Benghazi Hearing: Hicks ‘stunned’ at Rice explanation

Deputy Chief of Mission Hicks said it best about Susan Rice’s statements on the Sunday morning talk shows in which she perpetuated the lies about Benghazi: “My jaw dropped and I was embarrassed,” Mr Hicks said on his reaction to her interview.  Someone must be held accountable for the Obama Administration’s purposeful lies about the terrorist attacks on our Ambassador and three other Americans on 9/11/12. — AA

(Guardian UK)

A top US official who was in Libya during the deadly attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi has given the first public account of the event.

Gregory Hicks, deputy chief of mission in Tripoli, said he was “stunned” by UN Ambassador Susan Rice’s comments that the attack was spontaneous.

He also told lawmakers he received a phone call from US Envoy Christopher Stevens, just before he died.

Three other Americans were killed in the attack on 11 September 2012.

Continue reading the main story

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My jaw dropped and I was embarrassed”

Gregory Hicks on his reaction to Susan Rice’s comments

During several hours of emotional testimony before a House of Representatives committee on Wednesday, Mr Hicks described the moment he was informed of the attack.

He said he was in Tripoli watching TV when he received a phone call from Ambassador Stevens.

“Greg, we’re under attack,” the ambassador reportedly told Mr Hicks by telephone before the line cut.

He later received a phone call from the Libyan prime minister informing him of Ambassador Steven’s death.

“I think it is the saddest phone call I have ever had in my life,” Mr Hicks said.

After the disrupted phone call with Ambassador Stevens, Mr Hicks said he received calls from Libyans using the ambassador’s phone who said they had the envoy with them.

But Mr Hicks decided not to act on the calls, fearing an ambush.

UN Ambassador Susan Rice has been the focus of outrage from Republicans in Congress, for giving the news media what has been acknowledged as an incorrect explanation for the attack.

She said on a Sunday chat show on 16 September that the attack had grown out of an anti-US protest, while other officials have said they knew at the time it was an organised, armed assault, possibly by an Islamist militant group.

“My jaw dropped and I was embarrassed,” Mr Hicks said on his reaction to her interview.

Some Republicans accuse the White House of hiding information about the attack, while Democrats say the issue has become politicised.

The BBC’s Jane O’Brien in Washington says Wednesday’s testimony will do nothing to dispel Republican concerns that President Barack Obama tried to cover up a terrorist attack in the run-up to a presidential election.

Democrats will continue to say there was no attempt to mislead the public, our correspondents adds.

‘Need to evacuate’

At Wednesday’s hearing, Mr Hicks expressed frustration with the lack of a US military response during the night-time attack, saying one could have deterred a second assault.

The Pentagon has said nothing could have been done to assist the Americans in Benghazi.

Mr Hicks and two other state department employees criticised an official review undertaken after the attack, saying many people with first-hand knowledge of the event were not interviewed and it focused too much on lower-ranking officials.

The review found that poor leadership and management in two state department teams led to a security plan that was “inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place”.

Mr Hicks told the panel he spoke to people at the State Department and to Libyan officials, and had a conversation with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton around 02:00 on the night of the attack.

“Secretary of State Clinton called me along with her senior staff… and she asked me what was going on. And I briefed her on developments,” Mr Hicks told congressmen.

“Most of the conversation was about the search for Ambassador Stevens. It was also about what we were going to do with our personnel in Benghazi, and I told her that we would need to evacuate. She said that was the right thing to do.”

The ambassador died of smoke inhalation when he was trapped in the burning consulate building, after armed men stormed the compound.

State department employee Sean Smith and former Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty also died in the attack.

Mrs Clinton angrily defended her handling of the Benghazi raid in a series of hearings on Capitol Hill in January.

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Rubio Blasts Obama’s Immigration Plan

Only this president would oppose increased border security.  There’s no logic to this administration; we’re facing a major problem over the number of illegal aliens in the country, yet he is opposed to fixing the problem at its root.–AA

Hours before President Obama is set to deliver a major immigration speech, a key Republican senator blasted the president for reportedly opposing a requirement to shore up border security before legalizing up to 11 million illegal immigrants. 

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., one of four Republican senators involved in a bipartisan effort to craft immigration reform legislation, warned the president Tuesday against taking such a position. It was the first sign since the senators unveiled their guidelines a day earlier of friction between the two efforts. 

“I think that would be a terrible mistake,” Rubio told Fox News. “We have a bipartisan group of senators that have agreed to that. For the president to try to move the goalposts on that specific requirement, as an example, does not bode well in terms of what his role’s going to be in this or the outcome.” 

Rubio, a prominent conservative who is also Hispanic, is vital to the bipartisan effort on Capitol Hill. The senator, though, insisted that illegal immigrants not be allowed to obtain green cards — let alone citizenship — “until the enforcement stuff is in place.” 

“If that’s not in the bill, I won’t support it,” he said. 

Rubio was responding to reports that Obama, who is traveling to Las Vegas Tuesday to outline his immigration reform vision, does not want to make the legalization process contingent on increased border security. 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/01/29/obama-presses-immigration-agenda-as-senators-draft-new-overhaul/#ixzz2JNoh2Y4T

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Senate should extend lifelong protection for former presidents

Senate should extend lifelong protection for former presidents

As of last week, I’m now contributing columns to TheHill.com on its Congress blog.  Hope you like this piece and will follow my work there (and here, as ever). 

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Obama State Department Invited American Terrorist to Embassy

As you soak in the headline, be reminded that this is the same terrorist for whom President Obama authorized a kill order without due process, despite the fact that he was a United States citizen.  While I personally think such an order was warranted, it’s a move that contradicts every criticism he made of the Bush Administration’s approach to terrorists.  He essentially condone killing US citizens without due process in the courts while condemning what he inaccurately described as “torture.”  — AA

By Tom Fitton

One of the main arguments against the Obama plan to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp and the president’s attempts to bring “justice” to terrorists in the civilian courts is that upon release, these individuals become doubly dangerous. (We know this from Bush era records we obtained from the Obama administration.)

 

According to records recently obtained by Judicial Watch, one of the beneficiaries of the government’s “catch and release” program for terrorists was none other than Anwar al-Aulaqi, the U.S. citizen assassinated by a U.S. drone on September 30, 2011.

You may recall that in 2010, President Obama reportedly authorized the assassination of al-Aulaqi, the first American citizen added to the government’s “capture or kill” list, describing the radical Muslim Cleric as “chief of external operations for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).” (The Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice had previously determined that targeting and killing of U.S. citizens overseas was legal under domestic and international law.)

The heavily redacted documents received in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by Judicial Watch on September 30, 2011, show that the known terrorist had been in custody and that the Obama State Department hatched an incredible plan to invite him to one of our embassies. The following are highlights from the records:

 

• The U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, was asked on March 24, 2011, to issue a communication to al-Aulaqi, requesting him to “appear in person” to pick up an important letter at the “post.” The letter issued by the embassy, which included a partial address for al-Aulaqi, was a revocation of his passport: “The Department?s [sic] action is based upon a determination by the Secretary that Mr. al-Aulaqi [sic] activities abroad are causing and/or likely to cause serious damage to the national security or the foreign policy of the United States.” The embassy was instructed not to inform al-Aulaqi when he came to the embassy that the “important letter” was a passport revocation.

 

• The documents include two “Privacy Act Release Forms” issued by the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, signed by al-Aulaqi. One was dated November 14, 2006, and the other July 2, 2007 –which indicates that he was held for at least eight months. (Press reports had indicated that al-Aulaqi’s arrest was in relation to an al-Qaeda plot to kidnap a U.S. government official.) The documents do not show how long al-Aulaqi was detained or why he was released.

 

• A September 30, 2011, email from Stephanie A. Bruce, Consular Section Chief at the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa to Elizabeth L. Perry, Team Lead for CA/OCS/ACS/NESCA at the State Department, included the following statement: “Elizabeth, I wanted to let you know that the Yemeni Defense Ministry reported that AMCIT Anwar al-AwLaki [sic] was killed in Yemen today.” Except for the added observation, “The statement is being cited in international and regional press reports,” the rest of the email is redacted.

 

• Documents from a related FOIA request that was submitted on October 26, 2011, include records concerning the death of Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi, Anwar al-Aulaqi’s son, who was killed on October 14, 2011. Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi’s death certificate was recorded on November 14, 2011. He is noted on the death certificate as being the 16-year-old son of Anwar al-Aulaqi. The documents also include a “Report of Death of American Citizen Abroad” dated December 20, 2011. The cause of Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi’s death on the form is “unknown.” Press reports indicate Abdulrahman al-Aulaqi was born in Denver, Colorado, and was killed by a U.S. drone strike two weeks after his father was killed.

 

In addition to the arrest noted by the documents in 2006 and 2007, Anwar al-Aulaqi was detained at New York’s JFK airport on October 10, 2002, under a warrant for passport fraud, a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. However, the FBI ordered al-Aulaqi’s release, even though the arrest warrant was still active at the time of his detention as reported by the Fox News Channel’s Catherine Herridge. Once released, al-Aulaqi then took a flight to Washington, DC, and eventually returned to Yemen.

 

And how dangerous was he?

 

Since September 2009, according to the James Baker III Institute for Public Policy, 26 terrorism cases have been tied to al-Aulaqi, including an association with blind sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, currently in prison for his role in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. Anwar al-Aulaqi was also known to have been in email contact (19 email exchanges) with Major Nidal Hasan, charged with 13 murders during the Fort Hood massacre on November 5, 2009, and allegedly had contacts with at least three of the terrorists who carried out the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

 

So allow me to sum up what these records and reporting detail. The Bush administration had Anwar al-Aulaqi in custody. Then it released him. The Obama administration tried to revoke his passport and concocted some Keystone Cop scheme to get him to come to the embassy for notification. (I mean, the idea of inviting al-Aulaqi – a known terrorist – to our embassy in Yemen in order to revoke his passport is beyond belief.) Then President Obama makes the unprecedented decision to assassinate him via drone, later killing his son as well.

 

Look, there aren’t many people who will mourn the killing of this terrorist. But that’s not the point of this story. The point is that the federal government (under both Bush and Obama) bungled attempts to bring justice to terrorists, placing the American people at risk.

 

Anwar al-Aulaqi is just one high-profile example. How many other terrorists have benefited from the incompetence and permissiveness of our government? How many more drones will have to be sent to clean up the mess?

 

Again, we should all give kudos to Catherine Herridge of the Fox News Channel for some excellent reporting on al-Aulaqi, a topic that has been largely ignored by other so-called mainstream press outlets.

 

Our disclosures this week led to some tough questions for the Obama State Department.  According Josh Gerstein of Politico:

 

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland indicated Wednesday that the embassy did reach out to Al-Awlaki, but he never responded.

 

“He chose not to answer our request for him to come to the embassy,” Nuland said at the daily press briefing. She said that had he come in officials planned to offer him a “one-way passport back to the United States” to face criminal charges. She didn’t specify the charges.

 

Nuland did not respond directly to a provocative question from the Associated Press’s Matthew Lee about whether the U.S. believes it would have had the legal right to kill Al-Awlaki on the spot.

 

“Are you obligated not to kill someone who is responding to such an invitation?” Lee asked.

 

“I’m not going to entertain the notion that we would be calling him to the embassy for that purpose,” Nuland replied.

(Breitbart.com)

 

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Judith Miller: Obama Warns Syria’s Assad Against Chemical Weapons

While the president’s stand against the use of chemical weapons is laudable, it begs the question: is the president willing to stand by while civilians are slaughtered by conventional weapons? — AA

by Judith Miller
NewsMax

December 4, 2012

Amid signs that the Syrian regime might be preparing to some of its vast chemical weapons stocks against insurgents who are growing stronger by the day, President Barack Obama warned Syria on Monday that the use of chemical weapons would be “totally unacceptable.”

Mr. Obama said that the use of such weapons by President Bashar al-Assad against his own people would have unspecified “consequences” for him and his beleaguered regime, stressing that they would be held “accountable” for such a “tragic mistake.”

“Today I want to make it absolutely clear to Assad and those under his command: The world is watching,” President Obama said.

The president delivered his blunt warning — the starkest his administration has issued so far — in a speech at a conference at the National Defense University. He spoke at the close of a meeting of over 200 national security officials to commemorate the 20^th anniversary of the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program aimed at reducing the threat of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

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My Response to a Post by Peter Bergen on Benghazi

Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst and the author of “Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden — From 9/11 to Abbottabad,” an outstanding book. He’s also one of my favorite commentators on terrorism and is consistently on target. However, I took issue with his defense of the Obama administration on the opinion page of CNN.com. Here’s an excerpt from his piece: 

What is the Republican theory of the case against Rice? It appears to boil down to the idea that leading Democrats covered up the involvement of terrorists in some way connected to al Qaeda in the Benghazi attack during the run-up to the close presidential election because President Obama and others in his administration had for some time said that al Qaeda was close to strategic defeat.

 

Does this case make sense? First, you would have to accept that Obama, Rice and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton all knowingly deceived the American public about what had happened at the Benghazi consulate.

Read the whole piece at CNN.com HERE

In response, I offer the following:

Peter, you ignore the point that by creating a cause entirely out of whole cloth–namely, citing The Innocence of Muslims–the administration also provoked more unrest, protests, and riots in Libya and other Middle Eastern nations. The president in turn made unnecessary statements on national TV and before the UN decrying a video no one would have seen had they not created such a lie. And Ansar al-Sharia isn’t so stupid as to not know they would be immediate suspects especially when they were claiming responsibility.

I’ve not received a response.

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Benghazi Hearings will be Fascinating

So much about the coming hearings into the Benghazi tragedy will be worth noting.  First, what the president knew and when he knew it will be the key to this whole fiasco.  Few with an understanding of how such national security events work believe he 1) didn’t know what was happening in real-time and 2) that he didn’t know it was a terrorist attack.  As Col. David Hunt told a radio interviewer recently, the entire operational arm of the government is made aware of the situation on the ground immediately when American interests are under siege.

Almost as interesting will be how the politics play out.  Obama, of course, will have to worry that Republican majority in the House might seek impeachment over the findings, which are sure to embarrass–at the least–the White House.  Second, it will be interesting to see just how much more Hillary Clinton is willing to fall on her sword for this president.  She did so two weeks ago, but that was in the face of a presidential election.  With Obama re-elected, her willingness to be his fall-person will be weighed against her own future designs on the White House.  With Obama’s friend Deval Patrick reportedly interest in the Oval Office, the amity between Obama and Clinton could soon turn to enmity.  Finally, Sen John Kerry, who will be leading hearings, is set to become Clinton’s replacement at State.  It’s unlikely that he’ll allow the president to be embarrassed in the hearings, but that might lead to some heated criticism from the Republicans.  All told, there will be much to look for in the coming month.

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FP: ‘Troubling’ Surveillance Before Benghazi Attacks

This is so troubling that it makes it hard for me to fathom how anyone can go into a voting booth tomorrow and pull the lever for Obama.  Don’t miss this amazing work by Harald Doornbos and Jenan Moussa

Finally, early this morning at 0643, September 11, 2012, one of our diligent guards made a troubling report. Near our main gate, a member of the police force was seen in the upper level of a building across from our compound. It is reported that this person was photographing the inside of the U.S. special mission and furthermore that this person was part of the police unit sent to protect the mission. The police car stationed where this event occurred was number 322.”

The account accords with a message written by Smith, the IT officer who was killed in the assault, on a gaming forum on Sept. 11. “Assuming we don’t die tonight. We saw one of our ‘police’ that guard the compound taking pictures,” he wrote hours before the assault.”

Read the whole story HERE

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Where is Michael Moore’s Next Film?

NB: The Huffington Post, for whom I have written for the past few years, rejected this post.  “It’s just not right for us,” they told me.  This is the second straight post they’ve rejected, and both lean to the right.  So much for the free exchange of ideas, HuffPost.  –AA

The timeline of events which occurred in Benghazi that resulted in the deaths of four Americans, including an ambassador of the United States, has made it unambiguous that a third-rate YouTube video was not the impetus of the attacks on the American embassy. We now know, without any doubt, that there was no protest by Libyan Muslims whose feelings were hurt (as if that would have been an excuse to riot in the first place). No, this was a terrorist attack against Americans on the eleventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11. And this isn’t just the opining of some right-wing groups: even CBS is reporting this.

With such a scandal upon us, I’ve been eagerly awaiting an announcement from documentarian Michael Moore that a new film is in the works. By choosing September 11 to strike, the terrorists even did Moore a favor and set him up with the obvious title: Fahrenheit 9/11: The Sequel. Remember Moore’s famous scene of President George W. Bush sitting in the Florida classroom as an on-screen timer ticked away until Bush made a move? The Sequel could show the calendar flipping as President Obama and his most senior staff continue to blame the insipid video for days on end. There’s plenty of video from which Moore can choose: the Secretary of State at the transfer of the remains ceremony; the ambassador to the United Nations on the Sunday morning shows saying that it was not a pre-planned attack; and of course, the president himself before the United Nations. There’s even horrific footage of Ambassador Stevens being dragged in the streets. To cap it off, he could interview the father of one of the dead Navy SEALs who gave his life for his country in Benghazi (though he might not like what he hears). He could wrap up the film by showing the viewer that by perpetuating the falsehood that the video The Real Life of Mohammad was at the root of the murders, millions more people saw it, leading to more violence in the streets near U.S. embassies in the Middle East.

But oddly, Michael Moore has been silent about any plans for another expose on a terrorism-related scandal. Instead, he seems emboldened to throw his formidable weight behind the president in the face of the death of Americans, including two Navy SEALs. Rather, he’s produced an odd commercial so NSFW that it could never air on television. It appears only on the web, and features elderly people threatening violence–using the most vulgar expletives–should Mitt Romney win the election.

The video is plainly exploitative as it seems to be an attempt to derive humor from seeing old people curse, as if people of their age wouldn’t normally know dirty language. In fact, I wonder why the AARP hasn’t condemned it. And its threats are geared towards those who might “steal” the election away from Obama through voter suppression. That’s truly perplexing, because national polls show Romney either leading or tied in the race, and I’ve heard no credible claims of pollster suppression. One wonders how Moore and his nonagenarians could believe that Romney can only win by keeping people away from the polls when in fact there’s every indication that he’s ahead.

It seems evident that the real suppression that is occurring involves not voters, but the story of the Benghazi cover-up. Fortunately for the president, there’s little time between now and November 6th for an inquiry to expose the bumbling plan to keep the American people from knowing what really happened in Libya on 9/11/12. One day, though, one of President Obama’s favorite quotes will come back to haunt him, as sunlight serves as a disinfectant on the events in Benghazi.

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The post-war bombings in Iraq

I suspect very strongly that we can count on more of the same now that President Obama has withdrawn all troops from Iraq.  AA

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq has claimed responsibility for a slew of bombings that killed at least 71 people in Baghdad last week, a group that monitors online communication among insurgents said Tuesday.

A suicide car bomber and multiple roadside bombs hit Baghdad’s mainly Shi’ite areas on December 22 in the first attacks on the capital since U.S. troops withdrew from Iraq on December 18.

In a sign of growing tensions within the government itself, Shi’ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has ordered the arrest of Sunni Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi and asked parliament to fire Sunni Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq.

The U.S.-based SITE Intelligence Group said the Islamic State of Iraq, an umbrella group for al Qaeda-linked insurgents, had claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement posted on Islamist websites Monday.

ISI said it had carried out the attacks in support of Sunni prisoners. “The operations were distributed between targeting security headquarters, military patrols…and eliminating the heads of unbelief from amongst the security, military and administration leaders of the Green Zone (Iraqi) government,” it was quoted by SITE as saying.

In Thursday’s single biggest attack, at least 18 people were killed when an attacker driving an ambulance detonated the vehicle near a government criminal investigation office in Baghdad’s central Karrada district.

Hashemi has been formally charged with running death squads targeting Iraqi government and security officials. He has denied all charges which he says were “fabricated.”

Overall violence in Iraq has dropped since the peak of sectarian fighting in 2006-07 but bombings and killings still occur almost daily.

Al Qaeda in Iraq has been weakened by deaths of leaders but there are fears the group will try to regroup and strengthen its presence following the withdrawal of U.S. troops almost nine years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

(Reporting by Serena Chaudhry)

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