Filed under: Election 2012, Foreign Policy, Middle East, National Security, Terrorism | Tags: Benghazi, Taking Responsibility, Terrorist Attack!
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said “I take responsibility” for the protection of U.S. diplomats., today in Lima, Peru. She said an investigation now under way will ultimately determine what happened in the attack that left four Americans dead.
Clinton said President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are not involved in security decisions. “I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha” she added, noting that it is close to the election.
This is what you might call “symbolic responsibility” as head of the Department that is at fault. The public usually respects showy professions of “the buck stops here” statements, something the president has never mastered. “This lets the president accept symbolic responsibility, while continuing to shunt actual responsibility onto State,” said Allahpundit.
In anticipation of unpleasant questions in tomorrow’s debate about foreign policy in general and Libya in particular, Obama wants you to know that he is prepared, if necessary, to make another “gutsy call.”
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.
All these details were made by officials who spoke on condition of anonymity, and were not authorized to discuss the high-level debates publicly. Uh huh. I can recognize a planned leak, and I imagine you can too. The White House declined to comment.
I wish some of the concern was for ambassador Chris Stevens, and Sean Smith, and the two former SEALS, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, and their families. But this is an administration that sends form letters to the families of fallen heroes.
Filed under: Islam, Israel, Middle East, Terrorism | Tags: Gaza Crisis, Not Peace Activists., Terrorist Attack!
The above photo is of the new Olympic-size swim pool in Gaza City. This is in an area that claims to be starved of water and building materials, and depends on humanitarian aid while they create a luxury lifestyle for some, while others suffer under a non-existent “mass humanitarian catastrophe.”
The Roots Club features steak au poivre and chicken cordon bleu, which seems somewhat disassociated from the media theme of desperate refugees suffering in terrible poverty in filthy camps. It is all very confusing.
A flotilla of six ships filled with “peace activists” has been trying to break the embargo on ships arriving at the Gaza strip. They claimed to be delivering “humanitarian aid” to the beleaguered refugees in Gaza.
The Israelis, desperately tired of Hamas attacks from Gaza, intended to inspect the ships to make sure that there were not new supplies of weapons from Iran for Hamas terrorists. Any humanitarian aid would be promptly delivered to Gaza by Israel.
The Israeli Navy sought first to warn the ships off verbally, then sent in commandos armed with paintball guns. The “peace activists” seemed to be largely European, and included a small child. The commandos fast-roped down from helicopters, and the” humanitarians” aboard the ship pulled out clubs, iron rods, knives, slingshots with steel balls and grenades and assaulted the commandos One commando was thrown 30′ down to a lower deck with a severe head injury.
The paintball guns were ineffective in a pitched battle with what turned out to be not a humanitarian mission, but an Islamist terror ambush. The invasion was backed by the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation, a radical Islamic organization outlawed by Israel in 2008 for allegedly serving as a major component in Hamas’s global fund-raising machine. They are noted for their role in Islamist terror in Afghanistan, Bosnia and Chechnya.
Attackers nabbed one commando, wrested away his handgun, and started to shoot at the commandos, who radioed for permission to use their sidearms. The soldiers started shooting at the terrorists legs to neutralize them.
It becomes clear that the Islamist strategy is, on the one hand theatrical events in which the Western media is to play the role of accepting the lies of Israeli violence against peaceful victims; while on the other hand the terrorist operation is intended to open a path through which Iran can supply Hamas terrorists with fresh supplies of war materials with which to attack Israel.
As Michael Rubin says, it is decision time for Obama. “Iran has dismissed Obama’s call to unclench its fist.” Obama still wants to chat with the Mullahs, who simply are not interested. Iran is nearing a nuclear-weapons capability, and the President of the United States seems intent on being the one who succeeds, at last, in applying “the Peace Process,” which is a fantasy beloved by the minions at the State Department for whom the goal is always — talks.
ADDENDUM: An article at American Thinker has pictures of the markets in Gaza, and a link to further pictures. Not quite as we have been led to believe.
American Elephants 