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Saturday, September 15, 2012

Mark Steyn is absolutely correct: The attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya was a disgrace and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama share responsibility for the deaths of Americans in Libya.

Mark Steyn is disgusted with the State Department's errors in Libya:
This is a security fiasco and a strategic debacle for the foreign policy of the United States, not a liquor store hold-up. What is wrong even with the bland, compliant, desiccated, over-credentialed, pansified, groupthink poodles of the press corps that they don’t hoot and jeer at Victoria Nuland? I know why she’s doing it; I know why Hillary Clinton is desperately trying to suggest that some movie trailer on YouTube is the reason that a mob in Benghazi knows the location of the US Ambassador’s safe house. But why would anybody else even pretend to take this stuff seriously? Elderly Soviet propagandists must be wondering why they wasted their time jamming radio transmitters and smashing printing presses when they could just have sent everyone to Columbia Journalism School.
Steyn rightly calls the Benghazi attack a disgrace for the United States.  What is also disgraceful is how the White House and the American press responded to it:
The men who organized this attack knew the ambassador would be at the consulate in Benghazi rather than at the embassy in Tripoli. How did that happen? They knew when he had been moved from the consulate to a “safe house,” and switched their attentions accordingly. How did that happen? The United States government lost track of its ambassador for ten hours. How did that happen? Perhaps, when they’ve investigated Mitt Romney’s press release for another three or four weeks, the court eunuchs of the American media might like to look into some of these fascinating questions, instead of leaving the only interesting reporting on an American story to the foreign press.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney claims there was no prior notice of the attacks that happened in Libya on September 11, 2012.   Hillary Clinton has also echoed those remarks.  Secretary Clinton and Carney are not completely wrong about YouTube (it was just a different video than the one they are assigning blame to):  Al Qaeda posted a video on YouTube on September 9 urging Libyans to attack on September 11 and avenge the death of an al Qaeda leader killed in a drone attack:

[A] closer examination of the evidence indicates al-Qaeda orchestrated these attacks, and the movie was just a bogus excuse used to trigger the widespread violence. Even worse, it seems al-Qaeda telegraphed these attacks, and the Obama administration still got caught flat-footed, unaware of the terror group's strength in the region, missing key signals and clues that were out in the open. 
One day before September 11, al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahri posted a 42-minute video on Jihadist forums urging Libyans to attack Americans to avenge the death of Abu Yahya al-Libi, the terror organization’s second-in-command, whom U.S. drones killed in June of 2012 in Pakistan.In the video, al-Zawahri said al-Libi’s “blood is calling, urging and inciting you to fight and kill the Crusaders,” leading up to a date heralded and celebrated by radical Islamists. 
Another version of the video was actually posted on YouTube on September 9 and yet, President Barack Obama, who has not attended an intelligence briefing since September 5, and his administration did not beef up security at the embassy and consulate on September 11. There were no Marines present to protect Americans abroad, as the Islamic mobs overwhelmed what little security presence there was.
Barack Obama was tweeting about campaign merchandise at the same time that
Ambassador Stevens' remains were arriving back in the United States

But hey, President Obama is busy campaigning for re-election.  You cannot expect him to do everything.

Update:
Oh and Jay Carney and Hillary Clinton claiming the U.S. had no prior warning of the attack?  CNN is reporting Libyans warned US of attack three days in advance...

4 comments:

  1. Steyn's Disgrace piece sums up what's been rattling around in my head the last couple of days.

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    Replies
    1. I'm shocked! Shocked!! to find that it's CNN reporting that the Libyans warned of this horrific attack on our ambassador and his staff... Forgive the sarcassm, but what's behind that?
      I'm glad they did, though.

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  2. A day after the attacks, the New York Times didn't even put the story on page one. My local fishwrap didn't mention it for a couple days, and then some silly local story had a larger headline. Anyone who relies on these clowns for news is stupid.

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