RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://spectator.org/archives/2013/05/15/naqba-commemorating-a-self-inf#commentcontainer

Israel’s founding wasn’t the reason for Palestinian displacement.

Today, Palestinians and their supporters, as they have done increasingly over the years, mark what they call the naqba (Arabic for catastrophe). It was on this day 65 years ago that Israel came into existence upon the expiry of British rule under a League of Nations mandate.

That juxtaposition of Israel and naqba in not accidental. We are meant to understand that Israel’s creation caused the displacement of hundreds of thousand of Palestinian Arabs.

But the truth is different. A British document from early 1948, declassified only weeks ago, tells the story: “the Arabs have suffered a series of overwhelming defeats…. Jewish victories … have reduced Arab morale to zero and, following the cowardly example of their inept leaders, they are fleeing from the mixed areas in their thousands.”

In other words, Jew and Arabs, including irregular foreign militias from neighboring states, were already fighting and Arabs fleeing even before Israel had sovereign existence.

Thus, on May 15, what is now called the naqba consisted, not of an Israeli act of forcible displacement of Arabs, but of neighboring Arab armies and internal Palestinian militias responding to Israel’s declaration of independence and Britain’s departure with full-scale hostilities. Tel Aviv was bombed from the air and the head of Israel’s provisional government, David Ben Gurion, delivered his first radio address to the nation from an air-raid shelter.

Israel successfully resisted invasion and dismemberment — the universally affirmed objective of the Arab belligerents — and Palestinians came off worst of all from the whole venture. At war’s end, over 600,000 Palestinians were living as refugees under neighboring Arab regimes.

So the term naqba is misleading. Indeed, it smacks of falsehood, inasmuch as it implies a tragedy inflicted by others. The tragedy, of course, was self-inflicted.

The illustrious author names Rohrerbacher as a good candidate for the Benghazi investigation committee. Rohrerbacher? He praised the Taliban and came to the defense of Islamic terrorist funder Jack Abramoff!
Kelly also puts forth Darrel Issa as a good candidate. Jihad Darrel? Darrel Issa was a good buddy of Yassir Arafat, praised Hezbollah as a humanitarian group, called Israel an apartheid state and referred to 9-11 as “simply a plane crash!” (However, with his criminal record, he fits in well with members of Congress)!
The head of the CIA is a Muslim! The secretary of defense is at the very least a Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer! Our government is rife with MB operatives and sympathizers! What about the Commander in Chief (SOA)? What about Huma’s tool? (Not to mention the hundreds of Islamic terrorists cells and JuF compounds around the country!)
How do intelligent, experienced people get the dumb idea that a massive structure devised over a 60 year period is going down with a committee – especially one composed of MB operatives and sympathizers?
Janet Levy,
Los Angeles
THE ROAD AHEAD FOR A BENGHAZI COMMITTEE BY JACK KELLY http://www.tothepointnews.com/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5437&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=92 http://www.tothepointnews.com/index2.php?option=com_content&task=emailform&id=5437&itemid=92
http://www.tothepointnews.com/content/view/5437/130/

Thanks to the testimony of whistleblowers last week, and subsequent reporting of how “talking points” were systematically scrubbed of every reference to the truth, we know for sure President Barack Hussein Obama and senior aides were lying when they blamed a Youtube video for the attack on our consulate in Benghazi.

More important is what is being covered up. To get to the bottom of what may be more a looming national security crisis than a scandal in the past, we must have answers to these critical questions:

*In only 14 of 264 diplomatic posts was the threat of terrorist attack deemed “high” or “critical.” Two were our embassy in Tripoli and the consulate in Benghazi. Despite this — and despite the fact the CIA was running an op out of the annex there — security at the consulate was well below the minimum standard set by the State Department. There had been 14 Special Forces soldiers assigned to guard the embassy in Tripoli. That was cut to 4 last July.

Why was security in Benghazi so lax? Why did the State Department ignore pleas from Ambassador Chris Stevens and Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom for more? Why was the number of Diplomatic Security Service officers assigned to Libya reduced?

Who decided to put security for the consulate chiefly in the hands of an Islamist militia with ties to al Qaida? Why?

It was routine in the Bush administration to beef up security as the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approached. Why wasn’t this done on the eve of the tenth anniversary?

*Gregory Hicks, the Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya, testified that a small Special Forces team was prepared to go to the rescue of the consulate, but was ordered twice to “stand down.” This contradicts the assertion by administration officials that no “stand down” orders were issued. Who issued the stand down order? Why?

Former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, were CIA security contractors in Libya They told their superiors they were going to help, were ordered to stand down, but went anyway, according to “sources who were on the ground,” reported Jennifer Griffin of Fox News. Who ordered them to stand down? Why?

Before they were killed by mortar rounds, Woods and Doherty were shining a laser designator on the location of the terrorist mortar team and calling out coordinates on the radio, according to Ms. Griffin’s “sources who were on the ground.” Since this would give away their position to the terrorists, it’s unlikely the former SEALs would do this unless they thought there was a US Spectre gunship overhead that could take out the mortar. Did they have a reason for thinking that?

*There were sensitive documents kept in both places, but the burned and looted sites of the consulate and annex were unsecured for days afterward. Journalists — including the CNN reporter who found Ambassador Stevens’ diary — wandered through them unmolested, so it doesn’t seem plausible this duty was neglected out of concern for the safety of Americans.

Journalists have conducted in-person interviews with the ringleaders of the attacks, so why can’t the FBI find them? Why did the FBI wait until last week to send out photos of the suspects?

Why have the 31 Americans who survived the attack been prevented from telling their stories to Congress?

When a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans are killed, we must hold those who were negligent (or worse) to account. But the more urgent reason for finding answers to these questions is because they likely are tied to President Obama’s policy of outreach to Islamists.

Learning the truth about Benghazi may tell us whether the president’s policy is endangering the lives of Americans, and give Congress the leverage to force him to change a disastrous course before it causes a calamity of enormous proportions.

* * * *

The next step should be for the House of Representatives to form a Select Committee, armed with subpoena power, to investigate what was going on before and during the attack on 9/11/2012, and what’s been happening since.

The Oversight Committee, in particular Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-UT, chairman of the terrorism subcommittee, has done fine work. But its members are relatively junior. It lacks the expertise and staff resources to explore fully the many ramifications of this scandal.

The disjointed manner in which it must conduct its hearings – with questioning jumping from Member to Member for periods of 5 minutes or less – makes it all but impossible to get to the bottom of a particular issue with a witness or witnesses, and only the committees which authorize their budgets can put real fear into the bureaucracies of the departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security, and the CIA.

The Benghazi Committee should consist of 12 Republicans and 9 Democrats — the same as the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It should be chaired by Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va, because (a) the Select Committee is his idea; (b) he is a very senior Republican, but is not now chairman of a major committee, so he could devote his full attention to this inquiry, and (c) he is well versed in this issue and this type of inquiry, having been instrumental in creating the National Commission on Terrorism in 1998, and the Iraq Study Group in 2005.

Next in seniority should be Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Ca, chairman of the Oversight Committee; Rep. Buck McKeon, R-Cal, chairman of the Armed Services Committee; Rep. Ed Royce, R-Ca, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee; Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Tex, chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich, chairman of the Intelligence Committee.

They should be on the committee because they have expertise and contacts on particular aspects of the scandal, staff resources they can lend to the effort, and because they can put real fear into bureaucrats at State, Defense, Homeland Security and CIA. But because they have important day jobs, we can’t expect them to do much more than show up for hearings and ask a few relevant questions. (An exception, I hope, will be Rep. Rogers, a former Army officer and special agent of the FBI.)

So the heavy lifting on the Benghazi Committee will have to be done by:

*Rep. Chaffetz. He’s sharp, and no Member is more familiar with the subject.

*Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-SC. A junior member of the Oversight Committee, but one of its sharpest tacks, as we saw last week’s hearing. He was a federal prosecutor before being elected to Congress.

*Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Ca. He chairs the Emerging Threats subcommittee on the Foreign Affairs Committee, and had the stones to sneak into Afghanistan with Jack Wheeler during the war with the Soviets. He’s sharp, honest, passionate about the issue, and he’s our bud.

The final three I’d put on the Benghazi Committee are Rep. Michael Grimm, R-NY, Rep. Tom Cotton, R-Ark, and Rep. Jim Bridenstine, R-OK. They’re all very junior (Grimm’s in his second term; Cotton and Bridenstine are freshmen), but they are among the GOP’s brightest young stars; the fact they are so junior means they’ve nothing more important to do, and they have special expertise.

Grimm is a Marine veteran of the first Gulf War and a former FBI special agent. Cotton is the only Harvard law grad to become an Army Ranger. He served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bridenstine is a lieutenant commander in the Naval Reserve. He flew F/A-18 Hornets in Irag and Afghanistan.

The Benghazi Committee should – as the Senate Watergate Committee did — hire a special counsel to direct investigative activities, and to do the initial questioning of witnesses at hearings. The special counsel should be wise in the ways of Washington and very familiar with national security issues. Former Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn, Minority Counsel on the Watergate Committee, would be a good choice. So would be Andy McCarthy, who prosecuted the mastermind of the first World Trade Center bombing.

The Benghazi Committee also should have its own media guy (Cliff May of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a former foreign correspondent for the New York Times, would be a good choice), and one or two full time investigators (one of whom should be a recently retired SEAL or Green Beret with excellent contacts among his former colleagues.

Additional staff can be detailed on a full or part time basis from the staffs of the Oversight, Armed Services, Foreign Affairs, Homeland Security and Intelligence Committees, and/or from the personal staffs of the Select Committee members.

* * * *

It won’t be bad if journalists note similarities between the Benghazi Committee and the Watergate Committee, but Republicans and conservatives must stay far away from the “I” word. We must learn the truth to illuminate and force changes in a dangerously flawed policy. Democrats and their allies in the news media want desperately to dismiss this as a partisan witch hunt. We must not provide them with ammunition.

There were good reasons to be against the impeachment of President Clinton as a matter of policy. (His conduct with Monica Lewinsky was disgusting and despicable, but not related to his official duties. His lying about it under oath in that deposition in Arkansas is, technically, perjury, but also had little relationship to his official duties.

The proper thing for the special prosecutor to have done was to issue a sealed indictment, to be served the moment Clinton’s successor’s hand came off the Bible.)

And because it was an exercise in futility. (Had the half-eaten remains of small children been found in the Oval Office, Senate Democrats still would not have voted to remove Clinton from office.)

And because it was sure to backfire. (Impeachment proceedings shifted the emphasis from the president’s despicable behavior to GOP overreach. Customarily, the out party gains seats in Congress in the 6th year of a presidential term. In 1998, the GOP lost five seats in the House.)

If there is premature talk of impeachment over Benghazi, Republicans will blow it again. And talk of impeachment is wildly premature. We know for a fact there’s been a coverup. But all the evidence to date indicates is that what is being covered up is negligence – gross negligence — but not a crime like burglary. And much of the negligence being covered up may be the fault of bureaucrats at State, Defense and CIA, not by the president or political appointees.

There is an ugly possibility that would justify – even make mandatory – impeachment proceedings. Kevin Dujan speculates the administration made a deal with Egyptian President Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood to permit the kidnapping of Ambassador Stevens, who would then be exchanged for the Blind Sheikh. Morsi would get what he seeks most; by arranging for the safe return of Ambassador Stevens, Obama would look like a hero on the eve of the election.

This theory could explain why:
(a) Hillary Clinton asked Stevens to go to Benghazi on 9/11/2012;
(b) Woods, Doherty, and LtCol. Gibson were ordered to stand down;
(c) the person or persons who told Mark Thompson not to mobilize the FEST team thought they knew how long the attack would last;
(d) Stevens – who was asphyxiated in a fire – was taken to a hospital and an attempt made to revive him, and
(e) the administration has prevented the 31 survivors of the attacks on the consulate proper and the annex from telling their stories to members of Congress.

But as of now, this is all just speculation. There should be no talk of impeachment unless and until proof of this (or something equally sinister, such as the speculation about a Uriah Mission in Afghanistan) is unearthed.

Hearings by the Benghazi Committee during the August recess could make for riveting television the broadcast nets couldn’t ignore. The truth about Benghazi, coupled with the IRS scandal and the problems sure to arise from implementation of Obamacare could make the 2014 midterms as bad for the Dems as the 1974 midterms were for the GOP. But only if we keep our focus on finding the truth.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Hard to believe this was a “field trip!”

Quabbin Reservoir is Boston’s (and Massachusett’s) main water source. Who visits a reservoir at midnight to pursue “chemical engineering career interests?” If they’re so well educated, can’t they read the “No Trespassing” signs? – J.L.
http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/05/14/7-cited-for-trespassing-at-quabbin-reservoir-patrols-stepped-up-across-state/

BELCHERTOWN (CBS) – Shortly after midnight Tuesday, seven people were caught trespassing at the Quabbin Reservoir.

State Police say the five men and two women are from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Singapore, and “cited their education and career interests” for being in the area. The men told police they were chemical engineers and recent college graduates.

The Quabbin, in Belchertown, is one of the country’s largest man-made public water supplies. Boston’s drinking water comes from the Quabbin and the Wachusett Reservoirs.

State Police say there were no warrants or advisories on any of the individuals and “there was no evidence that the seven were committing any crime beyond the trespassing.”

All seven were allowed to leave and will be summonsed to court for trespassing. The FBI is investigating and routine checks of public water supplies have been increased following the incident.

http://www.mythsandfacts.org/article_view.asp?articleID=210

FROM ELI HERZ MYTHS AND FACTS

On May 15 1948, as the regular forces of Egypt, Trans-Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and contingents from Saudi Arabia and Yemen invaded Israel to ‘restore law and order,’ the Arab League issued a lengthy document entitled “Declaration on the Invasion of Palestine.” In it, the Arab states drew attention to:

“The injustice implied in this solution [affecting] the right of the people of Palestine to immediate independence … declared the Arabs’ rejection of [Resolution 181]” which the League said “would not be possible to carry it out by peaceful means, and that its forcible imposition would constitute a threat to peace and security in this area” and claimed that the “security and order in Palestine have become disrupted” due to the “aggressive intentions, and the imperialistic designs of the Zionists” and “the Governments of the Arab States, as members of the Arab League, a regional organization … view the events taking place in Palestine as a threat to peace and security in the area as a whole. … Therefore, as security in Palestine is a sacred trust in the hands of the Arab States, and in order to put an end to this state of affairs … the Governments of the Arab States have found themselves compelled to intervene in Palestine.” [9]

The Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, was less diplomatic and far more candid. With no patience for polite or veiled language, on the same day Israel declared its independence on May 14 1948, at a Cairo press conference reported the next day in The New York Times, Pasha repeated the Arabs’ “intervention to restore law and order” revealing:

“This will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongolian massacres and the Crusades.”

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/obamas-msnbc-whore/print/

Yesterday, President Obama finally addressed the Benghazi controversy, calling scrutiny of the edited talking points a “sideshow” and denying his administration was involved in a cover-up. ”If this was some effort on our part to try to downplay what had happened or tamp it down, that would be a pretty odd thing that three days later we end up putting out all the information,” Obama said. “Who executes some sort of cover-up or effort to tamp things down for three days? So the whole thing defies logic.” Equally willing to defy logic was Obama’s MSNBC whore Chris Matthews, who has been more than eager to carry water for the Obama administration. Indeed, Matthews’ coverage of the unrelenting Benghazi scandal has distinguished itself as being particularly loathsome.

Last Thursday, Matthews was in fine form. After acknowledging that Greg Hicks, former deputy chief of mission in Libya, had testified before the House that he had spoken with Hillary Clinton on the night of the attack and that Clinton’s Chief of Staff tried to intimidate him into silence, Matthews downplayed the egregiousness of the former secretary of State’s scandalous behavior. The Obama administration was merely putting the “best face” on a terrible situation, Matthews said. “But it didn’t cause Chris Stevens to be killed, it didn’t cause the guys being killed by the mortar fire in the second attack, it didn’t really cause any damage except to Mitt Romney,” he continued. “And how is that going to offend the public?” In other words, four deaths and a subsequent cover-up are no big deal.

New York Times political reporter Jeremy Peters, on Matthews’ Hardball that night, parroted the host’s take, insisting the public wasn’t offended, and that any indignation was limited to “riling up a small part of the Republican base.” “You can’t go to a Republican town hall meeting these days without someone shouting ‘Benghazi! Benghazi!’” complained Peters. Incredibly, Matthews wondered what harm was done by the State Department removing references to terrorism from the post-attack talking points two weeks before the election. “What’s the big damage there?” he asked. Matthews neglected to connect for viewers that one of the president’s central campaign slogans was that terrorism was “on the run,” something that makes the cover-up of the jihadist murder of our ambassador and three Americans at the height of a presidential election much more nefarious.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/pamela-geller-banned-by-a-canadian-synagogue-on-the-glazov-gang/

This week’s Glazov Gang had the honor of being joined by Michael Chandler, a Black American Patriot, Borek Volarik, an anti-Communist Czech Defector, and Morgan Brittany, a conservative TV and movie star.

The Gang gathered to discuss What Does It Mean To Become An American? The dialogue occurred in Part I and focused on the hatred that the Left wants newcomers to feel. The segment also included a focus on: The Journey of a Black American Patriot.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/guy-milliere/no-future-for-france/print/

An atmosphere of insurgency hangs over France. Month after month, demonstrations against the legalization of gay marriage bring together hundreds of thousands of people, and mobilization is not weakening. Members of the government are harassed by disgruntled crowds during each trip they make. Bankrupt factories are stormed by angry workers who sometimes occupy the streets to erect barricades made of burning tires. Leftist groups hold rallies and accuse the government of not being radical enough. Rightist groups hold other rallies and suggest that French civilization is threatened and must fight back. Rabid feminists attack Catholics by stripping naked in public and shouting obscene slogans in churches and cathedrals.

Financial scandals are accumulating and slowly discrediting the entire political class. One month ago, Jerome Cahuzac, a Secretary of Finance, center left, who was in charge of the fight against tax evasion, was indicted for tax evasion. Now, Claude Gueant, a former Secretary of the Interior, center right, is accused of bleaching “black money” coming from the former Libyan dictatorship. François Hollande was elected President just one year ago, but he is already discredited and on the ropes: none of his predecessors had fallen from grace so fast. Seventy-six percent of the French express a negative or very negative opinion of him, and the number continues to rise. Mainstream magazines describe him with an unforgiving ferocity: “The Mediocre President,” says one, “He shames us,” adds another.

Articles appeared recently comparing the situation to the 1789 Revolution and Hollande to Louis XVI, a weak King who ended up on the guillotine. Others drew comparisons to February 1934, a time when extremist groups attempted to seize the National Assembly in a context of widespread corruption and political decay. Some analysts, trying to find a ray of light amid the darkness, have spoken of a “French Spring.” But apart from the fact that the calendar says it’s spring in France, it is difficult to see anything that resembles “spring” in what is occurring.

Editor’s note: Below is the video and transcript of former Congressman Allen West’s speech at the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s Texas Weekend. The inaugural event took place May 3rd-5th at the Las Colinas Resort in Dallas, Texas. http://frontpagemag.com/2013/frontpagemag-com/allen-west-how-conservatives-can-win-the-war/ Allen West:  I cannot thank you David Horowitz enough for always allowing me to be here as […]

http://www.steynonline.com/5561/michael-poppins A few years ago, after an enjoyable match at the nearby Victoria Cricket Club, I arrived at Rustico, a fine restaurant in the small village of Flatts at the western end of Harrington Sound in Bermuda. The fellow just leaving seemed vaguely familiar, albeit more luridly dressed than usual, and my dining companion informed […]

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/348328/praise-paranoia/page/0/1

The politics of the political right,” Charles Blow blew in a recent New York Times column, “have become the politics of paranoia.” If this is true, it is to the Right’s immense credit. Contrary to the derisive dismissals of our elites, paranoia is among the most transcendent of American virtues. In a week in which it was revealed that the Department of Justice undertook a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” into the privacy of the Associated Press, the Internal Revenue Service admitted that it had singled out the president’s enemies for special scrutiny, and the administration’s story on Benghazi started to crumble and fall, it is the credulous — not the skeptical — whose judgment has been called into question.

As it happens, Mr. Blow’s infelicitous sneer was a weak echo of the president’s. On May 5, Barack Obama shamefully told graduating students at Ohio State University:

Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems. Some of these same voices also do their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave, and creative, and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

This statement is telling. Contrary to the manner in which both Al Gore and President Obama customarily use the term, “self-rule” does not in fact describe a process by which the citizen submits himself to the state and, in return, is given occasion to cast a vote on how the government may run the more significant parts of his life. Instead, “self-rule” denotes a system in which a free man may maintain control over the lion’s share of his decisions while maintaining some say over the government’s conduct in those few areas where it is necessary for government to operate.

To listen to the amateur philosophizing of Obama and Blow is to be unhappily reminded of a 1767 essay, “On Public Happiness,” in which that execrable Frenchman Jean-Jacques Rousseau argues terrifyingly that one should “give man to the State or leave him entirely to himself.” This dichotomy — pristine solitude or total immersion in the State — is both false and dangerous. Yet Obama shows a particular fondness for it. The government cannot become tyrannical, it essentially holds, because, as Obama seems never to tire of intoning, the government is us. How many times has he insinuated that those who issue warnings about government are “anarchists”?

James Madison, writing as “Publius” in Federalist No. 47, insisted that it didn’t matter whether tyranny was “hereditary, self-appointed or elective,” because tyranny was tyranny. Who cares whether l’état, c’est moi or l’état c’est nous? “Even under the best forms of government,” Jefferson recognized, “those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.” Alas, in the age of universal suffrage, this truth has been lost on many. In response, we might insist more loudly that democratization does not necessarily equal government virtue and recall that the Bill of Rights effectively presumes that government is guilty, holding as it does that government may not intrude in certain areas of life however good it claims to be, and that the people may not be asked to relinquish their ultimate checks on power however secure they feel themselves to be. This is nothing short of codified paranoia, and America is better off for it.