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Barack Obama's appointments of Susan Rice as national security adviser and Samantha Power as ambassador to the United Nations have naturally triggered speculation about changes in foreign policy. Rice and Power have been proponents of humanitarian military intervention, a course that Obama followed, gingerly, in Libya -- "leading from behind," as one of his aides put it. But of course that didn't work out so well. The murder of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi last September showed that terrorists have a free hand in Libya -- even if the president and Rice, along with Secretary of...

This past week U.S. President Obama made Susan Rice his new National Security Adviser and Samantha Power his ambassador to the UN. Both women have the kind of credentials, loyalty and temperament that Obama needs to go full steam ahead on his second term agenda which includes the Obamification of the world, further apologizing for America, weakening the U.S. at every opportunity and saying "sorry" by supporting the most dangerous players on the world stage. The President is effectively giving up America's position as defender of freedom and promoter of democracy and Judeo-Christian values. The Pax Americana era has long...

US Secretary of State John Kerry looks like a bit of an idiot these days. On Monday he announced that he will be returning to Israel and the Palestinian Authority and Jordan for the fifth time since he was sworn into office on February 1. That is an average of more than one visit a month. And aside from frequent flier miles, the only thing he has to show for it is a big black eye from PLO chief and Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. When Kerry was here last month he unveiled a stunning plan to bring $4 billion...

Just try to wrap your arms around the magnitude of defiance and chutzpah that led to and accompanied President Obama's appointment of the discredited Susan Rice as national security adviser. But don't let this outrage distract you from his equally disturbing appointment of leftist Samantha Power to replace Rice as UN ambassador. Though Democrats and their supporting liberal media, with a few notable exceptions, have aggressively downplayed the multifaceted Benghazi scandal, none of them has laid a glove on the irrefutable claim that Rice delivered talking points altered by the administration to distort the facts in order to mitigate any...

Analysts at the National Security Agency can now secretly access real-time user data provided by as many as 50 American companies, ranging from credit rating agencies to internet service providers, two government officials familiar with the arrangements said. Several of the companies have provided records continuously since 2006, while others have given the agency sporadic access, these officials said. These officials disclosed the number of participating companies in order to provide context for a series of disclosures about the NSA's domestic collection policies. The officials, contacted independently, repeatedly said that "domestic collection" does not mean that the target is based...

The Washington Post played a game of “Hide the Benghazi” in its front-page story on Obama nominating Susan Rice to be the new National Security Adviser. The headline beat around the bush: “Obama signals new approach on national security: A Bigger U.S. Role Abroad. In shuffle, Rice replaces Donilon as adviser.” Reporter Scott Wilson announced “a major shuffle” and “an ideological shift” (let’s guess toward more humanitarian intervention). But you’d have to wait until paragraph twenty-two for the B-word: But months later, Rice watched as the aftermath of the Libyan intervention upset her career.

Domestic Spying Revelation Could Be Devastating For The Obama White House Peter Foster, The Telegraph June. 6, 2013, 6:46 AM The Obama administration will be bracing itself for a torrent of hostile questions this morning following the apparent revelation that the National Security Agency has been data-mining the phone records of tens of millions of ordinary Americans. Not to be confused with eaves-dropping, or bugging the phones of those suspected of conspiring to commit a terrorist or criminal offence, the top secret court order published by The Guardian appears to show that the NSA has been trawling the anonymous 'metadata'...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - The National Security Agency has been collecting the telephone records of millions of U.S. customers of Verizon under a top secret court order, according to a report in Britain's Guardian newspaper.</p> <p>The order was granted by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on April 25 and is good until July 19, the newspaper reported Wednesday. The order requires Verizon, one of the nation's largest telecommunications companies, on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the U.S. and between the U.S. and other countries.</p>

There's a saying I heard long ago that "only in Hollywood or in government, can you fail upwards." This is sadly true as that many people who screw up and fail in their job somehow get rewarded and move up the food chain. Unlike in the real world, where failure usually means that you lose your job, failing in government is fine as long as you know the right people. Case in point is how President Obama has rewarded those loyal to him despite failing the American people horrendously. The latest slap in the face to Americans is the appointment...

On Wednesday, Kathleen Troia “K.T.” McFarland, a former national security aide to Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan, claimed that United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice is being promoted to National Security Advisor in order to shield her from congressional scrutiny over her role in the response to the Benghazi attacks. “I figure that was the payback for Benghazi,” McFarland said of Rice’s promotion to NSA on Wednesday. “The fact that she carried the administration’s water – carried it very badly, I might say – but carried it.” [...] “Obviously, they have a close, personal relationship,” noted Fox News...

Reporting the breaking news on Wednesday's NBC Today that President Obama had named U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to be national security advisor, chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd portrayed Rice as a victim of Republican attacks: "Rice, who had become a Republican punching bag during the whole Benghazi controversy....this is a bit of a defiant move by the President to his Republican critics." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Later on his 9 a.m. ET MSNBC show, The Daily Rundown, while discussing GOP opposition to Rice's promotion – and her nominated replacement as U.N. ambassador,...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Yeah, here we are, great to be back here, folks. The news just isn't the news when I'm not here to tell you about it. I had so many people send me e-mails last week and the first couple days this week: "You know, Rush, there's a lot going on but it just doesn't seem like it's actually going on without you here." Folks, trust me, it was going on. It was happening. And I know it just doesn't seem the same, but the news isn't the news when I'm away. Because there isn't any news anymore....

As we mentioned in an earlier editorial about her possible appointment as secretary of state, "In 1996, while serving as assistant secretary of state for African affairs under former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Rice helped persuade President Clinton to rebuff Sudan's offer to turn Osama bin Laden, who was then living there, over to U.S. authorities." Richard Miniter, author of the book "Losing bin Laden," told World Magazine in 2003 that Rice played a primary role in scuttling the deal in which Sudan could have turned over bin Laden to the U.S.

In a move that is already angering Republican lawmakers, President Obama will name as his next national security adviser Susan Rice, the administration official who delivered (but did not draft) the talking points that downplayed the attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya on Sunday television shows in September five days after the incident. Rice, who is now the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was informally floated to be Obama’s pick late last year to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. But she withdrew her name from the process after key Republican senators like John McCain and...

ON Sept. 2, Ambassador Susan E. Rice delivered a eulogy for a man she called “a true friend to me.” Before thousands of mourners and more than 20 African heads of state in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, Ms. Rice, the United States’ representative to the United Nations, lauded the country’s late prime minister, Meles Zenawi. She called him “brilliant” — “a son of Ethiopia and a father to its rebirth.” Few eulogies give a nuanced account of the decedent’s life, but the speech was part of a disturbing pattern for an official who could become President Obama’s next secretary of state....

(CNN) – Susan Rice, United States ambassador to the United Nations, will replace Tom Donilon as President Barack Obama's national security adviser, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

WASHINGTON — A White House official says Tom Donilon is resigning as President Barack Obama’s national security adviser and will be replaced by Susan Rice. Rice is currently the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She has been harshly criticized by Republicans for her initial accounting of the attacks on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, which later proved to be incorrect.

(CNN) – Susan Rice, United States ambassador to the United Nations, will replace Tom Donilon as President Barack Obama's national security adviser

Benghazigate: The lack of a timeline for what the commander-in-chief was doing the night terrorists murdered our ambassador to Libya and three others is an "irrelevant fact," according to a key White House aide. Playing the role Sunday of former U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who last Sept. 16 went on all five talk shows to parrot the administration line that Benghazi was provoked by a video, was White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer. Following in Rice's footsteps, he announced that the details of where President Obama was and what he was doing that fateful night were an "irrelevant fact." "Fox...

Pfeiffer: Republicans owe Susan Rice an 'apology' By MACKENZIE WEINGER | 5/19/13 12:07 PM EDT White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer on Sunday said Republicans “owe” U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice “an apology” for saying she misled the country in the wake of the Benghazi attack. “Frankly, I think that many of the Republicans who had been talking about this, now that they’ve seen the emails, owe Ambassador Rice an apology for the things they’ve said about her in the wake of the attack,” Pfeiffer said on ABC’s “This Week.” “Apology for what?” ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked. “For accusing her of...

Then CIA-Director David Petraeus objected to the final talking points the Obama administration used after the deadly assault on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, because he wanted to see more details revealed to the public, according to emails released Wednesday by the White House. Under pressure in the investigation that continues eight months after the attacks, the White House on Wednesday released 99 pages of emails and a single page of hand-written notes made by Petraeus' deputy, Mike Morell, after a meeting at the White House on Saturday, Sept. 15. On that page, Morell scratched out from the...

Scandal In Libya: A new email dump shows that the White House, contrary to public statements, was heavily involved in editing the Benghazi talking points to remove all references to it being a terrorist attack. The limited, heavily redacted package of emails released by the administration Wednesday is noteworthy for what the emails don't say and reflect a concerted effort by the White House and State Department not to get at the truth but to put something together to help President Obama in an election two months out. The email package begins some 67 hours after the Sept. 11, 2012,...

Benghazigate might have derailed Ambassador Susan Rice’s bid to be Secretary of State, but the “extraordinary” Rice might have a promotion in her future after all. Foreign Policy reports today that Rice “has become the heir apparent to National Security Advisor Tom Donilon — a post at the epicenter of foreign-policy decision making and arguably more influential than secretary of state.” Writer John Hudson quotes an unnamed source as saying “it’s definitely happening.”

I had the same thought as Matt Lewis when reading through the news this morning. There’s too much smoke now from the IRS, DOJ/AP, and Benghazi scandals to pretend there’s no fire. If you’re sympathetic to O, it’s time to shift messages from “what fire?” to “Obama should have done more to put out these fires set by other people,” which conveniently leaves Bambi in the virtuous role of firefighter. It’s a classic plea bargain: He’s guilty of negligence, maybe, but of nothing more serious. Lewis: The media is helping. Obama isn’t a bad guy, he’s merely out of the...

Susan Rice went on Sunday talk shows on September 16, 2012 to proclaim that there was no evidence linking the attacks in Benghazi to terrorism... She told ABC on September 16 (emphasis mine): "But our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous — not a premeditated — response to what had transpired in Cairo. In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated." And she...

<p>President Obama may think the dispute over his handling of Benghazi is a “sideshow,” but his remarks Monday at the joint press briefing with British Prime Minister Cameron are evidence that his administration misled the American people and is trying to do so even today.</p>

Sometimes it is better to show a scandal than to explain it. SHARE this exposure of the Benghazi cover-up!

So far, the only high-ranking member of Obama administration to suffer politically from Benghazi is Susan Rice, who withdrew from consideration for Secretary of State late last year after blowback for reciting errant talking points on the Sunday shows after the attacks. But Rice’s unwanted place at the center of the Benghazi firestorm raises one tantalizing question: Why was she the administration’s point woman with the press — or, more to the point: Why wasn’t Hillary Clinton, Ambassador Chris Stevens’ boss, the messenger? Rice told NBC’s Brian Williams that Clinton was simply too tired to endure the grueling ordeal of...

At a press conference today at the White House, President Obama said "There's no there there" on criticism of how his administration handled the Benghazi terror attack: "And suddenly three days ago this gets spun up as if there's something new to the story," Obama said in response to a question about Benghazi. "There's no there there." The president continued, "Keep in mind by the way these so-called talking points that were prepared for Susan Rice, five, six days after the event occurred, pretty much matched the assessments that I was receiving at that time in my presidential daily briefing."

One of the mysteries in the Benghazi scandal has been the role of David Petraeus, who was then the Director of the CIA but was forced to resign in a personal scandal shortly thereafter. While the White House and State Department tried to cobble together talking points to explain away the terrorist attack that took four American lives, what did Petraeus do? According to new information reported for the first time by Jonathan Karl on ABC News’ This Week earlier this morning, Petraeus rejected the final version as “useless” —

The talking points used by Amb. Susan Rice on the Sunday shows on the weekend after the 9/11/12 terror attack in Benghazi underwent at least 12 edits – including revisions by the Obama administration’s State Department — new emails obtained by ABC News show. Those revisions included scrubbing all references to an Al Qaeda-affiliated group and all references to previous CIA warnings about a terror threat. From ABC: When it became clear last fall that the CIA’s now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community,...

The White House scrambled Friday to explain newly released email excerpts that show a top State Department official pushing to water down the intelligence community's initial story-line on the Benghazi attack, as Republicans sharply challenged the administration's honesty. With new details emerging in the Benghazi-gate controversy, the White House held a background discussion with more than a dozen news organizations. Afterward, Press Secretary Jay Carney weathered a barrage of questions from the media during an at-times awkward White House briefing -- where he tried to defend the truthfulness of his and other officials' prior claims that the initial talking points...

On his Thursday night PBS program, Charlie Rose attempted to fulfill his duties as a liberal media member by defending the State Department’s dishonest talking points following the September 11 terrorist attack in Benghazi. Rose was grilling Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who was involved in the Benghazi hearings, about his views on the matter. When Rose asked Chaffetz if he believed there was a coverup, the congressman was ready. He brought up the fact that for days after the attack, the administration claimed the incident had been sparked by a spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Islam YouTube video. But Chaffetz and...

Two days before the election, CBS posted additional portions of a Sept. 12 "60 Minutes" interview where President Obama seems to contradict himself on the Benghazi attack. As the Benghazi investigation gets more attention and focus, CBS is once again adding to the Benghazi timeline. ..These are two crucial answers in the big picture. Right after getting out of the Rose Garden, where, according to the second debate and other accounts he definitively called the attack terrorism, Obama is asked point blank about not calling it terrorism. He blinks and does not push back. Understand that this interview is just...

Gregory Hicks, former deputy chief of mission in Benghazi, told Congress today that a State Department official began criticizing his job performance, and he was ultimately demoted, after he asked why U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice attributed the Benghazi attack to an anti-Islamic Youtube video. “In hindsight, I think it began after I asked the question about Ambassador Rice’s statement on the TV shows,” Hicks said of the criticism during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on the attack today.

A former top U.S. diplomat in Libya said he was effectively “demoted” after questioning United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice’s explanation that the deadly Benghazi attack was the result of a protest over a video. Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission under slain Ambassador Christopher Stevens, now holds the title of foreign affairs officer in the Office of Global Intergovernmental Affairs — an almost catch-all designation. “I’ve been effectively demoted from deputy chief of mission,” Hicks said. He testified to members of the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday that he was “stunned” and “embarrassed” upon hearing Rice blame an...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Obama’s Benghazi PropagandistPosted By Matthew Vadum On May 8, 2013 @ 12:56 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 4 Comments A young White House speechwriter may be responsible for concocting the official lies about last September’s deadly terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya.The Obama administration’s rapidly unravelling narrative about what happened at the U.S. consulate in Libya’s second-largest city may have been cooked up by creative writer Ben Rhodes, the president’s 30-something Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting.The origin of the administration’s desperate election-season fabrications may come up today as a congressional committee...

On Wednesday congressional hearings on Benghazi will be revived, with much ado about whistle blowers, and dissenting testimony, but to what end? The story concocted by The Administration and The State Department is a swiss cheese-like artifice that would never hold up in an era of true journalism. However, though the ruse did not completely cover up the mistakes of Benghazi, the left hopes it will hold together long enough to protect Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Expect the left to circle the wagons around the two top players. At this point they will be willing to toss any underling...

“I wasn’t involved in the talking points process.... As I understand it, as I’ve been told, it was a typical interagency process where staff, including from the State Department, all participated, to try to come up with whatever was going to be made publicly available, and it was an intelligence product.” — Then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, Jan. 23, 2013 This column has been updated New information is raising questions about the development of the administration’s talking points on the deadly attack on the diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya, which left four Americans, including the ambassador, dead. Readers may...

New evidence reveals the Obama administration’s version of the events that took place in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 was based on a tissue of lies. The Weekly Standard’s Steven Hayes has obtained a timeline and a series of emails revealing the self-serving efforts made by administration officials, who heavily edited CIA talking points about the attack that cost four Americans, including ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens, their lives. Also revealed is who made the changes and why they made them. The revelations are part of a report published by the five Republican Committee chairmen that has been largely dismissed...

U.S. special operations forces in Libya could have saved Americans killed in the attack last Sept. 11 on the consulate in Benghazi but were told to stand down, a State Department whistle-blower has told congressional investigators. The testimony by Gregory Hicks, who will appear before a House panel on Wednesday, contradicts previous testimony by administration officials who have said all U.S. forces in Libya were deployed the night of the attack. Hicks was in Tripoli during the attack and became the top U.S. diplomat in Libya when Ambassador Christopher Stevens was killed. He said the special operations team was ready...

In an appearance on Face the Nation this morning, Rep. Darrell Issa revealed several new pieces of information about the Obama administration's controversial description of the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, casting doubt that the White House mischaracterized its cause by mere accident. "The talking points were right and then the talking points were wrong," Issa explained in response to a question about reporting at the Weekly Standard. The CIA and Greg Hicks, who took over as Charge d'Affairs in Libya after the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens, both knew immediately that it was an attack, not a protest....

SINCE THE Senate is solely responsible for the confirmation of Cabinet officers, it’s not often that members of the House of Representatives jump into a debate about the nomination of a secretary of state — particularly before there has been a nomination. That’s one of the reasons a letter sent to President Obama this week by 97 House Republicans, challenging his potential choice of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for the State Department job, is remarkable. Another is blatant disregard of established facts

Congressional Democrats on Sunday distanced themselves from the Obama administration’s explanation of the Benghazi, Libya, attacks in the immediate aftermath of the fatal strikes, amid mounting evidence that suggests the information was revised to intentionally mislead Americans. The original explanation of the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on the U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, was written by CIA officials, then revised by State Department and White House officials, according to news reports and witness testimony made available to Fox News. Removed from the CIA's so-called talking points were references to “Islamic extremists” and Al Qaeda in Libya And five days later,...

The Blog Dem Rep. on Benghazi Talking Points: 'It Was Scrubbed ... It Was False Information. There's No Excuse For That.' 10:28 AM, May 5, 2013 • By DANIEL HALPER Send to Kindle Single Page Print Larger Text Smaller Text Alerts Democratic congressman Stephen Lynch said this morning on TV that Susan Rice used "scrubbed" talking points on Benghazi to deliver "false information" to the American people

War On Terror: Eight months after the Benghazi attack, the FBI begs for help by releasing photos of three suspects, reports surface about an al-Qaida link and the State Department's review panel is under investigation. Ahead of highly anticipated hearings set for Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee featuring testimony from State Department whistle-blowers — of which a clueless President Obama professes no knowledge — the FBI has released photos of three people who were at the U.S. consulate when it was attacked last Sept. 11 — pictures that were available on Day One. But of course...

Even as the White House strove last week to move beyond questions about the Benghazi attacks of Tuesday, September 11, 2012, fresh evidence emerged that senior Obama administration officials knowingly misled the country about what had happened in the days following the assaults. The Weekly Standard has obtained a timeline briefed by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence detailing the heavy substantive revisions made to the CIA’s talking points, just six weeks before the 2012 presidential election, and additional information about why the changes were made and by whom. As intelligence officials pieced together the puzzle of events...

Rep. Trey Gowdy says that more Benghazi hearings are ‘coming quickly’ and they will be ‘explosive’. When asked if it will include witnesses who were there but haven’t been allowed to come forward, he wouldn’t say directly because of confidentiality but told the Fox News host that she was ‘very warm’ and suggested it may include ‘direct testimony by eyewitnesses’:

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and scorned former frontrunner to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, is back in the news. After public outcry following her role in mischaracterizing to the American public what had caused uprisings against the U.S. in arab countries across the globe in the fall of 2012, including the attack on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left the ambassador and three state department employees dead, Republicans lined up in premature opposition to Rice’s rumored nomination to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. Little has been heard from Rice since she...

UNITED NATIONS — Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who lost out in a bruising bid for the job of secretary of state, may have the last laugh. Rice has emerged as far and away the front-runner to succeed Thomas E. Donilon as President Obama’s national security adviser later this year, according to an administration official familiar with the president’s thinking. The job would place her at the nexus of foreign-policy decision making and allow her to rival the influence of Secretary of State John F. Kerry in shaping the president’s foreign policy.