Tag: Seals

BenghaziGate: A Matter of Transparency

On By kingsjesterIn Politics6 Comments

On September 11, 2012, 4 brave Americans, including our Ambassador, were murdered on the grounds of the Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. As I wrote the other day, answers are still being sought , and America’s President “ain’t saying a mumblin’ word.”

Perhaps, that is because his present actions are in direct opposition to what he promised upon taking office.

From whitehouse.gov, “Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies, SUBJECT: Transparency and Open Government”

My Administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government. We will work together to ensure the public trust and establish a system of transparency, public participation, and collaboration. Openness will strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness in Government.

Government should be transparent. Transparency promotes accountability and provides information for citizens about what their Government is doing. Information maintained by the Federal Government is a national asset. My Administration will take appropriate action, consistent with law and policy, to disclose information rapidly in forms that the public can readily find and use. Executive departments and agencies should harness new technologies to put information about their operations and decisions online and readily available to the public. Executive departments and agencies should also solicit public feedback to identify information of greatest use to the public…

As Americans have figured out by now, all of Obama’s promises come with expiration dates.

The Weekly Standard reports:

Seven weeks later, the White House still hasn’t explained what President Obama did and didn’t do during the seven hours of the attack on Benghazi on September 11. And there’s been no response from the White House to questions asked by senators or THE WEEKLY STANDARD or David Ignatius in the Washington Post.

We have, to be sure, heard from some government officials. But the information they’ve provided raises still more questions.

CIA director David Petraeus authorized a statement pointedly saying that “No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate”—which strongly suggests that Petraeus believes or knows that officials in other parts of the government may have told subordinates “not to help those in need.”

Those could have been officials in the Defense Department. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta seemed to suggest that was the case: “The basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on; without having some real-time information about what’s taking place, and as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, Gen. Ham, Gen. Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.”

It’s not just Obama and the Administration who are stone-walling. Heck, he’s even got Facebook stone-walling for him, as Breitbart.com reports:

Over the weekend, Facebook took down a message by the Special Operations Speaks PAC (SOS) which highlighted the fact that Obama denied backup to the forces being overrun in Benghazi.

The message was contained in a meme which demonstrated how Obama had relied on the SEALS when he was ready to let them get Osama bin Laden, and how he had turned around and denied them when they called for backup on Sept 11.

I spoke with Larry Ward, president of Political Media, Inc — the media company that handles SOS postings and media production. Ward was the one who personally put the Navy SEAL meme up, and the one who received the warning from Facebook and an eventual 24 hour suspension from Facebook because Ward put the meme back up after Facebook told him to take it down.

Here’s what Ward told me:

We created and posted this meme on Saturday after news broke that Obama had known and denied SEALS the backup they requested.

Once the meme was up it garnered 30,000 shares, approx. 24,000 likes, and was read by hundreds of thousands of people — all within 24 hrs. On Sunday, I went into the SOS Facebook page to post something else and found a warning from Facebook that we had violated Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities with our meme. So I copied the warning, put it on the meme as as caption, and re-posted the meme to the Facebook page.

Along with the re-posted meme, Ward put a link to the Facebook “feedback comment” inbox so visitors to the SOS page could send a message to Facebook if they were as outraged over the meme being jerked down as he was.

Ward said Facebook pulled the re-posted meme down within 7 or 8 hours and suspended the SOS account for 24 hours.

In other words, Facebook put the Navy SEALS in timeout in order to shield Obama.

How low can you go?

Evidently, lower than the belly of a snake.

In the newest revelation in this cover-up, Fox News reports

The U.S. Mission in Benghazi convened an “emergency meeting” less than a month before the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, because Al Qaeda had training camps in Benghazi and the consulate could not defend against a “coordinated attack,” according to a classified cable reviewed by Fox News.

Summarizing an Aug. 15 emergency meeting convened by the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Aug. 16 cable marked “SECRET” said that the State Department’s senior security officer, also known as the RSO, did not believe the consulate could be protected.

“RSO (Regional Security Officer) expressed concerns with the ability to defend Post in the event of a coordinated attack due to limited manpower, security measures, weapons capabilities, host nation support, and the overall size of the compound,” the cable said.

According to a review of the cable addressed to the Office of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Emergency Action Committee was also briefed “on the location of approximately ten Islamist militias and AQ training camps within Benghazi … these groups ran the spectrum from Islamist militias, such as the QRF Brigade and Ansar al-Sharia, to ‘Takfirist thugs.’” Each U.S. mission has a so-called Emergency Action Committee that is responsible for security measures and emergency planning.

The details in the cable seemed to foreshadow the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. compound, which was a coordinated, commando-style assault using direct and indirect fire. Al Qaeda in North Africa and Ansar al-Sharia, both mentioned in the cable, have since been implicated in the consulate attack.

This is not going away anytime soon.The American public wants some answers.

Ambassador Chris Stevens, Tyrone Woods, Glen Doherty, and Sean Smith remain unavailable for comment.

I Thought the CIC Was Supposed to Support Our Troops?

On By kingsjesterIn Politics2 Comments

To say that Obama and his Administration are not our Armed Forces’ best friends is an understatement.

Foxnews.com has the story:

A veterans group is vowing to get a handwriting expert to determine if the letters sent to parents of Navy SEALs killed in Afghanistan were signed by President Obama himself or an electronic autopen that can replicate his signature.

Karen and Billy Vaughn, whose son Aaron Vaughn was one of 17 SEALs and 13 other Americans killed in a helicopter crash Aug. 6, 2011, raised the issue at a Tea Party rally in Tampa during the Republican National Convention. Karen Vaughn said she compared the signature on her letter, dated Sept. 23, 2011, with those received by other families of SEALs and determined the signature was mechanical.

“We are going to have nationally recognized handwriting experts review the letters given the strong circumstantial evidence which exists in this case.”

– Joel Arends, Veterans for a Strong America

But the White House insists every letter sent out to the families of fallen service members is signed by the hand of the Commander-in-Chief.

“The President signs every such letter personally,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Friday.

An autopen is a machine that can be programmed to duplicate an individual’s John Hancock. Seen as more personal than a stamp but less than a hand-signature, the device was first used in the White House by President Harry Truman. President Obama made history when he became the first chief executive to use the device to sign a bill, authorizing its use to extend key provisions of the Patriot Act last year while he was in France.

Aaron Vaughn was part of a rescue team that was sent to a mountainous area in the Wardak Providence in August of last year to assist an Army Ranger unit that was under heavy fire. The team had completed their mission but their Chinook helicopter was shot down as they were departing. Nearly 40 people perished, marking it one of the deadliest single incident losses in the decade-long war in Afghanistan.

Veterans for a Strong America, a nonpartisan military watchdog group pledged to get to the bottom of the matter.

“After reviewing letters from several families of fallen Navy SEALs it appears that the letters may have been auto-penned, so we are going to have nationally recognized handwriting experts review the letters given the strong circumstantial evidence which exists in this case,” Joel Arends, chairman of Veterans for a Strong America said in a statement to FoxNews.com.

Arends also complained that the mailings are form letters, with only the names of the recipients changed. The White House conceded that point, but noted sending form letters has long been common practice for presidents, especially when war casualties mount.

In 2003, Newsweek reported that condolence letters from President George W. Bush were also form letters, “With the exception of the salutation and a reference to the fallen soldier in the text.”

However, four years later, the Washington Times ran a story claiming that Bush had sent personal letters to more than 4,000 families of soldiers killed in action and 9/11 victims during his presidency which was largely unnoticed by the public.

In a related story, also found on foxnews.com:

The Pentagon’s top lawyer on Thursday informed the former Navy SEAL who wrote a forthcoming book describing details of the raid that killed Usama bin Laden that he violated agreements to not divulge military secrets and that as a result the Pentagon is considering taking legal action against him.

The general counsel of the Defense Department, Jeh Johnson, wrote in a letter transmitted to the author that he had signed two nondisclosure agreements with the Navy in 2007 that obliged him to “never divulge” classified information.

“This commitment remains in force even after you left the active duty Navy,” Johnson wrote. He said the author, Matt Bissonnette, left active duty “on or about April 20, 2012,” which was nearly one year after the May 2011 raid.

By signing the agreements, Bissonnette acknowledged his awareness, Johnson wrote, that “disclosure of classified information constitutes a violation of federal criminal law.” He said it also obliged the author to submit his manuscript for a security review by the government before it was published. The Pentagon has said the manuscript was not submitted for review, although it obtained a copy last week.

Johnson said that after reviewing a copy of the book, “No Easy Day,” the Pentagon concluded that the author is in “material breach and violation” of the agreements.

The book is to be published next week by Penguin Group (USA)’s Dutton imprint. The Associated Press purchased a copy Tuesday.

First, Obama is “too busy” to actually sign letters to the families of our fallen, and now his administration wants to “take legal action” against a Navy Seal, for “divulging” a raid that happened a year ago, which Obama has been taking credit for. I realize that Bissonette committed a serious breach of protocol, but…

Given the treatment of our Armed Forces by their CIC, it is no wonder a Rasmussen Poll, taken in July, showed that

…military veterans prefer Mitt Romney by a wide margin, 59% to 35%. Another 5% prefer a third party candidate; 2% are undecided. This poll has been echoed by Gallup, which put the two at 58-34 back in May. John McCain won some 54% of the veteran vote against Obama.

Romney’s larger lead is a sign that veterans are dissatisfied with Obama, rather than pleased particularly with Romney – Romney, after all, was not a military man while McCain famously was. The poll did not ask military vets about their feelings on the end of “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Despite Obama’s attempts to pander to veterans by offering them larger benefits and suggesting that we build a country “worthy” of our returning vets, America’s military men and women continue to prefer hawkish foreign policy and fiscal responsibility to appeasement-oriented foreign policy and heavy spending.

Perhaps it’s because our Brightest and Best believe in American Exceptionalism and actually love this country.

As opposed to…well…you-know-who.

From Ryan to Ridiculous

On By kingsjesterIn Politics5 Comments

Last night, in Tampa, Florida, at the Republican National Convention, Vice-President Paul Ryan strode to the podium and delivered a solid speech.

Here are some excepts from it, courtesy of weeklystandard.com:

I accept the calling of my generation to give our children the America that was given to us, with opportunity for the young and security for the old – and I know that we are ready. Our nominee is sure ready. His whole life has prepared him for this moment – to meet serious challenges in a serious way, without excuses and idle words. After four years of getting the run-around, America needs a turnaround, and the man for the job is Governor Mitt Romney. …

Obamacare comes to more than two thousand pages of rules, mandates, taxes, fees, and fines that have no place in a free country. The president has declared that the debate over government-controlled health care is over. That will come as news to the millions of Americans who will elect Mitt Romney so we can repeal Obamacare. …

We have a plan for a stronger middle class, with the goal of generating 12 million new jobs over the next four years. …

My Dad used to say to me: ‘Son. You have a choice: You can be part of the problem, or you can be part of the solution.’ The present administration has made its choices. And Mitt Romney and I have made ours: Before the math and the momentum overwhelm us all, we are going to solve this nation’s economic problems. And I’m going to level with you: We don’t have that much time. But if we are serious, and smart, and we lead, we can do this. …

That is how a leader speaks, ladies and gentlemen.

As opposed our present CIC, as reported at Gateway Pundit, by Jim Hoft:

On August 6, 2011, 30 US service members were killed when a CH-47 Chinook helicopter they were being transported in crashed in Wardak province, Afghanistan. It was the deadliest single loss for U.S. forces in the decade-long war in Afghanistan. 17 members of the elite Navy SEALs were killed in the crash.

Yesterday, Karen and Billy Vaughn, parents of Aaron Carson Vaughn, spoke at the Defending the Defenders forum sponsored by the Tea Party Patriots outside the RNC Convention in Tampa. Karen brought a copy of the form letter they were sent following their son’s death.

It’s a form letter.

It was signed by an electric pen.

That’s not all.

Karen Vaughn reached out to the parents of the other SEALs killed in that crash.

Their letters were all the same.

Form letters – signed by an electric pen.

…After the deadliest single loss of US forces in Afghanistan, Barack Obama sent out form letters to the parents.

Pitiful.

However, just so you won’t think that I’m one -sided,  I am pleased to announce that an anonymous source has sent me an copy of the advance schedule for the Democratic National Convention.

Read this and you might become verklept (Yiddish for being overcome by emotion).

2012 Democratic Convention Schedule – Charlotte, NC

4:00 PM – Opening Flag Burning Ceremony – sponsored by CNN

4:05 PM – Singing of “God Damn America” led by Rev. Jeremiah Wright

4:10 PM – Pledge of Allegiance to Obama – led by Whoopie Goldberg

4:15 PM – Tribute to George Soros for his help in creating and financing the Democratic Platform – Nancy Pelosi

4:30 PM – Reading of the Democratic Platform – Nancy Pelosi XXXX Canceled. Will be passed without reading.

4:30 PM – Tribute to the Occupy Wall Street movement for all that they have accomplished to unify the country, improve employment, and boost the economy. – Harry Reid

4:45 PM – Jobs seminar “How to have a successful career without having a job.” – Al Sharpton / Jesse Jackson

5:00 PM – Travel Seminar; “Great Vacations I’ve Taken on the Taxpayer’s Dime” – Michelle Obama.

5:30 PM – “Family Values” Seminar – Eliot Spitzer (via Satellite)

5:35 PM – Real Estate Bargains Seminar – Tony Rezko

6:00 PM – Home Mortgage Seminar – Barney Frank

6:10 PM – Pledge of Allegiance to Obama – led by George Clooney

6:15 PM – Airing of Grievances by the Clintons

6:30 pm – Kinder, Gentler Bombing Techniques – Bill Ayers

6:45 PM – Paying Your Fair Share – Timothy Geitner

7:00 PM – Free Gov. Blagovich rally

7:15 PM – Tribute Film to Brave Freedom Fighters incarcerated at GITMO – Michael Moore

7:30 PM – Dramatized film re-enactment of Obama’s single handed capture of Osama Bin Laden – Michael Moore

7:45 PM – Personal Finance Seminar – Charlie Rangle

7:50 PM – Commitment to US border security – Atty Gen Holder

8:10 PM – Pledge of Allegiance to Obama – led by David Letterman

8:15 PM – Media Seminar “Bias in Media – How we can make it work for you” – sponsored by CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times

9:00 PM – Denunciation of Bitter Gun Owners and Bible readers – Dem Natl Cmte Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

9:15 PM – Energy Plan Symposium / Tire Gauge Demonstration / Profiting with Green Investments – Al Gore

10:00 PM – Ceremonial Waving of White Flag for IRAQ , & Afghanistan

10:10 PM – Pledge of Allegiance to Obama – led by Barbra Streisand

10:15 PM – Obama Accepts Oscar, Tony and Latin Grammy Awards

10:20 PM – Obama accepts Congressional Medal of Honor for Bin Laden capture

10:25 PM – Obama accepts Greenpeace Hero Medal for instant cleanup of Gulf oil spill, and blocking of Keystone Pipeline

10:30 PM – Official Nomination of Obama by Bill Maher and Chris “He sends a thrill up my leg” Matthews

10:45 PM – *** Break for installation of additional teleprompters ***

11:00 PM – Obama Accepts Nomination as Lord and Savior

11:45 PM – Feeding of the Delegates with 5 Loaves and 2 Fish – Obama Presiding

12:00 AM – Celestial Choirs Sing (Food stamps distributed to all delegates as they leave.)

1:00 AM – Convention Hall cleared and cleaned

3:00 AM – Biden Delivers Acceptance Speech

Gotcha.