Veterans and Newspapers Blast Obama on Benghazigate
Be sure to read about the lies and more lies from this administration. Also see Benghazigate part I (warning: long) and Benghazigate part II.
If you have read the above you know that President Obama watched in live video feed from our drones as our embassy staff was slaughtered. The CIA, State Department FEST (Foreign Emergency Support Team), Military, and the Counterterrorism Security Group were all told to stand down. Even after our Benghazi Consulate was the fourth embassy to come under attack in 24 hours. There is no excuse.
The Veterans
Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS), a Marine veteran, says that every meeting he has held lately is filled with veterans who want to know more about the Benghazi massacre and cover-up. "The military no longer trusts that Obama has their back" Roberts said.
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Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said that, veterans and the military “Have no confidence in this President as Commander in Chief” and he said that "the military is angry like I have never seen before".
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Remember the Iranian Hostage Crisis that President Reagan put to an end? Don Cooke was one of those taken hostage at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Today he said that President Obama is showing the same ambivalent foreign policy as Jimmy Carter.
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The Newspapers
While the CBS, NBC and ABC evening news ignore this story (CBS did report on this on their web site) Fox News, some newspapers, blogs and talk radio are all over it and the word is getting out.
Famed Democrat pollster and pundit Pat Caddell:
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Obama unworthy Commander-in-chief
The Obama administration sat by doing nothing for seven hours that night, ignoring calls to dispatch help from our bases in Italy, less than two hours away. It has spent the past seven weeks stretching the story out, engaging in misdirection and deception involving supposed indigenous outrage over an obscure anti-Muslim video, confident that with the aid of a docile press corps this infamous climax to four years of misguided foreign policy can be swept under the rug, at least until after Tuesday's election.
The Obama administration was warned. They received an embassy cable June 25 expressing concern over rising Islamic extremism in Benghazi, noting the black flag of al-Qaida "has been spotted several times flying over government buildings and training facilities." The Obama administration removed a well-armed, 16-member security detail from Libya in August, The Wall Street Journal reported last month, replacing it with a couple of locals. Mr. Stevens sent a cable Aug. 2 requesting 11 additional body guards, noting "Host nation security support is lacking and cannot be depended on," reports Peter Ferrara at Forbes.com. But these requests were denied, officials testified before the House Oversight Committee earlier this month.
Based on documents released by the committee, on the day of the attack the Pentagon dispatched a drone with a video camera so everyone in Washington could see what was happening in real time. The drone documented no crowds protesting any video. But around 4 p.m. Washington received an email from the Benghazi mission saying it was under a military-style attack. The White House, the Pentagon, the State Department and the CIA were able to watch the live video feed. An email sent later that day reported "Ansar al-Sharia claims responsibility for Benghazi attack."
Not only did the White House do nothing, there are now reports that a counterterrorism team ready to launch a rescue mission was ordered to stand down.
The official explanation for the inadequate security? This administration didn't want to "offend the sensibilities" of the new radical Islamic regime which American and British arms had so recently helped install in Libya.
The official explanation for why Obama administration officials watched the attack unfold for seven hours, refusing repeated requests to send the air support and relief forces that sat less than two hours away in Italy? Silence.
These behaviors go far beyond "spin." They amount to a pack of lies. To return to office a narcissistic amateur who seeks to ride this nation's economy and international esteem to oblivion, like Slim Pickens riding the nuclear bomb to its target at the end of the movie "Dr. Strangelove," would be disastrous.
Obama’s failed foreign policy
The Obama administration entered office with a theory of foreign policy that has failed the test of practice.
Candidate Obama promised a responsible end to the war in Iraq. But in 2008 the war was won and Iraq on a fragile path to stability and alignment with the United States. His administration declared that it wanted a continuing presence of thousands of American troops in Iraq; in fact, it appears, he did not believe in his own policy. President Obama’s policy has thus left us today with no presence, no leverage, and no credibility with the Iraqi leadership. Iran uses Iraqi air space and roads to resupply the Assad dictatorship.
Candidate Obama called Afghanistan a “war of necessity,” and promised to win it. But President Obama’s declaration of a date certain to end American combat operations discouraged our friends and heartened our enemies. Afghans, who know from bitter experience what abandonment can mean, are picking sides. In 2008 there were two “green on blue” attacks by Afghans against NATO forces. In the first nine months of 2012 there have been 33.
Candidate Obama defined our war with Islamist terrorists as being against the Al Qaeda organization that existed on September 10, 2001. But targeted killing is a tactic, not a strategy. The president and his advisers have crowed that the enemy is “on the verge of strategic defeat.” That complacency explains their bafflement at the precisely executed mortar barrage, the rocket propelled grenades and machine gun fire that demolished our consulate in Benghazi, killing four Americans, including the first American ambassador to die violently in over three decades.
The lapping of the Islamist tide through North Africa, Yemen, parts of South and Southeast Asia, and now in Syria suggests that they never really came to grips with who the enemy is. We have changed; so too has Al Qaeda, which has spread far beyond the Pakistan borderlands.
Candidate Obama believed that his life story would win over the Muslim world. He attempted to realize that notion in his Cairo speech, delivered on a trip to the Middle East that deliberately avoided Israel. But President Obama’s charisma and personal history failed him. In 2008, for example, 19 percent of Pakistanis had a favorable view of the United States. Today 12 percent do. And Pakistan is far from the only case.
The true audacity of the Obama administration lies less in its proclaimed foreign policy hopes, than in its insistence that its record is one of foreign policy success. It has, rather, been one of embarrassment, failure, and in some cases, disaster.
Because of the last four years, we face a world in which our enemies do not fear us, our friends do not believe they can trust us, and those who maneuver between the two camps feel that they will not get in trouble by crossing us. It is time, and more than time, to choose a different course.
The Wall Street Journal has more of the same, and even the "in the tank" for Obama Washington Post is stunned. They give Fox News credit for solid, aggressive reporting while insulting them later in the same sentence (to save face with liberal readers no doubt).