Category Archives: foreign policy

Obama’s Benghazi

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Here’s a chronology of the Obama administration’s…conflicting…statements about the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi that included the murders of our ambassador and three other Americans.

11 Sep:

  • the terrorist attack went in, resulting in the murders of an American Ambassador and three other Americans
  • real-time com is established between the defenders and the State Department, during which the defenders clearly identify both the lack of any disturbance at all prior to the attack and the presence and use of weapons consistent with an organized terror attack
  • surveillance drones (in sequence) arrive on scene, also returning real-time data to the US government which confirm the defenders’ information

12 Sep:

White House:

  • President Barack Obama makes a statement in the Rose Garden:

Yesterday, four of these extraordinary Americans were killed in an attack on our diplomatic post in Benghazi.

  • subsequently, Obama, in response to a CBS interview question about whether he thought the attack was terrorism, Obama said “it’s too early to tell exactly how this came about.”

State Department: Secretary Hillary Clinton said the US was “working to determine the precise motivations and methods” of the attackers, while citing the protest in Cairo over the anti-Islam film.

13 Sep: State Department: Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the department was “very cautious about drawing any conclusions” about who was behind the attack and what the motivations were.

14 Sep:

White House:

  • Press Secretary Jay Carney said “we have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack,” continuing, instead, to link the attack to protests over an anti-Islam film.

Intelligence:

  • CIA Director General David Petraeus briefed lawmakers, stressing a link between the anti-Islam film and the Libya attack.

16 Sep: State Department:  US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice went on five Sunday talk shows to claim the Benghazi Consulate attack was a spontaneous response to a video.

17 Sep: State Department: Nuland, asked if State regarded the strike as terrorism, insisted “I don’t think we know enough.”

19 Sep:  White House: National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen, in sworn testimony before the House Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, testified that the strike was a “terrorist attack.”

20 Sep: White House:

  • in an interview with Univision, Obama refused to label the attack terrorism. “I don’t want to speak to something until we have all the information.”
  • Carney, during the usual noon press conference, said of the Benghazi attack that it was “self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.”
  • Obama then claimed he had labeled it as a terrorist attack all along, including as he claimed in an October debate, in his Rose Garden statement.

21 Sep: State Department: Clinton described the attack as a terrorist attack.

28 Sep: Intelligence:

  • Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s said initial information led the office “to assess that the attack began spontaneously following protests earlier that day” in Cairo, and that information was provided to members of the Executive Branch and Congress.
  • but, “As we learned more about the attack, we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists.”

19 Oct: Intelligence: An intelligence official circulated a revised version: “extremist” elements were likely involved, but “the bulk of available information supports the early assessment that the attackers launched their assault opportunistically after they learned about the violence at the US Embassy in Cairo.”

16 Nov: Intelligence: Petraeus, in testimony before the House Intelligence Committee,  said that he suspected from the start that the attack was terrorism.  Congressman Peter King (R, NY) said Petreaus told the committee that the CIA’s original assessment pointed to “Al Qaeda involvement,” but that the line was removed after it left the Intelligence community’s hands.

Hmm….

Europe and Terrorism

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In preparation for the upcoming meeting between the European Union’s various foreign ministers and their Arab League counterparts, Spiegel International Online interviewed Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn on, among other things, Israeli settlement building.  This exchange, in particular, was interesting [emphasis added]:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Violence is also escalating in the Gaza Strip.

Asselborn: No one can or should justify violence—not even if it originates with Palestinians in Gaza.

Not even if it originates with terrorists.

And this exchange:

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has offered to meet the Palestinian president immediately in Ramallah or Jerusalem for peace talks.  Why are the Palestinians rejecting this offer?

Asselborn: Because it is just lip service. The Israeli settlement policy is an affront to every Palestinian because it is a constant provocation.

But, of course, the constant rocket attacks and the steady drumbeat of suicide bombing attempts from Gaza aren’t at all provocative.

No, if it’s an Israeli move, it’s just lip service; if it’s a PLO or Hamas move, it’s entirely innocent and sincere.

Hmm….

The View from Liberal Europe

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…on President Obama’s foreign policy.  This is from Spiegel Online International:

…Obama is a known factor—even if his first term hasn’t exactly dazzled the world with an energetic approach to foreign policy.  Only after long hesitation did Obama engage in the aerial warfare that toppled Moammar Gadhafi in Libya.  In the case of Iran’s secret nuclear program, it was the United Nations that stepped in.  And in the ongoing civil war in Syria, Obama has not yet managed to budge Russia away from its support of Bashar Assad’s regime.

Obama has a great deal to do in terms of foreign policy—and at the same time new conflicts are arising, for example in Mali, where the rebel-held north of the country threatens to develop into a new center of international terrorism.

Even they are not impressed.

Negligence or Arrogance?

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I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters.  I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors.  And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director.

So announced 2008 Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama.  Apparently he knows more about counterterrorism then his counterterror experts in Defense, CIA, State, et al., too.

Jennifer Griffin, of Fox News, has this:

Top State Department officials decided not to send an interagency rapid response unit designed to respond to terrorist attacks known as a FEST team, a Foreign Emergency Support Team.  This team from the State Department and CIA has a military Joint Special Operations Command element to it and has been routinely deployed to assist in investigations—for instance, after the USS Cole bombing and the bombings at the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

…

“The response process was isolated at the most senior level,” according to one intelligence source.  “Counterterrorism professionals were not consulted and a decision was taken to send the FBI on its own without the enablers that would have allowed its agents to gain access to the site in Benghazi in a timely manner.”  The FBI team did not get on the ground in Benghazi for several weeks after the attack and at that point any “evidence” had been rifled through by looters and journalists.

And

Further, the Counterterrorism Security Group, or CSG, was never asked to meet that night or in subsequent days, according to two separate counterterrorism officials, as first reported by CBS News.  The CSG is composed of experts on terrorism from across government agencies and makes recommendations to the deputies who assist the president’s Cabinet in formulating a response to crises involving terrorism.

Why not deploy the FEST?  State Department spokesman Philippe Reines:

[T]he first thing to know is that it’s not a security team.  It’s primarily a resource that State can send to help restore a facility.  Best example is Nairobi after the bombing because the Embassy suffered such significant damage.  It couldn’t function properly without resuming basic infrastructure needs like communications.  In this case, that was not necessary as Embassy Tripoli wasn’t impacted and could, as it does today, to function normally.

Look!  Shiny!  Umm, the terrorist attack occurred over in our Benghazi, Mr Reines….

The CSG?  Well, Obama and his lessers already knew all the answers.

[T]he most senior people in government worked on this issue from the minute it happened.  That includes the Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Secretary of State, National Security advisor, etcetera.  Additionally, the Deputies Committee—the second in command at the relevant national security agencies—met at least once and more often twice a day to manage the issue.

And now, four Americans, including a high-ranking Federal government official are dead; American territory lies in ruins with no apparent attempt to restore it; and who knows what classified information, names of locals who were helping us, etc now are in the hands of our enemies.

Because Barack Obama thinks he’s more expert than his experts.

Incompetence

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Fox News had this little tidbit buried in an article about a related matter—the fact that we knew who one of the Benghazi terrorists was in time to have him detained in mid-escape at a Turkish airport, and we let him get away.  The tidbit is this:

[T]he two Predator drones deployed over Benghazi the night of the attack were both unarmed. The first Predator was redirected from Darnah in eastern Libya, where Al Qaeda has active training camps that the US military has been watching for some time….  It arrived in Benghazi about an hour after the attack began, suggesting the first hour of the attack was not fed back to officials in Washington.

That drone was running low on fuel, so a second Predator, also unarmed, was deployed from Sigonella, Italy, to provide back-up.  It is not clear why the second drone left Sigonella unarmed after the attack had begun.

“While some may think that armed drones could have made a difference in Benghazi, that’s altogether unclear,” a senior defense official tells Fox News.  “You need good intelligence to drive the use of armed drones.  It’s not like you can just send hellfire missiles into a relatively crowded area when you don’t know precisely where the enemy is.”

First, keep in mind that real-time and near real-time data were flowing to State and to the White House via telephone from the consulate’s TOC and via email.

The “senior defense official” ‘s explanation for launching the second (weapons capable) drone into a combat zone unarmed is…inadequate.  The purpose of the drones was not to bore holes in the sky, but to observe the doings and to identify targets.  Perhaps even to launch on one that was being lased from the Annex rooftop later in that fight.  The claim of not knowing “precisely where the enemy is” is a reason for holding fire, not for launching unarmed.

This is really beginning to smack of an appalling paralysis under pressure by the small-time amateurs in the White House and Defense, if not of outright incompetence.