Tag Archives: Marco Rubio

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13 Hours movie review, and my top 25 posts about the Benghazi cover-up

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13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi
13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi

I went to see the movie 13 hours on Saturday and found that it dovetailed nicely with all the stories that I had written on this blog about the events in Libya and the subsequent lies and cover-up by the Obama administration.

I was asked to review the movie and post all of the links to the previous stories by my friends Kevin and McKenzie, so that’s what I’m going to do.

So, I am a huge war movie fan, and I read military biography and military history. The most frustrating thing in war movies and books about war is that the go too far down to the level of details, without providing the context. Very frustrating. I don’t want movies to be too much about action and fancy animations. I want to learn something about the strategy and tactics in play. And 13 Hours does not disappoint.

You get a lot of exposure to the real world of espionage, black ops and drones for one thing. They show you the insides of a real CIA station in Libya, tell how it was acquired, and they show what goes on there. You also get to see what diplomats do, and who is responsible for keeping them safe. The battle scenes feature a ton of top down / map-like shots. There are shots of maps with the buildings and who will be deployed where, and for what reason.

Everything is called by its real name, e.g. – a technical is not called “a pickup truck with a heavy weapon”, it’s called a “technical”. An AC-130 gunship is not “air support” it’s an AC-130 gunship. A Predator drone is not a drone, it’s a Predator. An F-16 is not a “fighter jet” it’s an F-16. A QRF is not a “Quick Reaction Force”, it’s a QRF. Too bad for you if you don’t read enough to know what these things are and how they work. Everyone should be interested in these things, because these things matter for national security and foreign policy.

And the actual scenes of shooting is not mindless gunplay like in “Inception” or “The Matrix” – they try to show you the ranges, the cover, the concealment, the lines of sight, suppression, etc. There is realistic confusion about fog of war (FOW) and identifaction: friend of foe (IFF). The fact that this is a true story where the people involved all collaborated on the book and on the movie makes it really something if you like realism. This is how State Department and CIA work in other countries really goes down. If you liked “Act of Valor”, “American Sniper”, “Blackhawk Down”, “Lone Survivor” or the battle scenes in “Rules of Engagement”, then you need to see this movie.

Hillary Clinton look bored about the deaths of 4 Americans who asked for her help
Hillary Clinton look bored about the deaths of 4 Americans who asked for her help

What difference at this point does it make?

All right, now the politics was kept to a minimum in the movie, but I was asked to list out all the posts that I wrote about this.

The list of posts goes back in time from October 22, 2015 to September 13th, 2012 (the day after the terrorist attack):

  1. Hillary Clinton’s State Department ignored 600+ requests for more security in Benghazi
  2. Why did Hillary Clinton blame the Benghazi terrorist attack on an “Internet video”?
  3. All evidence points to Hillary Clinton as source of internet video lie
  4. E-mails: Hillary Clinton’s top aides knew in minutes that Benghazi was a terrorist attack
  5. Clinton confidants were present to “separate” damaging documents before Benghazi probe
  6. E-mails: Susan Rice prepped to lie about Benghazi by White House
  7. Transcripts show that top U.S. military officials briefed Obama on Benghazi terrorist attack
  8. Benghazi liar Susan Rice to be appointed National Security Adviser by grateful Obama
  9. Released e-mails show that State Department edited terrorism out of Benghazi talking points
  10. Obama: editing of talking points to cover-up of Benghazi terrorist attack is a “sideshow”
  11. BBC News covers whistle-blower testimony: “After Benghazi revelations, heads will roll”
  12. What we learned from the Benghazi whistle-blowers
  13. Whistle-blower: State Department cut counterterrorism experts out of Benghazi decisions
  14. Official: We knew Benghazi was a terrorist attack “from the get-go”
  15. Benghazi whistle-blower: assets to protect the embassy were available
  16. Obama administration refused to engage top counter-terrorism resource for Benghazi
  17. Classified cable sent on August 16th warned of vulnerability of Benghazi consulate
  18. Requests for support from Benghazi defenders denied by the Obama administration
  19. White House told that terrorists took credit for Benghazi attack within two hours
  20. Unmanned drone observed Benghazi attack, no help sent for 7 hours
  21. CIA in Libya reported that Benghazi was a terrorist attack in first 24 hours
  22. Obama’s Watergate: State Department falsifies Obama’s Benghazi cover-up
  23. Benghazi attack was a massive failure of Obama’s security policy
  24. UK Independent: “America ‘was warned of embassy attack but did nothing’”
  25. Al Qaeda chief suspect in Libya terrorist attack, Obama flies to Las Vegas fundraiser

And of course the famous Hillary Clinton meltdown when questions about why she blamed a terrorist attack on a YouTube video, and why there was a stand down order to prevent help from being sent.

Hillary also lied to the families of the victims, telling the families that she blamed a YouTube video for protests that got out of hand.

To make a long story short, the Benghazi terrorist attack occurred two months before the 2012 re-election of Barack Obama. And that’s why Obama, Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice lied to the American people about it – they did not want the American people to know how poorly their Libya intervention had worked out. An intervention that was strongly supported by easily-influenced moderate, establishment Republicans such as Marco Rubio, by the way. Everyone who voted for the Obama administration in the 2012 elections voted against the 4 Americans who were killed in that terrorist attack. As Secretary of State, Clinton did not prioritize national security. Her focus was on promoting abortion and gay rights abroad.

Searching by tag name

If you want to search the blog by tag, just add tag/<tagName> to the end of the web page address (URL). The list above was generated with: “https://winteryknight.com/tag/Benghazi“. Use a dash for spaces in the tagName. For my other series of posts about Democrat scandals, such as Fast and Furious, just change the tag name: “https://winteryknight.com/tag/Fast-and-Furious“. You can do the same thing with the e-mail scandal, the Clinton Foundation scandal, and all the other scandals of this corrupt Democrat administration.

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CNN Debate: Ted Cruz hammers Marco Rubio over support for amnesty and Libya disaster

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The last GOP primary debate of 2015
The last GOP primary debate of 2015

Wow. If you missed tonight’s two CNN debates, you missed two great debates. Wolf Blitzer and Dana Bash show very little if any liberal bias, and the most biased moderator was actually the moderate RINO Hugh Hewitt. Substance, substance, substance.

Let’s look at the two biggest clashes of the night, both between Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio.

Cruz vs Rubio on amnesty and border security

The Washington Examiner was the most interesting exchange of the night between Cruz and Rubio, about Rubio’s past support for amnesty.

Excerpt:

Ted Cruz continued his fight with Marco Rubio over immigration and the Florida senator’s initial support of the Gang of Eight bill, which died in 2013.

The Texas senator told CNN’s Dana Bash that “border security is national security.”

“He has attempted to muddy the waters,” Cruz said of Rubio. “But I think that anyone who watched the battle that we had. … There was a time for choosing, as Reagan put it, where there was a battle over amnesty, and some chose to stand with Barack Obama and Chuck Schumer and support a massive amnesty plan. Others chose to stand with Jeff Sessions and Steve King and the American people and secure the border.”

Cruz then pivoted to tie the immigration issue to national security, arguing that the proposed immigration plan in 2013 had inadequate vetting, including the lack of mandated background checks for those entering the country.

“This issue is directly connected to what we’ve been talking about because he front line with ISIS isn’t just in Iraq and Syria, it’s in Kennedy Airport and the Rio Grande,” Cruz said. “Border security is national security, and one of the most troubling aspects of the Rubio-Schumer Gang of Eight bill is it gave President Obama blanket authority to admit refugees, including Syrian refugees, without mandating any background checks whatsoever. Now we have seen what happened in San Bernardino when you are letting people in and the FBI can’t vet them, it puts American citizens at risk.

“I tell you if i’m elected president, we will secure the border. We will triple the border patrol,” Cruz said. “We will build a wall that works and I’ll get Donald Trump to pay for it.”

I have the video clip (7 minutes):

You can hear Fiorina trying to jump in there, and I think she hurt herself quite a bit in the debate with her frequent interruptions. Yes, she is well-informed on foreign policy, but no, interruptions did not make her look presidential.

Now, Rubio did try to attack Cruz, claiming that he supported amnesty, and Cruz said that it was false. Who is right?

According to Andrew C. McCarthy in National Review, Cruz is right, and Rubio is lying:

Cruz has cast himself as the Republican field’s most consistent voice against “amnesty” for illegal aliens. Yet Rubio, with an assist from former Senator Rick Santorum, claims that Cruz has actually advocated granting legal status to illegal aliens.

Taken out of context, the charge seems colorable. But under the circumstances as they actually occurred, the proposal Cruz made was a case of intelligent legislating designed to expose the fraudulence of the pro-amnesty position. It was, in this way, reminiscent of smart legislating by Rubio (and, for that matter, by Cruz) that highlighted the folly of President Obama’s Iran deal.

He explains the whole story in the article, and concludes:

Cruz’s objective was to illustrate the fraudulence of the “out of the shadows” blather. Obviously, if the Gang of Eight had been sincere, a grant of limited legal status would have accomplished their purported humanitarian objective. But Cruz knew the Left would bitterly object, revealing that the true “comprehensive immigration reform” agenda was to mint new Democratic voters.

Indeed, Cruz made clear in proposing his amendment that the Gang of Eight would betray millions of legal immigrants who sought U.S. citizenship properly and that it therefore undermined the rule of law. And as the amnesty-friendly Huffington Post reported at the time, the point of Cruz’s amendment was to “take away one of [the Gang of Eight bill’s] central purposes: giving a pathway to citizenship to 11 million undocumented immigrants.”

It is thus remarkable to find Rubio, of all people, depicting Cruz as an amnesty supporter because of Cruz’s attempt to expose the Democratic agenda that Rubio, whether out of naïveté or opportunism, was then promoting.

The troubling thing is that Rubio is lying about this in televised ads, which I think justifies my decision to drop him off my list of acceptable candidates for me. He is conservative on many other things, but when you take his liberal policies and add it to these lies about Cruz, he should not be elected President.

Cruz vs Rubio on the Obama-Clinton invasion of Libya

And here is is Cruz attacking Rubio on his support for the Obama administration’s interventions in Libya:

I supported a boots-on-the-ground invasion and occupation of Syria to remove Assad when he crossed the red line. But Libya was a huge mistake that did more harm than good, and Rubio should not have supported the Obama-Clinton plan to invade Libya. I like projecting American military power and punishing evil, but not in Libya and not in Egypt. I disagree with Cruz on Syria, as he did not want to topple Assad. That would have been a huge win for us against Iran, which is the real power behind Syria – and Hezbollah, too. But that’s a minor disagreement compared to the foul-up in Libya.

Cruz vs Rubio on defense spending

I could not find the video clip for Rubio’s charge that Cruz did not vote for some defense spending bills, but this piece by Stephen Hayes in the Weekly Standard has more details about it. Those charges are damaging, but it turns out that Cruz is innocent of Rubio’s charges. First of all, both Cruz and Rubio voted against those bills, according to Yahoo News. Lindsay, who I often link to on this blog, is a huge Cruz supporter, and she found an article in the Washington Free Beacon that clears Cruz of the charge of being an isolationist:

Rubio said that Cruz’s votes against the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) would defund programs vital to the security of the U.S. and its allies. Cruz was one of only two senators, along with libertarian Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.), to oppose that defense bill in October.

“Three times he voted against the National Defense Authorization Act, which is a bill that funds the troops. It also, by the way, funds Iron Dome and other important programs,” Rubio said, referring to Israel’s air defense platform, which is supported with financial aid from the U.S.

Cruz responded that he opposed the NDAA to fulfill a campaign promise about indefinite detention.

“I voted against the National Defense Authorization Act because when I campaigned in Texas, I told voters in Texas that I would oppose the federal government having the authority to detain U.S. citizens permanently with no due process,” Cruz said.

Rubio responded that individuals who wage war against the U.S. forfeit the constitutional protections of civilians.

“If you’re an American citizen and you decide to join up with ISIS, we’re not going to read you your Miranda rights. You’re going to be treated as an enemy combatant—a member of an army attacking this country,” Rubio said.

While the candidates feuded over civil liberties, both expressed willingness to project power abroad.

“Radical Islamic terrorism will face no more determined foe than I will be,” Cruz said.

“We are the most powerful nation in the world. We need to begin to act like it again,” Rubio said.

However, Cruz introduced an amendment to the NDAA defense spending bill to remove the part about indefinite detention, so that he could go ahead and vote for the rest of the bill:

Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.), both of whom are running for president, have joined up with other senators to introduce an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), currently before the Senate, that would ban indefinite detention of U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents, without being charged or given a trial, unless authorized by Congress.

Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) also put their names on the provision.

“The Constitution does not allow President Obama, or any President, to apprehend an American citizen, arrested on U.S. soil, and detain these citizens indefinitely without a trial,” Cruz said in a statement. “While we must vigorously protect national security by pursuing violent terrorists and preventing acts of terror, we must also ensure our most basic rights as American citizens are protected.”

The amendment had bi-partisan support, but it did not pass – that’s why Cruz voted against the bill. At least he tried to fix it so that he could vote for it while respecting the wishes of his constituents. I thought he came across as informed and hawkish in the debate on Tuesday night, which works for me, although I am all for the Patriot Act and collection of bulk data.

So it turns out that Cruz’s attitude towards Rubio’s dishonest attacks was warranted, and it falls to me to do the investigating that shows who was right and who was wrong. Cruz comes out of the debate squeaky clean, and Rubio comes out looking dirty.

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Doug Wilson explains the meaning of love and respect

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Does government provide incentives for people to get married?
Women need love, men need respect… what does it really mean?

So, Dina sent me an audio book called “Reforming Marriage” by that Calvinist weirdbeard Doug Wilson. It actually sat on my ironing board for some time not being listened to, (I don’t iron, I have all wrinkle-free everything). I just finished listening to Bernard Cornwell’s classic on the battle of Waterloo, so I decided to pick this one up next.

I listened to the first CD, and I found something amazing in chapter 2. I want to make two points about what I heard. Fortunately, I was able to find the entire passage at one of Doug’s online haunts.

He writes:

Now the Scripture plainly gives us our duties. Wives are to respect their husbands, and husbands are to love their wives. But there is more. When we consider these requirements and look at how men and women relate to one another, we can see the harmony between what God requires and what we need both to give and to receive.

The commands are given to our respective weaknesses in the performance of our duties. Men need to do their duty with regard to their wives they need to love . Women need to do their duty in the same way they need to respect . But men are generally poor at this kind of loving. C.S. Lewis once commented that women tend to think of love as taking trouble for others (which is much closer to the biblical definition), while men tend to think of love as not giving trouble to others. Men consequently need work in this area, and they are instructed by Scripture to undertake it. In a similar way, women are fully capable of loving a man and sacrificing for him, while believing the entire time that he is a true and unvarnished jerk. Women are good at this kind of love, but the central requirement given to wives is that they respect their husbands. As Christian women gather together (for prayer? Bible study?), they frequently speak about their husbands in the most disrespectful way. They then hurry home to cook, clean, and care for his kids. Why? Because they love their husbands. It is not wrong for the wives to love their husbands, but it is wrong to substitute love for the respect God requires.

We can also see the commands which are given have regard for our respective weaknesses in another way. Men have a need to be respected , and women a need to be loved . When Scripture says, for example, that the elders of a church must feed the sheep, it is a legitimate inference to say that sheep need food. In the same way, when the Scripture emphasizes that wives must respect their husbands, it is a legitimate inference to say that husbands need respect. The same is true for wives. If the Bible requires husbands to love their wives, we may safely say that wives need to be loved.

But we are often like the man who gave his wife a shotgun for Christmas because he wanted one. When a wife is trying to work on a troubled marriage, she gives to him what she would like, and not what God commands, and not what he needs. She loves him, and she tells him so. But does she respect him and tell him so?

We have difficulty because we do not follow the scriptural instructions. When a man is communicating his love for his wife (both verbally and non-verbally), he should be seeking to communicate to her the security provided by his covenantal commitment. He will provide for her, he will nourish and cherish her, he will sacrifice for her, and so forth. Her need is to be secure in his love for her. Her need is to receive love from him.

When a wife is respecting and honoring her husband, the transaction is quite different. Instead of concentrating on the security of the relationship, respect is directed to his abilities and achievements; how hard he works, how faithfully he comes home, how patient he is with the kids, and so forth.

The specifics may cause problems with some because he thinks he might not come home, and she thinks he doesn’t work nearly hard enough. But love is to be rendered to wives, and respect to husbands, because God has required it, and not because any husband or wife has earned it. It is good for us always to remember that God requires our spouses to render to us far more than any of us deserve.

So I bolded the two parts that I want to talk about.

First thing is about the removing troubles view of love. Now, I had never really consciously thought of this before, but I was thinking about how I treat Dina and suddenly it became clear that this is exactly what I am trying to with her. She hurts her hands, has OCD, wants to vacuum up cat fur, has to lift a heavy vacuum up and down the stairs… I buy her a cordless hand vacuum! She likes to cook with a wok several times a week, uses a horrible, cheap broken-handle wok that has to be washed and dried or it will rust… I buy her a Circulon wok! She hates to iron, has to iron baskets and baskets of clothes with her hurt hands… I buy her a steam iron that makes quick work of ironing! And on, and on, and on. After all, why should she have to suffer when she is trying to do her work so she can clear her schedule in order to do other things, like care for the elderly as a volunteer? She already has a stressful job at work, she doesn’t need more stress at home. My job is to make her life easier, and that shows that I care about what her life is like. I don’t want her to be struggling, I want her to be able to do good for God without being burdened by troubles.

Second thing is about how a woman can give a man respect. Well, an important part of what a man does in a marriage is to give a woman security. And this is not something he can finesse at the end of his life, he has to be thinking about giving her that at the beginning of his life… when he is in school, when he is starting to work. The most praiseworthy way of getting money is by earning it in the private sector, by supplying the needs of consumers in a competitive free market. In order to learn how to do that, you have to study things that are valuable. to others, like mobile devices, petroleum engineering, etc. So when it comes to your education, you don’t get to study what you like or what makes you feel good. You have to study things that will allow you to earn money, money that you can use to give your wife security and freedom. Money that is saved should be invested, so that you earn more than you can even get by working. When a woman comes along, she must recognize which men have done hard things to prepare for her – hard things that were not fun. Choosing a man who understands the role of earned money in a marriage is a way of according him respect. No, he did not do what he felt like. No, he did not win the lottery. No, he did not receive money from his parents. Recognizing those sacrifices and the value others get from them is respect.

I’m going to keep working through this book and see if there are any other secrets for me to find in it. So far, so good.