GREG HICKS – Shifting blame to our dead ambassador is wrong on the facts. I know—I was there.

Last week the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued its report on the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. The report concluded that the attack, which resulted in the murder of four Americans, was “preventable.”

Some have been suggesting that the blame for this tragedy lies at least partly with Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the attack. This is untrue: The blame lies entirely with Washington.

The report states that retired Gen. Carter Ham, then-commander of the U.S. Africa Command (Africom) headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, twice offered to “sustain” the special forces security team in Tripoli and that Chris twice “declined.”

Since Chris cannot speak, I want to explain the reasons and timing for his responses to Gen. Ham. As the deputy chief of mission, I was kept informed by Chris or was present throughout the process. (more…)

Juice and Birdman, both short straws, were on a telethon for malaria trip when AJ slapped his neck for the eleven millionth time and frustratingly bitched “why the f**k do I always get the saw palms” and, more importantly, “why do these damned things say do not eat“?….

….The response from the wire holder was blandly delivered: “because, dipsh!t, somewhere in the vast world of the unflinching stupid, a dumbass is going to try and eat it“.

Houston, I do believe we have located said suspect:

Most people know al-Qaeda (as a terror entity) has evolved over the past 10+ years.   Recently the Obama administration has doggedly tried to parse and obfuscate around a principle that CORE al-Qaeda has been destroyed.

This claim is essential to framing any success around the Obama administration’s foreign policy and defense effort.     However, the claim is false and the success simply does not exist.

al-Qaeda is NOT on the run.

As a network of affiliated enterprises, with the same ideological goal, it has grown in influence specifically as a direct result of their own evolutionary intentions.

CORE al-Qaeda, or a centralized body from which all decision making stemmed, was never their intent.   al-Qaeda intended for terrorism to be “cellular” or operationally self-sustaining and widespread.    Bin Laden specifically intended the network to be a group of ideologically aligned but unaffiliated franchises all working on a common approach. (more…)

Since the initial publication of this article (2011) about Private Berghdahl – new information has come to light which reflects he actually intentionally disserted his post. Apparently his goal, according to those within his squad who knew him best, was to join the Taliban.

His unit, and the military members who knew the motives of PFC Berghdahl were sworn to secrecy about his defection to radical Islam. They were forced to sign non-disclosure agreements which would preclude the military from discussing the facts of his desertion.

It was against that unknown backdrop that most support for Bowe Bergdahl existed.

No-one should feel remorse, shame or guilt for expressing concern for a missing service member. You had no way to know the official U.S. position was to lie and be deceitful of the events in order to save the Obama administration embarrassment. Unfortunately people died trying to rescue Bergdahl, and the families of the fallen were lied to.

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CNN reporting:   The U.S. military has obtained new video apparently made by those holding the lone American prisoner of war, Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl.

A U.S. military official told CNN the clip shows the Wood Valley, Idaho, native in diminished health from the effects of close to five years in captivity.

He was seized in Afghanistan in June 2009 and is believed held by the Taliban-aligned Haqqani network in Pakistan, the official said.

The so-called proof-of-life video, the first of him in nearly three years, has a reference to December 14, 2013. (more…)

I have not had the opportunity to review the entire report – this article below is from the Washington Post.  All Senate Committees are chaired by Democrats.

WASHINGTON DC – A long-delayed Senate Intelligence Committee report released Wednesday faulted both the State Department and the intelligence community for not preventing attacks on two outposts in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including a U.S. ambassador, about 16 months ago.

The bipartisan report laid out more than a dozen findings regarding the assaults on a diplomatic compound and a CIA annex in the city. It said the State Department failed to increase security at its mission despite warnings, and blamed intelligence agencies for not sharing information about the existence of the CIA outpost with the U.S. military.

The committee determined that the U.S. military command in Africa didn’t know about the CIA annex and that the Pentagon didn’t have the resources in place to defend the State Department compound in an emergency.

“The attacks were preventable, based on extensive intelligence reporting on the terrorist activity in Libya — to include prior threats and attacks against Western targets — and given the known security shortfalls at the U.S. Mission,” the panel said in a statement. (more…)

HAPPY DANCE – Way to go Egypt;  this is good news to see published in Reuters.    Egypt’s military commanders are all Western educated and trained, primarily in U.K and U.S.  The tunnels from Egypt into Gaza have been a continuous source of terrorists moving weapons to attack Israel.   If Egypt can squeeze Hamas, an off-shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, from their side of the border, that could potentially be a game changer toward regional stability and security for Israel.

CAIRO (Reuters) – After crushing the Muslim Brotherhood at home, Egypt’s military rulers plan to undermine the Palestinian militant group Hamas, which runs the neighboring Gaza Strip, senior Egyptian security officials told Reuters.

The aim, which the officials say could take years to pull off, includes working with Hamas’s political rivals Fatah and supporting popular anti-Hamas activities in Gaza, four security and diplomatic officials said.

Since it seized power in Egypt last summer, Egypt’s military has squeezed Gaza’s economy by destroying most of the 1,200 tunnels used to smuggle food, cars and weapons to the coastal enclave, which is under an Israeli blockade.

Now Cairo is becoming even more ambitious in its drive to eradicate what it says are militant organizations that threaten its national security. (more…)

Iran and the White House are aligned in their demand the U.S. congress must not issue any further sanctions against the Iranian nuclear ambitions.   However, the more alarming aspect is that the White House is refusing to let congress review the exact terminology of the previously announced arrangement.

Not passing proverbial sniff test….

WASHINGTON DC –  Iran vowed to maintain its nuclear infrastructure and threatened to boost its uranium enrichment capabilities just hours after announcing that it had agreed to a deal to halt some aspects of its contested nuclear program.

Iran and Western nations announced on Sunday that they had agreed to an interim deal to halt portions of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for some $7 billion in sanctions relief.

Secretary of State John Kerry celebrated the interim agreement, which will officially begin on Jan. 20.

However, Iranian officials threatened to ramp up nuclear activities should they feel the West is violating the accord.

“We will in no way, never, dismantle our [nuclear] centrifuges,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told the country’s state-run television station on Sunday, according to New York Times reporter Thomas Erdbrink. (more…)

Armed Services Chairman Howard “Buck” McKeon, (R-CA) has downloaded pdf’s of testimony from last June. They are available HERE and we are in the process of going through line by-painstaking line. Why? Because since late September 2012 we have found a litany of dots which add up to a very specific pattern – and tell a very specific story. We feel, and this current new release confirms, the thread to pull this cover shroud apart is tied to AFRICOM – General Carter Ham.

Here is James Rosen’s initial take on his review, and at the bottom we’ll expand on what we feel is going to come to light.

WASHINGTON DC (VIA JAMES ROSEN) Minutes after the American consulate in Benghazi came under assault on Sept. 11, 2012, the nation’s top civilian and uniformed defense officials — headed for a previously scheduled Oval Office session with President Obama — were informed that the event was a “terrorist attack,” declassified documents show. The new evidence raises the question of why the top military men, one of whom was a member of the president’s Cabinet, allowed him and other senior Obama administration officials to press a false narrative of the Benghazi attacks for two weeks afterward.

Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time was head of AFRICOM, the Defense Department combatant command with jurisdiction over Libya, told the House in classified testimony last year that it was him who broke the news about the unfolding situation in Benghazi to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The tense briefing — in which it was already known that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens had been targeted and had gone missing — occurred just before the two senior officials departed the Pentagon for their session with the commander in chief.

(more…)

The Dear Leader Defense Corps strikes again.

It would have been more honest if she just stomped her feet and shouted “take it back, take it back“.