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AFRICOM General Now Weighs In: Obvious from Beginning Benghazi was Terror, Not YouTube Demonstration

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Photo Credit: CNNThe former head of U.S. forces in Africa said the September 11, 2012, attack on the American mission in Benghazi quickly appeared to be a terrorist attack and not a spontaneous protest.

It was clear “pretty quickly that this was not a demonstration. This was a violent attack,” former Gen. Carter Ham told the Aspen Security Forum on Friday. Ham is the former chief of U.S. Africa Command, commonly known as AFRICOM.

Five days after the attack, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went on the Sunday news shows to say it was the result of a spontaneous demonstration, not a terrorist strike.

While the State Department has maintained that Rice’s erroneous talking points were the result of getting and reacting to information in real time, critics accuse the Obama administration of orchestrating a politically motivated cover-up over a botched response, and continue to press for answers as to when the administration knew they were dealing with a terrorist attack.

When asked whether he specifically thought it was a terrorist attack, Ham said, “I don’t know that that was my first reaction. But pretty quickly as we started to gain understanding within the hours after the initiation of the attack, yes. And at the command I don’t think anyone thought differently.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Pentagon Admits that Key Marine Colonel Missing from Benghazi isn’t actually Retired; Will Now Allow Him to Testify

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Many of Restoring Liberty’s readers likely remember the article from earlier this month concerning congressional efforts to locate a Marine colonel, George Bristol, who was in a key position in the chain of command of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) on the night Ambassador Stevens was murdered. The Marine officer is one of the several witnesses who have gone missing from Benghazi since that fateful day.

In response to congressional inquiries, Pentagon spokesman Major Robert Firman characterized COL Bristol as “retired” and stated that the Department of Defense “cannot compel retired members to testify before Congress. Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, confirmed that DoD had said the Marine colonel was “retired and they can’t reach out to him.”

Turns out the Pentagon was not telling the truth. The colonel has several weeks until his retirement and is still under the Pentagon’s control. See the last story below.

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Pentagon does about-face on key Benghazi witness, makes Marine colonel available to talk to Congress

By David Martosko. The U.S. Department of Defense has agreed to make available to Congress a Marine Corps colonel who was in command of U.S. Special Forces in Northern Africa on the night armed terrorists staged a military-style assault on an American diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya.

A series of requests for Marine Col. George Bristol’s testimony from Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, both Republicans, had fallen on deaf ears until Friday. The Pentagon had claimed that since Bristol had retired, it ‘cannot compel’ him to tell congressional panels what he knows about the Benghazi attack.

Chaffetz said on July 9 that the Defense Department was ‘not willing to pass along any sort of information’ related to Bristol’s whereabouts.

Now Air Force Maj. Robert Firman has confirmed to MailOnline that due to an ‘administrative error,’ Bristol was mistakenly classified as a retired officer despite his current active-duty status.

‘The Department of Defense has fully cooperated with congressional requests to understand the attacks on the Benghazi compound,’ Firman said. ‘Col. George Bristol, USMC, will be available to meet with House and Senate members and their staffs.’ Read more from this story HERE.

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Despite Pentagon claims, Marine colonel sought in Benghazi investigation not yet retired

By Dan Lamothe. When insurgents attacked the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, last fall, Col. George Bristol held a key post in the region. As commander of Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara, he was in a position to know what options the U.S. had to protect Americans under fire.

U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans died in the Sept. 11 attacks, sparking national outcry and a congressional investigation examining the lack of protection. Several U.S. officials have testified before Congress since — but not Bristol, a salty Marine whose task force was responsible for special operations in northern and western Africa.

Defense Department officials have told members of Congress that Bristol cannot be forced to testify because he retired after stepping down during a March change of command ceremony, according to several media reports. The Pentagon reinforced that point of view to Marine Corps Times on Tuesday.

“Col. Bristol was not invited by Congress to testify before he retired,” said Air Force Maj. Robert Firman, a spokesman with the Office of the Secretary of Defense. “The DoD has cooperated fully with Congress and the Accountability Review Board since the beginning of this investigation, and we will continue to do so.”

That isn’t the case, however. While Bristol is preparing for retirement, he is on active duty through the end of July, said Maj. Shawn Haney, a Marine spokeswoman, on Wednesday. He will be placed on the inactive list on Aug. 1, she said. That contradicts statements that Pentagon officials have issued to both Congress and the media. Read more from this story HERE.

State Department Official Grilled Over Benghazi at Confirmation Hearing (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox NewsThe debate over the Benghazi terror attack flared once again Thursday as senators grilled a diplomatic nominee over her role in massaging the Obama administration’s initial story-line on the attack.

Republican senators repeatedly challenged Victoria Nuland, nominated as chief U.S. envoy for Europe, during her confirmation hearing before a Senate panel. The post typically would not receive this much scrutiny, but Nuland’s prior job was as the top spokesperson in the State Department — she was the face of the department in the days and weeks following the Benghazi attack.

Republicans say the full truth has not yet been told, and prodded for answers on the role Nuland played in pushing to change the so-called “talking points” after the attack. Those notes were ultimately used by then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to give a faulty account to the public about the nature of the attack.

“It is pretty remarkable how sanitized they really were,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said of the talking points.

He accused Nuland of being more interested in protecting her bosses’ image than getting the truth out.

Read more from this story HERE.

Libyan Official Ties Egypt’s Morsi to Benghazi Attack

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Photo Credit: WNDBy Jerome R. Corsi. A letter by a top Libyan official blames the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens on Mohamed Morsi, the now deposed president of Egypt.

WND has verified the authenticity of the letter by Col. Mahmoud al-Sharif, the chief of the Department of Security of the Libyan government in Tripoli, written four days after the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi.

The letter mentions Morsi as being implicated in the planning that led to the Benghazi attack and identifies the Egyptian jihadist group Ansar Sharia as the group responsible.

The letter discloses that the bodies of three Americans killed in the attack along with Ambassador Stevens were desecrated in revenge for the production of an anti-Islam film, assumed to be “Innocence of the Muslims.” The film was produced by the imprisoned Mark Basseley Yousef, the person the Obama administration erroneously claimed was responsible for triggering for attack itself.

White House press secretary Jay Carney confirmed Wednesday the Obama administration has no change in plans to deliver F-16s to the Egyptian military. The U.S. most likely will deliver four F-16s in August, with another eight slated for December. The deliveries are part of the continuing U.S. $1.5 billion in aid scheduled to be dispersed to Egypt in the current fiscal year, despite the military coup that ousted the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Morsi. Read more from this story HERE.

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Egypt Orders Arrest of Brotherhood Leaders

By Thomson/Reuters. Egypt’s public prosecutor ordered the arrest on Wednesday of the leaders of ousted President Mohamed Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood, charging them with inciting violence in a clash that saw troops shoot dozens of his supporters dead.

A week after the army toppled Egypt’s first democratically elected leader, bloodshed has opened deep fissures in the Arab world’s most populous country, with bitterness at levels unseen in its modern history.

Brotherhood spokesman Gehad El-Haddad said the announcement of charges against leader Mohamed Badie and several other senior Islamists was a bid by authorities to break up a vigil by thousands of Mursi supporters demanding his reinstatement.

This week’s unrest has alarmed Western donors and Israel, which has a 1979 peace treaty with Egypt. Washington, treading a careful line, has neither welcomed Mursi’s removal nor denounced it as a “coup”. Under U.S. law, a coup would require it to halt aid, including the $1.3 billion it gives the army each year.

The Brotherhood’s downfall has, however, been warmly welcomed by three of the rich Arab monarchies of the Gulf, who showered Cairo with aid to prop up the collapsing economy. Read more from this story HERE.

Where is the Marine Colonel Who May be Key to Understanding Benghazi?

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Photo Credit: U.S. AFRICA COMMAND/FlickrMarine Corps Col. George Bristol was in a key position in the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) chain of command the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. As such, he’s high on the list of people that some Republican members of Congress want to interview. But they don’t know where he is and the Pentagon isn’t telling.

Pentagon spokesman Major Robert Firman told CBS News that the Department of Defense “cannot compel retired members to testify before Congress.”

“They say he’s retired and they can’t reach out to him,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, told CBS News. “That’s hogwash.”

Bristol, a martial arts master, was commander of Joint Special Operations Task Force-Trans Sahara based in Stuttgart, Germany until he retired last March. In an article in Stars and Stripes, Bristol is quoted at his retirement ceremony as telling his troops that “an evil” has descended on Africa, referring to Islamic militant groups. “It is on us to stomp it out.”

Members of Congress in both the House and Senate, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., have asked the Pentagon for assistance in locating Bristol so that they can question him about events the night of the terrorist attacks in Benghazi. But those efforts have come up empty.

Read more from this story HERE.

From Benghazi to Nuclear Terrorism

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iran_nukeFormer Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey just published an article in the Wall Street Journal documenting how the U.S. has become so vulnerable to international terrorism that even the ridiculous government of North Korea could now detonate a small nuclear weapon above the American homeland.

“North Korea needs only one ICBM capable of delivering a single nuclear warhead in order to pose an existential threat to the U.S.,” wrote Woolsey, along with co-author Peter Pry, executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. “The Congressional Electromagnetic Pulse Commission, the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission and several other U.S. government studies have established that detonating a nuclear weapon high above any part of the U.S. mainland would generate a catastrophic electromagnetic pulse.”

This one explosion – something North Korea is actually capable of causing – would constitute an EMP attack that would, in the words of our former CIA chief, “collapse the electric grid and other infrastructure that depends on it – communications, transportation, banking and finance, food and water – necessary to sustain modern civilization and the lives of 300 million Americans.”

Another well-informed analysis, just published in the Weekly Standard, confirms that by mid-2014, the fanatically anti-American terrorist government of Iran will likely be able to enrich uranium to weapons-grade plutonium too rapidly for the U.S. to stop it militarily. When an insane and metastatic regime – one obsessed with destruction of (first) the “Little Satan,” Israel, and (later) the “Great Satan,” America – has a nuclear arsenal, we will be living in a very different and dark world indeed.

Read more from this story HERE.

New Evidence that Murdered Ambassador’s Benghazi Mission Involved Shipping Weapons to Syrian Rebels

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

A Libyan weapons dealer from a group hired to provide security to the U.S. mission in Benghazi told Reuters he has helped ship weapons from Benghazi to the rebels fighting in Syria.

The detailed account may provide more circumstantial evidence the U.S. Benghazi mission was secretly involved in procuring and shipping weapons to the Syrian opposition before the deadly attack last September that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

According to informed Middle Eastern security officials speaking to WND on multiple occasions, the Benghazi mission was a planning headquarters for coordinating aid, including weapons distribution, to the jihadist-led rebels.

After the fall of Libyan dictator Muammar Gadhafi, the arming efforts shifted focus to aiding the insurgency targeting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

Two weeks after the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack, WND broke the story that murdered U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens himself played a central role in arming rebels and recruiting jihadists to fight Assad, according to Egyptian security officials.

Read more from this story HERE.

Hillary Clinton’s Legacy of Scandal (+video)

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By Jeffrey T. Brown. In the midst of the eruption of near-daily scandals involving the Obama administration, let us not forget that until just a few months ago, Hillary Clinton was the most significant persona within that administration besides the president himself. Let us not also forget that notwithstanding the scandal-grenades going off all around us, Mrs. Clinton diligently plans her run for the presidency, even while several of those scandals are obviously and entirely her responsibility, exposing the State Department during her tenure as an utter sewer of corruption, cronyism, and fatal incompetence.

For as long as Hillary Clinton has been on the national scene, she has left a path of destruction and wreckage in her wake that is both impressive and terrible to behold. She is a testament to the extent of damage that can be done by one person determined to conquer everything before her in the quest for unlimited power and self-gratification. The only prize left to her in American politics is the presidency, which she has always felt is hers by right. Indeed, she would have attained it were it not for the upstart community organizer, a fellow admirer of Saul Alinsky, who spoke in volumes but said nothing.

While such determination comes at a staggering cost, we should remind ourselves that the bill is never paid by Mrs. Clinton or her equally arrogant husband. It is paid by the country. Before we ask yet again for the check, perhaps we should remind ourselves of exactly who this woman is who will soon attempt to seduce the country, and her history as the object of an absurd and undeserved degree of national affection.

Before accompanying her husband to the White House as our first co-president, Mrs. Clinton was working hard on becoming the person we now know her to be. As with her husband, the goal has always been the attainment of power masquerading as public service. Setting an example for the Obamas to emulate, the Clintons put self-absorption and personal victory before all else. The Clintons have always served themselves, and nothing else.

Do you recall the slime that was Whitewater, in which the Clintons dissembled and lied while their former business partners went to jail? Do you remember Mrs. Clinton earning $100,000 in profit in 1979 on a $1,000 investment over the course of only 9 months in volatile cattle futures, about which she knew nothing, thanks to help from a highly placed Tyson Foods connection? Tyson profited handsomely in Arkansas, with state loans and appointments. We are to believe that Clinton studied the Wall Street Journal to achieve a feat against which the odds were one in 250 million. Do you recall the Rose Law Firm billing records that magically appeared in Mrs. Clinton’s White House office, years after they had been subpoenaed? Or the death of Vince Foster under rather extraordinary and inexplicable circumstances, and the lies and cover-up that followed? Do you recall that while testifying before congressional investigators as first lady, she answered “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember” 250 times? Read more from this story HERE.

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Chelsea Clinton endorses mom: We need a woman in the White House

By Paul Bedard. Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton says it’s time for a woman in the Oval Office, music to her mom Hillary Clinton’s ears.

In a wide-ranging interview on MSNBC’s “NOW with Alex Wagner” Clinton was asked about getting a woman elected president, as her mother tried to do in 2008 and is expected to in 2016.

Read more from this story HERE.

Bombshell Admission: Special Forces Were Near Benghazi when Ambassador was Murdered

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Photo Credit: WND

In a bombshell admission that has until now gone unreported, Martin Dempsey, chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded that highly trained Special Forces were stationed just a few hours away from Benghazi on the night of the attacks but were not told to deploy to Libya.

In comments that may warrant further investigation, Dempsey stated at a Senate hearing Wednesday that on the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, command of the Special Forces – known as C-110, or the EUCOM CIF – was transferred from the military’s European command to AFRICOM, or the United States Africa Command.

Dempsey did not state any reason for the strange transfer of command nor could he provide a timeline for the transfer the night of the attack…

His remarks for the first time confirm an exclusive Fox News interview aired April 30 in which a special government operator, speaking on condition of anonymity, contradicted claims by the Obama administration and a State Department review that there wasn’t enough time for military forces to deploy the night of the attack.

“I know for a fact that C-110, the EUCOM CIF, was doing a training exercise in … not in the region of North Africa, but in Europe,” the special operator told Fox News’ Adam Housley. “And they had the ability to act and to respond.”

Read more from this story HERE.

US Gov’t Still Hasn’t Released Ambassador Steven’s Autopsy, Won’t Deny Terrorist’s Claim that He was Killed by Lethal Injection

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Photo Credit: Ben Curtis

An al Qaeda terrorist stated in a recent online posting that U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens was killed by lethal injection after plans to kidnap him during the Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi went bad.

The veracity of the claim by Abdallah Dhu-al-Bajadin, who was identified by U.S. officials as a weapons expert for al Qaeda, could not be determined. However, U.S. officials have not dismissed the terrorist’s assertion. [Editor’s Note: in September 2012, Restoring Liberty publicized the need HERE for the US Government to release the autopsy report to address allegations that the Ambassador had been sexually assaulted and suffered other abuses after capture]

An FBI spokeswoman indicated that the bureau is aware of the claim but declined to comment because of the ongoing investigation into the Benghazi attacks.

“While there is a great deal of information in the media and on the Internet about the attack in Benghazi, the FBI is not in a position at this time to comment on anything specific with regard to the investigation,” spokeswoman Kathy Wright said.

A State Department spokesman had no comment.

Read more from this story HERE.