The Blaze Lights Fire Under O's Benghazi Lies

Congratulations to Glenn Beck and his Blaze Network team for broadcasting the truth about Obama’s scandal and Libya.  The long and short of is that, according to recently released documents, the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon were all watching the Libyan atrocity unfold in real time.

They had U.S. Christopher Stevens’ memo pleading for help, in Obama’s hands before the attack actually began.  There was enough time to send in the Marines from Sicily to evacuate the ambassador.  Instead, the administration sat and watched as the safe house – Glenn cautions that it was not a consulate, an annex, or even an official government building; it was a private residence – burned and those inside murdered.

One responsible columnist – Victor Davis Hanson in the Aug. 27, 2012 issue of the National Review – discussed the whole issue of Syria.  The title of the article is “The ‘Reformer’ Tyrant:  Our Syria policy has been incoherent.”

Hanson discusses how the U.S. dropped its support for the “Annan plan”, with Annan “shuttling between the Syrian and government and the rebels” in order to facilitate a peaceful transition to consensual government and not upset the friends of Assad - China and Russia.  The bargain was to “be overseen by the United Nations and result in a pluralistic society, with some sort of face-saving retirement for the deposed tyrant.”

But that didn’t happen.  Annan retired as special U.N. Syrian envoy, “leaving the United States with the task of ‘asking Assad to step down while stealthily sending arms to the insurgents to ensure his compliance – hoping thereby to gain some influence when and if they take power.”

Assad, however, according to Hanson, “is no mood to compromise given the fate of other deposed authoritarians such Moammar Qaddafi, Hosni Mubarak, and Saddam Hussein.”  Hanson says Assad is wagering that the West is generally “tired of the Middle East and will not interfere in Syria the way it intervened in Libya – and that Barack Obama in particular is more worried about the November elections than the escalating violence.  Further, the regime [which one, Mr. Hanson, Assad’s or Obama’s?] knows that China and Russia will not abstain from Security Council votes on Syria as they did from votes on Libya.”

This assessment came about two weeks before the September 11^th attack in Benghazi.  But who reads The National Review, save for some Conservative think-tankers, politicians, and radio talk show hosts?  Certainly not the average American, and certainly not the Liberal mainstream Media.  The only news source to be generally alarmed by the events in Libya, in real time, was The Blaze and its host, Glenn Beck.  This is the link to their report from Sept. 14, 2012, three days after the attack:

http://www.glennbeck.com/2012/09/14/report-obama-administration-warned-about-attacks-did-nothing/

In the article, the Blaze reports, “Senior diplomatic sources say the U.S. State Department had credible information, 48 hours prior to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya and the embassy in Cairo, that American locations may be targeted, however, no warnings were issued, no “lock down” orders given, The Independent reports.

On Tuesday, a mob of radical Islamists stormed the consulate in Benghazi, killing U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans in a fiery assault. Officials say the murders of the four men were likely the result of “a serious and continuing security breach,” the report states.

They give their source as The Independent, a British news website.  The (UK) Independent reported on Sept. 14, 2012:

“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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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.

“Mr. Stevens had been on a visit to Germany, Austria and Sweden and had just returned to Libya when the Benghazi trip took place with the US embassy's security staff deciding that the trip could be undertaken safely.”

Glenn Beck offered us more insight this morning into Mr. Stevens’ activities the day he was killed; he’d had lunch with Turkey’s consul.  Turkey has been serving as the go-between in delivering Saddam Hussein’s former stockpile of weapons not just to rebels but Islamist terrorist groups.

“Eight Americans,” The Independent’s report goes on, “some from the military, were wounded in the attack which claimed the lives of Mr. Stevens, Sean Smith, an information officer, and two U.S. Marines. All staff from Benghazi have now been moved to the capital, Tripoli, and those whose work is deemed to be non-essential may be flown out of Libya.

“In the meantime, a Marine Corps FAST Anti-Terrorism Reaction Team has already arrived in the country from a base in Spain and other personnel are believed to be on the way. Additional units have been put on standby to move to other states where their presence may be needed in the outbreak of anti-American fury triggered by publicity about a film which demeaned the Prophet Mohamed.

“A mob of several hundred stormed the U.S. embassy in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa yesterday. Other missions which have been put on special alert include almost all those in the Middle East, as well as in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Armenia, Burundi and Zambia.

“Senior officials are increasingly convinced, however, that the ferocious nature of the Benghazi attack, in which rocket-propelled grenades were used, indicated it was not the result of spontaneous anger due to the video, called Innocence of Muslims.  Patrick Kennedy, Under-Secretary at the State Department, said he was convinced the assault was planned due to its extensive nature and the proliferation of weapons.

“There is growing belief that the attack was in revenge for the killing in a drone strike in Pakistan of Mohammed Hassan Qaed, an al-Qa'ida operative who was, as his nom-de-guerre Abu Yahya al-Libi suggests, from Libya, and timed for the anniversary of the 11 September attacks.

“Sen. Bill Nelson (D), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said:  ‘I am asking my colleagues on the committee to immediately investigate what role al-Qa'ida or its affiliates may have played in the attack and to take appropriate action.’

“According to security sources the consulate had been given a ‘health check’ in preparation for any violence connected to the 9/11 anniversary.  In the event, the perimeter was breached within 15 minutes of an angry crowd starting to attack it at around 10 p.m. on Tuesday night. There was, according to witnesses, little defence put up by the 30 or more local guards meant to protect the staff.  Ali Fetori, a 59-year-old accountant who lives nearby, said:  ‘The security people just all ran away and the people in charge were the young men with guns and bombs.’

“Wissam Buhmeid, the commander of the Tripoli government-sanctioned Libya’s Shield Brigade, effectively a police force for Benghazi, maintained that it was anger over the Mohamed video which made the guards abandon their post.  ‘There were definitely people from the security forces who let the attack happen because they were themselves offended by the film; they would absolutely put their loyalty to the Prophet over the consulate. The deaths are all nothing compared to insulting the Prophet.’

“Mr. Stevens, it is believed, was left in the building by the rest of the staff after they failed to find him in dense smoke caused by a blaze which had engulfed the building. He was discovered lying unconscious by local people and taken to a hospital, the Benghazi Medical Centre, where, according to a doctor, Ziad Abu Ziad, he died from smoke inhalation.

“An eight-strong American rescue team was sent from Tripoli and taken by troops under Captain Fathi al- Obeidi, of the February 17 Brigade, to the secret safe house to extract around 40 US staff. The building then came under fire from heavy weapons. ‘I don't know how they found the place to carry out the attack.  It was planned, the accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any ordinary revolutionaries,’ said Captain Obeidi. ‘It began to rain down on us, about six mortars fell directly on the path to the villa.’

“Libyan reinforcements eventually arrived, and the attack ended.  News had arrived of Mr. Stevens, and his body was picked up from the hospital and taken back to Tripoli with the other dead and the survivors.”

Bing West, also of the National Review and former Assistant Secretary of Defense under Pres. Ronald Reagan, gave this interesting account of the Benghazi attack in his online column on Oct. 21, 2012, entitled “First, Aid the Living”:

“A U.S. ambassador is missing and his diplomatic team is desperately fighting off terrorist attacks. Our commander-in-chief and his national-security team in Washington are listening to the phone calls from the Americans under attack and watching real-time video from a drone circling overhead. Yet the U.S. military sends no aid. Why?

“On Sept. 11, at about 10 p.m. Libyan time (4 p.m. in Washington), Ambassador Chris Stevens and a small staff were inside our consulate in Benghazi when terrorists attacked. The consulate staff immediately contacted Washington and our embassy in Tripoli. The White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and numerous military headquarters monitored the entire battle in real time via the phone calls from Benghazi and video from a drone overhead.

“Our diplomats fought for seven hours without any aid from outside the country. Four Americans died while the Obama national-security team and our military passively watched and listened. The administration is being criticized for ignoring security needs before the attack and for falsely attributing the assault to a mob.  But the most severe failure has gone unnoticed: namely, a failure to aid the living.

“By 4:30 p.m. Washington time, the main consulate building was on fire and Ambassador Stevens was missing.  In response, the embassy in Tripoli launched an aircraft carrying 22 men. Benghazi was 400 miles away.

“At 5 p.m., President Obama met with Vice President Biden and Secretary of Defense Panetta in the Oval Office. The U.S. military base in Sigonella, Sicily, was 480 miles away from Benghazi. Stationed at Sigonella were Special Operations Forces, transport aircraft, and attack aircraft — a much more formidable force than 22 men from the embassy.

“In the past, presidents had taken immediate actions to protect Americans. In 1984, President Reagan had ordered U.S. pilots to force an airliner carrying terrorists to land at Sigonella. Reagan had acted inside a 90-minute window while the aircraft with the terrorists was in the air. The Obama national-security team had several hours in which to move forces from Sigonella to Benghazi.

“Fighter jets could have been at Benghazi in an hour; the commandos inside three hours.  If the attackers were a mob, as intelligence reported, then an F18 in afterburner, roaring like a lion, would unnerve them. This procedure was applied often in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Conversely, if the attackers were terrorists, then the U.S. commandos would eliminate them. But no forces were dispatched from Sigonella.

“In the meantime, while untrained and poorly led by American standards, the terrorists at Benghazi were proving to be lethal. They forced the Americans to abandon the consulate, with the ambassador still missing, and fall back to an annex a mile away. When the terrorist gang followed the Americans, looters took the opportunity to ransack the empty consulate. But when they found Ambassador Stevens unconscious on the floor, they stopped looting and rushed him to a hospital. Unfortunately, the doctors could not save his life. Not knowing who he was, they took the cell phone from his pocket and called numbers. By about two in the morning, the American embassy received word that the ambassador was dead.

“At about the same time, the 22 men from the embassy in Tripoli had arrived at the Benghazi airport. They drove to the annex to assist in its defense against persistent terrorist attacks. Around 4 a.m. Libyan time — six hours into the fight — enemy mortar rounds killed two of the defenders on the roof of the annex.

“The fight began at 10 p.m. and petered out at dawn when the Libyan militia came to the aid of the Americans.

“It is bewildering that no U.S. aircraft ever came to the aid of the defenders. If even one F18 had been on station, it would have detected the location of hostiles firing at night and deterred and attacked the mortar sites. For our top leadership, with all the technological and military tools at their disposal, to have done nothing for seven hours was a joint civilian and military failure of initiative and nerve.

“Secretary of State Clinton has said the responsibility was hers.   But there has been no assertion that the State Department overruled the Pentagon out of concern about the sovereignty of Libyan air space. Instead, it appears passive groupthink prevailed, with the assumption being that a spontaneous mob would quickly run out of steam.

“Firefights, however, wax and wane from dusk to dawn. You cannot predict ahead of time when they will stop. Therefore a combat commander will take immediate action, presuming reinforcements will be needed.

“The administration wrongly blamed a mob for the attack.  Yet ironically, Mr. Obama’s chances of reelection would have plummeted were it not for the human decency of a mob that took the ambassador to the hospital before the terrorists returned.

“If the terrorists had taken his body and, with no Special Operations Forces hot on their trail, taunted America the next day — claiming the ambassador was still alive — the Benghazi tragedy would have escalated into an international disaster. The U.S. military sent no aid.  Why?”

All this certainly makes a liar of Vice President Biden, who claimed they knew nothing about the attack until it was all over.  Obama, covering his tracks, made a general statement about terrorism in his Rose Garden presser the next day, but then spent the next two weeks, along with his good friend, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, taking a minor Libyan police official’s word for it that the attack was due to the video.

The Blaze and Glenn Beck deserve credit for issuing the general alarm to the American people.  Beck’s producer, Stu Burgiere said this morning that he hoped now “real reporters” would take up the story.  I wanted to jump up and shake the television.  “Real reporters?”  REAL REPORTERS!!?  Who does he mean?  Those card-carrying, water-carrying communists at the New York Times and the Washington Post?  The cheerleaders on the network news stations?  The late-night comedians posing as news anchors on the cable networks?

Glenn said that he didn’t like this job of bringing the truth to the American people.  He’d much rather being doing things that make people happy.  However, his station’s slogan is “The Truth Lives Here” and apparently that’s no lie.  He’s obligated to live up to his promise.  He should know that he and his team of reporters and researchers are doing an excellent job.  They may not think they have a big enough audience to claim credibility.  I’ve found it’s not the size of your audience that matters, but their attention span, and their willingness to spread the word to others.

We have to play the cards we’re dealt.  We happen to be at a crossroads in American history, where we Conservatives are going to push back against Socialist-creep or we’re going to defend our freedom.  We don’t want to make that wrong turn down the “Road to Serfdom.”  That means that we’re going to have to wrest the steering wheel – and the microphone – away from the Progressives.  America takes a back seat to no one – and neither should The Blaze or Glenn Beck.  Or any of us.

By the way, Mitt Romney’s approach to Obama in the third debate was understandable.  Big Brother had called right in the middle of the exchange about the military, so I missed some of what had been said.  Obama’s response to Mitt’s criticism about downsizing the military to 1916 levels was yet another Obama non-sequitur.  Obama tried to patronize the older Romney by saying, ‘This isn’t 1916; we have things like aircraft carriers.  Planes land on them.  And submarines that go under the water.’

Once again, Obama was diverting from the point.  If Obama carries through with his plans to reduce the military, we will not have those things.  We will not have enough aircraft carriers, planes, or submarines to engage in even one conflict, much less multiple conflicts. We will be in the same position as Great Britain was prior to World War II, where the British sunk their own fleets leftover from World War I in order to appease the Germans, who were busy cranking out ships, planes, the revamped submarines, and new thing called “tanks.”

Here’s some fact-checking for Obama:  Yes, there were battleships and aircraft carriers in World War I and submarines and torpedos.  Capt. Georg Von Trapp from the Sound of Music?  Remember him?  He was the captain of one of those subs in the Adriatic.  The award he got was for sinking the most British ships.  His first wife was Agathe Whitehead, granddaughter of the inventor of the first effective, self-propelled torpedo, Robert Whitehead.  He left all his vast fortune to her.

What’s more, to this day, our army uses horses and bayonets.  Glenn Beck noted that the Army uses horses in the Afghanistan war.  There’s even a book about it, called “Horse Soldiers:  The Extraordinary Story of a Band of Soldiers Who Rode to Victory in Afghanistan,” by Doug Stanton, published by Scribner in 2009.

In any case, Obama chose the loudmouth ignoramus approach to the debate, and Romney wisely let him go at it.  I know how it is.  The Tattooed Lady was complaining about how I completely ignore her, even when she shouts at me.  I responded by decorating my right-hand garden outside my door as a cemetery for Halloween.  I even have a ghost figure I’m saving back for Halloween Eve that looks just like her.  The point is, there’s really no arguing with idiots.  If someone is committing political suicide, you don’t try to save them; you keep out of their way and let them hammer themselves into oblivion.

Polls indicate that Obama technically won the third debate, yet Glenn Beck reported that while those who voted in his favor said they thought he won the debate, they didn’t like the way he did it.  Others didn’t understand what pundits meant by “looking presidential.”  What did Big Brother say about the undecided ten percent being the idiots who don’t know what’s going on, still haven’t made up their minds, and have no idea where Libya is, much less Benghazi,  yet they will decide who our next president will be?

If Obama doesn’t win the election, some pundits are promising that there will be riots in the streets.  A scarier thought, however, is that if he loses the election, he’ll become the next Secretary-General of the United Nations.

Obama brags about having killed Bin Laden (personally).  Yup, he got Bin Laden, chief of the 9/11/01 attacks - sent Navy SEAL Team Six in to bag him - and lost a U.S. ambassador, whose saving was not as optimal, on Sept. 11, 2012.  If The Blaze is the “media” of record, so be it.  I followed Glenn Beck from Fox News to his own network, cancelling all but my basic cable, because I wanted to hear the truth, something I wasn’t hearing anywhere else, not even on Fox.

The Benghazi story bears out my investment in that little Roku box and the subscription to Beck’s network.  The truth lives there.  If only Beck would stop beating himself up for being successful, I’d be perfectly satisfied…