WH: Obama 'Is Not Particularly Concerned' Whether Susan Rice Misled the American People

Weekly Standard
Daniel Halper

In response to a question from reporter Major Garrett on whether the Obama administration's mishandling of Benghazi raises "core questions of basic competency," press secretary Jay Carney revealed that Barack Obama "is not particularly concerned" about whether Susan Rice misled the American people:



"What the president is worried about, Major, is what happened and why in Benghazi. He is not particularly concerned about whether the ambassador or I went out and talked about the fact that we believed extremists might have been responsible. And whether we named them as al Qaeda or not does not--no, it certainly doesn't have any bearing on what happened and who was responsible as that investigation was continuing on Benghazi."

Ear to the Ground U.S. May Be ‘Filibustering’ Security Council Over Gaza

TruthDig
Peter Z. Scheer

Scott Garner (CC-BY-ND)

The Russian ambassador to the United Nations on Monday said an unnamed country (“I’m sure you can guess which”) was engaged in a “filibuster attempt” to block a statement condemning the violence in Gaza.

“Several Western diplomats” told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that the statement, written by the Moroccan delegation, did not lay enough blame for the violence on Gazan rockets.

The Security Council has been a paragon of inaction in the Middle East. Russia may want to halt Israeli bombs in Gaza, but Moscow has steadfastly opposed international engagement in nearby Syria.

U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice is reported to have sided with Israel in a closed-door meeting, although she “deplored the violence.” Rice is rumored to be President Obama’s top choice to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. Clinton is expected to step down in the second term.

The BBC reports that as of Monday, more than 105 people in Gaza have been killed by Israeli airstrikes.

Petraeus may be called in U.S. inquiry on Benghazi: Feinstein

Reuters
Deborah Zabarenko

(Reuters) - Despite an adultery scandal that ended David Petraeus' tenure as CIA chief, the general may be called to testify in a Senate inquiry into the killing of four Americans at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, Senator Dianne Feinstein said Sunday.

Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on the "Fox News Sunday" program that Petraeus' resignation on Friday "was like a lightning bolt."

She said there will be an investigation into why the FBI failed to inform her and others on the intelligence committee before Friday about the extramarital affair between Petraeus and his biographer, Paula Broadwell, when the FBI probe had been proceeding for weeks.

The California Democrat said there was no connection between Petraeus' resignation and the September 11, 2012, killings in Benghazi. Petraeus had been scheduled to testify about the Benghazi case on Thursday in a closed session of the committee; Mike Morrell, the acting CIA director, is now expected to do so.

She said the committee may decide to call Petraeus in a future meeting of the intelligence panel on the Benghazi killings. Four U.S. citizens were killed, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

"My biggest concern is, there are literally hundreds of threat warnings in the material that has been accumulated," Feinstein said. "There were five attacks during the year, one prior attack on the consulate itself. The question I have is ... why wasn't something done about it?"

U.S. Representative Peter King, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, raised questions about why it took FBI investigators so long to inform President Barack Obama and others in his administration that Petraeus was involved.

FBI TIMELINE QUESTIONED

"The timeline has to be looked at and analyzed," the New York congressman said on CNN's "State of the Union. "Because obviously this was a matter involving a potential compromise of security and the president should have been told about it at the earliest stage."

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said he was ready to turn the page on the scandal that prompted Petraeus to resign, but said the former general must testify before Congress about what he called a "national security failure" at Benghazi.

Graham, of South Carolina, called for a Watergate-style joint select committee of members of the House and Senate to investigate the matter.

Speaking on "Face the Nation" on CBS, Graham said the Pentagon and the U.S. intelligence community have much to explain in this case, but singled out Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, for her role.

"I don't, quite frankly, trust her rendition of Benghazi," Graham said. Rice initially described the attack as a spontaneous outburst rather than a planned attack. Her handling of the matter provided fodder to Republican opponents in the final months of Obama's re-election campaign.

Rice has been mentioned as a possible choice by Obama to succeed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but Graham said Rice's nomination to this post "would have incredibly difficult time getting through the Senate."

"I would not vote for her unless there's a tremendous opening up of information explaining herself in a way she has not yet done," Graham said of Rice.

Who Is Responsible For The Mess In Libya?

Washington Times
Judge Andrew Napalitano

How many times have you heard the truism that in modern-day America the cover-up is often as troubling as the crime? That is becoming quite apparent in the case of the death of J. Christopher Stevens, the former U.S. ambassador to Libya.

Stevens and three State Department employees were murdered in the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last month, on September 11th. About an hour before the murders, the ambassador, who usually resides in the U.S. embassy in Tripoli but was visiting local officials and staying at the consulate in Benghazi, had just completed dinner there with a colleague, whom he personally walked to the front gate of the compound. In the next three hours, hundreds of persons assaulted the virtually defenseless compound and set it afire.

Around the same time that these crimes took place in Benghazi, a poorly produced, low-grade, 15-minute YouTube clip was going viral on the Internet. The clip shows actors in dubbed voices portraying the prophet Mohammed and others in an unflattering light. The Obama administration seized upon the temporary prevalence of this clip to explain the assault on theconsulate. Indeed, the administration sent U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to represent it on five Sunday morning TV talk shows on September 16th, to make the claim that the attack on the consulate was a spontaneous reaction to the YouTube clip, that it could not have been anticipated, and that the perpetrators were ordinary Libyans angry at the freedom moviemakers in America enjoy.

Soon, U.S. intelligence reports were leaked that revealed that the intelligence community knew the attack was not as described by Ms. Rice. The intelligence folks on the ground in Libya reported before September 16th that the attack was well organized, utilized military equipment and tactics, and was carried out by local militias with ties to al-Qaida. In response to these leaks, the State Department, for which Ms. Rice works, acknowledged that the assault was an organized terrorist attack.

The Obama administration has publicly rejected the intelligence leaks and insisted as recently as last week during the vice presidential debate that “we” did not know the assault was an act of terrorism against American personnel and property. The word “we” was uttered by Vice President Joseph R. Biden, whose credibility hit a new low when he insisted that the government did not know what we now know it knew. A day after the debate, the White House claimed that the “we” uttered by Mr. Biden referred to the president and the vice president, and not to the federal government or the State Department. This is semantics akin to Bill Clinton’s “it depends what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”

Earlier this week, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in one of her rare forays into domestic politics, backed up the White House. She actually claimed that the White House was kept in the dark by the State Department.

What’s going on here?

What’s going on here is the unraveling of a value-free foreign policy and its unintended consequences. The whole reason that the streets in Libya are not safe and the country is ruled by roving gangs of militias is because the U.S. bombed the country last year. In an unconstitutional act of war, the president alone ordered the bombing. It destroyed the Libyan military, national and local police, roads, bridges, and private homes. It facilitated the murder of our former ally Col. Gadhafi and ensured the replacement of him by a government that cannot govern.

The consulate attack defies the claims of the president, articulated loud and long during this presidential campaign, that because he killed Osama bin Laden, al-Qaida is dead or dying, and the terrorists are at bay. Thus, in order to be faithful to his campaign rhetoric, the president has been unfaithful to the truth. I personally have seen excerpts from intelligence cables sent by American agents in Libya to Washington on September 12th, the day after the attack and four days before Ms. Rice’s TV appearances, acknowledging the dominant role played by al-Qaida in the attack.

So, who is to blame here? The president. He is responsible for destroying the government in Libya, and he is responsible for the security of U.S. personnel and property there. He is accountable to the American people, and he is expected to tell the truth. Instead, he has leaked the possibility of more bombings in Libya. These bombings would be more than a month after the Benghazi consulate attack and would attack the very government that Obama’s 2011 bombs helped to install.

Is it any wonder that Bill Clinton, in an unguarded private moment, referred to Obama as an “amateur”?

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. He is author of “It Is Dangerous to Be Right When the Government Is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom” (Thomas Nelson, 2011).

The Tender Tyranny of American Liberalism Redux

Global Research
Prof. James F. Tracy

Liberalism itself is a synthetic creation of the power structure, a humanitarian facade behind which the dirty work of policing the world can go on uninterrupted by idealistic spasms in the body politic.[1]

Journalist Eric Norden’s perceptive critique, “The Tender Tyranny of American Liberalism,” appeared in the early years of the Vietnam era, accurately identifying how a predominantly liberal worldview projected by the ruling technocracy and its intellectual adherents acted to subordinate genuinely Left-progressive ideas and social movements at home while ensuring the furtherance of US imperial designs abroad. Today Norden’s insights are worthy of reconsideration in light of how the Left remains largely devoid of its own voice or vision and more than ever liberalism provides ideological cover for aggressive Anglo-American militarism, the prerogatives of transnational corporations, and an ever-expanding police state.

Since the 1800s liberalism and its utilitarian philosophical bearings have been a central intellectual and popular means by which gunboat and “free trade” diplomacies alike are justified to the public at large.[2] It is also a foremost rationale through which aggressive social control is exerted on the population at home, more recently by political leaders who symbolize and embody real social struggles in American history and thereby may exercise a more valid claim to “feeling their constituents’ pain.”

The modern-day liberal handily anticipates and deflects criticism of her policies through a trumpeted alarm for a variety of social and political issues—student performance, public health, environmental degradation and the alleged atrocities of foreign enemies, waving about an array of solutions, from “educational initiatives” and “carbon credits,” to “humanitarian” military actions.

Norden argues how the era of American liberalism that began with Franklin Roosevelt’s election established a combined cult of personality and Keynesian welfare state that has diminished the possibilities for a more radical and participatory politics. A few short years following the establishment of Students for a Democratic Society, many in the Left continued to be hoodwinked and sidetracked by an oppressive militarized state effusing liberal bromides. For example, the Great Society’s ambitions obscured the reality that the American-orchestrated “genocide in Vietnam [was] a liberal genocide,” SDS President Carl Oglesby asserted.

[T]he menacing coalition of industrial and military power, the brutality of the blitzkrieg we are waging against Vietnam, the ominous signs around us that heresy may no longer be permitted … [are] creatures, all of them, of a government that since 1932 has considered itself to be fundamentally liberal.[3]

In light of this, a miracle of social engineering and propaganda is manifest in a population that readily identifies despotism with Hitler’s Nazism or Mussolini’s fascism, while the exploits of authoritarian social controllers carried out under the cloak of liberalism remain almost entirely unexamined. “Think of the men who now engineer” Vietnam, Oglesby writes.

[T]hose who study the maps, give the commands, push the buttons, and tally the dead: [National Security Adviser McGeorge] Bundy, [Secretary of Defense Robert] McNamara, [Secretary of State Dean] Rusk, [Ambassador to South Vietnam Henry Cabot] Lodge, [Ambassador to the United Nations Arthur] Goldberg, the President himself. They are not moral monsters. They are all honorable men. They are all liberals.”[4]

Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, Susan Rice, Samantha Powers and John Brennan are the ideological heirs of America’s holocaust in Indochina. Their warm and caring humanitarian patina allows the monstrous US-NATO war machine to proceed without question or incident. They plan the drone kill lists and oversee the accelerated tours of duty for US servicepersons. Their associates decide which branches of Al Qaeda mercenaries will be armed and dispatched into civilian areas to maim, kill and destroy. The wars and dislocation in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria are now undeniably liberal wars, carried out by our moral, liberal leaders.

Closer to home Ben Bernanke and Timothy Geithner, strong advocates and practitioners of Keynesian fiscal alchemy, at once monetize the war debt while disenfranchising the working class, retirees and poor by creating billions of dollars, most of which are then forked over to corrupt bankers and hedge fund managers who proceed to sit on the money or further inflate the markets through speculation. Bernanke, Geithner, and their technocratic peers at the Fed and Treasury are cultured and thoughtful liberals, professing heartfelt concern for “jobs” and social uplift.

Until recently, Cass Sunstein was Obama’s Information Czar. The law scholar professed an appreciation for “rational” public discourse and exchange. Yet in his academic writings Sunstein exhibited unbridled disdain for unconventional speculation and critique of government activities and policies (“rumors” and “conspiracy theories” in liberal parlance) to the extent of advocating COINTELPRO-style “cognitive infiltration” of groups discussing and circulating such ideas. Sunstein’s liberal credentials are indisputable.

Over the past several decades America’s chief war mongers and advocates of technocratic social control exude the aura of kind and caring masters who have been unwillingly forced into war due to humanitarian concerns; a “responsibility to protect” foreign peoples from the alleged oppression of their leaders, many of which are modern, pro-western US allies. The fruits of the violent Arab Spring color revolutions are a case in point.

“Things are Growing Better“

Today the world is told by the Nobel Peace Prize president how a new era of humanitarian interventionism has arrived through the establishment of the Susan Brown and Samantha Powers-inspired Atrocities Prevention Board. According to Presidential Study Directive 10 of August 4, 2011 laying the groundwork for the APB, and completed during the ultra-violent US and NATO-orchestrated guerrilla war and air bombardment of Libya, Obama identifies the prevention of mass atrocities and genocide as “a core national security interest and a core moral responsibility of the United States.”[5] Almost as if on cue, the administration’s liberal backers applaud such maneuvers.

Much like Vietnam, R2P military ventures are carried out under the aegis of liberalism and would be roundly condemned by liberals as so much subterfuge were they meted out by a professed “conservative” administration. In reality, had Obama been in office and embarked on the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq while uttering the appropriate humanitarian-sounding shibboleths he would have succeeded with nary a peep from most if not all of the Left-liberal intelligentsia.

In the 1950s and 60s liberalism constituted the ideological armature of the Cold War consensus which provided for the massive Keynesian military buildup and the eventual recolonization of the Third World under brutal IMF and World Bank auspices. At the same time, however, social programs such as Medicare and the expansion of public higher education were in their infancy, thus providing concrete appeasement for the US population. Norden points to the Great Society as liberalism’s “giant con, designed to assure the American people that, whatever horrors we perpetrate abroad, our hearts are still in the right places; whatever injustices persist at home, things are growing better.“[6]

In the absence of such compensation the American public today is afforded a simulacra of 1960s social struggle while similar imperial wars are waged abroad and barely a finger is lifted as America’s infrastructure crumbles, industrial jobs are continually outsourced, and the earth sustains what are likely her greatest environmental catastrophes in the Gulf of Mexico oil “spill” and the dire Fukushima nuclear meltdowns. In fact, the American liberal establishment overlooks such trifling events, content in the notion that it has “overcome” racism with an African American in the highest office, even as he busies himself dutifully enacting the policies of zombie banks, insurance and pharmaceutical conglomerates, and the military-industrial-surveillance complex.

Liberalism’s Enduring Quest for Ideological Conformity

[D]espite their protestations of moderation, liberals are the most ruthless of ideological fanatics. If challenged on this point, the average lib will ooze the milk of human kindness from every pore, his eyes melting over to the consistency of hot butterscotch sauce. Is he not against “extremism” in every shape and form? But those who really cross liberalism are pursued with cold implacable fury, up to and even beyond the grave.[7]

False Flags and Imperial Mobilization: The Middle East Explodes on 9/11 Anniversary

Global Research
Larry Chin

Every year, people commemorate 9/11 without having a clear understanding of the original event or the elite agenda that made it possible. This lack of comprehension persists, even as the world explodes in series of orchestrated “new 9/11s” on the eleventh anniversary of the original crime.

* * *

What was still is

The attacks of 9/11/01 was a false flag operation of the Bush/Cheney administration and CIA-affiliated military-intelligence assets (Al-Qaeda, etc.). The resulting “war on terrorism” of the Bush/Cheney and Obama administrations is built on false flag terrorism and propaganda. The “terrorists” are military-intelligence assets, acting on behalf of Anglo-American leaders and their allies.

9/11 is not history. It is now.

The overriding elite military and intelligence agenda remains the conquest of oil and gas resources. 9/11/01 was the first act of desperation among elites to control all significant energy-related geography on the planet, while preventing rival powers from doing the same.

Under the “war on terror”, the world has suffered eleven continuous years of false flag terror. Bombings. Destabilizations. Assassinations. Coups and counter-coups. Controlled and co-opted popular revolts and “mob violence”. Regime changes. Criminality beyond redemption.

As of this writing, new false flag terror attacks in various nations have been carried out by “terrorists” directly and indirectly connected to the CIA and Washington.

They have taken place simultaneous with mob action and grass roots street protests, likely stoked and guided by military-intelligence assets of the CIA and its affiliates.

The manner of the Benghazi attack suggests military-style coordination (also see here), and that the attack was allowed to happen.

The timing was politically convenient. The anti-Muslim film (allegedly by an American right-wing Christian zealot) that sparked riots, and its translated broadcast in Egypt, demand further inquiry. Popular unrest also appears to be guided and/or co-opted.

While the situation remains fluid, what is beyond question is that in the wake of this violence, there has been no attempt to negotiate peace. Instead, support is being drummed up for retaliation: new military attacks and aggressive US war policies, for either the “restoration of order” (Libya,), or new and long-planned regime changes (Syria, Iran, Pakistan, etc.) In the famous words of Zbigniew Brzezinski, such attacks would spur the masses to support “imperial mobilization”.

This is not simply sudden chaos or reaction. Ignoring the multiple red herrings, the central war agenda has not changed in eleven years. It is simply being taken to a new level.

Military-intelligence assets behind every act

The Libyan violence, including the assassination of Ambassador Christopher Stevens was carried out by the Al-Qaeda “freedom fighters” that helped the US overthrow the regime of Muammar Qaddafi. These assets are closely linked to American neoconservatives, including a large contingent of figures behind the Bush/Cheney apparatus. At the forefront is the bloodthirsty Senator John McCain, who is all over the American media screaming for vengeance. Other “leading suspects”, such as the Ansar al-Shariah group, are also Al-Qaeda linked.

Libyan president Mohammed el-Megarif has stated clearly that the attack was “planned by foreigners, by people who entered the country a few months ago”.

Al-Qaeda, a CIA front for decades, plays multiple roles, boogeymen as well as “freedom fighters”, on behalf of US policy.

In Afghanistan, the pattern repeats. The murder of four members of the NATO coalition force by terrorists impersonating Afghan police officers has been blamed on the Taliban. The Taliban is another Islamic front connected to the CIA and Pakistan’s ISI, which is a virtual branch of the CIA that came to power with Washington support. There is no mention of these connections in mainstream reporting.

Syria has been targeted for regime change, and a “humanitarian” war. It is in the process of being destabilized, as are Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. The same forces are involved in each region. The Haqqani network in Pakistan was recently named as a major new threat. Not mentioned is the fact that the ISI, as already noted, is connected to the CIA.

Iran has been the target of CIA covert operations and black ops for years. Like the other nations, it has been infiltrated and is brimming with spies and “terrorists”.

This combination—calculated, criminal military-intelligence programs by world leaders, competing and/or “out of control” intelligence assets, intelligence blowback, parallel with legitimate protests and popular backlash—is a recipe for global catastrophe, threatening the future of humanity.

Following the attack in Benghazi, the next step has already been taken, and it is not towards peace or order. Now that it has the luxury of another pretext, the Obama administration has sent even more CIA and FBI spies to the region (not mentioning the fact that the region is already brimming with intelligence assets working for Anglo-American interests), more drones, and Marines, including forces to the Syrian border.

This is the Obama administration’s “diplomacy”. The administration has plans to attack both Syria and Iran. His political “rivals” embrace the same plans, and more.

Cover-up and spin

As of this writing, US officials and the US State Department are involved in a propaganda dance with competing factions, all playing political football with this “new 9/11”. CIA-connected media outlets are unleashing waves of competing spin.

Speaking on behalf of the Obama administration, UN Ambassador Susan Rice claims that there was no “actionable intelligence” that could have prevented the attacks by Al-Qaeda, blaming the violence on “spontaneous” mob reaction. This, even while strong evidence suggests that Washington had clear warnings. This, directly counter to the claim by Libyan president Mohammed el-Megarif that the attack was “planned by foreigners, by people who entered the country a few months ago”. Many suspicious aspects abound, as noted by former US congresswoman Cynthia McKinney.

And as it was eleven years ago, hot propaganda debate swirls deceptively around the ability of the supposedly “stretched thin” CIA, its intelligence successes or “failure” to “protect Americans”. We hear the endless assertions that the CIA and its many foreign branches, with their unlimited budgets, resources, technology and global stranglehold “lack the resources”. The criminal agency responsible for the bulk of the world’s terrorism is depicted as the heroic outfit that will “go after” the terrorists on behalf of America.

The parallels with the original 9/11 attack and propaganda cover-up are unmistakable.

Presidential election charade

While the world burns under the fires lit by military-intelligence, yet another sham of a presidential election is underway, with Barack Obama and Mitt Romney (and the poison-spitting vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan)—each of them war mongering corporatist candidates—falling over themselves to proclaim who is the more effective “terrorist killer”, and who will do a better job when it comes time to destroy Iran and Syria.

The outbreak of anti-Americanism abroad conveniently steers election debate away from a US economy that will not be revived, the endless looting of US tax dollars, and the destruction of social programs (and the fact that all of that taxpayer money goes to war and the CIA). It focuses American anger once again on “crazy Arabs”. The US population was false flagged and “dog wagged” on 9/11/01. It is being deceived again.

Towards oblivion

Thanks to successful mass conditioning, the annual 9/11 “remembrance” has become a yearly international holiday for the Big Lie.

Both the Republican neocons and the Democrats and the Obama administration benefit from this propaganda. Obama and Romney know that the US economy will not be repaired, and that there really is nothing to talk about.

But war is forever. Popular hysteria and hatred remain the keys to controlling the “hearts and minds” of the emotional and the uninformed, who do not bother to study history and facts, even though they are widely available.

It will not matter which war mongering US presidential candidate “wins” (granted the next seat by the consensus of elites, and given the fraudulent electronic vote totals).

The inability and refusal by the masses to recognize and resist this horror ensures that the atrocities to continue, towards even greater criminality and destruction.

The pandora’s box opened on 9/11/01 remains wide open, and set ablaze, on 9/11/12.

LIbyan Official: Attack on U.S. Consulate Took Months of Planning

Washington Post

The leader of Libya's national congress said he's convinced the recent attack that killed the American ambassador and three of his aides was a terrorist act, not part of a spontaneous protest. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice says the protests were not premeditated.

“Based on the best information we have to date ... it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo, where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video. But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution. And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent.... We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned.”

— Susan E. Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“The way these perpetrators acted and moved, and their choosing the specific date for this so-called demonstration, this leaves us with no doubt that this was preplanned, predetermined.”

— Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf, president of Libya’s General National Congress, on the same program.

This is a strange one.

Just minutes after Libya’s de facto head of state says that the deadly attack on an American Consulate was “preplanned, predetermined,” the top administration spokeswoman on the same show disagrees with him, saying there is no “information at present” that suggests the attack was planned.

Yet in the same breath, Susan E. Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, says that “extremist elements” joined in what she calls a demonstration that began “spontaneously” in response to another demonstration in Cairo. That certainly suggests that someone may have been planning to take advantage of any opportunity.

The investigation is in its earliest stages, but let’s explore what we know and why the administration would be eager to play down any suggestion that this tragedy was planned.

The Facts

The attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans took place on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. That may simply be a coincidence, but if so, it would be a pretty big one.

In his interview, Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf, the president of Libya’s National Congress, said Libya had arrested 50 people, many connected to al-Qaeda. That would certainly bolster the notion that the date — Sept. 11 — was not a coincidence. He also said a few of those arrested were from other countries.

It is in Magariaf’s interest to emphasize that this tragedy does not reflect anti-American feelings by the Libyan people, especially because Stevens was a well-liked diplomat in the country. But he was also emphatic that “the way these perpetrators acted and moved” and the “specific date for this so-called demonstration” make it clear that the attack was planned.

“It was planned by foreigners, by people who entered the country a few months ago, and they were planning this criminal act since their arrival,” he said.

To some extent, Rice and Magariaf may be speaking past each other. Magariaf is emphasizing a plan in motion for a period of time; Rice appears to be focused on a plan for that particular day, or even an attack specifically on the ambassador. The two positions do not necessarily contradict each other.

For instance, Stevens was known to travel with a relatively small security detail, so the attackers may have planned to take advantage of that. But that does not mean they had a specific plan for that day — until the opportunity presented itself.

Stevens, who died of smoke inhalation, may not have been the target of the attacks in any case. Onemedia report claims that key documents, including one with the names of Libyans working with Americans, were taken from the consulate.

That same report, in the Independent, quotes a Libyan military official as saying that a separate safe house also came under attack:

The building then came under fire from heavy weapons. “I don’t know how they found the place to carry out the attack. It was planned, the accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any ordinary revolutionaries,” said Captain Obeidi. “It began to rain down on us, about six mortars fell directly on the path to the villa.”

Indeed, news services reported last week that Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, briefing lawmakers last week, said the attack appeared to be planned because it was so extensive and because of the “proliferation” of small and medium weapons at the scene. That also would seem to contradict Rice’s stance.

Finally, ABC News reported that Glen Doherty, one of the former Navy SEALs who was killed, was not there to provide security but was on a mission to track down shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles and destroy them. “Doherty said that he traveled throughout Libya chasing reports of the weapons, and once they were found, his team would destroy them on the spot by bashing them with hammers or repeatedly running them over with their vehicles,” ABC said.

While Rice pointed to anger at an anti-Muslim film that appeared on YouTube as the spark for the demonstration, Doherty’s mission suggests that there were aspects of U.S. policy that may have directly affected militants in the country — and angered them. That also would strengthen the case that this was a planned attack.

The Pinocchio Test

The administration obviously wants to play down the possibility of a planned attack because that would raise broader questions about whether U.S. intelligence and embassy security in Libya were adequate. But Rice’s comments strain credulity, especially after Libya’s president declared without a doubt that the attack was planned.

We also acknowledge being suspicious when an official begins by citing “the best information we have to date” because that suggests other information, such as that gathered by the Libyans, is not being given the same weight. (Rice said FBI agents were not even in Libya yet.) Elsewhere in the interview, Rice used carefully hedged language — “We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated” — that suggests the administration is straining to avoid an obvious conclusion.

Given that this is a fast-moving story with confusion about basic facts, we are going to start out relatively light on the Pinocchios. We may adjust depending on the information that emerges in the coming weeks, but at the moment the publicly available evidence stands in stark contrast to Rice’s talking points.

UPDATE: Administration officials sharply disputed these conclusions, especially the awarding of any Pinocchios so early in the process. They argued we had really jumped the gun. We had considered a “verdict pending,” but had believed the gap between Rice’s statement and other information publicly available made a Pinocchio rating appropriate.

For instance, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said after receiving a briefing from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that “it was a planned, premediated attack.”

But officials also pointed to a statement by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), chair of the Intelligence Committee. “I can say I’ve seen no evidence or no assessment that indicates” this was a planned attack, she said after receiving a briefing from CIA Director David Petreaus.

Part of the issue surrounds the definition of “planning.” Was this something in the works for months, which intelligence had missed, or was this an opportunistic event, planned just 24 or 48 hours earlier, that could not have been prevented? U.S. officials do not discount the possibility of the later, but insist there is thus far no evidence of the former.

“We have no indication that there was actionable intelligence that would have allowed us to predict there would be an attack on the U.S. post in Benghazi,” said Shawn Turner, director of communications for national intelligence.

It is of course in the Libyan government’s interest to point the finger at foreigners, just as it is in the intelligence community’s interest to suggest this tragedy sprung up suddenly, with little or no prior planning. We still think Rice’s statement is bit too categorical, given the the timing of the attack and the statements of the Libyan government. But we also can see an argument for considering this worthy of a Pinocchio, or a Verdict Pending--options we had considered on Sunday.

As mentioned above, we are prepared to revisit this issue in the future, adjusting the ruling as new information emerges. We would welcome reader input as well, since this is a difficult issue to judge. Were we too hasty or on the mark?

Were Cheerleaders for a Libyan Style Intervention of Syria Interrupted by Patrick Seale?

Amy Goodman's appalling coverage of NATO's plundering of Libya made "Democracy Now" look like cheerleaders for humanitarian death squads.

The next good-will bombing adventure may take place in Syria. No challenge from Amy Goodman as Susan Rice chastises China and Russia for their decision not to participate.  State Department Spokesperson Victoria Nuland also occupied a sizable chuck of "Democracy Now" time to deliver her caring, empathetic, yet offensively condescending tone as she stated the need for the U.S. to "work outside of the United Nations" so the U.S. can force democracy on Syria.

Amy Goodman began her final interview on the subject with British author Patick Seale, who offered a surprisingly realistic account of the situation in Syria.  Is that what Amy Goodman was going for?  You decide.

NATO Prepares Global War – Russian and Chinese Military on Highest Alert

NSNBC
Dr. Christof Lehmann

At the International Security Conference (ISC) in Munich, 2007, Vladimir Putin warned western leaders, that the unprecedented aggressive expansion of NATO has brought the world more close to a third world war than it has ever been before. This stern warning came years before NATO´s aggression against Libya and it´s undeclared war in Syria and Pakistan. Following the recent deployment of US troops to Uganda, and military threats directed against Pakistan, the armed forces of NATO, Russia and China have never been as close to open and all out conflict as today.

A recent and sobering report of the Russian Intelligence Service FSB, details the fact that the USA and NATO are currently planning and actively preparing for all out war on all continents. After the recent meeting between Russian P.M. Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Huan Jintao, both Russian and Chinese military forces have been placed on highest alert.              


The speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin at the 43rd International Security Conference in Munich in 2007, and Putin´s statement, that the aggressive expansionism of NATO has brought the world more close to a third world war than it has ever been before, was sobering in 2007. That an all out conflict has been prevented until now however, is not based on the fact that NATO has changed it´s aggressive policy of military expansionism. Putin´s speech from 2007 was sobering then, and few understood it´s full implications. The developments of recent months, however, are eliciting the urgent need to stop a cycle of aggression that can only be described as megalomaniacs insanity.

Since the middle of September 2011 Russian politicians at Russia´s State Duma began discussing that NATO must significantly reduce it´s military footprint in the former Soviet Republics. By early October, those calls had developed into demands that Russia should assert it´s interests in the former Soviet republics, and especially in the South. Since the discontinuation of the USSR, and NATO´s war on Afghanistan, it has significantly increased it´s military footprint in Russian and Chinese neighbor states such as Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and not least in Georgia. The fact that Russian and NATO troops came into open armed conflict when Georgi attacked Ossetia, and not least the US backed armed insurgency in Chechnya are eliciting the fact that Russia is increasingly threatened. A clear response by Vladimir Putin to the State Duma´s demands for policy changes came on 3 October, after Putin had received the sobering Intelligence Report, that warned of US and NATO preparations of a global war. On 3 October, only days before his meeting with Jintao, Putin announced his plans for a Eurasian Union.

When Russia´s Prime Minister, and most likely winner of the next presidential elections, Vladimir Putin, met Chinese President Huan Jintao on 12 October, the official narrative elicited mutually beneficial friendship and treaties, trade and other relations. The most important reason for the sudden visit however, did not make the headlines. Before leaving for Beijing, Putin received a sobering report from the Russian Intelligence Service FSB. The FSB report to Vladimir Putin supported reports from the Chinese Intelligence Service and China´s Ministry of State Security, MSS, which were among other based on intelligence received via the former Blackwater operative Brian Underwood.

Underwood is currently held in the US on charges of espionage. According to reliable sources, China has attempted to warn Russia of US and NATO plans to initiate a global armed conflict. This conflict has reportedly moved from the drawing board to an activation stage.

According to both Chinese and Russian Intelligence Sources, the US and NATO plans include among other, the deliberate implosion of the US- and EU Economies, destroying the worlds financial systems, and the launching of a massive conventional war throughout North America, Africa and Asia, as well as the Middle East. The war plans include the release of biological warfare agents designed to kill millions if not billions of people. The NATO strategists rely on their ability to sue for peace when the coming conflict is at it´s highest, to call for the establishment of a “New World Order” under the pretext of preventing the destruction of the planet and civilization as we know it. One of the preparatory stages was reportedly doctrinal and strategy changes wherein the training of it´s soldiers shifted from counter insurgency to more conventional warfare and tank on tank battles.

The FSB Report states that the activation of the conflict is to be expected sooner rather than later, since the US and NATO have pre-deployed 2000  M1 Abrams Battle Tanks in Iraq, and another 2000 in Afghanistan. In the area between the Middle East and Asia, tens of thousands of other armored vehicles are deployed. The FSB evaluates the situation as so threatening, that it explains in it´s report, that the only thing needed to activate the war plan is a call for the full mobilization of 1.5 Million US Reserves. Their activation can come at moments notice, and needs no further authorization by the US Congress.

US campaigned heavy-handedly to help Israel escape UN war crimes probe: WikiLeaks

Daily India

White Phosphorus Over Civilian
Population During "Operation Cast Lead"

Washington, April 19(ANI): The United States led a vigorous campaign to hinder the progress of an independent UN investigation into possible war crimes in the aftermath of Israel's 2008-2009 intervention in the Gaza Strip, according to diplomatic cables unveiled by whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.

The new cables provide a rare glimpse behind the scenes at the United Nations as American diplomats sought to shield Israel's military from outside scrutiny over its conduct during Operation Cast Lead, Foreign Policy reports.

These documents, though consistent with public US statements at the time opposing a UN investigation into Israeli military operations, reveal in extraordinary detail how the US wields its power behind closed doors at the United Nations, the report said.

They also demonstrate how the US and Israel were granted privileged access to highly sensitive internal UN deliberations on an "independent" UN board of inquiry into the Gaza war, raising questions about the independence of the process, it added.

In one cable, US Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan E. Rice, repeatedly prodded UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to block a recommendation of the board of inquiry to carry out a sweeping probe into alleged war crimes by Israeli soldiers and Palestinian militants, the report said.

In another cable, Rice issued a veiled warning to the International Criminal Court (ICC) President Sang-Hyun Song that an investigation into alleged Israeli crimes could damage its standing with the US at a time when the new administration was moving closer to the tribunal, it added.

"How the ICC handles issues concerning the Goldstone Report will be perceived by many in the US as a test for the ICC, as this is a very sensitive matter," a November 3, 2009 cable from the US mission to the United Nations quoted her, as telling Song.

Rice, meanwhile, assured Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman during an October 21, 2009 meeting in Tel Aviv that the US had done its utmost to "blunt the effects of the Goldstone report", and that she was confident that she could "build a blocking coalition" to prevent any push for a probe by the Security Council, according to an October 27, 2009 cable.

Apparently due to persistent American pressure, Ban Ki-moon flatly rejected UN troubleshooter Ian Martin 's recommendation for an investigation into violations of international humanitarian law by Israeli forces, Hamas, and other Palestinian militants, according to the report.

The release of the cables comes as Rice is very publicly sticking with her position on the Goldstone Report, said the report.

"The United States was very, very plain at the time and every day since that the Goldstone report was deeply flawed, and we objected to its findings and conclusions," Rice told the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week.

"We didn't see any evidence at the time that the Israeli government had intentionally targeted civilians or intentionally committed war crimes," she added.

How Honest is the Honest Broker?

Richard Falk
VeteransToday

Susan Rice with Benjamin Netanyahu

In what appears to be as close to a consensus as the world community can ever hope to achieve, the United States reluctantly stood its ground on behalf of Israel and on February 18, 2011 vetoed a resolution on the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem that was supported by all 14 of the other members of the UN Security Council. The resolution was also sponsored by 130 member countries before being presented to the Council.

In the face of such near unanimity the United States might have been expected to some respect for the views of every leading government in the world, including all of its closest European allies, to have had the good grace to at least abstain from the vote. Indeed, such an obstructive use of the veto builds a case for its elimination, or at least the placement of restrictions on its use.

Why should an overwhelming majority of member countries be held hostage to the geopolitical whims of Washington, or in some other situation, an outlier member trying to shield itself or its ally from a Security Council decision enjoying overwhelming support. Of course this American veto is not some idiosyncratic whim, but is an expression of the sorry pro-Israeli realities of domestic politics, suggesting that it is Israel that is the real holder of the veto in this situation, and the U.S. Congress and the Israeli Lobby are merely designated as the enforcers.

Susan Rice, the American chief representative in the Security Council, appeared to admit as much when she lamely explained that the casting the veto on this text “should not be misunderstood to mean support for settlement construction,” adding that, on the contrary, the United States “rejects in the strongest terms the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity.” Why then? The formal answer given is that the United States, agreeing with Israel, believes that only in the context of direct negotiations can the issue of settlements be addressed alongside other unresolved matters such as refugees, borders, and the status of Jerusalem. This seems absurdly arrogant, and geopolitically humiliating.

If the 14 other members of the Security Council believe that Israeli should be censured for continuing to build unlawful settlements, and that no negotiations can proceed until it ceases, then it would seem that a united front would be the most effective posture to resumed negotiations. This is especially so here as it is a no brainer to realize that every additional settlement unit authorized and constructed makes it less likely that a truly independent and viable Palestinian state can ever be brought into being, and that there exists the slightest intention on the Israeli side to do so.

In view of this feverish Israeli effort to create still more facts on the ground, for the Israelis to contend that negotiations should resume without preconditions, is to hope that the Palestinian Authority will play the fool forever.

After all for more than 43 years the Israelis have been whittling away at the substance of the two state consensus embodied in unanimous Security Council Resolution 242 (1967), contending at every phase of the faux peace process that an agreement must incorporate ‘subsequent developments,’ that is, unlawful settlements, ethnic cleansing. In the end, the Israelis may turn out to have been more clever by half, creating an irresistible momentum toward the establishment of a single secular democratic state of Palestine that upholds human rights for both peoples and brings to an end the Zionist project of an exclusive ‘Jewish state.’ With great historic irony, such an outcome would seem to complete the circle of fire ignited by Lord Balfour’s secret 1917 promise to the Zionist movement of ‘a Jewish homeland’ in historic Palestine, a process that caused a Palestinian catastrophe along the way and brought war and bloodshed to the region.

The disingenuousness of the Israeli position was confirmed by the recent publication of the Palestine Papers that showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that even when the Palestinian Authorities caved in on such crucial issues as Jerusalem, settlements, and refugees, their Israeli counterparts, including the supposedly more moderate predecessors to the Netanyahu leadership, displayed no interest in reaching even an agreement so heavily weighted in Tel Aviv’s favor. What seems inescapable from any careful reading of these negotiating positions behind closed doors during the prior decade is that the public negotiations are a sham designed to buy time for Israel to complete its illegal dirty work of de facto annexation in the West Bank, a position it has long adopted in the form of Israeli de jure annexation of the entire expanded city of Jerusalem in defiance of the will of the international community and the understanding of international law, objectively considered.

To contend that stopping the unlawful encroachments of continuing settlement activity on occupied Palestinian territory, an assessment that even the United States does not question substantively, is an inappropriate Palestinian demand seems so excessive as to humiliate any Palestinian representatives that stooped so low as to accept it. Equally so, is the Israeli claim that this demand has not been made in the past, which to the extent accurate, is not an argument against freezing further settlement activity, but a disturbing comment on Palestinian complacency in relation to their failure to insist upon respect for their rights under international law.

In the context of this latest incident in the Security Council, the Palestinian Authority deserves praise for holding firm, and not folding under U.S. pressure, which was strongly applied, including reported warnings from President Obama by phone to President Mahmoud Abbas of adverse ‘repercussions’ if the text calling for an end to illegal settlement building was brought before the Security Council for a vote. Obviously, the United States Government realized its predicament. It did not want to be so isolated and embarrassed in this way, finding itself caught between its international exposure as willing to support even the most unreasonable Israeli defiance of the UN and its domestic vulnerability to a pro-Israeli backlash in the event that it failed to do Israel’s bidding in this matter of largely symbolic importance.

We should not forget that had the Security Council resolution been adopted, there is not the slightest prospect that Israel would have curtailed, let alone frozen, its settlement plans. Israel has defied a near unanimous vote (with, hardly a surprise, the U.S. judge casting the lone negative vote among the 15 judges) of the World Court in 2004 on the unlawfulness of the settlement wall.

Here, an American dissent could not bring Israel in from the cold of its refusal to abide by this ruling as thankfully there is no veto power in judicial settings. In that instance of the wall, Israel wasted no time denouncing the advisory opinion of the highest UN judicial body, declaring its refusal to obey this clear finding that the wall built on occupied Palestinian territory should be dismantled forthwith and Palestinians compensated for any harm done. Instead, despite brave nonviolent Palestinian resistance, work continues to this day on finishing the wall.

With respect to the settlements it is no wonder that American diplomacy wanted to avoid blocking an assertion of unlawfulness that it was on record as agreeing to, a fact awkwardly acknowledged by Ambassador Rice in the debate, knowing that the resolution would not have the slightest behavioral impact on Israel in any event. It should be noticed that as much as Israel defies the UN and international law, it still cashes in its most expensive diplomatic chips to avoid censure whenever possible. I believe that this is an important, although unacknowledged, Israeli recognition of the legitimizing role of international law and the UN. It is also connected with an increasing Palestinian reliance on soft power, especially its BDS campaign.


His partial shift in Palestinian tactics worries Israel. In the last several months Israeli think tanks close to the government refer to as ‘the delegitimation project’ with growing anxiety. This approach of the Palestinian Global Solidarity Movement is what I have been calling a Legitimacy War. For the last several years it is being waged and won by the Palestinians, joining the struggles of those living under occupation and in exile.



On the PA side there was reported anxiety that withdrawing the resolution in this atmosphere would amount to what was derisively referred to as a possible ‘Goldstone 2,’ a reference to the inexcusable effort by the Palestinian Authority back in October 2009 to have consideration of the Goldstone Report deferred for several months by the Human Rights Council as a prelude to its institutional burial, which has now more or less taken place thanks to American pressures behind the scene. It has even been suggested that had the PA withdrawn the resolution Abbas would have been driven from power by an angry popular backlash among the Palestinian populace. In this sense, the PA was, like the United States, squeezed from both sides: by the Americans and by their own people.

Of course, in the background of this incident at the UN are the tumultuous developments taking place throughout the region, which are all adverse to Israel and all promising in relation to the Palestinian struggle even though many uncertainties exist. It is not only the anti-autocrat upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt, the outcome of which is still not clear from the perspective of genuine regime change as distinct from recasting the role of dictatorial leader, but the wider regional developments. These include the political rise of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Turkish diplomacy that refuses to tow the Washington line, the failure of American interventionary diplomacy in Iraq, and the beleaguered authoritarian governments in the region some of whom are likely to give more active support on behalf of Palestinian goals to shore up their own faltering domestic legitimacy in relation to their own people.

In many ways, the failed Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity is a rather trivial event in the broader setting of the underlying conflict. At the same time it is a significant show of the play of forces that are operative in Washington and Ramallah, and above all, it is an unseemly display of the influence Israel wields with respect to the Obama Administration.

Is it not time that the United States revisited its Declaration of Independence or began to treat the 4th of July as a day of mourning?

9/11: 'Awkward gaps and contradictions in official explanations' - You betcha!

Citizens for Legitimate Government

We read: US fury over UN expert's 9/11 'cover-up' claims 25 Jan 2011 The United States on Tuesday demanded the sacking of a UN human rights expert for "noxious" [?] comments claiming there had been a US cover-up over the September 11 attacks... The US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, called Falk's views "despicable and deeply offensive" and said she had registered a protest and called for his dismissal. Falk wrote in his personal blog on January 11 that there are "awkward gaps and contradictions in the official explanations" given for the attacks when hijacked [sic] jets crashed into the World Trade Center towers in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. He said there was "an apparent cover-up" by the US government over its knowledge of the attacks masterminded by Osama bin Laden. Falk said mainstream US media had been "unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an Al-Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials."


Except that the events of September 11th were not a 'bin Laden' operation.
They were a Cheney/Neo-con operation, six ways to Sunday.

I'd like to know *once and for all* how Osama bin Laden was able to command NORAD to 'stand down' the morning of the 9/11 attacks? I'd also like to know how bin Laden was able to 'pull' Lucky Larry's Building 7 (which, incidentally, was announced as having collapsed on the BBC before it even (exploded then) fell -- truth be damned). Bin Laden gave the order to shoot down a US commercial aircraft over Shanksville, PA? And, the lone terrorist rushed to squander, apparently in conjunction with the FBI -- like a squirrel in the dead of winter -- the surveillance footage of the 'plane' that hit the Pentagon? Osama bin Laden was responsible for 'huge surges in purchases of put options on stocks of the two airlines used in the attack -- United Airlines and American Airlines?'

Answer: He didn't. And I'd like to know how the paper passports were located of the so-called hijackers (many of whom, incidentally, were later found alive), but not the Black Boxes? LOL. And when my IQ drops fifty points overnight, and I lose every vestige of common sense and integrity, I'll accept and espouse the US 'official' explanation of the events surrounding 9/11. Until then, shut the f*ck up and stop calling 9/11 Truth people 'conspiracy' theorists.