Too good to pass up

The silence of Benghazi

FOFB

The 21

Twenty-one Egyptian Christians in Libya were brought to the seaside near Tripoli recently where they were simultaneously beheaded by ISIS murderers for a video spectacle. 

Their names should be remembered.

The White House refuses to refer in any way to the men's Christian identity, even while the ISIS video makes it explicit that they were killed solely because they were Christians.

The question is begged:

Not to the Obama administration.

Update: Video technologists and special effects say that the video of the beheadings is substantially faked, although no one thinks that the Egyptian Christians are still alive. One giveaway is this frame (photolink may perishable) that seems to show dwarf Egyptians and giant Islamists, towering two feet over their victims:

But several anomalies in the video, which was posted online Feb. 15, indicated to trained eyes that at least some of the production was done on "green screen" with background added later, perhaps to disguise the real location of the atrocity. A day after the clip went viral, Egyptian warplanes struck hard at an eastern port city near Tripoli, where the video appeared to have been shot.

“The Islamic State’s manipulation of their high-production videos has become commonplace,” said Veryan Khan, editorial director of the Florida-based Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium. The murders likely took place in a studio, and the background image shown was likely from another location, the Bay in Sirte, a part of the Mediterranean Sea on the northern coast of Libya, according to Khan. There are several technical mistakes in the video that show it was manipulated, she said.

But the Christian men are still dead. Link.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha!

That Roger Simon, what a jokester he is for writing this: "American 'liberals' and their media consorts should search their souls" over the proof from "administration emails [that] show that a coordinated effort was made in the days following the Benghazi terror attacks to portray the incident as 'rooted in [an] Internet video, and not [in] a broader failure or policy.'"

Really, I laughed so hard that I had to stop for breath, for whatever liberalism is, "soul searching" ain't included. Liberalism means never having to say you’re sorry.

Benghazi Day is upon us

It is already Sept. 11 is some parts of the world where America is reviled and al Qaeda and its allies are strong.

The ruins of the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, Sept. 11, 2012.

I wonder whether in his address to the nation tonight President Obama will acknowledge the anniversary? And more pointedly, I wonder whether his administration has taken any proactive steps to detect and defend against possible attacks against US interests on the anniversary.

Our enemies despise weakness in us at least as much as they hate who we are. And there is no lack of weakness to despise in our foreign policy in recent weeks. I am far from confident that al Qaeda, et. al., will lay low tomorrow just because of Syria and related events.

Would not bet on that at all.

Syria will turn out well, just look how Libya is doing!

Then again, don't: Libya had moved on – into lawlessness and ruin - The Independent

As world attention focused on the coup in Egypt and the poison gas attack in Syria over the past two months, Libya has plunged unnoticed into its worst political and economic crisis since the defeat of Gaddafi two years ago. Government authority is disintegrating in all parts of the country putting in doubt claims by American, British and French politicians that Nato’s military action in Libya in 2011 was an outstanding example of a successful foreign military intervention which should be repeated in Syria.

Presenting Secretary of State Alfred E. Neumann

The secretary of state testified before Congressional committees today on what happened last year in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of four American, including the US ambassador to Libya.

First the video:

"What difference at this point does it make?" That's what she really said.

And now the true face and motto of the Clinton State Department is revealed.

Petraeus to testify to Congress this week

Disgraced former CIA Director David Petraeus will voluntarily testify before Congress before the end of this week. Benghazi questions will definitely predominate.

The Libya Standown

The San Diego Union-Tribune on the Benghazi coverup:

Isn’t this a story – a gigantic story? 

Of course. But we fear that ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post will only choose to realize how obvious this is after Nov. 6. Then it will come to them – spontaneously, we’re sure.

HT: M. Simon

They say, "Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by mere stupidity." No matter which way you want to see it, the Obama administration abandoned Americans to die in Benghazi. Whether it did so knowing it was so doing, or whether it is just another example of the administration's ineptitude at crisis management, we may never know. But abandon them it did.

It's simply not credible that President Obama does not know exactly who decided that night not to send a rescue mission. Yet he refuses to say anything except that "an investigation is under way."

On Friday, President Obama was asked directly by Denver's KUSA-TV's Kyle Clarke whether our forces were denied backup during the attack. The president dodged the first question. Clark followed up, "Were they denied requests for help during the attack?"

"Well, we are finding out exactly what happened," the president responded.

This answer is either dissembling (highly likely) or evidence of Obama's disengagement with the whole issue (sadly, just as likely).

Personally, I opt for the former. Someone definitely made a decision to leave Ambassador Stevens and the other Americans to die, be wounded and/or captured. The question is, Who? As Glenn Reynolds has answered, "Someone too big to fit under the bus."

IMO, that means only two persons: Obama himself or Vice President Biden. Some blogerati have fingered Valerie Jarrett, whose influence on the president is enormous, but even if Obama heeded her counsel, she could not have personally given the order. It still would have needed to come from him.

Columnist Jack Kelly says that the Benghazi coverup is "much worse" than Watergate's "third-rate burglary." (And no one was left to die in the Watergate Hotel.) How do we know there is a coverup going on? Because the administration's version of events keeps changing.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said all along that there was just not enough information in decision-makers' hands to send in a rescue mission.

"You don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on," Panetta said. "(We) felt we could not put forces at risk in that situation."

Now, though, Panetta's own official spokesman says that Panetta did order forces to Benghazi, according to The Washington Post's David Ignatius:

George Little, a spokesman for Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, told me on Wednesday, responding to an initial online version of this column: “Within a few hours, Secretary Panetta ordered all appropriate forces to respond to the unfolding events in Benghazi, but the attack was over before those forces could be employed.”

So it was only yesterday that anyone in the SecDef's office awoke to remember, "Hey, wait a minute! The SecDef did order a rescue!" And somehow not even Panetta remembered this order in his statements before yesterday.

Larry Bell at Forbes sums it up well:

There are some large disconnects between Obama administration explanations concerning security and response actions taken before, during and after the disastrous terrorist attacks on our Benghazi consulate and accounts, compared with those which continue to emerge from outside sources. Following numerous White House claims now known to be inaccurate and intentionally misleading, we are repeatedly assured that we will get the real scoop in due time after full investigations are complete. One perplexing issue, among many, revolves around conflicting accounts regarding requests and denials of military aid which might have saved American lives.

Further delays only increase wide-spread suspicions that there are no legitimate answers, and that the president’s strategy is to run out the clock until after his final election is over. If this were not the case, it would seem logical that he would seize upon every opportunity to demonstrate evidence of the leadership and transparency he has repeatedly promised.

I think that Obama's strategy for dealing with this matter is very simple: stonewall until after Nov. 6. Then stonewall some more. If Obama is reelected (which he clearly thinks he will be) then he knows that the media will drop this issue like a hot watch. And with the looming adjournment of the existing Congress, attention will drop there, too. If Obama loses, no one will care what happened on his watch before Nov. 6 and all media attention will turn to Romney and the transition.

Like Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans, the Benghazi abandonment will soon be dead and buried. That is what Obama is counting on, and I think with sound reasons.

Benghazi attack and flash traffic

Rush military caller says that Obama ordered no response to Benghazi attack - YouTube:

A man identifying himself as a retired lieutenant colonel and 15-year special-operation planner called Rush Limbaugh's show (yesterday, I think) to explain just why President Obama absolutely was told about the attack against the US's Benghazi consulate on Sept. 11 only about an hour after the attack began.

There is some technical discussion about "flash traffic" messages being sent to Washington from the US embassy in Tripoli, but while the caller explains what (undoubtedly) happened to the flash messages once they were received, he does not really explain what flash traffic is.

I have quite a bit of experience in handling flash traffic from my days as a career officer of the nuclear-capable US Army field artillery during the Cold War. Listen to video of the call, then read below the video embed.

"

Some explanatory notes:

1. Flash traffic refers to a message-handling procedure, not to the content of the message. Any sort of message can be sent flash. Any message designated flash always receives the highest-priority handling. There are always specified individuals within the receiving headquarters of government agency who must be notified immediately upon receipt - even before the message is decoded.

Any officer in a Cold War artillery unit (except 105mm) would have been trained in responding to flash traffic received by the battalion communications center. There were always extremely short timelines to be met, measured from the time the message was originated until its end recipient acknowledged receipt. When I last handled flash traffic back in the 1980s, this time was significantly less than 30 minutes. This may sound like a lot today, but back then we used encoded voice telephone to send and receive messages because there were no computers as we have today, no digital transmissions. There was simply no other way to send the message within the time frame required. Today, with electronic encryption and digital transmissions, I am sure the time frames are much shorter, and they were doggone short in my day.

Our messages almost always originated from the National Security Agency or National Command Authority, either testing the system or giving certain kinds of operational instructions, about which I don't care to be more specific.

There was a small number of officers in my battalion who were always notified of incoming flash traffic, even though decoding would be carried out by staff during the duty day and by on-call designees during non-duty hours. The battalion commander obviously was one to be called. I was the S3 operations officer so I always got called, too. There were two others. I took my turn as an on-call decoder, too, and so on more than a few occasions was rung out of bed to drive to the headquarters to decode with another officer.

2. The White House's excuse that Tripoli's messages were lost in the noise of all the message traffic coming into the Situation Room is quite simply Bravo Sierra. The flash protocols are specifically designed to punch through that noise. It's like this:

Imagine you are giving a birthday party for a five year old who's invited his entire school class. All those little kids are running in out of the party room, yelling and juking around.

That's the normal message traffic of a message center.

Of a sudden, in runs Shaquille O'Neal to the middle of the room, waving his arms and yelling at the top of his lungs, "Hey! Look at me!"

Shaq is flash traffic.

There is no way that the White House Situation Room did not know it had received flash traffic. Remember, the staff of the Room are career professionals. They had received many, many flashes before and they knew what to do, how quickly, and with whom.

It is not believable that President Obama was not notified of the attack within mere minutes of the message being received.

3. Certain kinds of messages are code worded, meaning a category of message has a specific code name assigned to it that mandates specified procedures and notifications. The header of a flash message will identify the code name. The code name is not necessarily classified; back in the voice-telephone day they rarely were. The sender would simply say at the beginning, "This is a Star Cluster message," or whatever the code name was ("Star Cluster" is a pseudonym).

Whether there is a code name assigned to messages relating to threats against US diplomatic missions I do not know, of course. But I assure you that code name messages causes factors to pucker at the recipient station, especially since the recipients have memorized the code names of the categories of messages they will handle (most messages are not code named, code names are used only for the most urgent categories). I last handled such traffic in 1986, and I still remember the code names of message categories that made my pulse rate shoot for the moon, and what their categories were.

Bottom Line: The White House, the administration and the president himself are lying through their teeth about what happened in Washington that night, and especially about the orders President Obama issued or refrained from issuing.

This issue is so potentially damaging to Obama that when directly questioned about it by an intrepid local-news reporter, all Obama replied was, There's an investigation.

So Obama ordered an investigation in order to discover what he himself did and directed the night of Sept. 11.

This is a scandal of stunning proportions, and the oldline media are utterly ignoring it. No wonder Jay Leno said last night that to get in costume for Halloween, all you need is an Obama 2012 button and you'll be dressed as a reporter.

And so the question for Benghazi-gate is the same as for Watergate: "What did the president know and when did he know it?"

The Benghazi kabuki dance falls apart

The multi-day kabuki dance that the Obama administration, including the president himself, performed for the American people is rapidly turning into a clown show.

The rug beneath Obama's feet

"I am not going under the bus
because of Benghazi, Barack!"

When it comes to Machiavellian, political maneuvering, even the Chicago-trained Barack Obama and team are the rankest of amateurs compared to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Anyone who thinks for a fleeting second that Hillary Clinton is going to fall on her sword for Obama over the Benghazi attack is living in a choom-clouded lala land.

To recap: At Thursday evening's debate with Rep. Paul Ryan, Vice President Joe Biden said of the attack in Benghazi, Libya, that took the lives of four Americans, including our ambassador, on Sept. 11:

MS. RADDATZ: What were you first told about the attack? Why were people talking about protests? When people in the consulate first saw armed men attacking with guns, there were no protesters. Why did that go on for weeks?

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Because that's exactly what we were told —

MS. RADDATZ: By who?

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: — by the intelligence community. The intelligence community told us that. As they learned more facts about exactly what happened, they changed their assessment. That's why there's also an investigation headed by Tom Pickering, a leading diplomat in the — from the Reagan years, who is doing an investigation as to whether or not there were any lapses, what the lapses were, so that they will never happen again. But —

MS. RADDATZ: And they wanted more security there.

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well, we weren't told they wanted more security again. We did not know they wanted more security again. And by the way, at the time we were told exactly — we said exactly what the intelligence community told us that they knew. That was the assessment. And as the intelligence community changed their view, we made it clear they changed their view. That's why I said, we will get to the bottom of this.

This doesn't exactly throw Hillary under the bus, but it sure opens the door while the bus is moving. The State Department has a large intelligence bureau that focuses closely on security of US displomats, staff and properties overseas. So what Biden basically said was, "Hillary? She never told us nuthin'! If only she had!"

If President Obama is wondering why the grounds are shifting beneath his feet, he can first read the polls and then take a look at the rug he's standing on - because Hillary and husband Bill are starting to yank it out.

Furthermore:

The State Department has released a transcript of a briefing that two high-ranking department officials gave to a number of reporters via conference call on October 9 (Tuesday). I am not certain about this, but I believe the transcript was only made public today. You should read it in its entirety; it is the most detailed description I have seen of the events in Benghazi on September 11.

While this is by no means clear, it appears that the State Department may have released the transcript as part of the escalating conflict between Barack Obama and Joe Biden and the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. In their desperation to avoid responsibility for the Benghazi debacle, Obama and Biden have pointed fingers in two directions: at the intelligence community for reporting incorrectly that the incident was a protest over a YouTube video clip, and at the State Department for not providing adequate security for the Ambassador.

Prediction: If the White House doesn't relent (and I don't think it will), H. Clinton will appear before Rep. Darrell Issa's House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, officially at Committee request (or even subpoena) but unofficially by her own, back channel request. There, with the convenience of being under oath and thus having no choice, she will effectively go destructo on her putative boss, Barack Obama.

If her legacy-clearing testimony costs Obama the election, so be it. Hillary Clinton absolutely will not take the fall for Obama on this matter.

Time to save Syria, because Libya worked out so well

As usual, the best assessments of whether the US or European powers should intervene in Syria somehow come from the British media, not American. Here is Con Coughlin in The Telegraph, "Syria’s rebels are not yet worthy of our trust."

But for all the protestations we heard from Libyan exiles that Gaddafi’s regime would be swapped for Western-style democracy and the rule of law, “liberated” Libya now finds itself in thrall to rival gangs of heavily armed militias, some of whom subscribe to an Islamist, and positively anti-Western, agenda. The recent failed assassination attempt against Dominic Asquith, Britain’s ambassador to the country, tells you all you need to know about the attitude of liberated Libyans towards Britain, irrespective of the heroics performed by the RAF and the rest of the British military in securing Gaddafi’s downfall. It’s what is known in foreign policy circles as an own goal.

After this debacle, it clearly makes sense for the Government and its allies to ensure that, before we go too far down the road towards establishing no-fly zones and safe havens in Syria, we exact some degree of reassurance from those seeking the overthrow of Assad: that any administration they establish in its place will constitute a tangible improvement, and not the opposite.

I would add, though, that there would be no reason at all to put stock in any such assurances even if they are given.

As I said here, if the rebels win, expect a bloodbath of non-Sunnis, especially the Alawites and Christians. But I have already written we should stay out of Syria.

Video proof that Libya's freedom fighters have turned into brutal torturers | Mail Online

Video proof that Libya's freedom fighters have turned into brutal torturers | Mail Online:

A terrified Libyan man is beaten and tortured with electric shocks by youths who appear to be former revolutionary fighters.
The images, taken from a video handed to The Mail on Sunday in a Tripoli refugee camp, will be seen as fresh evidence that those who deposed Colonel Gaddafi with the help of the West are adopting methods as brutal as the dead tyrant’s.
The film shows three men tying up the blood-spattered man before whipping him repeatedly with cables, touching him on his skin with electric wires and taunting him as he pleads for mercy.

I hate to say I told you so, but I told you so - back in March.

When/if the rebels take control of the country, they will carry out a bloodbath against their tribal foes that we are not willing to imagine today.

See also.

Reasons for optimism in Libya

The fall of Gaddafi — War in Context

Steve Negus says there are three main things that bode well for Libya's future (uncertain though that future is).

• The West has leverage because the rebel alliance knows it could not have prevailed without NATO's airstrikes, but the rebels' honor is intact because they did the hard fighting and bleeding.
• Qaddafi's ruling party was not much bigger than him. There are not large numbers of "dead enders" to oppose the transitional government as there were in Iraq when Saddam was deposed.
• Libya is highly tribal but pretty homogenously Sunni and conservative. There really aren't any heretics, political or religious, that provides easy planting for Islamist radicalism. My comment: that one we will wait and see most of all. 

Drudgeku comes thru

Now the White House says that Qaddafi (remember him? He's in Libya. Make that "still" in Libya) will be out by the end of this month.

Second verse, same as the first!

"If We Had a Carrier..."

Information Dissemination: "If We Had a Carrier...

So saith the admiral commanding Britain's Royal Navy: "If we had a carrier, we'd be there [Libya]" in greater force. Technically, Britain does have a carrier, HMS Illustrious, but there are no aircraft in any of Britain's armed forces that can be flown off it.

Britannica rules the waves? No longer, no.

To be fair, though, if Qaddafi holds out until 2020, The Royal Navy will be able to kick his tail. The toothless Illustrious is due to leave service in 2016. It's replacement, Queen Elizabeth, will not enter service until 2020 at the earliest. QE and its later sister ship, Prince of Wales, however, will be super carriers rivaling the US Navy's and will be the largest warships ever for the Royal Navy. Curiously, both predecessor ships of the same names were battleships sunk in World War II.

The Libyan quagmire

Some quick Libya links, hopefully some assessments later.

With U.S. in support role, NATO's Libya mission 'going in circles' - Kadafi's forces have been able to intensify their counteroffensive while NATO members don't appear willing to escalate their intervention.

West Exacerbates Libyans' Suffering

The Libyan intervention is not wholly legal

False pretense for war in Libya? (Boston Globe)

And the capper: "LIBYAN REBEL WAR CRIMES: The Videos America Doesn't Want You To See"

I first wrote about this on March 28: "Libyan rebel atrocities"

Obama lied, people died?

False pretense for war in Libya? - The Boston Globe

EVIDENCE IS now in that President Barack Obama grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat to justify military action in Libya. The president claimed that intervention was necessary to prevent a “bloodbath’’ in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city and last rebel stronghold.

But Human Rights Watch has released data on Misurata, the next-biggest city in Libya and scene of protracted fighting, revealing that Moammar Khadafy is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government.

Misurata’s population is roughly 400,000. In nearly two months of war, only 257 people — including combatants — have died there. Of the 949 wounded, only 22 — less than 3 percent — are women. If Khadafy were indiscriminately targeting civilians, women would comprise about half the casualties. ...

But intervention did not prevent genocide, because no such bloodbath was in the offing. To the contrary, by emboldening rebellion, US interference has prolonged Libya’s civil war and the resultant suffering of innocents.

As I wrote on March 29,

President Obama said that there would have been a massacre in Benghazi if Qaddafi's army had not been turned back. This is a reasonable assumption - but it is no more reasonable (or necessarily more accurate) than President Bush's assertion that Saddam Hussein possessed stocks of WMDs that would be turned against Iraq's neighbors or even the United States.

But was protection of civilian lives really Obama's objective, or was this?

France And Britain Call For Expanded NATO Role In Libya

France And Britain Call For Expanded NATO Role In Libya.

Meaning that Britain and France want the United States to take charge again and go Roman on Qaddafi. Well, otherwise, this war could spell the end of NATO. And I say good riddance.

Belmont Club offers insights.