Internet Scofflaw

I saw this coming. Last August, President Obama said:

We cannot have a situation in which chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people . . . We have been very clear to the Assad regime but also to other players on the ground that a red line for us is, we start seeing a whole bunch of weapons moving around or being utilized.

This was clearly taken as a threat of force. (NYT headline: “Obama Threatens Force Against Syria”).

Unfortunately, it was just as obvious that he didn’t mean it.  Alas, it was obvious not just to me, but also to Assad. So when Assad started moving his chemical weapons around, the administration claimed it wasn’t clear that he was doing it.  When we learned he was using them, they claimed it wasn’t clear that he was using them. And, when the evidence finally became undeniable, they were forced into a humiliating backpeddle.

The bottom line is that Obama is just really bad at this. This is a guy who actually says things like “don’t call my bluff.” In this case, the president’s aides had carefully developed a position that was supposed to scare Assad but not mean anything. But then Obama went and ad-libbed a new policy at the podium:

Moving or using large quantities of chemical weapons would cross a “red line” and “change my calculus,” the president declared in response to a question at a news conference, to the surprise of some of the advisers who had attended the weekend meetings and wondered where the “red line” came from.

This is a president who manages, on the fly, to invent a policy even worse than his intended policy of meaningless talk.

But his weakness goes so much further than that. When trying to develop a response to Assad disregarding Obama’s threats, the White House felt its hands were tied:

Mr. Obama’s advisers also raised legal issues. “How can we attack another country unless it’s in self-defense and with no Security Council resolution?” another official said, referring to United Nations authorization. “If he drops sarin on his own people, what’s that got to do with us?”

Well, that’s the problem with giving foreign dictators a veto over US policy, isn’t it? But what about “what’s that got to do with us”? A year ago Obama thought it had something to do with us, when he vowed to prevent foreign atrocities in a speech at the Holocaust Memorial Museum:

And finally, “never again” is a challenge to nations.  It’s a bitter truth — too often, the world has failed to prevent the killing of innocents on a massive scale.  And we are haunted by the atrocities that we did not stop and the lives we did not save.

These too are shown to be empty words. In April 2012 he was running for election and had to pretend to be strong, when in fact he is anything but. (See also, Benghazi.)

POSTSCRIPT: Remember this, from Joe Biden?

We’re going to face a major international challenge, ’cause they’re going to want to test him, just like they did John Kennedy, they’re going to want to test him, and they’re going to find out this guy’s got steel in his spine.

Tested he was, but steel in his spine? Not so much.

The Benghazi cover-up is finally unraveling. A well-reported piece in the Weekly Standard exposes the process by which the intelligence estimate on Benghazi was laundered to remove all mention of Islamic militants. The claims that the drivel put out by the administration were the intelligence community’s best estimate are an outright lie.

The piece really needs to be read in its entirely, but a graphic illustrating the laundering process is extracted here. And here is the reason why:

The talking points were first distributed to officials in the interagency vetting process at 6:52 p.m. on Friday. Less than an hour later, at 7:39 p.m., an individual identified in the House report only as a “senior State Department official” responded to raise “serious concerns” about the draft. That official, whom The Weekly Standard has confirmed was State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland, worried that members of Congress would use the talking points to criticize the State Department for “not paying attention to Agency warnings.”

There, in black and white: the estimates were laundered for political reasons.

In other developments: The Benghazi whistleblowers have been identified and will testify before the house committee. Second:

On the night of the Benghazi terror attack, special operations put out multiple calls for all available military and other assets to be moved into position to help — but the State Department and White House never gave the military permission to cross into Libya, sources told Fox News.

We don’t know who the sources are, I hope they are among the whistleblowers so we can get them on record. But we already know that the CIA operators who defended the consulate personnel were ordered twice to leave them to die, so this is entirely plausible.

Third, the Benghazi attack was an Al Qaeda attack. While we ponder that entirely unsurprising development, think of what transpired the morning after the Benghazi attack: Our feckless diplomats responded to a terrorist attack (one we now know, but always suspected, was an Al Qaeda attack) by apologizing. Mitt Romney said (paraphrasing) maybe we shouldn’t be apologizing to terrorists while we are still burying our dead, and virtually the entire media attacked Romney for it!

All of this shows massive malfeasance on the part of the administration, and the media that covers for them, but it misses the true scandal. The administration put a filmmaker in jail over the Benghazi attack, and he is still there. I can scarcely imagine a greater dereliction of presidential duty than jailing a man for exercising his free speech because it offended foreign Islamists. (Glenn Reynolds isn’t letting this go either.)

ASIDE: Please, no nonsense about how Nakoula Nakoula is in jail for parole violations. Yes, those were the charges they used to jail him, but they never would have cared about a minor parole violation if not for him making the video that they claimed was responsible for the Benghazi attack. In fact, they never would have known his identity if not for a federal investigation that pierced his pseudonym. We need to know who ordered that investigation and why (although we can guess). Efforts to get to the bottom of Benghazi won’t have even begun until we know that, as far as I’m concerned.

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It’s disappointing, but not surprising, to see the effort to create free cities in Honduras fail. I wanted it to succeed, but it wasn’t at all clear that Honduras was the right place.

For a president who wants to convince Jewish voters that he is not hostile to Israel, this is a peculiar move:

An outspoken critic of Israel who once said the Jewish state should be added to the list of 9/11 terror suspects was recently selected by the Obama administration to participate in an international forum on human rights — sparking outcry from watchdog groups.

The participant, Muslim Public Affairs Council founder Salam al-Marayati, was tapped to be part of the U.S. delegation to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe forum in Poland.

Al-Marayati’s first reaction on 9/11 was that Israel was responsible, and he has insinuated that Israel runs US foreign policy. He defends terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah. His organization (the Muslim Public Affairs Council) engages in the crudest blood libels, such as accusing Israel of harvesting organs from Palestinians. More here.

But the State Department assures us that he’s no anti-Semite. That’s a relief.

POSTSCRIPT: No wonder that approximately zero percent of Israelis believe that Obama is friendly to Israel.

The State Department now says they never believed that that Benghazi consulate attack was a protest that spun out of control. They have no explanation for why they kept saying otherwise:

When asked to explain the discrepancy, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said she was too “dumb” to explain it. Yes, she really did.

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The Benghazi scandal keeps getting worse. According to congressional testimony, when State Department security officer Eric Nordstrom requested more security for the Benghazi consulate on two separate occasions, the State Department didn’t even respond.

Instead, the consulate was left to depend on a local militia for protection, a militia that had not been paid in months:

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For days after the 9/11/2012 attack, the Obama administration peddled this asinine story about how the attack on the Benghazi consulate was a protest that spun out of control. We knew that wasn’t true on the very first day, and so did the administration, but it it took them over a week to admit it.

But it’s far worse than that. Not only was the attack not a protest that spun out of control, there was no protest. The incident began with an explosion and gunfire.

I saw it suggested, somewhere in the alternative media, that this was the case, but it sounded implausible. If the administration was claiming that the attack was a protest that spun out of control, surely there must at least have been a protest! Surely no one could be so dishonest as to make up such a story without at least having some elementary facts to build on. As it turns out, yes, these people are that dishonest.

POSTSCRIPT: There’s an interesting coda to this development. Why did the administration finally tell the truth? ABC News explains in the video linked above:

A big part of this, Diane, is because you have this major congressional hearing tomorrow, and they wanted to get this out now.

(Previous post.) (Via Instapundit.)

The Obama administration didn’t actually believe the spontaneous-riot story they were using publicly:

In a briefing to Capitol Hill staffers delivered the day after the deadly Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the killings appeared to be the result of a terrorist attack. . .

That a State Department official of Kennedy’s rank . . . reached so swiftly the conclusion that the attacks were premeditated and coordinated stands in stark contrast to the opposing narrative pressed at that time, and for several days afterward. . .

Three days after Kennedy’s conference call, for example, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice appeared on five Sunday morning talk shows to insist that the attacks were neither coordinated nor premeditated, but were rather the result of a spontaneous mob action. . . Rice has since told lawmakers that her comments reflected “the intelligence community’s best, current assessment as of the date of my television appearances. . .”

I actually find this reassuring. I hate dishonesty, but I think I prefer it to the kind of incompetence it would have taken actually to believe their story.

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It keeps getting worse: The State Department has reportedly been cutting security in Benghazi for the last six months, even as the mission requested increased security.

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Hugo Chavez endorses Barack Obama:

“If I were American, I’d vote for Obama,” Mr Chavez said in a televised interview that aired Sunday.

Actually, if Chavez were an American, we would have kept him in prison after he attempted to overthrow the government by force.

(Via Instapundit.)

Three weeks after the 9/11/2012 attack, the State Department still hasn’t secured the Benghazi consulate. A Washington Post reporter was able to stroll through and collect sensitive documents. We’re beyond simple incompetence now.

(Via Byron York.) (Previous post.)

If the Benghazi consulate attack wasn’t a scandal before, it is now:

House investigators warned Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to expect a hearing into their finding that that American staff at the U.S. Embassy in Libya had their request for additional security denied by Washington officials. . .

“In addition, multiple U.S. federal government officials have confirmed to the Committee that, prior to the September 11 attack, the U.S. mission in Libya made repeated requests for increased security in Benghazi,” Issa and Chaffetz added (my emphasis). “The mission in Libya, however, was denied these resources by officials in Washington.”

The committee noted 13 “security threats” in Benghazi, including an attempt to assassinate the British ambassador to Libya.

UPDATE: In case there was any doubt as to the veracity of this, Darrell Issa (R-CA) has released the cables.

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How badly did the administration screw up the security at the Benghazi consulate? Pretty much as badly as possible:

An intelligence source on the ground in Libya told Fox News on Friday that no threat assessment was conducted before U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and his team began “taking up residence” at the Benghazi compound — describing the security lapses as a “total failure.”

The source told Fox News that there was no real security equipment installed in the villas on the compound except for a few video cameras.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst, the intelligence source said the security lapses were a 10 — a “total failure” because Benghazi was known to be a major area for extremist activity.

The revelation that no threat assessment was conducted directly contradicts the State Department’s claim (cue to 5:04 here):

We did evaluate the threat stream. And we determined that the security at Benghazi was appropriate for what we knew.

The article goes on to explain the security measures that should have been in place. A waiver from Washington was required to proceed without the minimum security, so who issued that waiver, and why?

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Within 24 hours of the 9/11/2012 consulate attack, US intelligence knew that Al Qaeda was likely responsible. (This should not surprise us, since that information leaked almost immediately.) But for some reason (despite the concerns of wiser officials), the Obama administration for days peddled nonsense about how the attack was a spontaneous response to a YouTube video.

The Washington Post has collected a chronology of the administration’s nonsense, and Fox News assembled it into a devastating special report:

UPDATE: Eli Lake has a partial explanation of how this might have come to pass. It seems that the CIA issued a “talking points” document that suggested that the attack was spontaneous, and the administration was using that. Still unanswered: how it happened that the CIA put out a document that was at odds with everything they knew, and why the White House and State Department were so unskeptical about a story that contradicted everything that was being reported.

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The kerfuffle over Ambassador Chris Stevens’s diary is emblematic of the Obama administration’s meltdown over the Benghazi consulate attack. CNN recovered the diary from the compound where he died (astonishingly, it seems that no US personnel searched the premises), and they used it, reporting that Stevens was concerned about growing Al Qaeda activity in Libya and was concerned that he might be on a hit list.

The diary made a mockery of the State Department’s contention that there was no advance information to suggest that maybe the consulate should have some security. So, the Obama administration being the Obama administration, they counter-attacked, saying that CNN should not have used the diary. Now, I have no love lost for CNN, but they were just doing their jobs. Given a scoop of this importance, no self-respecting reporter would sit on it.

Some reporters refused to be distracted, and asked questions about the journal. Byron York asked:

Is fact that US govt didn’t know about Amb. Stevens’ diary indication US investigators didn’t get on case as quickly as White House claimed?

Indeed it was such an indication. In fact, we now know that (at least as of Saturday), the FBI investigators still have not reached Benghazi.

But the reporter who really got under their skin was BuzzFeed’s Michael Hastings, who asked Assistant Secretary of State Philippe Reines (Hillary Clinton’s spokesman):

Why didn’t the State Department search the consulate and find AMB Steven’s diary first? What other potential valuable intelligence was left behind that could have been picked up by apparently anyone searching the grounds? Was any classified or top secret material also left? Do you still feel that there was adequate security at the compound, considering it was not only overrun but sensitive personal effects and possibly other intelligence remained out for anyone passing through to pick up? Your statement on CNN sounded pretty defensive–do you think it’s the media’s responsibility to help secure State Department assets overseas after they’ve been attacked?

These are all very good questions, and Reines didn’t like being asked them. After a contentious exchange (in which Hastings was the first to use a mild profanity), Reines exploded:

I now understand why the official investigation by the Department of the Defense as reported by The Army Times The Washington Post concluded beyond a doubt that you’re an unmitigated [expletive].

How’s that for a non-[expletive] response?

Now that we’ve gotten that out of our systems, have a good day.

And by good day, I mean [Expletive] Off

Why would Reines lose his cool to the extent of spewing profanity? Because Hastings’s questions were unanswerable: Why didn’t they search for intelligence? Do they still maintain they had no reason for security? Is it the media’s job to collect this stuff for them? And why, as Hastings asked in exasperation during their exchange, don’t they give some answers that “aren’t [expletive] for a change?”

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Security at the Benghazi consulate was below minimum standards, which was permitted only because of a waiver from Washington:

The U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, was operating under a lower security standard than a typical consulate when it was attacked this month, according to State Department officials.

The mission was a rented villa and considered a temporary facility by the agency, which allowed a waiver that permitted fewer guards and security measures than a standard embassy or consulate, according to the officials. . .

Allowing a waiver would have been a decision made with input from Washington, Libyan officials and the ambassador, according to diplomatic security experts.

(Via Hot Air.) (Previous post.)

Prior to the 9/11/2012 embassy attack, US intelligence warned of attacks against embassies, but no action was taken:

According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and “lockdown”, under which movement is severely restricted.

After this report came out, the administration vigorously denied it, sort of. Actually, they issued very carefully worded non-denial denials. The National Intelligence Director’s office said:

This is absolutely wrong. We are not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent.

The White House said:

The story is absolutely wrong. We were not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the US mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent. That report is false.

Note that both these statements use almost exactly the same words: there was no actionable intelligence that an attack in Benghazi was planned or imminent.

What neither said is that there was no intelligence that an attack against US embassies in general was likely, which (as you can see quoted above) is what the report actually said. Given that the administration’s phrasing was so precise, and given that they surely would have liked to make a broader claim, we have to take this as more of a confirmation than a denial.

And, in fact, later developments confirm that impression. Days later, Reuters reported:

A U.S. intelligence cable warned the American Embassy in Cairo of possible violence in response to Arabic-language broadcasts of clips from an anti-Muslim film, U.S. government sources said on Monday.

The cable, dispatched from Washington on September 10, the day before protests erupted, advised the embassy the broadcasts could provoke violence. It did not direct specific measures to upgrade security, said the sources. . .

Copies of the cable were not sent to other U.S. outposts in the region, including the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, where violence took the life of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

We’ve also learned that there were several attacks against western targets in Benghazi leading up to 9/11/2012, and just three days before, a local security official says he warned US officials of deteriorating security in Benghazi. Despite all that, the consulate was left nearly undefended.

UPDATE: I’m not the only one to notice the non-denial nature of the denial; John Hinderaker observed it too. So why isn’t anyone in the press asking for clarification of this key point?

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