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GOP Senators Send Letter to Obama Demanding Benghazi Explanation

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Photo Credit: Getty ImagesThree Republican senators have sent a letter to President Barack Obama demanding answers to questions his interview with Bill O’Reilly raised about the Benghazi attack.

In the letter, Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, and John McCain of Arizona tell Obama that his interview “raises more questions than it answers,” and lay out some of the issues they want clarified.

The letter notes that Obama told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly in the interview broadcast in two parts on Sunday and Monday that what “became clear was that the security was lax, that not all the precautions that needed to be taken were taken.”

The bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report concluded that the intelligence community provided “ample strategic warning” that Americans in Benghazi were at risk, the lawmakers wrote, yet Obama’s State Department ignored those warnings and failed to either increase security sufficiently or close the diplomatic facility.

The lawmakers also asked why then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on all five Sunday talk shows and said the United States had a strong security presence that was both “substantial” and “significant.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama on Benghazi: ‘We Revealed What We Knew at the Time’

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Photo Credit: APPresident Obama said the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya occurred because “not all the precautions that should have been taken were taken’ and denied any effort in the immediate aftermath to downplay the role terrorism played.

“That is inaccurate,” Obama said of Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly’s suggestion that the administration sought to sweep under the terrorist-nature of the attack in the final months of his 2012 re-election campaign.

“We revealed to the American people what we knew at the time,” said Obama.

n a contentious pre-Super Bowl interview with O’Reilly, Obama said early on during the attack — when then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta informed him about the assault — that U.S. officials did not tell him exactly who was involved.

“People understood at the time that something very dangerous was happening,” Obama said. “In the aftermath what became clear was the security was lax — not all the precautions that should have been taken were taken.”

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Senate State Dept. Retaliated Against Benghazi Witnesses

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

The White House, Pentagon and especially the Department of State are actively frustrating the Senate’s investigation into the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack, according to the Senate’s recently released 88-page report.

In a particularly stinging accusation that went largely unreported by news media, the Senate’s extensive report by its Benghazi investigative committee charged a “strong case can be made that State engaged in retaliation against witnesses who were willing to speak with Congress.”

“No reasonable explanation accounts for the State Department’s unacceptable treatment of these witnesses,” read the report.

The lawmakers also accused the State Department of returning some witnesses to active duty so they were “shielded from, or actively avoided, Committee requests for interviews.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama ‘Threatening Fox News Reporter’s Career’

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren charges that the Obama administration tried to press her to shut down a colleague’s reporting on the jihadist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that cost the lives of a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

Van Susteren asserted recently on her blog that the administration made an extensive effort to conceal what happened in Benghazi. She cited U.S. officials’ refusal to include the Fox News Channel in several Benghazi briefings along with a warning that her colleague’s career would be ruined if she persisted in her reporting on the attack.

The Fox News host recalled a “disturbing phone call from a good friend in the Obama administration” shortly after the Sept. 11, 2012, attack, which the administration initially blamed on a protest of an anti-Islam video.

“In this call, my friend told me that my colleague Jennifer Griffin, who was aggressively reporting on Benghazi, was wrong and that, as a favor to me, my friend in the administration was telling me so that I could tell Jennifer so that she did not ruin her career,” Van Susteren wrote.

Van Susteren said that in her 20-plus years in the business, she had never received a call to try to shut down a colleague.

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The Real Scandal: Why are the Benghazi Killers Still at Large?

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Photo Credit: NEWSCOM

Photo Credit: NEWSCOM

Months and months ago, when Barack Obama could be bothered to say anything at all about the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11, 2012, the president promised to bring the perpetrators to justice. That was before White House spokesman Jay Carney dismissed the attacks as something that “happened a long time ago.”

It’s been 16 months. The U.S. government has neither captured nor killed a single participant in those attacks, which left Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead.

Why? A new report on the attacks from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, along with more than 400 pages of newly declassified congressional testimony from senior military officials, provides fresh insight. The explanation for this failure—a lack of will, combined with a shameless mischaracterization of intelligence—is almost as outrageous as the failure itself.

Since the attack in Benghazi, the Obama administration has refused to publicly identify the parties responsible. But the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report confirms that the U.S. government’s investigation has turned up more and more ties to al Qaeda.

“Individuals affiliated with terrorist groups, including AQIM [Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb], Ansar al-Sharia, AQAP [Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula], and the Mohammad Jamal Network, participated in the September 11, 2012, attacks,” according to the Senate Benghazi report, prepared under the supervision of Chairman Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, and signed by every Democrat on the panel.

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Benghazi Guards Refused to Protect Fleeing Americans

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

The Senate’s 88-page report on the Benghazi assault provides a new detail about the role of an al-Qaida-linked organization that provided external security to the fated U.S. special mission.

According to the report, the Libyan 17th of February Brigade militia refused to “provide cover” for the U.S. security team that was trapped inside the compound.

The detail was not mentioned in the State Department-sanctioned Accountability Review Board, or ARB, investigating the Benghazi attack. The ARB paints a picture of the 17th of February Brigade as largely aiding in the evacuation of the U.S. personnel at the mission.

The 17th of February Brigade, which was hired by the State Department to protect the U.S. facility in Benghazi, operates under the Ansar-Al-Sharia banner.

Ansar al-Sharia, tied to al-Qaida, has been implicated in carrying out the attack.

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Does the Buck Ever Stop with Hillary Clinton?

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Photo Credit: Linda Davidson/The Washington Post

Photo Credit: Linda Davidson/The Washington Post

Mainstream pundits have many excuses for Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi, Libya, performance. The most common being trotted out was that Benghazi was below her radar screen, and she can’t be expected to know everything going on in her shop. Let’s count the ways this is unconvincing, if not downright wrong.

First, of course, every politician (ahem, a Northeastern governor) is held responsible for what goes on by underlings. The head of an organization must be held accountable for the people she hires. And, yes, leaders need to take ownership of the “culture” around them.

The Clinton culture is simple: Deny, insulate, deny. This is how Hillary and Bill Clinton have kept scandal from enveloping them again and again. (The Rose law firm documents were in a closet?!) They have loyalists, Cheryl Miller is among the closest, who clear up messes, as she apparently was seeking to do when she cautioned State Department personnel against talking to members of Congress. Clinton can keep trotting out the excuse that every scandal is someone else’s doing, but at some point the lady who knows so little about what is going on around her ceases to be seen as a competent leader.

Journalists who’ve never worked in a big company, served in the military or held an executive post may not have a good grasp on how information gets to the person at the top. It begins with the person at the top and/or her chief of staff setting up procedures and understandings about what is urgent, what gets elevated and what should never be a surprise for the boss. If this doesn’t exist, it is because the boss wants plausible deniability (that Clinton culture again) or because the boss is so caught up in minutiae and/or is out of the office so much (Clinton, to a tee) that the organization is chaotic and slow to react.

Read more from this story HERE.

Network Coverage of ‘Scathing’ Benghazi Report Doesn’t Mention Obama’s Name Once

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Photo Credit: MRC

Photo Credit: MRC

While NBC, ABC, and CBS all covered the new Senate Intelligence Committee report blaming the Obama administration for security failures leading up to the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack, none of the coverage on Wednesday’s evening newscasts or Thursday’s morning shows mentioned President Obama by name.

At the top of Wednesday’s NBC Nightly News, anchor Brian Williams announced: “…a scathing report just issued by the Senate Intelligence Committee. It says the deaths could have been prevented by better security, better communication….And the State Department, they say, gets most of the blame.” CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley declared: “A critical report tonight blames American diplomats and intelligence officers for failing to prevent the attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, Libya.”

The closest any of the reporting came to including President Obama in the scandal was on ABC’s World News, when correspondent Jonathan Karl explained: “The conclusions, there were ‘no protests’ prior to the attacks, as the White House first claimed.” Footage of Obama appeared on screen as Karl spoke.

Moments later, Karl added: “On one key point, the report backs up the White House. It says there were ‘no U.S. military resources’ nearby that could have helped defend the compound. In fact, both the State Department and Ambassador Stevens himself turned down an offer from the military to keep a special forces unit in Libya a month before the attacks.”

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Ambassador Stevens Cabled Washington: CIA Says ‘AQ [Al Qaeda] Training Camps Within Benghazi’

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

On August 16, 2012–a little less than a month before the terrorist attacks on the U.S. State Department and CIA facilities in Benghazi, Libya–Amb. Chris Stevens sent a cable to State Department headquarters in Washington, D.C. stating that a CIA officer on the ground in Benghazi had briefed a State Department officer in that city the day before “on the location of approximately ten Islamist militias and AQ training camps within Benghazi.”

This information was released today in a report issued by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

“AQ,” the initials for al Qaeda, are used in intelligence documents quoted in the report to indicate a tie to al Qaeda. For example, a Defense Intelligence Agency report refers to “al Qa’ida (AQ) regional nodes;” a Pentagon Joint Chief’s intelligence report refers to “AQ associates;” and a CIA report entitled “Libya: Al Qa’ida Establishing Sanctuary,” refers to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula as “AQAP” and al Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Magreb as “AQIM.”

The CIA officer’s discussion of the “AQ training camps” in Benghazi occurred at an “Emergency Action Committee” meeting convened August 15, 2012 by the State Department’s principal officer in Benghazi.

“In an August 16, 2012, cable to State headquarters, Stevens raised additional concerns about the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi following an Emergency Action Committee (EAC) meeting held on August 15, 2012, in Benghazi,” says a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report on Benghazi that was released today.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rep. Trey Gowdy Wants A Subpoena for Hillary Clinton (+video)

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Photo Credit: Right Wing News

Photo Credit: Right Wing News

By Janeen Capizola.

South Carolina Congressman Trey Gowdy slammed the State Department Friday night over its slow response in finally naming the suspected terrorist groups responsible for the attack in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012.

“I think tomorrow [the State Dept.] is going to announce that we put a man on the moon, that the Berlin Wall fell and that we discovered this neat little drug called penicillin,” Gowdy told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “That’s about how far behind the intelligence our State Department is.”

The “shocking part,” Gowdy said, was that one day after the terrorist attack, members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s inner circle – including Clinton’s Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills and Under Secretary of ManagementPatrick Kennedy – “admitted” that it was Ansar al-Sharia who was responsible.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Congressman: Hillary Busted in Monster ‘Lie’

By Garth Kant.

President Obama has problems with credibility, as the world well knows after he disingenuously insisted, “If you like your health-care plan, you can keep your health-care plan” about two dozen times in public.

Now, it turns out, the Democrat most political observers believe will try to replace Obama as president apparently also has problems telling the truth.

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lied to the American people about Benghazi, a congressman who recently returned from a fact-finding trip to Libya told WND.

He said she also lied to Congress.

Read more from this story HERE.