Obama’s Chairman of the Joint Chief nominee: Russia is an ‘existential threat’ to the United States

In the 2012 presidential debate between the congenitally smarmy and clownish Barack Obama and the hapless and fearful of offending Mitt Romney, Barack Obama leveled this charge against Romney:

OBAMA: Governor Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that Al Qaida is a threat, because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not Al Qaida; you said Russia, in the 1980s, they’re now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because, you know, the Cold War’s been over for 20 years

But Governor, when it comes to our foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s, just like the social policies of the 1950s and the economic policies of the 1920s.

Obama was wrong then. But if he had been right, then the testimony of his own nominee to be Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Joe Dunford would have provided damning appraisal on the fecklessness of Obama’s foreign policy:

During his confirmation hearing Thursday morning, President Barack Obama’s pick to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Joe Dunford, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Vladimir Putin’s Russia ranked No.1.

Moscow’s behavior is “nothing short of alarming,” the general said, adding that “Russia presents the greatest threat to our national security” and “could pose an existential threat to the United States.”

If Chief Justice John Roberts is reading this, we’re using a dictionary where this is found:

An existential threat is a threat to something’s survival.

One of the critical geo-political errors made by George H. W. Bush was treating Russia, the successor state to the USSR, as some sort of pet Yorkie that could be made to perform tricks rather than a nuclear-armed kleptocracy ruled by, as George Patton would have said, ‘recently civilized Mongolian bandits.’ George Bush was getting the formula right when he left office. He had looked into Putin’s soul and beheld a seething, effervescing puddle of hate and corruption.

China may be our most dangerous adversary. Iran is the one most likely to do something really ugly. But Russia is the only nation in the world that has set out to pick a fight with the United States for no other reason than Putin needs a permanent enemy to fight in order to remain in power. This was obvious in 2009. It is staggeringly obvious today.

So Obama owes the nation answers to several question.

Via: Red State

Continue Reading....

New Pentagon manual declares journalists can be enemy combatants

The Pentagon’s new thick book of instructions for waging war the legal way says that terrorists also can be journalists.

The description appears in a 1,176-page, richly footnoted “Department of Defense Law of War Manual” that tells commanders the right and wrong way to kill the enemy. It says it’s OK to shoot, explode, bomb, stab or cut the enemy. Surprise attacks and killing retreating troops also are permitted. But a U.S. warrior may not use poison or asphyxiating gases.

Going back decades, this is the Pentagon’s first comprehensive, all-in-one legal guide for the four military branches, who over the years had issued their own law of war pamphlets for air, sea and ground warfare.

The manual pushes aside the George W. Bush-era label of “unlawful enemy combatant” for al Qaeda and the like. The new term of choice: “unprivileged belligerent.”

An eye-catching section deals with a definition of journalists and how they are expected to stay out of the fight.

The manual defines them this way: “In general, journalists are civilians. However, journalists may be members of the armed forces, persons authorized to accompany the armed forces, or unprivileged belligerents.”

Lumping terrorist writers with bona fide scribes prompted one officer to call the paragraph “odd.” A civilian lawyer who opines on war crime cases called the wording “an odd and provocative thing for them to write.”

Michael Rubin, a Middle East expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said the manual reflects today’s muddled world of journalism.

“It’s a realization that not everyone abides by the same standards we do,” said Mr. Rubin. “Just as Hamas uses United Nations schools as weapons depots and Iran uses charity workers for surveillance, many terrorist groups use journalists as cover.”

Mr. Rubin recalled that two al Qaeda terrorists posed as journalists to assassinate anti-Taliban leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. Chechen Islamists went on missions with camera crews.

“Journalists are the new consultant. Anyone can claim to be one,” he said. “No American serviceman should ever be killed because a politician told them they had to take a foreign journalist at his or her word.”

Army Lt. Col. Joseph R. Sowers, a Pentagon spokesman, explained the reasoning behind the inclusion of “unprivileged belligerents” as journalists.

“We do not think that there is any legal significance to the manual listing unprivileged belligerents as sometimes being journalists because the manual does not, itself, create new law,” Col. Sowers said.

“That last sentence simply reflects that, in certain cases, persons who act as journalists may be members of the armed forces, persons authorized to accompany the armed forces or unprivileged belligerents rather than civilians. The fact that a person is a journalist does not prevent that person from becoming an unprivileged belligerent.”

Via: Washington Times

Continue Reading....

[VIDEO] Emails reportedly show confidant told Clinton Benghazi attack planned by AQ-tied fighters

A longtime Clinton confidant reportedly advised then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton two days after the 2012 Benghazi terror attack that an Al Qaeda-tied group had planned the deadly assault and used a protest as cover -- but despite this warning, Clinton's U.N. ambassador went on to publicly claim the attack was "spontaneous." 

The guidance from ex-Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal was contained in a memo sent Sept. 13, according to The New York Times. It is the latest documentation effectively contradicting the administration's early narrative that the attack was driven by protests over an anti-Islam Internet video -- and raising questions over why officials stuck to that story for days. 

According to the Times, Blumenthal initially blamed "demonstrators" angry over that video for the attacks. But the next day, he sent Clinton a very different memo. 

According to the Times, Blumenthal told Clinton the attack was driven by Al Qaeda-tied Ansar al-Shariah members who had planned it for a month and used a protest as cover. He cited "sensitive sources." 

"We should get this around asap," Clinton reportedly told an adviser in response.

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading....

[VIDEO] Trove of Bin Laden documents released

U.S. intelligence officials on Wednesday released a trove of documents recovered during the 2011 raid on Usama bin Laden's compound -- offering a rare window into the operations of Al Qaeda and bin Laden's involvement in leading the network from his Pakistan hideaway. 

The documents include dozens of letters, some from  bin Laden himself, as well as accounting information and even what appears to be an application form for prospective Al Qaeda members. That form, which asks a series of detailed questions, includes the line: "Who should we contact in case you became a martyr?" 

CLICK TO READ THE DOCUMENTS 

The correspondence itself shows bin Laden continued to be engaged from his hideout and sought to direct operations. Shortly before he was killed in the May 2011 raid, a letter shows him celebrating the Arab Spring revolutions which had toppled Tunisia's leader at that point and were mounting in several other countries. 

"These are gigantic events that will eventually engulf most of the Muslim world, will free the Muslim land from American hegemony, and is troubling America whose Secretary of State declared that they are worried about the armed Muslims controlling the Muslim region," bin Laden wrote, according to a translated version. 

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading....

[VIDEO] Military intel predicted rise of ISIS in 2012, detailed arms shipments from Benghazi to Syria

Seventeen months before President Obama dismissed the Islamic State as a "JV team," a Defense Intelligence Agency report predicted the rise of the terror group and likely establishment of a caliphate if its momentum was not reversed. 

While the report was circulated to the CIA, State Department and senior military leaders, among others, it's not known whether Obama was ever briefed on the document. 

The DIA report, which was reviewed by Fox News, was obtained through a federal lawsuit by conservative watchdog Judicial Watch. Documents from the lawsuit also reveal a host of new details about events leading up to the 2012 Benghazi terror attack -- and how the movement of weapons from Libya to Syria fueled the violence there. 

The report on the growing threat posed by what is now known as the Islamic State was sent on Aug. 5, 2012. 

The report warned the continued deterioration of security conditions would have "dire consequences on the Iraqi situation," and huge benefits for ISIS -- which grew out of Al Qaeda in Iraq. 

"This creates the ideal atmosphere for AQI (Al Qaeda in Iraq) to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi," the document states, adding "ISI (Islamic State of Iraq) could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of its territory." 

Via: Fox News Politics

Continue Reading.....

American held by al Qaeda in Pakistan urges Obama for help

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - A U.S. development worker kidnapped in Pakistan by al Qaeda two years ago appealed to President Barack Obama to intervene and help negotiate his release, in a video released on Thursday.

In a 13-minute clip issued by al Qaeda's media wing and posted on several news websites, Warren Weinstein, 72, looked gaunt and tired.

"I am not in good health. I have a heart condition. I suffer from acute asthma... Needless to say I've been suffering deep anxiety every part of every day," he said.

"Mr President, for the majority of my adult life, for over 30 years I've served my country ... Now when I need my government it seems that I have been totally abandoned and forgotten."

The video could not be independently verified.

Weinstein was abducted in 2011 in the eastern city of Lahore where he worked for a U.S. consulting company.

Pakistan's tribal areas on its border with Afghanistan serve as safe havens for al Qaeda, the Taliban and other militant groups, and the Islamabad government has been under pressure from the United States to do more to eliminate the insurgency.

Via: Chicago Tribune

Continue Reading....

Hill leaders: Terror threat growing in US; intel community not the 'bad guys'

The worldwide terror threat is growing and changing, making Americans less safe than they were in years past, the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees said Sunday.

“Terror is up worldwide,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. “The statistics indicate that. The fatalities are way up.”

Feinstein made her comments on CNN’s “State of the Union” during a joint interview with Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, who argued the terror group Al Qaeda continues to grow and consolidate.

“What's happening in places like Syria [is] that you have a pooling of Al Qaeda and affiliates. …  Groups have changed the way they communicate, which means it's less likely that we're going to be able to detect something prior to an event.”

Rogers also suggested that public scrutiny over U.S. intelligence work, brought on by recent disclosures about the efforts of the National Security Agency and others, has hurt anti-terror efforts.

“We’re fighting amongst ourselves here in this country about the role of our intelligence community,” he said. “That is having an impact on our ability to stop what is a growing number of threats. Our intelligence community isn’t the bad guys.”

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading....

Exclusive: US May Have Let 'Dozens' of Terrorists Into Country As Refugees

Several dozen suspected terrorist bombmakers, including some believed to have targeted American troops, may have mistakenly been allowed to move to the United States as war refugees, according to FBI agents investigating the remnants of roadside bombs recovered from Iraq and Afghanistan.

The discovery in 2009 of two al Qaeda-Iraq terrorists living as refugees in Bowling Green, Kentucky -- who later admitted in court that they'd attacked U.S. soldiers in Iraq -- prompted the bureau to assign hundreds of specialists to an around-the-clock effort aimed at checking its archive of 100,000 improvised explosive devices collected in the war zones, known as IEDs, for other suspected terrorists' fingerprints.

"We are currently supporting dozens of current counter-terrorism investigations like that," FBI Agent Gregory Carl, director of the Terrorist Explosive Device Analytical Center (TEDAC), said in an ABC News interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC News' "World News with Diane Sawyer" and "Nightline".

"I wouldn't be surprised if there were many more than that," said House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Michael McCaul. "And these are trained terrorists in the art of bombmaking that are inside the United States; and quite frankly, from a homeland security perspective, that really concerns me."

As a result of the Kentucky case, the State Department stopped processing Iraq refugees for six months in 2011, federal officials told ABC News – even for many who had heroically helped U.S. forces as interpreters and intelligence assets. One Iraqi who had aided American troops was assassinated before his refugee application could be processed, because of the immigration delays, two U.S. officials said. In 2011, fewer than 10,000 Iraqis were resettled as refugees in the U.S., half the number from the year before, State Department statistics show.

Via: ABC News

Continue Reading.....

[WATCH] Fox News guest claims al Qaeda could’ve run Obamacare better than the president

The implementation of Obamacare has been so bad, according to a recent guest on Fox News, that the terrorist organization al Qaeda could have run the program more efficiently.

Robert Laszewski, a former insurance executive and the president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, made that assertion to Fox News’ Megyn Kelly Monday night.

“The federal health care exchange is simply not going to be working” by January 1st, he said. “The Health and Human Services Department held a briefing on Friday, a progress report, and said every time they find something broken, they fix it, and then find something else broken. This is just a disaster. Al Qaeda couldn’t have run this worse than the Obama Administration has run Healthcare.gov.”

Laszewski also added that he had been in contact with several insurers, who confirmed the bleak enrollment numbers released by The Wall Street Journal Monday. According to the Journal, less than 50,000 Americans have successfully purchased private insurance through the Healthcare.gov website. Despite the website’s many technical issues, the number represents about one-tenth of the Obama Administration’s initial enrollment target.

“The numbers the Wall Street Journal reported, 50,000, are accurate,” Lasczewski said. “They jibe with the numbers I have been hearing. More than that. It’s 50,000 people, but it works out to about 50 people per state per day. Do the math. 30 days, 36 states, 50 people a day…That’s the trickle that’s getting through Healthcare.gov right now. Very, very few people are able to make it through this gauntlet.”

Watch the exchange below.

Via: Red Alert Politics

Continue Reading.....

Obama’s Waffling Foreign Policy

AFP PHOTO/Mandel NGANMANDEL NGAN/AFP/GettyImages

President Obama’s foreign policy over the course of his presidency has suffered from severe inconsistency, writes Heritage Foundation distinguished fellow Kim Holmes in The Washington Times:

He’ll draw red lines in Syria and threaten military strikes, then call off the strikes and convene diplomatic conferences. If he’s not killing terrorists with drones, he’s bringing them to New York for civilian trial. He’ll bypass the United Nations Security Council to take military action against Syria, but demand its approval before bombing Libya.

As Jackson Diehl wrote in The Washington Post this week, even if “al-Qaeda’s new base in eastern Syria, Hezbollah’s deployment of tens of thousands of missiles in Lebanon and the crumbling of the U.S.-fostered Iraqi political system pose no particular threat to America,” these are major concerns to U.S. allies. This leaves our allies wondering whether the U.S. will act to defend them in the face of aggression from common foes.

This is no way to lead a country on the international stage and is a result of President Obama’s being, as Holmes puts it, “deeply conflicted about the purposes of American power.” Consistent policy is based on conviction, and without conviction, a leader cannot successfully defend his actions to allies. More importantly, he has no chance of expecting those allies to maintain their trust in the security he is supposed to provide.

Via: The Foundry

Continue Reading.....

Terrorists Threaten to Strike Back

The covert U.S. military raid to capture a senior Libyan al Qaeda leader in Tripoli has triggered threats against Americans and other anti-U.S. sentiment in the volatile north African state.

The most serious threat included a posting on Facebook warning that U.S. journalists in the country will be kidnapped and used to try and exchange them for Abu Anas al Libi, who was snatched by commandos on Saturday in the Libyan capital.

Most of the threats appeared on the Facebook page “We are all Nazih al Rugai”—another name used by al Libi. The site was opened Oct. 6 and closed on Wednesday.

Other Libyan Islamists issued threats to target U.S. interests in North Africa, Malta, and Italy. The group Al Ruqayat Rebels Assembly posted the statement on Facebook and said the attacks would be in retaliation for the “treacherous abduction” of al Libi.

Islamists also called for mass demonstrations outside the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli.

Regarding the capture of U.S. journalists, an Oct. 9 posting on the Facebook site in Arabic stated that the “best defense is a good offense.”

“I am speaking now about swap deals,” the posting stated. “The government, the [General National] Congress, and the state shall know that America has breached the covenant with its nationals staying now in the country. Now, they are not protected by any covenant or agreement. I say frankly that the kidnapping and disappearance of journalists working for the intelligence service and touring the country will continue to take place in the country until the Libyan citizen [Abu Anas al Libi] is back to his country and his people with pride. O agents of America, we warn you.”

Via: WFB

Continue Reading.....

Kenya's president says his military has 'ashamed and defeated' Islamist militants inside mall

Kenya’s president says his military has “ashamed and defeated” Al Qaeda-linked terrorists in an apparent end to a standoff and hostage situation inside a popular mall that lasted for four days.

Uhuru Kenyatta said in a national address Tuesday that Kenya’s armed forces were able to kill five of the militants and took eleven into custody. 

"These cowards will need justice as well their accomplices and patrons, wherever they are," he said.

He said 61 civilians and six security officers were killed in the violence at Nairobi’s Westgate Mall, and called for three days of national mourning beginning Wednesday.

Kenyatta added that three floors of the mall collapsed and that there are "several bodies still trapped in the rubble, including the terrorists."

FBI investigators are now waiting for forensic evidence, including fingerprints taken from inside the mall as well as dental records, to verify claims that some of the attackers were Americans, a federal law enforcement source told Fox News. 

Kenya's foreign minister, Amina Mohamed, claimed in a television interview Monday that two or three Americans and one Briton were among those behind the attack.

Amina Mohamed said in an interview with PBS' "NewsHour" program that the Americans were 18 to 19 years old, of Somali or Arab origin and lived "in Minnesota and one other place" in the U.S. The attacker from Britain was a woman who has "done this many times before," Mohamed said.

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading....

President Barack Obama owes world explanation about why he supports al-Qaeda

If ever there was a terrorist attack that cries out the name “President Barack Hussein Obama!” the massacre at Kenya’s Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi is it.

The Somalian terrorist group, al-Shabaab, which has links to al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the slaughter of at least 68 people, including Canadian diplomat Annemarie Desloges and an as yet unnamed other Canadian. Annemarie’s husband, Robert Munk was injured and has since been released from hospital.

Imagine this horrific scene: Terrified shoppers hid behind counters as the gunmen went on the rampage using guns and grenades. (Daily Mail, Sept. 22, 2013)

Today 10 to 15 hostages are still trapped in the shopping center as security forces lay siege to the building, from which Armed police managed to lead about 1,000 people to safety.

Via: Canada Free Press

Continue Reading....

The 12-Year War: 73% of U.S. Casualties in Afghanistan on Obama's Watch

(CNSNews.com) - Twelve years ago today, nineteen al Qaeda terrorists hijacked four U.S. commercial airliners and flew them into the World Trade Towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

In the war that Congress authorized against al Qaeda only three days after that attack, the vast majority of the U.S. casualties have occurred in the last four and a half years during the presidency of Barack Obama.

In fact, according to the CNSNews.com database of U.S. casualties in Afghanistan, 73 percent of all U.S. Afghan War casualties have occurred since Jan. 20, 2009 when Obama was inaugurated.

The 91 U.S. casualties in Afghanistan so far in 2013 are more than those that occurred in the first two full calendar years of the war (2002 and 2003) combined, when 30 and 31 U.S. troops were killed there.

On Sept. 14, 2001, Congress approved a resolution authorizing the president “to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons.”

CNS News

Continue Reading....

Election-year shock: Obama boasts of ‘decimated’ al Qaeda undermined by intel briefings

As President Obama ran to election victory last fall with claims that al Qaeda was “decimated” and “on the run,” his intelligence team was privately offering a different assessment that the terrorist movement was shifting resources and capabilities to emerging spinoff groups in Africa that posed fresh threats to American security.

Top U.S. officials, including the president, were told in the summer and fall of 2012 that the African offshoots were gaining money, lethal knowledge and a mounting determination to strike U.S. and Western interests while keeping in some contact with al Qaeda’s central leadership, said several people directly familiar with the intelligence.

---

PHOTOS: President Obama's favorite footstool: The famous Resolute desk

---

The gulf between the classified briefings and Mr. Obama’s pronouncements on the campaign trail touched off a closed-door debate inside the intelligence community about whether the terrorist group’s demise was being overstated for political reasons, officials told The Washington Times.

Many Americans believed when they voted in November that the president was justifiably touting a major national security success of his first term. After all, U.S. special operations forces succeeded in May 2011 in capturing and killing the al Qaeda founder and original leader, Osama bin Laden, in Pakistan.

But key players in the intelligence community and in Congress were actually worried that Mr. Obama was leaving out a major new chapter in al Qaeda’s evolving story in order to bend the reality of how successful his administration had been during its first four years in the fight against terrorism.

Via: Washington Times

Continue Reading.....

Welcome to the ‘United States of al-Qaeda’

Big question on Syria should not be why America is going into Syria, but who America is sending into Syria

Look out Free World: Here Comes the USA—the newly minted ‘United States of al-Qaeda’.

The ‘United States of al-Qaeda’ is the first hard evidence of President Barack Obama’s Fundamental Transformation of America, which in effect throws all U.S. citizens in with the terrorists known as al-AQaeda; a new kind of military of which no one can be proud.

It was in 2008 when running for the presidency, that Barack Obama declared he would someday soon lead a civilian army of his very own: “We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we set.  We gotta’ have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded.” (Barack Obama, July 2, 2008).

To a majority of the American population, it may no longer be “our military” but Obama’s ‘United States of al-Qaeda’.

Back when Obama was talking about having his own army,  no one in the mainstream media took him at his word.  Whipped up during a campaign where people actually fainted at the sight of him, voters sent the man who vowed to lead his own army to the Oval office in a landslide election that was to change America forever.

Surrealism not withstanding, it somehow fits the script that the senator who ran against him for the presidency is now Obama’s biggest booster for war on Syria when he’s not playing iPhone poker during senate hearings.

Via: Canada Free Press

Continue Reading....

Obama Declares “Al-Qaeda Has Been Decimated”…

Even as new information continues to surface revealing that the Obama White House may be embroiled in a cover-up scandal regarding the terror attack in Benghazi that left four Americans dead, the president took to the campaign trail in Wisconsin Thursday morning and actually declared that “al Qaeda has been decimated.” Recall that the carnage in Libya was, according to experts, waged by al Qaeda or pro-al Qaeda affiliates like the militant group Ansar al Sharia, which even claimed credit for the attack.

The president made the ire-inducing remark during a campaign stop at Austin Straubel International Airport Thursday morning where he spoke to a crowd of some 2,600 people. Obama, wearing a flight-jacket, addressed Hurricane Sandy relief efforts, then touched on the economy but  highlighted what he framed as his accomplishments in foreign policy, including smiting Osama bin Laden and yes, “decimating al Qaeda.”

“The war in Afghanistan is winding down,” the president said. “al Qaeda has been decimated. Osama bin Laden is dead. So we made real progress these last four years, but Wisconsin, we know our work’s not done yet.”

Obama’s statement, for many conservatives, is the ultimate in hubris and they took to Twitter to convey as much. Consider the following tweets, courtesy of Twitchy:

Via: The Blaze

Continue Reading...

Exclusive: Classified cable warned consulate couldn't withstand 'coordinated attack'

The U.S. Mission in Benghazi convened an “emergency meeting” less than a month before the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, because Al Qaeda had training camps in Benghazi and the consulate could not defend against a “coordinated attack,” according to a classified cable reviewed by Fox News.

Summarizing an Aug. 15 emergency meeting convened by the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Aug. 16 cable marked “SECRET” said that the State Department’s senior security officer, also known as the RSO, did not believe the consulate could be protected.

“RSO (Regional Security Officer) expressed concerns with the ability to defend Post in the event of a coordinated attack due to limited manpower, security measures, weapons capabilities, host nation support, and the overall size of the compound,” the cable said.

According to a review of the cable addressed to the Office of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Emergency Action Committee was also briefed "on the location of approximately ten Islamist militias and AQ training camps within Benghazi … these groups ran the spectrum from Islamist militias, such as the QRF Brigade and Ansar al-Sharia, to ‘Takfirist thugs.’” Each U.S. mission has a so-called Emergency Action Committee that is responsible for security measures and emergency planning.

The details in the cable seemed to foreshadow the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. compound, which was a coordinated, commando-style assault using direct and indirect fire. Al Qaeda in North Africa and Ansar al-Sharia, both mentioned in the cable, have since been implicated in the consulate attack.

In addition to describing the security situation in Benghazi as “trending negatively,” the cable said explicitly that the mission would ask for more help. “In light of the uncertain security environment, US Mission Benghazi will submit specific requests to US Embassy Tripoli for additional physical security upgrades and staffing needs by separate cover.”

As for specific threats against the U.S., the cable warned the intelligence was not clear on the issue, cautioning that the militias in Benghazi were not concerned with any significant retaliation from the Libyan government, which had apparently lost control in Benghazi. A briefer explained that they “did not have information suggesting that these entities were targeting Americans but did caveat that (there was not) a complete picture of their intentions yet. RSO (Regional Security Officer) noted that the Benghazi militias have become more brazen in their actions and have little fear of reprisal from the (government of Libya.)”

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading...

FOX EXCLUSIVE: E-mails Prove White House Knew Within Hours Al Qaeda-Linked Terrorists Claimed Responsibility for Benghazi Attack

Fox News

State Department emails from day of Libya attack show Al Qaeda-tied group on radar

 

By Chad Pergram | Published October 24, 2012 | FoxNews.com

A series of internal State Department emails obtained by Fox News shows some of the initial assessments of last month's deadly consulate attack in Libya, including one email within hours of the attack that noted the group Ansar al Sharia had claimed responsibility.

The emails provide some of the most detailed information to surface about what officials knew in the initial hours after the attack. And it again raises questions about why U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, apparently based on intelligence assessments, would claim five days after the attack that it was a 'spontaneous' reaction to protests over an anti-Islam film.

Ansar al Sharia has been declared by the State Department to be an Al Qaeda-affiliated group. A member of the group suspected of participating in the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi has been arrested and is being held in Tunisia.

The emails obtained by Fox News were sent by the State Department to a variety of national security platforms, whose addresses have been redacted, including the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon, the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence.

Fox News was told that an estimated 300 to 400 national security figures received these emails in real time almost as the raid was playing out and concluding. People who received these emails work directly under the nation’s top national security, military and diplomatic officials, Fox News was told.

The timestamps on the emails are all Eastern Time and often include the subheading SBU…which is shorthand for “Sensitive But Unclassified.”

The third email came at 6:07 p.m. ET and was sent to a different email list but still includes the White House Situation Room address and a subject line of “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack (SBU).”

“Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli," the email reads.

Earlier emails did not go into who might have been responsible for the attack.

The first email indicates that U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and other personnel were “in the compound safe haven.” Officials later discovered that Stevens and three other Americans had died in the attack.

The first email was sent at 4:05 p.m. ET with the subject line “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack (SBU).”

“The Regional Security Officer reports the diplomatic mission is under attack," the email reads. "Embassy Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four COM personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17^th of February militia is providing security support.

"The operations Center will provide updates as available.”

The second email came at 4:54 p.m. ET, with a subject line “Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi (SBU)"

“Embassy Tripoli reports the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi has stopped and the compound has been cleared. A response team is on site attempting to locate COM personnel.”

Via: Fox News

Continue Reading...

Draw Down, Back Down Obama to push come-home foreign policy in debate

President Barack Obama is pushing an isolationist return-to-home foreign policy in his latest TV attack-ad, entitled “Rebuilding.”

Obama will likely push that theme during Monday’s foreign-policy debate, partly because support for the anti-jihad campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan have fallen further — especially among late-deciding swing voters — since Obama took office in 2009.

“Obama ended the Iraq war. Mitt Romney would have kept 30,000 troops there, and called bringing them home ‘tragic,’” says the 32-second ad.

“Obama has brought 30,000 soldiers back from Afghanistan, and has a responsible plan to end the war. … It is time to stop fighting over there, and start rebuilding here,” the ad concludes.

The ad does not say if the president wants to win the Afghanistan campaign, which began after al-Qaida’s jihadis used Afghanistan to launch the Sept. 11 attack on New York.

Obama pulled troops out of Iraq in 2011 after Iraq leaders declined a proposed long-term strategic deal. The draft deal, however, collapsed after Obama said the proposed U.S. back-force in Iraq had to be fewer than 4,000 troops.

The withdrawal came after U.S. forces had won a hard-fought to campaign to cripple the various groups that were attacking the elected Iraqi government.

Since then, Iraq’s government has come under increasing pressure from the radical leadership in neighboring Iran.

Via: The Daily Caller

Continue Reading...