May17
The video magically appeared between edits two and three:
That’s when the video became the deus ex machina, the soon-to-be-visible hand of the bag of lies dumped on the electorate to prevent us from seeing the catastrophe of the Obama appeasement of radical Islam — a.k.a. “leading with the behind.” Saying “attacks” would have automatically put the Benghazi events in the context of the (banned concept) war against terror, whereas ”demonstrations” shifted the context — the whole Arab Spring thing consisted of lots of demonstrations, and the Obama crowd was basically pro-demonstration.
Indeed, Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice justified the demonstrations. How? By blaming them on the video. More evidence that the invisible video was hidden in the third edit.
You can tell they were scrambling to try to save the campaign narrative.
…and Libya falls apart.
From Benghazi to Boston, the Obama administration ignores it:
Looking back, a cynic would say that for this administration there really was no other way to characterize what happened in Benghazi but as a spontaneous protest to an anti-Islam video. For the truth to be revealed in the middle of a competitive election would have too many disquieting resonances, too many unknown effects. The specter of jihad must be muted and diffused. These are the same people, remember, who replaced the concept of “terrorism” with the euphemism “man-caused disaster,” who labeled Nidal Hassan’s jihadist rampage in Ft. Hood, Texas, an incidence of “workplace violence.” Who could doubt they’d blame the stupid videotape.
These are the same people, the Washington Free Beacon’s Bill Gertz reports, who have instituted a cultural change at the FBI that seeks “to dissociate Islam from terrorism, a policy critics say fails to properly identify the nature of an enemy engaged in waging religiously inspired war and insurgency against the United States and its allies.” It was the same politically correct blindness that led so many in the media and government, in their absurd search for a “motive” in the Boston bombings, to downplay the religious dimension of Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s plot against America, to willfully describe the bombers as “lone wolves” despite their ideological allegiances and familial ties to overseas militants. Gertz’s sources suggest political correctness even may have played a part in the inability of the U.S. counterterrorism establishment to heed warnings from the Russians about the older Tsarnaev, whose every action in the run-up to the attack screamed, “Call the police.”
This is dangerous to our security, and utterly lacking in feck.
Did Clinton and Obama really believe it? I don’t know what’s worse — if they did or if they didn’t.
A different take on CSNY’s “Ohio.”
They should be toppled:
We should respond in scale to violations of international law, whether at our expense or not, and opportunistically move to make an example of such regimes when they so mismanage their affairs as to lose control of their own countries. When these awful governments can be eliminated easily, do it. Instead, we have helped destabilize and bring down the Shah of Iran, President Mubarak of Egypt, and President Musharraf of Pakistan, who were allies, however far removed they may have been from replicating the state of Connecticut or the kingdom of Denmark in their own affairs. And we have given the ayatollahs a pass for a brutally stolen election in Iran and waffled inelegantly for years over Syria. This, of course, summarizes the contrasting errors of the George W. Bush and Obama administrations: Bush stumbled into nation-building and Obama has tried and failed to make deals with Iran and the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood.
In terms of foreign policy, the Bush administration’s biggest failing was that there seemed to be no strategy once Saddam was removed, when he should have taken the opportunity to pressure the mullahs in Iran. And the Obama administration’s naive approach to Tehran has been worse than feckless.
For something that was old news, we sure learned a lot of new stuff today.
[Update a while later]
So Hicks was demoted because he wouldn’t toe the party line. And now, because he’s been demoted, he’s “got an axe to grind,” so we must not believe him. Funny how that works.
There are at least five of them.
I have a feeling that the administration would like to see them continue to go unsolved, because the truth will not reflect well on them.
Special Forces were told not to go there.:
According to excerpts released Monday, Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S. compound “when [Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ‘you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now.’ And so they missed the flight … They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”
CNN is on the case, finally, too, but of course, it’s Jake Tapper. I wonder what Candy Crowley thinks?
The rest of the media is finally starting to at least attempt to catch up with Fox, though they remain far behind.
…is still in jail:
The fast-tracking of Nakoula’s jailing was highly irregular. Among other things, I’d like to see the Congressional investigators get Nakoula’s prosecutor, Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Dugdale — and perhaps his boss, U.S. Attorney André Birotte Jr. — under oath about communications from the White House or the Justice Department regarding this case.
Because what it’s looking like is that Nakoula was targeted and jailed so as to provide a scapegoat/villain in a politically motivated cover story that the White House knew was false. If that’s the case, it’s extremely serious indeed, and in some ways more significant than whatever lapses and screwups took place in Benghazi. I’d also be interested in hearing from Nakoula’s attorney, Steven Seiden, about any threats made by the government to secure a plea deal.
If there’s an impeachable offense anywhere in the Benghazi affair — and at this point, I’m not saying there is — it’s more likely in what happened with Nakoula than in the problems abroad…
Unfortunately, impeachable offenses,and high crimes and misdemeanors are in the mind of the beholder, and impeachment is ultimately a political, not legal act.
Whose ideas inspired them to hate America?
Hint: It wasn’t Sarah Palin, or the Tea Party, much to the disappointment of the media idiots.
Within hours of the initial attack on the U.S. facility, the State Department Operations Center sent out two alerts. The first, at 4:05 p.m. (all times are Eastern Standard Time), indicated that the compound was under attack; the second, at 6:08 p.m., indicated that Ansar al Sharia, an al Qaeda-linked terrorist group operating in Libya, had claimed credit for the attack. According to the House report, these alerts were circulated widely inside the government, including at the highest levels. The fighting in Benghazi continued for another several hours, so top Obama administration officials were told even as the fighting was taking place that U.S. diplomats and intelligence operatives were likely being attacked by al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists. A cable sent the following day, September 12, by the CIA station chief in Libya, reported that eyewitnesses confirmed the participation of Islamic militants and made clear that U.S. facilities in Benghazi had come under terrorist attack. It was this fact, along with several others, that top Obama officials would work so hard to obscure.
And with the help of a supportive/indifferent media, they succeeded. Until now.
“When you are on the ground, you depend on each other — we’re gonna get through this situation. But when you look up and then nothing outside of the stratosphere is coming to help you or rescue you, that’s a bad feeling,” one source said:
On the night of the Benghazi terror attack, special operations put out multiple calls for all available military and other assets to be moved into position to help — but the State Department and White House never gave the military permission to cross into Libya, sources told Fox News.
But, but, I thought the president gave orders to do everything possible?!
And then there’s this:
“They had no plan. They had no contingency plan for if this happens, and that’s the problem this is going to face in the future,” one source said. “They’re dealing with more hostile regions, hostile countries. This attack’s going to happen again.”
And unfortunately, they don’t have much of a learning curve.
[Update a few minutes later]
Only six months late:
Confirmed: Obama’s denial of cross border authority killed 2 and abandoned 30 Americans in Benghazi
Couldn’t have the media discussing it then, though — it might have hurt Obama’s election chances.
Who are you gonna believe? Some whistleblower, or your lying eyes president and secretary of state?
Also, just posted on Twitter:
Clinton Administration Spokeshole: “That’s old news.”Obama Spokeshole: “That happened a long time ago. In a country far away.”
— Rand Simberg (@Rand_Simberg) May 1, 2013
This is amazing dashcam video of the plane that stalled and crashed at Bagram. Fortunately it was a cargo plane, and they only lost seven crew.
I’m as shocked as the rest of you to learn that the Russians are jacking up the price for ISS support again:
That’s $70.6 million per seat — well above the previous price tag of about $65 million.
Just your standard inflation, I’m sure. Bolden is right:
NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said if Congress had approved the space agency’s request for more funding for its commercial space effort, the latest contract would have been unnecessary. He is urging full funding of the Obama administration’s 2014 budget request of $821 million for the commercial crew program.
“Because the funding for the President’s plan has been significantly reduced, we now won’t be able to support American launches until 2017,” Bolden, a former shuttle commander, wrote in a NASA blog.
It could take longer if Congress does not fully support the 2014 request, he said.
“Further delays in our Commercial Crew Program and its impact on our human spaceflight program are unacceptable,” Bolden said.
But they’ll keep wasting money on SLS.
Here’s what I write in the book:
What is nuclear non-proliferation worth to us? This shouldn’t be an issue of civil space policy, but it is. There is a U.S. law called the Iran/North-Korea/Syria Non-Proliferation Act (INKSNA), which states that we will not trade with any nation that supports any of those countries in the development of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Russia has been doing both for years, and in order for us to continue to utilize their services for ISS access and lifeboats, Congress has to continually waive the law, essentially rendering it toothless with respect to one of the most significant violators of it (in early January of 2013, they did so out to 2020). If (as earlier discussed) we were to start using Falcon-9/Dragon sooner, even without its abort system, we could stop depending on the Russians, and stop shipping money to a nation that is indifferent to our security, if not outright hostile to it. Why don’t we? Because we don’t want to risk the lives of an astronaut crew, even though the Falcon-9/Dragon is probably as, or more, reliable at this point than anything we flew in the 1960s. Same thing applies for the Atlas and the Boeing CST capsule.
I think that it’s “safe enough” right now to end our dependence on the Russians. Despite their stated desire for three nines of safety, I’d bet that most people in the astronaut office would agree, and if there are some who don’t, no one held a gun to their heads to be an astronaut. In our unwillingness to do this, we are saying that the life of an astronaut crew is more valuable than preventing Iran from getting nukes, or to be more precise, we don’t think that non-proliferation is worth risking their lives. I don’t think that’s the case, and I’d guess that few astronauts do, either, but in its continuing hyperconcern about safety, that is exactly the message that we are getting from Congress. Now obviously, we see many men and women willing to risk their lives for national security every day, in Afghanistan (and now in other places in the Middle East). If I were an astronaut, I’d be insulted that Congresspeople don’t think that I’d be willing to. But if it’s true, then maybe we need some new astronauts, because the current ones, if they’re demanding three nines, don’t have the Right Stuff.
But space isn’t important.
The difference it makes:
Maybe there’s an explanation in the internal processes of the State Department. And, it should be said, high officials often make decisions that with hindsight seem obvious mistakes. But she has given us just an exclamation, not an explanation.
And, as the Interim Report goes on to explain, the accounts given by the Obama administration at the time were misleading — deliberately so.
It notes that State immediately reported the attack to the White House Situation Room and two hours later noted an al Qaeda affiliate’s claim of responsibility. There was no mention of a spontaneous protest of an anti-Muslim video.
Yet President Obama, Clinton and press secretary Jay Carney spoke repeatedly for days later of a video and a protest. Clinton assured one victim’s family member that the video-maker was being prosecuted.
Because they had to maintain the false narrative for the election.
The contrast between the political exploitation of Newtown and the way in which the same media outlets have gone out of their way to avoid drawing the obvious conclusions about Boston could not be greater. In one case, the media helped orchestrate a national discussion in which hyper-emotional rhetoric about the fallen drove a political agenda. In the other, they are seeking to ensure that no conclusions — even those that are self-evident — be drawn under any circumstances.
We’re living in politically correct, and culturally suicidal times.
Jihad has blown it up. Also, thoughts on SWAT nation.
Yes, I’m as shocked as I’m sure you all are to learn that she is also on a terrorist watch list. The more that comes out on this, the more our government looks like Keystone Cops.
But at least we can agree with her on one thing. Like her, I’m sorry that she ever brought her murdering sons to the United States.
“…or I’ll kill you or blow off your legs!”
[Update a couple minutes later]
Mark Steyn on anger management:
And now the media are full of stories about how the Tsarnaevs were all-American kids and “beautiful, beautiful boys” and maybe it was the boxing or the Ben Affleck movies or the classical music but, whatever it was, it was nothing to do with Islam. Nothing whatever.
So I guess it worked.
It always works with the fools in the media.
[Update a couple more minutes later]
“Soon we’ll be told American society is responsible for the Tsarnaevs because of our consumerist addiction to pressure cookers.”
Also, I fearlessly predict calls for, and introduction of legislation to ban the purchase and possession of recreational fireworks by the general public.
[Update a few minutes later]
Aaaaaannnndd…Jerry Rivers is first out of the gate.
As Mark Twain wrote, the principal difference between a dog and a man is that the former won’t bite the hand that feeds it. Once again, we see a connection between welfare and terrorism. As in the UK, we fund their lifestyles so that they have the leisure and resources to plot to murder and maim us.
[Update a few minutes later]
Did Boston have it coming? The UN (of course!) says yes. Remember: blame America first.
And of course, fisking lying anti-Semitic leftist Richard Falk is like shooting a whale in a barrel. I heard him speak in Ann Arbor in the late seventies, when I was a student. He doesn’t seem to have learned much in the interim.
Hey, it wouldn’t be the first time she’s lied under oath. She did it routinely in the nineties.
Of course it was. So was Fort Hood, and it’s insane, or stupid, or both, to try to deny it.
[Update a while later]
Recognizing the enemy: lessons from the Cold War.
You know what no one in Boston was saying, or even thinking last week? “I wish I had a smaller magazine.”
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Ten To Twenty More Years Of War
by Rand Simberg on May 19, 2013 at 9:49 am…against Al Qaeda?
OK, so, ignoring the fact that this goes against the president’s reelection narrative, please explain how it ends.