Wednesday, April 23, 2014
Shocking Video: Harry Reid Just Accidentally Revealed His Stunning Disrespect For Americans
Shocking Video: Harry Reid Just Accidentally Revealed His Stunning Disrespect For Americans
The most frightening thing is that most politicians in Washington probably secretly agree.
One of the most important things revealed in that interview was not something that Harry Reid said, but what he did. Watch closely as Reid talks about the Bundy situation, and see what he does as he says “Federal Land.” It is very revealing about what he, and most likely, many other policians in Washington really think about the public (and even the private) land in America.
Georgia governor to sign 'unprecedented' bill expanding gun rights
Georgia governor to sign 'unprecedented' bill expanding gun rights
October 25, 2012: A Glock handgun available in a raffle promotion is shown at Adventures Outdoors in Smyrna, Georgia.REUTERS
The bill, described by the National Rifle Association’s lobbying arm as "the most comprehensive pro-gun reform legislation introduced in recent state history," expands the scope of public places where licensed owners are allowed to carry firearms.
The bill makes several changes to state law. It allows those with a license to carry to bring a gun into a bar without restriction and into some government buildings that don't have certain security measures. It also allows religious leaders to decide whether it's OK for a person with a carry license to bring a gun into their place of worship.
Democrats resisted the proposal, although they conceded it would pass in the GOP-dominated House of Representatives. They argued that allowing guns in more places will not make society safer and may lead to more deaths.
Under the bill, school districts would now be able, if they wanted, to allow some employees to carry a firearm under certain conditions. The bill also eliminates the fingerprinting requirement for renewing weapons carry licenses.
According to the Marietta Daily Journal, the legislation prohibits the state from creating and maintaining a database of licensed weapons carriers and repeals the state-required license for firearms dealers.
Colin Goddard, who survived the 2007 campus shooting at Virginia Tech, told Georgia Public Broadcasting he's alarmed by a provision that waives criminal prosecution of felons who use illegal firearms in the act of self-defense.
“The stand your ground expansion is truly a new type of stand your ground as we know it,” Goddard said. “To expand it in such a way to remove all carrying or possession offenses is really unprecedented.”
Jerry Henry of GeorgiaCarry.org told GPB News he doesn’t expect to see a surge in gun sales or an increase in gun-related businesses in the state. He noted that other states have far less restrictive gun laws than Georgia.
“I don’t think people are going to look at it and say, ‘Oh Georgia just passed a new law and I’m going to move over there because it’s so much easier.’ I don’t think we’re going to see that,” he said. “Arizona, Wyoming, Alaska, Vermont – they all have Constitutional Carry."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Click here for more from the Marietta Daily Journal.
Click here for more from GPB News.
Greg Abbott slams BLM’s potential seizure of private lands
Greg Abbott slams BLM’s potential seizure of private lands
4:24 PM 04/22/2014
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott slammed the federal Bureau of
Land Management’s claims that private property within the state now
belongs to the federal government.
The BLM says the federal government owns a 90,000 acre piece of land along Texas’s Red River, despite it being maintained and cultivated by private landowners for generations and no law has been passed by Congress giving BLM ownership of the land.
In the wake of cattle rancher Cliven Bundy’s standoff with federal agents over desert tortoise habitat in Nevada, Abbott — who is currently running for governor — argues that BLM’s plans to seize the Red River lands “threaten to upset long-settled private property rights.”
“I am deeply concerned about the notion that the Bureau of Land Management believes the federal government has the authority to swoop in and take land that has been owned and cultivated by Texas landowners for generations,” Abbott wrote in a letter to BLM Director Neil Kornz.
“The BLM’s newly asserted claims to land along the Red River threaten to upset long-settled private property rights and undermine fundamental principles—including the rule of law—that form the foundation of our democracy,” Abbott added. “Yet, the BLM has failed to disclose either its full intentions or the legal justification for its proposed actions. Decisions of this magnitude must not be made inside a bureaucratic black box.”
How can the federal government just take over private land? About a century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case Oklahoma v. Texas that the boundary between the two states was at the gradient line of the Red River’s south bank. But federal regulators have never really agreed with the court’s decision.
In 1994, the BLM said that the Red River area “cannot be defined until action by the U.S. Congress establishes the permanent state boundary between Oklahoma and Texas.” But the BLM also said that legislation defining the “south geologic cut bank as the boundary” would have given up to 90,000 acres of land to the federal government.
Congress did enact legislation in 2000, but the bill did not heed the BLM’s advice. Instead, lawmakers ratified the boundary pact agreed to by Oklahoma and Texas, putting the boundary at “the vegetation on the south bank of the Red River” and not the “south geologic cut bank” like the BLM wanted.
But still the BLM is eyeing the lands near Red River for federal takeover. A BLM document from last November obtained by Breitbart Texas shows that the agency is conducting “a scoping period where they are gathering facts on land whose ownership they believe to be in question in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.” This will help the BLM develop a Resource Management Plan for the 263 million acres of land, which Abbott fears could propose a federal takeover of some Texans’ private property.
“I understand that your office is in the early stages of developing a plan—known as a Resource Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement (RMP/EIS)—to regulate the use of federal lands along a 116-mile stretch of the Red River,” Abbott said. “Despite the long-settled expectations of these hard-working Texans along the Red River, the BLM appears to be threatening their private property rights by claiming ownership over this territory.”
“Yet, the BLM has failed to disclose either its full intentions or the legal justification for its proposed actions,” Abbot added. “Decisions of this magnitude must not be made inside a bureaucratic black box.”
Abbot, a Republican, will face off against Democrat Wendy Davis in the governor’s race this fall.
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The BLM says the federal government owns a 90,000 acre piece of land along Texas’s Red River, despite it being maintained and cultivated by private landowners for generations and no law has been passed by Congress giving BLM ownership of the land.
In the wake of cattle rancher Cliven Bundy’s standoff with federal agents over desert tortoise habitat in Nevada, Abbott — who is currently running for governor — argues that BLM’s plans to seize the Red River lands “threaten to upset long-settled private property rights.”
“I am deeply concerned about the notion that the Bureau of Land Management believes the federal government has the authority to swoop in and take land that has been owned and cultivated by Texas landowners for generations,” Abbott wrote in a letter to BLM Director Neil Kornz.
“The BLM’s newly asserted claims to land along the Red River threaten to upset long-settled private property rights and undermine fundamental principles—including the rule of law—that form the foundation of our democracy,” Abbott added. “Yet, the BLM has failed to disclose either its full intentions or the legal justification for its proposed actions. Decisions of this magnitude must not be made inside a bureaucratic black box.”
How can the federal government just take over private land? About a century ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the case Oklahoma v. Texas that the boundary between the two states was at the gradient line of the Red River’s south bank. But federal regulators have never really agreed with the court’s decision.
In 1994, the BLM said that the Red River area “cannot be defined until action by the U.S. Congress establishes the permanent state boundary between Oklahoma and Texas.” But the BLM also said that legislation defining the “south geologic cut bank as the boundary” would have given up to 90,000 acres of land to the federal government.
Congress did enact legislation in 2000, but the bill did not heed the BLM’s advice. Instead, lawmakers ratified the boundary pact agreed to by Oklahoma and Texas, putting the boundary at “the vegetation on the south bank of the Red River” and not the “south geologic cut bank” like the BLM wanted.
But still the BLM is eyeing the lands near Red River for federal takeover. A BLM document from last November obtained by Breitbart Texas shows that the agency is conducting “a scoping period where they are gathering facts on land whose ownership they believe to be in question in Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.” This will help the BLM develop a Resource Management Plan for the 263 million acres of land, which Abbott fears could propose a federal takeover of some Texans’ private property.
“I understand that your office is in the early stages of developing a plan—known as a Resource Management Plan/Environmental Impact Statement (RMP/EIS)—to regulate the use of federal lands along a 116-mile stretch of the Red River,” Abbott said. “Despite the long-settled expectations of these hard-working Texans along the Red River, the BLM appears to be threatening their private property rights by claiming ownership over this territory.”
“Yet, the BLM has failed to disclose either its full intentions or the legal justification for its proposed actions,” Abbot added. “Decisions of this magnitude must not be made inside a bureaucratic black box.”
Abbot, a Republican, will face off against Democrat Wendy Davis in the governor’s race this fall.
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.
America’s Darkest Secret: Barack Obama Is A Pawn For The New World Order
America’s Darkest Secret: Barack Obama Is A Pawn For The New World Order
THINKSTOCK
The United States has become a stacked game for the mega rich and a sucker’s game for the growing poor. Today, it is President Barack Obama who heads this tragedy — stealing from the middle class to pay off the rich while manipulating multitudes of the millions to become needful and poor, compliant and cowering.
The once proud and independent American middle class is being gutted. And no President has done more to eviscerate it than Obama, whose handlers urge him to build a socialist nation for the ever-increasing number of needful people while at the same time giving power to an oligarchy of billionaires who have ultimate authority and pull the puppet strings on their patsy: an African-American community leader dug up in Chicago, turned into a junior Senator and then made President.
In exchange, Obama has done exactly as ordered. He has made the billionaires even richer while shoveling millions of dollars in aid to the once-proud middle class, who have lost their jobs in manufacturing because Obama and previous Presidents systematically gave away American technology and destroyed the factories that built this Nation.
And so it goes. America’s debt levels soar, as do American stocks. That wealth is not going to the American worker, but to the deal makers and paper pushers who sit in plush offices and live a lifestyle like the French autocracy on the eve of the French Revolution.
But Washington has learned some history. They use the media to make the people afraid of myriad enemies and make us thankful to “eat cake” so long as it comes with booze, lotto, movies and sports and, in some States, marijuana.
And King Barry has something Louis XVI never had — an intelligence network that spies on each and every citizen. There will be no Maximilien Robespierre or Jacobins to orchestrate a march on the White House regardless of what this jester President does.
Why Wall Street Loves Obama
The only money being made in America nowadays is by the geniuses in Silicon Valley, which is deserved, and by the money changers on Wall Street, which is undeserved.Timothy Smeeding, head of the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Madison-Wisconsin told The New York Times:
Almost all of the benefits of growth since the trough of the Great Recession have been going to those in the upper classes. Middle- and lower-income families are getting a smaller slice of a smaller economic pie as labor markets have changed drastically during our recovery.I spent enough time as a stockbroker that I felt like killing myself. Nothing productive resulted from my efforts or the efforts of anyone else at that office. But there were star money makers there, and in New York there are bushels of stars that gamble trillions of dollars every day and make personal fortunes doing it.
Obama has been ordered to curry favor with Wall Street, despite his initial campaign promise to crack down on the investment banks that took the world to the edge of economic collapse and whose mistakes led the Federal Reserve to the largest monetization of debt in history. Today, the U.S. Treasury begs our competitors and future enemies such as Russia and China to invest in additional Treasury bills, notes and bonds at debt auctions that both Moscow and Beijing understand will one day be worthless. Yet they play along until there is either a new reserve currency or a gold standard.
Obama was bought and paid for by big money powers, and he has done well at serving the interests of big money. He demanded nothing after putting up $700 billion in the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) for the investment banks whose blind greed and reckless practices drove America toward the worst economic crisis in history. Of course, these are the investment banks that appointed Obama as President twice.
The Way We Were
America wasn’t like that when I got started as a writer more than 30 years ago. My wife bought me suits off the sales racks at Sears because we had a young family and a big mortgage. Back then, I was mostly a proofreader and a researcher. My friends were in the same boat, and we used to say over the course of the day: “What’s the Dow doing?”Nobody asks that anymore. Maybe that’s because of the Internet, but I think there is another reason. I don’t think middle-class people have the money to invest in the stock market anymore. By the time they pay the bills, the mortgage and car insurance, few can even think of taking a position in the Dow or any blue chip stocks.
I could take a position of 100 shares in a stock for $1,000 or $2,000. That would be a stock trading at $10 or $20 per share. In 1984, a share of Apple (AAPL) cost $20. Today, a share costs well more than $500. Of course, the value of Apple shares has soared; but stock splits have not kept pace.
Do you know anyone who can pull $50,000 out of their bank account and buy a token position in Apple? I don’t. As a result, Apple is almost exclusively traded between mutual funds, brokerage houses, investment banks and the ultra-rich.
Last year, Wall Street bonuses rose by 15 percent. That makes the overall bonus totals close to $27 billion in 2013 or the most since the infamous pig-fest in 2008 when Wall Street got stinking rich while almost destroying the global economy. Keep in mind this is bonus money, not salary money. Bonus money based on performance — how much brokers and dealers sold to unsuspecting suckers even if they were colleagues and friends.
No surprise that Wall Street insiders contribute to the truth that starting two years ago, the top 10 percent of U.S. households made more than 50 percent of total U.S. income.
The Secret War On The Middle Class
Nearly 50 million Americans are on food stamps. That is more than the number of women in the country who have full-time jobs.The Department of Agriculture lists the annual average number of food stamp participants going back to 1969. That year, there were 2.9 million people on food stamps. Since then, food stamp participants have increased by more than 1,600 percent. In 1969 there were 15.7 million women who worked full-time in the U.S. At the end of 2012, that total had increased by 181 percent.
Obama and previous patsy Presidents have made it easy for tens of millions of Americans to give up, sit back and collect government money. At the same time, the Federal government has done little to help women become wage earners — workers who pay taxes, invest back into America and build a better future.
But on goes the puppet show: the Obamas saying they are fighting against obesity in children while forcing healthcare on millions of people who don’t want it. Then there are others — leaders like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who holds on to regal power the way Queen Victoria did, and Republican Senator John McCain, who is as bent on empire building as Otto von Bismarck was in the 19th century.
And who are we to stop them? President George W. Bush begat Obama, and Obama will begat the next patsy President. The wolves of Wall Street will get ever fatter, while we on Main Street are left to starve.
Obama is an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.
Yours in good times and bad,
–John Myers
John Myers is editor of Myers’ Energy and Gold Report. The son of C.V. Myers, the original publisher of Oilweek Magazine, John has worked with two of the world’s largest investment publishers, Phillips and Agora. He was the original editor for Outstanding Investments
and has more than 20 years experience as an investment writer. John is a
graduate of the University of Calgary. He has worked for Prudential
Securities in Spokane, Wash., as a registered investment advisor. His
office location in Calgary, Alberta, is just minutes away from the
headquarters of some of the biggest players in today’s energy markets.
This gives him personal access to everyone from oil CEOs to roughnecks,
where he learns secrets from oil insiders he passes on to his
subscribers. Plus, during his years in Spokane he cultivated a network
of relationships with mining insiders in Idaho, Oregon and Washington.
DOJ announces clemency overhaul, allows release for some after 10 years
DOJ announces clemency overhaul, allows release for some after 10 years
April 8, 2014: Attorney General Eric Holder testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington.AP
The initiative is part of a broader Obama administration effort to ease sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.
Deputy Attorney General James Cole outlined the changes, which include six separate criteria inmates must meet to be eligible, on Wednesday morning. Among the requirements is that inmates must have served at least 10 years of their federal sentence and not have a "significant criminal history." They must be "non-violent, low-level offenders" with no significant ties to major gangs, have a record of good conduct in prison, and have no history of violence.
Finally, the process will be open to those who likely would have gotten a lesser sentence if convicted of the same offense today.
"Older, stringent punishments that are out of line with sentences imposed under today's laws erode people's confidence in our criminal justice system. I am confident that this initiative will go far to promote the most fundamental of American ideals -- equal justice under the law," Cole said.
He said the department plans to launch the initiative "quickly and effectively."
Cole suggested attorneys in the Justice Department are on board, though separate efforts to curb mandatory minimum sentencing have drawn complaints from the rank and file.
The National Association of Assistant Untied States Attorneys wrote to Attorney General Eric Holder in January arguing that the current sentence system is "worth preserving" -- and that mandatory minimums give prosecutors "leverage to secure cooperation from defendants."
DOJ leaders, though, argue that the new clemency changes are meant to address inconsistencies in sentences over time. The announcement is aimed primarily at drug prisoners, especially those sentenced under old guidelines that resulted in significantly harsher penalties for people caught with crack cocaine than for those who possessed the powder form of the drug. But it also applies to federal inmates imprisoned for other crimes, provided they meet the same criteria for clemency.
Cole outlined a detailed process that apparently will kick into gear starting next week. He said the Bureau of Prisons will circulate the new criteria to inmates across the country, and allow those who think they meet the standards to fill out an electronic form.
DOJ lawyers will screen those forms and forward select cases to pro bono attorneys to help in preparing clemency applications. Cole said lawyers from the Justice Department and elsewhere are being assigned to the pardon office to help in reviewing the "numerous petitions" expected to be submitted.
He said applications will undergo "rigorous scrutiny."
Cole also announced that current Pardon Attorney Ron Rodgers will be resigning; he will be replaced by Deborah Leff, acting senior counselor for access to justice.
One source told The Associated Press the Justice Department has identified more than 23,000 people who are serving sentences of at least 10 years. But it was not clear how many of those people would be viable clemency candidates.
The Obama administration says it's working to correct the legacy of an old sentencing structure that, historically, subjected black convicts to long prison terms for crack cocaine convictions while giving far more lenient sentences to those caught with powder, who were more likely to be white. The Fair Sentencing Act reduced that disparity and eliminated a five-year mandatory minimum for first-time possession of crack, and officials are now turning their attention to identifying inmates who received sentences under the old guidelines that now appear unduly harsh.
President Obama, who granted only one commutation in his first term, cut short in December the sentences of eight prisoners he said had been locked up too long for drug crimes. The White House has said it's seeking additional good candidates to consider for clemency, though spokesman Jay Carney said Monday that the number of commutations "will depend entirely on the number of worthy candidates."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Benghazi attack could have been prevented if US hadn't 'switched sides in the War on Terror' and allowed $500 MILLION of weapons to reach al-Qaeda militants, reveals damning report
Benghazi attack could have been prevented if US hadn't 'switched sides in the War on Terror' and allowed $500 MILLION of weapons to reach al-Qaeda militants, reveals damning report
- Citizens Committee on Benghazi claims the US government allowed arms to flow to al-Qaeda-linked militants who opposed Muammar Gaddafi
- Their rise to power, the group says, led to the Benghazi attack in 2012
- The group claims the strongman Gaddafi offered to abdicate his presidency, but the US refused to broker his peaceful exit
- The commission, part of the center-right Accuracy In Media group, concluded that the Benghazi attack was a failed kidnapping plot
- US Ambassador Chris Stevens was to be captured and traded for 'blind sheikh' Omar Abdel-Rahman, who hatched the 1993 WTC bombing plot
The
Citizens Commission on Benghazi, a self-selected group of former top
military officers, CIA insiders and think-tankers, declared Tuesday in
Washington that a seven-month review of the deadly 2012 terrorist attack
has determined that it could have been prevented – if the U.S. hadn't
been helping to arm al-Qaeda militias throughout Libya a year earlier.
'The
United States switched sides in the war on terror with what we did in
Libya, knowingly facilitating the provision of weapons to known al-Qaeda
militias and figures,' Clare Lopez, a member of the commission and a
former CIA officer, told MailOnline.
She
blamed the Obama administration for failing to stop half of a $1
billion United Arab Emirates arms shipment from reaching al-Qaeda-linked
militants.
'Remember,
these weapons that came into Benghazi were permitted to enter by our
armed forces who were blockading the approaches from air and sea,' Lopez
claimed. 'They were permitted to come in. ... [They] knew these weapons
were coming in, and that was allowed..
'The
intelligence community was part of that, the Department of State was
part of that, and certainly that means that the top leadership of the
United States, our national security leadership, and potentially
Congress – if they were briefed on this – also knew about this.'
The weapons were intended for Gaddafi but allowed by
the U.S. to flow to his Islamist opposition.
Scroll down for video
The Citizens Committee on Benghazi released its
interim findings on April 22, 2014 in Washington. Pictured are (L-R)
Clare Lopez, Admiral (Ret.) Chuck Kubic, Admiral (Ret.) James 'Ace'
Lyons, former CIA officer Wayne Simmons and civil rights attorney John
Clarke
On September 11, 2012 armed terror-linked
militias attacked U.S. diplomatic outposts in Benghazi, Libya, killing
four Americans and driving the United States out of that part of the
country
'The White
House and senior Congressional members,' the group wrote in an interim
report released Tuesday, 'deliberately and knowingly pursued a policy
that provided material support to terrorist organizations in order to
topple a ruler [Muammar Gaddafi] who had been working closely with the
West actively to suppress al-Qaeda.'
'Some look at it as treason,' said Wayne Simmons, a former CIA officer who participated in the commission's research.
Retired Rear Admiral Chuck Kubic, another commission member, told reporters Tuesday that those weapons are now 'all in Syria.''Gaddafi wasn't a good guy, but he was being marginalized,' Kubic recalled. 'Gaddafi actually offered to abdicate' shortly after the beginning of a 2011 rebellion.
'But
the U.S. ignored his calls for a truce,' the commission wrote,
ultimately backing the horse that would later help kill a U.S.
ambassador.
Kubic said that the effort at truce talks fell apart when the White House declined to let the Pentagon pursue it seriously.
'We had a leader who had won the Nobel Peace Prize,' Kubic said, 'but who was unwilling to give peace a chance for 72 hours.'
In
March 2011, Kubic said, U.S. Army Africa Commander General Carter told
NBC News that the U.S. military was not actively targeting Muammar
Gaddafi. That, Kubic revealed, was a signal to the Libyan dictator that
there was a chance for a deal.
Gaddafi responded by 'verifiably ... pull[ing] his forces back from key rebel-held cities such as Benghazi and Misrata.'
Christopher Stevens served as the U.S. Ambassador to Libya from June 2012 to September 11, 2012 when he was killed in the attack
Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the
Senate Foreign Relations Committee in January 23 that it mattered
little why the Benghazi diplomatic compound was attacked: 'What
difference, at this point, does it make?'
Gaddafi
wanted only two conditions to step down: permission to keeo fighting
al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), and the lifting of sactions
against him, his family, and those loyal to him.
The
Obama administration's unwillingness to help broker a peaceful exit for
the Libyan strongman, 'led to extensive loss of life (including four
Americans)' when al-Qaeda-linked militants attacked U.S. diplomatic
facilities in the city of Benghazi,' the commission told reporters.
The White House and the National Security Staff did not immediately respond to questions about the group's findings.
'We don't claim to have all the answers here,' said Roger Aronoff, whose center-right group Accuracy in Media sponsored the group and its work.
'We hope you will, please, pursue this,' he told reporters. 'Check it out. Challenge us.'
Retired Admiral Chuck Kubic said the White House
refused to let the Pentagon pursue a peaceful exit for Muammar Gaddafi:
'We had a leader who had won the Nobel Peace Prize, but who was
unwilling to give peace a chance for 72 hours'
The
commission and AIM filed 85 document requests under the Freedom Of
Information Act, hitting the Department of Defense, State Department,
Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency with
demand after demand.
But
most of its information has come from insiders with deep knowledge of
the flow of weapons in Libya and elsewhere in the African Maghreb.
Admiral
James 'Ace' Lyons told the group that he believes the raid on the
Benghazi compound was intended as a kidnapping exercise, aimed at
snatching U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and demanding a prisoner swap
for the 'blind sheikh' Omar Abdel-Rahman.
Abdel-Rahman
is serving a life sentence in federal prison for planning the 1993
bombing of the World Trade Center garage in New York City. He also
masterminded a plan, later foiled, to blow up the United Nations, both
the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the George Washington Bridge and a
federal building where the FBI had a base of operations.
A senior FBI source, Lyons said Tuesday, 'told me that was the plan.'
The attack, history shows, grew in intensity and resulted in the deaths of Stevens and three other U.S. personnel.
Lyons also said U.S. claims that it lacked the resources to mount a counterattack in time to save lives is false.
'I'm
going to tell you that's not true,' he said. 'We had a 130-man unit of
forces at Sigonella [AFB in Italy]. They were ready to go.'
'The flight time from Sigonella to Benghazi is roughly an hour.'
Killed: An image captured by a cellular phone
camera shows the arrest of strongman Muammar Gaddafi in Sirte, Libya on
October 20, 2011
Former CIA officer Clare Lopez accused the U.S.
government of allowing arms to flow to al-Qaeda militants who opposed
Gaddafi in 2011, 'switching sides in the war on terror'
Some of the
group's claims strain credibility, including the assertion that the
Obama administration's early effort to blame the Benghazi attack on a
protest against a crude anti-Muslim YouTube video 'appears to have been
well-coordinated with U.S.Muslim Brotherhood organizations as well as
Islamic state members of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).'
Those
groups, the commission noted, 'all joined in condemnation of the video,
and, even more troubling, issued calls for restrictions on Americans’
free speech rights.'
But
Simmons, the former CIA officer, criticized the Obama administration on
the familiar refrain of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
exclaiming in a Senate hearing that it mattered little why the Benghazi
facilities were struck.
'They
believed they were going to be saved, that they were going to be
rescued, but they weren't,' Simmons said of the four Americans who died.
'I
know who made the decision, in my heart of hearts, to leave our war
fighters there and be blown up. And then to have one of the most
powerful politicians in our country sit there and say, "What difference
does it make?" – should be an alarm bell for all Americans.
'It haunts me,' Simmons said. 'I play that line over, and over, and over, and over in my mind.'
The
group has called for a Select Congressional Committee to investigate
the Benghazi episode. A total of 189 House members have signed on to a
bill that would create the committee, which would be bipartisan and have
sweeping powers to subpoena the executive branch.
House
Speaker John Boehner, Lopez said Tuesday, 'he blocked it. One has to
wonder if he and Congress have had some sort of briefing on what
happened.'
Kubic
insisted that Congress is unable to break logjams in the Obama
administration and find out what happened in the days leading up to and
following the Benghazi attack without a new committee.
'If
they don't have strong subpoena power, if they don't have the ability
to do long-term cross examination, it won't work,' he said.
New Information about the Benghazi Attack
Washington Times reporter Guy Taylor gives an update on Benghazi.
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