Exclusive: Secret tapes undermine Hillary Clinton on Libyan war

Joint Chiefs, key lawmaker held own talks with Moammar Gadhafi regime

By Jeffrey Scott Shapiro and Kelly Riddell - The Washington Times - Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Top Pentagon officials and a senior Democrat in Congress so distrusted Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2011 march to war in Libya that they opened their own diplomatic channels with the Gadhafi regime in an effort to halt the escalating crisis, according to secret audio recordings recovered from Tripoli.

The tapes, reviewed by The Washington Times and authenticated by the participants, chronicle U.S. officials’ unfiltered conversations with Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s son and a top Libyan leader, including criticisms that Mrs. Clinton had developed tunnel vision and led the U.S. into an unnecessary war without adequately weighing the intelligence community’s concerns.

“You should see these internal State Department reports that are produced in the State Department that go out to the Congress. They’re just full of stupid, stupid facts,” an American intermediary specifically dispatched by the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Gadhafi regime in July 2011, saying the State Department was controlling what intelligence would be reported to U.S. officials.

At the time, the Gadhafi regime was fighting a civil war that grew out of the Arab Spring, battling Islamist-backed rebels who wanted to dethrone the longtime dictator. Mrs. Clinton argued that Gadhafi might engage in genocide and create a humanitarian crisis and ultimately persuaded President Obama, NATO allies and the United Nations to authorize military intervention.

Gadhafi’s son and heir apparent, Seif Gadhafi, told American officials in the secret conversations that he was worried Mrs. Clinton was using false pretenses to justify unseating his father and insisted that the regime had no intention of harming a mass of civilians. He compared Mrs. Clinton’s campaign for war to that of the George W. Bush administration’s now debunked weapons of mass destruction accusations, which were used to lobby Congress to invade Iraq, the tapes show.

“It was like the WMDs in Iraq. It was based on a false report,” Gadhafi said in a May 2011 phone call to Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat serving at the time. “Libyan airplanes bombing demonstrators, Libyan airplanes bombing districts in Tripoli, Libyan army killed thousands, etc., etc., and now the whole world found there is no single evidence that such things happened in Libya.”

Seif Gadhafi also warned that many of the U.S.-supported armed rebels were “not freedom fighters” but rather jihadists whom he described as “gangsters and terrorists.”

“And now you have NATO supporting them with ships, with airplanes, helicopters, arms, training, communication,” he said in one recorded conversation with U.S. officials. “We ask the American government send a fact-finding mission to Libya. I want you to see everything with your own eyes.”

The surreptitiously taped conversations reveal an extraordinary departure from traditional policy, in which the U.S. government speaks to foreign governments with one voice coordinated by the State Department.

Instead, the tapes show that the Pentagon’s senior uniformed leadership and a congressman from Mrs. Clinton’s own party conveyed sentiments to the Libyan regime that undercut or conflicted with the secretary of state’s own message at the time.

“If this story is true, it would be highly unusual for the Pentagon to conduct a separate set of diplomatic negotiations, given the way we operated when I was secretary of state,” James A. Baker III, who served under President George H.W. Bush, told The Times. “In our administration, the president made sure that we all sang from the same hymnal.”

Mr. Kucinich, who challenged Mrs. Clinton and Barack Obama for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, acknowledged that he undertook his own conversations with the Gadhafi regime. He said he feared Mrs. Clinton was using emotion to sell a war against Libya that wasn’t warranted, and he wanted to get all the information he could to share with his congressional colleagues.

“I had facts that indicated America was headed once again into an intervention that was going to be disastrous,” Mr. Kucinich told The Times. “What was being said at the State Department — if you look at the charge at the time — it wasn’t so much about what happened as it was about what would happen. So there was a distortion of events that were occurring in Libya to justify an intervention which was essentially wrong and illegal.”

Mr. Kucinich wrote a letter to Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton in August explaining his communications in a last-ditch effort to stop the war.

“I have been contacted by an intermediary in Libya who has indicated that President Muammar Gadhafi is willing to negotiate an end to the conflict under conditions which would seem to favor Administration policy,” Mr. Kucinich wrote on Aug. 24.

Neither the White House nor the State Department responded to his letter, he said.

A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton declined to provide any comment about the recordings.

The State Department also declined to answer questions about separate contacts from the Pentagon and Mr. Kucinich with the Gadhafi regime, but said the goal of Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama was regime change in Libya.

“U.S. policy during the revolution supported regime change through peaceful means, in line with UNSCR 1973 policy and NATO mission goals,” the State Department said. “We consistently emphasized at the time that Moammar Gadhafi had to step down and leave Libya as an essential component of the transition.”

‘President is not getting accurate information’

Both inside and outside the Obama administration, Mrs. Clinton was among the most vocal early proponents of using U.S. military force to unseat Gadhafi. Joining her in making the case were French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, and her successor as secretary of state, John F. Kerry.

Mrs. Clinton’s main argument was that Gadhafi was about to engage in a genocide against civilians in Benghazi, where the rebels held their center of power. But defense intelligence officials could not corroborate those concerns and in fact assessed that Gadhafi was unlikely to risk world outrage by inflicting mass casualties, officials told The Times. As a result, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, strongly opposed Mrs. Clinton’s recommendation to use force.

If Mrs. Clinton runs for president next year, her style of leadership as it relates to foreign policy will be viewed through the one war that she personally championed as secretary of state. Among the key questions every candidate faces is how they will assess U.S. intelligence and solicit the advice of the military leadership.

Numerous U.S. officials interviewed by The Times confirmed that Mrs. Clinton, and not Mr. Obama, led the charge to use NATO military force to unseat Gadhafi as Libya’s leader and that she repeatedly dismissed the warnings offered by career military and intelligence officials.

In the recovered recordings, a U.S. intelligence liaison working for the Pentagon told a Gadhafi aide that Mr. Obama privately informed members of Congress that Libya “is all Secretary Clinton’s matter” and that the nation’s highest-ranking generals were concerned that the president was being misinformed.

The Pentagon liaison indicated on the tapes that Army Gen. Charles H. Jacoby Jr., a top aide to Adm. Mullen, “does not trust the reports that are coming out of the State Department and CIA, but there’s nothing he can do about it.”

In one conversation to the Libyans, the American intelligence asset said, “I can tell you that the president is not getting accurate information, so at some point someone has to get accurate information to him. I think about a way through former Secretary Gates or maybe to Adm. Mullen to get him information”

The recordings are consistent with what many high-ranking intelligence, military and academic sources told The Times:

Mrs. Clinton was headstrong to enter the Libyan crisis, ignoring the Pentagon’s warnings that no U.S. interests were at stake and regional stability could be threatened. Instead, she relied heavily on the assurances of the Libyan rebels and her own memory of Rwanda, where U.S. inaction may have led to the genocide of at least 500,000 people.

“Neither the intervention decision nor the regime change decision was an intelligence-heavy decision,” said one senior intelligence official directly involved with the administration’s decision-making, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “People weren’t on the edge of their seats, intelligence wasn’t driving the decision one way or another.”

Instead of relying on the Defense Department or the intelligence community for analysis, officials told The Times, the White House trusted Mrs. Clinton’s charge, which was then supported by Ambassador to the United Nations Susan E. Rice and National Security Council member Samantha Power, as reason enough for war.

“Susan Rice was involved in the Rwanda crisis in 1994, Samantha Power wrote very moving books about what happened in Rwanda, and Hillary Clinton was also in the background of that crisis as well,” said Allen Lynch, a professor of international relations at the University of Virginia. “I think they have all carried this with them as a kind of guilt complex.”

Humanitarian crisis was not imminent

In 2003, Gadhafi agreed to dismantle his weapons of mass destruction and denounce terrorism to re-establish relations with the West. He later made reparations to the families of those who died in the bombing of Pan-Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

News media frequently described the apparent transformation as Libya “coming in from the cold.”

Still, he ruled Libya with an iron grip, and by February 2011 civil war raged throughout the country. Loyalist forces mobilized tanks and troops toward Benghazi, creating a panicked mass exodus of civilians toward Egypt.

Mrs. Clinton met with Libyan rebel spokesman Mahmoud Jibril in the Paris Westin hotel in mid-March so she could vet the rebel cause to unseat Gadhafi. Forty-five minutes after speaking with Mr. Jibril, Mrs. Clinton was convinced that a military intervention was needed.

“I talked extensively about the dreams of a democratic civil state where all Libyans are equal a political participatory system with no exclusions of any Libyans, even the followers of Gadhafi who did not commit crimes against the Libyan people, and how the international community should protect civilians from a possible genocide like the one [that] took place in Rwanda,” Mr. Jibril told The Times. “I felt by the end of the meeting, I passed the test. Benghazi was saved.”

So on March 17, 2011, the U.S. supported U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 for military intervention in Libya to help protect its people from Gadhafi’s forthcoming march on Benghazi, where he threatened he would “show no mercy” to resisters.

“In this particular country — Libya — at this particular moment, we were faced with the prospect of violence on a horrific scale,” Mr. Obama declared in an address to the nation on March 28. “We had a unique ability to stop that violence: An international mandate for action, a broad coalition prepared to join us, the support of Arab countries and a plea for help from the Libyan people themselves.”

Yet Human Rights Watch did not see the humanitarian crisis as imminent.

“At that point, we did not see the imminence of massacres that would rise to genocidelike levels,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of the Middle East and North Africa division for Human Rights Watch. “Gadhafi’s forces killed hundreds of overwhelmingly unarmed protesters. There were threats of Libyan forces approaching Benghazi, but we didn’t feel that rose to the level of imminent genocidelike atrocities.”

Instead, she said, the U.S. government was trying to be at the forefront of the Arab Spring, when many dictator-led countries were turning to democracy.

“I think the dynamic for the U.S. government was: Things are changing fast, Tunisia has fallen, Egypt has fallen, and we’d better be on the front of this, supporting a new government and not being seen as supporting the old government,” Ms. Whitson said.

Clinton blocks Gadhafi outreach

On the day the U.N. resolution was passed, Mrs. Clinton ordered a general within the Pentagon to refuse to take a call with Gadhafi’s son Seif and other high-level members within the regime, to help negotiate a resolution, the secret recordings reveal.

A day later, on March 18, Gadhafi called for a cease-fire, another action the administration dismissed.

Soon, a call was set up between the former U.S. ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz, and Gadhafi confidant Mohammed Ismael during which Mr. Ismael confirmed that the regime’s highest-ranking generals were under orders not to fire upon protesters.

“I told him we were not targeting civilians and Seif told him that,” Mr. Ismael told The Times in an telephone interview this month, recounting the fateful conversation.

While Mrs. Clinton urged the Pentagon to cease its communications with the Gadhafi regime, the intelligence asset working with the Joint Chiefs remained in contact for months afterward.

“Everything I am getting from the State Department is that they do not care about being part of this. Secretary Clinton does not want to negotiate at all,” the Pentagon intelligence asset told Seif Gadhafi and his adviser on the recordings.

Communication was so torn between the Libyan regime and the State Department that they had no point of contact within the department to even communicate whether they were willing to accept the U.N.’s mandates, former Libyan officials said.

Mrs. Clinton eventually named Mr. Cretz as the official U.S. point of contact for the Gadhafi regime. Mr. Cretz, the former ambassador to Libya, was removed from the country in 2010 amid Libyan anger over derogatory comments he made regarding Gadhafi released by Wikileaks. As a result, Mr. Cretz was not trusted or liked by the family.

Shutting the Gadhafis out of the conversation allowed Mrs. Clinton to pursue a solitary point of view, said a senior Pentagon official directly involved with the intervention.

“The decision to invade [Libya] had already been made, so everything coming out of the State Department at that time was to reinforce that decision,” the official explained, speaking only on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

As a result, the Pentagon went its own way and established communications with Seif Gadhafi through one of his friends, a U.S. businessman, who acted as an intermediary. The goal was to identify a clear path and strategy forward in Libya — something that wasn’t articulated by the White House or State Department at the time, officials said.

“Our big thing was: ‘What’s a good way out of this, what’s a bridge to post-Gadhafi conflict once the military stops and the civilians take over, what’s it going to look like?’” said a senior military official involved in the planning, who requested anonymity. “We had a hard time coming up with that because once again nobody knew what the lay of the clans and stuff was going to be.

“The impression we got from both the businessman and from Seif was that the situation is bad, but this [NATO intervention] is even worse,” the official said, confirming the sentiments expressed on the audio recordings. “All of these things don’t have to happen this way, and it will be better for Libya in the long run both economically and politically if they didn’t.”

Pentagon looks for a way out 

The Pentagon wasn’t alone in questioning the intervention.

The week the U.N. resolution authorizing military force was passed, Sen. Jim Webb, Virginia Democrat, expressed his own concerns.

“We have a military operation that’s been put to play, but we do not have a clear diplomatic policy or clear statement of foreign policy. We know we don’t like the Gadhafi regime, but we do not have a picture of who the opposition movement really is. We got a vote from the Security Council but we had five key abstentions in that vote.”

Five of the 15 countries on the U.N. Security Council abstained from voting on the decision in Libya because they had concerns that the NATO intervention would make things worse. Mrs. Clinton worked to avoid having them exercise their veto by personally calling representatives from Security Council member states.

Germany and Brazil published statements on March 18, 2011, explaining their reasons for abstention.

“We weighed the risks of a military operation as a whole, not just for Libya but, of course, also with respect to the consequences for the entire region and that is why we abstained,” Germany said.

Brazil wrote, “We are not convinced that the use of force as contemplated in the present resolution will lead to the realization of our most important objective — the immediate end of violence and the protection of civilians.

We are also concerned that such measures may have the unintended effect of exacerbating tensions on the ground and causing more harm than good to the very same civilians we are committed to protecting.”

Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak, Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., told The Times that history has proved those concerns correct.

“The U.N. Security Council resolution on Libya was meant to create a no-fly zone to prevent bombing of civilians,” said Mr. Kislyak. “NATO countries that participated in this intervention were supposed to patrol the area. However, in a short amount of time the NATO flights — initially meant to stop violence on the ground — went far beyond the scope of the Security Council-mandated task and created even more violence in Libya.”

On March 19, the U.S. military, supported by France and Britain, fired off more than 110 Tomahawk missiles, hitting about 20 Libyan air and missile defense targets. Within weeks, a NATO airstrike killed one of Gaddafi’s sons and three grandsons at their the family’s Tripoli compound, sparking debate about whether the colonel and his family were legitimate targets under the U.N. resolution.

Mr. Gates, the defense secretary, said the compound was targeted because it included command-and-control facilities.

Even after the conflict began, U.S. military leaders kept looking for a way out and a way to avoid the power vacuum that would be left in the region if Gadhafi fell.

As the intelligence asset working with the Joint Chiefs kept his contacts going, one U.S. general made an attempt to negotiate directly with his Libyan military counterparts, according to interviews conducted by The Times with officials directly familiar with the overture.

Army Gen. Carter Ham, the head of the U.S. African Command, sought to set up a 72-hour truce with the regime, according to an intermediary called in to help.

Retired Navy Rear Adm. Charles Kubic, who was acting as a business consultant in Libya at the time, said he was approached by senior Libyan military leaders to propose the truce. He took the plan to Lt. Col. Brian Linvill, the U.S. AFRICOM point of contact for Libya. Col. Linvill passed the proposal to Gen. Ham, who agreed to participate.

“The Libyans would stop all combat operations and withdraw all military forces to the outskirts of the cities and assume a defensive posture. Then to insure the credibility with the international community, the Libyans would accept recipients from the African Union to make sure the truce was honored,” Mr. Kubic said, describing the offers.

“[Gadhafi] came back and said he was willing to step down and permit a transition government, but he had two conditions,” Mr. Kubic said. “First was to insure there was a military force left over after he left Libya capable to go after al Qaeda. Secondly, he wanted to have the sanctions against him and his family and those loyal to him lifted and free passage. At that point in time, everybody thought that was reasonable.”

But not the State Department.

Gen. Ham was ordered to stand down two days after the negotiation began, Mr. Kubic said. The orders were given at the behest of the State Department, according to those familiar with the plan in the Pentagon. Gen. Ham declined to comment when questioned by The Times.

“If their goal was to get Gadhafi out of power, then why not give a 72-hour truce a try?” Mr. Kubic asked. “It wasn’t enough to get him out of power; they wanted him dead.”

Libyan officials were willing to negotiate a departure from power but felt the continued NATO bombings were forcing the regime into combat to defend itself, the recordings indicated.

“If they put us in a corner, we have no choice but to fight until the end,” Mr. Ismael said on one of the recordings. “What more can they do? Bomb us with a nuclear bomb? They have done everything.”

Under immense foreign firepower, the Gadhafi regime’s grip on Libya began to slip in early April and the rebels’ resolve was strengthened. Gadhafi pleaded with the U.S. to stop the NATO airstrikes.

Regime change real agenda

Indeed, the U.S. position in Libya had changed. First, it was presented to the public as way to stop an impending humanitarian crisis but evolved into expelling the Gadhafis.

CIA Director Leon E. Panetta says in his book “Worthy Fights” that the goal of the Libyan conflict was for regime change. Mr. Panetta wrote that at the end of his first week as secretary of defense in July 2011, he visited Iraq and Afghanistan “for both substance and symbolism.”

“In Afghanistan I misstated our position on how fast we’d be bringing troops home, and I said what everyone in Washington knew, but we couldn’t officially acknowledge: That our goal in Libya was regime change.”

But that wasn’t the official war cry.

Instead: “It was ‘We’re worried a humanitarian crisis might occur,’” said a senior military official, reflecting on the conflict. “Once you’ve got everybody nodding up and down on that, watch out because you can justify almost anything under the auspices of working to prevent a humanitarian crisis. Gadhafi had enough craziness about him, the rest of the world nodded on.”

But they might not be so quick to approve again, officials say.

“It may be impossible to get the same kind of resolution in similar circumstances, and we already saw that in Syria where the Russians were very suspicious when Western powers went to the U.N.,” said Richard Northern, who served as the British ambassador to Libya during part of the conflict. “Anything the Western powers did in the Middle East is now viewed by the Russians with suspicion, and it will probably reduce the level of authority they’re willing to give in connection to humanitarian crises.”

Mr. Kucinich, who took several steps to end the war in Libya, said he is sickened about what transpired.

He sponsored a June 3 resolution in the House of Representatives to end the Libyan war, but Republican support for the bill was diluted after Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, proposed a softer alternative resolution demanding that the president justify his case for war within 14 days.

“There was a distortion of events that were occurring in Libya to justify an intervention which was essentially wrong and illegal because [the administration] gained the support of the U.N. Security Council through misrepresentation,” said Mr. Kucinich. “The die was cast there for the overthrow of the Gadhafi government. The die was cast. They weren’t looking for any information.

“What’s interesting about all this is, if you listen to Seif Gaddafi’s account, even as they were being bombed they still trusted America, which really says a lot,” said Mr. Kucinich. “It says a lot about how people who are being bombed through the covert involvement or backdoor involvement of the U.S. will still trust the U.S. It’s heart-breaking, really. It really breaks your heart when you see trust that is so cynically manipulated.”

In August, Gadhafi’s compound in Tripoli was overrun, signaling the end of his 42-year reign and forcing him into hiding. Two months later, Gadhafi, 69, was killed in his hometown of Sirte. His son Seif was captured by the Zintan tribe and remains in solitary confinement in a Zintan prison cell.

Since Gadhafi was removed from power, Libya has been in a constant state of chaos, with factional infighting and no uniting leader. On Tuesday, an attack on a luxury hotel in Tripoli killed nine people, including one American. A group calling itself the Islamic State-Tripoli Province took responsibility for the attack, indicating a growing presence of anti-American terrorist groups within the country.


God bless,
JohnnyD

 

 

It's the patriotism, stupid. What liberal critics don't get about "American Sniper"

From: Fox News

by - Pete HegsethPublished January 28, 2015


There’s no denying it. Clint Eastwood’s “American Sniper” has struck a chord with the American people, and did so by tapping into the deepest civic values we have as Americans – duty, honor, fidelity, courage, love for country…and a love for others.

However, no war movie can live on the big screen without a spew of liberal backlash, and this film is no different. Criticism has come quickly from Michael Moore, Seth Rogen, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and other Hollywood leftists.

Thankfully, some things speak louder than cowardly tweets—like the more than $200 million in ticket sales the movie has raked in just one week. In fact, the new war film featuring Bradley Cooper as well-known Navy SEAL sniper, Chris Kyle, is on pace to become the top-grossing war film of all time.

As much as the left would like you to believe it, Chris Kyle was not a bloodthirsty warmonger; he was a noble warrior who fought to defend his fellow troops, watched over the lives of his brothers, and advanced the cause of (eventual) peace. This is where the true success of “American Sniper” comes to light.

The film is not a movie about the Iraq war, or whether we won or lost; or even whether our motivations were justified. Instead, it’s a story about a man and the many trials of war, including coming home from it. In the words of my good friend and former Army Ranger, Sean Parnell,“[American Sniper] isn’t a pro-war film. It’s a pro-warrior film.”

That’s the key. The movie is a testament to the warrior – to the man in the arena. Everyone criticizing the film is on the sidelines hurling insults. Chris was in the arena, fighting for us in a dangerous and complicated war.

Nonetheless, outspoken liberals will continue to cast judgment, saying that they support the warrior but not the war. But they contradict themselves even on that point. The left sees  warriors—men like Chris Kyle—as bloodthirsty and ignorant Americans from fly-over country who cling to God and guns in blind support of our military. They dislike both the war and the warrior.

Nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, middle-America is full of hard working people of faith and fidelity who love their nation and believe in celebrating someone like Chris Kyle. These are people who feel like they’re already taxed enough, that the government is over-bearing in their lives, that religion has been stripped from every aspect of civil society, and that the president is misguided in his gutting of their military. They are, in a word, patriots.

Despite their frustrations with leftists, middle America is the beating heart of our nation and remains the first in line to selflessly strap on their boots and defend the very freedoms that people like Michael Moore use to criticize them.

It’s awfully easy for progressives to cast criticism down from their isolated ivory towers, but next time they consider demeaning the warriors protecting them afar, as Chris Kyle once did, they may want to consider who protects those towers and keeps them from tumbling.

They’re not only the folks who see this movie, but more often than not, they’re the kind of people depicted in these movies. They’re the kind of people who embody “citizenship,” and the very idea of living and fighting for something bigger than oneself.

Chris Kyle understood that. Today’s servicemen and women understand that. And that’s why millions of people are seeing this movie. They want to celebrate and believe in America again, if only for two short hours in a crowded dark theater.


God bless our warriors,
JohnnyD

Admiral: U.S. could have ousted Gadhafi peacefully

Brokered deal but Obama chose to arm al-Qaida-linked 'rebels'

From: World Net Daily

by - Jerome R. Corsi

NEW YORK – As the allied bombing of Libya began in 2011, the Obama administration rejected an offer by Moammar Gadhafi to engage in negotiations to abdicate, according to a retired U.S. Navy officer who says he was prepared to broker the deal.

Instead, the U.S. decided to provide weapons to “rebels” consisting of al-Qaida-related local Libyan militia and members of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood, contends retired Rear Adm. Chuck Kubic.

Kubic began email and telephone contact March 21, 2011, between Tripoli and AFRICOM in Stuttgart, Germany, to broker an offer by Gadhafi to engage in talks with the U.S. under a white flag of truce, according to testimony he provided the Citizens Commission on Benghazi.

As WND reported Monday, the commission – comprised of 17 retired admirals and generals; former intelligence agents; active anti-terrorist experts; media specialists; and former congressmen – has been conducting its own investigation and working behind the scenes for the past year and a half to ensure Congress uncovers the truth of what happened in Benghazi and holds people accountable.

WND reported Tuesday the commission found in an interim report that the Obama White House and the State Department under the management of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “changed sides in the war on terror” in 2011 by implementing a policy of facilitating the delivery of weapons to the al-Qaida-dominated rebel militias in Libya attempting to oust Gadhafi.

As WND previously reported on Tuesday, the Citizens Commission on Benghazi has concluded the State Department then under the direction of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton authorized Christopher Stevens prior to the fall of Qadhafi to enter Libya at Benghazi from a cargo ship, where he implemented an Obama administration policy of facilitating the delivery of weapons to the al-Qaida-controlled rebel militias in Libya attempting to oust Gadhafi from power.

The commission’s April 2014 interim report said the war in Libya continued “and ultimately cost tens of thousands of lives.”

“The U.S. failure to even consider Gadhafi’s request for talks, and its determination to enter and pursue this war in support of al-Qaida-linked rebels, presents the appearance of a policy intent upon empowering Islamic forces with no measurable benefit to U.S. national security,” the report said.

The Citizens Commission on Benghazi involves a group of 17 now retired admirals and generals, former intelligence agents, active anti-terrorist experts, media specialists, and former members of Congress organized

The commission was organized in 2013 by Accuracy in Media Editor Roger Aronoff along with three retired military officers: Navy Adm. James Lyons, Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely and Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney.

Their interim report said Gadhafi “expressed his willingness to abdicate shortly after the beginning of the 2011 Libyan revolt, but the U.S. ignored his calls for a truce, which led to extensive loss of life (including four Americans), chaos, and detrimental outcomes for U.S. national security objectives across the region.”

In the following days, the report said, Gadhafi “expressed interest in a truce, and possible abdication and exile out of Libya.”

“He even pulled his forces back from several Libyan cities as a sign of good faith.”

The report detailed the precise chain of communications with the U.S. government regarding the possibility Gadhafi would abdicate and obviate the need for the U.S. to join with NATO to back the al-Qaida-affiliated militia seeking to depose the dictator.

Kubic, according to the report, telephoned Lt. Col. Brian Linvill, the U.S. AFRICOM point of contact for all military matters regarding the Libyan situation, to “advise him of Gadhafi’s desire to enter into military-to-military discussions.”

Gen. Carter Ham was advised immediately on 21 March 21, 2011, of the communications and conveyed them up his chain of command to the Pentagon.

The Obama administration, however, expressed no apparent interest in pursuing the possibility Gadhafi might step down from power in Libya, the report said.

After two days of communication with the Libyans, however, Ham had received no consent from Washington, D.C., to pursue Gadhafi’s offer.

The consequences of rejecting Gadhafi’s offer to step down were dire, the interim report detailed, leading to the Obama administration “changing sides” in Libya to support and help arm the al-Qaida-related Islamic militia and Libyan Muslim Brotherhood members planning to launch a violent rebellion to oust Gadhafi.

“About the time the bombing of Libya by U.S. and European forces under NATO started around March 19, 2011, I became aware through intermediaries that Gadhafi was ready to step aside and go into exile,” Kubic explained to WND in an exclusive interview. “I was talking through intermediaries to Gadhafi’s top military commanders and the command center at Stuttgart, but I never spoke directly with General Ham.”

Kubic explained he was trying to facilitate a 72-hour truce to conduct discussions between opposing battlefield commanders, Ham for AFRICOM and Gen. Abubaker Saad for the Libyans.

“I was concerned there were too many politicians and diplomats involved, but Gadhafi trusted his generals, and I thought that from a military perspective pursuant to the laws of war this would be the best way to do it,” Kubic continued.

Kubic explained what he was trying to achieve: “This resonated with AFRICOM, so we drafted up proposal and there were phone calls between Tripoli and Stuttgart.

“Under the 72-hour truce, the military commanders from both sides would meet either ashore at Tripoli or afloat, and there would be observers from the African Union to police the truce. The goal was to negotiate a cease-fire, and the purpose was to get Gadhafi’s abdication and his subsequent either internal or external exile.

Kubic said that as an expression of good faith, AFRICOM asked Gadhafi to pull back at Benghazi, “and AFRICOM was able to observe Gadhafi complying and pulling back.”

Kubic noted that part of the initial agreement was for Ham to make a public statement that the U.S. was not targeting Gadhafi.

The condition was partially met in a Department of Defense news briefing held by Vice Admiral Gortney in Washington on behalf of AFRICOM on March 20, 2011.

Gortney said he could “guarantee” that Gadhafi was not on a target list for the U.S. joint operation with European forces under NATO in Operation Odyssey Dawn, the U.S. military code name for the U.S. military involvement in Libya.

Then, also on March 21, 2011, in a televised news briefing from Germany, Ham, in response to press questions, stressed the U.S. military was not targeting Gadhafi.

“Everything seemed to be set and there was a lot of enthusiasm that we could stop this crisis in Libya before it got out of hand,” he continued.

Gadhafi had two conditions, Kubic explained.

“He wanted to ensure that there was a residual military force left in Libya to oppose the al-Qaida forces he knew were operating in Libya, and he wanted safe passage for his family and friends,” he said.

“The Libyan military, as part of the discussions, wanted to leave one or two of Gadhafi’s top generals who would continue to command the military forces to make sure Libya remained stable after Gadhafi abdicated and to insure al-Qaida didn’t take over the country.”

Suddenly, Kubic was informed the U.S. did not want to proceed with the discussions. The idea of a 72-hour cease-fire was “off,” and AFRICOM was ordered “to stand down” form truce talks.

“AFRICOM thought Gadhafi’s conditions were reasonable, and we were just in the process of settling where the truce talks would be held, when AFRICOM told me that everything had been called off,” Kubic said.

“I then asked to speak with Gen. Ham and was told the decision was reached above his head. I then asked who at the Pentagon I needed to see and was told the decision came from outside the Pentagon,” he continued.

“I found it hard to understand that we have a Nobel Peace Prize winner in the White House and President Obama was not willing to give peace a chance in Libya for 72 hours,” Kubic said.

“I don’t know if the decision came from the White House or from Hillary Clinton at the State Department,” he said, “but the advice for me from AFRICOM was to basically just leave everything alone, to simply stand down.”

Yet that was not the end of the story.

“I was told by an authoritative source in the U.S. government that an intelligence memorandum was prepared on the negotiations that went to President Obama in its raw form. And this was the document that basically gave the actual intelligence on the al-Qaida elements that were part of the Libyan revolution,” Kubic said.

“All these negotiations happened in the period of March 19-22, 2011, and the intelligence document given the president was created on March 24, 2011,” Kubic noted. “It was on March 29, 2011, that President Obama signed the finding authorizing the United States to arm the rebels.”

Confirming Kubic’s timeline, Reuters reported March 30, 2011, that Obama “has signed a secret order authorizing covert U.S. government support for rebel forces seeking to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi,” citing government officials.

Reuters further reported the “presidential finding” signed by Obama was “a principal form of presidential directive used to authorize secret operations by the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Did Obama administration brief GOP?

Former CIA agent Kevin Shipp, a member of the Citizens Commission on Benghazi, said he believes House Majority Leader John Boehner and other members of the “Gang of Eight” in Congress were briefed by the Obama administration on Ambassador Christopher Stevens’ involvement with the CIA was in Benghazi.

Shipp spent 17 years with the CIA counter-intelligence, counter-terrorism, human intelligence operations and internal security. He also was a program manager of the State Department’s Diplomatic Security, Anti-Terrorism Assistance global police training program.

Among his roles was working on the 7th floor at Langley conducting protective duties for then-CIA Director William Casey.

In his interview with WND, Shipp made clear he was speaking on the record for himself, not representing the views of the Citizens Commission on Benghazi or of the views of any of the other members.

The “Gang of Eight” leaders in Congress, who are regularly briefed by the White House on intelligence matters, are the speaker of the House, the House minority leader, the Senate majority and minority leaders and the chairmen and ranking members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

In the 113th Congress from 2012-2014, the Republican members were House Speaker John Boehner; then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell; Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence; and Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

“I think the GOP Gang of Eight, including Boehner, have guilty knowledge of everything the Obama administration and the State Department conducted in Libya,” Shipp said.

“Even when it got to the ultimate goal of Christopher Stevens diverting weapons up with the assistance of Qatar and Saudi Arabia of diverting weapons from Libya up through Turkey to the rebels in Syria, the GOP Gang of Eight, with security clearances, would have been briefed in advance of the operation.”

Shipp continued: “In my opinion Boehner and the other GOP members of the Gang of Eight would have been witting of the gun-running activities the CIA and State Department were conducting in Libya from the very beginning. When everything went wrong and Stevens was killed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it’s my belief Boehner and none of the other GOP members of the Gang of Eight wanted the American public to know they had anything to do with it.”

Kubic told WND he could not confirm the Gang of Eight had received an intelligence briefing on the presidential finding Obama signed March 29, 2011, authorizing the CIA to support the Libyan al-Qaida-affiliated rebels in their military efforts to oust Gadhafi.

“In this particular case, I don’t know whether the Gang of Eight was briefed, whether they were partially briefed and not given the whole story, or whether they were really not briefed at all,” Kubic cautioned.

“It makes a big difference,” he said. “The question is whether the Gang of Eight were accessories to Obama’s presidential directive of March 29, 2011, or were they unwitting accomplices. We don’t know, and it’s my personal opinion that it’s not proper to jump to conclusions.”

He said it’s a matter for the House Select Committee on Benghazi, headed by Rep. Gowdy, R-S.C.

Did GOP leaders know of al-Qaida affiliation

On April 22, 2011, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., publicly called for support of Libya’s rebels in their rebellion to oust Gadhafi.

“They are my heroes,” McCain told reporters as he out of a hotel in Benghazi after having toured a rebel stronghold, NBC’s Richard Engel reported.

Engel said that McCain, “one of the strongest proponents in Congress of the U.S. military intervention in Libya, said he planned to meet with the rebel National Transition Council, the de-facto government in the eastern half of the country.”

NBC further reported McCain “said at a news conference Friday that all nations should recognize the council as the legitimate voice of the Libyan people.”

Engel quoted McCain saying: “I would encourage every nation, especially the United States, to recognize the Transitional National Council as the legitimate voice of the Libyan people.”

On May 2, 2011, after being informed privately by a phone call from the White House in advance of Obama’s nationally televised announcement that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by U.S. Special Forces operating in Pakistan, House Speaker John Boehner put out a statement: “This is great news for the security of the American people and a victory in our continued fight against al-Qaida and radical extremism around the world.”

‘Papered silent with security agreements’

Shipp explained both Republican and Democratic White Houses require the Gang of Eight to sign secrecy agreements before receiving classified administration briefings on foreign policy and intelligence matters.

“The White House papers everybody briefed in Congress with secrecy agreements,” he said. “This agreement threatens the possibility of criminal prosecution if any classified information is leaked to the public in an unauthorized fashion.
”
He noted a member of the House or Senate could be removed from office for violation of the agreement.

“These agreements are powerful instruments of persuasion.”

Shipp questioned whether the Benghazi gun-running operation was classified “above top secret,” meaning Boehner and the other GOP members would face severe penalties, including the possibility of criminal prosecution, if any leaked the information.

Or, he asked, was it possible the GOP leadership believed Obama signing of the Presidential Finding on March 29, 2011, authorizing the CIA to support the Libyan rebels would have implied his approval of the gun-running activities subsequently undertaken by the CIA in conjunction with the State Department?

Shipp acknowledged that a criminal or, even worse, a traitorous White House could use the secrecy agreements to ensure silence.

“Unfortunately, that could happen,” he said. “If the CIA wants to conceal an operation, they classify it at a very high level and they paper Congress with a secrecy agreement such that you are bound for life.”

Shipp emphasized how ironclad the CIA-executed secrecy agreements were.

“Any disclosure of information in an unauthorized fashion could result in prison time,” he said. “The document makes it clear that anyone who signs it can never mention the operation or any connection to the operation. Even if the information comes out in a public forum, you can’t so much as confirm a news report, because just confirming information can be considered a violation of the security agreement.”

A ‘de facto, third-party assassination’

Shipp discussed his concerns that the Obama administration shifted ground in Libya and refused to accept Gadhafi’s offer to abdicate.

“Gadhafi had established diplomatic relations with the United States and we had an embassy in Libya,” Shipp noted.

“One of the most astounding parts of this whole thing is that Gadhafi had destroyed his stash of WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction), and he was providing us with a steady stream of intelligence on al-Qaida movements in Libya,” he said.

Shipp said Gadhafi “was collaborating with us as an ally, so for the Obama administration, the White House national security team and the State Department to break off contact with Gadhafi was amazing, especially when he was asking to step down and seek asylum.”

Shipp expressed his continued amazement the Obama administration stood by not only while Libyan rebel forces aligned with al-Qaida toppled Gadhafi, but also killed him.

“It amounted to a de facto, third-party assassination committed ultimately by the United States, if you ask my opinion,” he concluded.

“Why would we completely destabilize Libya when the leader was trying to be our ally is a huge question that falls into a pattern of the Obama administration and his national security advisers supporting Islamic rebel movements, including now supporting the Free Syrian Army, over what could be a more stable solution.”

Shipp speculated on why the Obama administration began covering up the truth about Benghazi, attributing the attack to the reaction to a Youtube video that insulted Islam’s founder, Muhammad.

“What the Obama administration was terrified about, in my view, was the American public knowing the CIA and State Department were running guns secretly into Libya before Gadhafi was deposed, that the guns got into the hands of al-Qaida, and that the guns ended up bound for Syria,” he said.

“Those events put together could be looked at even as traitorous, in my opinion, if the facts ever came out to the American public.”

God bless,

JohnnyD

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God bless,

JohnnyD

The Threat We Face

From: Front Page Magazine

by - October 10, 2013 by David Horowitz



I was born at the beginning of the Second World War into a family of high school teachers who were members of the Communist Party, and therefore were actually part of a vast conspiracy dedicated to the destruction of this country, although they would never have looked at it that way, and so-called liberals would be the first to deny it.

In those days, the schools were old fashioned enough that my parents did not use their classrooms to indoctrinate students as tens of thousands of university professors and even more K-12 teachers regularly do today. It is also an unhappy but hugely important fact that the conspiracy to which my parents belonged has steadily migrated into the heart of the Democratic Party until it now occupies the Oval Office in the person of our president, Barack Obama, and his closest advisors.

The president, his chief operative Valerie Jarrett and his chief political strategist David Axelrod all came out of the same Communist left and the same radical new left as I did, and all have remained heart and soul a part of it. As someone who turned his back on that destructive movement, I can say with confidence that they have not. If a person belongs to an organization or is the supporter of an idea that they come to see as destructive or evil, the first thing they will want to do when they leave is to warn others against it, to warn them of the dangers it represents. If a person does not do this – that tells me that he or she hasn’t left the destructive movement or abandoned the pernicious idea but has just put another face on them. Instead of calling themselves communists or socialists they call themselves liberals and progressives. This camouflage is very old. I never once heard my parents and their party friends refer to themselves as Communists. They were progressives – and registered Democrats.

This is why – to take one disturbing example, I know that Hillary Clinton’s right hand, Huma Abedin, the former deputy secretary of state, and chief foreign policy adviser on Muslim Affairs is a Muslim Brotherhood operative. Huma Abedin’s late father was a Muslim Brotherhood leader, and her mother and brother still are. For 12 years until the moment she was hired by Hillary, Huma Abedin worked for Abdullah Omar Naseef, one of the top three funders of Osama Bin Laden who is still wanted by our government for his role in the 9/11 attacks.

Huma Abedin has never to my knowledge uttered a word of disapproval about the Muslim Brotherhood’s desire to rid the world of Christians and Jews or to bring all infidels under the heel of totalitarian Islamic law. Her spiritual adviser Yusef al-Qaradawi is the spiritual leader of the Brotherhood. Qaradawi has publicly said that the Holocaust of the Jews was God’s punishment for their corruption, and that it would come again, and when it did, “Allah willing it will be at the hands of the believers.” Huma Abedin has not broken her relations with this evil man or dissociated herself from his genocidal remarks. Nor has she opposed the policies enacted by Obama and Hillary, which have supported the Muslim Brotherhood at home and in the Middle East.

On the contrary. when the Obama administration supported the Brotherhood’s rise to power in Egypt, Huma Abedin was our government’s key adviser on Muslim affairs. She was at Hillary’s side when security was not provided to our diplomatic complex in Benghazi and when al-Qaeda fanatics murdered our Ambassador. The murder of Ambassador Stevens led to the most shameful presidential act in our history when the President turned his back on the cries for help of three American heroes who served him and who were in a desperate fight for their lives. It is a time honored American code never to abandon our warriors on the field of battle. But America’s commander-in-chief turned his back on these brave fighting men and left them to die; and then lied to the American people to cover up his crime.

Ever since Barack Obama was elected and began his radical course, American conservatives have been in a state of shock, as though they couldn’t quite believe what was happening. Until then there had been a general collusion in the practiced deceptions of the left as commentators on all sides would refer to unrepentant radicals, and dedicated socialists as “liberals,” and turn half blind eyes to their anti-American agendas. What is “liberal” about the mean-spirited intolerant people of the left, except their attitude to hard drugs, sex, and criminal behavior? Oh yes, and spending other people’s money?

Today the Obama juggernaut is systematically bankrupting our country, and undoing our constitutional arrangements. Its contempt for consultative and representative government is relentlessly on display. This week Senate Majority leader Harry Reid defended his refusal to negotiate with Republicans over Obamacare and the debt in these words: “We are here to support the federal government. That’s our job.” End quote. Forget about representing the people whom our Founders made sovereign. Forget what America is about.

The fact that I had a radical past allowed me to see much of this coming. But even I never thought we would be looking so soon at the prospect of a one-party state. Those words may sound hyperbolic, but take a moment to think about it. If you have transformed the taxing agency of the state into a political weapon – and Obama has; if you are setting up a massive government program to gather the financial and health information of every citizen, and control their access to care; and if you have a spy agency that can read the mail and listen to the communications of every individual in the country, you don’t really need a secret police to destroy your political opponents. Once you have silenced them, you can proceed with your plans to remake the world in your image.

The good news is that the bad five years we have just been through have aroused a sleeping giant among Americans who didn’t see it coming and couldn’t imagine that it would. For the first time since the Cold War, people with a public voice are calling socialists by their right name; conservatives are finally organizing at the grassroots to defend their freedom; and at last we have leaders who are willing to stand up to the thuggery of the left and who have the spine not to back down.

As a sometime Jonah freed from the whale let me offer some intelligence about the political forces arrayed against us. Do not make the mistake of thinking that progressives and conservatives are people who merely differ about practical agendas. There are four defining features of the left, which distinguish it as a movement of individuals who approach politics quite differently from pragmatically-minded conservatives.

The first of these features is their alienation from country: If you ask progressives about their patriotic feeling, they will tell you that they don’t think of themselves first as Americans but as “citizens of the world.” That even has a Harvard imprimatur. They are, in fact, so profoundly alienated from their country as to be in some sense foreigners to it. They are hostile to its history and to its core values, which they see as reflections of a society that has been guilty of racism and oppression on an epic scale. And they are fundamentally opposed to its constitutional arrangements which the framers specifically designed to thwart what they deemed “wicked projects” to redistribute income and share individual wealth.

This is perhaps the hardest feature of their progressive adversaries for conservatives to comprehend. It is difficult to imagine that people as privileged by America’s generosity as Barack Obama and his entourage of despoilers should be so alienated from their country as to feel themselves in it but not of it. And there is no more shocking example of this than Benghazi. No matter what your politics, or what solutions you propose to the problems that confront this nation, ask yourself this: Could you have done what Barack Obama did that night? Could you as commander-in-chief abandon three Americans fighting for their lives under your command? These men had served their country for more than a decade. For seven hours they cried out for help from their government, but you refused to give it.

How, as a fellow American, could Obama have just left these men to die? No one with an ounce of patriotic feeling could. But he did. Even Alexei Kosygin, the Soviet premier of a Communist dictatorship, maintained contact with his astronaut as he burned up in space. But not our president. When the attack on our embassy in Benghazi began, he hung up the phone and went to bed, and then on to a fundraiser with Beyonce and Jay-Z in Las Vegas in the morning. This, with four Americans including our ambassador dead.

As a nation we are now confronted by mortal enemies in Iran and Syria, in Hizbollah and Hamas – enemies who have openly declared that we are the devil’s party and should be erased from the face of the earth. How could an American president deliberately set out to appease such enemies? How in the face of such threats could he reduce our country to an international laughing stock, no longer respected by our friends, no longer feared by our foes? How could he be so cavalier about having failed so miserably to have defended his country’s security and uphold its honor? How could an American commander-in-chief then put himself in a position to be snubbed by the Iranian Hitlerites, which is what they are, and which is what Obama did? How could he snub our Israeli allies and at the same time grovel before our Islamic enemies? But he did. How could he create a vacuum in the Middle East allowing Russia to become the new regional power? How could he make himself an ally of the Muslim Brotherhood, which slaughters Christians, and promises the extermination of the Jews and spawns terrorist armies like al-Qaeda and Hamas?

The answer to all these questions is that Obama doesn’t identify with our country. He sees himself as a “citizen of the world,” and a redresser of grievances for the suffering he imagines America has inflicted on our adversaries, including Hitlerite Iran.

The second feature of the progressive left that is key to understanding it is its instinctive, practiced, and indispensable dishonesty. As I previously noted, the Communists in the circles I frequented in my youth never identified themselves as Communists but always as “progressives” and “Jeffersonian democrats” (which is the last thing they were). When I was a young man and Stalin was alive, the goal of the Communist Party U.S.A. was a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” and a “Soviet America.” But under Stalin’s inspiration the official slogan of the Communist Party was “Peace, Jobs, and Democracy.”

The lesson? People on the left may be delusional but they are not stupid. They know what they can say and get away with, and what they can’t. Barack Obama is a born and bred member of the left and not coincidentally is the most brazen and compulsive liar ever to occupy the American White House. What other politician could have successfully explained away the fact that two of his closest political confidantes over a twenty-year period were an anti-American racist, Jeremiah Wright and an anti-American terrorist William Ayers?

There is a marked difference between the radicals of the Sixties and the radical movement Obama is part of. In the Sixties, as radicals we said what we thought and blurted out what we wanted. We wanted a revolution, and we wanted it now. It was actually very decent of us to warn others as to what we intended. But because we blurted out our goal, we didn’t get very far. Americans were onto us. Those who remained on the left when the Sixties were over, learned from their experience. They learned to lie. The strategy of the lie is progressives’ new gospel. It is what the progressive bible — Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals — is all about. Alinsky is the acknowledged political mentor to Obama and Hillary, to the service and teacher unions, and to the progressive rank and file. Alinsky understood the mistake Sixties’ radicals had made. His message to this generation is easily summed up: Don’t telegraph your goals; infiltrate their institutions and subvert them; moral principles are disposable fictions; the end justifies the means; and never forget that your political goal is always power.

An SDS radical wrote in the Sixties: “The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.” The Alinsky version is this: The issue is never the issue; the issue is always power: How to wring power out of the democratic process, how turn the process into an instrument of progressive control. How to use it to fundamentally transform the United States of America — which is exactly what Barack Obama warned he would do on the eve of his election.

The chosen legislative instrument to begin this transformation was Obamacare. It was presented as an act of charity, a plan to cover the uninsured. That was the “issue” as they presented it. But the actual goal of Obamacare’s socialist sponsors was a “single payer system” – government healthcare — which would put the state in control of the lives of every American, man, woman and child. That is the reason that none of the promises made about Obamacare was true, beginning with his campaign lie that Obamacare government health care was not a program he would support. Obamacare will not cover 30 million uninsured Americans, as Obama and the Democrats said it would; Obamacare will not lower costs, as they promised it would; Obamacare will deprive many Americans of their doctors and healthcare plans, as they assured everyone it would not; Obamacare is a new tax, as they swore it wouldn’t be. All these promises Obama and the Democrats made were false because they were only a camouflage for their real goal actual goal, which was universal control.

A third feature of progressives that defines their politics is that they regard the past, which is real, with contempt, and are focused exclusively on a future, which is imaginary.

To understand why this is important, think of progressives as a species of religious fundamentalists planning a redemption. Like fundamentalists they look at the world as fallen – a place corrupted by racism, sexism and class division. But the truly religious understand that we are the source of corruption and that redemption is only possible through the work of a Divinity. In contrast, progressives see themselves as the redeemers, which is why they are so dangerous. Because they regard those who oppose them as the eternally damned. Progressives are on a mission to create the kingdom of heaven on earth by redistributing income and using the state to enforce politically correct attitudes and practices in everyone’s life. They want to control what you do, and who you are, and even what you eat. For your own good, of course.

The fact that they see themselves as saving the world – or “saving the planet” as they would prefer — results in a fourth key characteristic of their politics, which is that they regard politics as a religious war. This explains why they are so rude and nasty when you disagree with them or resist their panaceas (and of course if they had the power, the punishments would be more severe); that is why the politics of personal destruction is their favorite variety, why they are verbal assassins and go directly for the jugular, and why they think nothing of destroying the reputations of their opponents and burying them permanently. And that is why they can perform their character assassinations without regrets – or did I miss Obama’s  apology to Romney for accusing him of killing a woman with cancer during the campaign? Why apologize when you did it for the good of a world transforming cause?

To sum this up: Progressives see themselves as an army of the saints, and their opponents as the party of Satan; and that will justify almost anything you can get away with.

An appalling episode of their Machiavellian politics has shaped the international conflict in which we find ourselves currently impotent in the Middle East. The root of that impotence lies in the way Democrats turned the issue of the Iraq war against the Republican president George Bush. The Democrats’ case against Bush was that he acted unilaterally, deceptively and in haste.

Nothing could be further from the truth. The policy to remove Iraq’s government by force was put in place by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, when he signed the Iraqi Liberation Act and fired 450 cruise missiles into that sovereign country. He did it, by the way, not only unilaterally but without consulting anyone.

That was in 1998, which is five years before Bush sent American troops into Iraq. Ten months before Bush did that he warned Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein, to obey the Gulf War truce he had signed in 1991 and then repeatedly violated over the next ten years. Seven months before sending our troops into Iraq Bush went personally to the UN and got a unanimous Security Council ultimatum to Saddam. UN Resolution 1447 said: Obey the terms of the Gulf War truce by December 7, 2002 – or else.

Two months before that deadline Bush went to Congress and requested an authorization to use force in the event that Saddam did not voluntarily observe the terms of the UN Resolution, and the Gulf War truce he had signed and then violated.  Both houses of Congress including a majority of the Democrats in the Senate voted to authorize Bush to use force in Iraq. He also got an authorization from NATO and he also formed a coalition of 40 nations, including America’s oldest allies, the Brits, to enforce the UN Security Council ultimatum.

Not only was the decision not made in haste, and not made without consultation, as the Democrats claimed. The truth was just the opposite. The process of making the decision to go to war took 10 months and every significant authority was consulted. But once U.S. troops entered Iraq on March 19, 2003, it took only three months for the Democrats to betray them and their president, to turn their backs on the war they had authorized and supported, and claim it was – to use the words of former Vice President Al Gore, “unnecessary, immoral and illegal.” Or in the words of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, “the wrong war, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.”

Why did the Democrats betray the war they had supported? It was not because of any fact on the ground in Iraq, or any principles Bush had allegedly violated. They betrayed our troops and turned on their commander-in-chief for one reason and one reason alone: to gain political power at home.

At the very moment of their treachery a Democratic primary was in progress. An anti-war Democrat – a Sixties leftist named Howard Dean — was on the verge of winning their presidential nomination, burying other candidates like John Kerry and John Edwards in the polls. Until then, Kerry and Edwards were full-throated supporters of the war. Kerry made a speech on the floor of the Senate in support of the bill authorizing the use of force. He explained why the forcible removal of Saddam was necessary to defend the country and secure the peace.

But that was before the anti-war candidate Howard Dean had surged ahead in the polls. When that happened, and Kerry saw that he was going to lose the party nomination, he decided to switch sides. He turned his back on everything he had said in defense of the war, and the necessity of using force, and he turned his back on our troops in the field, and attacked their commander-in-chief. He did it for one reason, and one reason only. He did it because he saw it as the only way to win the Democratic nomination and have a chance of winning the presidency in 2004.

Kerry and the Democrats betrayed the war they had authorized; they betrayed the young Americans they sent into harms way; they betrayed the country they had sworn to serve. They did it to win the political power they were going to use to change the world. No conservative in his right mind would behave like this. No conservative would regard a political administration in Washington as a stepping stone on the way to a brave new world, and therefore something to justify opposing a war they had authorized and supported.

What were the issues the Democrats used to make their case against the president and the war in Iraq? It didn’t really matter, because the issues were never the issue. The Democrats opposed Bush and the war because both stood in the way of their quest for power.

The Democrats attacked Bush for acting in haste and acting unilaterally. Both charges were false. Worse, the Democrats claimed that the war was about weapons of mass destruction, ignoring the fact that Saddam had violated the Gulf War truce and had failed to comply with sixteen Security Council resolutions attempting to bring him into line, including the ultimatum of December 7. To make their case they claimed that Bush falsified the intelligence reports about weapons of mass destruction and lied in order to fool them into supporting the war. This was the biggest lie of the entire war. CIA chief George Tenet was a Clinton appointee. John Kerry sat on the intelligence committees with other Democrats like Feinstein and Rockefeller. The Democrats had access to all the intelligence information that Bush did. Bush could not have persuaded them to support the war by lying about the data, even if he had wanted to.

Why did they accuse him of lying? Because they could not admit the actual reason they had betrayed the war and the young men and women they sent to battle. They did it for partisan political gain. Unfortunately neither the White House nor any Republican had the political courage to hold them to account, and we are all paying the price for that.

For five years the Democrats conducted a scorched earth campaign against their country and its commander in the midst of a war. The harm they did is irreparable. Their sabotage of the war crippled our efforts to prosecute it – for example to follow Saddam’s weapons and generals into Syria, where they had fled; to take the war to Iran which supplied the IEDs which killed most of our troops; to close the border with Syria across which jihadists entered Iraq to fight our troops. The Democrats’ sabotage of the war created the power vacuum in the Middle East, which the terrorists and the Russians have now filled. And it most certainly inflicted casualties on our troops, though no one has had the political courage to say so.

The Democrats sabotaged the war in Iraq for the worst of reasons. They claimed it was for principle, but it was really – and only — to save their political skins.

Once the Democrats recaptured the presidency, it took no time at all for events to expose this destructive farce. Unlike the majority of his Democratic colleagues, Senator Barack Obama had always opposed the war in Iraq. He was against American interventions in sovereign countries, and he was against presidents who acted unilaterally, and in haste. Or so he said.

But when Obama became president and had the power to do so, he invaded Libya: unilaterally, and without authorization, and with no national security interest at stake. And he lied about the cause. There was no prospect of massacres as he claimed, and it was not a human rights intervention. If it were, Libya would not now be in chaos with al-Qaeda resurgent, and in a worse state than before.

Obama’s invasion of Libya was not merely unilateral. It was egomaniacal. Obama consulted no one outside his White House inner circle, not his own party, not the Congress, not the United Nations. Unlike Bush, he acted without constitutional authority and he acted alone. Yet there was not one Democratic leader who stood up for the principles they had all invoked to cripple America’s war against the jihadists in Iraq. Not one Democratic leader opposed the Democratic president, or criticized his aggression. They abandoned the principles of multilaterialism, consultation with Congress, and support from the U.N. because it would have been bad for their leader if they didn’t; it would have jeopardized their power.

The political consequences of the differences between conservatives and progressives is not only not small, it affects the way both sides conduct their political battles. Progressives focus on an impossible future, a utopia of promises, and this justifies for them their unscrupulous means. Issues for them are merely instruments for accumulating political power.  Conservatives look to the past as a guide to what is possible and humanly practical, and what is not. Issues for them are problems that need to be fixed, and they take seriously the policies they devise to address them. This puts conservatives at a huge political disadvantage. It causes them to argue policy as though they were debating a party with whom they shared goals and only differed on the means to get there. But that is far from the case.

Take the present debate about a government shutdown. A statement from Boehner’s office explains, “The entire government is shut down right now because Washington Democrats refuse to even talk about fairness for all Americans under ObamaCare.” This is a proposal for compromise and is designed to portray Republicans as reasonable. We’re all part of the same social contract, and we need to give on both sides to resolve the impasse. We’re all interested in fairness, when all is said and done. If individuals were to be given a year’s extension under Obamacare, as corporations already have been, that would be fair. But since when is Obamacare about fairness? That’s a Democratic façade and talking point, courtesy of the Republican Speaker. By way of contrast, this is how the Democrats make their argument: “Republicans are trying to shut down the government so they can prevent us from providing all Americans with affordable healthcare.” In other words, Democrats are standing up for fairness and ordinary Americans, against the selfish Republicans who want deny them affordable care and shut down their government. This is three lies in one sentence. But who do you think wins that vote?

If you want to fight the left you have to fight fire with fire. That means first and foremost you have to hold them to account for hurting the people they are pretending to help. Whose opportunities are going to be wrecked by Obamacare? Health care taxes will go up for those who pay taxes – the middle class — while their incomes will go down. Already Obamacare is cutting the workweek to 30 hours. Whose pocket books do you think that is hitting?

They claim conservatives are conducting a war against minorities; we need to throw the truth back in their faces. We need to tell the people that progressives are the principal oppressors and exploiters of minorities and the poor in this country. Progressives control the inner cities, which are teeming with the nation’s minorities and poor; and they run the broken public school systems that have become dumping grounds for those who cannot afford a private education.

The city of Milwaukee has been run by liberals and progressives without interruption for more than 100 years. What is the consequence of this progressive rule? Milwaukee’s median household income is forty percent below the rest of the country. The black unemployment rate is 27%, three times the national average for everyone. Milwaukee’s population is majority black and Hispanic, and 30% of it lives below the poverty line. A third of Milwaukee’s public school children drop out before they graduate; those who do are barely literate. That’s what progressive policies achieve. Don’t let them forget it.

Conservatives need to put the human disasters of progressive policies in front of people every chance they get. We need to confront progressives with the misery they have created in America’s bankrupt cities, Detroit and Chicago, Philadelphia and Cincinnati, St. Louis, and the nation’s capital, and every city they have controlled for 25, 50 and 100 years, without interruption.

Conservatives need to talk less to the voters’ heads and more to their hearts. Government debt is not just an accountant’s nightmare. Debt is a form of economic slavery. If you add up all the taxes Americans pay — federal, state, local, income, sales — Americans already work half the year for government rather than for themselves. Like Obamacare and the political use of the I.R.S., debt is a threat to individual freedom. 

Freedom is what our cause is about not just fiscal responsibility. Fiscal responsibility has no emotional appeal except to people who already understand what it means. Fiscal responsibility is a means to an end. The end is freedom, and that is what inspires commitment and sacrifice and the passion necessary to win. Because it speaks to the heart.

Conservatives need to speak up as champions of the little guys, the underdogs, whose lives are being steadily constricted – made less free — by the ongoing destruction of a system that once afforded more opportunity for more people than any other in the history of the world. Conservatives need to speak up for the young whose future horizons are being rapidly diminished as the trillion dollar Obama deficits pile higher and higher. Conservatives need to speak for all Americans whose security under Obama has been degraded to the most dangerous levels since the end of the Cold War.

This is the threat we face, and the sooner we grapple with it the greater our chances to survive it. The most important battle in the world today is not being waged in the Middle East but here at home in the United States. If we lose this battle, everything is lost. But if we will take the measure of the enemies of freedom and prepare ourselves to fight them, we have a better than even chance to win.


God bless,
JohnnyD