Thursday, May 30, 2013

Our Coward-In-Chief...where was he?

Once again, Dr. Krauthammer nails it!

Krauthammer’s: Benghazi’s ‘Biggest Scandal of All’ Has Yet to Be Uncovered

(The Blaze) – Columnist Charles Krauthammer on the “O’Reilly Factor” Tuesday night said the “biggest scandal of all” regarding the Benghazi attacks on Sept. 11, 2012, has yet to emerge.

“I think there is a bigger story here, here’s the one that will in time come out,” Krauthammer said.  ”The biggest scandal of all, the biggest question is: What was the president doing in those eight hours?”

“He had a routine meeting at five o’clock. He never after, during the eight hours when our guys have their lives in danger, he never called the Secretary of Defense, he never calls the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he never calls the CIA Director,” Krauthammer continued.

“Who does he call? About five hours in he calls the Secretary of State. And after the phone call she releases a statement essentially about the video and how we denounce any intolerance.

It looks as if the only phone call was to construct a cover story at a time when the last two Americans who died were still alive and fighting for their lives.

There’s the scandal and that has to be uncovered.”

http://www.teaparty.org/krauthammers-benghazis-biggest-scandal-of-all-has-yet-to-be-uncovered-24853/

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

America, WAKE UP before all of your freedoms are obliterated by this socialist regime in the White House

By Michelle Malkin  •  May 29, 2013 09:06 AM

Copyright 2013

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius controls a $54 million slush fund to hire thousands of “navigators,” “in-person assisters” and counselors who will propagandize and enroll Obamacare recipients in government-run health insurance exchanges. This nanny-state navigator corps is the Mother of all Community Organizing Boondoggles. It’s also yet another Obama threat to Americans’ privacy.

A reminder about Secretary Sebelius’ sordid snooping history is in order here. In August 2009, HHS and the White House Office of Health Reform called on their ground troops to report on fellow citizens who dared to criticize their federal health care takeover. Team Obama issued an all-points bulletin on the taxpayer-funded White House website soliciting informant emails. Remember?

“If you get an email or see something on the Web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov,” the Obamacare overlords urged. The feds even singled out conservative Internet powerhouse Matt Drudge because he had featured a video compilation of Obama and other Democrats — in their own words — exposing the “public option” as a Trojan Horse for government-run health care and the elimination of private industry.

Texas GOP Sen. John Cornyn protested at the time that “these actions taken by your White House staff raise the specter of a data collection program.” The flagging operation was shut down, but a plethora of federal disclosure exemptions protect the Obama administration from revealing what was collected, who was targeted and what was done with the database information.

White House lapdogs dismissed the concerns of conservatives as paranoid delusions. Now, fast-forward three years. In light of the draconian IRS witch hunt against tea party groups and the Justice Department’s plundering of journalists’ phone records and email accounts, every tax-subsidized Obama “outreach” initiative warrants heightened scrutiny.

Obamacare navigators will have access to highly personal data from potential “customers” to assess their “needs.” That means income levels, birthdates, addresses, eligibility for government assistance, Social Security numbers and sensitive medical information. They’ll be targeting both individuals and small businesses. Anyone they can lay their grubby hands on. Who’s getting the navigator grants and training?

“Community groups” in 33 states that naturally include socialized medicine-supporting unions and Saul Alinsky-steeped activist outfits.

On Capitol Hill last week, a top Obamacare official told GOP lawmakers that navigators will not be required to undergo background checks. Criminal records are not automatically disqualifying — and that includes identity theft. The federal rule-makers will require online training of a measly 20 hours. Health care regulations watchdog Betsy McCaughey adds that navigators “don’t have to know math or insurance, but rules announced April 5 specify you have to match the race, ethnicity and language preferences of the neighborhood that will be targeted.”

The Obamacare navigator corps smacks of ACORN redux, stocked with demographically tailored Democratic Party recruitment operatives, not objective, informed insurance experts.

Sebelius and her enforcers promise strict neutrality and clean conduct. The bureaucrats say there will be severe consequences for violating citizens’ privacy or breaking any other laws. Pffft. The Office of Special Counsel determined that Secretary Sebelius herself violated the federal Hatch Act prohibition on exploiting her HHS leadership position for partisan activity last fall. She then tried to cover up her breach after the fact by classifying the event in which she electioneered for Obama as a “personal” appearance.

Consequences? What consequences?

Sebelius has zero credibility when it comes to reining in overzealous partisans. But she’s darned good at unleashing them. During the White House pressure campaign for Obamacare, Sebelius goaded her “brothers and sisters” from the brass-knuckled SEIU. SEIU goon Dennis Rivera joined her on a White House conference call in which he lambasted tea party activists as the “radical fringe” of “right-wingers” whose protests amounted to “terrorist tactics.”

Now, the SEIU is on the board of directors of Enroll America, the left-wing, Obamacare advocacy nonprofit for whom shakedown artist Sebelius has been soliciting funds.

Sebelius’ corruptocracy runs deep. While she was governor of Kansas, an independent inspector general reported that her appointed health policy board had “applied pressure to alter an audit report, restricted access to legal advice and threatened to fire her for meeting independently with legislators,” according to the
Topeka Capital-Journal.

Team Sebelius was also embroiled in a ruthless vendetta and obstruction campaign against then-GOP Attorney General Phill Kline, who unearthed damning evidence that the Sebelius administration had shredded key documents related to felony charges against Sebelius’ abortion racketeering friends at Planned Parenthood.

Sebelius notoriously threatened private companies and insurers who increased rates to cope with Obamacare coverage mandates. She bullied private companies to meet discriminatory and arbitrary disclosure demands. And she lashed out at newspapers that dared to report on the true costs of the Obamacare regulatory leviathan.

You can’t trust sleazy Sebelius to navigate anything with her broken ethical compass. This is worse than the fox guarding the henhouse. She has unfettered authority and a bottomless budget to weaponize legions more foxes who will serve as Obamacare’s eyes and ears on the ground. The snitch brigade lives!

http://michellemalkin.com/2013/05/29/obamacare-navigators-another-sebelius-snitch-brigade/print/

Friday, May 24, 2013

With gratitude for US soldiers and war veterans everywhere

Here's wishing all American Patriots
A Happy Memorial Day



Be thankful for the sacrifices made by our brave soldiers throughout the history of our great Nation.  Especially those that made the ultimate sacrifice.  Honor their valor by protecting the freedoms they fought so valiantly to preserve.  Let's all pledge and strive to keep this a Nation Under God, Indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.

Despite Obama's attempts to distract America away from his treasonous handling of the Benghazi tragedy - before, during and after - there are those who will not backdown. Thank God.

Benghazi Investigation Deepens: Lawmakers Seek Interviews of 13 Officials Involved
Stephen F. Hayes
May 23, 2013 5:16 PM

As the investigation into the Obama administration’s handling of the attacks on U.S. facilities in Benghazi intensifies, lawmakers on Capitol Hill are seeking to conduct transcribed interviews with thirteen top State Department officials in the coming weeks in order to learn more. Those named in the letter include a wide range of current and former State Department personnel, from senior advisers to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to mid-level career officials with responsibility for diplomatic security.
Among those officials: Jacob Sullivan, then deputy chief of staff and director of policy planning (and currently national security adviser to Vice President Joe Biden); Victoria Nuland, then State Department spokesman; Raymond Maxwell, deputy assistant secretary of state for near east affairs; Patrick Kennedy, undersecretary of state for management; and Eric Boswell, former assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security.
In a letter dated May 17, 2013, Representative Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry to request formally that Kerry make these current and former State Department employees available. “The State Department employees whose testimony the Committee is seeking are critical fact witnesses who are positioned to shed light on what happened before, during and after the terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of four Americans in Benghazi.”
Issa reminded Kerry of his recent promise to run “an accountable and open State Department,” but noted that State’s “posture with respect to the congressional investigation of the Benghazi attacks has not lived up to your commitment to ‘provide answers.’” The State Department, Issa wrote, “continues to limit the Committee’s access to relevant documents and witnesses.” The transcribed interviews are likely a first step towards requesting—or demanding—congressional testimony for several of those listed.
In addition to the thirteen State Department officials, Issa’s committee will conduct a transcribed interview on June 3, with Ambassador Thomas Pickering, one of the two primary authors of the Administrative Review Board report on the Benghazi attacks. That investigation, which failed to interview Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other officials with knowledge of the attacks, has not fared well under the additional scrutiny that it has attracted as more information on the attacks has become public. Sources tell THE WEEKLY STANDARD that the committee will likely seek to interview Admiral Mike Mullen, the other chief author of the ARB report, at some point in the near future.
Republicans on the committee hope that the next round of interviews will provide a better sense of the State Department’s role in providing security before the attacks, in the deliberations about a military response during the attacks and in the creation of the administration’s public narrative after the attacks.
Sullivan figured prominently in emails sent between senior Obama administration officials about the formulation of Benghazi talking points that were distributed to policymakers in Congress and the executive branch in the aftermath of the attacks. An email from a United Nations staffer to Ambassador Susan Rice, who would present the administration’s case on five Sunday talk shows on September 16, reported that Sullivan would work with officials from the intelligence community on those talking points. Subsequent emails between Sullivan and the U.N. staffer showed efforts to ensure that Rice was kept in the loop on those talking points.
In another email exchange, this one with State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland, Sullivan reports that he will make edits to the talking points working with National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor. Nuland had previously objected to some of the language in the talking points, on the grounds that members of Congress would be in a position to say things that she had not been allowed to say and that members might criticize the State Department for ignoring warnings about previous attacks.
Sullivan, in his email to Nuland, wrote: “I spoke with Tommy. We’ll work through this in the morning and get comments back.” Moments later, Sullivan reiterated the point: “Talked to Tommy. We can make edits.”
The emails contradict claims from Jay Carney and others that neither the White House nor the State Department played a significant role in editing the talking points. Several major edits were made to the talking points at or following a meeting of senior Obama administration officials during a secure video teleconference on Saturday morning.
Lawmakers want to ask Nuland about an email she sent expressing her concerns and those of her “building leadership” at the State Department to some of the contents of the talking points. In another email, Nuland notes that State Department leadership would be contacting the National Security Staff directly.
In testimony on January 23, Hillary Clinton claimed that the talking points were “an intelligence product” and that the “intelligence community was the principal decider about what went into the talking points.” But her testimony is contradicted by an email from the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs, which reported: “The State Department had major reservations with much or most of the document. We revised the document with their concerns in mind.”
Was Clinton involved in the revisions?
Beyond the talking points, lawmakers want answers to questions decisions on security before and during the attacks. Kennedy, who has testified previously about Benghazi, will no doubt face additional questions about his role in refusing to send the Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST) to Benghazi when the attack began. CBS’s Sharyl Attkisson reported this week that deployment of the FEST team to Benghazi was “ruled out from the start,” a “decision that became a source of internal dissent and the cause of puzzlement to some outsiders.” An official who spoke to Attkisson said that Kennedy dismissed the idea. 
Maxwell, who was placed on “administrative leave” last winter, recently told Josh Rogin of the Daily Beast that he had nothing to do with decision making on Benghazi. “I had no involvement to any degree with decisions on security and the funding of our security at our diplomatic mission in Benghazi,” Maxwell said. Maxwell’s punishment came after the release of the ARB report, and Rogin reports that Maxwell has never had access to the classified version of that report, where some of the State Department’s failures are laid out.
The same is true for Greg Hicks, former deputy chief of mission in Libya, who recently offered in congressional testimony a critical assessment of State Department leadership during and after the Benghazi attacks. Victoria Toensing, who is representing Hicks, says he has still not been allowed to review the classified version of the ARB report, despite his having been interviewed for it.
This lack of access to the classified ARB report is one of many questions Pickering will face when he is interviewed early next month. Why not let Hicks and others interviewed for the report see the final product?
In addition, lawmakers will press Pickering on a report that many consider to be a whitewash. Not only did the ARB team fail to interview Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, they didn’t speak with lower-level personnel in the chain of decision making who had volunteered to speak with them. One of those officials, Mark Thompson, the State Department’s acting deputy assistant secretary of state for counterterrorism, offered to share his experience from that evening with the ARB, but was never contacted for an interview.
Thompson was one of a handful of State Department officials who had a firsthand view of what was happening in Libya that night. When he learned that Ambassador Chris Stevens was missing and that others had sought safe haven, Thompson testified, he told his leadership at the State Department “that we needed to go forward and consider the deployment of the Foreign Emergency Support Team.”
“I notified the White House,” Thompson continued. “They indicated that meetings had already taken place that evening” and that FEST would not be deployed.
Did the ARB leadership believe this testimony wasn’t relevant to their investigation? Or was it inconvenient to the conclusion they wanted to reach?

Thursday, May 23, 2013

All of these scandals rocking Obama's Culture of Corruption are no surprise to Tea Party Patriots...of which I am proud to be among their ranks

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: USA Today published an op-ed by The Tea Party Strategist


As we all follow the details of the growing number of scandals that have rocked the Obama Administration, it is important to note that these abuses of power are the very thing we have been warning you about.

The Tea Party movement stands firmly for a limited federal government and believes that concentrating money and power is a recipe for disaster, the IRS scandal is a perfect example.

The cure is to reduce the size, cost, and intrusiveness of the federal government. We wanted to share with you an op-ed that USA Today published yesterday from Tea Party Chief Strategist Sal Russo.

 

 

 


IRS scandal symptom of intrusive government


Controversy indicative of a federal bureaucracy that has expanded beyond control

by Sal Russo May 21, 2013

Our Founding Fathers were fearful of a powerful federal government because it was a threat to liberty. The recent Internal Revenue Service scandal is the foreseeable and inevitable consequence of a too powerful federal government, and the validation of the mission of the Tea Party movement that stands firmly for a limited national government.

When our Constitution was being written, our leaders were wise enough to know that concentrated power inevitably leads to abuse. So they constructed a system of government that greatly limited the function of Washington to enumerated powers, and they imposed a system of checks and balances to keep those powers under control. That the president's former chief adviser, David Axelrod, recently used "the government is so vast" excuse is unwittingly an indictment of a bureaucracy run amok.

The Tea Party burst onto the political scene in 2009 in reaction to seeing both political parties succumbing to government expansion, excessive spending and an unsustainable national debt. Concentrating money and power is a recipe for national disaster, and the IRS scandal is a perfect example. And looming behind it all is ObamaCare -- an epic disaster waiting to happen.

When the IRS story broke, it seemed immediately plausible to us. As the Tea Party Express conducted its national bus tours, we heard local Tea Party groups from all over the country complaining about IRS delays with inappropriate and intrusive questions. This unfairness was so pronounced that it was obvious that there was a deliberate attempt to suppress these groups. Unsurprisingly, the mainstream media ignored and dismissed these legitimate grievances as false conspiracy theories.

As the proverbial camel's head gets under the IRS tent, the predictable collapse is starting to happen. While originally dismissed as the escapades of a couple of rogue agents in the Cincinnati IRS office, we know now that officials in Washington were at least aware of the scandal very early on, and maybe are even more culpable than that. It is clear that congressional inquiries about improper behavior were pushed aside and material facts were not disclosed. The cover-up had begun, which is always a sign that there is more bad news coming from the IRS.

This scandal is indicative of a federal government that has expanded beyond control. The only cure for an overgrown government is to reduce the size, cost and intrusiveness of the federal government. Since absolute power corrupts absolutely, it is the system, not the individual, which is to blame. It is an unavoidable consequence of human behavior for those with unchecked power who ultimately turn to abusing that power, regardless of whatever noble intentions they may have.

As Thomas Jefferson famously said, "Bad government results from too much government." We cannot continue expanding the government without consequence. American freedoms and privacy are being violated to serve the whims of government bureaucrats who feel empowered by the system. If we are going to get serious about protecting ourselves from government overreach, we must be willing to temper the invasive power of government.

There is a very good way to reduce the necessity of a huge IRS, which has also been tasked with enforcing ObamaCare. The president is increasing the size of the IRS at a very time when people are less inclined to want them to look at their private health care records.

The solution to both problems is straightforward. We should repeal ObamaCare and use more market-driven solutions to improve our health care system. And, we must finally address the 800-pound gorilla in the room, comprehensive tax reform. Both actions would substantially reduce the size and power of the IRS and the first step in reining in the size, cost and intrusiveness of the federal government.

Sal Russo is chief strategist for Tea Party Express.

Support Patriot Voices so we can take back our Country



Do you know the laundry list of some of the top abuses that have plagued President Obama's administration?

  • The Internal Revenue Service admitted that members of the agency targeted Tea Party groups for discriminatory reviews of their applications for tax-exempt status. The Justice Department has initiated a criminal investigation into the matter.
  • According to reports, IRS officials would not grant tax exempt status to a pro-life organization unless they promised to not protest outside of Planned Parenthood clinics.  Freedom to peaceably assemble?  Oh right, that's in our Constitution.  The IRS must have forgotten that one. 
  • We know that President Obama's Justice Department secretly obtained phone records of Associated Press reporters.  Freedom of the press?  Yep, that's in the Constitution, too.  How convenient that President Obama disregarded that.
  • The Obama administration potentially lied and covered-up details about the tragic terrorist attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi, Libya to keep the issue quiet before President Obama's reelection.
It's hard to believe that all of these abuses were exposed in just the last month!Help Patriot Voices hold President Obama accountable for his abuses of power. We plan to activate our grassroots army to stand up against these abuses, but we need your help. Would you consider joining our efforts by making a contribution of $25, $35, or $50 to help us hold him accountable for these unconstitutional actions?

  • Look at some of these other abuses that happened before the press was paying attention!
  • President Obama gutted the landmark welfare reform law that I coauthored in 1996.
  • He instructed the Department of Health and Human Services to remove the work requirement for welfare recipients despite its bipartisan support and that it was signed into law by a fellow Democrat - President Clinton.
  • President Obama had his Justice Department file a lawsuit against the state of Arizona for enforcing immigration laws. Arizona was just enforcing the laws that Obama refused to enforce.
  • President Obama announced that he would now follow the DREAM Act, a law Congress has not passed. He instructed his Department of Homeland Security to no longer deport young illegal immigrants who meet certain criteria he set.
  • He instructed his Justice Department to stop enforcing DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, a law duly passed by Congress, simply because he did not like the law.
  • He instructed HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to grant waivers, and establish new budgets and guidelines for implementing Obamacare, without any Congressional oversight.
  • He had his Department of Interior illegally place a moratorium on offshore drilling. This was illegal because a federal judge in Louisiana held them in contempt of court for "dismissive conduct" for doing that earlier.
  •  
It's clear we can't take any more abuses from President Obama.  He's systematically transforming this country so our citizens lose more and more of our rights each day.  Patriot Voices is watching him closely and we are asking you to help us hold him accountable.  We need your participation in order to activate our grassroots army so please make a contribution of $25, $35, or $50 today so we have the resources to hold him accountable for these unconstitutional actions!Standing with you,
  
Rick Santorum

We know where the loyalty of this corrupt administration lies

Obama Administration Calls for the ‘Human Rights’ of Jihadi Murderers

Nigerian government is criticized by the U.S. for going after savage terrorists who murder Christians.
 
It’s well known that whenever jihadis attack and slaughter innocent people — especially Christians — the Obama administration tries to ignore or whitewash. Lesser known, however, is that whenever foriegn governments try to subdue the jihadis, the Obama administration objects and calls for the “human rights” of the terrorists.

According to Reuters,
Nigerian warplanes struck militant camps in the northeast on Friday [5/17] in a major push against an Islamist insurgency, drawing a sharp warning from the United States to respect human rights and not harm civilians. Troops used jets and helicopters to bombard targets in their biggest offensive since the Boko Haram group launched a revolt almost four years ago to establish a breakaway Islamic state and one military source said at least 30 militants had been killed.  But three days after President Goodluck Jonathan declared a state of emergency in the northeast, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry issued a strongly worded statement saying: “We are … deeply concerned by credible allegations that Nigerian security forces are committing gross human rights violations, which, in turn, only escalate the violence and fuel extremism.

Thus here is Kerry grandstanding about the “human rights” of Boko Haram, a jihadi group whose name means “Western Education is a Sin” — that is, a group whose very name embodies hostility for Western civilization. (Of course, it’s not surprising that the Obama administration overlooks Boko Haram’s animus for the West, considering that it was just revealed that “it is Obama administration policy to consider specifically Islamic criticism of the American system of government legitimate.”)

But what about the “human rights” of the victims of jihadi terror? In 2011, when Egypt’s Christians protested the constant attacks on their churches and the Egyptian military responded by massacring them at Maspero, including by running them over with armored vehicles, the White House said nothing about “human rights,” declaring instead that “now is a time for restraint on all sides” — as if Egypt’s beleaguered and unarmed Christian minority needed to “restrain” itself against the nation’s military.

As for Nigeria’s Boko Haram, the group has been responsible for some of the most horrific human-rights abuses. Indeed, of all the human rights abuses I catalog in my new book Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians, Boko Haram’s relentless slaughter of Christians is the most savage, resulting in more Christians killed than in the rest of the world combined.

The group has bombed or burned hundreds of Christian churches, most when packed for service. The Christmas day church attacks — in 2010, 2011, and 2012 — which left hundreds of Christians dead or dismembered, are the tip of the iceberg of Boko Haram’s hate for Christianity. In the group’s bid to cleanse northern Nigeria of all Christian presence, it has threatened to poison the food eaten by Christians and “to strike fear into the Christians of the power of Islam by kidnapping their women.” The group frequently storms areas where Christians and Muslims are intermingled — from villages to colleges — and singles the Christians out before slitting their throats to cries of Allahu Akbar. Pregnant and elderly Christian women and children have been raped, enslaved, and slaughtered simply for being “infidels.”

The fact that Boko Haram’s motives are clear-cut and fueled by Islamic teachings — the creation of an Islamic state that enforces Sharia law and is Christian-free — has not stopped the Obama administration from pointing to anything and everything else to rationalize its bloodlust.

The very next day after Boko Haram bombed Christian churches celebrating Easter in April 2012, killing 39 Christian worshippers, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Johnnie Carson said, “I want to take this opportunity to stress one key point and that is that religion is not driving extremist violence” in Muslim-majority Nigerian areas where churches were and continue to be attacked.

As far as Bill Clinton is concerned,  “inequality” and “poverty” are “‘what’s fueling all this stuff’” — a reference to Boko Haram’s anti-Christian jihad. Foreshadowing Kerry’s concern for the wellbeing of Islamic mass murderers, Clinton also said that “it is almost impossible to cure a problem based on violence with violence” — a suggestion that Nigeria’s government not retaliate in response to Boko Haram with any severity.

Talk of “poverty,” “inequality,” “grievance,” and the rest of the canards used by Western leaders to overlook Islamic violence blatantly ignores all the facts. Boko Haram began its jihad in earnest because a Christian won what was described as Nigeria’s freest and fairest elections. And Islamic law forbids non-Muslims from ruling over Muslims — not because they’re bad for the economy, but because they’re infidels.

The full name of Boko Haram is “Sunnis for [Islamic] Propagation and Jihad” — which doesn’t reflect any economic grievances. Their repeatedly stated goal is the establishment of a pure Sharia state in Nigeria. In other words, they are motivated by the same Islamic supremacism that is prompting jihadis all around the Islamic world to attack, kill, and displace infidels, leading to, among other travesties, a mass exodus of Christians.

Once again, then, reality is easily ascertained — at root, Boko Haram’s terror campaign is entirely motivated by Islamic teachings — even as the Obama administration refuses to designate the group as a terrorist organization, wastes millions of U.S. tax dollars on superfluous initiatives (or diversions), and pressures the Nigerian president to make concessions to the jihadis — including building more mosques, the very breeding grounds for Islamic “radicalization.”

And now, when the Nigerian government goes on the offensive to neutralize the terrorists responsible for countless inhuman atrocities, the Obama administration offers “a strongly worded statement” to defend their “human rights.”

Meanwhile, when such jihadis daily persecute and murder non-Muslims around the world — Christians at the top of the list — the only sound coming out of the White House is of crickets chirping.

Postscript: Following Kerry’s call to protect the “human rights” of Nigeria’s jihadi terrorists, Obama himself has just urged Myanmar to halt violence against Muslims” and “move ahead with economic and political reforms” — all while omitting the fact that the government’s offensive is in response to violent, separatist Muslims, whose jihad has nothing to do with “economic and political reforms,” only the subjugation of infidels.

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Now THIS should scare everyone! This is why the liberal agenda is geared toward disarming America...this is why the DHS is buying millions of rounds of ammunition...this is why the DOJ and IRS are targeting real Patriots...WAKE UP AMERICA!

Armed DHS Guards Protect IRS From Tea Party Protesters

Agency created to protect against terror attacks now policing free speech

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
May 22, 2013

The DHS appears to have finally found a use for all those bullets it’s been buying. At a Tea Party protest outside an IRS building in St. Louis yesterday there were no regular police – only armed Homeland Security guards.

Video footage from the demonstration at which protesters, including Infowars.com readers, chanted “no more harassment,” shows numerous DHS Federal Protective Service vehicles along with several armed DHS guards. There is not a regular police officer in sight.

The St. Louis demonstration was just one of numerous similar protests against the IRS’s punitive targeting of conservative groups that took place across the country yesterday. Homeland Security agents also kept a watchful eye on a Tea Party rally in Florida.

The DHS was supposedly founded to protect against and respond to terrorist attacks, man-made accidents, and natural disasters. It was not created to protect the IRS from peaceful protesters, but in the decade since its inception, Big Sis has morphed into an entity that polices and monitors political free speech as one of its primary functions.

Homeland Security has routinely been caught spying on protesters from both ends of the political spectrum via its nationwide network of “threat fusion centers”.

Government documents unearthed in April revealed that the DHS, “conducts daily monitoring of peaceful, lawful protests as a matter of policy” and functions as a “secret political police force against people participating in lawful, peaceful free speech activity,” such as ‘Occupy’ demonstrations.

In 2011, the DHS asserted that it had every right to spy on peaceful protest groups and had been using Federal Protective Service (FPS) agents to do so since at least 2006.

In March, Arkansas State Fusion Center Director Richard Davis admitted that the federal agency spies on Americans deemed to be “anti-government,” noting that the DHS concentrates on, “domestic terrorism and certain groups that are anti-government. We want to kind of take a look at that and receive that information,” so-called threats which included people, “putting political stickers in public bathrooms or participating in movements against the death penalty.”

A 2012 Senate subcommittee investigation of DHS data fusion centers found that millions of dollars had been spent not on gathering important anti-terrorism information but on collating “a bunch of crap,” which was “unrelated to terrorism” and in fact targeted Americans peacefully exercising their First Amendment rights.

In its promotional material for the ‘See Something, Say Something’ snitch program, the DHS has routinely portrayed white, middle class Americans as the most likely terrorists. Mock news reports and security drills run by the DHS have also depicted gun owners and homeschoolers as violent terrorists.

It’s no surprise that the DHS is now deploying its agents to defend the IRS against the ire of the American people given that both federal agencies have gone to extreme lengths to target law-abiding, conservative, or God forbid “anti-government” Americans as domestic extremists and even terrorists.

Monday, May 20, 2013

I'll sleep a little more soundly tonight with visions of leg shackles dangling from Barry's legs clanging as he does his perp walk



The Impeachment Option

Jason Chaffetz raises the prospect.


Representative Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, says President Barack Obama may face impeachment over his administration’s response to the Benghazi attack.

“They purposefully and willfully misled the American people, and that’s unacceptable,” Chaffetz tells me. “It’s part of a pattern of deception.”

Behind the scenes, he says, House Republicans are frustrated by the White House’s evasiveness, and the calls for impeachment will likely increase.

Chaffetz acknowledges that House speaker John Boehner is wary of moving too swiftly against the president, but the brash, 46-year-old conservative is tired of waiting for answers. He’s ready to issue subpoenas and schedule more hearings.

His chief concern is that the White House, which he says is staffed by “self-preservationists,” seems to be hiding documents related to the attack and the president’s decisions, in order to protect the administration from scrutiny.

“They’ve released 100 e-mails, but there are thousands of documents that we still need to see,” he says. “The truth gets colder as time goes on, so we need to stay vigilant.”

“Now, the speaker has more patience than I do,” Chaffetz says. “He has told me to be patient, that the truth will eventually surface. But I’m not a patient person, and if this administration makes us do this the hard way, that’s what we’ll do.”

Chaffetz’s tension with the White House has been building for months, ever since he took a fact-finding trip to Libya last October, less than a month after the terrorist attack. During that visit, he huddled with several U.S. diplomats, including Gregory Hicks, a former deputy chief of the Libya mission.

But the heavy-handed tactics of the president’s advisers, he complains, sullied his investigation from the start. He worries that allies of Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton have inappropriately pressured his sources — and restricted his access. “They’ve obstructed me from doing my congressional duty,” he says. “When I went over there, a State Department babysitter intimidated me and many others.”

“The State Department had people watching my every move,” he recalls. “But even as they watched me like a hawk, I was able to see how ill-prepared the embassy was for an attack. There were walls that weren’t very tall, and trees that could be climbed. One of the walls was so low that some people were able to prop up a ladder to dump trash on our embassy’s grounds. I asked one of my guides why that was allowed, and he shook his head and said, ‘Well, I guess we just didn’t want to offend the neighbors.’”

But the worst part of the journey, Chaffetz says, was having State Department lawyer Jeremy Freeman along, shadowing him through every meeting. Hicks and other U.S. diplomats, he says, were effectively muzzled by his presence. “And at one point, Hicks had to leave a meeting, only to be chastised over the phone by Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s top adviser,” he says. “It was unsettling — to see, up close, the depths to which Secretary Clinton was willing to go to manipulate the process.”

Chaffetz says he has relayed these stories to his Republican colleagues, especially after Hicks testified before the House oversight committee earlier this month. Chaffetz says the conversations about his experiences have stirred unease, and he expects members to press the White House for details on how officials may have obstructed Congress.

“The White House likes to say that our questions are a political sideshow, but it seems like it was their politics that caused a lot of the problems,” Chaffetz says. “Hicks testified about being suppressed from saying much to me during my trip, so it’s not like we’re running roughshod.”

Over the weekend, White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer appeared on the Sunday talk shows and defended the administration. When asked about the editing of national-security talking points and the president’s conduct on the night of the attack, Pfeiffer argued that the administration was engaged and acted responsibility.

Chaffetz doesn’t buy it. “This is an administration embroiled in a scandal that they created,” he says. “It’s a cover-up. I’m not saying impeachment is the end game, but it’s a possibility, especially if they keep doing little to help us learn more.”

Look for Chaffetz, the chairman of the oversight committee’s subcommittee on national security, to lead the fight for accountability as the controversy — and talk of impeachment proceedings — escalates.

In the meantime, he’s trying to get back to Libya.

“Unless you go out there and kick the tires, you’ll never really get the proper perspective,” he says.

“I’ve been kicking them for a while, but this is only the beginning. I’m going to spend months finding out the truth, and do whatever it takes.”

— Robert Costa is National Review’s Washington editor. 

It is now irrefutable...Chicago-style politics has officially enveloped the White House

Intimidation: The Need For A Weekly Friday Hearing

 
Saturday, May 18, 2013  |  posted by Hugh Hewitt
 
What we learned the past two weeks was not just the outlines of the scandals surrounding Benghazi and the IRS’ abuse of political opponents of President Obama.

We also learned that the American people are paying very close attention, and that they are outraged.  They want to know more, and the House GOP should deliver the knowledge they demand, and in an orderly, systematic fashion.  The MSM may scoff and the president’s loyalists scream “partisanship,” but the lid is off the Chicago-style politics of intimidation and Americans are angry.

The Benghazi and IRS scandals will follow their own courses, but there are horror stories from every corner of the government. Recall Regional EPA Administrator Al Armendariz who was forced out after a tape of his argument on the need to “crucify” the regulated community?  Or the Sacketts who prevailed 9-0 in their case against the EPA when it got to the Supreme Court, or the little Lutheran school Hosanna-Tabor, persecuted by the EEOC until the Supreme Court put a stop to that by another 9-0 vote?  These three examples are all from within the first term of President Obama, as are all of the IRS abuses detailed yesterday and the many more lined up for expose.

I have spent 23 years representing clients before various federal agencies, and the vast majority of federal officials I have dealt with have been just like those I worked with during my time as a general counsel in two federal agencies, and as a staff lawyer the White House Counsel’s office and DOJ –superb public servants of the highest ethics and significant competence.

I continue that law practice before an alphabet soup of agencies, as do my partners, but things have changed, and they have changed at every level of the federal government.  Indifference combined with arrogance and sometimes pure spite used to be very, very rare, but increasingly it seeps out of almost every agency, and the very good employees struggle to undo the work of the worst.

There are roughly 75 Fridays between now and the effective end of this Congress which comes with the elections of 2014.  There are hundreds of federal departments, agencies, bureaus and commissions.  The House GOP leadership should put together a master schedule of oversight hearings, one for almost every Friday stretching from now through to the end of this Congress, and publish the name and membership of that committee and the contact staffers for the committee which will be conducting the hearing, and ask the public to step forward with their stories of abuse at the hands of these agencies.  Some agencies will no doubt emerge with stellar records and no headlines, but the weeks for which the various divisions of EPA are in the dock the stack of damning material will be high indeed.

What last week’s Benghazi hearing and this week’s IRS hearing showed us is that even MSM is obliged to cover those hearings which are scheduled and publicized.  Take a look at the members who have appeared on my show in the past week and whose interviews we have transcribed.  (Some of the interviews with other members could not be transcribed.)  The list of interviewees is long and full of senior senators and representatives, and much more importantly, the audience for what they had to say was vast and engaged.

People want to know their government is being called to account.  It is up to the House GOP to do just that, and to do so in such a way that the aggrieved know when they will have a hearing and who is conducting it.

That is genuine oversight, and if yesterday’s chilling testimony and evidence showed anything, it is that such oversight is vitally necessary now.

The GOP must become the party of government reform and it must demand ethics at every level of the vast federal government even as it battles to pare that government back to a manageable size. 

The latter project cannot succeed with a Democratic Senate and President Obama blocking the way for the balance of his term.

But reform has its own momentum, and hearings generate attention and reform, as well as prosecutions when required.  The House GOP knows what it has to do.  Let’s see if it has the courage to do it.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Good Lord! I think Hell just froze over!

Joe Scarborough, Piers Morgan: Obama Scandals Prove Gun Advocates Aren't Crazy

How big of a wake-up call are the Obama scandals, especially the ones surrounding the seizing of phone records from the Associated Press and the IRS's targeting of conservatives? So big that two of the media's most shameful and shameless gun control advocates -- Joe Scarborough and Piers Morgan -- have finally conceded that arguments made by pro-Second Amendment activists against the expanding of background checks might not be so ridiculous.
In a roundtable discussion on Friday's "Morning Joe,"  Scarborough said that because of the IRS scandal, “My argument is less persuasive today because of these scandals.” He added: "People say, ‘Hey, if they do this with the IRS, asking people what books you read, then how can I trust them with information about my Second Amendment rights?’”
Mika agreed completely: "That is a really, really good point." Even the Huffington Post's Sam Stein agreed.
How big of a wake-up call are the Obama scandals, especially the ones surrounding the seizing of phone records from the Associated Press and the IRS's targeting of conservatives? So big that two of the media's most shameful and shameless gun control advocates -- Joe Scarborough and Piers Morgan -- have finally conceded that arguments made by pro-Second Amendment activists against the expanding of background checks might not be so ridiculous.
In a roundtable discussion on Friday's "Morning Joe,"  Scarborough said that because of the IRS scandal, “My argument is less persuasive today because of these scandals.” He added: "People say, ‘Hey, if they do this with the IRS, asking people what books you read, then how can I trust them with information about my Second Amendment rights?’”
Mika agreed completely: "That is a really, really good point." Even the Huffington Post's Sam Stein agreed.

Though I was appalled by the media's relentless and shameless push last month to pass the Toomey-Manchin bill that would have tightened background checks, I did support its passage, and said so many times while criticizing the media for their disgusting behavior. But this chilling reminder of how corrupt the federal government is has changed my mind completely.

Moreover, our government is not only corrupt, it is vigorously protected by a media that is just as corrupt (NEVER forget the media ignored, dismissed, and even defended the IRS targeting conservatives). The government and media can scream all they want that background checks won't be used to create a backdoor registry…

But the government and media are liars.  

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2013/05/18/Joe-Scarborough-Piers-Morgan-Concede-gun-rights-activists-not-crazy

Saturday, May 18, 2013

No charge less than treason is appropriate for these two Anti-American, Pro-Islamic Frauds - Clinton and Obama

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE         

 

The 10 P.M. Phone Call
Clinton and Obama discussed Benghazi. What did they say?

 
By  Andrew C. McCarthy
 
‘What would you be focusing on in the Benghazi investigation?” I spent many years in the investigation biz, so it’s only natural that I’ve been asked that question a lot lately.

I had the good fortune to be trained in Rudy Giuliani’s U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan. Rudy famously made his mark by making law enforcement reflect what common sense knew: Enterprises take their cues from the top. Criminal enterprises are no different: The capos do not carry out the policy of the button-men — it’s the other way around.

So if I were investigating Benghazi, I’d be homing in on that 10 p.m. phone call. That’s the one between President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — the one that’s gotten close to zero attention.

Benghazi is not a scandal because of Ambassador Susan Rice, State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland, and “talking points.” The scandal is about Rice and Nuland’s principals, and about what the talking points were intended to accomplish. Benghazi is about derelictions of duty by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton before and during the massacre of our ambassador and three other American officials, as well as Obama and Clinton’s fraud on the public afterward.  A good deal of media attention has quite appropriately been lavished on e-mail traffic between mid-level administration officials in the days leading up to Sunday, September 16.

That is the day when Ms. Rice, a close Obama confidant, made her appalling appearances on the Sunday-morning political shows. Those performances were transparently designed to mislead the American people, during the presidential campaign stretch run, into believing that an anti-Islamic Internet video — rather than a coordinated terrorist attack orchestrated by al-Qaeda affiliates, coupled with the Obama administration’s gross failure to secure and defend American personnel in Benghazi — was responsible for the killings. 

Fraud flows from the top down, not the mid-level up. Mid-level officials in the White House and the State Department do not call the shots — they carry out orders. They also were not running for reelection in 2012 or positioning themselves for a campaign in 2016. The people doing that were, respectively, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton.

Obama and Clinton had been the architects of American foreign policy. As Election Day 2012 loomed, each of them had a powerful motive to promote the impressions (a) that al-Qaeda had been decimated; (b) that the administration’s deft handling of the Arab Spring — by empowering Islamists — had been a boon for democracy, regional stability, and American national security; and (c) that our real security problem was “Islamophobia” and the “violent extremism” it allegedly causes — which was why Obama and Clinton had worked for years with Islamists, both overseas and at home, to promote international resolutions that would make it illegal to incite hostility to Islam, the First Amendment be damned.

All of that being the case, I am puzzled why so little attention has been paid to the Obama-Clinton phone call at 10 p.m. on the night of September 11.

Even in the conservative press, it has become received wisdom that President Obama was AWOL on the night of September 11, after first being informed by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, in the late afternoon, that the State Department facility in Benghazi was under attack. You hear it again and again: While Americans were under attack, the commander-in-chief checked out, leaving subordinates to deal with the crisis while he got his beauty sleep in preparation for a fundraising campaign trip to Vegas.

That is not true . . . and the truth, as we’ve come to expect with Obama, is almost surely worse. There is good reason to believe that while Americans were still fighting for their lives in Benghazi, while no military efforts were being made to rescue them, and while those desperately trying to rescue them were being told to stand down, the president was busy shaping the “blame the video” narrative to which his administration clung in the aftermath.

We have heard almost nothing about what Obama was doing that night. Back in February, though, CNS News did manage to pry one grudging disclosure out of White House mendacity mogul Jay Carney: “At about 10 p.m., the president called Secretary Clinton to get an update on the situation.”

Obviously, it is not a detail Carney was anxious to share. Indeed, it contradicted an earlier White House account that claimed the president had not spoken with Clinton or other top administration officials that night.

The earlier story better fit Obama’s modus operandi, which is to disappear in times of crisis. His brief legislative career was about voting “present” because he prefers to be absent when accountability knocks.

The idea is to be the Obama of Evan Thomas lore: “standing above the country, above — above the world, he’s sort of God.” He reemerges only after the shooting stops and the smoke clears: gnosis personified, here to diagnose our failings. He is not a commander-in-chief for the battle but the armchair general of the post mortem.

In this instance, though, Carney’s hand was forced by then-secretary Clinton. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January, she recounted first learning at about 4 p.m. on September 11 that the State Department facility in Benghazi was under attack. That was very shortly after the siege started.

Over the hours that followed, Clinton stated, “we were in continuous meetings and conversations, both within the department, with our team in Tripoli, with the interagency and internationally.” It was in the course of this “constant ongoing discussion and sets of meetings” that Clinton then recalled: “I spoke with President Obama later in the evening to, you know, bring him up to date, to hear his perspective.”

Yes, the 10 p.m. phone call.

In contrast to President Obama’s preference for absence, Mrs. Clinton has always projected the image of the tireless hands-on leader. But the aim of this energetic ubiquity is not all that different from that of Obama’s disappearing act: If you’re dazzled by how hard she works, she may not need to account for what it is she’s been working on.

In the case of Benghazi, however, we now have context for Clinton’s frenetic activity. Thanks to the whistleblower testimony at a House hearing by Gregory Hicks, the State Department’s No. 2 official in Libya at the time of the Benghazi siege, we know what Clinton learned in her “continuous meetings and conversations” that night.

When Clinton began monitoring events after 4 p.m., State’s No. 1 official in Libya, Ambassador Christopher Stevens, had just urgently called his deputy, Hicks, to alert the State Department that the Benghazi facility and Stevens himself were “under attack.” Hicks, who was in Tripoli at the time, made clear that everyone on the ground in Libya knew what was happening in Benghazi was a terrorist attack — the anti-Islamic video “was a non-event,” he explained. He also made clear that he was the leader of what Clinton had called “our team in Tripoli.” As such, he kept the State Department in Washington up to speed on developments.

We also know that at 8 p.m. Washington time, Hicks spoke directly with Clinton and some of her top advisers by telephone. Not only was it apparent that a terrorist attack involving al-Qaeda-affiliated Ansar al-Sharia was underway, but Hicks’s two most profound fears at the time he briefed Clinton centered on those terrorists: First, there were reports that Ambassador Stevens might be in the clutches of the terrorists at a hospital they controlled; second, there were rumblings that a similar attack on the embassy in Tripoli could be imminent, convincing Hicks that State Department personnel should evacuate. He naturally conveyed these developments to his boss, the secretary of state. Clinton, he recalled, agreed that evacuation was the right course.
 
At about 9 p.m. Washington time, Hicks learned from the Libyan prime minister that Stevens was dead. Hicks said he relayed all significant developments on to Washington as the evening progressed — although he did not speak directly to Secretary Clinton again after the 8 p.m. briefing.

That is the context of the 10 p.m. phone call between the president and the secretary of state.

We do not have a recording of this call, and neither Clinton nor the White House has described it beyond noting that it happened. But we do know that, just a few minutes after Obama called Clinton, the Washington press began reporting that the State Department had issued a statement by Clinton regarding the Benghazi attack. In it, she asserted:
Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation.
Gee, what do you suppose Obama and Clinton talked about in that 10 p.m. call?

Interestingly, CNS News asked Carney whether, in that 10 p.m. phone call, the president and Secretary Clinton discussed the statement that Clinton was about to issue, and, specifically, whether they discussed “the issue of inflammatory material posted on the Internet.”

Carney declined to answer.

We now know from the e-mails and TV clips that, by Sunday morning, the White House staff, State Department minions, and Susan Rice were all in agreement that the video fairy tale, peppered with indignant rebukes of Islamophobia, was the way to go.

How do you suppose they got that idea?

— Andrew C. McCarthy is a senior fellow at the National Review Institute and the executive director of the Philadelphia Freedom Center. He is the author, most recently, of Spring Fever: The Illusion of Islamic Democracy.

Gee...whooda thunk?

Friday, May 17, 2013

Thankfully, Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard has been a leading figure in pressing for more investigation into Benghazi

What About the Video?
ADVANCE ARTICLE From our May 27, 2013 Issue.
Stephen F. Hayes
May 27, 2013, Vol. 18, No. 35
So, what about the video? The White House last week released nearly 100 pages of emails detailing some of the discussions within the Obama administration that resulted in major revisions to talking points about the Benghazi attacks drafted by the Central Intelligence Agency.
From the beginning, there have been two big questions about the administration’s deceptive spin on Benghazi: How were the talking points whittled down to virtually nothing from the CIA’s original draft? And how did a previously obscure YouTube video gain such prominence in the administration’s explanation of what happened in Benghazi?
The emails fill in at least some of the details about the talking points. They also leave in ruins administration claims that White House and State Department officials were mere bystanders in the process. But how, exactly, the video became so prominent in the administration’s public rhetoric remains something of a mystery.
The new documents disprove claims by Obama spokesman Jay Carney, Hillary Clinton, and others that the White House and State Department had virtually nothing to do with rewriting the talking points. Carney maintained that officials from State and the White House were responsible for a “single adjustment” to the language. Clinton insisted that the intelligence community was the “principal decider” of what would be said. But the emails make clear that top White House and State officials played key roles in reshaping the CIA’s initial draft.
“The State Department had major reservations with much or most of the document,” wrote a CIA official from the Office of Public Affairs, at 9:15 p.m. on September 14. “We revised the document with their concerns in mind.”
An official with the CIA’s Office of Terrorism Analysis, where the talking points originated, signed off on the changes but warned that members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) wouldn’t be pleased. “They are fine with me. But, pretty sure HPSCI won’t like them. :-)”
The emails make clear that many of the deliberations about changing the talking points—phone calls, teleconferences, and discussions—were not recorded. But a picture nonetheless emerges of officials keenly interested to avoid blame, protect their bureaucracies, and settle on a message that all could live with.
At the end of a chain of emails in the early evening of September 14 regarding the “concerns” of State Department “leadership,” Ben Rhodes, a top adviser to Obama on national security, reassures the group that all concerns would get a hearing. “We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation,” he wrote. Rhodes worried about “wrong information” coming from briefings provided to Congress and argued “we need to have the capability to correct the record, as there are significant policy and messaging ramifications that would flow from a hardened misimpression.”
Rhodes doesn’t specify the “wrong information” that concerns him or what “messaging” problems the president might face. But in the days preceding the email members of both parties had begun to challenge administration claims that the attacks were the result of a mob gone wild. Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, had told reporters that the government had “evidence” the attacks were “pre-planned.” Adam Smith, a Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, said the same thing. Following an intelligence committee briefing, Mike Rogers, a Republican from Michigan, said: “This was a coordinated attack, more of a commando-style event.”
Rhodes ends his email by advising recipients that the issues would be addressed during a Deputies Committee meeting the following day, one of several times the decision making process appears to have gone offline.
That same evening, Jake Sullivan, the deputy chief of staff and director of policy planning at the State Department, emails Victoria Nuland, the department spokesman, to inform her of conversations he’s had with Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council at the White House. “I spoke with Tommy,” he wrote at 9:25 p.m., September 14. “We’ll work through this in the morning and get comments back.” In another, seven minutes later: “Talked to Tommy. We can make edits.” Another round of substantive edits took place during or after the Deputies Committee meeting the following morning.
Such exchanges between a top official at State and his counterpart at the White House belie claims from Carney and others that substantive revisions to the talking points came only from the intelligence community.
So, too, does an email from CIA director David Petraeus to Chip Walter, on the legislative affairs staff at the agency, after Petraeus was provided a final draft of the talking points that had been through the interagency scrubbing. “No mention of the Cairo cable, either?” he wrote. “Frankly, I’d just as soon not use this, then.” Petraeus’s use of the word “either,” suggests he disliked not just the omission of Cairo but the removal of something else as well.
The Cairo reference is important for another reason. It is the first step on a long, circuitous journey to understanding why the CIA initially reported that the Benghazi attacks had been “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo” and how the Obama administration came to depend on that phrase in selling its narrative about a YouTube video.
There was an intercepted communication between two al Qaeda-linked terrorists, one of whom participated in the Benghazi attack. According to sources familiar with the communication, a jihadist in Libya, believed to be a member of Ansar al Sharia (AAS), reported to a more senior operative about his participation in the Benghazi attack. The AAS member mentioned having seen the Cairo protests earlier in the day before joining the attack on the diplomatic facility in Benghazi. (There is disagreement among analysts whether the jihadist joined the Benghazi attacks because he had seen the protests in Cairo or simply after he had seen them.)
The intelligence community knew about the communication within 24 hours of the Benghazi attack. It would serve as the basis for two claims in the initial draft of the CIA talking points—“spontaneously inspired” and “Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda.” The “spontaneous” language, which would prove dubious, survived the scrubbing process and was in the final talking points. The “ties to al Qaeda” language, which would prove true, was stricken.
That connection to Cairo, however tenuous, initially suited the purposes of both the CIA and the Obama administration. The CIA had warned about the possibility of protests in Cairo. An early version of the talking points included this bullet point: “On 10 September we warned of social media reports calling for a demonstration in front of the Embassy Cairo and that jihadists were threatening to break into the Embassy.” 
You can see the bureaucratic logic. It was all about avoiding blame: We didn’t specifically warn about attacks on 9/11/12 in Benghazi, but we warned about possible attacks at an embassy in the region. And by definition a spontaneous attack could not have been prevented.
The Cairo cable did not survive the interagency editing process. But the claim that Benghazi had been “spontaneously inspired” by the protests in Cairo would prove very useful for the Obama administration.
Jihadists did, in fact, demonstrate outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo on September 11, 2012. It took no great skill to predict this, as they had announced their intention to do so on Facebook in the days before the eleventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. As Thomas Joscelyn has reported, Mohammed al Zawahiri, the brother of al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri, helped plan the protest. Numerous well-known al Qaeda sympathizers were involved. They raised a black al Qaeda flag in place of the American flag and chanted, “Obama, Obama, we are all Osama.” An obscure YouTube video mocking the Prophet Muhammad that had aired on Egyptian television days earlier was the pretext for the demonstration. It was, in the words of one U.S. intelligence official, “a classic information operation.”
And it worked. The agency’s attempts at CYA had given Obama officials an opening, and they quickly took it. On these thin strands, the Obama administration built its explanation for Benghazi. There had been a demonstration in Cairo. The leaders of that protest used a YouTube video to incite a mob. A Benghazi attacker had seen the Cairo protest. He later participated in the attack in Benghazi. 
A quadruple bank shot. And yet within days this previously obscure film became a central component of the Obama administration’s messaging on the Benghazi attacks. The Obama administration moved quickly to elevate the importance of the video. An attack that evolved from what the president would call “natural protests” by a mob over a video was a much better fit with the president’s claim that “al Qaeda is on a path to defeat” than assaults planned by al Qaeda-linked jihadists on multiple U.S. diplomatic facilities on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11.
{BLOGGER NOTE:  This action described below is by far the most shameful action by one of Government officials…apologies from Clinton should be demanded!]
Hillary Clinton mentioned it in her remarks at the ceremony to receive the caskets of the four dead Americans on September 14, regretting the violence “over an awful Internet video we had nothing to do with.” According to Charles Woods, the father of one of the officials killed in the attack, former Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, Clinton told him at the same ceremony that the U.S. government would make sure the filmmaker was “arrested and prosecuted.” Pat Smith, the mother of communications specialist Sean Smith, reported that Clinton told her the same thing, “nose to nose.”
Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., spoke for the administration on multiple television talk shows on Sunday, September 16, delivering variations on the theme that Benghazi was “a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video,” as she told Jake Tapper, then at ABC. “Our understanding and our belief based on the information we have is it was the video that caused the unrest in Cairo, and the video and the unrest in Cairo .  .  . that precipitated some of the unrest in Benghazi and elsewhere,” said Jay Carney on September 18.
[BLOGGER NOTE:  As late as September 20th our Liar-in-Chief was STILL blaming the YouTube Video – the second most shameful action by a Government official – our President no less – Obama should apologize to America!]
Asked about Benghazi on September 20, President Obama referred to “natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video [and] were used as an excuse by extremists to see if they can also directly harm U.S. interests.” It was one of several times he would cite the video.
Despite the centrality of the YouTube video to the administration’s public discussion of Benghazi, it goes virtually unmentioned in the nearly 100 pages of emails between the nation’s top intelligence and Obama administration officials as they reshaped the talking points provided by the CIA. The film trailer is included as part of a list on the first page of the documents and again at the very end, in the subject line about a meeting of high-ranking officials on Saturday morning: “SVTS [Secure Video Teleconferencing System] on Movie Protests/Violence.”
As the top U.S. officials discussed what to include in the talking points that would shape their case to the country on the attacks in Benghazi, the video was absent. Whose idea was it to make it the centerpiece? The Obama administration still has a lot of explaining to do. 
Stephen F. Hayes is a senior writer at The Weekly Standard.