Washington must be in a state of shock. The scandals swirling around this administration just keep on coming and the  sheer speed with which they are being revealed seems to be putting the White House on the defensive. Take your pick:

- the Benghazi cover-up, in which the administration was caught in a flood of lies regarding Benghazi and the events surrounding the murders of four American,  even as the President’s narrative continues to change.

Former Secretary Hillary Clinton will no doubt go down in history, not for her time as First Lady, or her service as Obama’s Secretary of State, but for her angry response to Sen. Ron Johnson, during a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigating the Benghazi murders:  “Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?”

To those of us who still care about the obligation of protecting the men and women who serve us overseas, it makes a great difference. And it matters that those who serve in high office are held publicly accountable to the American people for their acts of commission and omission when they betray the public trust. By not doing everything possible to save the Americans who represented us  in Benghazi that night, the administration is likely to be found culpable and perhaps criminally guilty.

Two of the most recent scandals are:

- the IRS admittedly targeting “right wing” organizations for costly audits just before the 2012 Presidential election, while giving liberal groups (like Planned Parenthood and NPR) a pass, including the President’s own brother’s “Barack H. Obama Foundation”, which claimed 501(c)3 (tax deductible) status and solicited tax-deductible contributions, while operating solely out of Kenya;.

- the Department of Justice seizing AP’s phone records without notice, compromising Constitutional guarantees of the First Amendment and the ability of the press to protect its sources.

And then, there is:

- ObamaCare, which is now costing Americans millions instead of reducing health care costs as promised, placing an added tax burden on middle class workers’ paychecks (despite campaign promises of  “not one penny of new taxes on the middle class”). ObamaCare is also forcing corporate employers to either stop hiring or put full time workers on part-time status in order to avoid the huge additional costs of the program.

The list of scandals and cover-ups continues, including the DOJ’s stealth “Fast and Furious” gun-running operations that sent 2,000 guns into the hands of Mexican drug cartels and resulted in the murder of several hundred people there and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry. In the hearings that uncovered this scandal, the Director of the Department of Justice Eric Holder refused to produce requested documents and was held in contempt of Congress. But since he is the head of the DOJ, he gave himself a pass. This scandal is hardly mentioned these days in the wake of all the others. In the words of Jay Carney, “That was a long time ago,” as if that makes a difference.

Another is the President’s still repeated promise to protect the middle class (repeated again by WH Press Secretary Jay Carney just yesterday as the President’s top priority), at a tme when the middle class is hurting the most in this job-poor economy.

All of these issues are serious. The fact that they are coming to light shows that there is a wide-spread epidemic of arrogance and corruption in Washington that gives those in positions of highest power the feeling that they are above the law and are not accountable to the American people, whom they are supposed to serve. These scandals should not be ignored and those who perpetrated them need to be held accountable.

The good news is that the scandals are finally seeing the light of day and the mainstream media is finally doing its job, asking the hard questions and demanding straight answers from the administration.

Congress is also finally doing its job, holding hearings that demand that people, even those at the top of the administration,  show up and testify under oath in order to get at the truth behind the scandals and cover-ups.

It is still too early to know what impact these new revelations and old scandals will have on the Obama administration, which is already showing signs of stress fatigue as they become increasingly defensive.

I have always had faith in America, but in recent years, I have worried that the system would be overrun by a new and dangerous ideology that puts the government first and the people last. Now, for the first time in a long time, I am beginning to believe that the system, so brilliantly conceived by our founding fathers, is still working.

——– Ilana Freedman, Editor

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department secretly obtained two months of telephone records of reporters and editors for The Associated Press in what the news cooperative’s top executive called a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into how news organizations gather the news.

The records obtained by the Justice Department listed incoming and outgoing calls, and the duration of each call, for the work and personal phone numbers of individual reporters, general AP office numbers in New York, Washington and Hartford, Conn., and the main number for AP reporters in the House of Representatives press gallery, according to attorneys for the AP.

In all, the government seized those records for more than 20 separate telephone lines assigned to AP and its journalists in April and May of 2012. The exact number of journalists who used the phone lines during that period is unknown but more than 100 journalists work in the offices whose phone records were targeted on a wide array of stories about government and other matters.

In a letter of protest sent to Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday, AP President and Chief Executive Officer Gary Pruitt said the government sought and obtained information far beyond anything that could be justified by any specific investigation. He demanded the return of the phone records and destruction of all copies.

“There can be no possible justification for such an overbroad collection of the telephone communications of The Associated Press and its reporters. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the newsgathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to AP’s newsgathering operations, and disclose information about AP’s activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know,” Pruitt said.

The government would not say why it sought the records. U.S. officials have previously said in public testimony that the U.S. attorney in Washington is conducting a criminal investigation into who may have leaked information contained in a May 7, 2012, AP story about a foiled terror plot. The story disclosed details of a CIA operation in Yemen that stopped an al-Qaida plot in the spring of 2012 to detonate a bomb on an airplane bound for the United States.

In testimony in February, CIA Director John Brennan noted that the FBI had questioned him about whether he was AP’s source, which he denied. He called the release of the information to the media about the terror plot an “unauthorized and dangerous disclosure of classified information.”

Prosecutors have sought phone records from reporters before, but the seizure of records from such a wide array of AP offices, including general AP switchboards numbers and an office-wide shared fax line, is unusual and largely unprecedented.

In the letter notifying the AP received Friday, the Justice Department offered no explanation for the seizure, according to Pruitt’s letter and attorneys for the AP. The records were presumably obtained from phone companies earlier this year although the government letter did not explain that. None of the information provided by the government to the AP suggested the actual phone conversations were monitored.

Among those whose phone numbers were obtained were five reporters and an editor who were involved in the May 7, 2012 story.

The Obama administration has aggressively investigated disclosures of classified information to the media and has brought six cases against people suspected of leaking classified information, more than under all previous presidents combined.

Justice Department published rules require that subpoenas of records from news organizations must be personally approved by the attorney general but it was not known if that happened in this case. The letter notifying AP that its phone records had been obtained though subpoenas was sent Friday by Ronald Machen, the U.S. attorney in Washington.

Spokesmen in Machen’s office and at the Justice Department had no immediate comment on Monday.

The Justice Department lays out strict rules for efforts to get phone records from news organizations. A subpoena can only be considered after “all reasonable attempts” have been made to get the same information from other sources, the rules say. It was unclear what other steps, in total, the Justice Department has taken to get information in the case.

A subpoena to the media must be “as narrowly drawn as possible” and “should be directed at relevant information regarding a limited subject matter and should cover a reasonably limited time period,” according to the rules.

The reason for these constraints, the department says, is to avoid actions that “might impair the news gathering function” because the government recognizes that “freedom of the press can be no broader than the freedom of reporters to investigate and report the news.”

News organizations normally are notified in advance that the government wants phone records and enter into negotiations over the desired information. In this case, however, the government, in its letter to the AP, cited an exemption to those rules that holds that prior notification can be waived if such notice, in the exemption’s wording, might “pose a substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation.”

It is unknown whether a judge or a grand jury signed off on the subpoenas.

The May 7, 2012, AP story that disclosed details of the CIA operation in Yemen to stop an airliner bomb plot occurred around the one-year anniversary of the May 2, 2011, killing of Osama bin Laden.

The plot was significant because the White House had told the public it had “no credible information that terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida, are plotting attacks in the U.S. to coincide with the (May 2) anniversary of bin Laden’s death.”

The AP delayed reporting the story at the request of government officials who said it would jeopardize national security. Once government officials said those concerns were allayed, the AP disclosed the plot because officials said it no longer endangered national security. The Obama administration, however, continued to request that the story be held until the administration could make an official announcement.

The May 7 story was written by reporters Matt Apuzzo and Adam Goldman with contributions from reporters Kimberly Dozier, Eileen Sullivan and Alan Fram. They and their editor, Ted Bridis, were among the journalists whose April-May 2012 phone records were seized by the government.

Brennan talked about the AP story and leaks investigation in written testimony to the Senate. “The irresponsible and damaging leak of classified information was made … when someone informed the Associated Press that the U.S. Government had intercepted an IED (improvised explosive device) that was supposed to be used in an attack and that the U.S. Government currently had that IED in its possession and was analyzing it,” he said.

He also defended the White House’s plan to discuss the plot immediately afterward. “Once someone leaked information about interdiction of the IED and that the IED was actually in our possession, it was imperative to inform the American people consistent with Government policy that there was never any danger to the American people associated with this al-Qa’ida plot,” Brennan told senators.

Read the original article here.

“This is pretty straightforward. If, in fact, IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that have been reported on and were intentionally targeting conservative groups, then that’s outrageous, and there is no place for it,” Obama said during a joint question-and-answer session with British Prime Minister David Cameron at the White House. “You don’t want the IRS ever being perceived to be biased and anything less than neutral in terms of how they operate.”

The president said he learned that the Internal Revenue Service may have improperly scrutinized the tax-exempt status of tea party-related groups when the news broke on Friday.

Obama’s strong words followed an outcry from many Republicans over the IRS’s apparent display of political bias. Maine Sen. Susan Collins, a GOP moderate, said Sunday that the IRS’s actions needed to be “personally condemned” by the president, who must “make crystal clear that this is totally unacceptable.”

Collins also called into question the IRS’s early claim that the improper behavior was the work of low-level staffers.

“I just don’t buy that this was a couple of rogue IRS employees,” she said, underlining that “groups with ‘progressive’ in their names were not targeted similarly.”

Obama emphasized that the Treasury Department’s inspector general was investigating and that he did not want to comment “prematurely” on what they might uncover.

“But I can tell you that if you’ve got the IRS operating in anything less than a neutral and nonpartisan way, then that is outrageous, it is contrary to our traditions, and people have to be held accountable and it’s got to be fixed. So we’ll wait and see what exactly all the details and the facts are,” Obama said. “But I’ve got no patience with it. I will not tolerate it. And we’ll make sure that we find out exactly what happened on this.”

Presidential press secretary Jay Carney told reporters that the White House counsel’s office learned of the internal IRS investigation into the issue “in the week of April 22nd of this year.”

Carney said it was too early to talk about potential action against any IRS employees if evidence of wrongdoing comes to light. “The ‘if’ is important here,” he said. “We, like everyone else, are awaiting its results.”

In the press conference, Obama also pushed back hard against Republican-driven charges that his administration tried to cover up the role terrorists played in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi, which claimed the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens.

“There’s no there, there,” he said.

Five US Air Force F-22 Raptors on the ramp at Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates. (Google Earth)

At a dinner in downtown Washington Thursday, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel touted the Pentagon¹s deployment of advanced weaponry, including the Air Force F-22 Raptor, to the Middle East.

The stealthy fighters, as well other ³high-end air, missile defense, and naval assets,² have been positioned in the region ³to deter Iranian aggression and respond to other contingencies,² Hagel said during his remarks to The Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

It just so happens that satellite imagery of those F-22s in the Middle East  has popped up on Google Earth.

Five F-22s have turned up on satellite imagery at Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates  about 100 miles from Iranian territory. While it’s no secret the US has deployed the radar-evading Raptors to the Al Dhafra, this is the first time they have popped up on publicly available satellite imagery.

The satellite picture was taken about a year ago, however it appears to have been put on Google Earth in recent months.

An Air Forces Central Command spokeswoman based in the Middle East would not say whether the Raptors were still in the region. ³We cannot confirm that they¹re in the [area of responsibility],² she said.

In January, the Aviationist blog published pictures of six F-22s aerial refueling over Italy. The blog said the jets were flying from UAE back to the United States. It also reported that those F-22s were being replaced by six Raptors from a different wing.

The US military goes to great lengths not to disclose the location of Air Force assets in the region, mostly due to host nation sensitivity. That said, the Air Force has periodically released pictures of F-22s on the ground and training. Photo captions simply refer to the jets being in Southwest Asia.

In November, the Navy released a picture of a F/A-18 Hornet training with an F-22 in the 5th Fleet area of responsibility, aka, somewhere in the Middle East. The Air Force sent the F-22s to the region about a year ago for what it described as a  “routine security partnership deployment”.

The Google Earth images put the F-22s about 100 miles from Iranian waters and 140 miles from the Iranian mainland.

The stealthy jet can fly at speeds above Mach 2, according to an Air Force fact sheet, meaning it could reach the Iranian mainland is less than six minutes from Al Dhafra.

Al Dhafra is the premier UAE Air Force base. The US Air Force has built a strong relationship with its UAE counterparts and occasionally sends fighters to train at the Gulf Air Warfare Center there.

Just last month, the Pentagon announced UAE would buy another batch of advanced Block 60 F-16 fighters.

Read the original article here.

The following article provides a cautionary alert to Americans that our world has changed. It is far more dangerous than it ever has been before and we must, individually and collectively, live our lives with a heightened sense of awareness about the environment around us.

The author, Reza Khalili, has provided our readers with excellent information in the past. Whether what he predicts in this article will actually happen remains to be seen, but it could.  And we, as Americans, must take it upon ourselves to be accountable for what we can control.

If only one of the friends of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev had told authorities when he bragged that he could make a bomb, the Boston Marathon bombing might have been stopped.

If only someone in the Cambridge Islamic Society of Boston had warned the police when Tamerlan Tsarnaev‘s talk became so radical that he was asked to leave the mosque, which itself has historical ties to terrorists, the bombing might have been stopped.

If only the FBI has followed the leads they had on Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the bombing might have been stopped.

But none of those things happened. Consequently, three people died and over 260 were wounded by the two bombs that the Tsarnaev brothers place near the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

If we learned anything from the bombing, it is that Americans must be actively part of the solution, not part of the problem. Terrorism is no longer a  theoretical attack on people living halfway around the world. It is here, it is now, and we must wake up and be ready to defend ourselves.

Americans can take a lesson from the Israelis, who have lived under the cloud of terrorism in their midst for many decades. They know that being watchful and ready to call the police when they see something suspicious is the best way to prevent a terrorist attack. And the police know to take them seriously every time, even if it turns out to be a false alarm.

A citizenry that understands that being aware and participating in the safety of its own community can make a critical difference in the outcome will be a much safer one in this increasingly dangerous world.

——————-  Ilana Freedman, Editor

___________________

Terrorist Super-axis Plans to Strike Within U.S.

By Reza Khalili

Imminent attacks planned by al-Qaida, Quds Forces, Hezbollah

Iran has given the go-ahead to operatives of three terrorist groups who have infiltrated the United States to carry out their missions, including what is expected to be a Mumbai-style attack on a hotel where innocent bystanders would be killed, WND has learned.

A full report with many details of the missions has been passed on to U.S. officials and to a congressional intelligence committee.

Three targets have been chosen within America for imminent attack and the terror teams have now cut communications with the operational center in Iran, a sign that they are moving ahead with the attacks, according to a high-level intelligence officer within the Islamic regime.

The regime believes that if even one of the attacks occurs, the operation would be a success and that it won’t be traced back to Iran due to the nationalities of the operators, he said. It is likely that one of the attacks will resemble the one in Mumbai in 2008, the source added, in which a hotel was attacked, hostages were taken and 164 people were killed over several days.

India alleges that Pakistan used proxies to carry out that attack so it wouldn’t be traced back to Pakistan, just as Iran now is using proxies to hide its current terrorism. The information provided by the source provides details of a new jihadist coalition with a focus on creating instability in America.

The source said the regime views the Boston bombing as a successful terrorist attack in which fear was created, U.S. intelligence questioned and a sense of security diminished. There has yet to be any link to any specific group or country.

As WND reported exclusively on April 22, the regime’s Quds Forces have done extensive planning on gatherings, events and high-value targets in the United States, but for two years have focused on events such as the Boston Marathon and run an extensive network of terrorists out of South Asia.

A Feb. 14, 2010, meeting in Iran either set up this new jihadist coalition or continued the coalition among the Quds Forces, Hezbollah and al-Qaida. The latter was formed years ago by Imad Mugniyeh, the dead mastermind terrorist from Hezbollah, under the direction of Ahmad Vahidi, then the head of the Quds Forces and the current Iranian defense minister, to collaborate on their fight against America.

At the 2010 meeting, Qasem Soleimani (the head of the Quds Forces), Seif Adel (the operational head of al-Qaida) and Mustafa Badr al-Din (the operational head of Hezbollah) devised a plan for operations against America under a new coalition, dubbed the “Coalition of Muslim Soldiers.” This coalition includes al-Shabaab, an al-Qaida offshoot based in Somalia, and has its central command in the Iranian city of Kerman with command and control centers in the Iranian provinces of Kerman, Khorasan, Khuzestan, Kurdistan, and Sistan and Baluchistan, the source said.

The coalition, led by Soleimani with Iran the main source of funding, is based on a strategic collaboration and devoid of ideological differences and opinions of Shiite and Sunni Marjas. The main operational commanders, mostly well-known terrorists, are:

1. Gen. Soleimani, the head of the Quds Forces with full power given to him by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
2. Brig. Gen. Abdolreza Shahlabi of the Quds Forces.
3. Brig. Gen. Hamed Abdollahi of the Quds Forces.
4. Brig. Gen. Hossein Movahedian of the Quds Forces.
5. Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr of the Quds Forces.
6. Seif Adel, the operational head of al-Qaida.
7. Abdol Rahman Yasin of al-Qaida operations.
8. Abu Saeed al-Mesri of al-Qaida in Latin America.
9. Adnan ShokriJuma of al-Qaida in America.
10. Hakimalah Masoud of al-Qaida operations.
11. Mustafa Badr al-Din, the operations head of Hezbollah (and the brother-in-law and cousin of the dead terrorist Imad Mugniyah) who now serves as Mugnyiah’s replacement as the military leader of Hezbollah and who also serves as the deputy to the Quds’ Soliemani.
12. Talal Hamieh, the head of the External Security Organization, strategic planning and funding for Hezbollah in Venezuela (he commutes directly from Venezuela to Damascus, Syria, then to Lebanon and back).
13. Fozi Mohammad Mostafa of Hezbollah operations.
14. Mohammad Ali Hamdi of Hezbollah operations in Toronto, Canada (he targets nuclear power plants and other sites in Canada).
15. Ebrahim Saleh Mohammad al-Yaghoub of Hezbollah operations.
16. Mohammad Ahmad al-Monavar, the operations commander for Abu Nidal.
17. Jahad Servan Mostafa, the operations commander for al-Shabaab in Somalia.

Based on intelligence and infiltration by Western intelligence agencies into institutions, operations and cultural centers of radical Arab Islamists after 9/11, the new coalition recruits non-Arab Islamists from many other nationalities and Arabs from countries not on the hot list for American agencies.

Iran believes that the perception of security in America that has helped empower its actions in the Middle East must be turned 180 degrees, not only to defeat and derail all U.S. calculations based on gathered intelligence but to destabilize the political, economic and social conditions in America, the source said.

Based on that understanding, he said, America through its military might has kept the fight in the Islamic region and away from its homeland and its allies’ turf. Now continuous operations must be conducted in the U.S. homeland to change that equation, they believe.

More than 2,600 targets, including public places, government buildings and military installations, have been chosen for attack and reconnaissance has been done. Information about some of the targets, based on direct knowledge of the source, has been given to U.S. officials to neutralize the threat and confront the terrorists. They include specific government buildings, news networks, malls and sports events.

This new coalition has also prepared for a major attack to avenge al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden’s killing to satisfy Seif Adel, the operational head of al-Qaida, for his collaboration with the Islamic regime ruling Iran.

The radical regime ruling Iran has set up several channels for financial support of the new coalition with its terrorist activities. Multiple commerce, cultural and financial institutions in the U.S. are part of that network. The connection includes individuals running businesses in Damascus and its connections to al-Qaida operatives in America.

Since 2001, more than $270 million has been invested in the expansion of mosques and Islamic centers in America by institutions in the Iranian city of Qom. As part of the coalition’s plan, some 27 mosques and Islamic centers in America are their target for collaboration, infiltration and recruitment of sympathizers for various missions, including reconnaissance and terrorist acts.

The source said the new coalition, due to its composition of different people in Central Asia, is a very complex organization.

The publication of a limited version of the full report is an intention to put the Islamic regime on notice that should it go ahead with its planned attacks in the U.S. homeland, it should be held responsible, the source said.

Reza Kahlili, author of the award-winning book “A Time to Betray,” served in CIA Directorate of Operations, as a spy in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, counterterrorism expert; currently serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security, an advisory board to Congress and the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI). He regularly appears in national and international media as an expert on Iran and counterterrorism in the Middle East.

Read the original article here.

Friday, May 10, 2013

JERUSALEM — Israel’s recent airstrikes on Syria not only stopped the delivery of arms to its sworn enemy Hezbollah in Lebanon but also gave notice to the Obama administration and Iran that the Jewish state has the will and the means to act unilaterally to protect its interests in the volatile Middle East.

Using accurate intelligence and precision munitions, Israeli warplanes flying in Lebanese airspace reportedly fired missiles early Sunday on caches of weapons outside the Syrian capital, Damascus.

The immediate goal was to eliminate shipments of Iranian-made Fateh-110 missiles that were stored in warehouses before being trucked to Hezbollah arsenals in Lebanon. The warehouses were apparently the targets of three separate Israeli missile attacks early Sunday and of a smaller attack two nights earlier.

Israel struck when Syria’s regime, deeply embroiled in a civil war, was highly unlikely to do anything about it. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not even bother postponing a planned week-long visit to China, and took off for Beijing a few hours after the airstrikes.

Israeli officials have long been mulling a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities to prevent the Islamic republic from developing an atomic weapon. The U.S. and other Western nations have advocated restraint to allow economic sanctions against Tehran to squeeze the Iranian economy and alter its leaders’ actions.

Iran, whose leaders have called for Israel’s destruction, has insisted that its nuclear program is designed for peaceful purposes, yet has refused to allow international inspectors to examine its facilities.

Israel’s airstrikes served as a reminder, particularly to Iran, that the Jewish state has intelligence capable of silently keeping track of its enemies, operational capabilities to execute complex missions and the national will to do so if necessary.

The strikes also showed Washington that effective operations in murky circumstances can be carried out without the sky falling in.

It is doubtful that Israel is attempting to push the Obama administration to intervene in Syria — Jerusalem itself is of two minds about whether the fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad would be a good thing.

But Jerusalem definitely hopes that Washington will be prepared for military action against Iran if the latter does not halt its march to the bomb.

Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon indicated this week that the attacks represent a new policy regarding the blocking of advanced weaponry destined for the militant group Hezbollah.

“We have made clear what our interests are,” he said. “We have red lines and will not give up on them.”

Israel had not attempted to interdict tens of thousands of rockets that flowed from Syria to Hezbollah in the past few years. Mr. Ya’alon’s terse statement indicated that something has changed.

Analysts have speculated that the missile shipment was part of an Iranian effort to push through advanced armaments to Hezbollah as quickly as possible for fear that Mr. Assad’s fall could sever the link between Tehran and Hezbollah.

By indicating its intention to act again if its  red lines are crossed Israel has made itself a player-in-waiting in the Syrian saga, with potentially far-reaching consequences.

For four decades, Israel refrained from attacks on Syria which, in turn, kept its border with Israel perfectly peaceful.

There was one exception in 2007, when Israeli planes destroyed a  secret nuclear facility being built in a remote part of Syria. In a noteworthy example of mutual self-restraint, Israel did not claim responsibility for the attack and Syria denied construction of a nuclear facility.

The same self-restraint was displayed last Friday when Israel did not announce its first attack and Syria did not report it.

After the dramatic sound-and-light show early Sunday two miles from Mr. Assad’s palace, national honor obliged him to warn that if Israel attacks again Syria would respond.

Israeli analysts believe that any Syrian response would be directed at the sparsely populated Golan Heights where the chances of heavy Israeli casualties, and a strong Israeli counter-strike, are smallest.

Hezbollah’s rocket and missile arsenal is Teheran’s first line of defense against an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities. Tehran sees the missiles as a deterrent that would make Israel hesitate before striking and a potent military asset if war does break out. The highly accurate Fateh-110 missiles pose a formidable threat in themselves to Israeli air bases and vital infrastructure like power stations, not to mention population centers.

As the situation in Syria deteriorates, the entire region is shifting restlessly.

“Everyone will be reassessing their position now, including Russia and America, Sunnis and Shiites,” said Uzi Rabi, a political scientist at Tel Aviv University. “The whole region is moving into a new era through the back door of the Arab Spring.”

Abraham Rabinovich, a graduate of Brooklyn College and a United States Army veteran, worked as a reporter for Newsday before joining the Jerusalem Post. His work has also appeared in the “New York Times,” the “Wall Street Journal,” the “Christian Science Monitor,” the International “Herald Tribune,” and” The New Republic,” among other publications. The author of several books, including The Boats of Cherbourg, he lives in Jerusalem. “From the Hardcover edition.”

Read the original article here.

Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in Libya, testifies Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Photo by Jeffrey Malet.

The minute by minute first hand account of the Benghazi attacks from Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in Libya was gripping. It also made clear that the narrative that was delivered to the American people by the Obama administration was totally and utterly false and they knew it from the beginning.

In the words of Hicks, when asked his reaction to the story of the “spo0ntaneous demonstration” and the anti-Islam video that the administration claimed was the cause of the attacks, “I was shocked. My jaw dropped. And I was ashamed. . . . In Libya, the video was a non-issue.”  He also explained how the misinformation that was repeatedly presented by President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice so insulted the Libyan Prime Minister that the FBI could not gain access to the site for 17 days, during which time the site was not secured and was severely compromised.

Another casualty of the cover-up was Hicks himself, who was demoted for daring to challenge the disinformation campaign (see article below).

The testimony in yesterday’s hearing was credible and shocking to anyone who didn’t already understand the depths to which the administration went to cover up the real facts. There will undoubtedly be more coming, and while it may come in dribs and drabs, the facts will surface and the culpability may go right to the top of the food chain.

The charges are so serious because in the moments when people were dying, the President, who had been informed of the attacks, went to sleep, and the Secretary of State who also had been informed, refused to take action. In the wake of this apparent dereliction of duty, four men, including the Ambassador, died and many were injured. The cover-up that followed only added to the malfeasance. These are actionable charges and the American people have the right to know what happened, why it was covered up, and to hold those responsible accountable.

——- Ilana Freedman, Editor

____________________________

Describing Benghazi Attack

Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in Libya, testifies Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Photo by Jeffrey Malet.

The Morning Line

Last year’s attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, have been the subject of presidential debates, a report from an independent review board and on Wednesday, compelling testimony at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

The hearing was fraught with emotion and political theater as Republicans leading the investigation sought to pin blame on President Barack Obama’s administration and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Lawmakers grilled witnesses over what happened in the hours after the attacks that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. Former Deputy Chief of Mission Gregory Hicks choked back tears as he detailed his surprise at initial suggestions the events of Sept. 11, 2012, had any link to backlash against an anti-Islamic film.

House Republicans who have had five different committees examining the attacks charged in their own report that the Obama’s administration “willfully perpetrated a deliberately misleading and incomplete narrative.”

The panel’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Elijiah Cummings of Maryland, complained about the nature of the queries. He called the hearing part of “a full-scale media campaign that is not designed to investigate what happened in a responsible and bipartisan way” but is instead intended “to smear public officials.” Others suggested the new focus on Clinton was more about her possible 2016 presidential ambitions than on seeking answers.

Wednesday’s hearing was just the latest in a lengthy battle on the issue between Republicans in Congress and Mr. Obama. The administration’s response to the attacks cost Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice a potential promotion to replace Clinton after some Senate GOP lawmakers expressed concerns about her statements following the events.

Hicks has been dubbed a “whistle-blower.” The New York Times summarizes his emotional testimony:

During a chaotic night at the American Embassy in Tripoli, hundreds of miles away, the diplomat, Gregory Hicks, got what he called “the saddest phone call I’ve ever had in my life” informing him that Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was dead and that he was now the highest-ranking American in Libya. For his leadership that night when four Americans were killed, Mr. Hicks said in nearly six hours of testimony, he subsequently received calls from both Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Obama.

But within days, Mr. Hicks said, after raising questions about the account of what had happened in Benghazi offered in television interviews by Susan E. Rice, the United Nations ambassador, he felt a distinct chill from State Department superiors. “The sense I got was that I needed to stop the line of questioning,” said Mr. Hicks, who has been a Foreign Service officer for 22 years.

He was soon given a scathing review of his management style, he said, and was later “effectively demoted” to desk officer at headquarters, in what he believes was retaliation for speaking up.

White House press secretary Jay Carney dismissed the hearing as “part of an effort to chase after what isn’t the substance here.”

Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler looked at the details emerging from the hearing and ticks off the facts coming from each side.

After six hours of testimony, committee chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., declared the hearing was closed. He added a note signaling more is to come: “But this investigation is not over.”

Read the original article here.

In light of the current encouraging events in Washington, the hearings on Benghazi, on the Boston Marathon Bombing, and the Extortion 17 press conference at the National Press Club yesterday, Syria has recently taken a back seat in the news. But that isn’t to say that there aren’t a lot of very serious developments.

To say that the situation in Syria is extremely complex, is putting it mildly. The conflict has already taken between 70,000 and 80,000 lives, nearly 80% of whom were civilians, and created more than a million refugees who have fled to neighboring countries.

The chaos that has engulfed Syria for the last two years has been fueled by a huge number of foreign fighters, many of whom came from other conflicts and are connected to terrorist groups, particularly those connected to or inspired by al Qaeda.

One of these, Jabhat al-Nusra, is now easily the most dominant fighting force of all the diverse groups that comprise the opposition in Syria. It is also responsible for the increasing number of atrocities being reported, which the Western press has consistently blamed on the Assad regime. These include huge bombs in densely populated areas, sectarian murders specifically targeting Christians, beheadings, and terrorist attacks on schools and other civilian targets. al-Nusra is also reportedly working with Free Syrian Army fighters (the ‘good guys’) and training them how to build car bombs.

On the other hand, Assad has his own terrorist organizations. Both Hezbollah and Iran’s IRGC fighters in Lebanon were sent by Iran, and have been actively engaged in the conflict on the side of Assad’s forces ever since. Over time, they have become increasingly involved in Syria’s civil war, supplying troops and military advisers to help Assad retain control of his country.

There are still patriotic Syrian forces fighting fiercely against Assad for a free Syria, and our sources tell us that their numbers are over twice that of the rest of the unruly opposition. There is speculation that their numbers have been infiltrated by Islamist jihadis, and it clear that the US has increasingly difficult to tell the ‘good guys’ from the ‘bad guys’. Any foreign policy that the US promotes which suggests that it can provide arms to just the “good guys” is simply hubris and, in my view, is very, very bad policy when they can’t tell the difference.

Many analysts, including myself, had anticipated that despite the strong backing of Iran, Assad would not be able to withstand indefinitely the onslaught of the opposition forces, which only a few months ago were gaining ground very rapidly. At the time, I qualified my comments by saying that it really depended on how much Iran was willing to invest in supporting the Assad government. The answer turned out to be “Quite a lot”.

Syria is strategically important to Iran as a land bridge to supply arms and technical support to Hezbollah in Southern Lebanon, and to give Iran Land access to the Mediterranean. The fall of Assad would seriously compromise Iran’s power in the region. This makes the stakes for Iran very high indeed.

Meanwhile, Senior IRGC commanders have been seen in Syria while on assignment to Hezbollah in Lebanon. Their presence in Syria underscores the strong links between Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah.

It is essential that we do not to overlook the strength of this relationship in considering the current situation in Syria, because while the media concentrates on the conflict between the opposition and Assad, there is another maelstrom brewing underneath the surface that is being either being willfully ignored or irresponsibly discounted.

Should Assad be ousted in the coming weeks or months, it is overly simplistic to say that Syria will become another Islamist country in a growing sea of Islamist countries. However, in the end, it is undoubtedly true.

If the current situation continues, it is no longer so clear that Assad will be ousted. Syria is so strategically important to Iran, and Iran’s support is so significant, that if there is no international interference, or a dramatic shift in power in the opposition that favors the Syrian Free Army, it is quite possible that with Iran’s support, Assad will continue to remain in power.

But (and it’s a big but) things are already changing.

The recent use of chemical weapons in Syria was supposed to represent a “red line”, according to President Obama, but a dispute over whether they had or had not actually been used has allowed the President to stall any military intervention, despite his earlier warning. This is critical because it demonstrates to the Muslim world that the US does not stand behind its warnings and can be considered a non-issue as they develop their plans for war and power.

Another dispute over which side used chemical weapons is equally critical. It is well known that Syria has been developing chemical and biological weapons for many years, and the factories and weapons depots are spread all over the country. A number of them have already been seized by oppsition forces. In other words, it is no longer a question of whether the terrorists can get them, because both sides already have them.

There is a difference, however, between having chemical weapons and using them. Israel said at the end of last month that it had found evidence that the Syrian government had repeatedly used chemical weapons during the month of March. But there have also been strong indications that opposition forces have also used chemical weapons.

Carla Del Ponte, a member of the U.N. commission that was charged with investigating the possible use of nerve gas in Syria, said there are “strong, concrete suspicions” of Sarin gas being used, “on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities.”

Although Israel has tried to stay out of the Syrian conflict, Netanyahu has made it very clear that sending chemical or biological weapons to Hezbollah will be a red line, and he has already demonstrated that, unlike our own administration, a red line still has meaning in Israel’s lexicon.

The two sets of air attacks last week that destroyed both weapons convoys and weapons factories were stern proof of that. The convoys included precision-guided missiles, which certainly could have escalated the level of confrontation, had they been allowed to get through to Hezbollah.

Israel may now be quickly drawn into Syria’s civil war. Assad has openly promised to supply “game-changing” weapons to Hezbollah and Israel has vowed not to allow these shipments to get through. Such advanced Iranian missiles, armed with chemical or biological weapons, would represent a potentially devastating assault on Israel’s civilian population, something Israel’s government cannot allow.

Assad has also reportedly given orders to engage attacking Israeli aircraft “without further warning”, should they attack “again”. However, shooting down attacking Israeli war planes is probably not one of Syria’s options, since Israel has been using over-the-horizon smart missiles to target Syrian convoys and chemical plants, and has not, to the best of my knowledge, had any over-flights over Damascus.

Nasrallah said Hezbollah expects more strategic weapons from Syria in the future, and Assad has promised that Syria will “give Hezbollah everything” in recognition of its support. Hezbollah already has an estimated 100,000 rockets and missiles, and hundreds of stationary and mobile missile launching pads throughout Southern Lebanon. A recent report stated that 110 of these missiles were already aimed at Tel Aviv.

So the situation in Syria is now at a 211 degrees Fahrenheit, and ready to boil over. Despite his bravado, Assad can probably not withstand a multi-front war at home and across international boundaries, particularly not with Israel.

Iran, however, may want to create a new distraction as it nears completion of its nuclear weapons program. It’s complicity in the recent North Korean crisis, for example, was for just that reason, coming immediately after the presence of a secret multi-function nuclear site not far from Iran’s Fordo nuclear plant was revealed. By fueling an international conflict between Hezbollah, its ally, and Israel, its designated enemy, Iran will most assuredly create a very significant distraction.

But that may well lead to both the further destruction of Syria and Lebanon brought on by massive Israeli retaliation, and a new international confrontation that may be, for the first time in history, a face off between nuclear powers, at least one of which will not be afraid – in fact may be eager – to use its newly acquired nuclear weapons.

Graphic courtesy of Rush Limbaugh

The long-held, but too infrequently aired opinions that the Obama administration was guilty of a massive cover-up regarding the Benghazi attacks on 9/11/12, are now, finally, seeing the light of day. As Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) will convene a full committee hearing, “Benghazi:  Exposing Failure and Recognizing Courage,” which Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) has warned will be “explosive”.

Only three people – State Department “whistle-blowers” – will give testimony at this hearing, and it is still not clear how much they will actually reveal, despite the pre-hearing PR. However, many are now standing in the wings – witnesses and victims of the attack, who have been hidden and, according to many accounts, forbidden to speak to anyone about the events leading up to, during, and after that night.

The events of today may well trigger a cascade of testimonies that will expose what appears to be an intentional administration cover-up of the real events of 9/11/12, in order to protect the President’s political prospects, less than two months before the 2012 presidential election. 

It is not yet clear, and may not be for a while, what effect today’s hearings will have on the futures of President Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former head of the CIA Leon Panetta,  and many other senior officials in the future. They all, it appears, lied about what they knew before the attacks, about the terrorist involvement of al Qaeda in the attacks, and concocted the story of the video that they said caused the attacks. They lied rather than admit that they had failed in their collective mission and allowed four Americans, including our Ambassador, to die that night without any effort on the part of the US government to save them.

It remains to be seen whether today’s testimony will be sufficiently potent to result in  Clinton’s public fall from grace, thus eliminating her chances for a run for the White House in 2016. Or whether it will lead to a Congressional effort to impeach the President for abdicating his responsibilities and making himself unavailable during one of the worst attacks on our diplomatic missions in many years.

Today, the hearings, which will be broadcast on C-Span 3 beginning at 11:30 today, May 8. It is required viewing for all Americans, who are (or should be) interested in learning more of the truth about what happened in Benghazi and, quite possibly, about the lengths to which our leaders will go to protect their own, even at the expense of the people and the nation they are sworn to represent.

The following article by Andrew McCarthy gives some revealing background into the political theater that put people with dangerously anti-American connections in positions of real power and the failure of the team that was tasked to investigate a possible Benghazi coverup but failed to complete the job. America faces the clear possibility that our elected officials have,  in the interest of politics and, perhaps, based on ideologies that are in conflict with American values,  compromised the safety of our citizens and the future of America.

Today’s hearings may open a window that will allow some air and daylight into a topic that has refused to go away, despite all efforts by the administration to make it do so. Check in tomorrow for a post-hearing analysis.

————  Ilana Freedman, Editor

__________________

Clinton’s Republican Guard

With each new revelation, what has always been obvious becomes more pronounced: the State Department’s self-proclaimed final word on the Benghazi Massacre, the risibly named “Accountability Review Board” investigation, is a fraud. Yet, like the rest of the Obama administration’s obstructive wagon-circling, the ARB’s report continues serving its intended purpose: to thwart efforts to hold administration officials accountable. Even on Fox News, which has been admirably dogged covering a scandal the Obamedia has done its best to bury, the refrain is heard: How could the ARB report be a whitewash when its investigation was run by such Washington eminences as Ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Michael Mullen?

The answer is simple: Pickering and Mullen were not chosen by accident; then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tapped them because, to insulate herself, she needed a pair of Beltway careerists held in high esteem by the progressive-friendly Republican establishment. As night follows day, Pickering and Mullen produced exactly the shoddy, politicized report that was expected of them – bleaching away the malfeasance of Clinton, a central figure in the scandal whom they did not even bother to interview.

Mrs. Clinton is a master of this game.

Recall that her top advisor at State was Huma Abedin, a longtime associate of Omar Abdullah Naseef, a rabid Islamic supremacist and financial backer of al Qaeda. For a dozen years, during most of which she was also working for Mrs. Clinton, Abedin worked at Naseef’s Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs – a building block of the joint Saudi regime and Muslim Brotherhood project to promote sharia enclaves in the West, encouraging Muslims to resist assimilation.

Abedin had begun working for then-First Lady Hillary Clinton in the nineties, while a member of the executive board of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at George Washington University. Founded in the early sixties, the MSA is first building block of the Brotherhood’s American infrastructure, and its GWU chapter has quite a history: In 2001, its “spriritual guide” was Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaeda operative who was then ministering to some of the eventual 9/11 suicide-hijackers. As Patrick Poole has demonstrated, it was in the MSA that Awlaki first cut his Islamic supremacist teeth – as have a number of prominent Islamists, including (to name just two) Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood stalwart turned Egyptian president, and Abdurrahman Alamoudi, a now convicted al Qaeda financier who was a favorite “moderate” Muslim leader of the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

Abedin continued at Naseef’s journal until moving to the State Department with Secretary Clinton in 2009. Naseef, a wealthy, well-connected Saudi, was secretary general of the Muslim World League, perhaps the most significant Saudi-Brotherhood collaboration in the world. In addition to founding the journal, Naseef  also started the Rabita Trust, a formally designated international terrorist organization. His partner in that venture was Wael Jalaidan, a founding member of al Qaeda who –whaddya know! – ran the MSA chapter in Arizona. The Rabita Trust that was an important funding source for Osama bin Laden. Ms. Abedin’s close tie to Naseef stems from the fact that he is the patron of her parents – Muslim Brotherhood operatives both. Abedin’s mother, Dr. Saleha Mahmood Abedin, is a close associate not only of Naseef but of top Muslim Brotherhood sharia jurist, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi. In fact, Dr. Abedeen runs an organization, the International Islamic Committee for Woman and Child, that is part of Qaradawi’s Union of Good. Formally designated as an international terrorist organization, the Union of Good is a major supporter of Hamas.

Five conservative Republican members of the House had the gumption to ask why a person with Ms. Abedin’s alarming connections to prominent Islamic supremacists would be given a high-echelon State Department job, performance of which requires a security clearance granting access to top-secret intelligence. Based on Abedin and other officials with disturbing Islamist ties, the five members asked for inspector-general investigations into Muslim Brotherhood penetration of our government.

In response, Secretary Clinton deftly called out the Washington establishment’s Republican guard. Senator John McCain, House Speaker John Boehner, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, and other top GOP figures obliged, dutifully lambasting the House conservatives. Nothing to see here – just “a few unspecified and unsubstantiated associations,” twaddled McCain. Boehner, who conceded that he did “not know Huma” and had not read the House conservatives’ letters, nevertheless assured Americans that Abedin had a “sterling character” and that the accusations  “were pretty dangerous.”

Mind you, while all this was happening, Obama administration policy, led by the State Department, was swinging dramatically in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the Middle East. Obama was even intervening in Libya on behalf of the Brotherhood and al Qaeda elements in Benghazi, toppling a theretofore American-supported regime that had been providing us with critical intelligence against anti-American Islamists. Yet, Secretary Clinton succeeded in burying the story. Thanks to the GOP greybeards, the media meme became purported conservative Islamophobia. The bullet was dodged as the manifest influence of Islamic-supremacists on Obama administration policy was ignored.

Unlike that outrage, the public’s interest has been roused by the killings of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, State Department IT specialist Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Ty Woods and Glen Doherty on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, in virulently anti-American Benghazi – at a U.S. State Department compound of unexplained purpose which, under Clinton’s leadership, stood recklessly unprotected.

Clearly, the administration, including the President and Secretary Clinton, knew the compound was under terrorist attack from the early stages of the September 11 siege. Yet, they took no meaningful action to protect and defend the Americans there. Furthermore, there are grounds to believe the command chain may actually have prevented a forceful response, ordering special forces to stand down while the attack raged.

That remains to be established. What we do know is that, at a minimum, Obama was inexcusably derelict in failing even to attempt to overcome Libyan intransigence. At the airport in Benghazi, officials of the new Libyan government – the one Obama brought to power – obstructed the few brave Americans who desperately tried to come to the rescue, delaying them for over three hours. Put aside the commander-in-chief’s failure to deploy U.S. military assets (discussed by Jed Babbin, here); Obama never even picked up the phone to cut through the red Libyan tape. Then, in the days and weeks that followed, top administration officials serially lied to the American people. The president and his underlings repeatedly claimed that the lethal jihadist attack – which, as Steve Hayes has meticulously detailed, they mendaciously downgraded to a “demonstration” – had been a spontaneous protest over an obscure video demeaning Islam’s prophet.

As the White House knew from the first, the Benghazi Massacre was a coordinated terrorist attack involving al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists who used mortars and other high-power weapons. Alas, the attack occurred in the stretch-run of the presidential campaign. Obama had staked his reelection on the claims that he had decimated al Qaeda; that he had prudently intervened against Qaddafi for the benefit of freedom-craving Muslim moderates; and that he was bringing the war on terror to a successful conclusion. An al Qaeda attack against America in Benghazi, the heart of the anti-Qaddafi jihad empowered by Obama’s heedless Libya War, puts the lie to this fairy tale. Consequently, the White House plainly decided (a) not to respond forcefully to the jihadist attack lest it look like what it was – a jihadist attack; and (b) to obscure the truth, and run out the 2012 campaign clock, with the preposterous video canard.

Even though the carnage at Benghazi stoked broader and more determined public outcry than the (closely related) issue of Islamic-supremacist infiltration of our government, Secretary Clinton reasonably figured the whitewash strategy that had worked so well before might do the trick again. Enter Pickering and Mullen.

The game here is to convince the public that two Beltway eminences, objects of bipartisan reverence, would never help blind Americans to the administration’s malfeasance – no more than would McCain & Co. when it came to Huma Abedin. The game exploited the certainty that the mainstream media would slobber over Pickering and Mullen as if they were a pair of lovable moderate mavericks who might, at any moment, unleash a “wacko bird” tirade against conservatives or inveigh against “Tea Party hobbits.”

In truth, Pickering and Mullen are a pair of reliable politicos who have drunk deep from Washington’s See-No-Islam well. Ambassador Pickering was President George H.W. Bush’s ambassador to the UN – hailed at the New York Times, that weathervane of transnational progressivism, as arguably the best ever in that post. He later seamlessly transitioned to the Clinton State Department, becoming ambassador to Russia and, later, undersecretary of state for political affairs. I’d give you more chapter and verse, but Diana West has already done the scut work:

Pickering is one of those Washington insiders whose public record is less a matter of what he’s done than what he’s been: U.S. ambassador to Russia, Israel, El Salvador, Jordan, India, Nigeria and the United Nations. What such postings may obscure, however, is that the man is a foreign policy establishment leftist. It’s not just that Pickering serves as chairman of the board of trustees of the International Crisis Group, a George Soros group that, for example, advocated engagement with the Shariah-supremacist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Pickering has personally explored opening relations with Hamas; pushed peace talks with the Taliban; argued for getting rid of, or removing to the U.S., all tactical nuclear weapons in Europe (and moving Russia’s to east of the Urals); and promoted bilateral talks with Iran without preconditions. And speaking of Iran, Pickering sits on the boards of two pro-Tehran groups, the American Iranian Council and the National Iranian American Council….

Pickering’s politics place him squarely inside the Obama foreign policy mainstream[.]… Pickering has expressed support for Obama’s Libya policy, “where,” as he put it in March, “we play a major role behind the scenes and … incorporate many other people in the activities we did in Libya.” Explaining the Libyan “experimentation” in “consultative leadership” that minimizes the U.S. military role, Pickering sounds as if he also endorsed the disastrous policy of relying on local jihadist militias for U.S. security.

On a panel titled “The Muslim Experience in America” at Washington’s National Cathedral, Pickering recently advocated “dialogue with the Iranians … informed by an effort to develop religious understanding and perhaps harmony,” while also bridging the “gulf” with Islam in America more generally. He also made an ominous call for “strong efforts … to deal with opinion leaders who harbor (anti-Islam) prejudices, who espouse them and spread them.”

Yes, who better than a supporter of the Obama-Clinton policy of empowering Islamic supremacists to conduct an investigation into whether that policy created the conditions that directly caused the Benghazi Massacre? Who better to probe whether the administration’s post-siege cover-up is explained by the Obama campaign’s need to conceal that policy failure?

Then there’s Michael Mullen, a four-star admiral named chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by President Bush in 2007. Having exhibited the required cluelessness about our enemies’ ideology, Mullen was subsequently reappointed by President Obama.

Echoing Obama’s Muslim Brotherhood consultants, Mullen denies the nexus between Islamic scripture and the threat to the West. The jihad, he instead insists, is the result of “the humiliation, the hopelessness, the illiteracy and abject poverty which lie at the core of the attraction to extremist thought[.]” In fact, Mullen actually claims – I’m not kidding – that if we just taught illiterate Middle Easterners how to read, they would eschew violence because they would “understand the Koran for what it is.”

Could it really be lost on a man of Mullen’s experience and stature that jihadist leaders are frequently well-educated scions of wealthy families? That the Koran contains over a hundred verses lauding violent jihad, and that globally influential sharia jurists like Sheikh Qaradawi – who know a lot more about Islam than Mullen does – interpret Muslim scripture to endorse suicide bombings in Israel, terrorist war against U.S. troops in Iraq, the subjugation of women, and the brutalizing of apostates and homosexuals?

Naturally, it was during Mullen’s tenure on the Joint Chiefs that the Defense Department labeled the Fort Hood atrocity “workplace violence,” filing a lengthy investigative report that – in Benghazi ARB fashion – omitted any mention of “Islam” and “jihad” in analyzing thirteen murders carried out by a jihadist who, after consulting with al Qaeda’s Awlaki, screamed “Allahu Akbar!” as he pumped round after round into American soldiers. It was also during Mullen’s stint that the Defense Department purged intelligence training materials of information Obama’s Brotherhood consultants found to be disparaging of Islam (i.e., any information demonstrating that Islamic supremacist ideology is virulently anti-Western and leads, inexorably, to violence). Herb London hits the nail on the head: under Mullen, in lieu of “battlefield action based on lethality,” the armed forces have convinced themselves that “pop-psychology” will quell the enemy.

Mullen’s crack analytical skills were on full display as he oversaw the U.S.-Pakistani military “alliance” – if that word can be used with a straight face. The Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) has notoriously used U.S. aid to arm jihadists. The ISI created and sustains the Taliban, and it uses the al Qaeda-affiliated Haqqani network in much the same way Iran uses Hezbollah: as a forward jihadist militia. Yet, as Diana West recounts, Mullen announced in 2009 that he had no intention of dwelling on the past since he was “here to write a history for the future” and “re-establish that trust” between nations.

Mullen’s fantasy was soon punctured. It turned out that Pakistan was harboring Osama bin Laden (who was shacked up for years in a compound virtually down the block from the national military academy). The ISI was also sharing U.S. technology with China, and enabling the Haqqani network as it attacked the American embassy in Kabul, among other U.S. interests. None of this would have been remotely surprising to anyone who has been paying attention for the last 30 years. But Mullen, as he rode off into the sunset of retirement, expressed shock at the ISI’s confederation with the anti-American jihad.

So to recap: with innate Muslim sympathies and under the counsel of Islamic supremacist advisors, Obama and Clinton direct a policy designed to empower Islamic supremacists whose ascendancy, inevitably, results in violent jihadist attacks against the West, including the strike against the U.S. compound in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. In desperation to cover their tracks after not only authoring this policy but denying security enhancements in the months prior to the siege, Obama, Clinton and their confederates concoct a fraud that – implausibly on its face – depicts the murderous attack as a protest that got out of hand over a video no one had seen. The farce allows them to rant indignantly about Islamophobia, catnip to their media allies. This is enough to cow Mitt Romney who, as a good establishment Republican, goes silent on Benghazi at the close of his inept presidential campaign – virtually endorsing Obama in the candidates’ final debate on foreign policy.

The jihadist slaughter of our ambassador and three other Americans is so grave, though, that the White House and its media cannot kill the story. As the drip, drip, drip of revelations illustrates administration malevolence and incompetence, Secretary Clinton seeks out Pickering and Mullen, two old reliable hands who, much like herself and her president, refuse to see any nexus between Muslim scripture and jihadist violence, support the policy of empowering Islamic supremacists, think the real security threat is Islamophobia, and have a history of overlooking inconvenient facts.

What a surprise that Pickering and Mullen should conduct an embarrassment of an investigation that fails to interview key witnesses (including, of course, Mrs. Clinton), and that fails to grapple with key events – like the infamous Susan Rice “talking points” that became increasingly fraudulent precisely because Clinton’s State Department kept pressing for more massaging of the facts.

What a surprise that, even as the predictably shoddy Pickering-Mullen report is now itself being investigated over its breathtaking omissions and spin, the Obama administration continues to tout it as “unimpeachable” bipartisan gospel.

It is a cynical strategy, but it’s been known to work.

Read the original article here.

Three explosions were heard in western Tehran on Tuesday, in an area where Iran carries out missile research and storage, according to a Tweet by a BBC Persian journalist.