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Benghazi Burns and Petraeus Goes to Princeton?
Diana West ^ | Oct. 12, 2012
Posted on Friday, October 12, 2012 10:12:29 AM by Milagros
OCT12
Written by: Diana West
Friday, October 12, 2012 12:52 AM
Two weeks ago, I wondered whether CIA Director Petraeus was politicizing the intelligence after a source told Fox News on September 27 that three days after the Benghazi assault, Petraeus briefed the House Intelligence Committee that “Benghazi was an out-of-control demonstration prompted by the YouTube video. According to the source, this was `shocking’ to some members who were present and saw the same intelligence pointing toward a terrorist attack.”
Knowing Petraeus’ sensitivities to the faux-stimulus of what he has called in Senate testimony “Arab anger,” such politicization, or, perhaps better, such Arabizing of the intelligence would likely come naturally to him. No stranger to politicking, Petraeus as CENTCOM commander engaged in what was described as an “unprecedented”political push in early 2010 on behalf of Islam’s Israel-centered demonology in order to enhance Americas’s military standing in Iraq and Afghanistan. This dovetailed neatly with his perhaps surprising take on Gitmo — close it, its “existence has been used by the enemy against us” — and his really shocking take on Hezbollah: “Hezbollah’s justifications for existence will become void,” Petraeus told the Al Hayat as reported in the Lebanese Daily Star, “if the Palestinian cause is resolved.” Given this Arabist sensibility (and don’t forget one of his thesis directors at Princeton was Stephen Waltof Walt & Mearsheimer), it’s no stretch to imagine the man taking up cry of Islamic video-rage as well.
Now, with so many of the adminstration’s bald lies about Benghazi being exposed,PJ Tatler’s Bryan Preston is asking not whether Petraeus was politicizing the intell, but whether he is “among the sources of the Benghazi deception.”
In a post called “You Know Who Still Hasn’t Called Benghazi a Terrorist Attack?” Preston reprises some of Petraeus’ appeasement of Koran Rage back in Afghanistan. Preston also notes that several senators sent a letter on October 9 to Petraeus, DNI Clapper and White House CT advisor John Brennan asking for a specific timeline on the Benghazi intelligence They haven’t received an answer.
Which isn’t to say Petraeus hasn’t been busy of late. Two weeks ago (September 27), the Daily Princetonian published a story suggesting that the CIA director was interested in becoming president of Princeton — this after the current president anounced her retirement on the weekend of September 23. Petraeus’ response as reported by the college paper?
I think I’ve made my respect and admiration for the great faculty and student body of Princeton University very clear, and I will reiterate that now,” Petraeus said in the statement. “As it currently stands, however, I am living the dream here at CIA.”
You don’t need a CIA decoder ring to read that as he wants it. Further, with Benghazi’s Big Lies crashing around him, I would even interpret the strangely jarring phrase “living the dream here at the CIA” as: Get me out of here. But I wonder how Benghazi-gate will look on his resume? Diana West
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2943780/posts
Benghazi’s Real Scandal? Uncle Sam Joined the Jihad
DianeWest.net ^ | 11OCT12 | Diane West
Posted on Friday, October 12, 2012 10:35:05 AM by bayouranger
Imagine, pre-9/11/12, that you were responsible for arranging the defense of the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Would you have considered American interests and personnel best protected by bringing in a local security outfit called the February 17 Martyrs Brigade?
The question has yet to come up in House hearings, but I think it holds the key to the Obama administration’s betrayal of the American people in “Benghazi-gate.” To an American with common sense not subverted by advanced degrees, the thought of putting Islamic “martyrs” in charge of American “infidels” in Benghazi – which, fun fact, literally means “city of holy warriors” – would trigger the inevitable “heck, no.” And that’s without even knowing what is significant about Feb. 17.
But I’m talking about Washington, D.C. Here, placing the lives of Americans in the hands of a thug-army linked to multiple atrocities and drawn from jihad-epicentral eastern Libya disturbs no collective brain wave. No matter that Benghazi and nearby Derna sent more men, per capita, to Iraq to kill Americans than anywhere else in the world. As far as the Obama administration is concerned, putting local boys in barracks inside the consulate compound was a great idea. Why not? President Obama’s ambassador, the late Christopher Stevens, was, as they say, “reaching out” across the jihad spectrum on official business.
Meanwhile, Ansar al Sharia (“Supporters of Islamic Law”), the al-Qaida-linked militia believed to have led the consulate assault in September, is a spinoff of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, but that didn’t scratch the lacquered political surface, either. And even as reports remind us of ties among February 17 Martyrs Brigade leadership, the Muslim Brotherhood and the web of jihad-poison spun by Qatar’s Yusuf al-Qaradawi and Libya’s Ali al-Salabi – the latter having been tapped by the Qatari dictatorship to distribute $2 billion to Libyan “rebels” – the focal point remains elsewhere.
Partly, that’s because the breathtaking lies the Obama administration has told us post-9/11/12 distract our attention from the disastrous policy previously in place. Plus, there remains a lingering confusion over good guys and bad guys. After all, Uncle Sam isn’t supposed to support bad guys. The Obama administration, however, threw in Uncle Sam’s lot with bad guys – the “rebels,” the “martyrs,” the Muslim Brothers, the whole jihad-happy crew in Libya and the wider Middle East. Uncle Sam, more or less, crossed to the “other side.” It is this alliance or support for “martyrs” and their sympathizers in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt and Syria that is the betrayal from which Benghazi-gate rises, particularly as our veterans’ cemeteries and hospitals are filled with casualties caused by such “martyrs.”
Whether, as the Daily Beast reported, the February 17 Martyrs Brigade may have been ordered by a pro-al-Qaida Libyan politician to “stand down” for the attack remains to be verified. Meanwhile, the State Department reminds us not to forget the service of two brigade members who were beaten and two who were shot defending the compound. “But there were some bad apples in there as well,” one intelligence source told the Daily Beast.
How could there not be? And here is where the significance of Feb. 17 comes in.
John Rosenthal, an independent journalist based in Europe, wrote early on that the Libyan rebellion wasn’t led only by al-Qaida commanders. This anti-Gadhafi movement was symbolically also an Islamic jihad on Western liberty itself. We know this because, as Rosenthal reported, the “Day of Rage” called for Feb. 17, 2011, to kick off the Libyan civil war was the fifth anniversary of another assault on the West, also in Benghazi.
Following Friday prayers on Feb. 17, 2006, thousands of Benghazians attacked the Italian Consulate to punish the temerity of an Italian minister, Roberto Calderoli, who several days earlier had publicly defended free speech in the West. The world was then experiencing another cycle of Islamic violence, this one orchestrated to punish a tiny Danish newspaper for publishing a sheet of Muhammad cartoons and, in turn, Denmark itself for refusing to punish the journalist-transgressors of Islamic law, which outlaws any critiques and all depictions of Muhammad.
Calderoli didn’t merely defend free speech. During his TV interview, he dramatically unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a T-shirt featuring a cartoon of Muhammad. Referring to Islamic rioters worldwide, he added: “When they recognize our rights, I’ll take off this shirt.” He was forced to resign from his post the next day, a sacrifice on the altar of Shariah (Islamic law) by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. It wasn’t enough.
“We feared for our lives,” the wife of the Italian consul later told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, describing the attack in which the consulate was set on fire. All personnel were safely evacuated. Libyan police used tear gas to try to disperse the rioters, later opening fire and killing 11 attackers.
These are the “martyrs” who serve as role models for the security team that was defending the U.S. Consulate. Symbolically, they figure into the wider war in Libya, which is often called the February 17 Revolution. With this in mind, it becomes clear that the Islamic war on free speech, the basis of our liberty, was an inspiration of “regime change” in Libya. And we supported it.
That’s the real scandal.