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President Obama’s once seemingly unstoppable march toward re-election hit what he might call “bumps in the road” in Benghazi, Libya, late on Sept. 11, 2012. It might be more accurate to describe the effect of the well-planned and -executed, military-style attack on a diplomatic facility there as the political equivalent of a devastating improvised explosive device on the myth of the unassailability of the Obama record as commander in chief.
Thanks to intrepid investigative reporting — notably by Bret Baier and Catherine Herridge at Fox News, Aaron Klein at WND.com and Clare Lopez at RadicalIslam.org — and information developed by congressional investigators, the mystery is beginning to unravel with regard to what happened that night and the reason for the subsequent, clumsy official cover-up now known as Benghazigate.
The evidence suggests that the Obama administration has not simply been engaging, legitimating, enriching and emboldening Islamists who have taken over or are ascendant in much of the Middle East. Starting in March 2011, when American diplomat J. Christopher Stevens was designated the liaison to the “opposition” in Libya, the Obama administration has been arming them, including jihadists like Abdelhakim Belhadj, leader of the al Qaeda franchise known as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group.
Once Moammar Gadhafi was overthrown, Stevens was appointed ambassador to the new Libya run by Mr. Belhadj and his friends. Not surprisingly, one of the most important priorities for someone in that position would be to try to find and secure the immense amount of armaments that had been cached by the dictator around the country and systematically looted during and after the revolution.
One of the places in Libya most awash with such weapons in the most dangerous of hands is Benghazi. It now appears that Stevens was there — on a particularly risky day, with no security to speak of and despite now copiously documented concerns about his own safety and that of his subordinates — for another priority mission: sending arms recovered from the former regime’s stocks to the “opposition” in Syria. As in Libya, the insurgents are known to include al Qaeda and other Shariah-supremacist groups, including none other than Abdelhakim Belhadj.
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.
Read more: GAFFNEY: The real reason behind Benghazigate - Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com...
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edit on 23-10-2012 by Vitruvian because: txt
...After all, Mr. Klein reported last month that, according to sources in Egyptian security, our ambassador was playing a “central role in recruiting jihadists to fight Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.”...
While Obama stonewalls, more and more information keeps leaking out about the events surrounding the attack. And each new piece of information somehow manages to make Benghazigate seem even worse.
The latest tidbit is an interview with some of the guards from the Islamist militia tasked with guarding the Benghazi consulate.
The guards were members of the February 17 Brigade, a militia linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Despite being hired to guard the consulate, the militia members were apparently supposed to be armed and trained by the US consulate.
The State Department, instead of providing proper security, was using the consulate to train Islamist militia.
The February 17 Brigade had early warning that an attack would happen and the guards clearly knew that the attackers would not fire if they knew they were Feb 17.
One guard said that his team had received information on August 28, 2012 about a possible attack on the diplomatic compound from its unit (i.e. Special Protection Unit/February 17 Brigade), and that warning had remained in effect until September 11, the day of the attack.
Another guard said that on the morning of the attack, the consulate had asked the Libyan security unit assigned to it to increase the number of its security vehicles outside the compound to 10, and to send 25 additional guards – but that for an unknown reason, the consulate later cancelled that request.
‘Ali also said that an hour and a half prior to the attack he received a phone call from one of his friends warning him “non-specific[ally]” about possible demonstrations and disturbances in areas nearby. He decided not to report the phone call to the security team, but instead took it upon himself to personally investigate the matter.
Realizing that he remained alone and might be killed, ‘Ali said that he yelled to his attackers, “I am [a member] of the February 17 Brigade. Don’t attack me… don’t shoot,” and that he told them that he was only assigned to do work outside the embassy and that he had happened to be drinking tea at the main gate.
Ali’s entire narrative probably cannot be trusted, but it indicates that there was forewarning and that the ties between Feb 17 and the consulate and Feb 17 and the attackers who were members of a Feb 17 splinter group left the consulate vulnerable to infiltration and attack.
...superb investigative reporting such as we see at Fox News...
NBC was the most-watched network for the final presidential debate last night with 12.391 million viewers tuning in. ABC was next with 11.730 million, according to Nielsen Fast National numbers. But the 11.474 million that watched on Fox News were enough to give the network its most-watched telecast ever. Fox News’s previous record was set in 2008 when VP nominees Gov. Sara Palin and Sen. Joe Biden debated. On that night 11.098 million watched. Fox News also topped CBS and beat the combined viewership of MSNBC and CNN.
Despite their biased LEFTIST efforts towards the re-election of the Obama Chicago machine - they FAILED - BIG TIME.
Thanks to intrepid investigative reporting — notably by Bret Baier and Catherine Herridge at Fox News, Aaron Klein at WND.com and Clare Lopez at RadicalIslam.org
President George W. Bush invited Baier and his wife and son to the Oval Office for a visit and had the White House physician update him on Paul's progress
Originally posted by MystikMushroom
I stopped reading when I saw this in the opening:
...superb investigative reporting such as we see at Fox News...
It's funny how during periods of relative political calm nearly everyone on ATS bashes on Fox News (Faux News, ect). . . When it comes time for an election, suddenly Fox News is a-okay again and considered legit.
Originally posted by Vitruvian
BTW - We should all praise God to the high heavens for Fox-News et al., The Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh as very effective counter foils against the Zionist inspired and extremely left wing communist media in America.
Originally posted by VariableConstant
Originally posted by Vitruvian
BTW - We should all praise God to the high heavens for Fox-News et al., The Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh as very effective counter foils against the Zionist inspired and extremely left wing communist media in America.
Zionist-inspired communists? That doesn't make any kind of sense.
Interesting article, but you may have gone a little overboard with this comment.