The advocacy group Fwd.Us, created by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and others, has shocked some liberals with its tactics in a campaign to support immigration reform, Somini Sengupta and Eric Lipton report in The New York Times. … Read More
US diplomat ‘stunned and embarrassed’ by hushed reaction to Benghazi attack
During a six-hour hearing with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Gregory Hicks told lawmakers he spoke with J. Christopher Stevens at the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Hicks said Stevens sounded frantic and communicated a quick “Greg, we’re under attack” before the call was lost.Hicks, who was in Tripoli at the time, added that he had requested air support from a US Air Force base in Aviano, Italy and later for ground troops to fend off Libyan insurgents but was denied by the State Department in both instances. Fearing their consulate would be the next to be overrun, Hicks and his aides began destroying communications equipment with an ax, according to The New York Times. “None of us should ever experience what we went through in Tripoli and Benghazi,” he said. The diplomat claimed that his later pleas for answers about what happened and what could be improved were swept under the rug and out of the news cycle, perhaps for fear of a political backlash in the heat of the presidential election. One example he cited was that several of the people who were directly involved in the attack were never interviewed about what happened.“I’ve been effectively demoted from deputy chief of mission to desk officer,” Hicks said.“They stopped short of interviewing people who I personally know were involved in key decisions,” said Eric Nordstrom, who works in the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security.The Benghazi attack has become a point of bitter contention between the Obama administration and Congressional Republicans, who assert that the nation’s Democratic leadership was slow to respond to the attack and has since attempted to cover up what truly happened on the eleventh anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Hicks testified that he got a sense that he “needed to stop the line of questioning” after he asked superiors why then-UN ambassador Susan Rice initially blamed the anger that led to the attack on a YouTube video, not terrorists. “I was stunned,” he said of her explanation. “My jaw dropped and I was embarrassed.” After his relations with bosses turned frosty, Hicks said, he was told not to speak with a congressman investigating the attack. Upon defying that order Hicks claimed to receive an angry phone call from then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Mills.Republicans have claimed that the issues they’ll uncover during the hearings this week will be enough to undercut Obama’s ability to lead the US. “This is a subject that has, from its beginning, been subject to attempts to politicize it by Republicans,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Wednesday. If White House officials are anxious for the story to disappear they should prepare to be disappointed. A cursory glance at a recent Google trends report, highlighted by Foreign Policy Magazine, reveals that based on their Internet searches, Americans care more about the Benghazi attack now than when it actually happened. On the week September 9-15, 2012 “Benghazi” as a search query scored 24 out of 100 peak interest points. The term then peaked at 100 points during the week preceding the presidential election, then dipped before rising again to 64 points this week. … Read More
Sen. Leahy pushes for LGBT equality in comprehensive immigration bill
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) announced Tuesday that he planned to file an amendments to the Senate’s comprehensive immigration bill that would expand the rights of LGBT individuals. “For immigration reform to be truly comprehensive, it must include protections for all families,” he…
Benghazi Whistleblower: “You should have seen what (Clinton) tried to do to us that night!”
Categories: Editor’s Choice, Political GamesmanshipTags: ambassador, benghazi, Clinton, cover-up, ObamaThompson considers himself a whistle-blower whose account was suppressed by the official investigative panel that Clinton convened to review the episode. Thompson’s lawyer has further alleged that his client has been subjected to threats and intimidation.(Read more…) … Read More
Washington kept Special Forces out of Benghazi in ‘purely political’ move – diplomat
During an interview with Republican members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Gregory Hicks said that if the US had deployed military aircraft to fly over Benghazi it may have prevented the second attack that killed two CIA security officers. Excerpts of Hicks’ interview with lawmakers were released to the press in preparation for his testimony in front of the committee Wednesday. “I think it was a terrorist attack from the get-go,” Hicks is quoted as saying. “I think everybody in the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning.” Republicans, perhaps most notably Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have maintained their accusation that the Obama administration has covered up the full story of the September 11, 2012 attack on the nation’s consulate. Hicks’ comments are expected to reignite a political debate that began just before the US presidential election in 2012 and could factor into any of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential aspirations. Despite being heavily favored to be the Democratic candidate in the next election, Clinton was secretary of state at the time of the Benghazi attack, eventually resigning because of it. Hicks complained that the State Department somehow prevented Special Forces from making the trip to Benghazi even after US intelligence indicated Stevens had been killed. “They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it,” he told the GOP interviewers. “I guess they just didn’t have the right authority from the right level.”He reiterated the claim that had US jet fighters assembled they could have thwarted a mortar attack from Libyan insurgents. Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and other military leaders have repeatedly stressed that the events in Benghazi happened too quickly for the military to effectively send help.“I believe the Libyans would have split. They would have been scared to death that we would have gotten a laser on them and killed them,” Hicks is quoted as saying. The GOP committee has been criticized by Democrats for seemingly examining the attack selectively, with more regard for political gain and sensationalism than for the truth. “It certainly seems so, so far,” State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell told the Associated Press when asked. “I mean, this is not sort of a collaborative process where the committee is working directly with us and trying to establish facts that would help as we look to keep our people safe overseas in a very complex environment.” Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who will lead the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday, accused State Department leadership of trying to bury the story. “Early on in this fight these people made a critical bad decision in that they did not activate these people simply because they were afraid it would be labeled as terrorism,” he said. “It was pure politics.” In the interview snippet Hicks told investigators that on the night of the attack he spoke with Col. Keith Phillips, the consular defense attaché, who told him that the nearest fighter jets were located at Aviano Air Base in Italy. It would take two to three hours to get the planes into the air because they were low on fuel, Phillips responded, according to Hicks, and there was no aircraft or tanker to refuel them. Hicks is also expected to claim Wednesday that he was the last American to speak to Stevens before the ambassador was transported to a Libyan hospital and died after a cardiac arrest.“Greg, we’re under attack,” he claimed Stevens said. “My response is, ‘Okay,’ and I’m about to say something else and the line clicks.” … Read More
Why conservatives should support immigration equality
A majority of Americans now support marriage equality, and a (slowly) growing number of Republicans have recently come around to the idea, too. Despite this, the opposition to the inclusion of gay binational couples and their families in immigration reform remains strong. Senator Jeff Flake (R-AZ), of “Gang of Eight” fame, told the New York Times on Wednesday that “there’s a reason this language wasn’t included in the Gang of Eight’s bill: It’s a deal-breaker for most Republicans… Finding consensus on immigration legislation is tough enough without opening the bill up to social issues [like gay marriage].”On Thursday in the Daily Beast, writer Jonathan Rauch called Flake’s “deal-breaker” misguided — and a GOP “suicide mission” (emphasis mine):Continue Reading… … Read More
