A President without Shame

Speaking at a photo op about the Sandy hurricane disaster, President Obama said: 

"In times of crisis, "we pull together, we leave nobody behind, we make sure we respond as a nation," Obama said, reprising one of his 2012 campaign themes.

"Whenever an American is in need, all of us stand together in providing the help that is necessary," he added."

Not only "leave nobody behind", but "providing the help that is necessary."

It was an amazingly audacious lie, prompting Grady Gibbs to post on Facebook, "The Brazilians have the perfect expression for this. There's no exact translation for 'sim vergonha,' but it means 'having no shame or pride.'"

Maybe he thought no one had caught on to the way this administration had failed Ambassador Stevens and those trapped in Benghazi, but three women journalists, at least  (Fox's Jennifer Griffin and Catherine Herridge and CBS's Sharyl Attkisson ), have not forgotten those acts of incompetence, treachery and mendacity. They are being helped by countless whistleblowers that share our outrage. And it is obvious even more are coming forward every day fueled by the anger we all share at this failure to "stand together, providing the help that is necessary".

This week's top honors go to Ms. Attkisson whose work deserves your attention. I can only summarize some of the highlights of her work, and I urge you to read it all.

She reports that during the crisis the Administration did not call upon "its top interagency counterterrorism resource: The Counterterrorism Security Group, (CSG)."

Her sources reveal that key responders were ready and available to deploy for a rescue but were never called upon to do so. She details the protocols that were in place to call upon the services of the CSG and says they were never followed:

Another senior counter terrorism official says a hostage rescue team was alternately asked to get ready and then stand down throughout the night, as officials seemed unable to make up their minds.

A third potential responder from a counter-terror force stationed in Europe says components of AFICOM -- the military's Africa Command based in Stuttgart, Germany -- were working on course of action during the assault. But no plan was put to use. [snip]

According to a public military document, the directive was designed to "synchronize the efforts of all the government agencies that have a role to play in the Global War on Terrorism." 


The Administration also didn't call on the only interagency, on-call, short notice team poised to respond to terrorist incidents worldwide: the Foreign Emergency Support Team (FEST). FEST's seasoned experts leave within four hours of notification and can provide "the fastest assistance possible." 

FEST Teams deployed immediately after al Qaeda bombings of US embassies in East Africa in 1998, and the USS Cole in 2000, but were not used for Benghazi, to the chagrin of some insiders. It's likely that the CSG task force, if contacted, would have recommended FEST aid." First a tactical response was needed," says a senior U.S. counterterrorism official, "and while that was being implemented, the holistic response could have been developed and deployed within hours" which could have allowed the FBI investigate safely on site well ahead of the "24 days it took." 

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Counterterrorism officials also indicated to her that -- despite the Administration's fairytale about the trailer for the video spurring the attack -- "they concluded almost immediately that the attack was by terrorists and was not spontaneous."

Blogger Doug Ross of Director Blue has labored hard and provided a chart with timeline of the events as they unfolded in Benghazi and Washington. Together these accounts are damning for the Administration, which on November 15, after the election, will be questioned in a closed Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. Luckily for voters, so many people have access to the truth, share our disgust, and are talking to reporters now when it most matters we know what kind of Administration this is.

Compare and contrast these accounts with the lame apologia by NPR online.

There's no reason to act surprised about the Administration's handling of this crisis,  after all.  Did you assume as apparently pundits like Peggy Noonan and David Brooks did that a community organizer known largely for voting "present" was up to the task? Or did they miss this luftmensch's   blather in 2007?

Hit & run explains:

"In 2007, Obama was asked in a Democratic primary debate what he would do if terrorists launched an attack on US soil, and we knew it was the work of al Qaeda. Although Libya is half a world away, given that the consulate is sovereign US territory, it isn't completely incomparable.

Obama responded thusly:

'Well, the first thing we'd have to do is make sure that we've got an effective emergency response, something that this administration failed to do when we had a hurricane in New Orleans. And I think that we have to review how we operate in the event of not only a natural disaster, but also a terrorist attack.

The second thing is to make sure that we've got good intelligence, A, to find out that we don't have other threats and attacks potentially out there; and B, to find out do we have any intelligence on who might have carried it out so that we can take potentially some action to dismantle that network.

But what we can't do is then alienate the world community based on faulty intelligence, based on bluster and bombast. Instead, the next thing we would have to do, in addition to talking to the American people, is making sure that we are talking to the international community.

Because as has already been stated, we're not going to defeat terrorists on our own. We've got to strengthen our intelligence relationships with them, and they've got to feel a stake in our security by recognizing that we have mutual security interests at stake.'"

And there you have it. I am sure this is the real reason we did nothing to help those trapped in Benghazi. We couldn't get the interim government of Libya to okay a rescue initiated from outside the country and we held back from even allowing our own people on site to go while the president dithered over whether "the international community" -- aka, the weak, make believe Libyan government we put in place, and perhaps the Moslem Brotherhood  forces in  Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, the consequences of the Administration's foolish Arab Spring initiative -- would go along with this mission of rescuing our own people on what is at law our own land.

Speaking of emergency responses, the situation in New York, most particularly Staten Island, is dire. People lack housing, clothing, food, water, and transport, and once again Nemesis seems to have struck at those journalists who attack Mitt Romney without warrant.

This week, Andrea Mitchell criticized Romney for gathering relief supplies for the storm victims, saying really people should just send money to the Red Cross. Before the week was out the President of Staten Island was cursing the ineffective Red Cross and begging for relief supplies. Maybe MSNBC can airdrop Ms. Mitchell into Staten Island for a live report .

And Mike Bloomberg is lucky that New York City must be short of pikes and spears because he announced that the marathon would go on as scheduled this weekend, only to retreat in the face of city residents outraged at the diversion of resources away from those who needed them. That would have meant three generators that could provide needed electricity to countless beleaguered New Yorkers without electrical power would be in use to maintain the press tent for the marathon; that food, water, and police forces they need are going to be stationed along the marathon routes for the runners, not the citizens, and the only route to get supplies to Staten Island , the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, would be closed  on occasions for the race.

Vote like your life depends on it on Tuesday, because it probably does.