Tag Archives: Al Qaeda

The New York Times Comes to Hillary Clinton’s Defense on Benghazi

David Kirkpatrick’s December 28 New York Times article “A Deadly Mix in Benghazi” marks a new low for the Times and its shameless cheerleading for the Obama administration.  In this piece, the Times is trying to address one of the main obstacles to a Hillary Clinton presidency: the cover-up of the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans: Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods.

In an 8,000-word article billed as the result of a lengthy New York Times investigation, Kirkpatrick claims the Times could find “no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault” on the Benghazi consulate and that the attack “was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.”

These claims are astonishing since the Obama administration long ago backed away from its insistence that the attack on the consulate was not a terrorist attack but a spontaneous demonstration in response to an anti-Muslim video that spun out of control.  (In fairness, I note that Kirkpatrick admits the attack was not spontaneous although he says it was not “meticulously planned.”)

Kirkpatrick’s article is politically convenient for the Obama administration which continues to be pummeled by Congressional Republicans for refusing to fully cooperate with investigations into the Benghazi terrorist attack and for blocking survivors of the attack from speaking with Congress.  But the article will be especially useful for Hillary Clinton who has been accused of a cover-up of the attack, of not holding anyone at State accountable for how they reacted and security problems at the consulate, and for her infamous comment to Senator Ron Johnson last January: “With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?”

The Times knows Clinton’s callous “what difference does it make” statement is a serious political liability and will be repeated again and again in Republican attack ads if she runs for president in 2016.  Kirkpatrick’s article appears intended to provide a narrative that supports her statements and undermines Republican criticism.

To do this, David Kirkpatrick had to engage in some fancy foot work to get around evidence that contradicts Clinton’s statements and find information that supports her.  This was a tall order.

To start, Kirkpatrick’s article is based mostly on interviews with Libyans who he claims had direct knowledge of the attack on the consulate.  None of them admitted involvement in the attack or any affiliation with terrorist groups.  This is hardly a surprise since these Libyan militia members probably fear being arrested or executed over the consulate attack.  Claims by some that the anti-Muslim video was a principal reason for the attack was predictable after President Obama and other senior U.S. officials publicly offered this as the motivation.

According to the article, a central figure in the attack was an eccentric, malcontent militia leader, Ahmed Abu Khattala.  Kirkpatrick writes that Khattala was an Islamist but said there is no evidence he had ties to al Qaeda.  But read the article carefully and you can see that there likely are such ties.  Kirkpatrick writes that Khattala said in hours of interviews after he became a suspect in the attack that “he had no connections to Al Qaeda. But he never hid his admiration for its vision.”  The article also says Khattala spent time in prison for Islamist extremism and drove a truck in a convoy in Benghazi in June 2012 flying the black radical Islamist flag.

Kirkpatrick says Khattala had close ties to the radical Islamist militia group Ansar al-Sharia but criticizes Republican claims that this proves a link between the Benghazi terrorist attack and al Qaeda because Kirkpatrick claims this group is a purely local extremist organization.

Kirkpatrick’s claims about Khattala, Ansar al-Sharia, and al Qaeda fly in the face about what is known about how al Qaeda has been operating since 9/11.  To evade intensified Western surveillance and counterterrorism efforts, al Qaeda is now a decentralized organization operating through loosely-based regional affiliates and franchises.  “Al Qaeda core” in the Waziristan area of Pakistan does not need to officially approve terrorist attacks on Western targets or send personal representatives to oversee them.  It now operates by providing the direction and inspiration for violence to its many global affiliates.  The best evidence of this was made public last August with news of an internet-based conference call between more than 20 senior al Qaeda leaders around the world.

It also is worth noting that al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, in a September 10, 2012 video, called for attacks the next day to avenge the death of his deputy, Abu Yahya al-Libi, by a U.S. drone strike in June 2012.  I believe is no coincidence that Zawahiri’s brother and Egyptian radical Islamist, Mohammed al-Zawahiri, was outside the wall of the U.S. embassy in Cairo on September 11, 2012 while angry mobs tried to storm it.

Kirkpatrick does not mention Zawahiri’s call for violence on September 11, 2012 nor does he discuss how al Qaeda has changed its method of operations.

Perhaps the biggest flaw of the Kirkpatrick article is that it relies on interviews with Libyans but ignores what many in Congress claim is strong intelligence indicating that al Qaeda was behind the attack on the consulate.  Kirkpatrick contends that the only intelligence connecting Al Qaeda to the attack was an intercepted phone call that night from a participant in the first wave of the attack to a friend in another African country.  House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers and House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King believe otherwise.

Rogers said in response to the New York Times article that “I don’t think this is only a Republican stance that it was an al Qaeda attack.  The body of intelligence from the raw reports – the 4,000 of them leading up to the day of the attack, to the events of the day of the attack, to the post-attack – all lead to the conclusion that al Qaeda was involved in the attack.”

Peter King said in response to the Kirkpatrick story, ““They are saying that al-Shariah is involved, but al-Shariah is a part of the al Qaeda umbrella, the al Qaeda network.”

Even CNN does not agree with Kirkpatrick’s attempt to disassociate Ansar al-Sharia from al Qaeda.  In a December 5, 2013 op-ed on its website, CNN reporters Paul Cruickshank and Nic Robertson wrote

 “Groups sympathetic to al Qaeda have a significant presence in Benghazi, most notably Ansar al-Sharia, an umbrella group that includes militant outfits suspected of launching the attack that killed four Americans in the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.”

What does Kirkpatrick think about specific charges made by Congressmen Rogers, King, Issa and others concerning al Qaeda’s role in the attack on the Benghazi consulate?  He ignores them except for stating that

“The only intelligence connecting Al Qaeda to the attack was an intercepted phone call that night from a participant in the first wave of the attack to a friend in another African country who had ties to members of Al Qaeda, according to several officials briefed on the call. But when the friend heard the attacker’s boasts, he sounded astonished, the officials said, suggesting he had no prior knowledge of the assault.”

This sounds like Kirkpatrick was shopping around for input from Obama officials who would support his story line.  Why did he not talk to Rogers and other Republicans with a different view?  Why did he not at least present their views?  The reason is clear: Kirkpatrick wanted to avoid including inconvenient facts that contradicted his thesis that the Obama administration’s initial claims about the attacks on the Benghazi consulate were essentially correct.

This is more than sloppy journalism.  It is dishonest political advocacy intended to shore up the 15-month Obama administration cover-up of the attacks on the Benghazi consulate.  It is now clear that Mr Obama and his senior officials repeatedly lied about this being a preplanned terrorist attack so this tragedy would not hurt his re-election chances.  Kirkpatrick and the Times hope articles like this will help protect the legacy of this president and remove this issue from hurting the presidential prospects of Hillary Clinton, who the Times wants to succeed him.

When the press is a poodle

This nation’s founders had a special role in mind for the media in the constitutional arrangements they carefully constructed.  It was to provide a fourth source of checks and balances on the potential abuse of power by the three branches of government, by virtue of journalists’ independence and, if assured freedom of the press, their ability to expose and, thereby, to counter overreaching presidents, legislators or courts.

The Framers of our Constitution didn’t reckon on the American media in the age of Obama, however.  Three examples in recent days suggest that at least the “mainstream” press have become little more than flaks for the President and his agenda. Whether out of a sense of ideological affinity or thanks to successful official manipulation, such journalists have been reduced to the status of Obama’s poodles.  Move over Bo and Sunny, you have company.

Let’s start with the New York Times – the country’s putative “paper of record” – that has shilled shamelessly for Barack Obama from the get-go.  To cite but one example, last month it called his serial, fraudulent commitment that “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, period” an “incorrect promise.”  As one blogger memorably put it, “There are lies, damned lies and ‘incorrect promises.’”

Then on December 28th, the Grey Lady breathlessly claimed that extensive interviews on the ground in Benghazi “turned up no evidence that al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role” in the murderous attack on U.S. facilities there on September 11, 2012.  The Times insisted that, “The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi.”

Times’ reporter David Kirkpatrick concluded, moreover, that the murderous assault “was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.”

Unsurprisingly, this article was immediately touted by Team Obama as vindication of the administration’s initial party line – and damning to congressional Republicans and others who have disputed it.

The trouble is, it just ain’t so. Lawmakers of both parties, including notably members of the House Intelligence Committee like Chairman Mike Rogers (Republican of Michigan), Adam Schiff (Democrat of California) and Pete King (Republican of New York) have publicly contested the Times’ findings.  Testimony provided before their panel has confirmed that jihadists who share al Qaeda’s shariah-directed, supremacist goals and claim to be its affiliates conducted the attack in a planned and disciplined fashion – not as a spontaneous mob.

It is a travesty that, twelve-plus years after 9/11, neither the Obama administration nor the so-called gold standard for America’s Fourth Estate understand and correctly depict the nature of the threat we face from shariah and the full panoply of jihad – both violent and stealthy – required of its adherents.

One thing is clear, though: We need a Benghazigate select committee to get the truth out, once and for all.

A willingness to do the Obama administration’s bidding also seems at work behind reporting by the Associated Press about the declining condition of the land-based leg of America’s strategic Triad and the plummeting morale of the Air Force personnel responsible for it.

On December 21st, the AP distributed an article entitled, “U.S. Nuclear Missiles are a Force in Much Distress.” It chronicles the fact that the Minuteman III intercontinental-range ballistic missiles have been in the inventory since 1970 – but fails to mention that they have recently completed a comprehensive service-life extension program.  The article also discusses the fact that “young officers sense the mission is in decline.”

The real point of the report seems to have been promoting the Obama administration’s line that, “The U.S. sees less use for nuclear weapons and aims to one day eliminate them, possibly starting with the missiles. The trend is clear, advanced by President Barack Obama’s declared vision of a nuclear weapons-free world.”

The problem of course, is that no other nuclear weapon state or wannabe is pursuing President Obama’s “vision” – not one.  The fact that this reality was not mentioned – combined with the emphasis placed on the age of the missiles, the worrisome readiness shortfalls among their crews and the need for costly modernization of these and other elements of the U.S. deterrent – smacks of the spin of administration denuclearizers, not objective reporting.  The answer to such real problems in the real world is energetic corrective action, not unilateral disarmament.

Finally, as Matt Continetti of the Washington Free Beacon recently observed, the press “pool reporter” selected to cover Vice President Joe Biden’s recent meetings with Chinese leaders was not even a journalist.  He was Steve Clemons, a Democratic foreign policy activist.  And it showed in the slanted reporting he provided to the “working press” along for the trip and, through them, to the rest of us.

At a time when President Obama is increasingly engaged in extra- and un-constitutional behavior, a free press performing the function envisioned for it by the Framers is more necessary than ever.  In its absence, there’s every reason to believe that  not only will the mainstream media be poodled, but the country will go to the dogs.

Former CIA Analyst: New York Times Benghazi Article Doesn’t Pass Smell Test

“This article is based on interviews with Libyans. Most of the Libyans deny they had anything to do with this attack. Well of course they’re going to say that. They don’t want to be prosecuted. They don’t want to be arrested.”

Speaking on Fox News, former CIA analyst Fred Fleitz ripped apart the New York Times’ assertion that there was no Al-Qaeda involvement in the attack on our embassy in Libya. The Times concludes that the murder of the Ambassador and three other Americans was the direct result of unrest over a video posted on YouTube, a theory first infamously floated by Susan Rice.

“I think there were a lot of omissions. I think that were statements about terrorism that simply didn’t add up.”

Fleitz points out that the article fails to take key intel about Al-Qaeda and how its tactics have changed over the years. The interview highlights the credulous way in which the Times swallows lines not only from the administration but from bad or self-interested actors in country without outside verification. Fleitz notes that Congressman Mike Rogers has access to classified information and facts and intel that the New York Times reporter was not privy to, and calls the evidence for terrorist involvement “overwhelming.”

Is this an attempt to lay cover for President Obama or for Hillary Clinton ahead of her possible presidential run? Why, what on earth would possibly make you think the media might exercise such subterfuge and water-carrying?

We’re here to kill Americans

On October 27th, CBS News’ “60 Minutes” led its program with a fresh look at what happened in the run-up to and during the nighttime attack on two U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya.  The leitmotif of the report was a statement made by the jihadists as they beat hapless unarmed Libyans who were, somehow, supposed to have protected the interior of the so-called “Special Mission Compound”:  “We’re here to kill Americans.”

And kill they did.  Four Americans were murdered, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, who had warned superiors repeatedly about the inadequate security of the installation in which he died, by some accounts after being tortured and raped.  More of our countrymen would likely have met a similar fate but for the unauthorized intervention and heroics of two former Navy SEALS, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, who subsequently were killed in action.

Amb. Stevens was not the only one who had warned about the dangerous vulnerability of an American outpost in a city increasingly manifesting the presence of al Qaeda elements – including by the flying of the terrorist group’s black flag on government buildings.  In fact, similar warnings were also sounded by several others interviewed for the 60 Minutes segment, notably: a British security contractor tasked in the five months leading up the September 11th with managing the impotent Libyan “security force” inside the wire; Amb. Stevens Number 2 in Tripoli, Deputy Chief of Mission Greg Hicks; and Lieutenant Colonel Andy Wood, a Green Beret who was charged at the time with protecting U.S. personnel in Libya.

As Col. Wood put it: “We had one option: Leave Benghazi or you will be killed.”  He told 60 Minutes that he had recommended to the embassy’s senior staff known as the “country team” in Tripoli that they “change the security profile [in Benghazi]…Shut down operations. Move out temporarily. Or change locations within the city.  Do something to break up the profile because you are being targeted.”  The reason: “You are gonna be attacked in Benghazi.”

Mr. Hicks added that a “particularly frightening piece of information” compounded his concerns about security when the embassy learned, as 60 Minutes put it, that “senior al Qaeda leader Abu Anas al-Libi was in Libya, tasked by the head of al Qaeda to establish a clandestine terrorist network inside the country.”

The 60 Minutes report adds texture to the astounding malfeasance of the Obama administration as it ignored these warnings in the months leading up to the attack and set up Americans for murder at the hands of jihadists.  But it failed to even ask, let alone answer, several of the most pregnant outstanding questions.  These include:

  • Why were the Special Mission Compound and CIA annex in Benghazi in the first place, let alone in such an insecure status?  Was it to facilitate the collection and onward shipment to Syrian “rebels” – known to include al Qaeda and elements loyal to it – of arms recovered after Muammar Qaddafi’s weapons caches were “liberated” by jihadist “rebels” in Libya?
  • Why was Amb. Stevens in that exposed facility in a city awash with al Qaeda on a particularly dangerous day for Americans?  Why especially since al Qaeda’s leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, had called on his followers the day before to retaliate for a U.S.- engineered assassination of a top member of the group, Libyan jihadist Abu Yahya al-Libi?
  • If, as has been widely reported, Amb. Stevens was in Benghazi because a gun-running operation from there to Syria had been compromised and he needed to do damage-control, why would al Qaeda have attacked the facilities from which it was being armed?  The Iranians would have had a motive, but not al Qaeda.  Was the attack initiated by Tehran and the Sunni jihadists went along with it just so they could “kill Americans”?
  • Who was responsible for the false narrative that the Benghazi “consulate” (actually the Special Mission Compound) was sacked and set afire by a mob angry about an internet video?  Could it have been the same person(s) who prevented security from being upgraded in the interest of showing the success of Team Obama’s toppling of Qaddafi and perhaps the one(s) who thought it a good idea to help arm “the opposition” – including al Qaeda-linked militias – first in Libya, then in Syria?
  • Where were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton during this seven-hour battle in Benghazi?

These are the sorts of questions that will, at this point, probably only be answered by a select House committee – something sought by Rep. Frank Wolf (Republican of Virginia) and 176 other members of the House of Representatives.  It is scandalous that they have not been satisfactorily addressed before now by the five standing committees that have, to date, been conducting desultory and inconclusive inquiries.  Since the jihadists are “here to kill Americans,” we are on notice that persisting in such willful blindness and a lack of accountability is an invitation to disaster.

Worse yet, as Representatives Bill Goodlatte and Jason Chaffetz (Republicans of Virginia and Utah, respectively) have learned, the Department of Homeland Security is preparing to “lift the longstanding prohibition on Libyans to come to the U.S. to work in aviation maintenance, flight operations, or to seek study or training in nuclear science.”  Why on earth would they do that? Evidently, to show that U.S.-Libyan ties have been “normalized.” Sound familiar?

If we don’t want jihadists literally here to kill us, we better stop them elsewhere.  And getting to the bottom of Benghazigate is a necessary step towards doing that.

An Anniversary to Remember – and Learn From

Jerusalem, Israel: Forty years ago this week, Arab armies launched the Yom Kippur War at a moment when practically every Israeli was preoccupied with religious obligations.  The Arab coalition very nearly succeeded in their longstanding goal of driving the Jews into the sea.

Such a peril arose principally because the Israelis failed to understand the enemies they were confronting at that moment – and their perception that the Jewish State was, if not weak, at least unready for a concerted, coordinated attack.  As has happened so often in the past, such a perception need not be right to precipitate war.  It just has to take hold in the minds of freedom’s foes.

Four decades later, we have much to learn from this experience.  Now, as then, the forces of the Free World are ignoring the nature and ambitions of the enemy arrayed against it.  And we are engaged in behavior that encourages the latter to behave aggressively towards us.

Seen from the vantage point of the Middle East, for example, there appears to be a widespread consensus:  What I think of as the Obama Doctrine – diminishing our country, emboldening our adversaries and undermining our friends – is sowing the seeds for escalating instability.  The result may once again be war.  Perhaps it will be a regional one.  Perhaps, as the Yom Kippur War threatened to do, it will spread beyond the Middle East.

While the recent raids by U.S. special operations units in Somalia and Libya are commendable – and indeed long overdue, like drone strikes targeting al Qaeda-linked individuals, these actions cannot begin to make up for the Obama administration’s failure to recognize that, far from being on the “path to defeat,” Osama bin Laden’s organization is continuing to metastasize.

This bit of national security fraud, which was perpetrated for nakedly political purposes in the course of the last presidential election, is greatly compounded by another: the proposition that al Qaeda and its franchises are the only jihadist danger we confront.  In fact, they are but subsets of a much larger threat posed by those who fully share Osama bin Laden’s supremacist agenda of imposing shariah worldwide.

Specifically, Team Obama persists in its efforts to embrace, legitimate, empower, fund and arm the wellspring of that Islamist threat: the Muslim Brotherhood. Even after the Egyptian military forced Brotherhood president Mohamed Morsi from power, rounded up the group’s leadership and, most recently, banned it outright, President Obama remains on the wrong side of history.

In Egypt, that may drive the new government into the arms of Russians. In Syria, Libya and Tunisia, it has us helping jihadists. And it contributes to a policy of weakening and otherwise isolating the one state in the region that stands as an actual counterweight to these forces: Israel.

The question occurs:  Why?

Clearly, President Obama is personally sympathetic to what he perceives as a “non-violent” Islamic group with whom we can do business, and he has surrounded himself with subordinates who share that view.  This ignores the fact that the federal government has proven in court that the Muslim Brotherhood’s mission in our own country is “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within…by [our] hands.”

The Obama administration’s own clueless proclivities towards such enemies are being powerfully reinforced by Muslim Brotherhood-associated individuals now advising the President and U.S. national security agencies.  A free on-line course produced by the Center for Security Policy (www.MuslimBrotherhoodinAmerica.com) details the roles played by six such individuals.

One of them is Mohamed Elibiary, a Texas-based Islamist activist with a long-record of associations with and advocacy for the Muslim Brotherhood.  He was recently reappointed to the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Council and given the title of Senior Fellow there.

Yet, as Charles Johnson reported at the Daily Caller on 7 October, Elibiary makes no bones about his support for convicted terrorists and their funders.  Worse yet, an annotated series of interviews with Elibiary conducted by the Clarion Project’s Ryan Mauro published the same day by the Center for Security Policy establishes that Elibiary has used his advisory role to discourage the prosecution of his friends on material support for terrorism grounds. He has also played an instrumental role in the purging of official training materials of information about shariah and civilization jihad that our homeland defenders, law enforcement, intelligence community and military need to know to protect us.

A similar sort of wishful thinking and failure to calibrate the enemy nearly destroyed the Jewish State in October 1973.  The potential cost of our persisting in such a mistake today is as predictably high as it is avoidable.  But in order to avoid the bitter fruits of the Obama Doctrine, we have to understand our Islamist foes and, for starters, take a page from the new Egyptian government, by removing them and those who do their bidding from positions of influence and power in that of the United States of America.

Influential U.S. Syria Expert: Not All Islamists Are Enemies of West

The coverage of the downfall of Elizabeth O’Bagy, a very influential expert on Syria who was found to have lied about her credentials, is missing an important element: O’Bagy based her assessments on the notion that not all Islamists are enemies of the West.

O’Bagy burst onto the scene as the leading Syria expert for the Institute of the Study of War at age 26. She was the center of attention when her August 30 editorial in the Wall Street Journal argued that concern about the composition of the Syrian rebels is overblown. It was subsequently cited by Senator John McCain (R-AZ) and Secretary of State John Kerry.

“Contrary to many media accounts, the war in Syria is not being waged entirely, or even predominantly, by dangerous Islamists and al Qaeda die-hards,” O’Bagy wrote.

The Wall Street Journal was hammered for not disclosing O’Bagy’s position with the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an opposition group linked to the rebels and who facilitated a meeting between Senator McCain and rebel commanders in Syria in May.

O’Bagy was fired by the Institute for the Study of War for falsely claiming she had a doctorate from Georgetown University.

More importantly, O’Bagy wasn’t merely tied to the Syrian opposition, a connection that shouldn’t necessarily disqualify her as an expert (though it should be disclosed), the advice she gave top U.S. officials did not treat the terms “Islamist” and “moderate” as mutually exclusive terms. This inflated the numbers of the so-called “moderates” and deflated the number of extremists.

On September 7, she tweeted, “Islamist groups [are] very different than AQ linked groups and extremists. Different outlook, ideology, relations with people, etc.”

Her Twitter account has since been deleted but the Clarion Project has a screenshot.

Contradicting her analysis, Clarion reported in June that 10 of 12 rebel groups are Islamist with another one linked to Kurdish terrorists. The remaining force also has Islamists in its ranks. There is indeed a power struggle between Islamist and non-Islamist rebels, but the secular forces are outmatched by their Islamist competitors.

O’Bagy’s perception of what qualifies as “moderate” falls in line with the agenda of the Syrian Emergency Task Force, an opposition group linked to the Syrian rebels that paid her as a contractor.

The executive director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force is Mouaz Moustafa, who admitted that his antagonism against Israel is stronger than his feelings against Al-Qaeda. He tweeted on June 5: “nothing hurts me more than being called pro Zionist, ive been called al Qaeda and terrorist etc but being called Zionist kills me when my family are n camps just come see where I grew up Palestine lives in me”

Moustafa also reportedly “liked” a video on YouTube that shows Hamas terror leader in Gaza Ismail Haniyeh praying. Moustafa’s playlist of “favorite” videos include explicitly pro-terrorist music videos that have a montage of photos celebrating Hamas and Hezbollah. One is titled “A LA INTIFADA !!!” and the other is named  “INTIFADA!!!” It opens with the text, “Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea.” That implies the elimination of Israel.

O’Bagy is still listed as the Syrian Emergency Task Force’s Political Director.

Daniel Greenfield discovered three members of the Syria Emergency Task Force Board of Trustees/Board of Directors are linked to U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities: Dr. Jihad Qaddour was a trustee of the Muslim American Society; Bassam Estwani is a former imam of the radical Dar al-Hijrah mosque and Zaher Saloul is chairman of the Council on Islamic Organizations of Chicago.

In September 2011, the Los Angeles chapter of the group held an event with the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity. A State Department official was one of the speakers.

Cassie Chesley was listed as the Syria Emergency Task Force’s Communications, but his name has since been removed from the group’s website, as was the name of Research Associate Ahmad Soliman, who attended an event of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) at the University of Michigan about one year ago. ISNA is a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity.

These organizations as a whole are impacting U.S. policy, not just O’Bagy. As mentioned, the Syrian Emergency Task Force acts as a middle-man for Senator McCain’s meetings with the rebels. The organization also gets funding from the State Department. The Syrian Support Group, a separate but linked organization, is the main liaison for the U.S. government to the rebels.

These are the groups and experts that are informing our leaders. Did anyone in the U.S. government do a basic background check?

National Security leaders urge Speaker Boehner to establish Select Committee on Benghazi

Washington, D.C.: Today – on the eve of the one-year anniversary of the jihadist attacks on American facilities in Benghazi, Libya, that resulted in the deaths of four Americans and the wounding of many more – a group of distinguished national security leaders sent a letter to Speaker John Boehner, urging him to establish a select committee to fully investigate the events surrounding last year’s assault.
The letter, organized by the Center for Security Policy, points out that the American public is losing confidence in the institutions of government to respond appropriately to these attacks, and observes that although existing mechanisms in Congress have been afforded ample time to investigate the events of Benghazi, critical questions remain unanswered.  A select committee, the letter argues, would draw upon existing investigative resources and results to date in order to bring about a comprehensive inquiry, without imposing undue costs or further delay.
The signers of the letter include:
  • Hon. Michael B. Mukasey, former Attorney General of the United States
  • Admiral James “Ace” Lyons, US Navy (Ret.), former Commander-in-Chief, US Pacific Fleet
  • General Frederick J. Kroesen, US Army (Ret.), former Vice Chief of Staff, US Army
  • Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin, US Army (Ret.), former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Intelligence)
  • Lieutenant General Harry Edward Soyster, US Army (Ret.), former Director, Defense Intelligence Agency
  • Ambassador Henry Cooper, former Chief Negotiator, Defense and Space Talks, former Director, Strategic Defense Initiative
  • Major General Paul E. Vallely, US Army (Ret.), former Deputy Commander, US Army Forces Pacific
  • Hon. Tidal McCoy, former Secretary of the Air Force (Acting)
  • Lieutenant Colonel Allen West, US Army (Ret.), former Member of Congress
  • Hon. Joseph E. Schmitz, former Inspector General, Department of Defense
  • Hon. Michelle Van Cleave, former National Counterintelligence Executive
  • Vice Adm. Robert Monroe, US Navy (Ret.), former Director, Defense Nuclear Agency
  • Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy (Acting)
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy, commented:
“Nearly a year after the attacks at Benghazi, the American people are still waiting for a full accounting of what transpired there.  We have a need to know:  What policies contributed to this debacle?  Who was responsible for the lack of response during the attacks that spanned seven-hours? And why has none of those who perpetrated these murderous acts of jihad and those who attempted to mislead us about them been held accountable.
“It is now clear that only a select committee is likely to provide complete, accurate and long-overdue answers to these fundamental questions.  The military, intelligence, and national security leaders who have signed this letter speak for millions of Americans who also seek such answers.  They deserve our gratitude for their leadership in insisting that such a mechanism is established.”
The full text of the letter can be found below.
-30-
10 September 2013
Hon. John Boehner
Speaker
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C.  20515
Dear Mr. Speaker:
As former military, intelligence and national security officials with extensive experience in security policy and practice, we are concerned about the American people’s apparently serious loss of confidence in the institutions of their government.  One factor contributing to this alienation has been the failure of those institutions to respond appropriately to the murderous jihadist attacks in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.  They rightly expect, at an absolute minimum, that Congress will ensure accountability for those responsible.
As you are well aware, our country is nearing the first anniversary of the assaults on the Special Mission Compound and CIA Annex in Benghazi.  To date, however, the five House committees that share jurisdiction have held only a small number of mostly less-than-illuminating hearings into the policies that led to, and the events that occurred during and after, the murder of four of our countrymen and the wounding of many more.
We appreciate that the chairmen of these committees produced four months ago a joint “interim report.”  Yet, its authors acknowledged that they did not have answers to many crucial national security questions.  Worse, as your colleague, Rep. Frank Wolf, has established in a succession of speeches delivered on the House floor in the interval, we are no closer today to knowing those answers. (Attached please find a list of the illustrative outstanding questions Congressman Wolf has highlighted.)
In addition, no timeframe has been publicly announced for going beyond the interim report or holding additional hearings toward that end. This is particularly troubling in light of press accounts that the survivors of the Benghazi attacks are being intimidated and risk job action should they come forward with their eye-witness accounts.  If Congress does not afford them an opportunity to do so without fear of retaliation by issuing subpoenas for their testimony, it will be complicit in precluding their help in seeing justice served – and in denying the American people the full accounting to which they are entitled.
We believe an ample chance has been afforded for the “regular order” to operate in investigating Benghazigate.  It has failed to do so.  Now is the time for a select committee to be established with a mandate to draw upon the five committee’s existing investigative resources and results to date and to complete – if possible by year’s end – the necessary, thorough and comprehensive inquiry.  This approach can alleviate concerns about undue costs and further delay in convening a select committee.
Mr. Speaker, the survivors want to tell their stories and correct the record.  Two different books based on their stories are reportedly in the works.  If the American people learn what happened from a published account rather than from those charged with congressional oversight, the perception of a cover-up – or at least a serious dereliction of duty – is inevitable.
Our republic is predicated on the trust of the governed in those they choose to represent them.  We must not allow the jihadists who have thus far paid no price for killing Ambassador Stevens, murdering three of his comrades and afflicting the lives of so many others to do violence as well to our people’s confidence in their constitutional form of government.
For all these reasons, we call upon you to establish without further delay a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attacks.
Sincerely,
Hon. Michael B. Mukasey, former Attorney General of the United States
Admiral James “Ace” Lyons, US Navy (Ret.), former Commander-in-Chief, US Pacific Fleet
General Frederick J. Kroesen, US Army (Ret.), former Vice Chief of Staff, US Army
Lieutenant General William “Jerry” Boykin, US Army (Ret.), former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Intelligence)
Lieutenant General Harry Edward Soyster, US Army (Ret.), former Director, Defense Intelligence Agency
Ambassador Henry Cooper, former Chief Negotiator, Defense and Space Talks, former Director, Strategic Defense Initiative
Major General Paul E. Vallely, US Army (Ret.), former Deputy Commander, US Army Forces Pacific
Hon. Tidal McCoy, former Secretary of the Air Force (Acting)
Lieutenant Colonel Allen West, US Army (Ret.), former Member of Congress
Hon. Joseph E. Schmitz, former Inspector General, Department of Defense
Hon. Michelle Van Cleave, former National Counterintelligence Executive
Vice Adm. Robert Monroe, US Navy (Ret.), former Director, Defense Nuclear Agency
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy (Acting)
A Selection of Outstanding Questions Concerning the Attacks in Benghazi as Posed by
Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) on the Floor of the U.S. House of Representatives
Question of the Day #1
 Where are the Benghazi survivors?
Question of the Day #2
 Which agency was responsible for vetting the Libyan security guards at the U.S. consulate?
Question of the Day #3
 How many Benghazi survivors were forced to sign Non-Disclosure agreements?
Question of the Day #4
 Why haven’t we applied pressure to countries refusing to allow the FBI to access the terrorists responsible for the attack?
Question of the Day #5
Why was the CIA’s security team repeatedly ordered to “stand down” after the attack began?
Question of the Day #6
Why did Gen. [Carter] Ham speak publicly about the military’s response at a forum in Aspen, Colorado – where tickets start at $1,200 – yet his testimony before Congress was behind closed doors?
Question of the Day #7
Ambassador Stevens made several calls for help to nearby consulates. Which foreign consulates did he call? How did those consulates respond?
Question of the Day #8
What happened in Washington on the night of the attack and in the days to follow?
Question of the Day #9
Who are the anonymous senior administration officials who admitted “mistakes” in their handling of the attack to CBS News?
Question of the Day #10
Why was there a facility operated by the CIA in Benghazi?
Question of the Day #11
Who in the White House knew what was going on in the CIA annex in Benghazi?

Question of the Day #12
Why are these heroes being told not talk? What is the administration afraid of?
What is it protecting?

Just say no on Syria

Team Obama’s public campaign to embroil the United States in Syria’s civil war has kicked into high gear.  The President’s senior subordinates have been warning incessantly about the costs of inaction, and making preposterous promises about the benefits of conducting a limited attack on Bashir Assad’s regime.

President Obama is throwing himself into the sales pitch, too, with a saturation round of TV appearances Monday night and an address to the nation Tuesday.

Will all this lobbying work?  Will skeptical legislators ignore their constituents – who overwhelmingly recognize the folly of this proposal – and do as the White House and some Republicans demand?  Not if the common sense of most Americans prevails, as common sense tells us our attacking Syria will not make things better.  Rather, it likely will make matters worse, and probably much worse.

Here’s a sanity check on the case being made by the proponents.

The principal argument of advocates of a new authorization for the use of military force principal has two facets:  First, the United States has an international responsibility to act in the face of chemical weapons use.  And second, if we don’t, Assad, Iran and others will employ them with impunity and the mullahs in Tehran will no longer fear our red lines on their nuclear programs.

The United Nations, the Left and others hostile to American power have long sought to subordinate it to the dictates of the so-called “international community.”  The doctrine of a “responsibility to protect” (R2P) was tailor-made for this purpose:  It furthers the notion that the use of force is only legitimate when a UN mandate has been provided or, where that’s not possible (due to Russian and/or Chinese vetoes), where some other grounds can be found for invoking an international authority.

More to the point, R2P ensures that the U.S. military’s finite – and currently seriously overstretched – resources will be put to use punishing those whose barbarism violates “international norms,” the enforcement of which becomes defined as a vital American interest.  Consequently, a vote for Obama’s Syria resolution is a vote to legitimate and authorize the transnationalist grab for control of the only armed forces we have, at the expense of our sovereignty and, inevitably, of our security.

As to the possibility that, absent our attack, we will confront more chemical weapons use, it cannot be ruled out.  On the other hand, no one – no one – has explained how “degrading Assad’s capabilities” and “changing the momentum of the battlefield” (as the Senate Foreign Relations Committee resolution demands) will assure greater control of the Syrian dictator’s vast chemical arsenal.  In fact, Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey has testified that the U.S. strike will target the regime’s weapons used to protect that arsenal.

Even in the absence of such a deliberate purpose, we have to assume that either the designated terrorist group allied with Assad (Hezbollah) or the one dominating the opposition (al Qaeda) will gain access to some of these arms.  Consequently, those voting for the President’s resolution have no claim to a higher moral authority than the opponents when it comes to preventing future examples of the horrific incidents captured in videos of Syrian victims that the administration is shamelessly exploiting to buffalo legislators.

Then, there is the ultimate appeal being made to patriots – in and out of the Congress – found in the assertion that not just the President’s credibility, but the nation’s, is on the line. Some Republican legislators and a number of former officials of GOP administrations have embraced this argument.  They warn that the repercussions of defeating Mr. Obama this time will be to damage confidence in America for the duration of his presidency, with potentially devastating effects.

Unfortunately, inordinate damage has already been done to our leadership in the world as a result of nearly five years of what passes for this president’s security policy-making.  That has been the predictable effect of the Obama Doctrine – which I have reduced down to nine words: emboldening our enemies, undermining our allies, diminishing our country.  And, as Norman Podhoretz trenchantly put it in the Wall Street Journal on Monday: “[Obama’s] foreign policy, far from a dismal failure, is a brilliant success as measured by what he intended all along to accomplish….The fundamental transformation he wished to achieve here was to reduce the country’s power and influence.”

As a result, the question before the Congress this week is not whether the United States credibility will be degraded by its repudiation of what is, in fact, more of a Gulf of Tonkin-style blank-check than a restrictive authorization for only a limited military action.  Rather, it is:  Will we be able to measure the marginal additional harm done to our nation’s prestige, power and influence – all ingredients in its credibility – given the damage Mr. Obama has already done to them?

It was predictable, and predicted, that the whirlwind Barack Obama has sown, would be reaped eventually.  That moment may be at hand.  Thanks in no small measure to the decisions taken to date – including those that have hollowed out our military, reduced our presence and power-projection capabilities and contributed to the metastasizing of, among other threats, the Islamist cancer – there are no good options in Syria.  Unfortunately, the worst of them at the moment appears to be our going to war there, and Congress should decline to do so.

Go-Code for al Qaeda in Syria

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee yesterday approved a resolution green-lighting the attack President Obama is intent on launching in Syria.  A bipartisan majority would permit military strikes to “change the momentum” in Syria’s civil war.

Since that authorization is directly at odds with the sentiments of the American people – who oppose intervention in Syria by at least 56 to 19 percent – the Committee’s members must have found the arguments of the critics unpersuasive.  Oh wait, the Committee actually didn’t take testimony from any critics.

That’s right, Senators have only heard from administration witnesses, all of whom unsurprisingly support the President’s plan for military strikes that would help al Qaeda overthrow Syria’s dictator.  If this sounds to you like a recipe for disaster, you might let your representatives know.

Obama’s bread and circuses

Over the past week, President Barack Obama and his senior advisers have told us that the US is poised to go to war against Syria. In the next few days, the US intends to use its airpower and guided missiles to attack Syria in response to the regime’s use of chemical weapons in the outskirts of Damascus last week.

The questions that ought to have been answered before any statements were made by the likes of Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel have barely been raised in the public arena. The most important of those questions are: What US interests are at stake in Syria? How should the US go about advancing them? What does Syria’s use of chemical weapons means for the US’s position in the region? How would the planned US military action in Syria impact US deterrent strength, national interests and credibility regionally and worldwide? Syria is not an easy case. Thirty months into the war there, it is clear that the good guys, such as they are, are not in a position to win.

Syria is controlled by Iran and its war is being directed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and by Hezbollah. And arrayed against them are rebel forces dominated by al-Qaida.

As US Sen. Ted Cruz explained this week, “Of nine rebel groups [fighting the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad], seven of them may well have some significant ties to al-Qaida.”

With no good horse to bet on, the US and its allies have three core interests relating to the war. First, they have an interest in preventing Syria’s chemical, biological and ballistic missile arsenals from being used against them either directly by the regime, through its terror proxies or by a successor regime.

Second, the US and its allies have an interest in containing the war as much as possible to Syria itself.

Finally, the US and its allies share an interest in preventing Iran, Moscow or al-Qaida from winning the war or making any strategic gains from their involvement in the war.

For the past two-and-a-half years, Israel has been doing an exemplary job of securing the first interest. According to media reports, the IDF has conducted numerous strikes inside Syria to prevent the transfer of advanced weaponry, including missiles from Syria to Hezbollah.

Rather than assist Israel in its efforts that are also vital to US strategic interests, the US has been endangering these Israeli operations. US officials have repeatedly leaked details of Israel’s operations to the media. These leaks have provoked several senior Israeli officials to express acute concern that in providing the media with information regarding these Israeli strikes, the Obama administration is behaving as if it is interested in provoking a war between Israel and Syria. The concerns are rooted in a profound distrust of US intentions, unprecedented in the 50-year history of US-Israeli strategic relations.

The second US interest threatened by the war in Syria is the prospect that the war will not be contained in Syria. Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan specifically are threatened by the carnage. To date, this threat has been checked in Jordan and Lebanon. In Jordan, US forces along the border have doubtlessly had a deterrent impact in preventing the infiltration of the kingdom by Syrian forces.

In Lebanon, given the huge potential for spillover, the consequences of the war in Syria have been much smaller than could have been reasonably expected. Hezbollah has taken a significant political hit for its involvement in the war in Syria. On the ground, the spillover violence has mainly involved Shi’ite and Shi’ite jihadists targeting one another.

Iraq is the main regional victim of the war in Syria. The war there reignited the war between Sunnis and Shi’ites in Iraq. Violence has reached levels unseen since the US force surge in 2007. The renewed internecine warfare in Iraq redounds directly to President Barack Obama’s decision not to leave a residual US force in the country. In the absence US forces, there is no actor on the ground capable of strengthening the Iraqi government’s ability to withstand Iranian penetration or the resurgence of al-Qaida.

The third interest of the US and its allies that is threatened by the war in Syria is to prevent Iran, Russia or al-Qaida from securing a victory or a tangible benefit from their involvement in the war.

It is important to note that despite the moral depravity of the regime’s use of chemical weapons, none of America’s vital interests is impacted by their use within Syria. Obama’s pledge last year to view the use of chemical weapons as a tripwire that would automatically cause the US to intervene militarily in the war in Syria was made without relation to any specific US interest.

But once Obama made his pledge, other US interests became inextricably linked to US retaliation for such a strike. The interests now on the line are America’s deterrent power and strategic credibility. If Obama responds in a credible way to Syria’s use of chemical weapons, those interests will be advanced. If he does not, US deterrent power will become a laughing stock and US credibility will be destroyed.

Unfortunately, the US doesn’t have many options for responding to Assad’s use of chemical weapons. If it targets the regime in a serious way, Assad could fall, and al-Qaida would then win the war. Conversely, if the US strike is sufficient to cause strategic harm to the regime’s survivability, Iran could order the Syrians or Hezbollah or Hamas, or all of them, to attack Israel. Such an attack would raise the prospect of regional war significantly.

A reasonable response would be for the US to target Syria’s ballistic missile sites. And that could happen. Although the US doesn’t have to get involved in order to produce such an outcome. Israel could destroy Syria’s ballistic missiles without any US involvement while minimizing the risk of a regional conflagration.

There are regime centers and military command and control bases and other strategic sites that it might make sense for the US to target.

Unfortunately, the number of regime and military targets the US has available for targeting has been significantly reduced in recent days. Administration leaks of the US target bank gave the Syrians ample time to move their personnel and equipment.

This brings us to the purpose the Obama administration has assigned to a potential retaliatory strike against the Syrian regime following its use of chemical weapons.

Obama told PBS on Wednesday that US strikes on Syria would be “a shot across the bow.”

But as Charles Krauthammer noted, such a warning is worthless. In the same interview Obama also promised that the attack would be a nonrecurring event. When there are no consequences to ignoring a warning, then the warning will be ignored.

This is a very big problem. Obama’s obvious reluctance to follow through on his pledge to retaliate if Syria used chemical weapons may stem from a belated recognition that he has tethered the US’s strategic credibility to the quality of its response to an action that in itself has little significance to US interests in Syria.

And this brings us to the third vital US interest threatened by the war in Syria – preventing Iran, al-Qaida or Russia from scoring a victory.

Whereas the war going on in Syria pits jihadists against jihadists, the war that concerns the US and its allies is the war the jihadists wage against everyone else. And Iran is the epicenter of that war.

Like US deterrent power and strategic credibility, the US’s interest in preventing Iran from scoring a victory in Damascus is harmed by the obvious unseriousness of the “signal” Obama said he wishes to send Assad through US air strikes.

Speaking on Sunday of the chemical strike in Syria, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu warned, “Syria has become Iran’s testing ground…. Iran is watching and it wants to see what would be the reaction on the use of chemical weapons.”

The tepid, symbolic response that the US is poised to adopt in response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons represents a clear signal to Iran. Both the planned strikes and the growing possibility that the US will scrap even a symbolic military strike in Syria tell Iran it has nothing to fear from Obama.

Iran achieved a strategic achievement by exposing the US as a paper tiger in Syria. With this accomplishment in hand, the Iranians will feel free to call Obama’s bluff on their nuclear weapons project. Obama’s “shot across the bow” response to Syria’s use of chemical weapons in a mass casualty attack signaled the Iranians that the US will not stop them from developing and deploying a nuclear arsenal.

Policy-makers and commentators who have insisted that we can trust Obama to keep his pledge to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons have based their view on an argument that now lies in tatters. They insisted that by pledging to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, Obama staked his reputation on acting competently to prevent Iran from getting the bomb. To avoid losing face, they said, Obama will keep his pledge.

Obama’s behavior on Syria has rendered this position indefensible. Obama is perfectly content with shooting a couple of pot shots at empty government installations. As far as he is concerned, the conduct of air strikes in Syria is not about Syria, or Iran. They are not the target audience of the strikes. The target audience for US air strikes in Syria is the disengaged, uninformed American public.

Obama believes he can prove his moral and strategic bonafides to the public by declaring his outrage at Syrian barbarism and then launching a few cruise missiles from an aircraft carrier. The computer graphics on the television news will complete the task for him.

The New York Times claimed on Thursday that the administration’s case for striking Syria would not be the “political theater” that characterized the Bush administration’s case for waging war in Iraq. But at least the Bush administration’s political theater ended with the invasion. In Obama’s case, the case for war and the war itself are all political theater.

While for a few days the bread and circuses of the planned strategically useless raid will increase newspaper circulation and raise viewer ratings of network news, it will cause grievous harm to US national interests. As far as US enemies are concerned, the US is an empty suit.

And as far as America’s allies are concerned, the only way to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power is to operate without the knowledge of the United States.