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Clinton’s Republican Guard

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hillary4By Andrew McCarthy:

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 hasdemonstrated, 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.

Read more at PJ Media

 

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Flag Draped Coffins

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article-2203298-1504F4CD000005DC-986_634x406by Justin O. Smith:

While I understand the current mission of the U.S. African Command to counter, stop and destroy Islamist militants and to fight terrorism without being drawn into a major conflict, the lack of preparation and the ignored warnings prior to the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. facilities at Benghazi are inexcusable and indefensible; repeatedly we have heard Obama and everyone associated with his administration declare that the U.S. response to these attacks was “adequate.” But more than this, as more facts are uncovered, no doubt is left that this administration is incompetent, and it is engaged in a cover-up of mammoth proportions.

Many Democrats call any criticism concerning the events surrounding the Benghazi slaughter “GOP political pandering,” but whatever your party affiliation, it is incomprehensible and beyond incompetence that Gen. Carter Ham did not request any additional forces to be on hand on the anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001, despite his belief that the intelligence did not indicate an imminent attack. Ham must have been struck deaf, dumb and blind, because nothing else explains such a casual dismissal of, at the very least, ten months of communiques and memos from the Benghazi Consulate that indicated a dire and increasingly dangerous situation looming on the horizon. And on that same note, one must wonder, as heads of the State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB), what bribe or coercion influenced retired Admiral Mike Mullen and retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering to find the Obama administration’s response to these attacks “adequate.”

I also wonder if Obama himself or Hillary Clinton have explained to the families of Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glenn Dogherty just how “adequate” the response really was? I’ll bet Tyrone Woods thought the response was “adequate” as he painted the terrorists’ mortar armed position with a laser and waited for it to be bombed by a drone or jet fighter from Aviano Airbase (Italy)… right up until he cursed Obama with his last dying gasp.

In conjunction with Glenn Dogherty’s Libyan mission to recover advanced weapons systems, such as SA-7 missiles from the hands of the Islamists, Ambassador Stevens was negotiating a weapons transfer and removal of SA-7s from the hands of Libyan extremists on the night of 9/11; FoxNews recently reported that the Libyan vessel ‘Al Entisar’ arrived in the Turkish port of Iskenderun, just 35 miles from the Syrian border, on September 6 with a cargo of RPGs, shoulder launched missiles and surface-to-air anti-aircraft missiles. Add to this Stevens’ meeting with Turkish Consul General Ali Sait Akin the night Stevens was murdered, and it is not far-fetched, rather highly likely, that the Obama administration has been running weapons through Turkey to the rebels in Syria, mostly comprised of Islamists and Al Qaeda and enemies of the U.S.

Although Clinton stated before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “I am determined to leave the State Dept and our country safer, stronger and more secure,” her determination on 9/11/12 was focused on joining in the spinning of the story, the obfuscation and outright lies originating with Obama. Clinton was actually notified of the attacks around 4PM and about an hour before Obama was notified by Leon Panetta. Apparently they sat on their thumbs and spun afterwards, despite Clinton’s claim that “we kept talking with everyone through the night.” But through a response garnered by Senator Lindsey Graham’s efforts in blocking Chuck Hagel’s nomination for Secretary of Defense, we know neither Clinton nor Obama attempted to contact government officials in Libya to help rescue our U.S. citizens that night, if time and logistics really were the problem; however, Obama did call Clinton at 10PM, and it was “about 10PM” when the State Dept released Clinton’s statement (FactCheck.org) entitled ‘Statement on the Attack in Benghazi’, which linked the attacks to an anti-Islamic video.

While the attacks were still ongoing, a lot of time was wasted simply doing nothing and fretting about political futures rather than saving American lives. When asked about Panetta’s and Gen. Dempsey’s Senate testimony that they weren’t in touch with the White House after their meeting ended at 5:30PM, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney stated, “They said they hadn’t spoken with the president. The president has a National Security Advisor… He has a Deputy National Security Advisor and remember he had already spoken with… the Secretary of Defense, with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.” And with pin-point accuracy, Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) February 7th questioning of Panetta before the Armed Services Comittee exposes Carney’s lie: “Did you communicate with anyone else at the White House that night?” Panetta answered, “No.”

After Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisc) placed Hillary Clinton on the spot regarding the fact that no protest existed prior to the attack, Clinton angrily retorted, “What difference… does it make?” The difference it makes is this, Mrs Clinton: Your outright lying and colloboration with Obama in this matter created a delay that cost Tyrone Woods and Glenn Dogherty their lives; no good reason can be given for not having ordered an airstrike on the terrorists’ position. And for fear of forced retirement and other curious reasons, some of the upper echelon military ranks have lost their spine, as they support the Democratic Party line, Obama’s position and the delusive findings of the ARB!

As I recall Obama and Clinton meeting flag-draped coffins of four brave Americans in feigned respect, I am ashamed of a people who could reelect such a thing to the Office of the President. A president should always strive for more than “adequate,” because to be merely adequate is meeting only a bare minimum of requirements; while Jay Carney quotes page 37 of the ARB report, “the safe evacuation of all U.S. government personnel from Benghazi twelve hours after the initial attack… was the result of exceptional… military response…,” an immense number of accomplished military minds such as Lt. Col. Tony Schaffer and Gen. William Boykin, ex-Commander of U.S. Special Forces, have refuted this analysis, which leaves dozens of unanswered questions: Why haven’t Americans heard from the surviving diplomatic security officer, who saw the attack begin and alerted the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli that they were under seige? … Why haven’t we heard the testimony of the thirty-two survivors, who Gen. C.K. Hyde confirms were evacuated to Ramstein Airbase (Germany)? … Why didn’t the Turkish Consul General warn Ambassador Stevens about the Al Qaeda checkpoints after he left at 8:35 PM Benghazi time? It doesn’t matter that protocol and standard operating procedures were followed and the response was “adequate.” What ever happened to initiative and rising above and beyond the call of duty? No doubt remains that Tyrone Woods and Glenn Dogherty’s deaths were unnecessary, preventable and lay on Obama’s head!

“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our American dead. In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage.” -literary license taken with Shakespeare’s ‘Henry the Fifth’