Posted on 05/11/2013 9:48:12 PM PDT by Kaslin
here is no escaping the fact that, where Benghazi is concerned, there is blood in the water and the mainstream media has (at long last) picked up the scent. Yesterday, the sharks representing the three major TV networks circled Press Secretary Jay Carney, bombarding him with questions that were uncharacteristically tough.
ABC’s Jonathan Karl, who broke the story that the talking points underwent twelve revisions, had the aspect and attitude of a man scorned and determined to set the record straight as much to clear his own name as to ascertain the truth. When Carney attempted to weasel out of his claim earlier in the week that the White House had merely made minor “stylistic” changes to the talking points, Karl was adamant and unrelenting.
While there are now premature suggestions that impeachment may be in the president’s future, there is no dismissing the fact that this is a major cover-up whose potential for harming administration members present and past (that means you, Hillary!) should not be underestimated. As Mark Steyn reminds us, in January, Clinton “denied ever seeing Ambassador Stevens’s warnings about deteriorating security in Libya on the grounds that ‘1.43 million cables come to my office’ — and she can’t be expected to see all of them, or any,” adding:
Once Ambassador Stevens was in his flag-draped coffin listening to her eulogy for him at Andrews Air Force Base, he was her bestest friend in the world — it was all ‘Chris this’ and ‘Chris that,’ as if they’d known each other since third grade. But up till that point he was just one of 1.43 million close personal friends of Hillary trying in vain to get her ear.
Now we know that at 8 p.m. Eastern time on the last night of Stevens’s life, his deputy in Libya spoke to Secretary Clinton and informed her of the attack in Benghazi and the fact that the ambassador was now missing. An hour later, Gregory Hicks received a call from the then–Libyan prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, informing him that Stevens was dead. Hicks immediately called Washington. It was 9 p.m. Eastern time, or 3 a.m. in Libya. Remember the Clinton presidential team’s most famous campaign ad? About how Hillary would be ready to take that 3 a.m.call? Four years later, the phone rings, and Secretary Clinton’s not there. She doesn’t call Hicks back that evening. Or the following day.
Are murdered ambassadors like those 1.43 million cables she doesn’t read? Just too many of them to keep track of? No. Only six had been killed in the history of the republic — seven, if you include Arnold Raphel, who perished in General Zia’s somewhat mysterious plane crash in Pakistan in 1988. Before that you have to go back to Adolph Dubs, who died during a kidnapping attempt in Kabul in 1979. So we have here a once-in-a-third-of-a-century event. And at 3 a.m. Libyan time on September 12 it’s still unfolding, with its outcome unclear. Hicks is now America’s head man in the country, and the cabinet secretary to whom he reports says, ‘Leave a message after the tone and I’ll get back to you before the end of the week.’ Just to underline the difference here: Libya’s head of government calls Hicks, but nobody who matters in his own government can be bothered to.
That includes Obama, who was off to a big campaign fundraiser in Las Vegas.
Yet, the view from the liberal blogosphere is still “Nothing to see here.” The expectation that the testimony before the House Oversight Committee by three whistleblowers on Wednesday would “break the dam that would lead to President Obama’s eventual downfall?” Pure fantasy. That was how Hayes Brown of ThinkProgress summarized the hearings. If anything, Brown wrote, “these witness [sic] actually served to debunk several theories that the right-wing has pushed on Benghazi, leaving the hearing a fizzle for the GOP.”
Much of his post was devoted to the testimony provided by Gregory Hicks, a Foreign Service Officer and the former Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya. Most analysts after the fact found Hicks’s testimony to be among the most riveting and politically toxic to the administration. But not Brown. In his view, Hicks’s account was but a feeble attempt to connect the dots between the White House and the deaths of four Americans in Libya last Sept. 11 collapsed altogether under a withering cross-examination by ranking committee member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.).
You’d think with Hicks’s evisceration at the hands of an experienced statesman, there would be no need for a follow-up column. Yet on Friday, Brown delivered a second post-mortem, quoting a former staffer under Hicks who called him “the worst manager I’ve ever seen in the Foreign Service.” Another of Hicks’s former underlings is reported to have said, “Literally every single one of us begged for him to be removed from post.”
The question is why bother devoting column inches to defaming a man who has already been discredited — whose testimony, if anything, vindicates the president and his successor, Hillary Clinton? Could all the president’s acolytes have lapsed into denial, the first of the five stages of grief? Or is this just a case of shooting the messenger? We will learn the answer in the weeks and months to come. The Benghazi cover-up is not going away.
In fact that is something that should be done. Every little foible, gaffe, and character flaw needs to be revealed and denounced.
Just watched her on C-SPAN. In addition to asking some of her 25 important Benghazi questions, she also re-reported the time Hillary misstated the facts about an overseas trip during which she had to “dodge bullets and run for the car.” This CBS reporter was on that very overseas trip with her, and had to report no such thing happened. In fact they still had footage of school children handing out flowers on the tarmac. So there were difinitely no bullets flying on that trip.
"Even though Hillary 'signed off' on Benghai security,
that does not mean she actually 'knew' about it."
Will say it again or type it again ... There was blood, in the water from nearly day one. Something has changed. Something else has become known. There is something else going on ... don’t ask me what ... I do not know.
Thanks to the member who spotted the 'white washing' image.
“They have no credibility.”
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Right, to say they are losing credibility is like saying the Sahara is drying up.
No Sh*t. It’s rather frightening to see the lengths they’ll go to keep in power. They’ve given up doing what’s right for this country a long time ago, now its all about retaining power and forcing folks to live as they want them to.
God willing, more and more will start to see these vermin for what they are, handouts or not, and gradually turn on them. I think your ‘wag the dog’ scenario is highly plausible, but I’m also under the thinking that people are just too damn tired of war, etc.
People are now seeing what a moron this man is, those that he has surrounded himself with and his foreign policy debacles. About the only two places he can go is Iran and Syria. While still having to deal with Afghanistan and what is left of Iraq. Not to mention, Egypt, NKorea, Somalia and pretty much the entire continent of Africa, as it becomes more and more radicalized.
So, whatever he does will be a disaster, people will die, he’ll blame on Bush and whoever else and we’re worse off than when we started, again.
Gutless and Selfish....absolutely
But, just as importantly...he has no clue what he’s doing on anything. Especially when it comes to knowing when you use the military and when not.
Clinton didn’t either. Carter...nuff’ said.
The man is so far out of his league, its painful. The problem is, that not only is he out of his league, all of the people around him and most of the Democratic Party have shown that they are nothing but useful idiots. If it weren’t for Republicans restraining them and keeping them inline, they would have self destructed long ago.
Ok, if you are under oath. Was Hillary under oath? Did the Kenyan communist perjure himself? No and no.
Obstructruction of justice is a crime.
Only for the little people, like you and me, citizen.
Red, it's 2013 and any criticism of your (half)black president is racism. Holder should be impeached for flooding Mexico with guns. It's not going to happen.
To me, your Kenyan president has committed treason on numerous occasions. That is a high crime, I believe. Good luck on that prosecution.
Specifically, if the USAF can't get a couple of F-16's in Italy over Benghazi for 20 hours, we might as well surrender to the Red Chinese right now.
Dempsey lied for Obama.
It seems as if everybody in the executive branch lies for Obama. Nice bunch of honest, forthright people.
There is an angle in all of this it seems to me not many have considered. There are folks who work at jobs interfacing with US on a daily basis for whom we have in the past had some, if not grudging respect, at least tolerance. I think these folks may begin to comprehend they do not want to see the day dawn wherein they will have to deal with us in a way they might the Gangsta Disciples or the Crips. As our gummint becomes more feral many of us may become increasingly intolerant of even the slightest encroachment upon our lives or actions. They like to show the pictures of their SWAT teams and APCs but do they really think they can manage a community where minor flunkies have to be protected by SWAT teams to do building inspections?
Somewhere along the way here somebody needs to wake the hell up or things are gonna get seriously out of hand.
Issues:
1) the State Department had the necessary budgetThere are only 15 facilities around the world rated "high" or "critical" - out of almost 300. The Benghazi site was rated "critical" (the highest threat) and needed H.R. Clinton's authorization to operate it while at the officially documented, legally deficient state of security , before the attack.
2) wanted Benghazi to become a permanent consulate
3) it was 1 of only 15 sites out of 300 globally to be rated at the 2 highest levels, is legally required to conform to upgraded security standards, and the Secretary of State (Clinton) must sign off on operating at substandard levels
4) and MOST DAMNING – Clinton ignored multiple formal requests to bring it up to legal standards after multiple, serious security incidents
5) The false narrative of a protest based on a YouTube video caused irreparable harm to the newly elected Libyan leader and caused a delay of the FBI getting to the scene by 18 days or more
H.R. Clinton told Stevens, presumably ordered by Obama, that this admin's goal was to make Benghazi a permanent consulate. But, career state department employees were threatened, and demoted, for using official channels to make basic requests for security before the mid-term election.
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