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In the broadest sense, policy makers in Washington fail to understand the deep-seated religious zeal through which many Middle Easterners – including some of those educated in the West -- view their society and the world. They also appear not to comprehend that allegiances among many Arabs are based not so much on notions of political solidarity, profession, or the many other indices of “identity” familiar to us in western countries, but rather on tribal customs and background. The nature and use of violence – while well-known to virtually every culture in the world -- occupies a peculiar place in Arab culture that must first be understood and then forcefully and consistently defended against.
In a more focused sense, the Obama Administration seems to have made almost every mistake capable of being made, on the ground in Libya. Everything went wrong – from the failure to properly evaluate and disseminate relevant intelligence data (not “actionable” but “relevant” intelligence) to the physical aspects of knowing where your people are and maintaining communication with them during an emergency. With all the technology available to the United States of America, in Libya or anywhere else on the face of the earth, imagine “losing” an Ambassador inside a building controlled by our own government.
In fact, imagine an American ambassador placing himself – or allowing his staff to place him -- in such a situation in an area in which violence is clearly predicted and should have been expected, and then being taken to a “safe” house which location and layout was already known to well-armed assailants.
It is not difficult to chronicle numerous other mistakes made by our government in assessing the prelude to the violence last week in Cairo and Benghazi, and then elsewhere. Why, for example, do we rely still in such countries as these on local security personnel to provide the “first line” of defense? Why do we not anticipate violence ensuing from actions almost identical to earlier episodes that precipitated violence – does Washington really believe Arab culture has changed in the months since an **** “preacher” in Florida threatened to stage a Quran burning? Why apparently did we not equip a “safe house” in an area known to harbor violent extremists, with the basic back-up generators and individual gas-mask protection devices now required in virtually every major federal government building in our country?
The list goes on and on. And all this Administration does is send its emissaries out to blame a film maker in California; hoping that by avoiding accountability it will avoid defeat at the polls. And as Washington dithers, families mourn and the world burns.
Congress to probe security flaws for Libya diplomats
By Sharyl Attkisson
10/5/2012
(CBS News) WASHINGTON - CBS News has learned that congressional investigators have issued a subpoena to a former top security official at the US mission in Libya. The official is Lt. Col. Andy Wood, a Utah National Guard Army Green Beret who headed up a Special Forces "Site Security Team" in Libya.
Lt. Col. Andy Wood led a 16-member Special Forces site security team responsible for protecting U.S. personnel in Libya.
/CBS News/Andy Woods
Libya consulate: Was security added or taken away?
FBI team examines site of deadly Libya attack
Lt. Col. Wood has told CBS News and congressional investigators that his 16-member team and a six-member State Department elite force called a Mobile Security Deployment team left Libya in August, just one month before the Benghazi assault. Wood says that's despite the fact that US officials in Libya wanted security increased, not decreased.
Wood says he met daily with Stevens and that security was a constant challenge. There were 13 threats or attacks on western diplomats and officials in Libya in the six months leading up to the September 11 attack.
A senior State Department official told CBS News that half of the 13 incidents before September 11 were fairly minor or routine in nature, and that the Benghazi attack was so lethal and overwhelming, that a diplomatic post would not be able to repel it.
Wood, whose team arrived in February, says he and fellow security officials were very worried about the chaos on the ground. He says they tried to communicate the danger to State Department officials in Washington, D.C., but that the officials denied requests to enhance security.
"We tried to illustrate...to show them how dangerous and how volatile and just unpredictable that whole environment was over there. So to decrease security in the face of that really is... it's just unbelievable," Wood said.
The State Department official says there was a "constant conversation" between security details in Libya and officials in Washington D.C.
Sources critical of what they view as a security drawdown say three Mobile Security Deployment teams left Libya between February and August in addition to the 16-member Site Security Team on loan from the military. That's 34 highly-trained security personnel moved out over a six month period.
One State Department source told CBS News the security teams weren't "pulled," that their mission was simply over.
Also scheduled to appear at next week's hearing are Libya's former U.S. Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom and State Department official Charlene Lamb.
NO MUERTOS EN WATERGATE... PERO CIENTOS EN FAST & FURIOUS
Perspective: No Body Count from Watergate but Hundreds Dead from Fast and Furious
by AWR Hawkins
6 Oct 2012
Watergate is arguably the most sinister crime a Democrat can find to present to the American people when trying to silence a Republican. But it pales in comparison to the lies, illegal gun sales, weapons trafficking, and wholesale slaughter of innocents we've seen as a result of Fast and Furious.
Think about it -- Watergate was a break-in, the goal of which was **noallow** some "dirt" on Democrats to help Richard Nixon during his re-election bid in 1972. Nixon, the man vilified for it, didn't even know about it until after the break-in had already happened, and his crime was covering it up once he learned of it.
He had to resign to avoid being impeached for covering up a break-in in which no one was physically harmed.
Now, jump to 2009 and the launchh of operation Fast and Furious under President Barack Obama; 2,500 guns were sold to criminals or to straw purchasers who knowingly intended to pass the guns to criminals. Background checks for the purchasers were done away with and in some cases, the money to buy the guns was supplied at taxpayers' expense.
Because of this, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) has relayed tales of individuals on food stamps coming into a gun store in the Phoenix area with brown bags full of money and purchasing hundreds of guns.
The vast majority of these guns were then smuggled across the U.S./Mexico border while the ATF and DOJ looked the other way, ostensibly hoping the guns would be passed to Mexican cartel members so the U.S. government could make arrests.
For the record, we're still waiting on those arrests.
Over a year after Fast and Furious began, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was gunned down by men armed with Fast and Furious weapons on the southwest border, and hundreds of Mexican citizens have been killed with weapons smuggled into Mexico during the operation.
Moreover, early on in the operation (January 30, 2010), 14 teenagers at a birthday party near Juarez were massacred by men armed with Fast and Furious weapons.
And at every turn in the road, as Congressman Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) have tried to investigate Fast and Furious, there have been cover-ups, changes in testimony, and withheld evidence.
The bottom line -- Watergate was less than child's play compared to Fast and Furious.
Nixon lied but hundreds have died under Obama and Eric Holder.
Pitiful, pathetic III Team Obama only makes it worse
Manchester Union Leader ^ | October 13, 2012 | Editorial
We have already written twice under the heading of the Obama administration’s pitiful and pathetic performances, first in its response to Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. foreign offices, one of which killed four Americans; and then the President’s debate, in which he repeatedly lied about his opponent’s tax policies. (The administration’s mischaracterization of the oft-quoted “independent study” of the Romney proposal has been thoroughly discredited, in part by the study’s own authors.)
But nothing in those examples comes close to the continued attempts by Obama and company to mislead the American public about the circumstances leading up to and including the terrorist attack that killed Americans in Benghazi, Libya.
The written and taped record is so clear about what the administration claimed, and then tried to walk back, about that attack that short of admitting it, Team Obama has apparently decided to just double-down and keep lying with a straight face. (Well, not even a totally straight face, as the cackling Joe Biden showed repeatedly in last Thursday’s debate.)
In another era, this was called the Big Lie, and its proponents firmly believed that if they told it often enough and loud enough, it would be believed.
For weeks, Team Obama stuck to the story that all evidence pointed to a shoddy anti-Muslim film as the source of a “spontaneous” street protest that ended with our Ambassador Christopher Stevens and others dead. Even if one were to accept this incredible claim, (the State Department says that was not its conclusion), subsequent White House claims that the President had never suggested it was not a terrorist attack are more preposterous.
Beyond making Obama look ridiculous and his sidekick Biden the fool, however, the real worry here is that this is apparently the current foreign policy of the United States: Ignore warnings of inadequate security in a hostile place; fail to be on guard for 9-11 anniversary attacks; try to blame a shoddy film for the resulting disaster; and then lie and laugh about the whole thing.
The election is about the economy, of course. But it also needs to be about American safety and defense. Barack Obama fails on all counts.
BENGHAZI-GATE:
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday-chri
EL EMBAJADOR Y OTROS TRES OFFICIALES AMERICANOS SON ASESINADOS POR TERRORISTAS ISLAMICOS, QUEMAN LA DELEGACIÓN DE ESTADOS UNIDOS EN BENGHAZI... SON ATACADAS EMBAJADAS AMERICANAS A TRAVÉS DEL MUNDO ISLÁMICO ...
RESPUESTA RÁPIDA DEL GOBIERNO AMERICANO... OBAMA VUELA A LAS VEGAS.... ¡Y AQUÍ NO HA PASADO NADA!!!
