This is Pat Buchanan's column from yesterday...
Three days after Ambassador Chris Stevens was
assassinated, Jay Carney told the White House press corps it had been the work
of a flash mob inflamed by an insulting video about the Prophet Muhammad.
As the killers had arrived with rocket-propelled grenades
and automatic weapons, this story seemed non-credible on its face.
But if it was good enough for Jay Carney... well... it
was good enough for my good friend... er... "Latrina."
(*WINK*)
Yet two days later, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice doubled
down. Appearing on five Sunday talk shows, she called the massacre the result
of a “spontaneous” riot that was neither “pre-planned” nor “pre-meditated.”
F*I*V*E...
And again... what's good enough for Susan Rice is good
enough (was good enough...???) for my good friend Latrina!
Carney and Rice deceived us. But were they deceived?
It is impossible to believe that Carney would
characterize the Benghazi, Libya, massacre as the result of a protest that
careened out of control unless he had been told to do so by the national
security adviser, the White House chief of staff or President Barack Obama
himself.
One would think...
Latrina...? What say you...? Best guess...?
Who told Carney to say what he did? Who arranged for Rice
to appear on five shows to push this line?
F*I*V*E...!!!
Throwing a rope to Rice and Carney, the director of national
intelligence, James Clapper, said last week that only recently had his team
concluded that Benghazi was the work of terrorists.
Ah... yes... he did in fact "say" that...
Yet intelligence insiders were leaking to the press the
day after Stevens was murdered that it was terrorism.
There are plenty of timelines out there... or... one
could just follow the story from day one via my own stand-alone posts and
newsbites posted here at Usually Right.
Now that the cover story — that the murder of Stevens and
the other Americans was the result of a spontaneous outburst the Obama
administration could not have foreseen or prevented — has collapsed, the truth
is tumbling out.
The truth was there to see from day one... it's just that
"some" folks chose not to see it.
(*SHRUG*)
And the truth is more alarming. For it calls into
question the credibility and competence of Obama’s security team and the
judgment of the president himself.
Now let's see... who was it that focused not just on the
"lies" issue, but on the COMPETENCE (or lack thereof) issue all
along...? (Oh, yeah... me!)
What do we now know?
Stevens believed he was on an al-Qaida hit list and so
wrote in his diary. He was concerned about a rise in Islamic extremism in the
city. “Days before the ambassador arrived from the embassy in Tripoli,” The
Washington Post reported Sunday, “Westerners had fled the city, and the British
had closed their consulate.”
Rice insisted that the act of barbarism arose out of a
protest, but there may not even have been a protest, just a military assault
with RPGs, machine guns and mortars that hit a safe house a mile from the
consulate, killing two former Navy SEALs, while other U.S. agents fled to the
airport.
So dangerous is Benghazi, The New York Times reported
Friday, FBI agents investigating the ambassador’s assassination have yet to
venture into the city.
I'm slightly more cynical than Buchanan on this one. It
seems to me that the last thing the administration would have wanted was for
the FBI to investigate a fresh "crime" (terrorism) scene and
officially conclude that the administration had (best case scenario) "got
it wrong" or (worst case scenario) was circumstantially connected to what
might appear to be an attempted cover-up.
Was U.S. intelligence oblivious to how dangerous Benghazi
was when Stevens went in? Was not Benghazi’s reputation as a haven for Islamic
jihadi known to us all before we “liberated” Libya?
One would hope that U.S. Intelligence is more about
knowing what "reality" is than focusing on "reputation,"
but in either case it appears the alarm bells had been sounded before - many
times before!
This is the city U.S. air power saved when Moammar
Gadhafi’s forces were closing in. It now appears to be an al-Qaidaville where
U.S. diplomats and agents dare not tread.
Late last week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
conceded that the Benghazi murders were acts of terror perpetrated by
extremists associated with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. She alluded to
Mali, where an al-Qaida affiliate, the Ansar Dine, has taken over half the
country.
How grave is that threat?
Obviously grave enough to put four Americans in their
graves...
On Thursday, The Associated Press reported that Gen.
Carter Ham, head of the U.S. Africa command, met with Mauretania’s president to
discuss “a possible military intervention … in north Mali against al-Qaida-linked
group members and their allies.”
Jeezus...
Yet Vice President Joe Biden still campaigns through the
Rust Belt bellowing, “General Motors is alive, and Osama bin Laden is dead,”
and Obama still recites his mantra, “al-Qaida is on the path to defeat.”
The reality. Al-Qaida affiliates have taken over a region
of Mali the size of France.
Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb may have been in on the
Benghazi massacre.
Al-Qaida is in Syria fighting for a cause, the overthrow
of Bashar Assad, Obama supports.
Al-Qaida has helped reignite sectarian war in Iraq.
Al-Qaida remains in Pakistan.
Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula is in Yemen.
We failed to cut out or kill the cancer at Tora Bora in
2001, and it has since metastasized and spread across North Africa, the Middle
East and South Asia.
Fair enough. We should have captured or killed bin Laden
at the Battle of Tora Bora. But would that have led to the end of al-Qaida?
Frankly... I didn't see it that way then... and I still don't see that scenario
as having been likely now.
As for the Arab Spring Obama embraced, that has given us
the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo and jihadi in Sinai.
Oops...
Our departure from Iraq paved the way to a new sectarian
war.
And frankly I'm fine with that. I'm not willing to
"garrison" Iraq for the next 50 years. (I do believe, however, that
we owe the Iraqi Kurds our protection and support!)
The surge troops are out of Afghanistan, and the remaining
U.S. troops no longer partner with the Afghan soldiers who are to take over the
war.
Some actually are, Pat; it all depends upon where in
Afghanistan we're talking and who is in command of a particular zone. That said...
Afghanistan is a disaster. We should have been out of there the moment the
Karzai government was installed.
Any doubt about the outcome there when we’re gone?
Nope. None at all.
Within the past month, anti-American riots, flag burnings
and the raising of Islamist banners atop U.S. embassy facilities have occurred
in too many countries and capitals to recite.
If this is the fruit of a successful engagement with the
Islamic world, what would a debacle look like?
Ha... ha... ha... ha... ha... (Hey... if I didn't
laugh... I'd cry...)
Rep. Paul Ryan said Sunday, “The Obama foreign policy is
unraveling literally before our eyes on our TV screens.”
Does my good friend Latrina acknowledge this...? I doubt
it...
(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)
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