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The Obama administration’s little-recognized war on religion is continuing, and once again the battlefield is the area in which the president has the greatest influence: the military.

During the last year-and-a-half, his administration has banned Bibles at Walter Reed hospital (a policy later rescinded), issued orders to Army chaplains limiting what they could preach from the pulpit, and tried unsuccessfully to strip a freedom-of-conscience clause for chaplains from the law.

Now the administration is pushing new rules to discourage evangelism among the military:

A Pentagon ban on proselytizing has left some conservative activists fearful that Christian soldiers — and even military chaplains — could face court martial for sharing their faith.

The Defense Department said this week that proselytizing — trying to get someone to change faiths — is banned. Its statement does not define proselytizing or address the role of military chaplains. It also does not rule out court martial for those whose share their faith too aggressively.

Supposedly the administration’s concern is superiors who pressure their subordinates to convert.  But that is not reassuring, for at least three reasons:

First, there is no evidence that anything like that is going on. Certainly it is not going on in the great numbers that would require a national policy.

Second, the rules as written do not limit themselves to pressure situations, but to any instance in which someone might be “induced” to convert to one’s faith.

Third, the rules were prompted by a meeting between the Pentagon and leaders of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an Orwellianly named group opposed to religion in the military. Given the rules’ origin, it’s impossible to allow them the benefit of the doubt.

(Via Hot Air.)

Another key revelation from the Benghazi hearings:

The deputy of slain U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens has told congressional investigators that a team of Special Forces prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command Africa.

The account from Gregory Hicks is in stark contrast to assertions from the Obama administration, which insisted that nobody was ever told to stand down and that all available resources were utilized. . .

Hicks told investigators that SOCAFRICA commander Lt. Col. Gibson and his team were on their way to board a C-130 from Tripoli for Benghazi prior to an attack on a second U.S. compound “when [Col. Gibson] got a phone call from SOCAFRICA which said, ‘you can’t go now, you don’t have the authority to go now.’ And so they missed the flight … They were told not to board the flight, so they missed it.”

In short: The military wanted to help but was forbidden to do so, and the Obama administration lied about it after the fact.

(Previous post.)

The untold story of the Obama administration is his fight against the free exercise of religion. It’s not just the contraception/abortifacients mandate. His administration has also argued that the government can dictate to churches who their ministers must be (they lost that case), and we’re starting to see a pattern of attacks on military chaplains.

Last year the Obama administration issued orders to Army chaplains forbidding them from reading a pastoral letter from the Catholic church to their congregations, and his latest attack goes directly at the chaplains themselves:

Religious liberty advocates are concerned after President Obama said a conscience clause that would allow military chaplains to opt-out of performing gay marriages is “unnecessary and ill-advised.”

The section reads, “No member of the Armed Forces may — require a chaplain to perform any rite, ritual, or ceremony that is contrary to the conscience, moral principles, or religious beliefs of the chaplain; or discriminate or take any adverse personnel action against a chaplain.

Let’s be clear what is at stake here. Obama wants to be able to force chaplains to perform rituals that are against their religions. Thus, any chaplain must either violate the precepts of his faith or leave the service. Either way, the men and women of the armed forces will be denied principled chaplains.

Obama lost this fight — as he’s lost most of them — but I wouldn’t assume this issue is over. The more radical the agenda, the more tenacious the man is in pursuing it. This issue will probably come up again with next year’s military budget.

The US Army is clearly being run by idiots now:

A proposed new handbook for Americans serving in Afghanistan warns them not to speak ill about the Taliban, advocate women’s rights or criticize pedophilia, and the general in charge is not happy with it.

The draft of the newest Army handbook seems to suggest that ignorance of Afghan culture is to blame for deadly attacks by Afghan soldiers against the coalition forces, according to The Wall Street Journal, which got a peek at the 75-page document. But its message of walking on eggshells around the locals is not going over well with U.S. Marine Gen. John Allen, the top military commander in Afghanistan.

“Gen. Allen did not author, nor does he intend to provide, a foreword,” said Col. Tom Collins, a spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan. “He does not approve of its contents.” . . .

The draft handbook includes a summary stating that some U.S. soldiers consider Afghan forces to be “basically stupid” thieves, “gutless in combat,” “profoundly dishonest” and engaged in “treasonous collusion and alliances with enemy forces.”

The draft handbook offers a list of “taboo conversation topics” that soldiers should avoid, including “making derogatory comments about the Taliban,” “advocating women’s rights,” “any criticism of pedophilia,” “directing any criticism toward Afghans,” “mentioning homosexuality and homosexual conduct” or “anything related to Islam,” according to the Journal.

If this is the mentality of the people running the Army, it’s no wonder we’re having trouble.

The Obama administration’s story that the Benghazi consulate attack was a the result of an anti-Mohammed video has collapsed in ignominy. But what about the other 9/11/2012 attack, the mob assault on the Cairo embassy? That one really was a response to the video, right?

Wrong. The evidence shows that the Cairo attack too was instigated by Al Qaeda.

(Previous post.) (Via Instapundit.)

A major new revelation in the 9/11/2012 Benghazi debacle: There were intelligence reports that a Libyan militia was gathering weapons and preparing for action three hours before the consulate attack began.

So we didn’t have seven hours to respond before the fight ended, we had ten hours. In fact, with Italy just two hours away, the military could have responded before the fight even began!

Why didn’t the administration respond? Certainly they had good reason for concern. Earlier that day, consulate personnel reported with concern that they had observed their own Libyan security photographing the consulate’s security, and the administration was fully aware that the consulate was vulnerable:

The U.S. Mission in Benghazi convened an “emergency meeting” less than a month before the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, because Al Qaeda had training camps in Benghazi and the consulate could not defend against a “coordinated attack,” according to a classified cable reviewed by Fox News.

Summarizing an Aug. 15 emergency meeting convened by the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Aug. 16 cable marked “SECRET” said that the State Department’s senior security officer, also known as the RSO, did not believe the consulate could be protected.

(Previous post.)

We’ve learned a lot about the 9/11/2012 attack during the last week. When the attack began, CIA operators stationed in Benghazi wanted to go to the consulate’s aid. They were ordered, twice, to “stand down”, and leave the consulate’s personnel to face their attackers alone. They disobeyed, went to the consulate and rescued the surviving personnel that they could find. (Tragically, they were not able to located ambassador Chris Stevens.)

Then they fell back to the CIA annex, which thereafter fell under attack. During the firefight that ensued, they requested military support, but that was denied. The firefight did not end until seven hours after the consulate attack began, which means that there was more than enough time to send air support from Italy, just two hours away.

Indeed, one CIA operator was painting targets with a laser designator, suggesting that there were air assets present that were not given permission to fire, but this has not been confirmed. It’s also been suggested that they might have designated targets as a bluff, to buy time by inducing the attackers to move. If so, it might have worked, except that the military did nothing with the time the ruse bought.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, asked why the military sent no assistance, gave this astonishing answer:

[The] basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on; without having some real-time information about what’s taking place. And as a result of not having that kind of information, the commander who was on the ground in that area, Gen. Ham, Gen. Dempsey and I felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation.

This is utter bullshit. We deploy military force without real-time intelligence all the time. It’s not called the fog of war for nothing! It’s preferable to have real-time intelligence, to be sure, but that’s a luxury one rarely has. We cannot shackle our military that way, and we never do — at least, we never used to.

If we take this idiotic policy seriously — and I truly hope that Panetta is simply lying — it says that we will never reinforce a position that comes under surprise attack. As long as the enemy can finish its attack before we can obtain real-time intelligence, they have nothing to fear from the US military!

Moreover, even if we really had such a stupid policy, Panetta’s defense still isn’t true. Military sources have reported that our drones over Benghazi were unarmed (uh, why?), but that confirms that there were drones overhead, so we did have some real-time intelligence.

Panetta’s effort at a post hoc justification aside, inside reports show an administration deeply ambivalent about responding to the attack:

CBS News has learned that during the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Obama Administration did not convene its top interagency counterterrorism resource: the Counterterrorism Security Group, (CSG).

“The CSG is the one group that’s supposed to know what resources every agency has. They know of multiple options and have the ability to coordinate counterterrorism assets across all the agencies,” a high-ranking government official told CBS News. “They were not allowed to do their job. They were not called upon.” . . .

Another senior counter terrorism official says a hostage rescue team was alternately asked to get ready and then stand down throughout the night, as officials seemed unable to make up their minds.

A third potential responder from a counter-terror force stationed in Europe says components of AFICOM — the military’s Africa Command based in Stuttgart, Germany — were working on course of action during the assault. But no plan was put to use.

President Obama, who has frequently boasted about how he, himself, all alone, without anyone else, individually took the brave, lonely responsibility of ordering the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. But now he curiously absents himself from the chain of command, saying ”If we find out that there was a big breakdown and somebody didn’t do their job, then they’ll be held responsible.” He has ordered an investigation. If it reveals who is in charge of our military, I suppose that will be useful.

Someone left our people in Benghazi to die, but whoever that person was, the blame belongs to the man at the top.

(Previous post.)

Michael Ramirez explains:

But hey, he killed Obama, right? Oh, about that. . .

Joe Biden says the Army doesn’t need tanks any more. Wow.

The Obama administration was warned of the dangers in Libya:

Less than two months before the fatal attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, the State Department concluded that the risk of violence to diplomats and other Americans in Libya was high and that the weak U.S.-backed government in Tripoli could do little about it.

“The risk of U.S. Mission personnel, private U.S. citizens and businesspersons encountering an isolating event as a result of militia or political violence is HIGH,” a State Department security assessment from July 22 concludes.

But, according to security officer Eric Nordstrom, the administration was determined to give the impression that Libya was safe.

(Previous post.)

The US government’s original story about what happened in Benghazi was really quite absurd. You have to see it to believe it. (Er, to believe that they would really put out such an absurd story, that is.)

(Previous post.)

Obama now admits that the Benghazi attack “wasn’t just a mob action”.

(Previous post.)

I think the drone campaign against Al Qaeda is necessary and effective, and I’m not even particularly squeamish about killing Americans who happen to be present at a legitimate military target. But I’m very uncomfortable about deliberately targeting Americans, particularly children:

He was an American boy, born in America. Though he’d lived in Yemen since he was about seven, he was still an American citizen, which should have made it harder for the United States to kill him.

It didn’t.

It should at the very least have made it necessary for the United States to say why it killed him.

It didn’t.

(Previous post.) (Via Instapundit, who adds some well-deserved mockery for the hypocritical left.)

Remember the left’s sanctimonious prattle during the Bush administration against its prosecution of the war on terror? Every bit of it was just naked political opportunism. Now that Democrats are in charge, they are doing everything either the same, or with fewer safeguards. For instance:

In a city full of them, Harold Koh is Washington’s biggest hypocrite. As the dean of Yale Law School, Koh was the most prominent critic of the Bush administration’s counterterrorism policies, deriding them as “executive muscle-flexing.” The former President, Koh said, was the “torturer-in-chief.” In a 2002 interview with The New York Times, he referred to the war on terror as “legally undeclared” and questioned the administration’s right to kill terrorists on the battlefield. “What factual showing will demonstrate that they had warlike intentions against us and who sees that evidence before any action is taken?” he asked.

In 2009, after the election of Barack Obama, Koh was awarded the job of State Department legal adviser. Since that time, he has defended a war waged in Libya without explicit congressional authorization, drone strikes targeting suspected terrorists and the extrajudicial assassination of an American citizen who had become a leading Al Qaeda ideologist.

During the Bush administration, Koh made the preposterous demand of a “factual showing” “before any action is taken.” Now:

As The New York Times described the administration’s rationale for drone strikes, “people in an area of known terrorist activity, or found with a top Qaeda operative, are probably up to no good.”

Also, the Obama administration, for political reasons, doesn’t want to send any new detainees to the professional, humanely-run prison at Guantanamo Bay. So instead they’re sending them to a secret prison in Somalia. Hypocrites.

Someday (hopefully soon) Republicans will be running the war or terror again. When that happens, these hypocrites will suddenly find their voice again. Pay no attention to them.

Remember when it was very, very bad to reveal the identity of a covert agent?

Among the bombshells Judicial Watch found in the documents, and there are several, is the fact that Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael Vickers disclosed the true identity of SEAL Team 6′s commander to those Hollywood producers.

I’m sure that everyone who was exercised about the disclosure of Valerie Plame’s identity will be equally upset about this. Ha ha! Just kidding.

Okay, seriously, this is why I found it so hard to take the sanctimonious indignation from the left and the legacy press over the Plame-Armitage affair. As we’ve seen so many times, they don’t care one bit about leaking sensitive information, including the identities of covert agents. They just found a weapon — a hugely hypocritical weapon — to wield against the Bush administration.

When George W Bush launched his re-election campaign, his first commercial naturally highlighted his leadership in the aftermath of 9/11. The Democrats immediately attacked the commercial for supposedly politicizing 9/11, using an astroturf group of 9/11 victim’s families they had waiting for just that purpose. It was absurd. The response to 9/11 was President Bush’s finest hour and of course he was going to highlight it.

The operation that killed Bin Laden was President Obama’s finest hour (in the sense of being his only good hour). He too is entitled to highlight it in his re-election effort. And if his lack of accomplishment in any other area leads him to over-emphasize it, that’s fine too.

But no, Barack Obama can’t merely trumpet his achievement. No, this guy has to turn it into an attack ad against Mitt Romney.

Would George W Bush have run an attack ad against John Kerry, alleging that he wouldn’t have been a strong leader following 9/11? We needn’t speculate — history shows he didn’t, despite the likelihood that such an ad would have struck home. In fact, Bush didn’t even exploit Bin Laden’s endorsement of John Kerry.

The first thing that’s hard to take about the Bin Laden attack ad (here, if you want to see it) is the premise that it was even a hard decision. Of course you would go and get the guy. The striking thing is how this administration made an easy decision hard. (The hardest in “500 years”!)

The second thing that’s hard to take is Obama’s choice of messenger. In the entire world there is one man who really did fail to give the order to take out Bin Laden when he had the chance. That one guy, Bill Clinton, is the guy Obama selected to preach about decisive leadership in dealing with Bin Laden. Bizarre.

The third thing that’s hard to take about this is the fact that raid that took out Bin Laden exploited intelligence from terrorist detainees, the exact sort of intelligence that Obama has ensured we will not be able to gather any more. The next president (or — god forbid — Obama in a second term) is less likely to have such an opportunity, as a result of Obama’s policies.

Finally there’s the actual substance of the attack, and this I want to take a look at. The attack quoted two statements by Romney. The first was taken completely out of context:

Mitt Romney criticized Barack Obama for vowing to strike al-Qaeda targets inside Pakistan if necessary.

This statement was made in 2007 when presidential candidate Barack Obama was lurching around making jaw-droppingly bizarre foreign policy pronouncements. Obama was talking about launching a war against al Qaeda in Pakistan, not about a raid about Osama Bin Laden. This was at a time when the Pakistani regime was friendly but fragile, and there was concern that the regime could destabilize and leave us with something much worse. Obama was trying to look tough, but actually came off as simply unstable. All the other presidential candidates attacked him, not just Romney. For example, Hillary Clinton said:

[It was] a very big mistake to telegraph that and to destabilize the Musharraf regime, which is fighting for its life against the Islamist extremists who are in bed with al Qaeda and the Taliban.

The second quoted statement highlights an important policy difference between the Democrats and Republicans:

It’s not worth moving heaven and earth spending billions of dollars just trying to catch one person.

This is exactly right. The war on terror is not about vengeance (although Democrats have often been confused on this point). It’s not even about dealing with al Qaeda, per se. It’s about making America safe. Al Qaeda is one of many threats, and the Obama administration is making a dangerous mistake by limiting its efforts to Al Qaeda alone.

Our efforts need to be allocated rationally, according to the seriousness of the threat. I believe that’s what Romney was saying. Billions spent on one man would be billions not spent on more serious threats.

The raid against Bin Laden was worthwhile because it didn’t involve moving heaven and earth. We had the intelligence (no thanks to Obama) so we sent in the SEALs. That’s an entirely different proposition.

Nothing that Romney has said suggests that he would have any difficulty in making the easy decision to take out Bin Laden. On the contrary, the very remarks that the ad quotes make it clear that Romney has a much better grasp of what should and should not be done than Obama.

UPDATE: I missed this bit:

Suppose [the SEALs] had been captured or killed. The downside would have been horrible for him.

Joe Biden says that President Obama’s decision to take out Osama Bin Laden was the most audacious military operation in 500 years:

You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan. Never knowing for certain. We never had more than a 48 percent probability that he was there.

A detachment of ten US Marines setting out to defeat the city of Derne, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, Hitler invading France through the impassible Ardennes Forest, the British retaking the Falkland Islands, America bringing down the Taliban with just special forces and air power — all that is nothing compared to Obama sending Seal Team Six to take down a house, says Joe Biden.

But the sad thing about this isn’t the hyperbole, but the Democratic posturing that the operation was audacious at all. Does anyone think that President Bush would have hesitated for a moment? He would have authorized the mission in a heartbeat. So would have Al Gore (“The guy is a terrorist. Go grab his ass.”).

Obama made the right decision, and gets the credit for it. But making it out as though this easy decision were hard (much less the hardest decision since around the Battle of Ravenna) shows him not as audacious, but the opposite.

Mohammed Merah, the terrorist who murdered seven people at a Jewish center in Toulouse, France, was captured in Afghanistan in 2010. Unfortunately, we weren’t sending anyone to Guantanamo any more, so instead we handed him over to France, who promptly released him:

Merah was grabbed by Afghan security forces in Kandahar and turned over to the US Army. The United States “put him on the first plane to France,’’ Molins said.

Pentagon spokesman Lt Col. Todd Breasseale said: “The Kandahari police picked him up a matter of years ago. They detained him. The mechanics by which he was returned to France, we are continuing to investigate.”

Someone, though, was smart enough to report the 23-year-old Algerian-born French citizen to the Department of Homeland Security, which added his name to the “no fly’’ list.

Upon his return to France, he was interviewed by intelligence officials, who released him.

Setting terrorists free rather than detaining them has real-world consequences. Imagine that.

(Via Patterico.)