Tag Archives: Benghazigate

News

Kyle Clarke of 9NEWS grills Obama on Benghazi and green energy corruption

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Watch the raw video (7 minutes) here before it disappears. (H/T ABC News via ECM)

Excerpt:

KUSA – President Barack Obama would not directly address questions from 9NEWS on whether Americans under attack in Libya were denied requests for assistance during the September 11th terror attack.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Friday that the military did not send immediate help to the consulate in Benghazi because commanders lacked enough information about the ongoing attack to put troops in harm’s way.

President Obama discussed the situation in Libya during a satellite interview Friday afternoon with 9NEWS reporter Kyle Clark, who also asked if it’s fair for Americans to be told to wait until after the election to learn what truly happened in Libya.

“The election has nothing to do with four brave Americans getting killed and us wanting to find out exactly what happened,” President Obama said. “Nobody wants to find out more what happened than I do.”

President Obama was directly asked twice whether pleas for help on the ground in Libya were denied during the attack. Both times, he repeated his standard call for a thorough investigation.

The President was also asked about the loss of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars in the failure of Abound Solar, a Fort Collins company connected to one of the President’s billionaire fundraisers.

“These loans that are given out by the Department of Energy for clean energy have created jobs all across the country,” President Obama said. “Some of them have failed but the vast majority of them are pushing us forward into a clean energy direction.”

“These are decisions, by the way, that are made by the Department of Energy, they have nothing to do with politics,” President Obama said.

President Obama was asked, in light of his calls for increased civility in politics, why he recently called Governor Mitt Romney a “bullsh—–” in an interview appearing in Rolling Stone magazine.

That article has excerpts from the transcripts for those who cannot watch the video.

This interview is amazing. Actual journalism. This is a must-see. Click the link and watch it NOW. Watch Obama squirm to defend his record without a teleprompter to save him. Oh my God. I have never, ever seen a reporter actually challenge this President in four years. This is amazing. CLICK THE LINK AND WATCH IT.

The mainstream media, tilted to the left as it is, has given Barack Obama a pass for the last four years. No one wanted to ask him any hard questions. Until this interview.

Also, please check the links below to make sure you keep up to date on this story, and Obama’s other foreign policy blunders. This is our generation’s Watergate – only it’s worse. Obama lied, Americans died. His weak foreign policy emboldened our enemies. Rather than hold the terrorists accountable, he blamed some unknown film maker who had nothing to do with causing the attack.

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News

Requests for support from Benghazi defenders denied by the Obama administration

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AC-130H Spectre
AC-130H Spectre gunship

Exclusive story from Fox News. This one is a must-read. (H/T Weasel Zippers via ECM)

Excerpt:

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.

Former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods was part of a small team who was at the CIA annex about a mile from the U.S. consulate where Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team came under attack. When he and others heard the shots fired, they informed their higher-ups at the annex to tell them what they were hearing and requested permission to go to the consulate and help out. They were told to “stand down,” according to sources familiar with the exchange. Soon after, they were again told to “stand down.”

Woods and at least two others ignored those orders and made their way to the consulate which at that point was on fire. Shots were exchanged. The rescue team from the CIA annex evacuated those who remained at the consulate and Sean Smith, who had been killed in the initial attack. They could not find the ambassador and returned to the CIA annex at about midnight.

At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing and repeatedly requested back-up support from a [AC-130] Spectre gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. Special Operations forces to provide support to Special Operations teams on the ground involved in intense firefights.

Read the rest.

Respected military blogger and former paratrooper BlackFive has more details here (H/T ECM) from a Delta Force operator who thinks that the AC-130 was “on station”, i.e. – in flight:

Having spent a good bit of time nursing a GLD (ground Laser Designator) in several garden spots around the world, something from the report jumped out at me.
One of the former SEALs was actively painting the target.  That means that Specter WAS ON STATION!  Probably an AC130U.  A ground laser designator is not a briefing pointer laser.  You do not “paint” a target until the weapons system/designator is synched; which means that the AC130 was on station.
Only two places could have called off the attack at that point; the WH situation command (based on POTUS direction) or AFRICOM commander based on information directly from the target area.
If the AC130 never left Sigonella (as Penetta says) that means that the Predator that was filming the whole thing was armed.
If that SEAL was actively “painting” a target; something was on station to engage!  And the decision to stand down goes directly to POTUS!

And BlackFive himself writes:

Even with two Predators on station, one unarmed and filming and one armed, the call to stand down comes from the same sources.  Earlier today, Bob Owens at PJ Media posts about the responsibility of the order to call off the mission as well as some good info about the AC130s on station.

Here’s the Predator:

Predator UAV drone firing missile
Predator UAV drone firing missile

AC-130 gunships and Predator drones are incredibly accurate when the target is being “lit” by a laser target designator (LTID) on the ground. There was no reason not to engage, and lives could have been saved. Instead, the Obama administration did nothing. This is worse than Watergate. Nobody was murdered by our enemies in Watergate. Nobody died because Nixon lied.

Gateway Pundit has already pointed out that the Obama administration refused to call for support that was an hour away in Italy.

The father of the ex-Navy SEAL killed at the consulate is calling for accountability from “the murderers of my son“. Will Obama respond? Or should we expect the same response as he gave to the death of the Border Patrol agent killed because his administration’s “Fast and Furious” gun-running operation?

UPDATE: CIA director David Petraeus confirms that “No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate” . The Weekly Standard agrees that it was likely a decision made by the President himself.

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News

White House told that terrorists took credit for Benghazi attack within two hours

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According to Yahoo News, the first e-mail arrived 20-30 minutes after the attack started. (H/T Jared)

Excerpt:

The records obtained by Reuters consist of three emails dispatched by the State Department’s Operations Center to multiple government offices, including addresses at the White House, Pentagon, intelligence community and FBI, on the afternoon of September 11.

The first email, timed at 4:05 p.m. Washington time – or 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began – carried the subject line “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack” and the notation “SBU”, meaning “Sensitive But Unclassified.”

The text said the State Department’s regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was “under attack. Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well.”

The message continued: “Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four … personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support.”

A second email, headed “Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi” and timed 4:54 p.m. Washington time, said that the Embassy in Tripoli had reported that “the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared.” It said a “response team” was at the site attempting to locate missing personnel.

A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.”

The message reported: “Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.”

While some information identifying recipients of this message was redacted from copies of the messages obtained by Reuters, a government source said that one of the addresses to which the message was sent was the White House Situation Room, the president’s secure command post.

Other addressees included intelligence and military units as well as one used by the FBI command center, the source said.

The American Enterprise Institute has the Benghazi attack timeline:

Rather, the story of Benghazi is that while the White House’s initial response may have been confusion (because other attacks were taking place at the same time), very soon thereafter, the outright lying began. And now that we have seen the emails that went to the White House within two hours of the attack naming the perpetrators — a known terrorist group operating in eastern Libya — the fact that officials from the president on down were intentionally and falsely insisting the 9/11/12 attack was not an act of terrorism is screamingly obvious.

Let’s review the timeline (h/t to the Washington Post) once again:

Here’s what the president said on September 12:

“Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence. None. The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts… No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.”

Note the reference to the YouTube video in the “reject all efforts to denigrate” line, and the generic references to “acts of terror” which the president falsely insisted (with assistance from CNN’s Candy Crowley) was an assertion that Benghazi was in fact an act of terror.

Here’s Jay Carney, White House spox, the following day:

“I think it’s important to note with regards to that protest that there are protests taking place in different countries across the world that are responding to the movie that has circulated on the Internet.”

Again, the movie.

Here’s Hillary Clinton on September 14:

“We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with. It is hard for the American people to make sense of that because it is senseless, and it is totally unacceptable.”

And Carney the same day:

“We were not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent. That report is false.” 

And then Obama’s U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice hit every Sunday show with this message on September 16:

“Based on the best information we have to date … it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo, where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video. “

[…] Obama doubled down on the lie that it was all about the video in his address to the United Nations General Assembly. On September 25, he said:

“That is what we saw play out in the last two weeks, as a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world.”

[…]Bottom line? Barack Obama was willfully and knowingly lying to the American people. Why? To protect the meme that he had al Qaeda and affiliates/sympathizers like Libya’s Ansar al Sharia on the run.

This is an impeachable offense. Obama should face impeachment for lying to the American people. This scandal is on the same level as Watergate. It’s an abuse of power designed to exonerate militant Islam while making the Obama administration look innocent for their national security blunders and their policies of apologizing to our enemies and unlilateral disarmament.

UPDATE: My favorite defense policy analyst Frank Gaffney has a more sinister view of why Obama lied about Benghazi: the Obama administration was involved in arming Islamic groups that included terrorists.

Check it out:

The evidence suggests that the Obama administration has not simply been engaging, legitimating, enriching and emboldening Islamists who have taken over or are ascendant in much of the Middle East. Starting in March 2011, when American diplomat J. Christopher Stevens was designated the liaison to the “opposition” in Libya, the Obama administration has been arming them, including jihadists like Abdelhakim Belhadj, leader of the al Qaeda franchise known as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.

Once Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown, Stevens was appointed ambassador to the new Libya run by Mr. Belhadj and his friends. Not surprisingly, one of the most important priorities for someone in that position would be to try to find and secure the immense amount of armaments that had been cached by the dictator around the country and systematically looted during and after the revolution.

One of the places in Libya most awash with such weapons in the most dangerous of hands is Benghazi. It now appears that Stevens was there — on a particularly risky day, with no security to speak of and despite now copiously documented concerns about his own safety and that of his subordinates — for another priority mission: sending arms recovered from the former regime’s stocks to the “opposition” in Syria. As in Libya, the insurgents are known to include al Qaeda and other Shariah-supremacist groups, including none other than Abdelhakim Belhadj.

Fox News has chronicled how the Al Entisar, a Libyan-flagged vessel carrying 400 tons of cargo, docked on Sept. 6 in the Turkish port of Iskenderun. It reportedly supplied both humanitarian assistance and arms — including deadly SA-7 man-portable surface-to-air missiles — apparently destined for Islamists, again including al Qaeda elements, in Syria.

What cries out for further investigation — and debate in the remaining days of this presidential election — is whether this shipment was part of a larger covert Obama effort to transfer weapons to our enemies that could make the Iran-Contra scandal, to say nothing of Operation Fast and Furious, pale by comparison.

SA-7 man-portable surface-to-air missiles can be used to attack civilian and military aircraft.

UPDATE: Obama refused to call in troops to defend the embassy – they were only 1 hour away.

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