“Things could be so different now, It used to be so civilized You will always wonder how, It could have been if you’d only lied
It’s too late to change events; it’s time to face the consequence For delivering the proof, In the policy of truth
Never again is what you swore, the time before Never again is what you swore, the time before…”
~Policy of Truth by Depeche Mode
First things first, we need a quick refresher on the timeline of the attack on Benghazi, Libya so we can fully grasp the implications of the latest revelations about the Obama administration’s actions that night as the attack happened:
2:30 p.m. (8:30 p.m. Benghazi time): Ambassador Chris Stevens steps outside the mission to say goodbye to a Turkish diplomat and there were no protesters at this time. A Background briefing from Oct. 9, 2012 confirms this.
3 p.m. (9:00 BT): Ambassador Stevens retired to his room, at about the same time; a mob approached the mission at the front gate, where four Libyan guards were posted.
3:30 p.m.: The mob fired the first shots, then militants breached the front and east walls around the mission, Americans fired from inside.
3:30 – 4 p.m.: Consulate alarm sounded and Libyan guards asked for help from friends in nearby barracks.
About 4 p.m.: This is the approximate time of first attack that was given to reporters at a Sept. 12 State Department background briefing. An administration official identified only as a senior administration official said, “The compound where our office is in Benghazi began taking fire from unidentified Libyan extremists.” The mission was in flames and Libyan government reinforcements arrived. They guarded front and rear gates as militants began to crowd at the rear gate.
Between4:15 p.m.-4:45 p.m. (10:15 pm- 10:45 p.m. BT) U.S. and Libyan guards entered the burning building and pulled out the body of information officer Sean Smith.
4:30 – 5:00 p.m.: Americans, except for the ambassador, retreated from the front gate in two cars to the annex a kilometer away, and there was a lull in the fighting.
6:07 p.m.: The State Department’s Operations Center sent an email to the White House, Pentagon, FBI and other government agencies that said Ansar al-Sharia had claimed credit for the attack on its Facebook and Twitter accounts. (Reuters reported about this e mail on Oct. 24.) It was sometime between Midnight Benghazi time and 2 am when looters on consulate grounds pulled Ambassador Stevens unidentified body from the burned mission.
After 7:00 p.m.: U.S. security reinforcements from Tripoli arrived and head to the annex.
9:45 p.m. (1:45 a.m. BT) Ambassador Stevens was declared dead at the Benghazi Hospital where he had been taken.
After 10:00 p.m.: Annex comes under attack. While fiercely fighting and begging for help for over an hour, Former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were killed.
Around the same time, at 10:00 p.m.: Hillary Clinton issued a statement confirming that one State official was killed in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi. Her statement, which MSNBC posted at 10:32 p.m., makes a reference to the video, saying in part, “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet… There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.”
On Wednesday May 21st 2014, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Ca) reported about a classified State Department email that exposes the Obama Administration’s actions while the terrorist attack was taking place.
From the available portion of the Congressional Record it’s documented that, “An e-mail sent at 9:11 pm eastern time on September 11, 2012, (3:11 am September 12 in Libya) to the Diplomatic Security Command Center under the subject line ‘‘Update on response actions—Libya’’ recounts items discussed in a Secure Video Teleconference attended by senior Administration officials. Among the items noted in this e-mail, one states: ‘‘White House is reaching out to YouTube to advise ramifications of the posting of the Pastor Jon Video.’’
Obama, the Administration and former Secretary of State Clinton knew that the video had nothing to do with it. Less than an hour after Ambassador Steven was declared dead, and over an hour before the deaths of Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, the White House was thinking of talking points! Let that sink in for a few minutes.
This information contradicts what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and others’ claimed about the attack being because of a video, and because the e-mail shows the White House had hurried to work out a false narrative, which clearly contradicted witnesses who were on the ground, before Americans were even out of harm’s way or before intelligence agencies had a chance to examine important, timely available evidence.
While Tyrone Woods and Glenn Doherty were begging for help and under a massive assault, Obama and Clinton were reportedly on the phone with YouTube.
The State Department admitted that there were no protesters at the Benghazi consulate prior to the attack. Libya President Mohamed Magariaf insisted five days after the attack during an interview with NPR that it was a planned terrorist attack and the idea that the attack was a “spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous.”
And just in case you need more evidence that this was a planned cover up, remember the US media were not the only ones reporting on the attack. I still like to watch and read news from Canada, among other places, because I am able to get a more thorough view of important news. One of my favorites is Sun News’ Brian Lilly. Some folks may remember a report he did on his BYLINE back in October 2012, where he discussed CNN’s reports which were never broadcast in the US. On the morning of September 11, 2012, CNN’s Nick Robertson reported in Egypt about a planned protest by the Muslim Brotherhood demanding the release of Omar Abdel Rahman aka the Blind Sheik. CNN knew it wasn’t about a video, any more than the attack in Benghazi that night was, and the footage was never aired here. Lilly makes the same point many of us have made- these were planned attacks, organized by Muslim groups who were all waving the black flags of Al Qaida specifically on the 11th as it coincided with the 11th Anniversary of the first attacks on the US on September 11th 2001.
When recent violence in Crimea was going on, Obama said on May 2nd, “It’s obvious to the world that these are not peaceful protesters. They are heavily armed militants.” Yet on September 20th,, 2012, 9 days after the attack on Benghazi, he had this to say while at a town hall meeting organized by Spanish language Univision Network, “What we do know is the natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video…”
Remember when Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney came out immediately the night of September 11th, to condemn the ‘terrorist attack’ and he was vilified not only by the press, but by the Administration and others in the Democrat party? Jay Carney remarked, “The republicans again, in this ongoing effort that began hours after the attack when Mitt Romney put out a press release to try and take political advantage out of these deaths, or out of the attack in Benghazi…and from that day forward there has been an effort to politicize it.” Well, let that sink in for a minute as well, since we know the White House knew without a doubt that it was no demonstration gone wrong, yet was already working on that as their cover story, and how dare anyone contradict the Administration’s narrative.
It seems as if the Democrats have been desperate to protect Obama and Hillary so much so, that they don’t have a problem of mocking the families of the dead whenever they call it everything from a distraction, phony scandal and the latest from Obama at a fundraiser on May 19th a few weeks ago when he claimed, “The debate we’re having now is about what, Benghazi? Obamacare? And it becomes this endless loop. It’s not serious…”
Not Serious, really? Retired Lt. Col. Allen West recently wrote about a conversation he had with someone who knew about what happened in Benghazi which coincides with what many of us have suspected, that gun running was involved which was why Ambassador Stevens and the others were there. He also mentions that witnesses are being threatened with their pensions being cut off if they come forward to speak, and also that actions associated with the whole Benghazi situation could be proven to have be treasonous if the truth comes out.
If it’s not serious and it really is just a partisan ‘witch hunt’ as Obama and fellow democrats have described it- let the truth of that come out during the Select Committee. Speaking of the Select Committee, at first the Democrats were planning on boycotting the whole thing out of mock disgust. Though Nancy Pelosi has had a change of heart, and has sent a list of democrats she (or Hillary Clinton) would like to see on the Committee, saying that in appointing members it’s to honor the families of the Americans who died- which is interesting since it was democrats who walked out on the families testimony during hearings last year.
Pelosi had this to say when giving a reason for changing her mind:
“I could have argued this either way: ‘Why give any validity to this effort?’ But I do think it is important for the American people to have the pursuit of these questions done in as fair and open and balanced way as possible… That simply would not be possible leaving it to the Republicans.”
Nancy, if it weren’t for a few hundred bloggers, a handful of Republicans, groups like OPSEC Team, Special Operations Speaks, over one thousand Special Forces veterans, Pat Smith, the mother of Sean Smith and Charles Woods, Tyrone Woods’ father, there would be no select committee, and all would still have the only answer we’ve been given thus far from the administration- that it was a about a movie.
The fact is… dude… while Benghazi may have been a long time ago; it proves that this administration has been scrambling to cover a continuing lie, which has been supported by the media. The Obama Administration has yet to show any real respect to the families or the American people, and now with this latest about his actions during this brutal attack which lasted for hours, proves that he has no business leading our military or security forces and neither does Hillary Clinton, should she go on with her goal of running for President in 2016.
This brings me to my second part of this piece, again, taking the words from the Depeche Mode song, “Never again is what you swore, the time before…” which reminds me of promises made to our men and women who have so valiantly served our country.
Many Veterans have had problems with the VA system for years. Recent news about secret lists and some clinics and hospitals gaming the system, reconfirms just how hard it has been for so many Veterans to get adequate care that they desperately need.
When White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was asked about when Obama was made aware of the latest allegations, Carney replied, “You mean the specific allegations that I think were reported first by your news network out of Phoenix, I believe… We learned about them through the reports. I will double check if that is not the case. But that is when we learned about them, and that is when I understand Secretary Shinseki learned about them, and he immediately took the action that he has taken.”
WorldNet Daily and others have reported that documents and testimony have shown that as far back as 2005, then U.S. senator Obama, was briefed on dangerously long wait times for returning veterans to receive treatment. Obama was a member of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee and often publicly criticized GW. Bush about the wait times, treatment shortages and lack of funding to the Veterans Administration’s medical programs. Yes, the problems continued under Bush, as they had under Clinton and others, yet Obama campaigned using his health-care legislation on the federal and state level which was modelled after a VA program.
In August of 2005, Obama issued a statement saying the “VA should never be funded as an afterthought” and wrote of disabled veterans waiting “hundreds of days” to have their claims processed.
During his transition into the White House in 2008-09, Obama proposed in his “Obama-Biden” plan to “make the VA a leader of national health care reform so that veterans get the best care possible.”
Obama signed a bill in 2012 to deal with VA schedules were being gamed, but nothing was done. Obama has known since before his first Administration, he has had a chance for 5 years to resolve and fix these atrocious acts under Secretary Shinseki and nothing has been done. It was recently reported about a doctor from the Phoenix VA who confirmed that as little as 3 weeks ago, active duty troops returning home injured are being made to wait 6-10 months or longer for treatment.
Obama has had no problem firing over 200 high ranking Military Officers from each branch of our Military, most of them well respected by their troops, for no more than a vague reason such as personal misbehavior, yet after 5 years of well documented atrocious and deadly activities done under Secretary Shinseki, he has yet to be let go?
This past week, the Senate had a chance to vote on a bill proposed by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) called the Department of Veterans Affairs Management Accountability Act of 2014. This would have allowed the Secretary of Veterans Affairs to remove any employee of the VA from a Senior Executive Service position depending on whether performance deserved removal, among other similar changes.
Congress passed a similar bill, yet the Senate bill late Thursday night on May 22ndfailed to pass. Senator Bernie Sanders, the Chairman of the Veteran’s Affairs Committee, cast the deciding vote, and voted no. His reason? He claimed he hadn’t read the bill, and that the Senate could not vote on something which needed more time to look at, even though he bill was proposed by Rubio this past February. Interesting that he and the rest of the Democrat led Senate didn’t read the 2,409 page Obamacare bill before they shoved it through, so they could see what was in it. This Bill which would have perhaps made real positive changes consists of 3 pages.
Bernie Sanders, like Hillary Clinton is considering running for President in 2016. He can’t be bothered to read three pages of a bill which could possibly save Veterans lives, Clinton couldn’t be bothered respond to repeated requests for extra security before the Benghazi attack, and Obama talked about a video on you tube while watching live drone footage of Americans fighting for their lives while begging for help that never came. None of these people have ever cared about the policy of truth and none of them deserve to be Commander in Chief of the bravest Americans- our troops and Veterans.