On September 11, 2012, the U.S. Diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya was attacked by a heavily armed group of 125-150 terrorists, whose trucks bore machine guns and the logo of Ansar al-Sharia, a group of Islamist militants, also known as Al Qaeda.
The violence carried on into the morning of September 12 and the attack expanded with a military styled mortar attack on a nearby unmarked CIA annex. Our Ambassador, a State Department Information Officer and two CIA contractors were killed during the series of raids. Their names are Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, respectively.
In the famous Rose Garden speech President Obama spoke admirably of their courage, and of Christopher Stevens he praised, “With characteristic skill, courage and resolve he built partnerships with Libyan revolutionaries and helped them as they planned to build a new Libya.”
From the beginning there has been a lot of “hoopla” about Benghazi. Congressional hearings have been held, documents withheld, emails deleted, computer servers have been wiped clean, FBI investigations have been conducted, names of witnesses have been changed, dozens of books have been written, movies have been made, and scores of “journalists” have published articles with the ever changing “All the Facts You Need to Know About Benghazi”.
There are a lot of contradictions and inconsistencies in all the reports. And there are still a lot of unanswered questions.
All the hoopla began when the White House continued to claim that “the Benghazi attack grew out of a spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Islam video on YouTube.”
White House press secretary Jay Carney said, “We don’t have and did not have concrete evidence to suggest that this was not in reaction to the film.”
Just days later, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went on a “the video-caused-a-protest story” tour for all the Sunday talk shows to repeat.
On September 18 in response to David Letterman’s comment about the ambassador’s death, Obama began with the “video caused protest story”.
On September 20 Obama repeated the same narrative in a town hall meeting organized by Univision
It’s been pretty well documented that both Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama both repeatedly pushed the video story.
The complete pass given by the Washington Post and other news outlets for Obama and Hillary Clinton exposes the double standard media bias. It makes one wonder if there are no more real journalists. This story was bigger than elected officials coming up with a spur of the moment false cover up about a video and spontaneous mob to further an election campaign narrative. This story is not just about election campaign cover-up hi-jinks like Watergate, although that’s bad enough. There’s also a bigger picture, one like the “Iran-Contra” story. But it would take years for truth to leak out and even then people might not put two and two together. Predictably when we “built partnerships with Libyan revolutionaries and helped them as they planned to build a new Libya” as our President said, those same revolutionaries might not have liked some of our “partnerships” with other “revolutionaries”.
The New York Times reported that the thirty survivors of the Benghazi raid plus the four bodies were safe in Tripoli before 2PM Washington D.C. time on September 12. The thirty plus survivors had to inform Washington that the attack was a planned terrorist action, not the work of a spontaneous mob. The CIA operatives were in real time contact with headquarters and reported their rescue efforts at the consulate.
At least as of 2 PM September 12, Obama and Clinton knew that this video-spontaneous-mob story was false. As more evidence continues to surface, we find that it’s more likely they knew before then.
John Tiegen, a U.S. Marine Corp veteran, hero, and survivor of the Benghazi attacks, revealed information previously unknown to the public. Tiegen claims that there is a “consulate video” of the attack filmed from a drone. The video shows there were no protests. He said that Obama and Hillary Clinton watched it live, and still told the American people the “YouTube video being the cause story” even after watching the attack, and then did nothing for 13 hours to save others.
Testimony given by Greg Hicks, Benghazi whistle blower and deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya, may have first exposed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as a liar in the Benghazi affair. She had been briefed by Hicks who was on the ground, yet she shamelessly stood in front of the flag draped caskets and blamed a YouTube video anyway.
It can be seen on the YouTube video titled “President Obama Speaks at Ceremony for Benghazi Victims”. Watch Clinton starting at about the 6 minute mark: “We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing to do with. It is hard for the American people to make sense of that, because it is senseless and totally unacceptable.”
Two years later, on June 15, 2014, one extremist militia leader, was captured by U.S. special forces, and charged with murder. But there’s still more to it.
For starters, why did an American President and the Secretary of State absolutely knowingly lie about the attack? We all know now that the video story was an attempt to deceive the American people and to sell an election cycle campaign narrative. Was it all just about the election, or was there more than one lie going on? Were they also lying to a few foreign leaders, and maybe a few “revolutionaries”?
In an email which referenced the notes from a phone call between Clinton and the Libyan president while the attack was going on, Clinton wrote about a “gun battle … which I understand Ansar al-Sharia is claiming responsibility for.” So she knew right then. They both knew. And as it turns out, lots of people knew.
In another email on the day after the attack, Clinton told the Egyptian prime minister that “we know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack, not a protest.”
She even emailed her daughter, Chelsea, who used the phony email pseudonym “Diane Reynolds”, she also said then that that the attacks were undertaken by an “Al Queda-like group.”
Remember Hillary’s response to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on January 23,2013? It can now be revisited and seen that it was filled with skillful babble, verbal diversion and avoidance acrobatics which ended with the infamous punch line “What difference at this point does it make?”
The State Department, nevertheless, withheld emails under the “deliberative process” exemption to FOIA disclosure. The Obama administration told the court that the release of the email chain “could reasonably be expected to chill the frank deliberations that occur when senior staff members are preparing points or other draft remarks for use by senior Department officials in addressing a matter of public controversy.”
So, they will not give out inconvenient information about the Benghazi cover-up because it may hamper future federal cover-ups. (Remember our President’s campaign pledge to be “the most transparent administration”? It seems funny now in a macabre sort of way.)
What were we really doing there? Why did we have a lot of fairly heavy government operators (around 37 were evacuated) in a place like Benghazi?
Why have a diplomatic outpost that you don’t plan on protecting, or was it really a “diplomatic outpost”? (Well, they weren’t handing out “CARE Packages”, were they?)
Why were CIA operators told to stand down? Urgent requests from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack were denied by the CIA chain of command, who also told the CIA operators twice to “stand down” rather than help the ambassador’s team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 P.M. that night.
It has been difficult to determine through media accounts the exact number of Americans inside the consulate and the annex, but about 37 people were evacuated. Who were they? What were they doing, and why haven’t we heard from them?
We know that congressmen had difficulties even finding out their names. We know that some were hospitalized and the State Department had the names changed on their records. We know that the CIA had additional Non- Disclosure Agreements (NDA’s) created and signed by Benghazi operatives. And we know a lot of emails were deleted.
In September 2013, investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson sent a tweet “Secretary Kerry tells congress he will not honor the request to make Benghazi survivors available for questioning.”
It all seems like a lot of cover if we were supposedly just there for opening an American cultural corner at a local school.
There was a story about an attempt to recover thousands of potentially dangerous shoulder-fired missiles known as “MANPADS” that were leftover from the Qaddafi regime. And there was another story about hundreds of missiles destined for one rebel group being stolen from the annex by a different rebel group. Maybe all those stories are just more government “disinformation leaks”.
And what is long-time Clinton insider Sidney Blumenthal’s interest in all this? He seemed to hit the news cycle with an email revelation that Blumenthal was forwarding memos about Libya to Hillary and that Blumenthal didn’t write the memos. Instead, they came from someone else, and he was “simply and merely a conduit”. And it was reported that he had financial interests in companies that might profit from Libyan government contracts.
So where’s the money? Well, aside from rebuilding Libya after the revolution toppling Muammar Gaddafi, a lot of money is in arms dealing…government approved sales of weapons to foreign countries, and maybe sometimes to a few “revolutionaries”.
Obama gave Hillary the consolation prize after she suspended her presidential primary campaign in 2008 against him: she received an appointment to the powerful position of Secretary of State in 2009. Then, according to an annual study by the Congressional Research Service, in 2011 the United States overseas weapons sales had the biggest year ever. Weapons sales to developing nations skyrocketed to $66.3 billion. That number is not a small concern. It is 77.7 percent of the global market for that year. That’s right. The US more than tripled its revenue in arms deals with foreign countries in just one year. That’s a lot of influence, and a lot of news headlines starting out with “U.S. State Department Approves Sale of Arms to – (fill in the blank with your favorite developing nation)”
Sure, the government will always be careful to issue their PR packaged statements which emphasize that, “the proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region.”
However, their baloney boiler plate statements will do little to alleviate your concerns if you are the “enemy” of the guys who got their guns from the new State Department approved U.S. arms package.
In addition, realistically, how can you sell 77.7 percent of the market share for global arms sales and not “alter the basic military balance” practically everywhere on the globe? Or maybe that just means that the way to increase arms sales is to sell to both sides?
How does that work? So, arms dealers received permission lawfully from the State Department to sell the weapons to a government, like Qatar, and others.
Qatar then sells, barters or gives these arms to the rebel groups opposing someone we may not like at the time, like Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.
He may have disappointed us when he ordered crackdowns and military sieges on Arab Spring protesters, leading to the Syrian Civil War, killing more than 250,000 Syrians and displacing 11 million Syrians, almost half the population.
Although the US stated its opposition to the Assad government, it hesitated to openly involve itself in the conflict, even after the Assad government allegedly used chemical weapons in 2013, and even though President Obama had previously referred to that as a “red line” that would prompt intervention.
So the rebel groups who opposed Assad might also be terrorist organizations, and we give them covert support with the knowledge of U.S. officials. U.S. officials knew where the weapons would end up. It’s not the first time that’s happened. As the saying goes, “It’s not their first rodeo.”
And it is now known that in October 2015, the US scrapped its controversial program to train Syrian rebels to fight Assad, after it was revealed that it had spent $500m, but only trained 60 fighters. You’d think someone knows how much it costs to train a soldier by now. (About $35-$50,000 to get them to their first duty station) So who got that extra money? We’re talking about hundreds of millions from just that. How does that happen?
Many say that it was all a scheme between high ranking government officials to get arms shipped to rebels in Syria and Libya.
Some of the rebel groups were on the United States’ list of terrorist organizations, so providing “material assistance” to them would be a felony. So what might we do? Arm the terrorist rebels against the regime? Arm the regime sympathizers against the other terrorists? Then make an agreement with Russia and come back and bomb them all because we’ve made such a mess of it and we hope nobody talks. It seems that the main objective of our foreign policy has been to sell weapons because that’s the one thing we’ve done well. After all, market share statistics like 77 percent of the global market of anything would be the envy of any global corporation.
But then, the next thing that can happen is that good guys get killed or assassinated using American weaponry. And that would not be the first time that happened. Remember the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) operation called “Fast and Furious”?
Official documents revealed that the FBI operatives, who were using U.S. taxpayer funds to purchase weapons for cartels, were considered “national security assets,” “off limits,” and “untouchable.” In all, thousands of high-powered American guns were provided to cartels by the administration through a deadly scheme similar to the emerging Benghazi/Syria/etc. fiasco.
And after learning about the slaying of a federal border agent, who was killed near the Mexican border by drug-cartel operatives armed by the ATF,… and that the murder weapons were from the administrations operation “Fast and Furious”… and that Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department was engaged in an attempted cover-up….a few federal agents knew that it was finally time to turn “whistle blower” and to go to Congress. There seems to be a pattern.
Remember the 1986 Iran Contra Scandal? Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. They hoped thereby to secure the release of several U.S. hostages and to fund the Contras in Nicaragua. Further funding of the Contras by the government had been prohibited by Congress under the Boland Amendment. Fourteen administration officials were indicted,eleven convictions resulted, some of which were vacated on appeal. The rest of those indicted or convicted received a presidential pardon. That one was on the Reagan-Bush era. See how it works when you’re part of the government? Now they threaten you with the prison clauses in their Non-Disclosure Agreements to keep you quiet, but all the big wigs will get a pardon if they get caught.
In 2016 there was a lot of controversy surrounding the $400 million cash payment made to Iran and delivered by unmarked cargo plane during the night in exchange for four American hostages. The cash flown to Iran consisted of Euros, Swiss francs, and other currencies. American officials procured the money from banks in Switzerland and the Netherlands, according to the Wall Street Journal Report. (Our politicians probably have a lot of good relationships with banks in Switzerland and the Netherlands.)
Pallets of cash in multiple currencies delivered under the cover of darkness in unmarked cargo planes? Some said it sounded like an old fashioned drug deal. Cash of course is the favored currency of both politicians and terrorists because it cannot be tracked. Iran is unabashedly the world’s largest state sponsor of terror. (It might also be the biggest sponsor of crooked politicians) It was reported that the money was only the first installment of a $1.7 billion deal the Obama administration reached with Iran over a failed arms deal dating from just before the Iranian Revolution in1979. (Yeah, right.) The U.S. government airlift occurred as four detained Americans were released by Tehran, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Most governments have a policy that they won’t pay ransom to kidnappers. Paying ransom to kidnappers puts Americans at risk. The White House’s policy of appeasement has already led Iran to illegally seize more American hostages. Since the cash was airlifted, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard immediately began arresting more Iranian-Americans and detained dual-nationals from France, Canada and the U.K.
But that’s not all, between January 2014 and July 2015, when the Obama administration was hammering out the final details of the nuclear accord, Iran was paid $700 million every month from funds that had previously been frozen by U.S. sanctions. So who all was in line to get some of that money?
According to Mark Dubowitz, executive director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a total of $11.9 billion was ultimately paid to Iran, but the details surrounding these payments remain shrouded in mystery.
Dubowitz disclosed that in total, “Iran may have received as much as $33.6 billion in cash or in gold and other precious metals,”.
Iran funds Hezbollah, one of the largest terror networks in the world. Hezbollah was responsible for more American deaths than any other terrorist organization prior to September 11, 2001. Iran is recognized as the largest state sponsor of terrorism. Now since we’ve sponsored the largest state sponsor of terrorism, what does that make us? (OK, besides the biggest arms dealer.) And it might have made a few politicians very, very wealthy.
So, new information will come out every day. During the 2016 election cycle we can count on a lot more “cover” than “coverage”, so we may not learn much, but we do know three things:
1 The U.S. government lied to us all and the purpose of a lie is to hide something that seems worse – usually corruption when big government dollars are involved. This involves huge money. The biggest ever.
2 There are a lot of contradictions and inconsistencies in all the reports. And there are still a lot of unanswered questions.
3 The best way to increase arms sales is to sell to both sides.
