response to the attacks in Libya has become a contentious issue in the hard-fought U.S. presidential race, with Republican opponents raising questions about his administration's truthfulness and competence.

Obama supporters have in turn accused Republicans of making unfounded accusations in an effort to score political points from the death of a U.S. ambassador and the three others killed in the Benghazi attack.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican John Boehner, asked in a letter to Obama on Thursday about whether military options and assets were offered 'during and in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attack.'

'Can you explain what options were presented to you or your staff, and why it appears assets were not allowed to be pre-positioned, let alone utilized?' Boehner asked.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told Pentagon reporters that U.S. forces were on a heightened state of alert already because of the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington by al Qaeda.

In the aftermath of the attack, Panetta reminded reporters that the Pentagon deployed a Marine fleet anti-terrorist security team to Tripoli and had Navy ships off the coast.

'And we were prepared to respond to any contingency. And certainly had forces in place to do that,' he said.

The administration initially attributed the violence to protests over an anti-Islam film and said it was not premeditated. Obama and other officials have since said the incident was a deliberate terrorist attack.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has attributed the shifting explanation to 'the fog of war.'

A State Department email made public this week showed that two hours after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission compound in Benghazi, the Department's Operations Center advised officials at various U.S. agencies that a militant group called Ansar al-Sharia had claimed credit on Twitter and Facebook for the attacks.

U.S. officials, including Clinton, on Wednesday said that such Internet postings did not constitute hard evidence of who was responsible for the attacks.

The State Department has set up an independent review board to investigate the background and response to the attacks.

The U.S. Senate intelligence committee on Thursday said it will hold hearings in November - after the November 6 presidential election - on security and intelligence issues raised by the September 11 attack in Libya.

http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/father-slain-seal-who-made-decision-not-save-my-son_657782.html

On meeting Obama: “Could not look me in the eye … like shaking hands with a dead fish.”

6:18 PM, OCT 25, 2012 • BY DANIEL HALPER

Charles Woods, the father of Tyrone Woods, who was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attack at the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, reveals details of meeting Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton at the publically broadcast memorial service for the slain Americans at Andrews Air Force Base only days after the attack. And, in a recent radio appearance, Woods publicly questions who made the call not to send in back-up forces to possibly save his son’s life, as well as the three other Americans killed in Benghazi (which includes the American ambassador to Libya).

NEWSCOM

“When [Obama] came over to our little area” at Andrew Air Force Base, says Woods, “he kind of just mumbled, you know, ‘I’m sorry.’ His face was looking at me, but his eyes were looking over my shoulder like he could not look me in the eye. And it was not a sincere, ‘I’m really sorry, you know, that your son died,’ but it was totally insincere, more of whining type, ‘I’m sorry.’”

Woods says that shaking President Obama’s hands at his son’s memorial service was “like shaking hands with a dead fish.”

“It just didn’t feel right,” he says of his encounter with the commander in chief. “And now that it’s coming out that apparently the White House situation room was watching our people die in real time, as this was happening,” Woods says, he wants answers on what happened—and why there was no apparent effort to save his son’s life.

“Well, this is what Hillary did,” Woods continues. “She came over and, you know, did the same thing—separately came over and talked with me. I gave her a hug, shook her hand. And she did not appear to be one bit sincere—at all. And you know, she mentioned that the thing about, we’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video. That was the first time I had even heard about anything like that.”

and........

http://www.silverdoctors.com/bill-clinton-told-hillary-to-resign-us-was-arming-syrian-al-queda-muslim-brotherhood/#more-16109

BILL CLINTON TOLD HILLARY TO RESIGN; US WAS ARMING SYRIAN AL QUEDA, MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

OCTOBER 26, 2012 BY THE DOC 18 COMMENTS

In what is rapidly becoming the biggest cover-up in US history, reports have surfaced that former President Clinton as well as her legal team have advised Secretary of State Hilary Clinton to resign over the recent Benghazi attacks.
The reports indicate that the US was running guns through Turkey to support the Syrian rebels- which coincidentally happen to be Al-Queda and the Muslim Brotherhood. Clinton has retained personal legal counsel over potential CRIMINAL CHARGES.

Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, came forward to “take responsibility overall” for the attacks at Benghazi, but perEd Klein we now know behind the scenes Bill Clinton advised his wife to resign over the possible criminal fallout of the Benghazi massacre. Today we learn from sources that not only did Hillary ask for added security, and was denied, but her closest advisers strongly suggested she seek legal counsel just days after the attack. Why? Why did “they” deny Hillary’s requests for added security to Benghazi, and why is this a situation in which a Secretary of State would need personal legal counsel? Could the Benghazi fallout, go beyond what a Public Relations firm can handle?…

To fully understand what happened in Benghazi, we need to step back. Ambassador Stevens was located in a CIA safehouse (otherwise known as the building burned down during attack)–that location is where on the night of the attack he dined with the Turkish General Counsel. Why? Why was Stevens meeting with this Turkish official? Apparently, in reports the US was gun running weapons through Turkey to aid the Syrian Rebels, but the real kicker here is that we handed over 400 tons in one shipment, to Al Queda and the Muslim Brotherhood, who are the leaders of these so called “Syrian Rebels”. We can speculate what the Turkish General Counsel talked with Ambassador Stevens about that night—but what is clear is that the Al Queda backed forces were on scene whilst the two men dined.

and....

Father of SEAL killed in Benghazi: Hillary told me, “We will make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted”

POSTED AT 9:46 PM ON OCTOBER 25, 2012 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

Via Glenn Beck, the bit about Hillary comes at the start of the second clip but both are worth listening to as an insight into how O, Biden, and Clinton allegedly operate in semi-private circumstances. The awkward “cueballs” line from Biden rings especially true, although I think he meant it as a compliment in his own oafish, hey-hiya-howareya way. With all due respect to Beck and Mr. Woods, though, I find Hillary’s comment about the movie significant for reasons different than they do. They seem to take it as evidence of a lie. She was pretending that the movie was to blame when we now know that the White House was tipped off to a terrorist connection in the earliest hours after the attack. Fair enough, but that gets back to the point I made last night: As far as I can tell, even now, the White House isn’t treating the “spontaneous outrage over a YouTube movie” and “organized terrorist attack” narratives as mutually exclusive. As recently as last week, long after the entire administration had finally gotten on board with the idea that this was in fact terrorism, the State Department was still looking at what role the Mohammed movie might have played in inspiring the attack. The going theory, I guess, is that the attackers seized on the uproar over the film elsewhere in the region as an incentive to hit the consulate in hopes of ingratiating themselves with people angry about the movie. That seems unlikely given how many people were involved and the sophistication of the weapons they used — there had to be some planning beforehand to pull this all together — but it beats the chump theory that none of this would have happened if jihadists’ delicate sensibilities hadn’t been inflamed. The assault on the embassy in Cairo pretty clearly used the movie as a pretext, to flex Islamists’ muscles; in theory, the attack on the consulate was a more vicious exercise towards the same end. As I said last night, The One and Hillary owe us a firm explanation on what their theory is.

What I found significant about this wasn’t the “movie protest” versus “preplanned attack” element, it was the fact that Hillary’s promise of vengeance to the father of a fallen SEAL wasn’t that we’d get the jihadis who killed him but that we’d punish the filmmaker. That’s perverse, but in keeping with the fact that she decided to run ads on Pakistani TV apologizing for the film while Islamist cretins menaced American diplomats across the region. Even if you give her the benefit of the doubt and assume that she had no intention of prosecuting the filmmaker but was merely telling Woods something she thought would console him, why on earth would she zero in on the filmmaker as the target of blame instead of the degenerates who actually shot his son? She and O need to answer. Let’s see how much they really value free speech. Simple question for both: Is Woods a liar or not?

......http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/24/obama-terrorism-kill-list

Obama moves to make the War on Terror permanent

Complete with a newly coined, creepy Orwellian euphemism – 'disposition matrix' – the administration institutionalizes the most extremist powers a government can claim

- Glenn Greenwald
- guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 October 2012 08.17 EDT
- Jump to comments (1348)

The National Counterterrorism Center, the site of a new bureaucracy to institutionalize the 'kill list'. Photograph: FBI

(updated below - Update II - Update III)

A primary reason for opposing the acquisition of abusive powers and civil liberties erosions is that they virtually always become permanent, vested not only in current leaders one may love and trust but also future officials who seem more menacing and less benign.

The Washington Post has a crucial and disturbing story this morning by Greg Miller about the concerted efforts by the Obama administration to fully institutionalize – to make officially permanent – the most extremist powers it has exercised in the name of the war on terror.

Based on interviews with "current and former officials from the White House and the Pentagon, as well as intelligence and counterterrorism agencies", Miller reports that as "the United States' conventional wars are winding down", the Obama administration "expects to continue adding names to kill or capture lists for years" (the "capture" part of that list is little more than symbolic, as the US focus is overwhelmingly on the "kill" part). Specifically, "among senior Obama administration officials, there is broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade." As Miller puts it: "That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism."

In pursuit of this goal, "White House counterterrorism adviser John O Brennan is seeking to codify the administration's approach to generating capture/kill lists, part of a broader effort to guide future administrations through the counterterrorism processes that Obama has embraced." All of this, writes Miller, demonstrates "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."

The Post article cites numerous recent developments reflecting this Obama effort, including the fact that "CIA Director David H Petraeus is pushing for an expansion of the agency's fleet of armed drones", which "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-September 11 focus on gathering intelligence." The article also describes rapid expansion of commando operations by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and, perhaps most disturbingly, the creation of a permanent bureaucratic infrastructure to allow the president to assassinate at will:

"JSOC also has established a secret targeting center across the Potomac River from Washington, current and former U.S. officials said. The elite command's targeting cells have traditionally been located near the front lines of its missions, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. But JSOC created a 'national capital region' task force that is a 15-minute commute from the White House so it could be more directly involved in deliberations about al-Qaeda lists."

The creepiest aspect of this development is the christening of a new Orwellian euphemism for due-process-free presidential assassinations: "disposition matrix". Writes Miller:

"Over the past two years, the Obama administration has been secretly developing a new blueprint for pursuing terrorists, a next-generation targeting list called the 'disposition matrix'.

"The matrix contains the names of terrorism suspects arrayed against an accounting of the resources being marshaled to track them down, including sealed indictments and clandestine operations. US officials said the database is designed to go beyond existing kill lists, mapping plans for the 'disposition' of suspects beyond the reach of American drones."

The "disposition matrix" has been developed and will be overseen by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). One of its purposes is "to augment" the "separate but overlapping kill lists" maintained by the CIA and the Pentagon: to serve, in other words, as the centralized clearinghouse for determining who will be executed without due process based upon how one fits into the executive branch's "matrix". As Miller describes it, it is "a single, continually evolving database" which includes "biographies, locations, known associates and affiliated organizations" as well as "strategies for taking targets down, including extradition requests, capture operations and drone patrols". This analytical system that determines people's "disposition" will undoubtedly be kept completely secret; Marcy Wheeler sardonically said that she was "looking forward to the government's arguments explaining why it won't release the disposition matrix to ACLU under FOIA".

This was all motivated by Obama's refusal to arrest or detain terrorist suspects, and his resulting commitment simply to killing them at will (his will). Miller quotes "a former US counterterrorism official involved in developing the matrix" as explaining the impetus behind the program this way: "We had a disposition problem."

The central role played by the NCTC in determining who should be killed – "It is the keeper of the criteria," says one official to the Post – is, by itself, rather odious. As Kade Crockford of the ACLU of Massachusettsnoted in response to this story, the ACLU has long warned that the real purpose of the NCTC – despite its nominal focus on terrorism - is the "massive, secretive data collection and mining of trillions of points of data about most people in the United States".

In particular, the NCTC operates a gigantic data-mining operation, in which all sorts of information about innocent Americans is systematically monitored, stored, and analyzed. This includes "records from law enforcement investigations, health information, employment history, travel and student records" – "literally anything the government collects would be fair game". In other words, the NCTC - now vested with the power to determine the proper "disposition" of terrorist suspects - is the same agency that is at the center of the ubiquitous, unaccountable surveillance state aimed at American citizens.

Worse still, as the ACLU's legislative counsel Chris Calabrese documented back in July in a must-read analysis, Obama officials very recently abolished safeguards on how this information can be used. Whereas the agency, during the Bush years, was barred from storing non-terrorist-related information about innocent Americans for more than 180 days – a limit which "meant that NCTC was dissuaded from collecting large databases filled with information on innocent Americans" – it is now free to do so. Obama officials eliminated this constraint by authorizing the NCTC "to collect and 'continually assess' information on innocent Americans for up to five years".

And, as usual, this agency engages in these incredibly powerful and invasive processes with virtually no democratic accountability:

"All of this is happening with very little oversight. Controls over the NCTC are mostly internal to the DNI's office, and important oversight bodies such as Congress and the President's Intelligence Oversight Board aren't notified even of 'significant' failures to comply with the Guidelines. Fundamental legal protections are being sidestepped. For example, under the new guidelines, Privacy Act notices (legal requirements to describe how databases are used) must be completed by the agency that collected the information. This is in spite of the fact that those agencies have no idea what NCTC is actually doing with the information once it collects it.

"All of this amounts to a reboot of the Total Information Awareness Program that Americans rejected so vigorously right after 9/11."

It doesn't require any conspiracy theorizing to see what's happening here. Indeed, it takes extreme naiveté, or wilful blindness, not to see it.

What has been created here - permanently institutionalized - is a highly secretive executive branch agency that simultaneously engages in two functions: (1) it collects and analyzes massive amounts of surveillance data about all Americans without any judicial review let alone search warrants, and (2) creates and implements a "matrix" that determines the "disposition" of suspects, up to and including execution, without a whiff of due process or oversight. It is simultaneously a surveillance state and a secretive, unaccountable judicial body that analyzes who you are and then decrees what should be done with you, how you should be "disposed" of, beyond the reach of any minimal accountability or transparency.

The Post's Miller recognizes the watershed moment this represents: "The creation of the matrix and the institutionalization of kill/capture lists reflect a shift that is as psychological as it is strategic." As he explains, extra-judicial assassination was once deemed so extremist that very extensive deliberations were required before Bill Clinton could target even Osama bin Laden for death by lobbing cruise missiles in East Africa. But:

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.

To understand the Obama legacy, please re-read that sentence. As Murtaza Hussain put it when reacting to the Post story: "The US agonized over the targeted killing Bin Laden at Tarnak Farms in 1998; now it kills people it barely suspects of anything on a regular basis."

The pragmatic inanity of the mentality driving this is self-evident: as Idiscussed yesterday (and many other times), continuous killing does not eliminate violence aimed at the US but rather guarantees its permanent expansion. As a result, wrote Miller, "officials said no clear end is in sight" when it comes to the war against "terrorists" because, said one official, "we can't possibly kill everyone who wants to harm us" but trying is "a necessary part of what we do". Of course, the more the US kills and kills and kills, the more people there are who "want to harm us". That's the logic that has resulted in a permanent war on terror.

But even more significant is the truly radical vision of government in which this is all grounded. The core guarantee of western justice since the Magna Carta was codified in the US by the fifth amendment to the constitution: "No person shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law." You simply cannot have a free society, a worthwhile political system, without that guarantee, that constraint on the ultimate abusive state power, being honored.

And yet what the Post is describing, what we have had for years, is a system of government that – without hyperbole – is the very antithesis of that liberty. It is literally impossible to imagine a more violent repudiation of the basic blueprint of the republic than the development of a secretive, totally unaccountable executive branch agency that simultaneously collects information about all citizens and then applies a "disposition matrix" to determine what punishment should be meted out. This is classic political dystopia brought to reality (despite how compelled such a conclusion is by these indisputable facts, many Americans will view such a claim as an exaggeration, paranoia, or worse because of this psychological dynamic I described here which leads many good passive westerners to believe that true oppression, by definition, is something that happens only elsewhere).

In response to the Post story, Chris Hayes asked: "If you have a 'kill list', but the list keeps growing, are you succeeding?" The answer all depends upon what the objective is.

As the Founders all recognized, nothing vests elites with power – and profit – more than a state of war. That is why there were supposed to be substantial barriers to having them start and continue - the need for a Congressional declaration, the constitutional bar on funding the military for more than two years at a time, the prohibition on standing armies, etc. Here is how John Jay put it in Federalist No 4:

"It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it; nay, absolute monarchs will often make war when their nations are to get nothing by it, but for the purposes and objects merely personal, such as thirst for military glory, revenge for personal affronts, ambition, or private compacts to aggrandize or support their particular families or partisans. These and a variety of other motives, which affect only the mind of the sovereign, often lead him to engage in wars not sanctified by justice or the voice and interests of his people."

In sum, there are factions in many governments that crave a state of endless war because that is when power is least constrained and profit most abundant. What the Post is reporting is yet another significant step toward that state, and it is undoubtedly driven, at least on the part of some, by a self-interested desire to ensure the continuation of endless war and the powers and benefits it vests. So to answer Hayes' question: the endless expansion of a kill list and the unaccountable, always-expanding powers needed to implement it does indeed represent a great success for many. Read what John Jay wrote in the above passage to see why that is, and why few, if any, political developments should be regarded as more pernicious.

Detention policies

Assuming the Post's estimates are correct – that "among senior Obama administration officials, there is broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade" – this means that the war on terror will last for more than 20 years, far longer than any other American war. This is what has always made the rationale for indefinite detention – that it is permissible to detain people without due process until the "end of hostilities" – so warped in this context. Those who are advocating that are endorsing nothing less than life imprisonment - permanent incarceration – without any charges or opportunities to contest the accusations.

That people are now dying at Guantanamo after almost a decade in a cage with no charges highlights just how repressive that power is. Extend that mentality to secret, due-process-free assassinations – something the US government clearly intends to convert into a permanent fixture of American political life – and it is not difficult to see just how truly extremist and anti-democratic "war on terror" proponents in both political parties have become.

UPDATE

As I noted yesterday, Afghan officials reported that three Afghan children were killed on Saturday by NATO operations. Today, reports CNN, "missiles blew up part of a compound Wednesday in northwest Pakistan, killing three people - including one woman" and added: "the latest suspected U.S. drone strike also injured two children." Meanwhile, former Obama press secretary and current campaign adviser Robert Gibbs this week justified the US killing of 16-year-old American Abdulrahaman Awlaki, killed by a US drone in Yemen two weeks after his father was, on the ground that he "should have a far more responsible father".

Also yesterday, CNN profiled Abu Sufyan Said al-Shihri, alleged to be a top al-Qaida official in Yemen. He pointed out "that U.S. drone strikes are helping al-Qaida in Yemen because of the number of civilian deaths they cause." Ample evidence supports his observation.

To summarize all this: the US does not interfere in the Muslim world and maintain an endless war on terror because of the terrorist threat. It has a terrorist threat because of its interference in the Muslim world and its endless war on terror.

UPDATE II

The Council on Foreign Relations' Micah Zenko, writing today about the Post article, reports:

"Recently, I spoke to a military official with extensive and wide-ranging experience in the special operations world, and who has had direct exposure to the targeted killing program. To emphasize how easy targeted killings by special operations forces or drones has become, this official flicked his hand back over and over, stating: 'It really is like swatting flies. We can do it forever easily and you feel nothing. But how often do you really think about killing a fly?'"

That is disturbingly consistent with prior reports that the military's term for drone victims is "bug splat". This - this warped power and the accompanying dehumanizing mindset - is what is being institutionalized as a permanent fixture in American political life by the current president.

UPDATE III

At Wired, Spencer Ackerman reacts to the Post article with an analysisentitled "President Romney Can Thank Obama for His Permanent Robotic Death List". Here is his concluding paragraph:

"Obama did not run for president to preside over the codification of a global war fought in secret. But that's his legacy. . . . Micah Zenko at the Council on Foreign Relations writes that Obama's predecessors in the Bush administration 'were actually much more conscious and thoughtful about the long-term implications of targeted killings', because they feared the political consequences that might come when the U.S. embraces something at least superficially similar to assassination. Whoever follows Obama in the Oval Office can thank him for proving those consequences don't meaningfully exist — as he or she reviews the backlog of names on the Disposition Matrix."

It's worth devoting a moment to letting that sink in.

and....

Woods continues: “Apparently even the State Department had a live stream and was aware of their calls for help. My son wasn’t even there. He was at a safe house about a mile away. He got the distress call; he heard them crying for help; that’s why he and Glen risked their lives to go that extra mile just to take care of the situation. And I’m sure that wasn’t the only one received that distress call—you know, come save our lives … I’m sure that other people in the military, in the State Department, in the White House, received that same call that he would receive. And I’m sure that most military people would jump at the chance … to protect that life [and] not leave anyone behind.”

Woods made clear that he isn't "mad," but that he wants to the "truth" to be told because he feels " abandoned."

Woods says he was told by military officials that the military could have "come above [the area] and completely carpeted area," and therefore saved the officials in Benghazi, Libya. But that someone gave the command for the American military not to save the lives of the Americans under attack.

"When I heard, you know, that there's a very good chance that the White House as well as other members of the military knew what was going on and obviously someone had to say, don't go rescue them. Because every person in the military--their first response [would be], we're going to go rescue them. We need to find out who it was that gave that command--do not rescue them."

Catharsis Ours

Friday, October 26, 2012

Benghazi going nuclear as the issues just won't go away ..... and now there is a disposition matrix to consider as endless kill lists become part of every day life.

Obama's Approval Rating Has Collapsed In The Past 3 Days

GOSH, WHICH COULD IT BE? "Either Fox is making stuff up, or the administration is lying through its teeth"

Local news reporter grills President Obama on Libya, ‘bullshitter’ remark

Obama Administration Replaces Top Generals Following Benghazi Disaster

Posted by Jim Hoft on Saturday, October 27, 2012, 3:45 PM

Navy Replaces Admiral Leading

Mideast Strike Group Because of

Ongoing Investigation

REAGAN DEFENSE OFFICIAL: IF OBAMA REALLY GAVE THE ORDER TO SECURE LIBYA PERSONNEL, ‘THERE’S A PAPER TRAIL’

Petraeus Throws Obama Under the Bus

Obama did not deny requests for help in Benghazi: Aide

Video: Obama ducks questions on why help wasn’t sent to Benghazi

POSTED AT 7:29 PM ON OCTOBER 26, 2012 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

WHITE HOUSE INSIDER: Emergency All Call At Obama White House

Obama White House Goes Into Information Lock Down

White House Kills the Briefing Room Lights

CIA agents in Benghazi twice asked for permission to help Ambassador Chris Stevens as bullets were flying and twice were told to 'stand down'

Father of Slain SEAL: Who Made the Decision Not to Save My Son?

On meeting Obama: “Could not look me in the eye … like shaking hands with a dead fish.”

BILL CLINTON TOLD HILLARY TO RESIGN; US WAS ARMING SYRIAN AL QUEDA, MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

Father of SEAL killed in Benghazi: Hillary told me, “We will make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted”

POSTED AT 9:46 PM ON OCTOBER 25, 2012 BY ALLAHPUNDIT

Obama moves to make the War on Terror permanent

Detention policies

UPDATE

UPDATE II

UPDATE III

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