Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (Getty Images)
Raymond Maxwell, one of four State Department employees recently disciplined by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, made headlines this month for penning slightly cryptic verses critical of the agency’s handling of the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi.
And now Maxwell, who was placed on forced “administrative leave” despite his claim had no role in consulate-related security issues, is back in the news for ditching the poetry and outright accusing former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of making him the Benghazi scapegoat.
House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa visits Meet the Press to update David Gregory on the latest developments in his panel’s investigation into the Benghazi attacks.
A top GOP critic pushed back Sunday on charges that Republican efforts to investigate last year’s Benghazi attack are designed to inflict political damage on former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“Hillary Clinton’s not a target,” said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa on NBC’s Meet the Press. “President Obama is not a target.”
Issa, who heads a panel probing the assault on the diplomatic outpost that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, said he will seek depositions from Benghazi review board heads Ambassador Thomas Pickering and retired Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Egyptian protest the deaht of Ezzat Atallah, who died in a Libyan prison, in front of the Libyan embassy in Cairo. (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) – On Feb. 12, about two years after the U.S. government first militarily intervened in Libya to advance the cause of Libyan revolutionaries and five months after Libyan terrorists murdered Amb. Chris Stevens and three other Americans in that country, the post-revolutionary Libyan government arrested a U.S. citizen for allegedly “proselytizing” Christianity in Benghazi.
As of today, according to both a senior administration official and a State Department spokesperson, this U.S. citizen remains imprisoned in post-Qaddafi Libya.
The Libyan government also arrested seven other Christians in Benghazi in connection with the same alleged case of Christian proselytizing. These include a South African woman, a South Korean man and five Egyptian men.
One of the Egyptians, Ezzat Atallah, was tortured by the Libyans while in detention, according to an Egyptian human rights lawyer. Atallah later died in Libyan custody—from what an Egyptian official characterized as natural causes.
Since 2010, when the upheaval in the Mideast dubbed the Arab Spring began, the United States has been the friend of rebels seeking regime change in countries throughout the region. In some cases, that meant providing weapons to rebels as well as reportedly conducting clandestine U.S. military operations.
In recent months, evidence emerged that al-Qaida has taken advantage of the U.S.-backed chaos in the Mideast and North Africa to gain allegiance in the aftermath of regime changes. When the Arab Spring initially began, al-Qaida was believed to be strongest in Pakistan. But policy analysts point to the rash of violent protests at U.S. embassies in Cairo and in Yemen and the attack that took the life of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi, Libya, as evidence of a proliferation of al-Qaida-initiated terror.
Last week, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the United States was prepared to provide $60 million in aid to opposition groups working to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad. That money will be in addition to $50 million already provided to the rebels to help them organize, as well as $385 million distributed to Syria and neighboring countries for humanitarian relief.
U.S. officials are reluctant to arm Syria’s rebels; the influx of monetary aid comes at a time when the United States and other outside nations have lost leverage over the Syrian opposition forces and radical Islamist groups like al-Qaida are gaining support among the rebel fighters. There is concern from some that the aid money could be making its way into the hands of terror groups.
A NATO researcher explained last week why the growing al-Qaida presence is cause for concern, saying Syria’s uncertain future could make it a top al-Qaida stronghold.
“It’s now clear that Syria is not undergoing a violent transition from one regime to another,” noted NATO researcher Jean-Loup Samaan. “In fact, the country is enduring a process of disintegration of its state structures. Planners for a post-Assad Syria are no longer eyeing the potential successors of Assad but [are looking] at the bewildering landscape of non-state actors that fight each other over the conquest of what will be eventually left of the Syrian state.”
Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander Massoud Jazayeri urged U.S. officials to rethink support of Syrian opposition forces earlier this month, warning that terror groups have gained heavy control of opposition forces. He warned that the al-Qaida mission, such as it is, will lead to the armed rebels continuing their terrorist activities in the other countries, including the West, in the near future.
“The al-Qaida groups and those services which conduct their operations in line with the U.S. interests will soon change track of their operations to other places and they will cause new troubles for the U.S. and Europe henceforth,” Jazayeri said.
Questions continue to swirl surrounding the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead. Among the most confounding factors were inaccurate comments made by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice in the wake of the assault. The embattled administration official appeared last night on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” to discuss the government’s handling of the crisis.
During the exchange, the host challenged Rice on some of the confusing and contradictory information that emerged in the wake of the terror attack. The ambassador also issued some tough words for those who still believe the Obama administration is hiding key information.
Stewart wasted no time launching into his questioning. Almost as soon as Rice sat down, he asked the ambassador why she was selected to speak out on Sunday morning shows and pondered why someone else more appropriate (i.e. Hillary Clinton or another official) wasn’t chosen. The ambassador gave this long-winded answer:
“I’ve spent many-a-Sunday doing the Sunday shows. In this case, Secretary Clinton, who had been asked originally to do it, felt that she didn’t want to, couldn’t do it that week, having been through quite an intense week with the loss of our colleagues in Benghazi, the violence against our embassies all over the Arab and Muslim world and then — also that Friday having to join President Obama in greeting the families of our fallen colleagues and bringing their bodies back.”
Syrian rebels are reported to have seized control of the country’s largest hydro-electric dam, in what would be a strategic loss to the government.
Activists and opposition groups said fighters had taken over entrances and exits of the dam in the northern province of Raqa.
Reports said the dam on the Euphrates River was still operational.
Meanwhile an explosion in a car on the Syria-Turkey border has killed at least seven people, officials say.
It is thought that the explosion happened in the area of the Cilvegozu customs post on the Turkish side of the border, in the southern province of Hatay.
Dozens of people were wounded in the blast, the cause of which was not immediately clear.
Rebels in Ras Lanuf, Libya, March 11, (Credit: AP)
The Obama administration “secretly” approved arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, however, U.S. officials quickly became concerned as evidence suggested Qatar was handing the weapons over to Islamic militants, The New York Times reports, citing a number of United States officials and foreign diplomats.
There is no evidence available that suggests the U.S.-approved weapons were involved in the deadly terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, which left four Americans dead on Sept. 11. But the revelation is sure to ignite speculation.
More from The New York Times:
But in the months before, the Obama administration clearly was worried about the consequences of its hidden hand in helping arm Libyan militants, concerns that have not previously been reported. The weapons and money from Qatar strengthened militant groups in Libya, allowing them to become a destabilizing force since the fall of the Qaddafi government. The experience in Libya has taken on new urgency as the administration considers whether to play a direct role in arming rebels in Syria, where weapons are flowing in from other countries.
Dec. 1, 2012: Supporters of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi rally in front of Cairo University, Cairo, Egypt. (AP)
CAIRO – Egypt’s President Mohammed Morsi called Saturday for a referendum in two weeks on a contentious draft constitution, setting a date for another milestone in the country’s transition to democracy. Widespread disputes over the charter and Morsi’s recent seizure of near absolute power have marred the process and thrown the country into turmoil.
As has been the case in nearly two years since Hosni Mubarak was ousted, what should have been a cause for national celebration turned into dueling protest between opponents and supporters of how the transition has been managed– largely divided along Islamist and secular lines.
More than 100,000 Morsi supporters organized by the Muslim Brotherhood and ultraconservative Salafi groups took to the streets of Cairo and other cities a day after a massive opposition demonstration against his recent decrees giving him immunity from judicial oversight and the charter that was rushed through an assembly packed with allies.
The presidency has been locked in a tug of war with the powerful judiciary and secular and Christian activists since Morsi granted himself far-reaching powers on Nov. 22 in a bid to pre-empt an expected decision by the Supreme Constitutional Court on Sunday to dissolve the constitutional panel, as it had done the Islamist-led parliament earlier this year.
GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – An Israeli envoy held talks with Egyptian officials Sunday on a ceasefire in his country’s offensive on Gaza as Israel widened the range of its targets, striking more than a dozen homes of Hamas militants and two media officials. Seven civilians were killed, including five children, in the conflict’s highest one-day civilian toll yet, according to security officials and witnesses.
Upon arrival at Cairo’s international airport, the Israeli official was whisked away directly from the tarmac and taken to talks with Egyptian authorities, Egyptian security officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press. They did not identify the Israeli official.
Egypt has been leading international efforts to broker a truce since Israel launched its offensive five days earlier aimed at stopping Gaza rocket attacks. But Israel and Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers remain far apart on any terms.
Has Libya attack become ‘politicized’? Senior retired military officer wants answers on…
Sources who have debriefed the team that was at the CIA annex the night of the attack in Benghazi say that the CIA operators from the Global Response Staff, or GRS, were equipped with Mark 48 machine guns and had two types of laser capability. Each weapon had both a “passive” as well as a “visible” laser that could be used against the Libyan attackers.
The presence of laser capability on the roof of the CIA annex confirms what Fox News sources that night in Benghazi originally said, which is that they had laser capability and for 5 hours and 15 minutes were wondering where the usual overhead air support was, especially since, according to this source, they radioed from the annex beginning as early as midnight asking for it.
The presence of lasers raises more questions about why air support was not sent to Benghazi even protectively once it became clear that the fighting had followed the CIA rescue team back to the annex.
U.S. military officials say they “thought the fighting was over” after the team left the consulate and that there was a lull in the fighting.
President Barack Obama could lose his home state of Illinois in November, a new poll shows.
A poll conducted by Illinois-based pollster and political strategist Michael McKeon found Obama leading Republican Mitt Romney by 49 percent to 37 percent in Cook County, the home of Chicago. That puts him ahead by a far thinner margin than expected in a county he should be winning handsomely.
Cook is the most Democratic leaning county in the state. It is also the most populous.
Those numbers do not bode well for the president.
“He has to come out of Cook County with a big lead or he’s gonna have problems downstate,” explained McKeon, who said that based on the numbers he had seen, Obama polled only in the forties in downstate Illinois.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden tells Newsmax that Mitt Romney was right — and President Obama wrong — when the GOP candidate said during the Monday debate that a nuclear Iran and not a terrorist attack was the biggest threat to America’s national security.
The retired 4-star Air Force General also says he is “not very hopeful” that negotiations with the Iranians will dissuade them from developing nuclear weapons. And he predicts that a President Romney would “review” Obama’s exemption of some of Iran’s major trading partners from imposing sanctions on the Islamic Republic.
WASHINGTON – The White House has put special operations strike forces on standby and moved drones into the skies above Africa, ready to strike militant targets from Libya to Mali — if investigators can find the Al Qaeda-linked group responsible for the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya.
But officials say the administration, with weeks until the presidential election, is weighing whether the short-term payoff of exacting retribution on Al Qaeda is worth the risk that such strikes could elevate the group’s profile in the region, alienate governments the U.S. needs to fight it in the future and do little to slow the growing terror threat in North Africa.
Details on the administration’s position and on its search for a possible target were provided by three current and one former administration official, as well as an analyst who was approached by the White House for help. All four spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the high-level debates publicly.
The dilemma shows the tension of the White House’s need to demonstrate it is responding forcefully to Al Qaeda, balanced against its long-term plans to develop relationships and trust with local governments and build a permanent U.S. counterterrorist network in the region.
Vice President Joe Biden pledged in his debate last week with Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan to find those responsible for the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others.
posted at 4:44 pm on October 12, 2012 by Allahpundit
My guess is no, they wouldn’t dare, but the Daily Caller and Tom Maguire make a fair point. In the span of about 18 hours, we’ve had Biden and Carney each insist that blame for Benghazi’s security failures lies outside the White House. It’s State that’s responsible for protecting U.S. diplomats in the field, which means if the buck doesn’t stop with Obama here, then it must stop with you-know-who. Normally that wouldn’t be a problem, as cabinet members are expected to take the heat for the president when something goes badly wrong. But in this case you-know-who has her eye on running in 2016 — possibly against (heh) Biden himself — and surely doesn’t want Benghazi staining the foreign policy credentials she’s worked hard to build.
Throw Bill Clinton, official Obama campaign surrogate, into the mix and we’ve got the makings of a nuclear clusterfark of ego, ass-covering, presidential ambition, and Clintonian drama. Edward Klein says the chain reaction is already in motion:
In fact, since the convention, Clinton and Obama have had a serious falling-out over two issues: the president’s preparation and lamentable performance in his debate with Mitt Romney, and the question of who should be assigned blame — Obama or Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — for the intelligence and security screw-up in Benghazi, Libya…
FILE: June 21, 2012: Mitt Romney campaigns in Orlando, Fla. (AP)
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is set to give a foreign policy speech Monday that will mark one of his final opportunities before Election Day to show his potential as a world leader — amid political turmoil in the Middle East and economic collapse in Europe.
Romney’s success on foreign policy has thus far have evolved towards good reviews. He has drawn widespread praise from conservatives and fellow Republicans for his full support of Israel’s quest to stop Iran from achieving nuclear capability.
U.S. intelligence officials knew within 24 hours of the assault on the U.S. Consulate in Libya that it was a terrorist attack and suspected Al Qaeda-tied elements were involved, sources told Fox News — though it took the administration a week to acknowledge it.
The account sharply conflicts with claims on the Sunday after the attack by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice that the administration believed the strike was a “spontaneous” event triggered by protests in Egypt over an anti-Islam film.
Two senior U.S. officials said that the Obama administration internally labeled the attack terrorism from the first day in order to unlock and mobilize certain resources to respond, and that officials were looking for one specific suspect. The officials said the intelligence community knew by Sept. 12 that the militant Ansar al-Shariah and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb were likely behind the strike.
Further, an official said, “No one … believed that the mortars, indirect and direct fire, and the RPGs were just the work of a mob — no one.”
Yet a congressional source told Fox News that CIA Director David Petraeus, during a briefing with members of the House Intelligence Committee three days after the attack, espoused the view 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.
After the White House for the first time Thursday explicitly called the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya an act of terror, President Obama ducked an opportunity to clear up the confusion about the ever-changing narrative — appearing to hold firm to the story that an anti-Islam film was to blame.
The president spoke Thursday at a town hall hosted by the Spanish-language Univision. He declined to get into specifics, even as lawmakers said after an intelligence briefing that there clearly was “some pre-planning” in last week’s deadly attack.
Instead, Obama launched into an explanation about how the U.S. saw something it’s seen before, where “there is an offensive video or cartoon directed at the Prophet Muhammad” and that is used “as an excuse by some to carry out inexcusable violent acts” against the U.S.
Obama stressed that we’re “still doing an investigation” and said he didn’t know whether Al Qaeda was involved.
Tunisian protestors burn a U.S. flag during a protest near the U.S. Embassy in Tunis on Wednesday, Sept. 12, 2012. (AP Photo/Hassene Dridi)
(CNSNews.com) – The first opinion poll to be conducted after last week’s deadly attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya and a spate of anti-American protests across the Muslim world has recorded a five-point drop in approval for President Obama’s handling of foreign policy.
The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday found the president’s foreign policy approval among registered voters at 49 percent, down from 54 percent one month earlier.
“The fall was steeper among independents, going from 53 percent in August to 41 percent,” NBC reported.
Reza Kahlili served in CIA Directorate of Operations, as a spy in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, counterterrorism expert; currently serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, an advisory board authorized by Congress. He is the author of the award winning book “A Time to Betray” and regularly appears in national and international media as an expert on Iran and counterterrorism in the Middle East.More ↓
Iranian analyst Alireza Forghani boasted today that Jerusalem, which he claims was invaded over 50 years ago by the “pig-faced” Jews, will soon become a mass “graveyard” for the Israeli people.
Forghani, a strategy specialist in the camp of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, boasted that every city in Israel will turn into a killing ground and the longsuffering of Muslims worldwide “will be justified by the mighty Islamic Iran.” No one then will listen to the cries of the women and children of Israel, the author warned, when Jerusalem becomes “the biggest graveyard in the world.”
Forghani has also previously penned articles that laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its people, as well as the right of Islamic Iran to obtain the nuclear bomb.
Monitoring the massive protests that continue to spread to various cities and localities in the Middle East is a tough task, as the response continues to grow exponentially. Islamists and others who find themselves immensely offended over a now-infamous anti-Muslim film have taken to the streets to target U.S. interests and defend their faith, sometimes using violent means to do so.
TUNISIA
On Friday, protests in the Middle East hit Tunis, Tunisia, where a large cloud of black smoke has risen around the U.S. embassy there. Outside the building, protesters are throwing stones, as police attempt to stop the activity unfolding.
Thousands of demonstrators massed outside the embassy and several were seen climbing the outer wall of the embassy grounds and raising a flag on which was written the Muslim profession of faith, an Associated Press reporter on the scene says. ”There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his prophet,” the flag purportedly read.
Protesters in Egypt and Libya attacked U.S. diplomatic missions on Tuesday, leading to the death of an American staffer at the consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi after fierce clashes at the compound, a Libyan official said. “One American staff member has died and a number have been injured in the clashes,” Abdel-Monem Al-Hurr, spokesman for Libya’s Supreme Security Committee, said, adding he did not know the exact number of injured or what the cause of death was.
The violence in Benghazi followed protests in neighboring Egypt where protesters scaled the walls of the Cairo embassy and tore down the American flag and burned it during protests over what demonstrators said was a U.S. film that insulted the Prophet Mohammad. On Tuesday, Egypt’s prestigious Al-Azhar mosque and seat of Sunni learning condemned a symbolic “trial” of the Prophet organized by a U.S. group including Terry Jones, a Christian pastor who triggered riots in Afghanistan in 2010 by threatening to burn the Koran.
Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood planned a mass climax to its presidential campaign on Sunday, hoping to sway undecided voters and clinch victory in this week’s election when Egyptians will choose their leader freely for the first time.On the last day of official campaigning, the Brotherhood told Egyptians to “book your place anywhere in Egypt” for evening rallies in support of its candidate Mohamed Mursi.
Brotherhood supporters seem unfazed by surveys that show their unfancied contender trailing rivals who entered the race earlier and are spending heavily in the dash for votes.
In one poll published last week in al-Masry al-Youm newspaper, Mursi was last of the four front-runners but 37 percent of the people surveyed were yet to make up their minds.
The polls, a relative novelty in Egypt, are admittedly unreliable and the large cohort of undecided voters further complicates any effort to pick a winner in the country’s first genuinely contested presidential election.
“Egyptians are a religious people and Mursi appears to be a man of God,” said Farag Ibrahim, a 44-year-old in the Nile Delta town of Mansoura. “That is why I will vote for him, and because I think many others will too, and he will win.”
With a grassroots network stretching into Egypt’s smallest villages, the Muslim Brotherhood has consolidated its influence since Hosni Mubarak’s overthrow in last year’s popular uprising.
Unsustainable debt, monetary inflation, uneasy markets, quantitative easing — the health of the global economy is on everyone’s mind.
Why? Because when coupled with massive amounts of public debt, weak economies usually lead to one thing: tax increases.
And it’s happening right now.
Just look at the eurozone where, desperate to address increasing deficits, several countries in the 17-nation union have increased personal income tax rates.
“Spain, for example, raised its personal tax rate by 2 percentage points to 45 percent last year and France’s newly elected Socialist Party is also proposing hiking taxes on the rich,” CNBC reports.
“Hike,” however, may be too kind a word. France’s newly-elected Socialist François Hollande wants to impose a 75 percent income tax on citizens earning more than $1.3 million. That’s a bit more than a “hike.” That’s an “ultra increase.”
Photo: AP -White House spokesman Jay Carney said Friday that he doesn’t lie.
But his office did lie on Monday for national security reasons.
On Monday evening the White House’s press office distributed a fake Tuesday schedule for the president. The deceptive document went to the White House press corps, and to the many other media outlets and non-media groups that track the president’s schedule.
“In the afternoon, the President and the Vice President will meet with Secretary of Defense [Leon] Panetta in the Oval Office,” said the 6:31 p.m. email, titled “Daily Guidance and press schedule for Tuesday, May 1, 2012.” The guidance also announced that Jay Carney, the president’s press secretary, would give a press briefing at 3 p.m.
WARNING: Freedom of SPEECH and of the PRESS is still the LAW.
THIS WEBSITE IS SERVING THE PUBLIC INTEREST. TAMPERING WITH THIS WEBSITE IS PUNISHABLE BY LAW AS A VIOLATION OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.
The Scripture Call for God’s People:
II Chronicles 7:14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
LIKE us on FACEBOOK
FoxNews “The Speaker’s Lobby”
We the People...
Fool Me Twice: Obama’s Shocking Plans for the Next Four Years Exposed
House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa visits Meet the Press to update David Gregory on the latest developments in his panel’s investigation into the Benghazi attacks.
by 
CWNews Posted Comments