American drones were in the skies above the U.S. consulate in Benghazi as the deadly attack that killed ambassador Christopher Stevens unfolded, it has been revealed.
Defense department officials considered sending troops in to rescue the ambassador and staff, according to CBS News, but ultimately decided not to.
They would haven been able to watch the attack on-screen as it unfolded.
The revalations came a day after it emerged that U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens repeatedly pleaded with the State Department to ramp up his security team in Libya — requests that the Pentagon ultimately denied — in the weeks, days and hours leading up to the terrorist attack that killed him and three other Americans, newly released cables have revealed.
Stevens, who was killed in the 11 September attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, warned the State Department of a ‘security vacuum’ in Libya ‘that is being exploited by independent actors’ in one cable that described rapidly deteriorating security conditions.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2012-10-21 00:35:502016-04-11 11:27:57US Drones Circled Benghazi During Attack, Rescue Considered by Obama Admin. But Rejected
President Vladimir Putin took a leading role in the latest tests of Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal, the most comprehensive since the 1991 Soviet collapse, the Kremlin said on Saturday.
The exercises, held mostly on Friday, featured prominently in news reports on state television which seemed aimed to show Russians and the world that Putin is the hands-on chief of a resurgent power.
Tests involving command systems and all three components of the nuclear “triad” – land and sea-launched long-range nuclear missiles and strategic bombers – were conducted “under the personal leadership of Vladimir Putin”, the Kremlin said.
An RS-12M Topol Intercontinental Ballistic Missile was launched from the Plesetsk site in northern Russia, and a submarine test-launched another ICBM from the Sea of Okhotsk, the Defence Ministry said. Long-range Tu-95 and Tu-160 bombers fired four guided missiles that hit their targets on a testing range in the northwestern Komi region, it said.
“Exercises of the strategic nuclear forces were conducted on such a scale for the first time in the modern history of Russia,” the Kremlin statement said.
In its final report on Customs and Border Protection’s strategy to address illicit cross-border tunnels issued Sept. 26, 2012, the Office of Inspector General for the Department of Homeland Security said there has been an 80 percent increase in the “tunnel activity” since 2008.
“Since 1990, law enforcement officials have discovered more than 140 tunnels that have breached the U.S. border, with an 80 percent increase in tunnel activity occurring since 2008,” the report stated in its executive summary.
“Illicit cross-border tunnels along the southwest border of the United States represent a significant and growing threat to border security,” the summary stated. “Criminals primarily use the tunnels to transport illegal narcotics into the United States.
The report was done “to determine whether U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has developed an operational strategy to detect and remediate cross-border tunnels, and has acquired tunnel detection technology,” which is “part of its overall border security and law enforcement missions.”
The summary pointed out, however, “the program has not matured to a point where it demonstrates how it will consider the needs of Homeland Security Investigations” with the development and acquisition of tunnel-detecting technology.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2012-10-20 05:07:142016-04-11 11:28:01More Evidence of Obama Border Insecurity: US-Mexico Tunnels Up 80%
By Oliver Holmes and Mariam Karouny. A prominent Lebanese intelligence official opposed to President Bashar al-Assad was killed in a huge car bomb in Beirut in another sign that Syria’s civil war is dragging its volatile neighbor into the conflict.
Wissam al-Hassan, who led an investigation that implicated Syria and Hezbollah in the assassination of former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri, and seven other people were killed when the bomb exploded in central Beirut on Friday afternoon.
Hassan, a Sunni Muslim who was close to Hariri, also helped uncover a bomb plot that led to the arrest and indictment in August of a pro-Assad former Lebanese minister, in a setback for Damascus and its Lebanese allies including Hezbollah.
The bombing was the most serious to hit the capital since Hariri’s 2005 assassination and prompted Sunni Muslims to take to streets across the country, burning tires and blocking roads in a show of sectarian anger.
Hariri’s son, Saad al-Hariri, accused Assad of being behind the bombing, while Lebanon’s opposition March 14 bloc called on Prime Minister Najib Mikati’s government, which includes ministers from Hezbollah, to resign over the bombing. Read more from this story HERE.
The following is footage of an international news report on the massive bombing:
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2012-10-20 04:45:442016-04-11 11:28:01Syrian Civil War May Be Spilling Over Into Lebanon (+video)
Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro suffered from a massive stroke that has left him hardly able to eat, speak, and recognize people, according to a Venezuelan doctor.
The doctor, Jose Marquina, revealed that he has access to firsthand sources, who say that the 86-year-old former Cuban leader who was last seen in public in March suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, reports Fox News. Marquina stated:
“He suffered an embolic stroke and recognizes absolutely no one. The people with a condition of this nature have difficulty eating and, of course, they end up with total deficit in their neurologic capacities.”
Rumors regarding Castro’s health have been circulating off and on since March, especially after he stopped posting blogs in summer. Cuban news media published Castro’s first new writing in months on Thursday.
The letter congratulated students at a Colombian medical institute on the school’s 50th anniversary, and also recalled how it was converted into an anti-aircraft installation during the Cuban Missile Crisis, just days after it opened in 1962.
Inexplicably, the US State Department is coming to the defense of a leading Dutch government official who has been accused of horrific sex crimes involving young boys. The foreign official, the Secretary General of the Netherlands Ministry of Justice, Joris Demmink, has repeatedly been accused of child sex crimes in the past. The past investigations into these allegations have ended prematurely under questionable circumstances.
After the State Department’s curious involvement in the case, several US congressmen decided to investigate. One, GOP Representative Christopher Smith (NJ), actually held a hearing on the matter. According to WND, Representative Smith deemed the allegations “credible”:
The allegations are shocking and horrible, Mr. Demmink has a right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law, and that is a sacred right that I’m sure we all want to protect. At the same time, the allegations, when taken in their full context, are credible, and deserve to be properly investigated so that a prosecutor can make a responsible decision whether to proceed with a case against Mr. Demmink. That investigation has never happened – the investigations that have taken place have been a travesty and have done nothing to clear Mr. Demmink’s name. Rather, they have raised further questions
One of the alleged child sex victim’s attorneys, Adele van der Plas, says there is “overwhelming proof” of the Dutch official’s guilt. According to WND:
She said there are four police reports naming Demmink as a suspect, and six victims who have come forward to identify him. She said a Turkish policeman who was to provide security but instead was asked to kidnap boys from the street for Demmink to rape has come forward.
But van der Plas told WND, “There has never been a credible investigation into his behavior.”
She said the investigations simply are halted.
Ms. van der Plas maintains that the past investigations into the accused molester’s criminal activities have been halted because the allegations would “touch the top power elite.” Similar allegations have been made about child sex investigations impeded in the US.
The following is a documentary that concludes “child traffickers rule” the Netherlands:
Why the US State Department would waste effort and reputation defending a foreign official accused of such horrid crimes is inexplicable.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2012-10-19 04:45:232016-04-11 11:28:03Failed US State Department Now Defending Dutch Leader Accused of Child Rape
“My fellow Americans, with a heavy heart, and in necessary fulfillment of my oath of office, I have ordered – and the United States Air Force has now carried out – military operations with conventional weapons only, to remove a major nuclear weapons build-up from the soil of Cuba.”
These are the words President Kennedy almost delivered in October 1962 announcing what could have been World War III. This draft speech is among several thousand drafts, letters, and handwritten notes from Robert F. Kennedy’s personal files that have just last week been opened at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.
Robert Kennedy’s writings make vivid how close we came to the brink of war. Had President Kennedy been forced to choose a response in the first 48 hours after an American spy plane discovered the Soviets sneaking nuclear-tipped missiles into Cuba, RFK had no doubt that his brother would have chosen an air strike against the missile sites, followed by an invasion. As he wrote in his notes while discussing this option, “if we go in, we go in hard.”
Had the United States launched an airstrike and invaded Cuba, the Soviet commander on the scene would almost certainly have responded with about 100 tactical nuclear weapons under his control – tactical nuclear weapons JFK did not even know were on the island. The US would have felt compelled to respond in kind triggering an escalation to nuclear Armageddon. As RFK later recalled, the Executive Committee of the National Security Council advising JFK during the crisis was full of “bright, able dedicated people, all of whom had the greatest affection for the US, [but] if six of them had been President…the world might have been blown up”.
Instead of the air strike, JFK initially chose to impose a naval blockade on further arms shipments to Cuba. Yet as the Soviets rushed to complete construction of missiles already in Cuba so that they could be fired against American cities, US planning for the air strike was refined.
The White House has put special operations strike forces on standby and moved drones into the skies above Africa, ready to strike militant targets from Libya to Mali — if investigators can find the Al Qaeda-linked group responsible for the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya.
But officials say the administration, with weeks until the presidential election, is weighing whether the short-term payoff of exacting retribution on Al Qaeda is worth the risk that such strikes could elevate the group’s profile in the region, alienate governments the U.S. needs to fight it in the future and do little to slow the growing terror threat in North Africa.
Details on the administration’s position and on its search for a possible target were provided by three current and one former administration official, as well as an analyst who was approached by the White House for help. All four spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the high-level debates publicly.
The dilemma shows the tension of the White House’s need to demonstrate it is responding forcefully to Al Qaeda, balanced against its long-term plans to develop relationships and trust with local governments and build a permanent U.S. counterterrorist network in the region.
Vice President Joe Biden pledged in his debate last week with Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan to find those responsible for the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2012-10-16 02:28:162016-04-11 11:28:14October Surprise May Be Underway: White House Prepares Strike Team to Hit Libyan Terrorists
Photo Credit: United Nations Photo Creative Commons[T]he U.N. is trying to become the world’s government, superseding national sovereignty and making of the world, one nation. And who is to run this global government? The unelected bureaucrats who staff the United Nations. And who will set policy for them? The corrupt, undemocratic nations that comprise the U.N. General Assembly…
The U.N. is an inherently undemocratic institution. Only 45 percent of its members are deemed to be “free” nations by the Freedom Institute. And about one-third of the world’s population –including notably China –are governed, and represented in the U.N., by dictatorial governments.
When the nations of the world sit augustly in the General Assembly chamber behind name plates for each country, the spectacle is deceptive. The delegate from Russia should not be called the representative of the “Russian Federation.” He is the representative of one man — Vladimir Putin. The Chinese delegate should frankly be called the representative of the handful of members of that country’s Politburo. The delegate for Venezuela represents only Hugo Chavez.
To give the United States, Britain, France, Canada, Germany, Japan and the other democracies the same one vote each as the U.N. gives dictatorships is a travesty.
When the U.N. was a forum for negotiation to avoid war, it made sense to take the nations as they come, treating free and not free equally. In avoiding war, it doesn’t matter if the Russian representative only speaks for Putin because it is on Putin’s say-so that a war could be launched.
But if we are talking about a global government, how can we accord one man the same power as the elected leaders of democracies elected by hundreds of millions of voters?
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2012-10-15 21:52:332016-04-11 11:28:16Dick Morris: The United Nations is Trying to Become the World’s Government
The world stopped getting warmer almost 16 years ago, according to new data released last week.
The figures, which have triggered debate among climate scientists, reveal that from the beginning of 1997 until August 2012, there was no discernible rise in aggregate global temperatures.
This means that the ‘plateau’ or ‘pause’ in global warming has now lasted for about the same time as the previous period when temperatures rose, 1980 to 1996. Before that, temperatures had been stable or declining for about 40 years.
The new data, compiled from more than 3,000 measuring points on land and sea, was issued quietly on the internet, without any media fanfare, and, until today, it has not been reported.
This stands in sharp contrast to the release of the previous figures six months ago, which went only to the end of 2010 – a very warm year.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2012-10-15 05:07:392016-04-11 11:28:16Scientists: Global Warming Ended 16 Years Ago
