Libya - a bright and shining lie

[4est_4est_Gump]

The Libya Lie
Victor Davis Hanson, NRO
October 18, 2012

Almost everything we have been told about Libya over the last two years is untrue.

A free Libya was supposed to be proof of President Obama’s enlightened “reset” Middle East policy. When insurgency broke out there, the United States joined France and Great Britain in bombing Moammar Qaddafi out of power — and supposedly empowering a democratic Arab Spring regime. Not a single American life was lost.

Libyans, like most in the Arab world, were supposed to appreciate the new, enlightened American foreign policy. Obama’s June 2009 Cairo speech had praised Islam and apologized for the West. A new “lead from behind” multilateralism was said to have superseded George W. Bush’s neo-imperialist interventions of the past.

Obama’s mixed racial identity and his father’s Muslim heritage would also win over the hearts and minds of Libyans after the Qaddafi nightmare. During this summer’s Democratic convention, Obama supporters trumpeted the successes of his Middle East policy: Osama bin Laden dead, al-Qaeda defanged, and Arab Spring reformers in place of dictators.

To keep that shining message viable until the November election, the Obama administration and the media had been willing to overlook or mischaracterize all sorts of disturbing events. We had asked for a United Nations resolution for humanitarian aid and a no-fly zone to intervene in Libya, but then deliberately exceeded it by bombing Qaddafi’s forces — after bypassing the U.S. Congress in favor of a go-ahead from the Arab League.

Libya was not so much liberated as descending into the chaos of tribal payback. Former Qaddafi supporters and African mercenaries were executed by those we helped. Islamists began consolidating power, desecrating a British military cemetery and driving out Westerners.

On the eleventh anniversary of 9/11, a radical Islamist hit team with heavy weapons stormed the American consulate in Benghazi, killing Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

In response, White House press secretary Jay Carney, National Intelligence Director James Clapper, and U.N. ambassador Susan Rice desperately insisted that the murders were a one-time, ad hoc demonstration gone awry, without much larger significance. Supposedly, a few Muslim outliers — inflamed over one American’s anti-Islamic Internet video — had overreacted and stormed the consulate. Such anger was “natural,” assured the president.

But why would furor over an obscure, months-old Internet video just happen to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary attack? Do demonstrators customarily bring along rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, and heavy machine guns? Why did the Libyan government attribute the killings to an al-Qaeda affiliate when the Obama administration would not?

Forget those questions: For most of September, desperate administration officials still clung to the myth that the Libyan catastrophe was a result of a single obnoxious video. At the United Nations, the president castigated the uncouth film. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lamented the senseless spontaneous violence that grew out of one American’s excesses, as she spoke beside the returning coffins of the slain Americans.

Nonetheless, more disturbing facts kept emerging: Ambassador Stevens repeatedly had warned his State Department superiors in vain of impending Islamist violence. Security personnel — to no avail — had also urged beefing up the protection of the consulate, prompting former regional security officer Eric Nordstrom to say in exasperation that “the Taliban is on the inside of the building.” Video of the attack revealed that there had been no demonstration at all, but rather a full-fledged terrorist assault.

Even as the fantasy of a spur-of-the-moment demonstration dissipated, administration officials tried to salvage it — and with it their idealistic policy in the Middle East. Vice President Joe Biden told a flat-out whopper in last week’s debate, saying the administration hadn’t been informed that Americans in Libya had ever requested more security. He scapegoated the intelligence agencies for supposedly failing to warn the administration of the threat.

The new administration narrative faulted not one video, but the intelligence community for misleading them about the threat of an al-Qaeda hit on an American consulate — and the Romney campaign for demanding answers about a slain ambassador and his associates. Meanwhile, the State Department, the Obama reelection team, and the intelligence community were all pointing fingers at each other.

What the Obama administration could not concede was the truth: The lead-from-behind intervention in Libya had proved a blueprint for nothing. Libya had descended into chaos. Radical Islam had either subverted or hijacked the Arab Spring. Al-Qaeda was not dismantled by the death of bin Laden or by the stepped-up drone assassination missions in Pakistan. Egypt was becoming Islamist. Syria was a bloody mess. Iran was on the way to becoming nuclear. Obama had won America no more good will in the Middle East than had prior presidents.

In other words, the administration’s entire experience in Libya — and in most of the Middle East in general — has been a bright and shining lie.

Let the sputtering14 begin...

 

[RobDownSouth]

"Acts of Terrorism"! *sob* "ACTS OF TERRORISM", DAMMIT!

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

The official story of what led up to the attack is just plain weird. Supposedly, the U.S. ambassador arrived back in the country and immediately ran off to Benghazi virtually by himself allegedly to investigate building a new school and a hospital there yet without any real security. His protection was to be provided by relatively untrained Libyans who a few months earlier had been rebels in the civil war.

It is quite true that the State Department and ultimately Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bear responsibility for the ambassador being in Benghazi and for ensuring his protection. The president would not be consulted on such a “minor” event. But the story hinges on why the ambassador was in Benghazi that day.

If he was, as accounts by sources in the U.S. intelligence community suggested, negotiating with a terrorist, anti-American group to obtain the return of U.S. weapons provided during the civil war, that would have been a much higher-priority matter. I have been asked by sources not to reveal the specific weapons system that was Washington’s highest priority to buy back, but the details make sense. The fact that the ambassador was not accompanied by a delegation of foreign aid experts to evaluate these alleged projects shows that the reason for the ambassador’s presence in Benghazi is being covered up. This situation transcends State Department jurisdiction and brings in the CIA and higher-level national security officials. The plan would have been in the presidential briefing and it is quite conceivable he would have been called on to approve of it.

Obama and his administration immediately lied to the American people about the cause of the attack, what happened, and who appeared to have done it.

– They said the attack was due to the video rather than a revolutionary Islamist attempt to hit at the United States and subvert the regime in Libya.

– They said the attack was a spontaneous act in the context of a peaceful demonstration when it was a planned assault.

– They said that there was no idea who was responsible when it was almost certainly al-Qaeda.

In the debate, Obama charged:

While we were still dealing with our diplomats being threatened, Governor Romney put out a press release trying to make political points. And that’s not how a commander in chief operates. You don’t turn national security into a political issue, certainly not right when it’s happening.

Yet all three of the above lies were precisely a matter of turning “national security into a political issue,” and that is what Obama has done throughout his term.

To acknowledge the cause of the attack would have been to acknowledge the real threat in the Middle East and the embarrassing fact that American weapons had been given to terrorist, anti-American groups. Incidentally, far from learning anything in Libya, Obama is now doing precisely the same thing in Syria.

Barry Ruben
http://pjmedia.com/barryrubin/2012/...tern-of-obama-foreign-policy/?singlepage=true

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

TEL AVIV — Hamas has begun firing surface-to-air missiles toward the Israel Air Force.

Israeli military sources said the Hamas regime has deployed Russian air defense systems in the Gaza Strip.

The sources said Hamas gunners were firing SA-7 missiles toward Israel Air Force fighter-jets and helicopters both from the Gaza Strip and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

http://www.worldtribune.com/2012/10...sian-made-missiles-against-israeli-air-force/

 

[Beco]

Nobody cares! It's the economy stupid

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Gotta get down to it,
Muslims are gunning us down!
Should have been done long ago...

 

[RobDownSouth]

♪ ♪ One good song deserves another... ♪ ♪

Gotta get down to it,
Muslims are gunning us down!
Should have been done long ago...

♫♫ AJ keeps on fearin'
Dems....so he keeps on smearing....

Trollin' (Trollin')
Trollin' (Trollin')

Trollin' on the Gee Bee! ♫ ♪♫

 

[hogjack]

Bring Back a Classic Lie to Set Things Right!

The American people are NOT paying adequate attention to this.

Here's an idea to get everyone on-board!

What if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appears before the UN with with a handful of satellite images showing Libya's mobile biological-warfare labs? Oh, and a video showing al-Qaeda operatives training in a secret Libyan camp!

We'll have a busy US military base set up just outside of Tripoli by November! Are there enough Tripoli prostitutes to handle the volume? If not consider bringing in Eyptian or Algerian whores. Primo quality.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Joe Biden would vote for it and then later lie about it...



... with bright and (Jack Nicholson) shining smile

 

[RobDownSouth]

See AJ derp. Derp, AJ, derp!

Saw this and thought of poor AJ...

 

[zipman]

The biggest Libya lie is the one coming from the right wing about it.

 

[unregistered]

 

[garbage can]

The biggest Libya lie is the one coming from the right wing about it.

Okay, I'll bite.

What *is* the biggest Libya lie?

 

[LiFeNdEaTh]

Saw this and thought of poor AJ...

looool

 

[zipman]

The biggest Libya lie is the one coming from the right wing about it.

That there was any lie in the first place.

 

[Liar]

Okay, I'll bite.

What *is* the biggest Libya lie?

That there is a big Libya lie.

 

[Liar]

Dammit, zipman.

 

[garbage can]

That there was any lie in the first place.

That there is a big Libya lie.

If there was no Libya lie, there must be a truth.

Do you know the truth on why there are 4 dead Americans?

 

[Liar]

If there was no Libya lie, there must be a truth.

Do you know the truth on why there are 4 dead Americans?

Because some assholes managed to kill them.

 

[RobDownSouth]

If there was no Libya lie, there must be a truth.

Wrong again. Fallacy of logical composition.

Consider the following logic:

• "Garbage can was arrested for bestiality in California in 2009".
• "There are no arrest records showing Garbage Can arrested for bestiality in California in 2009, your statement is demonstrably false".
• "Okay, when WAS he arrested for bestiality? There must be a truth!"

Proving one charge is wrong does not insinuate everything is known about a particular situation.

Better luck next diversion.

 

[Beco]

The biggest Libya lie is the one coming from the right wing about it.

There either a cover-up, or it was a very sloppy way to address an international incident, i sense a little bit of both