Tag Archives: Libya

Hillary Clinton and Marco Rubio’s intervention in Libya created an ISIS caliphate

Marco Rubio with his allies: Democrat Churck Schumer and RINO John McCain
Marco Rubio with his allies: Democrat Churck Schumer and RINO John McCain

First, let’s review what happened in Libya, and who owns it. Then, we’ll see where Marco Rubio stood on the issue.

The Daily Caller notes:

Clinton is, undoubtedly, the person most responsible for getting America into the international effort that toppled the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. Prior to the Benghazi attack, she was happy to have it known as “Hillary’s War” and touted it as a serious accomplishment.

Libya:

Libya is now a failed state where all types of Islamic extremists find safe haven and illegal migrants are able to pass through on their way to an over-burdened Europe. There are no signs of success at all in the beleaguered country as it has descended into total anarchy.

Egypt:

[Hillary] was a-ok with the toppling of Egyptian president and U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak. But it wasn’t hip liberals who came to power after Mubarak was deposed — it was the Muslim Brotherhood who took over the reins in Egypt before a military coup ousted the Islamists in 2013.

Syria:

Clinton was also the leading force in the Obama administration in backing rebels in Syria and wanted a more active role for America in that conflict. However, hardly any of the rebels seem much better than the current ruler Bashar al-Assad and many of them, such as ISIS, are far worse than the Iranian-backed despot.

So that’s three foreign policy disasters for Hillary: Libya, Egypt and Syria. Sounds pretty bad. But the Daily Caller leans right. Let’s see what the leftist Atlantic says about Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy.

They say:

In August, TheNew Yorker’s John Lee Anderson described the gains made by the Islamists as well as the consequences of ISIS fighters controlling territory in Libya:

Last November, battle-hardened Libyan Islamists, who had returned home from fighting in Iraq and Syria, along with Islamists from other countries, seized the eastern city of Derna and claimed it for ISIS. Emulating their comrades in Raqqa and Mosul, they stoned, shot, beheaded, and crucified people deemed guilty of espionage or ‘un-Islamic’ behavior. Last month, a rival militia loyal to Al Qaeda waged and won a battle for control of the city. The victors are said to have marched the captured ISIS commander through the streets naked before executing him. ISIS lost Derna, but in the past few months they have taken Qaddafi’s home town of Sirte and surrounding areas in Libya’s “Oil Crescent,” and have begun attacks on the outer defenses of the city of Misrata.

Alas, that’s not all:

For months, ISIS has been trumpeting its abduction and execution of African Christians in Libya. In February, a slick, ghoulish video showed twenty-one Egyptian hostages in orange jumpsuits being led along a beach by black-masked executioners, who forced them to kneel and then cut off their heads.

In April, another video appeared, showing the execution of twenty-nine Ethiopians in Libya. Gunmen who trained with ISIS in Libya were involved in the murder of twenty foreign tourists, at a Tunis museum in March, and thirty-eight more tourists, most of them British, at a seaside resort in Tunisia in June. These attacks focused attention on the fact that Libya, a vast, oil-rich, underpopulated country with a long southern-Mediterranean coastline, has become part of the self-proclaimed ISIS caliphate. In a parallel phenomenon, armed trafficking gangs in Libya are driving most of Africa’s illegal immigration to Europe. As many as a hundred and seventy thousand are thought to have made the crossing last year, with thousands dying en route. Unprecedented numbers are continuing to cross this year, taking advantage of the chaos in Libya.

An unnamed Obama Administration official told Anderson, “We think that the threat from ISIL-affiliated groups in Libya is very serious and we’re treating it that way.”

A strong case can be made that the war made Americans less safe.

Libya and Egypt were contained and peaceful before the U.S. Arab Spring interventions. After intervening in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood took over. After intervening in Libya, the Islamic State is rising. And after intervening in Syria, the Islamic State has a base there, too.

Do you know who backed Hillary in her Libya intervention plan?

MARCO RUBIO. 

Here’s an article from the Weekly Standard by Stephen Hayes, who is very favorable to Rubio, explaining how Rubio supported the Hillary-led intervention in Libya.

It says:

Senator Marco Rubio offered his full-throated support Wednesday for the U.S. intervention in Libya and called on President Barack Obama to be clear that regime change is the objective of America’s involvement.

[…]Last night, Rubio sent a letter to Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell, Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate, calling for Congress to affirm Obama’s policy by authorizing the use of the military force in Libya and to make explicit the goal of regime change. “This resolution should also state that removing Moamar Qadhafi from power is in our national interest and therefore should authorize the President to accomplish this goal. To that end, the resolution should urge the President to immediately recognize the Interim Transitional National Council as the legitimate government in Libya.”

Qadhafi had voluntarily given up his weapons of mass destruction and invited inspectors in, after seeing Bush invade Afghanistan and Iraq. They were no threat to us, and there were no crucifixions of Christians, kidnappings, executions, etc. that we see now.

And now we have an Islamic State caliphate in Libya, as the UK Telegraph reported earlier this week:

Yet this latest [execution] broadcast was shot not in the Isil strongholds of Raqqa [Syria] or Mosul [Iraq] but the terror group’s new “caliphate” in Libya, where it now controls Colonel Gaddafi’s home city of Sirte, just 350 miles south of Italy.

[…]Formed by a vanguard of just a few dozen fighters a year ago, Isil’s Sirte chapter is now believed to be up to 3,000-strong, imposing a regime of beheadings and crucifixions.

Marco Rubio strongly supported the intervention in Libya, spurning conservatives and embracing Hillary Clinton and the far left. Now we have a caliphate in Islamic State in Libya. I’m a very hawkish person, and supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But Libya and Egypt interventions made no sense, and no Republican should have backed either of them.

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

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.

It’s time for my annual trip to the movie theater… to see “13 Hours”

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

Here’s the trailer:

I listened to an episode of of the Weekly Standard podcast featuring Stephen Hayes. No one has done more and better reporting on Benghazi than Stephen Hayes, and I’ve featured his work on it on this blog. I wanted to see what he thought of the movie. He loved it, and said it was accurate to the way it was reported by the Weekly Standard and elsewhere.

I looked at 3 reviews, and chose this one from the leftist Seattle Times to quote here.

Excerpt:

Friend? Or foe?

Those are the critical questions bedeviling the six main characters in “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi.”

Strangers in a strange land, unable to speak or understand Arabic, assigned to provide security at a secret CIA installation in the restive Libyan city of the title — for them, those questions have life and death implications when the nearby ambassadorial compound is overrun by jihadist attackers on the night of Sept. 11, 2012. The assault claims the lives of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

In Michael Bay’s gripping dramatization of that controversial event, the men, highly trained American private security operatives, can’t be sure if the figures they see moving toward them in the dark are jihadists or friendly Libyan militia members who are supposed to be the main protectors of the compound. The loyalty of those supposed allies is also questionable. It’s only when the shooting starts that the questions are answered, and then the six are in for the fight of their lives.

The picture is reminiscent of “Black Hawk Down” and “American Sniper” in the way it marries visceral Hollywood-style filmmaking (a Bay trademark) with sober subject matter in a manner that doesn’t trivialize the seriousness of the story it’s telling.

Based on Mitchell Zuckoff’s 2014 best-seller “13 Hours,” Bay’s movie is a ground-level depiction of heroism in the midst of the fog of war. Hewing closely to Zuckoff’s true-life account, Bay seems to have no political ax to grind, at least with respect to the role in the fiasco of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose name is never mentioned.

I have heard the actual operators interviewed on TV and on several radio shows. They were heavily involved in the book and the movie. So, I’m going to do something that I really hate, and give the movie theater my money to see this thing. I am almost certain I won’t be disappointed. I loved Act of Valor, American Sniper and especially Lone Survivor, and people are comparing this movie to those movies. If you’re looking for something to see this weekend, try this one.