Senator Rand Paul today had opportunity to question Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the attacks in Benghazi in September 2012. Here is some video below:
Official portrait of United States Senator (R-KY). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This isn’t quite connected with Fast and Furious or the ATF’s gunwalking, but is the same administration walking guns not under a law enforcement guise, but as foreign policy… maybe. Though it could parallel what the Sinaloa cartel member on trail in Chicago had to say about the Obama administration running guns to them. Same effect, slightly different initial reasoning, ultimate goals include not just anti-2A, but foreign policy objectives through illegal means.
Via Washington Times:
Fox News has chronicled how the Al Entisar, a Libyan-flagged vessel carrying 400 tons of cargo, docked on Sept. 6 in the Turkish port of Iskenderun. It reportedly supplied both humanitarian assistance and arms — including deadly SA-7 man-portable surface-to-air missiles — apparently destined for Islamists, again including al Qaeda elements, in Syria.
What cries out for further investigation — and debate in the remaining days of this presidential election — is whether this shipment was part of a larger covert Obama effort to transfer weapons to our enemies that could make the Iran-Contra scandal, to say nothing of Operation Fast and Furious, pale by comparison.
–What we do know is that the New York Times — one of the most slavishly pro-Obama publications in the country — reported in an Oct. 14 article, “Most of the arms shipped at the behest of Saudi Arabia and Qatar to supply Syrian rebel groups fighting the government of Bashar Assad are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, and not the more secular opposition groups that the West wants to bolster.”
In short, it seems President Obama has been engaged in gun-walking on a massive scale. The effect has been to equip America’s enemies to wage jihad not only against regimes it once claimed were our friends, but inevitably against us and our allies as well. That would explain his administration’s desperate and now failing bid to mislead the voters through the serial deflections of Benghazigate.
This is more Iran Contra and less Fast and Furious, but it’s weird how an administration that hates US citizens owning weapons is sure willing to arm unfriendly actors in the Middle East; as well as arming cartels in Mexico.
Embassies and consulates attacked, flaccid Democrat president does nothing, Islamic terror attacks, wash, rinse, repeat.
The newest bit of info is that the consulate attack in Libya was planned, and the State Department knew about it, but did nothing, ultimately leading to the deaths of 4 Americans, including the ambassador.
The killings of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his staff were likely to have been the result of a serious and continuing security breach, The Independent can reveal.
American officials believe the attack was planned, but Chris Stevens had been back in the country only a short while and the details of his visit to Benghazi, where he and his staff died, were meant to be confidential.
The US administration is now facing a crisis in Libya. Sensitive documents have gone missing from the consulate in Benghazi and the supposedly secret location of the “safe house” in the city, where the staff had retreated, came under sustained mortar attack. Other such refuges across the country are no longer deemed “safe”.
Some of the missing papers from the consulate are said to list names of Libyans who are working with Americans, putting them potentially at risk from extremist groups, while some of the other documents are said to relate to oil contracts.
According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and “lockdown”, under which movement is severely restricted.
It’s an early report, it could be wrong, but it sure fits with the ineptitude that this administration has handled Libya, Egypt, and Syria. High-falutin’ speeches don’t really mean anything to a terrorist mob who kill over perceived insults. The White House has gone into spin mode, which might be believeable if it weren’t for things like Fast and Furious and Obama’s repeated lies about transparency. The White House has much to lose if it’s true, and the Brit paper really doesn’t have a dog in the fight.
Meanwhile, back stateside, Romney was looking mighty presidential:
And of course, the media was more interested in Romney than the Islamic world attacking our embassies, burning our flags, killing our people, and generally acting like savages. Or, as Jay Leno would end that line: “In the Middle East, they call it Tuesday.”
There are more attacks planned for the rest of the week, it seems, so this’ll get worse before it gets better. 1979 all over again.
From Gadi Adelman at Family Security Matters:
The story of the U.S. State Department funding mosques overseas was uncovered in July 2010 when reporter Justin Farmer from ABC affiliate WSBTV Channel 2 in Atlanta Georgia did an investigative report. Farmers’ story focused on how the U.S. was spending its tax payer dollars while supposedly trying to cut the budget.
That backstory here at WSBTV:
Updated: 5:23 p.m. Tuesday, July 26, 2011 | Posted: 3:57 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 11, 2010
Mosque Makeovers With Your Tax DollarsWASHINGTON, D.C —
A Channel 2 Action News investigation found that the State Department is sending millions of dollars to save mosques overseas. This investment has received criticism as the United States makes an effort to slash nearly $4 trillion in government spending.Plenty of outrage following the announcement made Thursday afternoon by a government commission that suggested huge cuts to the budget, including eliminating the interest education for home mortgage. This juxtaposed with United States investing millions to refurbish mosques as a good-will effort in Muslim countries has upset many taxpayer groups.
Watch The Video And Subscribe To The WSB-TV Youtube Channel
The Channel 2 Action News investigation found a 1,300-year-old Egyptian mosque that was almost flooded by contaminated sewer water that is one of many ancient Cairo mosques and churches that were saved from destruction by the U.S. taxpayers.
This is part of a $770 million program to rebuild Cairo’s sewer system, paid for by the U.S. State Department’s USAID program.
“We are spending money we don’t have. This is all on a gigantic credit card right now,” said Jared Thomas, a taxpayer advocate.
Millions more dollars have been sent to places like Cyprus. The State Department displays before and after pictures of mosques refurbished with U.S. tax dollars.
The FSM piece goes on (no not that FSM):
But what was supposed to be a ‘sewer’ rebuild is much more. The USAID website shows both before and after pictures of one such mosque in Cairo, Egypt.
Adelman continues, noting that spending money on building mosques is illegal:
205.1(d) of title 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations, it states plainly,
(b) Organizations that receive direct financial assistance from USAID under any USAID program may not engage in inherently religious activities, such as worship, religious instruction, or proselytization, as part of the programs or services directly funded with direct financial assistance from USAID
Long story short, these aren’t just mosques they’re subsidizing, there are also mosques that are being rebuilt in the West Bank and Gaza. Given that the main exports of those places are terrorism, specifically terrorism of the islamic variety, it seems odd that we’re rebuilding religious infrastructure in an area that uses those religious buildings as places to recruit and attack their neighbors from (mainly Israel, but the same recruitment centers would also send terrorists around the world – most notably nearby Iraq).
Adelman:
Section 4 is titled “Contractor’s Vetting Information Was Incomplete”. In this section it actually stated,Weaknesses in data accuracy also weaken the project’s efficiency and antiterrorism efforts.Antiterrorism efforts? I thought this money was going to health reform and development. Perhaps proper health care will keep people from wanting to blow themselves up, I’m not sure on that one. At the end of section 4 as expected two more recommendations.
Now, maybe the program was specifically to rebuild infrastructure to prevent terrorism, and maybe it’s just rebuilding mosques tended to by reform clerics, and so maybe it’s just violating law spending US taxpayer money on mosques on the other side of the globe because… why? But that part has already been addressed. Adelman’s wondering where the money really went – and did we directly fund terrorism.
From the audit:
The unreliable partnership with the Minister of Health developed because of the lack of focus in the original statement of work for the project. USAID/West Bank and Gaza also allowed the relationship to develop in this way by approving whatever the Minister requested, regardless of how the requests fit into the mission’s vision and focus for the project.
Huh.
Adelman finishes:
The final part of the audit was the ‘scope’ and it states,
We reviewed compliance by the mission and Chemonics with Executive Order 13224, “Blocking Property and Prohibiting Transactions with Persons Who Commit, Threaten To Commit, or Support Terrorism,” and with USAID/West Bank and Gaza Mission Order 21, “Anti-Terrorism Procedures.” Our antiterrorism compliance testing included reviews of relevant documentation, such as USAID/West Bank and Gaza’s agreement with Chemonics and eligibility notifications for trainees, subcontractors, and grantees.
I for one am glad that the compliance of “transactions with persons who commit terrorism” was reviewed through relevant documentation, especially since that documentation was provided by the group that “did not establish a reliable partnership”, “reported results that were not reliable”, “reported of achievements that were sometimes misleading” and provided “vetting information that was incomplete”.
Yes, our debt is growing and in the time it took me to write this it has risen over 2 million dollars. But no worries, we will still give money to our enemies to rebuild their mosques, after all we are sitting down with the Taliban, right?
For info, this is Gadi Adelman’s bio.
This isn’t the first time that US taxpayer money has been pushed to fund mosques. Even lefty-Annenberg Obama-supporting Orwellian-named Factcheck.org can’t dodge it (of course they say “well, we’re funding other religions, so it’s okay!”). Daily Caller had this piece on it a while back.
First off, why are we funding any religious buildings? Especially overseas? There should at least be atheists up in arms that not only are we not separating church and state, we’re actively rebuilding chuch-states around the globe. The idea of rebuilding historic artifacts is nice, but there are musuems to do that, there are private charities to do that, and there are the actual nations wherein those historic sites reside to do that.
Second, if we’re funding mosques in hotbeds of terrorism, aren’t we de facto supporting terrorism? Aren’t we rebuilding terrorist recruitment centers?
Third, even if we aren’t funding terrorism, aren’t we supporting gender discrimination and theocracies?
Not that the west has a particularly good recent history on that. Note the above picture is from Valley Park Middle School in Toronto. The boys pray up front, the girls in back, the girls on their periods are way back and not allowed to pray, since they’re unclean. Enlightenend liberalism becomes enforced segregation. The effects of cultural relativism.
So at absolute best, we’re supporting institutions that push treating women as “unclean” the same as pigs, dogs, and other things that islam hates.
But let’s check that other law:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
By Congress approving funding for USAID, they’re supporting/respecting an establishment of religion. By fedgov supporting all of these religious programs, they’re supporting religions, some more than others, and some more dangerous than others. If we were rebuilding Shinto shrines or Zoroastrian temples, it would still be just as objectionable on the tax aspect, but Shintoists pretty much gave up on suicide attacks over 60 years ago, and have been mostly harmless for a while now.
>I recently found myself rethinking my Egypt post while reading this American Thinker piece here:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/02/egypts_real_problem_decades_of.html
The fact of the matter is this: Mubarak is a socialist dictator, and his ruling party espouses socialist ideology. The revolution in Egypt is a direct result of the failure of authoritarian socialist ideology and policy. For over fifty years, the ruling political clique in Egypt has espoused a home-grown form of Arab nationalist socialism.
Arab nationalism. And a socialist dictator. Combine ethnic nationalism with socialism and you get the predictable.
It’s still unwise to support anti-Mubarak forces when the predictable replacement is going to be the proto-terrorist Muslim Brotherhood, but once there’s some degree of stability, well, stability really is the only reason to support Mubarak anymore.
This reminded me that I have a copy of President Saddam Hussein’s Address on Iraq’s National Day 1983, and President Saddam Hussein’s Speech on the 6th Anniversary of the Day of the Days The Great Victory Day 8 August 1994, and his roughly 50 page treatise “One Trench or Two“. All are drier reads than the country they hail from, but they are about pan-Arab nationalism and the idea of central control/rulership. Basically, arab national socialism.
Sometimes you can judge a dictator book by its cover.Richard Little at American Thinker points out the specifics with regards to Egypt and how it applies there. Broadly, national socialism and centralized control don’t work anywhere. Even with cultural differences (including the basic lack of a future tense in Arabic), education level differences, and economic developmental differences, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in Europe – where the wise nations are pulling away from their road to socialism before they implode like Greece; it doesn’t work in the US, where individual states like California are imploding from their own policies. It doesn’t work anywhere it’s tried.
Whether the central control be with a dictator or a committee of bureaucrats, it’s all coercive force that works against the will of the individual – the individual who knows their own needs better than any self-appointed super-genius, tyrant or king.
Kudos to the Egyptian people for trying to shrug it off. Hopefully they don’t end up replacing it with the Muslim Brotherhood – who will do the same, but with the added dictates of sharia law.
>For those unfamiliar with the term Groundhog Day, watch this first:
—
British MP Daniel Hannan made a point today on the Sean Hannity show. During the Cold War, the US supported dictators who opposed communism. Hannan explained that the argument during the Cold War was “He’s may be a son of a b*tch, but he’s our son of a b*tch. But now the cold war is over, so we can say ‘he may be our son of a b*tch, but he’s a son of a b*tch.”
The first thought is basically why we were supporting Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Mubarak’s dictatorship provided some degree of stability, especially for US ally Israel. Mubarak’s Egypt provided security for the Suez Canal, through which some 8% of the world’s shipping flows.
The old logic was that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, provided he’s not worse than your actual enemy. Ultimately compromising and supporting a very bad guy against an evil evil empire supported one’s good principles. Makes sense. The new logic is that since the evil empire is gone, it’s time to drop support for the very bad guy. Sorta makes sense.
The only failing is that without a transitional structure, there isn’t just a smooth handoff from “very bad guy” to “good new guy”. The people who almost invariably takeover in these situations are those that are prepared for it and have been working towards it. Very bad guy is replaced with different evil guy. If you don’t want a son of a b*tch, you replace him on your terms to make sure you get a better guy, or you apply pressure to reform him. You don’t go along with a mob that is at least in part incited by the evil guys – because that mob and those evil guys are often only kept in check because your guy is a son of a b*tch.
In the past, there are several examples of the people who take over after a nation collapses. The Leninist victory in Russia was a result of a fractured nation in a period of transition. The interim government of Kerensky may have promised a republic, but it lasted just long enough for Lenin to take over – which was his goal – Lenin was a professional revolutionary. The breakdown of China during WWII led to the Chinese Nationalists under Chiang Kai-Shek – a US ally, though with many faults – ultimately losing control of China to Mao, who was ready and working towards seizing power. Recently, this is the entire Beckian argument with regards to George Soros and his shadow government.
But it’s Groundhog Day in the very easy, and very apt, comparison of the Shah of Iran to Mubarak. The Iranian Islamic Revolution was the result of a lot of factors, but not the least of which was Jimmy Carter not doing much of anything to shore up US interests in Iran by supporting the Shah.
Probably not the best leader in Iran’s history, but far from the worst.The loss of the Shah brought us the Iranian Hostage Crisis and a nuclear Iran that seeks out the ability to obliterate its neighbors. The loss of Mubarak is most likely going to bring us the Muslim Brotherhood in charge of Egypt, as they are the most powerful opposition group, and stand the most to gain. The Muslim Brotherhood has been referred to as “Al Qaeda before Al Qaeda was cool”. They’ve also got a bit of history, going back to some other evil guys.
From the Council on Foreign Relations:
http://www.cfr.org/egypt/does-muslim-brotherhood-have-ties-terrorism/p9248
One reason the Brotherhood’s commitment to nonviolence is unclear: The original Egyptian organization has spawned branches in 70 countries. These organizations bear the Brotherhood name, but their connections to the founding group vary and some of them may provide financial, logistical, or other support to terrorist organizations. Some terrorist groups—including Hamas, Jamaat al-Islamiyya, and al-Qaeda—have historic and ideological affiliations with the Egyptian Brotherhood. In addition, some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists were once Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood members, including Osama bin Laden’s top deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Zawahiri went more hardcore after Sayyid Qutb was hanged by Egyptian authorities. Who was Qutb? Just the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. And what is Qutbism? Just good old-fashioned infidel-killing Jihad.
From a story on the Muslim Brotherhood in CanadaFreePress, 2006:
Here’s how the story began. In the 1920s there was a young Egyptian named al Bana. And al Bana formed this nationalist group called the Muslim Brotherhood. Al Bana was a devout admirer of Adolph Hitler and wrote to him frequently. So persistent was he in his admiration of the new Nazi Party that in the 1930s, al-Bana and the Muslim Brotherhood became a secret arm of Nazi intelligence.
The Arab Nazis had much in common with the new Nazi doctrines. They hated Jews; they hated democracy; and they hated the Western culture. It became the official policy of the Third Reich to secretly develop the Muslim Brotherhood as the fifth Parliament, an army inside Egypt.
More on Al Banna here:
http://www.mideastweb.org/Middle-East-Encyclopedia/hassan_al-banna.htm
And from Horowitz here:
http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/individualProfile.asp?indid=1368
Even CNN can’t spin them into a good thing, though they try:
http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2011/02/01/exp.am.intv.cruickshank.brother.cnn.html
Considering Hitler and the Muslim Brotherhood liked each other, making Mubarak into Hitler really makes no sense, other than to support Orwell’s claim that “fascist” just means “anything bad”.Weak, naiive democrat president with no foreign policy experience or understanding in charge of the US. An islamist group seizing power from a US ally. The US ally is a strongarm leader that the democrat’s touchy-feely side rejects, rather than figure out why we’d ever support the guy – and what the repercussions of not supporting him will be… Yup. It’s GROUNDHOG DAY!
But this time when we drive off the cliff, it’ll be different!
