BENGHAZI GATE PART 2,3,4,5!!!!!!!!
fear4freedom
Posts: 920
State Dept. testifying, BIDEN Lying, Clinton denying! No matter what.....Obama DYING!!!!
This does not smell good and Obama is inept in many ways and this is proof in the pudding baby!
Who told what to whom and when>? Did they cover up the cover up? Were they mis-informed? If so, how and why? This could be the worst scandal in US History!
This does not smell good and Obama is inept in many ways and this is proof in the pudding baby!
Who told what to whom and when>? Did they cover up the cover up? Were they mis-informed? If so, how and why? This could be the worst scandal in US History!
Theres no time like the present
A man that stands for nothing....will fall for anything!
All people need to do more on every level!
A man that stands for nothing....will fall for anything!
All people need to do more on every level!
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
Are you a Romney campaign bot? Serious question
Uh... except no.
And did you just threaten to kill the president?
Because that's a pretty serious thing to do.
liberal bias in the media
"...After NBC's Andrea Mitchell was caught using edited video to make Mitt
Romney look out of touch, Kandra decided he was finished defending what we call
the "Democrat-media complex." "Forget it. I’m done," he wrote, adding: You
deserve what they’re saying about you. It’s earned. You have worked long and
hard to merit the suspicion, acrimony, mistrust and revulsion that the
media-buying public increasingly heaps upon you. You have successfully eroded
any confidence, dispelled any trust, and driven your audience into the arms of
the Internet and the blogosphere, where biases are affirmed and like-minded
people can tell each other what they hold to be true, since nobody believes in
objective reality any more. You have done a superlative job of diminishing what
was once a great profession and undermining one of the vital underpinnings of
democracy, a free press."
He concluded by asking NBC: "What the h**l is wrong with you guys?"
So I ask what is wrong with Fox News, Daily Mail, The Blaze?
seriously, all caps 7 exclamation points, dudes a troll and a weak one at that. goodbye troll, have fun on the internets tonight
MGM Grand - Jul 6, 2006
Cox Arena - Jul 7, 2006
New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival - May 1, 2010
Alpine Valley Music Theater - Sep 3-4 2011
Made In America, Philly - Sep 2, 2012
EV, Houston - Nov 12-13, 2012
Dallas-November 2013
OKC-November 2013
ACL 2-October 2014
Fenway Night 1, August 2016
Wrigley, Night 1 August 2018
Fort Worth, Night 1 September 2023
Fort Worth, Night 2 September 2023
Austin, Night 1 September 2023
Austin, Night 2 September 2023
By Mark Steyn
September 15, 2012 9:12 A.M. Comments58
Rich, re the silence of the State Department, I understand that America has decayed from a land of laws to a land of legalisms but the position that no one at State can say a word about Benghazi because there’s now an FBI investigation, and so it’s a sub judice police matter, and Sergeant Friday has flown out with an extra long roll of yellow “DO NOT CROSS” tape and strung it round the smoking ruins of the U.S. consulate and the “safe house” is stark staring nuts.
This is a security fiasco and a strategic debacle for the foreign policy of the United States, not a liquor store hold-up. What is wrong even with the bland, compliant, desiccated, over-credentialed, pansified, groupthink poodles of the press corps that they don’t hoot and jeer at Victoria Nuland? I know why she’s doing it; I know why Hillary Clinton is desperately trying to suggest that some movie trailer on YouTube is the reason that a mob in Benghazi knows the location of the U.S. ambassador’s safe house. But why would anybody else even pretend to take this stuff seriously? Elderly Soviet propagandists must be wondering why they wasted their time jamming radio transmitters and smashing printing presses when they could just have sent everyone to Columbia Journalism School.
Law, Legalisms and Lying about Libya
By Andrew C. McCarthy
September 15, 2012 6:13 P.M.
Everything Mark says here about the audacious silence of the State Department is exactly right. I write only to add a couple of points about his apt distinction between “laws” and “legalisms.”
First, let’s pretend for argument’s sake that the paramount consideration in Libya were the criminal investigation rather than national security and political accountability (particularly at a time when the nation is about to choose a commander in chief). Even then, it would not be true that the commencement of a criminal investigation precluded comment by the government.
As a matter of law, grand jury secrecy applies only to evidence that the government learns solely by the grand jury process — e.g., I, the prosecutor, give you, the witness, a grand jury subpoena and, under that compulsion, you show or tell me something I would not otherwise have known. To be more concrete, if an FBI agent reads a Steyn column and is then asked questions about it while testifying in the grand jury, the Steyn column is still a matter of public record; it does not become “secret grand jury material” that — presto! — government officials are not allowed to talk about anymore. Most people, especially non-lawyers, are not versed in these concepts. So, government officials frequently try to get away with telling the public that they cannot comment on matters that are under investigation. But it is not true, and experienced members of the press well know it’s not true — which is why they keep hounding Republican administrations that try this stonewall tactic. Furthermore, since a U.S. federal grand jury sitting in Washington has absolutely no power to compel testimony or other evidence in Libya, grand jury secrecy should not be much of a bar.
Besides grand jury secrecy, there are no substantial restrictions on government commentary. Obviously, law enforcement investigators should protect their sources of information and should not reveal new evidence they learn of until they are ready to charge someone — they should restrict their comments to information already on the public record. But there is no legal restriction prohibiting government agencies — even law enforcement — from commenting about public-record information, as well as information regarding the activities and performance of “public servants” that are of obvious interest to the public.
If the State Department and the White House have gone mum, it is because they have chosen to stonewall the American people, not because anything in the law requires them to do so.
Second, treating national security challenges as though they were mere criminal justice issues is the major counterterrorism error the government made in the nineties — i.e., back when Hillary Clinton was the First Lady promoting Arafat rather than the Secretary of State promoting the Muslim Brotherhood. One of the lessons 9/11 is supposed to have taught us is that there are many things related to our national defense that are far more important than litigation — more important, even, than “bringing to justice” terrorists we happen to capture. This lesson applies to almost all aspects of foreign relations, not just counterterrorism.
It is entirely appropriate for the public to demand answers about what happened in Libya, even if the Justice Department happens to be investigating some of these events. And the killing of our ambassador and other personnel — particularly if it was done by al Qaeda and affiliated terrorists who are enemy combatants under Congress’s post-9/11 authorization of military force — is an act of war. If we are again adopting the Clinton approach of treating a war as a crime, that, too, is something the public should be told about.
And let’s think about this for a second. President Obama has (legitimately) used military force against a pair of American citizens in Yemen — he did not have Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Kahn arrested because he decided they should be treated like enemy combatants, not defendants. Indeed, the president used military force in Libya itself when he launched an unprovoked war against the Qaddafi regime when there were no vital American interests at stake — he decided that, too, was a military engagement not fit for law-enforcement processes. So now, after all that, you’re going to tell us that the killing of our officials by foreign terrorists with whom we are at war is a law enforcement matter that you can’t talk about? Are you serious?
One last thing: It is highly unlikely that there will be any American criminal proceedings based on the atrocities in Libya. If you think the Islamic supremacist marauding is bad now, imagine what it would be like if what passes for the Libyan government were to sign off on sending Libyans or other non-American Muslims to be prosecuted in the U.S. Don’t expend too much energy imagining, though, because it’s never going to happen. And do you really think these war criminals are going to be “brought to justice” by the vaunted Libyan justice system?
There is no good reason for the Obama administration to go mum on Libya. During the war in Iraq, then-Senator Hillary Clinton had no compunction about challenging General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on the Bush administration’s accounting of the surge, which, she inveighed, called for a “willing suspension of disbelief.” Her position was that the administration should expect to be grilled on the story it was telling the public. Her own story today appears to have a good deal less acquaintance with reality than what Petraeus and Crocker were relating. It is shameful for the press so passively to accept the administration’s ridiculous claim that it can make no comment beyond the State Department’s dubious story.
Denying the Libya Scandal
The vice president was dishonest during the debate
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/330318/denying-libya-scandal-andrew-c-mccarthy?pg=1
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/13/world ... d=all&_r=0
WASHINGTON — Lost amid the election-year wrangling over the militants’ attack on the United States Mission in Benghazi, Libya, is a complex back story involving growing regional resentment against heavily armed American private security contractors, increased demands on State Department resources and mounting frustration among diplomats over ever-tighter protections that they say make it more difficult to do their jobs.
Enlarge This Image
Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images
Patrick F. Kennedy of the State Department testified Wednesday about the security situation in Benghazi, Libya. The department has had difficulty balancing security and diplomacy.
Related
Focus Was on Tripoli in Requests for Security in Libya (October 13, 2012)
New Front in Campaign as G.O.P. Seizes on Libya Attack (October 13, 2012)
Connect With Us on Twitter
Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.
Twitter List: Reporters and Editors
.
The Benghazi attacks, in which the United States ambassador and three other Americans were killed, come at the end of a 10-year period in which the State Department — sending its employees into a lengthening list of war zones and volatile regions — has regularly ratcheted up security for its diplomats. The aggressive measures used by private contractors eventually led to shootings in Afghanistan and Iraq that provoked protests, including an episode involving guards from an American security company, Blackwater, that left at least 17 Iraqis dead in Baghdad’s Nisour Square.
The ghosts of that shooting clearly hung over Benghazi. Earlier this year, the new Libyan government had expressly barred Blackwater-style armed contractors from flooding into the country. “The Libyans were not keen to have boots on the ground,” one senior State Department official said.
That forced the State Department to rely largely on its own diplomatic security arm, which officials have said lacks the resources to provide adequate protection in war zones.
On Capitol Hill this week, Democrats and Republicans sparred at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing over what happened in Benghazi, whether security at the mission was adequate, and what — if anything — could have been done to prevent the tragedy.
But amid calls for more protection for diplomats overseas, some current and former State Department officials cautioned about the risks of going too far. “The answer cannot be to operate from a bunker,” Eric A. Nordstrom, who until earlier this year served as the chief security officer at the United States Embassy in Tripoli, Libya, told the committee.
Barbara K. Bodine, who served as ambassador to Yemen when the destroyer Cole was bombed in 2000, said: “What we need is a policy of risk management, but what we have now is a policy of risk avoidance. Nobody wants to take responsibility in case something happens, so nobody is willing to have a debate over what is reasonable security and what is excessive.”
For the State Department, the security situation in Libya came down in part to the question of whether it was a war zone or just another African outpost.
Even though the country was still volatile in the wake of the bloody rebellion that ousted Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the State Department did not include Libya on a list of dangerous postings that are high priority for extra security resources.
Only the American Embassies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are exempted from awarding security contracts to the lowest bidder. Dangerous posts are allowed to consider “best value” contracting instead, according to a State Department inspector general’s report in February.
The large private security firms that have protected American diplomats in Iraq and Afghanistan sought State Department contracts in Libya, and at least one made a personal pitch to the ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, who was killed in the militants’ attack in Benghazi on Sept. 11, according to a senior official at one firm.
But given the Libyan edict banning the contractors, the Obama administration was eager to reduce the American footprint there. After initially soliciting bids from major security companies for work in Libya, State Department officials never followed through.
“We went in to make a pitch, and nothing happened,” said the security firm official. He said the State Department could have found a way around the Libyans’ objections if it had wanted to.
Instead, the department relied on a small British company to provide several unarmed Libyan guards for security at the mission in Benghazi. For the personal protection of the diplomats, the department largely depended on its Diplomatic Security Service.
The wrangling over protection is part of a larger debate that has been under way for years within the State Department over how to balance security with the need of American diplomats to move freely.
Many diplomats rankle at the constraints imposed on them by security officials, who demand that they travel around foreign capitals in heavily armored convoys that local civilians find insulting and that make it nearly impossible for the envoys to meet discreetly with foreign officials. Many American diplomats have also grown deeply frustrated by the constraints imposed on them by working in the new, highly secure embassies that have been constructed around the world over the past decade.
After the 1998 bombings of two American embassies in East Africa by Al Qaeda, the State Department began a multibillion-dollar program to replace many embassies with hardened and highly secure facilities. American construction companies with experience in building prisons and military barracks won many of the contracts to build cookie-cutter buildings that look more like fortresses than diplomatic outposts. Between 2001 and 2010, 52 embassies were built, and many others are now under construction or being designed.
Often located in remote suburban areas far from crowded streets, the buildings are designed to withstand truck bombs, but they also require local security forces and heavily armed guards to resist the type of attack that the militants staged in Benghazi.
But many diplomats say the fortified embassies make it difficult for them to do their jobs, forcing them to find ways around them. Ronald E. Neumann, who served as the ambassador in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, and who worked in Baghdad before that, said that many foreign officials refuse to come into American Embassies because they are insulted by the intrusive security measures, and they do not want American officials coming to their homes with huge convoys.
“So you meet people in hotels,” said Mr. Neumann, now the president of the American Academy of Diplomacy in Washington. The security “has forced you to get more creative.”
That can mean taking more risks. “A lot of people are simply violating the security regulations to do their jobs,” said Anthony H. Cordesman, a national security analyst at the Center for International and Strategic Studies in Washington. “They have to find ways to get out, and sometimes they end-run the security officer, or sometimes the security officer will turn a blind eye.”
In fact, just as the Benghazi attack occurred, the State Department’s building department was beginning to address some of the frustrations by proposing more open and accessible designs for embassies. Under the new policy, embassies will still have to meet the same security standards, but the State Department will require that a higher priority be given to the visual appearance of buildings and will try to situate them in more central locations so that they are not so isolated. It is unclear whether the Benghazi crisis will force the State Department to abandon the new design policy.
“The problem is that embassies no longer function as public buildings,” said Jane Loeffler, the author of “The Architecture of Diplomacy,” a history of the design and construction of American embassies. “They used to be public, but no longer.”
For the State Department, finding the right balance between security and diplomacy has become increasingly difficult in a political environment. Perhaps no one understands that as well as Patrick F. Kennedy.
Five years ago, Mr. Kennedy, then the under secretary of state for management in the Bush administration, was caught up in a high-profile Congressional investigation of the episode in Nisour Square. Democratic lawmakers on the House Oversight Committee criticized the department for lax management of overly aggressive security contractors.
This week, Mr. Kennedy, who has the same job in the Obama administration, faced Republicans on the same House committee, who criticized the State Department for lax management and failing to provide more aggressive security in Benghazi.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 13, 2012
An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of the author of “The Architecture of Diplomacy.” She is Jane Loeffler, not Loefller.
A version of this article appeared in print on October 13, 2012, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Private Security Hovers as Issue After Benghazi.
So I put the question to you. where is the balanced middle ground going forward? Real common sense fullfilling of the duties of State Dept with their security in mind.
In my view we need to stay as far as possible aay from private security firms, been proven too many times they can cause more problems than they solve.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Sum it up in your own words, link to reputable sites to support your major points, try to keep from sounding like a batshit crazy lunatic.
Post titles in all caps look like a crazy old man shouting on a street corner.
Add an exclamation point and he sounds angry.
Add 7 exclamation points and he's Billy Mays.
If you want anyone to take you even remotely seriously... Those are some jump off points.
I have to agree with you. We need to use our own military to guard the embassy's and we should not even be in the areas such as Libya. Yet I wonder why Stevens was there. They knew something was going down. Was he ordered there? If so who sent him there.
AGAIN....the definition of a troll is one who aimlessly responds to posts......i clearly post my own posts....you (liberals) do not own this site! Got it? If you accuse a poster of being a troll, then you are telling us that your side (the left) owns this site! You do not own this site! A troll responds to posts!
A man that stands for nothing....will fall for anything!
All people need to do more on every level!
Let us know how that goes.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Are you wanting to set the rules here on the MT?
Some people want to stay in there own little bubble and will not read. Personally I read them for more information. With that said there is very good information in all these articles. No one should take anyone's word on this crisis. Research is the only way to find out who is lying.
Don't be silly. Trying to explain why a lot of posts get ignored. Sum it up... Link to more information. It's not that hard.
Mmhm. And yet you aren't bothered by the things said by Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan. I can see how lying upsets you so much.
I have to disagree buddy. They do own this site. The liberals are allowed to break rule 1 through 3 all the time yet I got a warning about what sites I use for my information. Though I pride myself in reading all side, but it seems there is to much bias information on most (not all) liberal site so I rarely use it. Be careful if you want to stay here. One guy got reprimanded ( may have been kicked off because I have not seen him for awhile ) for using the word Obamabots.
This thread is about Benghazi....concerning a cover up by the Administration we have now.... :fp:
Fair enough.
Although you seem to pick and choose your indignation.
But my point stands.
Endless scrolling text and poorly-formatted copy/paste isn't go into make your view very concise.
You dont have to respond all day long to every single post and response!
A man that stands for nothing....will fall for anything!
All people need to do more on every level!
Um.. Except I didn't call you a troll, you're not someone who's around that much. Sorry if you thought different.
I too come and go. Depends on my work cycle. At the moment I'm rendering video and sitting in a studio debating politics because it keeps me awake.
Don't worry, I wrap this movie in 2 days and then I'm back in production and you probably won't see much of me until after the election.