http://www.jewishpress.com/news/breaking-news/rules-of-engagement-changed-idf-may-not-shoot-back-in-gaza/2012/11/28/ THESE ARE THE AMERICAN COUNTER INSURGENCY RULES OF ENGAGEMENT THAT HAVE SO IMPERILED OUR TROOPS IN AFGHANISTAN AND IRAQ……RSK One week after the conclusion of operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza, the security reality alongside the Gaza Strip border is being reshaped, the IDF has been instructed to show restraint, farmers on both sides […]
http://frontpagemag.com/2012/steven-plaut/just-what-was-fundamentally-wrong-with-bolshevism/ I recently read the new biography of Trotsky by Oxford don Robert Service, published in 2009 by Pan Books. It is well-written and surprisingly interesting. The book does a great public service in describing the life of the actual Trotsky, whose previous “biographies” were little more than hagiographies written by his toady worshippers (people […]
http://jewishworldreview.com/cols/thomas112912.php3 Congress returned to “work” this week (now there’s a laugh) to complete its lame-duck session before taking another holiday. Spending other people’s money is a taxing experience. Their task is to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” a geological construct of their own making. It doesn’t take a genius to predict both parties will try to […]
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3467/jeremy-corbyn-mousa-abu-maria If we really want to take an effective stand against extremism, we should not obsess over the extremists; rather, we should tackle those who facilitate, empower and legitimize extremism. The worst culprits are particular British Members of Parliament – elected officials whom we employ to safeguard our liberties and democratic rights but who betray […]
Morsi at the UN: The Islamic sanctities and prophet Mohamed is a red line for all Muslims…We do not accept and we consider an enemy anyone who assaults our prophet through words or deeds http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2012/11/28/morsis-sharia-justice-death-penalties-for-expatriate-innocence-of-muslims-producers/ On September 23, 2012, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood President Muhammad Morsi issued [2] presidential order No 1/2012 appointing 3,649 […]
http://www.andrewbostom.org/blog/2012/11/28/the-american-publics-sobriety-on-post-arab-spring-egypt/ On the heels of Egyptian President Morsi’s recent consolidation [1] of power, polling data [2] from a survey of 1,000 Likely Voters by Rasmussen Reports, conducted November 26-27, 2012, reveal, once again [3], the American public is appropriately sober about what the much-ballyhooed Arab Spring [4] “transitions” have wrought. A mere 12% of voters […]
The Twenty-Seventh Man On the night of August 12, 1952, a group of Yiddish writers was executed on Joseph Stalin’s orders for the crime of writing while Jewish. The executions, remembered as the Night of the Murdered Poets, were the tragic culmination of the grand romance between Jewish intellectuals and Marxism. Author Nathan Englander now […]
http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=v494e8bab&v=001KdaRoZmLBVwh7NHbQlfiKz-JlautdtctpNRGsZbqc0Tk7iclqCO3rwVXLfn-CeSBIKdaUxZi5s9cByO-WJGQDhQA5wJFKlJMdzMf4_baqH-8I3cqvU50M3UZPulk6pJX8mY6ocoftkmvnRAfiY-OEg%3D%3D President Morsi Acts Out Egypt’s Tragedy How should we understand the apparently erratic behavior of Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi? In September, he seemed an unreliable ally, if an ally at all, after his tardy and diffident response to mob attacks on America’s Cairo embassy. Morsi rose sharply in Western esteem after the November 21 […]
http://www.nationalreview.com/blogs/print/334279
Jonah, those are all excellent points — and I especially agree that Steve has long been right (as have you) in pointing out the White House’s propensity to downplay terror attacks (I’d call them “jihadist” attacks if we were still allowed to say “jihad”). I just want to react to two things you cover, not to disagree but to make a couple of points worth making.
I do think Benghazi could be an impeachable scandal, and I don’t think this is an extreme position. Impeachment is a political remedy for gross abuses or power (including derelictions of duty). We do not yet have the answers about what happened on September 11 — most significantly, when did the commander-in-chief learn of the terrorist attack on the compound and what action did he take to defend Americans who were besieged for over seven hours under circumstances where there were U.S. military assets an hour away? We also do not know how the Mohammed movie cover-up was orchestrated, although the evidence and common sense point to the White House. With four Americans killed and the nation appallingly misled in the stretch-run of a presidential campaign, this is a far more consequential matter than those that led to the Watergate and Lewinsky investigations. A commander-in-chief’s dereliction of duty and his administration’s intentional lying to the American people — to say nothing of its overbearing prosecution of the filmmaker in a transparent effort to shift responsibility to him — would be impeachable offenses if they are proved.
Understand, I am not under any illusions that the Benghazi scandal will actually result in anyone’s impeachment, much less removal from office. Again, impeachment is a political remedy, not a legal one. At a critical political moment, Mitt Romney, as the GOP’s presidential candidate, was the leader of the president’s opposition party. For whatever reason, he calculated that it was in his interest not to focus on Benghazi — indeed, he and his advisers somehow decided it was to his advantage to allow no daylight between Obama’s handling of foreign affairs and what a President Romney would do.
I point this out not to dwell on daftness of this strategy, but to make the simple point that it is very hard to resurrect a serious scandal when the opposition’s standard-bearer treats it like a trifle and the matter thus fades away for three or four weeks. Even if Benghazi bears out our worst suspicions, the average person will reasonably ask: “How can this be impeachable when Romney didn’t even think it was worth talking about?”
Second, your excerpt of the Rice interview by Jake Tapper is very interesting — raising something I’d missed up until now. Amb. Rice is quoted as claiming: “[W]e had a substantial security presence with our personnel … and the consulate in Benghazi. Tragically, two of the four Americans who were killed there were providing security. That was their function.” (Emphasis added.)
Question: Why did Rice refer to our “consulate in Benghazi”?
We now know that the U.S. facility in Benghazi was not a consulate. Consular functions in Libya are handled in Tripoli. More to the point, Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security adviser, has explained that the “talking points” from the CIA off which Rice was working had been edited by the White House to reflect that there was no consulate in Benghazi. As Fox News reported on November 17:
The White House denied allegations Saturday that it scrubbed terrorist involvement from original CIA talking points on the fatal Libya attacks – part of a weekend back and forth in which both parties continued to defend their positions.
White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes said only one minor change was made by the Oval Office.
“The only edit that was made by the White House and also by the State Department was to change the word ‘consulate’ to the word ‘diplomatic facility,’ since the facility in Benghazi was not formally a consulate,” Rhodes told reporters Saturday aboard Air Force One.
“We were provided with points by the intelligence community that represented their assessment. The only edit made by the White House was the factual edit about how to refer to the facility,” Rhodes also said.
This raises at least two issues. First, it certainly appears that Ambassador Rice was not going strictly by the CIA talking points, as she has claimed. She said it was a consulate even though the White House had taken pains to remove the designation “consulate” from the talking points.
Second, and more importantly, what was the administration up to in Benghazi? In the Jake Tapper interview, Rice asserted — at least incorrectly, if not falsely — that two of the Americans killed on September 11 had the assigned “function” of “providing security” for a “consulate.”
By the administration’s own admission, the facility was not a consulate. So what exactly were those two Americans doing at this “diplomatic facility”?
Henry White (March 29, 1850 – July 15, 1927) was a prominent American diplomat during the 1890s and 1900s, and one of the signers of the Treaty of Versailles/
Theodore Roosevelt who was president during the peak of White’s career, described White as “the most useful man in the entire diplomatic service, during my Presidency and for many years before.Other called him “the most accomplished diplomatist this country has ever produced.”
In November of 1905, as Ambassador to Morocco he wrote the following to the Algeciras conference:
“Concurrent testimony positively affirms the intolerance of the Mohammedan rule in that country toward non-Musselmans….Jews, especially, appear to suffer from painful and injurious restrictions.”
