JERUSALEM – During the Senate hearing on Benghazi yesterday, outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton claimed she did not know whether the U.S. special mission attacked on Sept. 11 was involved in gun-running.
The remarks were perhaps the most important and telling of the entire hearing since they address a possible motive behind the jihadist attacks.
Yet Clinton’s answers were largely unreported by U.S. news media.
The exchange on the subject took place with Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.
Paul asked Clinton: “Is the U. S. involved with any procuring of weapons, transfer of weapons, buying, selling, anyhow transferring weapons to Turkey out of Libya?
“To Turkey?” Clinton asked. “I will have to take that question for the record. Nobody has ever raised that with me.”
Continued Paul: “It’s been in news reports that ships have been leaving from Libya and that may have weapons, and what I’d like to know is the annex that was close by, were they involved with procuring, buying, selling, obtaining weapons, and were any of these weapons being transferred to other countries, any countries, Turkey included?”
Clinton replied, “Well, senator, you’ll have to direct that question to the agency that ran the annex. I will see what information is available.”
“You’re saying you don’t know?” asked Paul.
“I do not know,” Clinton said. “I don’t have any information on that.”
That section of the exchange with Paul was almost entirely ignored by media, which instead focused on the Republican senator’s earlier statement that if he were president he would have relieved Clinton of her post.
WND has filed numerous reports quoting Middle East security officials who describe the mission in Benghazi as a meeting place to coordinate aid for the rebel-led insurgencies in the Middle East.
In September, WND also broke the story that the slain U.S. ambassador, Christopher Stevens, played a central role in recruiting jihadists to fight Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria, according to Egyptian security officials.
In November, Middle Eastern security sources further described both the U.S. mission and nearby CIA annex in Benghazi as the main intelligence and planning center for U.S. aid to the rebels that was being coordinated with Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
Many rebel fighters are openly members of terrorist organizations, including al-Qaida.
Among the tasks performed inside the building was collaborating with countries, most notably Turkey, on the recruitment of fighters – including jihadists – to target Assad’s regime, the security officials said.
According to the 39-page report released last month by independent investigators probing the attacks at the diplomatic facility, the U.S. mission in Benghazi was set up without the knowledge of the new Libyan government, as WND reported.
“Another key driver behind the weak security platform in Benghazi was the decision to treat Benghazi as a temporary, residential facility, not officially notified to the host government, even though it was also a full-time office facility,” the report states. “This resulted in the Special Mission compound being excepted from office facility standards and accountability under the Secure Embassy Construction and Counterterrorism Act of 1999 (SECCA) and the Overseas Security Policy Board (OSPB).”
The report, based on a probe led by former U.S. diplomat Thomas Pickering, calls the facility a “Special U.S. Mission.”
During the Libyan revolution against Moammar Gadhafi’s regime, the U.S. admitted to directly arming the rebel groups.
At the time, rebel leader Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi acknowledged in an interview that a significant number of the Libyan rebels were al-Qaida fighters, many of whom had fought U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He insisted his fighters “are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists,” but he added that the “members of al-Qaida are also good Muslims and are fighting against the invader.”
Media cover up?
From the beginning, U.S. media reports on the events in Benghazi have been misleading.
The vast majority of media coverage worldwide refers to the U.S. facility that was attacked as a “consulate,” even though the government itself has been careful to call it a “mission.”
A consulate typically refers to the building that houses a consul, who is the official representative of the government of one state in the territory of another. The U.S. consul in Libya, Jenny Cordell, works out of the embassy in Tripoli.
Consulates at times function as junior embassies, providing services related to visas, passports and citizen information.
On Aug. 26, about two weeks before his was killed, Ambassador Stevens attended a ceremony marking the opening of consular services at the Tripoli embassy.
The main role of a consulate is to foster trade with the host and care for its own citizens who are traveling or living in the host nation.
Diplomatic missions, on the other hand, maintain a more generalized role. A diplomatic mission is simply a group of people from one state or an international inter-governmental organization present in another state to represent matters of the sending state or organization in the receiving state.
However, according to the State Department investigation, the building was a “U.S. Special Mission” set up without the knowledge of the Libyan government.
Withholding, misleading
Two days before the November presidential election, CBS posted additional portions of a Sept. 12 “60 Minutes” interview in which Obama made statements that contradicted his earlier claims about the attack.
In the released portions of the interview, Obama would not say whether he thought the attack was terrorism. Yet he would later emphasize at a presidential debate that in the Rose Garden on the day of the attack, he had declared it an act of terror.
Reuters was also implicated by WND for possibly false reporting.
In the immediate aftermath of the attack, Reuters quoted a purported civilian protester by his first name who described a supposedly popular demonstration against an anti-Muhammad film outside the U.S. building.
Immediately following the attack, President Obama and other White House officials claimed anti-American sentiment fueled by the obscure anti-Muhammad video on YouTube sparked civilian protests outside the U.S. mission that devolved into a jihadist onslaught.
However, vivid accounts provided by the State Department and intelligence officials later made clear no such popular demonstration took place. Instead, video footage from Benghazi reportedly shows an organized group of armed men attacking the compound, officials said.
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2013/01/media-ignore-hillarys-bombshell-benghazi-claim/#kFbDEyPcXRVdMiQJ.99
Hitlery Clinton’s photo above reminds me of Steve Urkel and his response, “Turkey? Did I do that?”. Maybe she’ll have another one of her infamous seizures before getting back to answering Rand Paul’s question.
Hello Henry et al,
While I’ve never been one to defend either of the Clintons (the Thenardier and Thenardiess of Empire politics), I have no doubt that the Secretarys’ efforts to avoid questioning on the above referenced matter were undertaken not to save her own skin, but rather to shield certain of her superiors (individual and organizational) from unsolicited scrutiny.
The reader may recall that in the year 2009 our Dear Leader, Barack Obama, issued an obiter dictum (aka “executive order”) that specifically forbade the Central Intelligence Agency from engaging in the practice of torture on behalf of its Pentagon masters.
Of course, it goes without saying that this Presidential pronunciamento, wasn’t worth the foolscap that it was scribbled on, given that the government lacked both the means and the intent to enforce its stipulations. (Along similar lines, it is interesting to note that one of Mr. Obama’s predecessors, in this case a medieval Monarch, once issued a court summons to a swarm of bees. It is unlikely that either overseer did so with any expectation of compliance.) But were we to admit that which is obvious, we would also find ourselves compelled to acknowledge that which is no less apparent, i.e., that the “civilian” institutions of government are papier mache illusions, a reality that is manifestly unpalatable to both the American mainstream media, and a substantial plurality of the public. Best that we not go there.
It should be noted that the dearly departed “Ambassador” a gentleman who just prior to his appointment had, in his capacity as arms merchant and CIA operative, gladly participated in the recent and violent overthrow of the government of the formerly sovereign Libyan nation. In fact the Ambassador’s uncurbed enthusiasms (which mirrored those of his government’s — no more, no less) led him to oversee yet another American sponsored torture chamber of the sort referred to in polite conversation as a “safe house” or “special mission.”
To summarize then, one can hardly blame Mrs.Clinton’s reluctance to acknowledge that:
A) her nominal superior, Barack Obama, had forbidden the CIA from engaging in the practice of torture and that the Agency (Surprise, surprise!) had ignored the Presidential ruling, as this admission might imply that the President is a meaningless mannequin;
B) the nominal “Ambassador,” Mr.Stevens was a secretive figure with a criminal past — why that might serve to cast aspersions on the Department of State;
C) the State Department is now little more than an adjunct of the Department of Defense; and
D) the actions of so-called “terrorists” were defensive in nature (they wanted us the Hell out of their country) and, therefore, eminently justifiable — along the lines of sic semper tyrannus.
Ah, the fricative sibilance of cognitive dissonance…
Cheers,
JQP