COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Wednesday, May 08, 2013

Hilary is responsible for -- pushing to involve the US in the Libyan War in the first place. Hillary and Obama gave direct military support to the Islamist rebels that overthrew Qadaffi. Her previous experience at diplomacy was being a lawyer for WalMart.



US officials blocked rescue effort while Benghazi burned, Congress told

Diplomat Gregory Hicks accuses State Department of cover-up in evidence that may yet hurt Hillary Clinton's White House bid

Dan Roberts in Washington 
Wednesday 8 May 2013 22.00 EDT

While US diplomats were pulling bodies from a burning Libyan consulate and frantically smashing up hard drives last 11 September, their superiors blocked rescue efforts and later attempted to cover up security failings, according to damaging new evidence that may yet hurt Hillary Clinton's presidential hopes.
In vivid testimony to Congress on Wednesday, Gregory Hicks, deputy to murdered US ambassador Christopher Stevens, revealed for the first time in public a detailed account of the desperate few hours after the terrorist attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi.
But Hicks and two other state department witnesses also singled out the government response for criticism – criticism that until now has been largely dismissed as a partisan effort by Republican congressman to smear former secretary of state Clinton.
Hicks claimed Clinton's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, telephoned him to complain that he had given critical evidence to congressional investigators without the presence of a "minder" from the state department. "A phone call from that senior a person is generally considered not to be good news," said Hicks, who said he had since been demoted. "She was upset. She was very upset."
The career diplomat also alleged he was actively discouraged by officials from asking awkward questions about why other top Clinton aides were wrongly blaming the attack on a spontaneous protest that got out of control: a briefing he described as "jaw-dropping, embarrassing and stunning". It is now thought the attacks, involving up to 60 heavily armed militia, were co-ordinated by Ansar al-Sharia, a group affiliated to al-Qaida, and timed to coincide with the 11th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Centre.
The allegations of a state department cover-up follow equally embarrassing claims that military leaders blocked efforts to dispatch special forces troops to the Benghazi consulate.
In testimony that first emerged on Monday, Hicks claims that four special forces soldiers with him in Tripoli were "furious" when they were told by superiors in Washington that they could not join a relief flight to Benghazi organised by the Libyan government in the hours after the initial attack.
Mark Thompson, a former marine who heads the foreign emergency support team, also alleged that the White House blocked his efforts to dispatch a specialist group from the US that is designed to respond to incidents such as the Benghazi attaack.
Hicks said he was told that US air force jets based in Italy could have reached the consulate in "two to three hours" but were blocked, out of fear of offending the Libyan government, and because a refuelling tanker could not be found.
Pentagon officials have repeatedly argued that none of the available military assets could have reached Benghazi in time to prevent the death of ambassador Stevens and three other consular staff. But Hicks insisted even if they had been too late, better attempts should have been made. "People in peril in future need to know that we will go to get them," he said. "That night we needed to demonstrate that resolve even if we still had the same outcome."
Hicks also rejected the defence given by Hillary Clinton when pressed on the initial delay in attributing the attack to terrorists, arguing the US undermined its Libyan allies who were rightly pointing to Ansar al-Sharia.
"President Magarief was insulted in front of his own people, in front of the world. His credibility was reduced. His ability to govern was [damaged]. He was angry … He was still steamed about the talk shows two weeks later. I definitely believe it negatively affected our ability to get the FBI team quickly to Benghazi."
Democrats on the committee attempted to play down the significance of the new evidence. "There is no smoking gun today," said Mark Pocan of Wisconsin. "There is not even a lukewarm slingshot." Deputy chair Elijah Cummings said the hearing would not be able to get to a full picture without recalling other military witnesses.
But the powerful and at times emotional testimony of the state department witnesses is likely to rekindle questions over the government's handling of the incident. The Obama administration had hoped that an earlier independent review panel had drawn a line under the issue.
Republicans characterise their refusal to let the Benghazi issue go as a determination to find out what went wrong. But some Democrats have suggested that the real intention is to taint both the White House and Clinton in a bid to dent her chances in 2016 should she decide to run.
Hicks described receiving the final telephone call from ambassador Stephens revealing he was under attack. He said an attaché ran into his villa "yelling Greg, Greg, the consulate's under attack". Hicks looked at his phone and had two missed calls. He called back and got ambassador Stevens. "He said, 'Greg, we're under attack.'"
"I said 'OK' and the line cut."
Hicks then described how he had taken refuge in a secure villa that was set alight with petrol by the attackers. He also told how the embassy building in Benghazi was hit by mortar fire and how a tiny group of soldiers at both sites fought through the night to prevent both facilities from being overrun.
"September 11 was a routine day until we heard the news that our embassy in Cairo had been stormed and they were trying to tear down the flag," recalled Hicks.
"I had bad cellphone reception but walked to the tactical operations centre and heard that our consulate in Benghazi had been breached and at least 20 armed individuals were in the compound."
After twice not recognising the number, he said he received a short call from ambassador Stevens, thought to be his last, who said they "were under attack". He and an assistant, Sean Smith, were led to a safe area inside a villa next to the consulate by security agent Scott Strickland. It was set on fire with jerry cans of fuel shortly after 9pm.
"Scott attempted to lead them out but they didn't follow. He tried to get back in but was beaten back by the smoke," said Hicks. "Petroleum-based fires emit cyanide gas and one full breath can kill you. They managed to pull Sean out, but he was dead. They couldn't find Chris."
A second wave was coming to attack and the remaining consulate staff fell back to a nearby CIA annex. "After about an hour and a half of probing attacks from terrorists that they were able to repulse they decided to evacuate," said Hicks. They met with a response team flown from Tripoli on a Libyan C130 transporter and retreated back to the capital.
Hicks says at this point he still thought that ambassador Stevens might be alive and he received word from the Libyan government that he was being held in a hospital run by the same group responsible for the attack. "I thought we might need a hostage response team to get the ambassador out of a hospital under enemy control," explained Hicks.
At the same time the group was claiming responsibility for the Benghazi attack on Twitter, embassy staff began noticing threats against their facility in Tripoli too.
"We began planning to evacuate, and took 55 people to the annexe," said Hicks. "At 2am Hillary Clinton calls and she asks me what is going on. I brief her mostly about ambassador Stevens and told her we would need to evacuate. At 3am I received a call from from the prime minister of Libya who told me that ambassador Stevens had passed away. It was the hardest call I have ever had to take."
Hicks says he has vivid memories of communications staff in Tripoli destroying classified equipment including a female officer manager "smashing hard drives with an axe". The contingent in Benghazi then tried to drive to the airport around dawn but were hit by two mortar rounds.
"The first mortar was long and landed among the Libyans who were escorting us – they took casualties. The next was short and landed on the annex roof, killing one of our people and seriously wounding another, David. Mark charged onto the roof and strapped David, who was a large man, to his back and carried him down the ladder."
Hicks says he wanted to send further reinforcements to Benghazi where they had been fighting through the night but was unable.
Eric Nordstrom, a security officer who also gave evidence to Congress said the lessons state department employees have taken from Benghazi were scathing: "Whether you're at a mission, preparing for a hearing or you're standing on top of a building "surrounded by a mob," he says, "The message is the same: You're on your own."
• This article was amended on 8 May 2013 to make clear that mortar attacks took place in Benghazi, not Tripoli.

44 comments:

  1. Dick Morris has never been wrong :) and he says the play's at Act 3, and the end is known - it's over.

    Tragedy of pride, ambition, treachery, treason and sloth.

    In this play the bodies (four) were left on the stage in Act 1, rather than Act 5, as is usual.

    Nevertheless we will enjoy seeing true character revelations in a recognition scene when people wake up to it, a ruined Presidency, and an aborted Presidential run.

    The price of admission is not worth it, but a little justice will prevail in the end, taking the edge off.


    >Beyond the cover-up lies the question of why we were not more robust in our military intervention on the ground as the attack was being waged. Special forces nearby in the country were apparently ordered to “stand down” from responding to the attack. Is it possible that this order was given without consulting with the president or with the secretary of State? While possible, it is most unlikely. This was no minor attack, and the use of American forces eight weeks before an election would certainly need to be cleared with the commander in chief.


    Are Obama and Hillary really going to stake their future political credibility on the idea that they were out of the loop during this crisis? Are they really going to try to sell the idea that they were not informed by their own employees?<



    Benghazi: Beginning of end

    By Dick Morris - 05/07/13 06:36 PM ET


    http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/dick-morris/298369-benghazi-beginning-of-end


    I hope Dick has something right, for once.


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    1. He does not.

      The trouble Dick has, he was so far behind, he fell off at the curve.

      Delete
  2. If anyone had doubts that Syria’s gruesome civil war is already spinning into a wider Middle East conflict, the events of the past few days should have laid them to rest. Most ominous was Israel's string of aerial attacks on Syrian military installations near Damascus, reportedly killing more than 100.

    The bombing raids, unprovoked and illegal, were of course immediately supported by the US and British governments. Since Israel has illegally occupied Syria’s Golan Heights for 46 years, perhaps the legitimacy of a few more air raids hardly merited serious consideration.


    But it's only necessary to consider what the western reaction would have been if Syria, let alone Iran, had launched such an attack on Israel – or one of the Arab regimes currently arming the Syrian rebels – to realise how little these positions have to do with international legality, equity or rights of self-defence.

    Israeli officials have let it be known that the attacks, launched from Lebanese airspace, were aimed at stockpiles of Iranian missiles bound for Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shia resistance movement and governing party. They were not, it was said, intended as an intervention in Syria's civil war – but as a warning to Iran and protection against Hezbollah attacks in a future conflict.

    That's not how it seemed to the Syrian rebel fighters on the ground, filmed greeting the attacks with cries of "Allahu akbar", unaware of who had actually carried them out. By bombing the Syrian army, which has recently made advances in some rebel-held areas, Israel is clearly intervening in the war.

    The raids follow the public declaration by Hezbollah's Hassan Nasrallah last week that his fighters are supporting government forces inside Syria – which are also backed by Iran, Russia and China. It is Syria's role as the pivot of Iranian influence across the Middle East that has turned the Syrian war into a potential regional conflagration.

    Having hedged its bets, Israel has now started to make clear it regards the prospect of Islamist and jihadist groups taking over from the Assad regime as less threatening than the existing “Syria-Iran-Hezbollah axis", as the Israeli defence ministry official Amos Gilad put it recently.

    {…}

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  3. {…}


    That has coincided with talk of creating an Israeli buffer zone inside Syria, while Israeli officials have been pushing claims that the Syrian regime has used chemical weapons. Since Obama declared that the use of chemical weapons would cross a “red line”, allegations of their use have become a crucial weapon for those demanding increased western intervention, in a bizarre echo of the discredited orchestration of the invasion of Iraq a decade ago.

    That effort came unstuck this week when the UN investigator Carla Del Ponte reported that there were "strong concrete suspicions" that Syrian rebels had themselves used the nerve gas sarin. The claim was hurriedly downplayed by the US, though the rebel camp clearly has an interest in drawing in greater western intervention, in a way the regime does not.

    The fact is intervention has long been a central dimension of the war. The regime forces are backed by Syria's old allies in Russia and Iran. Funding and military support for the rebels come from the US, Britain, France and their regional allies: Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Jordan.

    Airlifts of arms to the Syrian rebels, co-ordinated by the CIA, have increased sharply in recent months to become what one former US official calls a "cataract of weaponry". British and American forces are training rebel fighters in Jordan. The worth of US aid to the Syrian opposition has doubled to $250m, while the EU has now lifted its oil embargo to allow exports from rebel-held areas.

    The result of foreign intervention has of course been to escalate the conflict. Now pressure is building on the Obama administration to go further and supply weapons directly. Among those pushing for more intervention is David Cameron – anxious to ingratiate himself with the Gulf dictators – who has been pressing for the EU arms embargo to be lifted.
    {…}

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  4. {…}

    The intention is to build up the west’s favoured groups and weaken the role of jihadists who have taken centre stage as the war has gone on. They include Jabhat al-Nusra, which now controls swaths of rebel-held territory and has declared allegiance to al-Qaida.


    The irony of the US and other western governments – let alone Israel – once again making common cause with al-Qaida, after a decade of a "war on terror" aimed at destroying it, is one factor holding Obama back. So is the risk of being drawn into all-out war (publicly raised by Britain's chief of the defence staff); the hostility of American public opinion (mirrored in Britain and the Arab world); and the aftermath of intervention in Libya, where militias have been besieging government offices demanding the ousting of western-backed Gaddafi-era leaders.

    The reality is that what began in Syria more than two years ago as a brutally repressed popular uprising has long since morphed into a vicious sectarian war, manipulated by outside forces to change the regional balance of power and already dangerously spilling over into neighbouring Lebanon and Iraq.

    The consequences for Syria have been multiple massacres, ethnic cleansing, torture, a humanitarian crisis and the risk of the country's breakup. The longer the war, the greater the danger of a Yugoslavian-style fragmentation into sectarian and ethnic enclaves.

    The Assad regime bears responsibility for that, of course. But so do those who have funded and fuelled the war, bleeding Syria and weakening the Arab world in the process. The demand by Cameron and other western politicians to increase the flow of arms is reckless and cynical.

    The result will certainly be to ratchet up the death toll and spread the war. If they were genuinely interested in saving lives – instead of neutralising Syria to undermine Iran – western leaders would be using their leverage with the rebels' regional sponsors to negotiate a political settlement that would allow Syrians to determine their own future.

    That would be difficult enough to achieve and enforce on the ground. But an internationally and regionally backed deal now looks the only way to bring the war to an end. In which case, increased intervention is really about improving the west’s bargaining hand, at a cost of yet more Syrian suffering – and yet another backlash to come.


    Seumas Milne
    The Guardian, Tuesday 7 May 2013 15.38

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    1. .

      Hardly a surprise the West aids al Queda. We would be currently negotiating with the Taliban in Afghanistan if they hadn't told us to go piss up a rope.

      .

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  5. Based on international law it's illegal to acquire territories by war.

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  6. In its report to the 47-nation council, a UN panel of investigators said Israel is violating international humanitarian law under the Fourth Geneva Convention, one of the treaties that establish the ground rules for what is considered humane during wartime.

    This was the first thematic report on Israel's settlements with an historical look at the government's policy since 1967, UN officials said. Previous UN reports have taken a look at Israeli settlement policy only through the lens of a specific event, such as the 2009 war in the Gaza Strip, when Israel launched an offensive in response to months of rocket fire by the ruling Hamas militant group.

    The Israeli government persists in building settlements in occupied territories claimed by Palestinians for a future state, including east Jerusalem and the West Bank, "despite all the pertinent United Nations resolutions declaring that the existence of the settlements is illegal and calling for their cessation," the report said.

    The settlements are "a mesh of construction and infrastructure leading to a creeping annexation that prevents the establishment of a contiguous and viable Palestinian State and undermines the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination," the report concludes.

    More than 500,000 Israelis already live in settlements that dot the West Bank and ring east Jerusalem, the Palestinians' hoped-for capital. Israel annexed east Jerusalem, with its Palestinian population, immediately after capturing the territory from Jordan in 1967 and has built housing developments for Jews there, but the annexation has not been recognized internationally.

    At UN headquarters in New York, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's office released a statement saying that he "has repeatedly made his views on Israeli settlements clear. All settlement activity in the occupied Palestinian territory, including east Jerusalem, is illegal under international law. It also runs contrary to Israel's obligations under the Road Map" for a Middle East peace settlemen

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  7. What does this have to do with Libya and Syria? Plenty.

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  8. Aren't Syria and Israel still technically in a state of war?

    I can't recall a peace treaty between them.

    The Golan Heights were used to repeatedly shell Israel before the '67 War.

    Israel has stated, I believe, that they need security guarantees, a reasonable request, before returning them. Of course they haven't gotten them.

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    1. "Since Israel has illegally occupied Syria’s Golan Heights for 46 years......"


      Heh

      Delete
  9. Zeev Maoz. Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel's Security and Foreign Policy. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006. xii + 714 pp. $45.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-472-11540-2.

    Reviewed by Eyal Ben-Ari (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
    Published on H-War (January, 2008)

    On the Blindness of Hubris and the Folly of Aggression


    In a scathing analysis that combines history, theory, and criticism, Defending the Holy Land charts the fundamental assumptions underlying Israel's flawed security and foreign policies. It also carefully examines how implementing these policies has, time and again, led to mistakes that have maintained and escalated, rather than reduced, the armed conflicts in which Israel has participated since its inception. In this monumental volume, Zeev Maoz, who teaches at the University of California, Davis, systematically analyzes the mistakes, self-fulfilling prophecies, and appalling judgments that characterize the history of Israeli security operations and foreign policy.

    In his preface, Maoz states that he was led to writing Defending the Holy Land because of the persistent failure of Israel's community of policymakers to learn from their mistakes and the uncritical treatment of most Israelis of the foundations of the country's national security doctrine. The overall argument is that Israel's foreign policy is derivative of its security policy so that considerations centering on military power, a deterrent stance toward the Arabs, and the internal domestic importance of supporting tough measures have come to dominate almost all thinking about accommodation with the country's neighbors. Throughout the volume, and especially towards its end, Maoz makes prescriptive comments and suggestions about how to improve policymaking in the country and develop the institutional ability of decision makers to understand the political reality of the Middle East.

    The volume, as a whole, is well written (if lengthy) and marked by a systematic and fair attempt to tackle conventional, scholarly, and political wisdom about security matters and foreign affairs issues. Moreover, time and again, Maoz carefully introduces a wealth of empirical data, presents alternative explanations to his own, and offers balanced summaries of all of these contentions. Many arguments that Maoz makes have been made before, but the great strength of Defending the Holy Land lies in bringing together and integrating previous scholarship in a succinct and piercing manner. The volume is thus the most comprehensive analysis to date of Israel's national security and foreign policy from the inception of the state of Israel to the present.

    Defending the Holy Land engages four interrelated strands of scholarship. First, it examines the ideological literature (going back to David Ben-Gurion but now including such politicians as Shimon Peres or Benjamin Nethanyahu). Next, it engages historical studies that include both conventional treatises and tomes produced by the "new" historians and sociologists. Third, the book assays analytic studies based within the disciplines of political science and international relations. And, finally, Maoz discusses prescriptive studies centered on improving policymaking in Israel. This kind of exceptionally broad-based engagement with the scholarly literature allows Maoz to accomplish a number of tasks. First, he initiates an approach that evaluates the extent to which security and foreign policy have been served by existing doctrines, decisions, and actions. Maoz then uses a critical perspective that challenges many of the fundamental assumptions underlying these policies. And, he integrates hitherto disparate fields into a common frame that links history, theory, policy, and methodology.

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  10. Defending the Holy Land is divided into five main parts covering fourteen chapters. The different sections often overlap in terms of empirical content, but in each the data is evaluated through different analytical or theoretical prisms.

    Part 1 outlines the book's analytical foundations by situating it within its scholarly context. This is followed by an outline of the assumptions at the base of the country's security and foreign policy. Part 2 centers on how Israel has used military force over the course of its existence as an independent state. Maoz thus charts the various wars and Israel's experience in Low Intensity Conflict (LIC). Here, the major thrust of the argument is that most of the country's conflicts were the result of deliberately aggressive designs, faulty decision making, or flawed conflict management strategies. Yet despite these developments, Maoz argues that no systematic critical self-reflection has taken place regarding Israeli security policy. One important chapter focuses on the overlooked War of Attrition that occurred between Israel and Egypt between the full-scale engagements of 1967 and 1973. This "forgotten war" was initiated by Gamal Abdel Nasser, and none of its lessons--such as the determination and fortitude of the Egyptian army and its ability to carry out simple maneuvers--were learned by Israeli policymakers. Rather, the War of Attrition was understood through the hubris that overtook the country and its leaders after the victory of 1967.

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  11. Part 3 examines Israel’s nuclear policy and takes issue with the overwhelming majority of scholars and commentators who have seen it as a success. Marshalling careful empirical data, Maoz, in contrast, argues that this policy was actually not successful since it had a number of adverse side effects, such as accelerating the conventional arms race in the Middle East.

    Part 4 comprises two chapters focusing on repeated failed attempts by Israel to intervene in the internal affairs of its neighbors for its own strategic ends and the long series of missed opportunities for peace diplomacy. The chapter on interventions in internal Arab affairs--for example, Israel's central role in encouraging the emergence of Hizbulla and Hamas and its fiasco in supporting local Palestinian elections in the 1970s--smack of deep-rooted assumptions held by Israeli leaders that one could chart out and socially engineer developments among Arab social and political entities. This view involves, in part, as Maoz argues in other parts of the book, a simplistic understanding of societies and polities that derives from the fact that most experts in Arab affairs within the country's security establishments have been educated in the history of the Middle East?"in Israel, they are called "Orientalists"--rather than in one of the relevant social sciences. Part 5 is a brilliant analysis of the dominance of the security establishment in Israeli political affairs, and argues that no real shift will occur in policy unless the structure of the policymaking machinery is changed. Accordingly, one of Maoz's cutting conclusions is that, except for the war in 1948, all of Israel's wars were the result of deliberate aggressive designs or flawed conflict management strategies orchestrated by leaders marked by militaristic thinking. The various conflicts were thus essentially all wars of choice.

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  12. What does today's attack on Israel have to do with this -

    US officials blocked rescue effort while Benghazi burned, Congress told

    ?

    I was hoping, when I saw the lead, that people would be attacking Shrillary and Barky.

    Disappointed, I head to bed.

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    1. It has plenty to do with it. Most of these so called Arab countries are artifacts of European colonialism. Israel is a continuation of European colonialism. Like it or not, it is the truth.

      Delete
    2. This is total non sense. Many Jews ended up in Europe because of Roman aggression, and you know that. Badly mistreated in Europe, they went home. And you know that, too.

      The entire southern Mediterranean basin was Judaic/Christian/pagan before the Moslems arrived from the south. The two world wars did change some lines in the arab world but that is a very recent event in the scope of things.

      Before Turkey sided with Germany much of the area was the Ottoman Empire.

      Perhaps we need another Christian Crusade to be preached by your new Pope Francis to take back Istanbul and change the name back to Constantinople?

      After all, it was stolen from the Christians through arab aggression.

      Delete
    3. Turkey maintained Neutrality all through WWII.

      The Canaanites were in Palestine at least 6,000 years before Jesus was so much as a twinkle in God's eye.

      Delete
    4. Your ignorance of history is appalling.

      Delete
    5. I was replying to Bob. Not Rufus :)

      Delete
    6. I'm not "great" at history, but I'm getting better at "google." :)

      Delete
    7. For a loving look at the entire idiotic view of God you need not go any further than Deuteronomy and his loving admonition to murder away:

      20:17
      Completely destroy them--the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites--as the LORD your God has commanded you.

      Murder away because god loves you more than anything else. Who believes this pathetic bullshit? Who was the sociopath that wrote it? I’ll bet he was a treat to behold. What nonsense.

      Delete
    8. ..and people are to respect these religions?

      Delete
    9. I heard he was from an obscure, backwoods tribe called "the Idahoans."


      "Ho'ans," or "Hos" for short.

      Delete
    10. Moses sent him to Idaho to teach the savages.

      Delete
    11. To teach the savages all about repeating rifles, and land grant deeds.

      Delete
    12. The only thing that has changed is the lethality of the weapons.

      Delete
    13. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
    14. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
  13. except for the war in 1948, all of Israel's wars were the result of deliberate aggressive designs or flawed conflict management strategies orchestrated by leaders marked by militaristic thinking. The various conflicts were thus essentially all wars of choice.

    None of this constant warfare in the Middle East will change until either Israel changes or the US and Europe stops rubber stamping something that is nothing more than old European style colonialism.

    Anything else is wishful thinking and the US will keep paying for the consequences of this disastrous European settlement in Arab lands.

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    1. .

      Once again, IMO, Deuce's number 42, the answer to all the world's problems, is Israel. Just saying.


      .

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  14. There is nothing holy about The Holy Land.

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  15. Russia and the US have agreed to work towards convening an international conference to find a political solution to the conflict in Syria.

    ...

    Relations between Moscow and Washington have been strained in the last two years by differences over Syria.

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  16. The Republicans refused to call the 4th witness, a General who was to testify that there was no way that they could have reached Benghazi in time.

    This is like the House voting 40 times to Repeal Obamacare.

    Silliness.

    The Republican House, that has a 15% approval rating, hopes to affect an election that is almost 4 years out by getting into a "he said/she said" with a woman who has a 65% approval rating.

    jeez

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    1. "there was no way that they could have reached Benghazi in time"

      Total non sense. The time from Tripoli was about a half hour.

      And no one knew how long the action was going to last.

      They didn't even try.

      Those people were sacrificed to a campaign slogan.

      And you actually know that, you just don't want to admit it.

      Delete
    2. I know you're an naïve nerf that has never worn a uniform, much less commanded men. Nobody in their right mind would send a handful of men into an lz such as that, based on the limited knowledge they had at the time. You've watched too many Westerns, cowboy.

      Delete
  17. On this day in 1970, the Beatles released the album “Let It Be.” It was the band’s 12th (and last) studio album.

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  18. >McInerney sees that as a low point in American history.

    “That is one of the most despicable statements that any American has said about such a tragic incident when you lose people like that. It makes a huge difference that our troops know that they will always be protected as much as they can and we’ll do anything to protect them,” he said. “She says, what difference does it make? That will live with her til the day she dies. I can tell you, all the people I know, both active and retired, think that is one of the most despicable statements we have ever heard a civilian leader say in our country’s history.”<

    Benghazi makes Watergate 'look like kindergarten'

    General: 'A dereliction of duty this nation has never seen before'

    Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/05/benghazi-makes-watergate-look-like-kindergarten/#k2GmFzmOfeP7vgGt.99

    Don't bitch about the source, they have this right.

    Really, g'nite

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    1. McInerny works for Fox News. Last time I saw him he was reassuring us all that the WMDs were "right over there."

      Delete
  19. And, I wish Hillary was knocked out of the 2016 race. The Dems have at least a half dozen that I would much rather see in the running than her.

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  20. Despite a known link between a masculine-looking face and aggression in men, macho-faced soldiers didn't survive Finland's World War II Winter War in greater numbers than recruits with less masculine faces.

    ...

    High levels of testosterone during development are linked with a certain macho look: a broad face, strong jaw and narrow eyes. Any number of swaggering movie stars, from Paul Newman to Channing Tatum ("G.I. Joe"), has parlayed this face shape into successful onscreen careers.

    ...

    The other findings were more surprising. For one, the wider-faced guys were actually less likely than narrow-faced men to rank higher in the military hierarchy.


    Advantage In War

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  21. Big day, tomorrow. The Unemployment claims number should be interesting.

    g'nite.

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