Friday roundup

Northern and western Africa are awash in jihadist arms:

A report issued this month tracking the flow of weapons across Libya and the Sahel revealed that terror groups operating in West Africa are getting much more than just inspiration from terror hubs in Iraq and Syria.

The study by UK-based Conflict Armament Research, an independent organization that tracks the flow of conventional weapons and materiel, found that weapons stockpiles remaining from the nearly 42-year dictatorship of Moammar Gadhafi have migrated as far as Mali and Syria.

But investigators found that the unstable country awash in more than 100 militia groups with around 125,000 fighters -- some support the unity government, some don't -- is not the only source of illicit weapons in the region.

"The profile of illicit weapons in the region reflects the consequences of other state crises, particularly in Mali, and of weak control over national stockpiles in the Central African Republic and Côte d’Ivoire," states the report. "The prevalence of Ivorian-origin small arms across the region is a particularly unexpected finding of this investigation."

And even through the flow of weapons out of Libya has been decreasing, importation of arms and ammunition into Libya has been increasing -- particularly from Sudan.

The report highlighted "a new set of weapons" now in use among Islamist armed groups in the southern Sahel, noted when al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Al-Mourabitoun attacked hotels, restaurants and resorts this year and last, killing Americans among other foreigners and locals, in Mali, Burkina Faso, and Ivory Coast with "a common set of small arms unlike any previously documented in the sub-region."

"These include Iraqi-origin assault rifles and a batch of Chinese rifles manufactured in 2011 whose serial numbers interleave with matching rifles that Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) seized from IS fighters in Syria in 2015. These findings indicate that the Islamist groups responsible for the Sahelian attacks have a common source of supply or constitute a single cell, and point tentatively to possible links or commonalities of supply sources between Islamist fighters in West Africa and those operating in Iraq and Syria."

The report says the weapons used in the high-profile attacks —AK-pattern Type 56-1 assault rifles— "are a type which are readily available from local sources in the region but which seem instead to have been sourced transnationally." The Chinese government had not yet responded to trace requests by UN and CAR investigators.

Informative Washington Post piece about an underground radio station in Mosul, Iraq the call-in shows of which give trapped residents a chance to speak out about day-to-day, moment-to-moment conditions.

Robert Tracinski at The Federalist offers five ways for #NeverTrump folks to move forward now that the deal is done: take what we can get, remember that the federal Congress and most state legislatures are in Pub hands, don't make partisan excuses for Squirrel-Hair, be the loyal opposition, and be the mustard seed. That last one has to do with preserving "the powerful mustard seed of liberty . . even when nobody else cares. Especially when nobody else cares.

Jonah Goldberg at NRO says it was the lefties that populate the MSM who "normalized" Trump:

Throughout the primaries, Trump’s conservative opponents complained bitterly that the mainstream media was normalizing Trump. No one listened, for three reasons.

Trump was good for ratings (and got billions worth of free media as a result). CBS honcho Les Moonves said that Trump’s success “may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”

Second, the mainstream media and numerous liberal pundits loved Trump’s impact on the GOP for the same reason bored teenagers like to throw lit matches into dumpsters: Garbage fires are fun to watch.

The third reason is closely related to the second: The media thought Trump was more likely lose to Hillary Clinton. (And so did the Clinton campaign itself, as we learned from WikiLeaks.)

In February, Jonathan Chait, a writer for New York magazine and the author of a forthcoming book explaining how super-terrific Barack Obama’s presidency was, wrote a piece titled “Why liberals should support a Trump Republican nomination.” He listed three reasons: Trump would lose, Trump would wreak havoc on the GOP, and Trump would be better than the other Republican candidates.

“If he does win,” Chait wrote, “a Trump presidency would probably wind up doing less harm to the country than a Marco Rubio or a (Ted) Cruz presidency. It might even, possibly, do some good.”

The day after the election, Chait declared on Twitter “This is the worst thing that has happened in my life.”

Okay, then.

Shortly after the election, Slate’s Jamelle Bouie wrote a piece titled “There’s no such thing as a good Trump voter,” likening some 60 million Americans to a racist lynch mob. Last year, Bouie penned an article with the headline “Donald Trump is actually a moderate Republican.”

Of course, Chait and Bouie are not alone. Progressive figures such as Paul Krugman, Matt Yglesias, Robert Borosage, Amanda Marcotte, and Bill Maher all said during the primaries that Trump was less scary than, say, Rubio or Cruz. (See Warren Henry’s excellent survey in The Federalist for details.)

Isn’t it awfully late to be decrying the normalization of Trump when you were an early adopter of normalization because you thought the horrible Democratic nominee would have an easier time beating him?

The dating app Tinder now offers users 37 gender choices.

The list includes “Agender,” “Gender Fluid,” “Gender Nonconforming,” every variation of “Trans” and “Transgender,” and “Two-Spirit.”

Another option is “Pangender,” a gender that can transcend sex and time.

“Pangender (and/or Omnigender) is a non-binary gender experience which refers to a wide multiplicity of genders that can (or not) tend to the infinite (meaning that this experience can go beyond the current knowledge of genders),” according to Nonbinary.org. “This experience can be either simultaneously or over time.”

The climate-change hustlers of the current post-American regime are in Morocco, trying to make haste regarding putting concrete details on the recent Paris accord. They and the rest of the attendees are making very little progress. 

Former Benghazi station chief: hell, yeah, Madame BleachBit is a liar and criminal

In both Congressional testimony and remarks on Fox News, he makes clear that the Freedom-Haters'  candidate for dictator of post-America president is telling a big falsehood about the jihadist attack on 9/11/12:

Hicks, a 25-year Foreign Service Office and former chief of station in Libya at the time of the Benghazi attack, gave riveting and damning testimony before Congress on Hillary’s lies and criminal negligence in the matter. The last man to speak to Ambassador Christopher Stevens, he has exposed the video lie, documented how he told Hillary’s State Department what was happening in real time that fateful night, and how her State Department ignored warnings from Stevens and others about the gathering terrorist storm and the woeful lack of security.

Now retired, private citizen Hicks goes farther, telling Fox News that Hillary Clinton broke laws while condemning four Americans to death at the hands of terrorists:

Just as the Constitution makes national security the President’s highest priority, U.S. law mandates the secretary of state to develop and implement policies and programs "to provide for the security… of all United States personnel on official duty abroad.”
This includes not only the State Department employees, but also the CIA officers in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. And the Benghazi record is clear: Secretary Clinton failed to provide adequate security for U.S. government personnel assigned to Benghazi and Tripoli.
The Benghazi Committee’s report graphically illustrates the magnitude of her failure. It states that during August 2012, the State Department reduced the number of U.S. security personnel assigned to the Embassy in Tripoli from 34 (1.5 security officers per diplomat) to 6 (1 security officer per 4.5 diplomats), despite a rapidly deteriorating security situation in both Tripoli and Benghazi. Thus, according to the Report, “there were no surplus security agents” to travel to Benghazi with Amb. Stevens “without leaving the Embassy in Tripoli at severe risk.”
Had Ambassador Stevens’ July 2012 request for 13 additional American security personnel (either military or State Department) been approved rather than rejected by Clinton appointee Under Secretary of State for Management Pat Kennedy, they would have traveled to Benghazi with the ambassador, and the Sept. 11 attack might have been thwarted.

Hicks also addressed the claim by Hillary that security at Benghazi was not her responsibility and that she had delegated that task to “experts”:

U.S. law also requires the secretary of state to ensure that all U.S. government personnel assigned to a diplomatic post abroad be located at one site. If not, the secretary -- and only the secretary -- with the concurrence of the agency head whose personnel will be located at a different location, must issue a waiver. The law, which states specifically that the waiver decision cannot be delegated, was passed after the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa, when deficient security was blamed for that debacle under Bill Clinton's presidency.
When asked about security at Benghazi on Sept. 11, Mrs. Clinton has repeatedly asserted her lack of responsibility. Initially, she said that she never read any of the reporting on security conditions or any of the requests for additional security, claiming that “she delegated security to the professionals.” More recently, she stated that “[I]t was not my ball to carry.” But the law says otherwise. Sound familiar?

It was Hillary’s responsibility to guarantee the security of U.S. diplomatic personnel abroad, a responsibility that cannot be delegated. She failed miserably on both counts and has lied about it ever since. Hillary Clinton that night knew that the video in question had nothing to do with Benghazi. Gregory Hicks told the truth before Congress and was rewarded with a demotion:

We have the testimony of Gregory Hicks, deputy chief of mission in Libya and a foreign service officer for 22 years. He was demoted to desk officer for telling the truth that those in Libya knew it was a terrorist attack from the "get-go," that there was no "protest" or mention of one from anyone on the ground, and that the infamous YouTube video was "a non-event" in Libya

Yet that is what she told the Benghazi parents on the tarmac. Hillary and her State Department has warning, including from Ambassador Stevens himself, that Benghazi was an insecure trap in the face of a growing terrorist threat.

It was widely known prior to 9/11/12 that the Libyan city of Benghazi was a city in which a jihadist attack was waiting to happen. The post-American Secretary of State at the time had some other kind of other weird priorities besides keeping those at the diplomatic and CIA compounds safe.

More on just how shameful the Benghazi debacle was

Yesterday's report had much to say about the security situation on the ground - or, rather, lack thereof:

By all accounts, the security conditions at the State Department's consular facility in Libya were "deplorable," as the House Benghazi committee's final summary report described it. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been warned a month before the attack that violence was "on an upward trend" and "unpredictable;" "lawlessness was increasing," and local militia groups that were providing security in many areas were at the same time "undercutting it in others."
One of those local militia groups just happened to be in charge of providing interior armed security at the Benghazi Mission compound: the February 17 Martyrs Brigade militia.
Yes, we entrusted armed Islamic strongmen -- linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, supportive of al-Qaida, and financed by the Libyan defense ministry -- to guard our diplomats. No, this is not an Onion parody.

Instead of serving as a "quick reaction force" as they were contracted to do, the Muslim militiamen fled. (What's Arabic for "cut and run force"?) Two days before Ambassador Chris Stevens was scheduled to arrive in Benghazi, the "martyrs" informed State's Diplomatic Security Agents that they would no long provide off-compound security during transport or meetings off-site. "The meeting underscored that the militias in Benghazi controlled what little security environment existed there," the House Benghazi final report noted.

Eventually, these clowns will get us all murdered in our beds.

 

The Most Equal Comrade's team's approach to foreign policy: a fetid stew of evil and incompetence

Per the Benghazi report:

The much anticipated Benghazi Select Committee report released early Tuesday morning reveals former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta order military assets to be deployed to Benghazi, but they never arrived. Two unarmed drones, showing a live feed of the attack, did.

Military assets sat for hours while Americans were under attack and while President Obama's team at the White House debated getting YouTube to take down a video offensive to Muslims, which was of course used as an excuse for the attack. 

"You can read this report in less time than our fellow Americans were under attack in Benghazi" Select Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy said during a press conference Tuesday. 

Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed eight hours into the attack. Doherty self-deployed with a small team to Benghazi from Tripoli after hearing about the attack. 

"Team Tripoli,  which  included military  personnel based  at  the Tripoli  Annex,  acted  with  purpose, precision and  ingenuity that  night. The Secretary and  the  Joint  Staff  did  not  know  those personnel  were  in Tripoli, much less were they considered as one of the potential assets to respond to the  events  in  Benghazi," the report states. "In  fact, they represent  the  only military 'asset' to  reach  Benghazi  during  the  attacks. They deployed  themselves because fellow Americans needed them."

The world's mightiest defense apparatus was not ready to deal with a major act of jihad:

"When  the  attacks in  Benghazi  began, the  Defense  Department was unprepared to respond. Despite there being a missing U.S. Ambassador, its response—from  the start  of  the  attack  at  9:42 p.m. in  Libya,  to  the amount of time it took for the forces to actually deploy until late the next morning in Libya at best illustrates a rusty bureaucratic  process  not in keeping  with  the gravity  and urgency  of  the  events  happening  on  the ground. The  decisions  made  earlier  in  the  year  by  senior  State  Department  officials to maintain a presence in Benghazi without adequate security forces and  an  inadequately  fortified Mission compound contributed  to  what amounted  to  a worst  case  scenario of  circumstances  that  would  test the military’s preparedness and ability to respond," the report states. "Nevertheless, the Defense Department did not pass the test. Whether this failure is shouldered by it alone,  or  rests  in  part  on  decisions  made  by  the  State  Department  in Washington D.C. or with the White House who presided over a two hour meeting  where  half  of  the  action  items  related  to  an  anti-Muslim video wholly unconnected to the attacks, is one of the lingering questions about Benghazi."
"What is  clear  is  the Secretary  of  Defense testified  he was  clear on both what the President ordered and what he ordered subsequent to the initial attack. Yet,  no  asset  was  ever  ordered  to  respond  to  Benghazi  and  the decisions made and  not  made coupled  with  a  lack  of  urgency in Washington D.C. delayed  the  response even, in some  instances, with an Ambassador missing," the report continues. 

To the pointy-headed scribes of the regime's propaganda wing it's all a big yawn:

Here’s the opening paragraph of the New York Times’s story on the report:

Ending one of the longest, costliest and most bitterly partisan congressional investigations in history, the House Select Committee on Benghazi issued its final report on Tuesday, finding no new evidence of culpability or wrongdoing by Hillary Clinton in the 2012 attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead.

And here’s the Washington Post on the report:

A final report issued by the Republican majority that investigated the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, found fault with virtually every element of the executive branch response to the attacks but provided no new evidence of specific wrongdoing by then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

This is an extraordinary response to a report that comprehensively details one of the most shameful episodes in recent American diplomatic and military history. 

That's the deeply sinister way the regime's propaganda arm plays: make that which is evil seem banal and overblown.

Wednesday evening round-up

The Brazilian left's response to the relieving of Dilma Rousseff of her presidential duties pending a conclusion to an investigation of her alleged corruption is in a range the parameters of which are disbelief and rage.

An Air Force witness who was stationed in northern Italy in September 2012 says his squadron was ready to go. Could have easily come to the rescue of the Benghazi people.

This is dandy:

As American and allied officials celebrated the opening of a long-awaited missile defense system in Europe with a ribbon cutting and a band, the reaction in Russia on Thursday suggested the system had raised the risks of a nuclear war.

Russian officials reiterated their position that the American-built system imperiled Russia’s security. But the public discussion in Russia was darker, including online commentary of how a nuclear confrontation might play out in Europe, and the prospect that Romania, the system’s host, might be reduced to “smoking ruins.”

“We have been saying right from when this story started that our experts are convinced that the deployment of the ABM system poses a certain threat to the Russian Federation,” the Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters in a conference call.

“Measures are being taken to ensure the necessary level of security for Russia,” he said. “The president himself, let me remind you, has repeatedly asked who the system will work against.”

The United States has asserted that the anti-ballistic missile system would protect only against “rogue” states, particularly Iran, and provide no protection for either Europe or the United States from Russia’s far larger arsenal of nuclear missiles. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization site will be controlled by an American officer.

The system, called Aegis Ashore, was essentially transferred from a seaborne launchpad onto land in Romania, at the Deveselu air base. The United States on Friday planned to break ground on a second site, in Poland, that should be completed in 2018. But a deputy United States defense secretary, Robert Work, reiterated Thursday there are “no plans at all” to strengthen this missile umbrella to protect against Russia.

In Moscow, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said Russian defense experts consider the site a threat.

“We still view the destructive actions of the United States and its allies in the area of missile defense as a direct threat to global and regional security,” Ms. Zakharova said.

Are you buying this crap about a "glitch" being the reason why the 2013 video of the Rosen - Psaki exchange is missing?

 

Friday morning roundup

Not much time to delve into any of these developments substantively right now, but their sum total has the effect of - well, making one want to crawl back into bed.

The Most Equal Comrade says that the UK and France are mainly to blame for Libya becoming a failed state - and for his own backing off from the chemical-weapons red line he set for Syria's Assad regime. Yessir, that's some deft handling of the Special Relationship right there.

David French at NRO has been as fierce and valiant as anybody in exposing Squirrel-Hair's true nature, so it's rather bracing to read his conclusion that last night's debate only moved the needle insofar as it increased the likelihood that S-H gets the nomination by yet another increment.

This item is going to have legs:

A former aide to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin who was found dead in a Dupont Circle hotel room in November died of blunt force trauma to the head, the D.C. medical examiner’s office said Thursday.

Mikhail Lesin, 59, also suffered injuries to his neck, torso and upper and lower extremities, the medical examiner said in a statement. The medical examiner had not concluded whether the injuries were the result of a crime, an accident or some other means.

Breitbart gets accused a lot of being in the tank for Squirrel-Hair and a glance at any day's stories there provide ample substantiation for the charge (although it has its outspoken anti-S-H figures as well, particularly Ben Shapiro), so this whole Michelle Fields dustup adds, shall we say a layer of complexity to the narrative.

Steve McCann at The American Thinker has concluded that it's time for conservatism's funeral.

Looks like the sun's coming up. Is it too early to start cocktail hour?

Your overlords don't care if you're murdered in your bed

The glaring question, of course, is why the hell not?

Despite the growing threat from the self-proclaimed Islamic State in Libya, the Obama administration has turned down a U.S. military plan for an assault on ISIS’s regional hub there, three defense officials told The Daily Beast. 

In recent weeks, the U.S. military—led by its Africa and Special Operations Commands—have pushed for more airstrikes and the deployment of elite troops, particularly in the city of Sirte. The hometown of former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, the city is now under ISIS control and serving as a regional epicenter for the terror group.

The airstrikes would target ISIS resources while a small band of Special Operations Forces would train Libyans to eventually be members of a national army, the officials said.

Weeks ago, defense officials told The New York Times that they were crafting military plans for such strikes, but needed more time to develop intelligence so that they could launch a sustained air campaign on ISIS in Sirte.
But those plans have since been put on the back burner.
“There is little to no appetite for that in this administration,” one defense official explained.

Ostensibly, the reason is that Libya has two governments, the Most Equal Comrade's policy being it needs to get down to one before post-America does anything other than occasionally zapping individual high-ranking operatives with drone strikes.

But in the meantime, we're still sitting ducks. 

Jihad never sleeps - today's edition

Stories breaking in two northern African neighbors.

From Egypt, back-to-back attacks in Cairo and a Red Sea resort town:

Two assailants armed with a gun, a knife and a suicide belt attacked a hotel in the Egyptian Red Sea resort town of Hurghada on Friday, wounding two foreign tourists, security sources said. 

One of the injured was from Denmark and the other from Germany, the sources said. .

They said the attackers had arrived by sea to launch the onslaught on the beachside Bella Vista Hotel, but that security forces had repelled the assault, killing the attacker wearing the suicide bomb.

However, the Interior Ministry gave a very different account, saying two assailants with knives had wounded two Austrians and a Swede. It said one of the attackers was a student from the Cairo suburb of Giza.

Egypt is fighting a wave of Islamist militancy, which began as attacks on security forces in remote regions of the Sinai, but is increasingly focusing on targets previously considered safe such as the tourist resorts on the Red Sea. 

The Islamic State militant group said on Friday that an attack on Israeli tourists in Cairo on Thursday had been carried out by its fighters, in response to a call by the group's leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, to target Jews "everywhere".

From Libya:

Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a suicide truck bombing on a Libyan police training center on Thursday that killed at least 47 people, in the worst such attack since the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.

Islamic State fighters have expanded their presence in the North African state, taking advantage of turmoil to control the city of Sirte and launch attacks on oilfields and key oil ports.

"This operation is one in a series of the battle of Abu al-Mughira al-Qahtani, which will not stop until we liberate all Libya," Islamic State's Tripoli militancy said in a statement.

The group said one of its militants had died carrying out the suicide bomb attack. Libyan authorities have not confirmed that.

The truck bomb exploded at the police training center in the coastal town of Zliten just as hundreds of recruits had gathered for a morning meeting. More than 100 people were also wounded, many by shrapnel.

Somebody get these guys into sensitivity training. And make them undergo background checks.

Not that this bombshell is likely to get the attention it needs . . .

 . . . but in a sane universe, this would sink Hillionaire:

A new email released today by Judicial Watch shows that the Department of Defense was ready to mobilize forces to Benghazi three and a half hours after the attack began.

An email was sent by then-Department of Defense Chief of Staff Jeremy Bash to State Department leadership that offered “forces that could move to Benghazi” during the terrorist attack on the U.S. Special Mission Compound in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012.

In an email sent to top Department of State officials, at 7:19 p.m. ET, only hours after the attack had begun, Bash says, “we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak.” The Obama administration redacted the details of the military forces available, oddly citing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) exemption that allows the withholding of “deliberative process” information.

Bash’s email seems to directly contradict testimony given by then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta before the Senate Armed Services Committee in February 2013. Defending the Obama administration’s lack of military response to the nearly six-hour-long attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Panetta claimed that “time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, events that moved very quickly on the ground prevented a more immediate response.”

Panetta said the 130 gunships or fixed wing fighters -- which would have required refueling abilities, armaments, targeting and support facilities -- "were not in the vicinity of Benghazi."

But according to Bash, their forces were "spinning up" and ready to deploy about an hour into the second wave of attacks.
The first assault occurred at the main compound at about 9:40 pm local time – 3:40 p.m. EST in Washington, D.C.  The second attack on a CIA annex 1.2 miles away began three hours later, at about 12 a.m. local time the following morning – 6 p.m. EST.

At approximately 11:15 EST, former U.S. Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed at the annex in the mortar assault. A DS agent and annex security member were severely wounded in that attack. 

It's a sign of how cacophonous the current moment is that this revelation is likely to evoke yearns from far too many post-Americans who are either outraged or enthused by the latest uttering of a buffoon like Squirrel-Hair.

The voice of reality

Amidst all the spin and skewed sense of priorities, Mr. Ingmire grasps the essence of the Benghazi scandal and its place in the death of Western civilization:

On Saturday’s “Fox & Friends” on the Fox News Channel, Michael Ingmire the uncle of Benghazi attack victim Sean Smith said that he’s “glad” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a “party” after her testimony before the Benghazi Select Committee, and it was “too bad” his nephew couldn’t make it. Ingmire further stated he was “embarrassed” at the Democrats on the committee.

Ingmire stated, “I’m glad that Mrs. Clinton had an Indian food, wine, and beer party. It’s too bad my nephew and Ambassador Stevens, you know, couldn’t show up.”

Ingmire further said that the difference in what Hillary told her family and what she told the victims’ families about the cause of the attack is “consistent to her career as a serial liar. Without a doubt, you know, Mrs. Clinton really has a problem embracing the truth.”

He also added that he was “embarrassed” at the “tantrums” Democrats on the committee had. Ingmire continued, “if you don’t want to be part of the process, nobody’s forcing you, resign, [Representative] 

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD)

14%

, [Representative] 

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA)

14%

, and [Representative] 

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA)

11%

 in particular, were an embarrassment.”

He notes the same thing LITD pointed out the other day: While the serious grownups on the select committee were dealing in facts and timelines and irrefutable evidence, the committee's Freedom-Haters used their time to indulge in feelings-based generalities, unsubstantiated vitriol and expressions of admiration for a public figure who is clearly one of the most despicable and morally decrepit human beings drawing a breath today.

Hillionaire's Hill grill and the stark contrast between serious Americans and lie-loving post-Americans

Of all the aspects of Hillionaire's testimony before the House select committee on Benghazi yesterday - the theater of it, the specific revelations, , the Sid Blumenthal factor, her overall poise, save a coughing fit that briefly interrupted proceedings, the media spin that began even as the hearing was still in process - the most significant was how it pointed up the difference between Republicans - and here I mean serious Republicans, those who are worthy of an R behind their name, who understand that American leadership is destiny's call in an otherwise senseless world, who cherish truth, decency, freedom and life, as opposed to Reasonable Gentlemen, carnival barkers and one-note johnnies - and Freedom-Haters.

Freedom-Haters, as exemplified by Elijah Cummings, used their time yesterday to keep pushing the "this-is-all-a-partisan-witch-hunt" meme, in keeping with their modus operandi in any situation - craft and perpetuate a narrative that readily resonates with the feelings-driven, low-information post-American cattle-masses to the point that it drowns out any and all facts that are damning to their case and their cause.

In the case of post-American foreign policy in the age of the Most Equal Comrade, that has meant grabbing on to any circumstantial sliver that could allow them to come up with a sound bite conveying the lie that the MEC and his nomenklatura had eradicated worldwide jihad, even as it had bequeathed a robust economy here in post-America:

In early September 2012, at the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Joe Biden summarized to thunderous applause the administration’s re-election pitch: “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.” Translation: The president had revived the economy, even as he had put “al Qaeda on the run,” as Mr. Obama put it.

The Benghazi attack occurred five days later.

And then came the willful deception involving the video:

The administration instead immediately presented the attack as a spontaneous mob backlash to an anti-Muslim YouTube video. At 10:30 on the night of the attack, Mrs. Clinton issued a statement about the violence, blaming the video. She repeated the charge in a speech the next day. President Obama gave his own speech that day, referring to the video and refusing to use the word “terrorism.”

The next day, Mrs. Clinton mentioned the video twice more. The day after that, Press Secretary Jay Carney said: “We have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack.” Mrs. Clinton promised the father of one of the victims that the administration would “make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.” In his weekly address, Mr. Obama talked about the video. When the Libyan president said there was evidence the attack was planned months in advance, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice contradicted him. She instead told five Sunday talk shows—five days after the attack—that “based on the best information we have to date,” the attack “began spontaneously” in response to “this hateful video.” Mr. Obama for two full weeks continued to talk about YouTube. 

By the end of those two weeks, the meme had an aura of implausibility to it in the minds of many post-Americans, but many others were sufficiently impressed by the faux seriousness of those spouting it to conclude that the matter was as those spokespeople were presenting it.

Cut to October 22, 2015, the day the irrefutable smoking gun was made visible to the whole world:

Two hours into Mrs. Clinton’s testimony, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan referred to an email Mrs. Clinton sent to her daughter, Chelsea, at 11:12 the night of the attack, or 45 minutes after the secretary of state had issued a statement blaming YouTube-inflamed mobs. Her email reads: “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like group.” Mrs. Clinton doesn’t hedge in the email; no “it seems” or “it appears.” She tells her daughter that on the anniversary of 9/11 an al Qaeda group assassinated four Americans.

That same evening, Mrs. Clinton spoke on the phone with Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf, around 8 p.m. The notes from that conversation, in a State Department email, describe her as saying: “We have asked for the Libyan government to provide additional security to the compound immediately as there is a gun battle ongoing, which I understand Ansar as Sharia [sic] is claiming responsibility for.” Ansar al Sharia  is al Qaeda’s affiliate on the Arabian Peninsula. So several hours into the attack, Mrs. Clinton already believed that al Qaeda was attacking U.S. facilities.

The next afternoon, Mrs. Clinton had a call with the Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil. The notes from it are absolutely damning. The secretary of state tells him: “We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack—not a protest.” And yet Mrs. Clinton, and Ms. Rice and Mr. Obama for days and days continued to spin the video lie.

Jordan also presented evidence that career-level types at State knew, even during the above-mentioned two-week period, what was really going on:

In a series of e-mails shown by Jordan, experts in the State Department’s Near East Affairs Bureau are shown reacting dubiously to Rice’s claim. “I think Rice was off the reservation on this one,” one wrote. “Off the reservation on five networks!” another responded. Another e-mail said the “WH [was] very worried about the politics. This was all their doing.”

The essence of what is going on here is the same as it always is with Freedom-Haters: develop the keenest possible sense of where the vulnerabilities lie as you are amassing power, and address them immediately:

 The Benghazi attack shortly before the 2012 election didn’t fit the administration narrative that the war on terror was over and that al-Qaida was on the run. It endangered President Obama’s reelection chances and Hillary’s chances to succeed him. That is why she invented and propagated the Benghazi video lie and told it to the parents of the Benghazi dead in front of their son’s caskets.

Thus we see one informative way in which we can speak of two types of Americans (although there is actually a third in this formulation - the great swath of the populace that is so addicted to amusement and distraction that all this is going right past them). There are those who understand the value of mining the essence of our national identity - that is, the first nation in history to be founded on an idea, that idea being that freedom is the essential condition for human well-being - and being fiercely dedicated to preserving that essence, and those who see the entire social / cultural / political stage as a platform for extolling "fairness" and "equality" and "social justice" because it is the fast track to a degree of power enjoyed by tyrants.

Hillionaire must never be allowed to occupy the Oval Office - today's edition

Hell, yes we still need a select committee on Benghazi. This has gone from bad to worse.


Looking into the privatizing of security in Benghazi - using a firm in which close bud Sydney Blumenthal had a financial interest.

Mentioning the name of a CIA operative in a private email.

Recall the furor over the leak of Valerie Plame’s status as a CIA employee? This is exponentially worse. Both Blumenthal and Hillary put the identity of an intelligence agent in unsecured communications. If anyone hacked this, the information would have easily cost the source his life.

And all the usual players are having a field day with Kevin McCarthy's fatal gaffe, but if you want to talk actual politicization of national security, look to the Hillionaire camp:

At the time, Blumenthal was pushing for an American military intervention, but not exactly for altruistic reasons. His first point in his argument, and his fifth point out of five as well, was a 2011 Quinnipiac poll showing Obama down 41/50 for re-election. “No time for panic,” Blumenthal wrote, “[t]ime to prevent panic.” Blumenthal further argued that stopping a massacre in Benghazi wouldn’t be enough to win an election, because “seeking gratitude from people … soon reaches a counter-productive point.” Blumenthal then tells Hillary this:

At this point, Gowdy notes in his letter, Hillary forwards this to Jake Sullivan, saying that “I agree about the need to keep the attack tempo up.” Note that this exceeded the stated mission for the US and NATO in Libya, transforming it from a genocide-prevention operation to a full-blown war of regime change on Qaddafi. The motivation, at least as expressed to Hillary and then forwarded by her to her team, appears to be entirely related to the need to look tough for the re-election campaign.

She cannot sink fast enough.

Hillary knew the Benghazi attack was jihad right away

God bless Judicial Watch for making this documentation public:

From the very first moments of the terrorist attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top aides were advised that the compound was under a terrorist attack. In fact, less than two hours into the attack, they were told that the al-Qaeda affiliate in Libya, Ansar al-Sharia, had claimed responsibility.

These revelations and others are disclosed by a trove of e-mails and other documents pried from the State Department by Judicial Watch in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The FOIA litigation focuses on Mrs. Clinton’s involvement in the government actions before, during, and after the Benghazi attack, in which Christopher Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, was murdered by terrorists. Also killed in the attack were State Department information management officer Sean Smith, and two former Navy SEALs, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, who were contract security employees and who had fought heroically, saving numerous American lives. At least ten other Americans were wounded, some quite seriously.

Here is a key set of exchanges that occurred:

At 4:07 p.m., just minutes after the terrorist attack began, Cheryl Mills, Secretary Clinton’s chief-of-staff, and Joseph McManus, Mrs. Clinton’s executive assistant, received an e-mail from the State Department’s operations center (forwarded to her by Maria Sand, a special assistant to Secretary Clinton). It contained a report from the State Department’s regional security officer (RSO), entitled “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi is Under Attack.” The e-mail explained that approximately 20 armed people had fired shots at the diplomatic mission, that explosions had been heard as well, and that Ambassador Stevens was believed to be in the compound with at least four other State Department officials.

About a half-hour later, another e-mail — this one from Scott Bultrowicz, then director of diplomatic security (DSCC) — related:

15 armed individuals were attacking the compound and trying to gain entrance. The Ambassador is present in Benghazi and currently is barricaded within the compound. There are no injuries at this time and it is unknown what the intent of the attackers is. At approximately 1600 [4 p.m.] DSCC received word from Benghazi that individuals had entered the compound. At 1614 [4:14 p.m.] RSO advised the Libyans had set fire to various buildings in the area, possibly the building that houses the Ambassador [REDACTED] is responding and taking fire.

At 6:06 p.m., another e-mail that went to top State Department officials explained that the local al-Qaeda affiliate had claimed responsibility for the attack:

Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack (SBU):  “(SBU) Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and call for an attack on Embassy Tripoli”

The post-American public's capacity for seriousness is gravely diminished, but can it be so badly diminished that it will elect as president someone so evil that she would deliberately obscure a jihadist attack on American soil?

The fruits of leading from behind

ISIS tightens its grip on Libya's throat:

Islamic State fighters said they were behind attacks on the residence of the Iranian ambassador in Tripoli and eastern Libya’s Labraq airport, a group statement on Twitter said on Sunday.

Two bombs detonated in front of the residency of the Iranian ambassador in Tripoli on Sunday, while rockets were fired on Labraq airport overnight Friday into Saturday. Iran’s official IRNA news agency confirmed the blasts and the absence of casualties, adding that Iran had previously suspended operations at its embassy.

“Two devices were laid, one exploded first and then the other. The point of the second bomb was to create confusion,” Col. Jumaa al-Mashri from the National Security Agency told Tripoli-based al-Nabaa television.

A Reuters reporter at the scene saw the second device going off some 30 minutes after the first one. Minor damage could be seen at the gate.

And there is some real toxic stuff that seems to be accessible to the jihadists:

On Saturday, Arab media reported that insurgents in Libya have captured chemical weapons from storage areas in southern and central parts of the country.
“Unfortunately [chemical weapons] exist in locations known to the militias, who have seized large amounts of them to use in their war against the [Libyan] army,” a Libyan military official told the London- based daily Asharq Alawsat.
Gaddafi’s former regime had held the chemical weapons and the official warned that Islamic State could obtain the chemicals, which include mustard gas and the nerve agent Sarin.
“Before his death, Gaddafi left approximately 1,000 cubic tons worth of material used for manufacturing chemical weapons and about 20,000 cubic tons of mustard gas,” added the military official.
In addition, Asharq Alawsat obtained a video of what seems to be fighters testing the chemical weapons in a mountainous area near the town of Mizda, 160 km. south of Tripoli. The video shows the firing of a projectile that produced fire and dense white smoke.

Locals told the Arab newspaper that an armed group that was guarding a chemical factory in Jufra District, 600 km.

southeast of Tripoli, transferred some of the mustard gas to the Mediterranean city of Misrata. 

And, as they reminded us with the symbolic move of taking a video of the blood of those Egyptian Coptic Christians washing into theMediterranean Sea, they're just a little over 100 miles from Europe.  And somebody among them knows how to fly military aircraft.

Now they're mass-beheading Christians in Libya

Lined up 21 Egyptian Copts like you would for a mass shooting and raised the swords:

Islamic State released a video on Sunday purporting to show the militant group beheading 21 Egyptian Christians kidnapped in Libya.

The Egyptians, dressed in orange jump suits, were beheaded after being forced down on the ground. The video appeared on the Twitter feed of a website that supports Islamic State.

We're on their list, too.

"They pretty much own Libya"

The reach of ISIS has extended well into northern Africa:

hile the world has been riveted by the latest high-tension ISIS hostage drama, U.S. officials are expressing alarm over the less-publicized expansion by the terrorist group's "caliphate" from Syria and Iraq into neighboring regions.

In particular, several counter-terrorism officials expressed deep concern about ISIS asserting itself in Libya, where the U.S. is still reeling from the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on a diplomatic post in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya.

"I am becoming concerned with how quickly their new affiliates are getting organized," one counter-terrorism official closely watching ISIS developments told ABC News last week.

"They pretty much own Libya," a second official involved in counter-terrorism operations said. "We have zero collection there and zero authorities there."

The West is losing this.

Benghazi: still a scandal, the House Intelligence Committee report notwithstanding

Okay, there was no stand-down order, no intelligence failure, and no further military resources that could have been deployed.

But Joel Pollack at Breitbart says that these three matters are still very much unresolved:

1. President Obama's dereliction of duty. We know that after being briefed early in the evening at a prescheduled meeting, Obama failed to monitor the attacks in the Situation Room, or even to maintain contact with his national security team. He claims to have issued "three directives," but there is no evidence of that, and some testimony contradicts that claim. He went to a fundraiser the next day, declined for days to refer to the events as a terror attack (despite later claims to the contrary), and blamed a YouTube video for the attack.

2. Hillary Clinton's dereliction of duty--and intimidation. In addition to failing to provide additional security to Benghazi when requested, Clinton enthusiastically promoted the story about the YouTube video, long after it was known to be untrue. She also allegedly tried to stop witnesses from cooperating with Congress.

3. The media's role in the cover-up. CBS News covered up the fact that Obama had lied to the public, and CNN's Candy Crowley famously intervened in the second presidential debate to help that lie along. Instead, the media targeted Mitt Romney's criticism of the administration's reaction to an attack on the Cairo embassy.

So, to answer a question that a key player histrionically posed at a Congressional hearing some time back, it makes a hell of a lot of difference.

Raymond Maxwell's bombshell

Sharyl Attkisson gleans some jaw-dropping tidbits from this former Foggy Bottom staffer.  He says he'd heard about a very fishy-sounding after-hours document-separating session, so he decided to wander into the office on a Sunday afternoon and see what he could find out about it:

When he arrived, Maxwell says he observed boxes and stacks of documents. He says a State Department office director, whom Maxwell described as close to Clinton’s top advisers, was there. Though the office director technically worked for him, Maxwell says he wasn’t consulted about her weekend assignment.

“She told me, ‘Ray, we are to go through these stacks and pull out anything that might put anybody in the [Near Eastern Affairs] front office or the seventh floor in a bad light,’” says Maxwell. He says “seventh floor” was State Department shorthand for then-Secretary of State Clinton and her principal advisors.
“I asked her, ‘But isn’t that unethical?’ She responded, ‘Ray, those are our orders.’ ”
A few minutes after he arrived, Maxwell says in walked two high-ranking State Department officials.

In an interview Monday morning on Fox News, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, named the two Hillary Clinton confidants who were allegedly present: Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff and former White House counsel who defended President Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial; and Deputy Chief of Staff Jake Sullivan, who previously worked on Hillary Clinton’s and then Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns. 

“When Cheryl saw me, she snapped, ‘Who are you?’” Maxwell says. “Jake explained, ‘That’s Ray Maxwell, an NEA Deputy Assistant Secretary. She conceded, ‘Well, OK.”
Maxwell says the two officials, close confidants of Clinton, appeared to check in on the operation and soon left.
Maxwell says after Mills and Sullivan arrived, he, the office director and an intern moved into a small office where they looked through some papers. Maxwell says his stack included pre-attack telegrams and cables between the U.S. embassy in Tripoli and State Department headquarters. After a short time, Maxwell says he decided to leave.

“I didn’t feel good about it,” he said. 

Attkisson's calls to Mills and Sullivan haven't been returned yet.

Read the whole article.  Maxwell sure doesn't think much of the Accountability Review Board, calling it a "shoddily executed attempt at damage control."

The bunch that has control of those eleven missing commercial jetliners

Gateway Pundit has photos of the jihadists who now possess them.  Take a look at how they "liberated" the Tripoli airport.  Looks a lot like what the rent-a-mob agitators did to the business district of Ferguson, Missouri.

I don't think they intend to start a travel club with those planes.

Our enemies fill the power vacuum on the world stage - today's edition

Dawn of Libya, a jihadist group in that country, has "secured" the post-American embassy compound in Tripoli.  Video at link shows them diving into the pool and having a grand time.