Benghazi - No Big Deal - Just a Blip in The Road of Lies!

I leave Saturday for another trip so no more memos for probably a week.
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Every effort is  being made by Obama's lap dogs in Congress and the media and news to make Benghazi go away. Those seeking the true facts are being accused of conducting a political witch hunt.
Those doing so are being  attacked for asking legitimate questions. Those opposing those seeking the true facts  are  trying to ignore the implications of Benghazi as if it never happened.

Democrats are engaged in this because Benghazi shows how callous, amoral and incompetent this lying  Administration is and the fact that they sought to win an election making killing bin Laden one of their themes..  It further shows how Hillary played along.

Obama would love to pass the baton to Hillary as payback for what 'Ole" Bill did for him and for coming to his rescue time and again etc.

Now Obama's deviance has made Hillary damaged goods and that could destroy her chance to become the Queen of America.

It is a very sordid tale which reveals to me , once again,  Hillary will do anything, even if it means allowing those under her charge to die without an effort to protect them.

Obama's press secretary's last name connotes a message as well. He is no more than a 'circus carny'!(See 1 and 1a below.)
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Has Obama's foot dragging in Syria allowed Iran and Hezballah to create a game changer? (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Caroline Glick and her dirty little secrets! (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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1)Gen. Hayden: Continuing Benghazi False Narrative 'Not Forgivable'
By Greg Richter and Kathleen Walter




The continuation of a false narrative for weeks after the terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead is "not understandable and is not forgivable," former director of the National Security Agency and Central Intelligence Agency Gen. Michael Hayden told Newsmax TV.

Hayden, in an exclusive interview, said he's been in the shoes of the State Department staff who had to deal with the aftermath of the Benghazi terrorist attacks. Knowing what they were going through, he tells Newsmax that he doesn't want to accuse anyone of wrongdoing in how they handled the situation while it was ongoing – or immediately afterward. 

But he is curious about why so few options were available in the first place and why the State Department and the White House weeks later were sticking with the narrative of a demonstration over a video.

"I’ve been in these kinds of circumstances where if you’ve got a worldview, if you’ve got a narrative that you believe in, you try to make the facts presented to you fit the narrative," Hayden said. "I fear there may have been some people in our government who kind of fell into that trap in the days after Benghazi, which is understandable and, frankly, forgivable, and then in the weeks after Benghazi, which is not understandable and is not forgivable."

"Anyone like me who saw those events would quickly conclude it was a terrorist attack," Hayden said. "It was fairly complex, synchronized, direct and indirect fire weapons on multiple locations, and it took place in a part of Libya that was the heartland of the Libyan Islamic fighting group."

"I mean, the immediate explanation that this was a bad movie review, that just beggared comprehension," he said.

You don’t have to do anything bad or stupid or unwise for bad things to happen, he said. He's more concerned with what happened before and after the Benghazi events.

Wednesday's testimony touched on that, he said, but added that more questions need to be answered. 

"If you had this very short menu of very bad choices to make during the event, why is that? Why do you put people in harm’s way the way we did when there was solid intelligence that Benghazi was very dangerous?" he said. "And then, afterward, I guess I would say don’t treat me like a child. It’s very obvious as to what happened here so give me some clarity, rather than obfuscating what really happened on the ground."

In a report three months after the events, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen and Ambassador Thomas Pickering concluded that, indeed, few options were available, and Hayden said he believes, after hearing Wednesday's testimony, that everyone on the ground did exactly what they should have.

"They were choosing from a short list of very bad options," Hayden said. "My point is, why is there only a short list of very bad options? Why did you create the circumstances in which there was almost nothing that could be done to save the ambassador and the other individuals?"

When he was head of the National Security Agency every intelligence report was sent with his name on it regardless of whether he personally knew about it, so he isn't surprised that some had then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's name on them.

Still, the report by Mullen and Pickering found "systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies."

There were lots of mistakes in Benghazi, Hayden said, "The question is, just at what level were they finalized?"

1a)

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

I

BREAKING: Jay Carney Lied About the Benghazi Talking Points

Breaking this morning, from ABC News' Jonathan Karl:

When it became clear last fall that the CIA's now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story.

ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.

White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department.  The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.

That would appear to directly contradict what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November.

"Those talking points originated from the intelligence community.  They reflect the IC's best assessments of what they thought had happened," Carney told reporters at the White House press briefing on November 28, 2012.  "The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word 'consulate' to 'diplomatic facility' because 'consulate' was inaccurate."

Here's the kicker: "In an email to officials at the White House and the intelligence agencies, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland took issue with including that information because it "could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either?  Concerned . . ."

Hey, why would they want to accurately inform the public if it might result in criticism from Congress, right?

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2)The Middle East, Suddenly Armed to the Teeth with 'Game Changer' Missiles

Perhaps the Middle East will be quiet in the coming days, but if it isn't . . . well, maybe this is a factor:

The chief of Hezbollah has said the the Lebanese Shia armed group is ready to receive "game-changing" weapons from Syria, just days after Israeli air strikes on Damascus reportedly targeted shipments of advanced Iranian weapons bound for the group.

Hassan Nasrallah, in a speech on Thursday, said the shipments of new types of weapons would serve as the Syrian reaction to Israel's air strikes.

"The resistance [against Israel] is prepared to accept any sophisticated weaponry even if it was to break the equilibrium [in the region]," he said in a speech.

Okay, first, the phrase "game-changer" is long overdue for retirement. John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, I blame you.

Apparently this is the hot phrase all over the Middle East:

Israel launched air strikes on targets in Damascus early on Sunday morning that shook the city and lit up the horizon.

Western and Israeli sources said its aim was to take out "game-changing" Iranian missiles destined for Hezbollah, which fought a war with Israel in 2006 and is a staunch ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Meanwhile, as Secretary of State John Kerry attempts to keep the Syrian bloodbath from spreading any further, the Russians are tweaking him, letting slip that they're shipping new arms to Syria, right after he asked them to help calm things down:

Secretary of State John Kerry today stood by his renewed push with the Russian government for the Assad regime and Syria's opposition to negotiate a political solution to end the conflict, now going into it's third year.

Speaking at a news conference in Rome, Kerry addressed a Wall Street Journal report on Thursday that Russia was preparing to sell missiles to the Syrian government, saying he expressed his general disapproval of Russian support to the Assad regime during his meetings with President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov earlier this week.

"We've made it crystal clear that we would prefer Russians not supply assistance. That is on record. That hasn't changed," said Kerry, who added that the United States believes the shipment of missiles would be "potentially destabilizing with the respect to the state of Israel."

But he also acknowledged that there are countries supplying weapons to the rebels, and stressed that he wants to focus on what the United States and Russia can accomplish towards helping both sides reach a political solution soon.

He said he remained encouraged by the Russians' cooperation and by what he described as a public backing-away from their specific support for Assad.

I feel actually pretty good that John Kerry is our secretary of state. Oh, I don't think he'll thrive in the job; in fact, I think he'll fall flat on his face. But he's wanted to do this job for so long, and been so certain that he knew how to play this role perfectly, that it's fun to see him run headlong into reality.

Anyway, about those missiles:

"It would be a game-changer," a senior Western diplomat said of the reported decision to offer the missiles to Assad. The diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because details of the reported offer remain classified, speculated that Moscow could be seeking leverage ahead of talks on a possible political settlement to the Syrian crisis.

You would almost think the "Game Changer" was a particular type of missile, wouldn't you?

Russia was heavily criticized in 2007 when it signed a deal to sell S-300 batteries to Iran for $800 million. Russian officials eventually terminated the contract, citing new U.N. resolutions banning the export of advanced missile systems to Tehran.

"After discussions with us, they did decide not to provide the missiles to the Iranians," recalled Dennis Ross, who was a senior Middle East adviser to the Obama administration in 2010, when Russia halted the missile sale to Iran. "If they proceed now, it hardly signals that they are prepared to walk away from Assad."

I just envision Kerry in his office, hitting the "reset button" over and over again, like an impatient man at an elevator.


2a)US envoy Ford’s secret crossing into Syria. Turkey’s “chemical dossier” for Obama


The Obama administration’s slowcoach policy on Syria has given Iran and Hizballah unfettered access for military intervention in the Syrian civil war, magnifying its lethality and heightening the prospects of its spilling over into Israel, Turkey and Jordan, say Middle East analysts. 

Ahead now is the influx of highly advanced weapons into the already excessively violent conflict. Thursday, May 9, US Secretary of State John Kerry warned that the transfer of advanced missile defense systems from Russia to Syria would be a “destabilizing factor for Israel’s security.”

Speaking to reporters in Rome, he was referring to Moscow’s imminent sale of S-300 air defense missiles to the Assad regime, and which President Vladimir Putin had disclosed in his tough conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu about Israel’s air strikes on Damascus.

In his comments, Kerry said nothing about how the US intended to stop the sale or respond to the deployment in Syria of weapons that would not only affect Israel’s security but lock the sky against US air action against Syria and the imposition of a no-fly zone.

The Syrian conflict and its repercussions, already horrendous, will go from bad to worse when it transpires – inevitably - that the Obama administration has no partner for its loudly hailed accord with Moscow, obtained by Kerry on May 7, for an international peace conference on the conflict.

Moscow has not joined the celebration. In fact, the prospects of this event started fading the moment Secretary Kerry declared in Rome, two days after his talks in Moscow, that “Bashar al-Assad cannot be part of a transitional government that would try to lead the country out of its civil war.”

This brought the rift to the fore, because Moscow will on no account countenance the exclusion of Assad’s representatives from any international forum or transitional government, whereas Washington keeps on insisting that Assad must go as the precondition for any deal to settle the conflict.

Washington, the West and Israel have been progressively losing bargaining chips in the weeks since a coalition of Syrian, Hizballah and Iranian Bassij troops began turning the tide of war against the rebels, pushing them out of one area after another which they had captured, including parts of the main cities of Damascus and Aleppo. 

This pro-Assad military alliance and its gains have been largely ignored by Western media.
Another complication is the emergence of the pro-Al Qaeda Jabhat al-Nusra as the most dedicated and best trained and armed of all the Syrian rebel militias fighting Assad. Although the US and Russia share an interest in liquidating this Islamist front and rooting al Qaeda’s followers out of Syria, no assent on this appears to be in the offing.

US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel was mobilized meanwhile to fend off the pressure for US military intervention in Syria coming from Israel, Turkey and the Gulf emirates. Addressing the Washington Institute for Near East Policy Thursday, Hagel stressed the “unprecedented levels in recent years” of US defense cooperation with Israel and US reliance on “strong partnerships with other regional countries from Jordan and Egypt to Saudi Arabia and the UAE.”

He did not however disclose if and when the US might take action to stop the bloodshed in Syria or curb Iran’s drive for a nuclear bomb.

The defense secretary likewise avoided spelling out how the US would be able to act militarily in a Middle East emergency while at the same time cutting deeply into its military resources. He assured his listeners that “US strategy sees the Middle East as critical to its security interests, and a robust presence would remain,” adding, “We have made a determined effort to position high-end air, missile defense, and naval assets to deter Iranian aggression and respond to other contingencies.”

His audience was well-informed enough to question this assertion at a time that US Air Force squadrons in Europe were being dismantled and returning home to be grounded.

While Hagel was speaking, US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford quietly crossed into northern Syria from Turkey for secret meetings with leaders of rebel groups fighting in Aleppo and Idlib - a mission assigned him by Secretary Kerry. He was only there for a few hours before crossing back to Turkey.
Ambassador Ford left Damascus in February 2012 when the embassy suspended operations in a capital beset by full-blown civil war.

Sources report his mission in meeting Syrian rebel leaders was threefold:

1. A demonstration that the Obama administration had no qualms about sending emissaries into embattled Syria and conveying direct US assistance to rebel forces.

2. A message to Moscow that if it persisted in sending Syria S-300 interceptor missile systems, that would jeopardize Israeli air force flights over Syria, Lebanon and even northern Israel, the United States would send the rebels weapons for knocking out Syrian air force operations and so eliminate the Assad’s military edge against the rebels.

3. Turkey was used for the crossing to hold off Ankara’s push for American military intervention in Syria - even on a limited scale.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who is scheduled to meet the US President at the White House on May 16, told an NBC TV interviewer Thursday: President Barack Obama’s red line had been crossed a long time ago as it was clear that the Syrian government used chemical weapons.”

The dossier Erdogan is preparing for Obama is based on the evidence of Turkish physicians who treated rebel casualties and diagnosed them as suffering from the effects of poison chemicals. Nonetheless, he has as little chance of being heeded by the US president as was Israel when it presented its findings on the use of chemical weapons in Syria last month.

In view of the US administration’s head in the sand and the spreading of a strong Russian umbrella for Bashar Assad over to his Lebanese Hizballah ally as well, Hassan Nasrallah was not surprisingly cockier than ever when he declared in a speech Thursday night that Syrian territory rather than Lebanon would henceforth be the stage for the combined Syrian-Iranian-Hizballah “resistance” front against Israel.

Secretary Kerry had a point when he noted that the Syrian war was on the point of spilling over into Israel, Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.

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3)The dirty little secret about Israel's Arabs

By Caroline B. Glick

What "respectable" organizations -- including Jewish ones -- and the international media are trying their hardest to cover up 

In 2010, Cpl. Eleanor Joseph became the first female Arab combat soldier in the Israel Defense Force. Joseph, a Christian Arab told Israel's daily Ma'ariv that her good luck charm is a drawing of the Star of David with the caption: "I have no other land, even when my ground is burning."

Her commander drew it for her.

Joseph explained, "It is a phrase that strengthens me. Every time I experience hardship, I read it. Because I was born here. The people I love live here: my parents, my friends. This is a Jewish state? Yes, it is. But it's also my country. I can't imagine living in any other place. I think every person should serve in the army. You live here? You make your home here? Then go defend your country. What does it matter that I'm an Arab?"

Joseph's story represents an incipient trend of integration among Israel's Arab community. Among other things, this trend is manifest in the consistently rising number of Israeli Arab students who elect to study in Hebrew-language schools and in the rising number of Israeli Arabs who elect to serve in national service, the civilian equivalent of military service.

A poll of Arab youth carried out in late 2007 made clear how widespread this integrationist impulse has become. 75 percent of Arab youth aged 16-22 supported voluntary national service.

And yet, despite these sentiments and developments, Arab Israelis who seek to integrate into Israeli society and reject the separatist messages of their political leaders are forced to contend with extraordinary social pressures and even coercion to prevent them from acting in accordance with their wishes.

A new study completed this week by Im Tirtzu exposes the vast array of NGOs generously funded by the supposedly pro-Israel New Israel Fund as well as by foreign governments which is running a campaign to oppose Cpl. Joseph and her comrades — Arabs and Jews alike. Since 1999 these groups have been conducting a campaign to undermine Arab integration into Israeli society specifically and demoralize and reduce the social standing of those who serve in the IDF, national service and IDF reserves generally. The campaign is being carried out on a dual track of discouraging Israeli Arabs from serving in the IDF or national service, and of opposing government benefits to IDF veterans, reservists, and those who undertook national service by claiming that these benefits unjustly discriminate against Israeli Arabs.

Im Tirtzu's report argues that the dual nature of the campaign, underwritten by the same funders shows that the goal "is to prolong irredentism or non-integration of the Arab sector in order to encourage it to act as a sector demanding national recognition and advance the aim of transforming the State of Israel from a Jewish democratic state into a binational state."

As the report notes, it is common practice in many countries to give government benefits and preferential treatment to military veterans and reservists. The US government provides massive assistance to veterans in employment, education, housing and other areas. The purpose of these benefits is to raise general motivation to serve and to reward those who have because the American people believe that their personal service advances the interests of American society as a whole.

To substantiate its claims against these NIF and foreign government financed Israeli NGOs, Im Tirtzu's organized its report as a timeline of efforts undertaken by various NGOs to advance the goals of Arab separatism and reducing the morale and social status of IDF and national service veterans and reservists across the board. Although the Hebrew-language report is worth reading in its entirety, a few examples will suffice to show the scope of these efforts.

In 1999 the Association for Civil Rights in Israel published a report which claimed that it was discriminatory for workplaces to make military service a qualification for employment. The report went so far as to insinuate that Israel could be likened to South Africa's apartheid regime due to workplace preference for veterans.

That report was followed by a series of petitions to the Supreme Court beginning in 2002 submitted by ACRI, Adalah and other groups to overturn laws and government decisions that give preferential treatment to IDF veterans and those who served in National Service. The petitions have not led to outright court victories. But in a number of cases, the lawsuits were dropped after the government cancelled the benefits under challenge.

These groups have opposed every sort of benefit, including tuition discounts for students, differential reductions on government child allowances for those who served in the military and national service and those who did not, preferential treatment in state land tenders and grants and other housing benefits.

Some of these court cases directly targeted benefits to Arab IDF veterans. For instance in 2005 Adalah petitioned the Court against the Israel Lands Authority for making military service a requirement for receiving ILA land grants in Bedouin villages. And in 2009 Adalah petitioned the Court to revoke preferential treatment to Cirassian veterans in an ILA tender for homesteads in Cama, a Cirassian village in the Galilee.

ACRI receives nearly a million dollars every year from NIF, and receives funding as well from the EU, the UK, Sweden, Norway, Netherlands, Spain, Belgium, the Ford Foundation and Christian Aid.

Adalah similarly receives massive funding from the NIF, the EU, Switzerland andScandinavian governments through their joint foreign aid organs. It also receives funding from George Soros's Open Society Institute.

Some of the organizations involved are both funders and participants. For instance, the Abraham Fund has participated in Supreme Court petitions against benefits to those who have served. And it is also a donor to Mossawa, an Israeli Arab group involved in the campaign. For its part, Mossawa was co-founded by NIF's Shatil organization.

According Im Tirtzu's report, active NGO campaigning against Israeli Arab national service and military service began in 2007. That year Baladna, which receives funding from the NIF, spearheaded what has become a continuous campaign to discourage Israeli Arabs from participating in national service. Baladna claims that national service is just military service in disguise.

In its words, "National service is a direct arm of the Israeli Occupation Army and of security frameworks that act and always have acted against the Arab population and the Palestinian nation generally. And so, all attempts to present the notion of civilian service as service for society are founded in a deliberate distortion directed at society generally and against the Arab sector in particular."

Following this line of reasoning, in 2010 Omar Nasser, the head of the Araba Local Council kicked two Arab women serving in national service out of the local school. Defending his actions Nasser said, "I object in principle to the national service project because I view it as a means of paving the way for male and female volunteers to serve in the military in the future, and I strenuously object to that."

As the Im Tirtzu report indicates, the NGO-led campaign against Israeli Arab military and national service has contributed to a situation in which Israeli Arabs who support such service are subjected to physical abuse, social ostracism, humiliation and harassment.

In October 2012 the Forum for Military Service in the Christian Sector held a conference in Upper Nazareth whose purpose was to encourage Christians to serve in the IDF and national service. Three hundred people participated in the conference. One of the heads of Mosawa wrote a widely distributed article accusing the Christian leadership of collaborating with the IDF. She suggested blacklisting the communal leaders involved.

When word of the conference got out, one priest who participated was banned from the Church of the Annunciation. Another priest had his tires slashed and a blood stained rag placed at his doorstep.

The children who participated in the conference were singled out for abuse. Their photos were disseminated on Facebook and in the Arab media. They were humiliated by their teachers and classmates.

Soldiers like Eleanor Joseph feel compelled to take off their uniforms before they return home because when they have worn them home, they have faced harassment. One female IDF soldier reportedly was severely beaten by her neighbors.

The general campaign against benefits for IDF veterans and those who served in national service also involves a similar campaign to demoralize high school students and encourage them not to serve. For instance, in 2008 Social TV, which is supported by the NIF and the US government, broadcast a propaganda film targeting Jewish Israeli youth. Its aim was to discourage them from serving in the IDF.

In 2009 22 self-proclaimed feminist organizations, many of which are financed by the NIF, launched a campaign to support seven members of New Profile under police investigation for launching websites instructing young people how to dodge the draft — a felony offense.

But the main thrust of the anti-military campaign has been to prevent and undermine Knesset and government action to provide benefits for those who serve — Jewish and non-Jewish alike. According to Im Tirtzu, the campaign has intimidated Justice Ministry officials into obstructing bills still before committee hearings.

For instance, in May 2012, at a Knesset Economics Committee hearing on a bill to provide housing benefits for IDF reservists, MK Miri Regev said the bill was being held up because the Attorney General feared legal challenges in the Supreme Court.

This week the Ministerial Law Committee approved a bill that would allow IDF soldiers to sue for libel those who wrongly accuse them of having committed war crimes during their military service. Justice Minister Tzipi Livni opposed the bill. Her opposition indicates that the bill may face a similar fate as the Knesset's attempt to provide benefits to reservists.

Military and national service are vital national institutions. Integration of the Israeli Arab community is a vital national interest. It is obscene that a handful of well-funded radicals are able to undermine them both — while paralyzing our representative institutions.

Im Tirtzu's report concludes with a list of recommendations the Knesset and government ministries should take to help those who serve the country, and protect Israeli Arabs who serve and those who support them. While they are all correct, and should be followed, they do not go far enough. The time has come for the government and the Knesset to reign in the twin forces — the NGO sector and the legal fraternity — which in the name of "democracy" undermine our democracy.

Every election we send our representatives to the Knesset. And every election the vast majority of our elected representatives share our desire to support those who serve in the IDF and national service without reference to their religion, race, or gender. We want to support them because they contribute to the general good of all of Israel.

But due to a handful of NGOs who receive their funding from outside of Israel from governments and groups that do not share our values and interests; and due to the cooperation they receive from activist judges and radical Justice Ministry attorneys, the will of the people is stymied again and again and again.

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