Free Republic

Despite repeated, self-serving claims by Obama officials that the Administration did everything it could to head off and then respond appropriately to the violence against American facilities in Libya and Egypt last week, their blunders in policy, intelligence and security illustrates an incompetence every bit as profound as exhibited by the administration of Jimmy Carter in Iran 33 years ago. It appears nothing has been learned in more than three decades; despite significant gains in technology available to the U.S. government during those intervening years. In 1979, the Carter Administration precipitously abandoned the Shah of Iran, Washington’s long-time and loyal...

SNIPPET: "Azerbaijan has arrested 22 people on suspicion of plotting attacks on the US and Israeli embassies in Baku on behalf of neighbouring Iran, the national security ministry said Wednesday." SNIPPET: ""On orders of the Sepah they were to commit terrorist acts against the US, Israeli and other Western states' embassies and the embassies' employees," it said. The ministry said that the suspects were recruited from 1999 onwards and trained in the use of weapons and spy techniques at military camps in Iran to enable them to gather information on foreign embassies, organisations and companies in Azerbaijan and stage attacks,...

– [Update 8:38 p.m. Cairo, 1:38 p.m. ET] A team of heavily armed Marine Corps security personnel have been sent to the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to provide additional security for the facility, defense officials tell CNN. The small team of Marines, about a dozen according to one of the officials, are part of a Fleet Antiterrorism Security Team (FAST). The Marines are inside the embassy perimeter. Egyptian military and security forces continue to provide security outside the embassy, the officials said.

Hello, this is my email to the American Embassy: I applied today September 2005 for a TRANSIT VISA..because I have to travel to England (by American Airlines) in October. Your person in charge rejected my application. I brought all the documents indicated in your web page and more that she did not want to see... and just rejected this. So I want to complaint because in your web page you don't say that to apply to a transit visa is going to be as difficult as a more important visa.... you don't say that people should bring many proofs that...

BEIRUT, Lebanon - A Lebanese man was arrested Friday on suspicion he ordered a bomb attack against the American Embassy in Beirut, a senior security official said. The official said Mehdi al-Hajj Hasan was detained after two men already in custody told interrogators he ordered them to carry out the bombing. Authorities said they foiled the plot Wednesday when they arrested a Lebanese man carrying more than two pounds of explosives and a Palestinian taxi driver. The men were arrested outside the U.S. Embassy complex. The device did not explode and no one was harmed. The State Department recently urged...