Mitt Romney Talks AP, IRS, Benghazi On “Tonight Show” With Leno, Says “I’m Not A Fan Of The President”

Former Gov. Mitt Romney, the Republican party’s presidential nominee in 2012, received large applause as he was introduced on Friday’s broadcast of The Tonight Show by host Jay Leno in his first appearance on the late night show since he lost to President Barack Obama in November.

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Leno asked Romney about the Obama administration’s scandal-plagued week and gave him ample time to address the AP, IRS and Benghazi investigations. After making it clear he was done in politics, Romney was given nearly ten minutes to slam Obama’s handling of Benghazi and his administration’s involvement in other scandals.

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While discussing the IRS scandal, Romney said it is time that a special counsel be appointed to investigate. “My own view is, that a a special counsel should be appointed. Because only a special counsel can investigate the administration,” he said.

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After giving his take on how Obama handled the scandals, Romney also opined on how Benghazi may impact Hillary Clinton’s chances in 2016. “I think if Hillary Clinton is the nominee of the Democratic party, there will be a careful inspection of her record as Secretary of State,” he said.

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Romney often received applause from the crowd and took a few shots at President Obama, noting he is “not a fan.”

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Romney on the AP wiretap probe:

LENO: This AP story, with the reporters, your take on that?

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ROMNEY: Well, I think it’s early to conclude exactly what’s happened there. I think a lot of people are concerned that the First Amendment is being challenged in some way when the Justice Department subpoenas phone records of some 20 different reporters over some period of time. And they’re looking for leaks of classified information. And clearly that’s something which is alarming to some folks. But there’s going to be more inquiring into that. W e’ll see what happens.

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LENO: Well, the thing that interests me about this, isn’t that under the PATRIOT ACT? Isn’t that basically covered under the PATRIOT ACT?

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ROMNEY: Well, the specifics here, where the administration is seeking information from — from the media is something in a circumstance like this which some people find very troubling. This was not done during the last administration. And — we’ll see what the circumstances were. Was there life at risk? What kind of measures were being safeguarded? But this is something where we’re at the very early stages, and clearly it raises questions. But those questions have yet to be answered.

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LENO: Do you find it troubling? Or does it seem –

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ROMNEY: Well I find — any time you have an administration subpoenaing a  large number of records from a news media organization, that’s something which is of concern and justifies closer inspection.

Romney on the IRS scandal:

LENO: Now the IRS scandal, which we had a little bit of fun with a few minutes ago. What is your take on that? They allegedly targeted — well, not allegedly, I guess they targeted conservative groups, Tea Party groups. Explain.
ROMNEY: Well, there are really two concerns with regards to the IRS story. One is that, they’ve admitted now, that they did target conservative groups for extra scrutiny as those groups were looking to find a tax exempt status. And that — that obviously is a violation of the very fundamental trust that we have that the IRS does not pursue a political agenda.

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LENO: But when you said, ‘they,’ are you talking about Democrats or the IRS?

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ROMNEY: I’m talking about the administration. The IRS reports to the Treasury Department, that reports to the president. The buck stops at the president’s desk. He’s indicated he wants to look into it and has already taken action to remove the head of the IRS.

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But nonetheless, you ask, okay, was this appropriate? Why was it happening? Why was it allowed to happen? Who knew what when? And then, the other part of the concern, is were individuals being audited? Individuals who donated to Republicans or to my campaign or others. Was that used as a weapon, just an audit?

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So there are two facets of this that are going to be looked into. And my own view is, that a  special counsel should be appointed. Because only a special council can investigate the administration. The president is saying that, he and his team will look into it. But frankly, they can’t investigate themselves.

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LENO: No, I understand that. But it seems to me, the AP story, I have more of a problem with. This seems to me, it doesn’t seem to go any higher than the IRS. This seems to me like, not people doing the bidding of the king without the king’s knowledge so to speak. You know what I’m saying? Like, ‘Oh, we’ll do this.’ Do you think it goes to the White House?

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ROMNEY: Well, it depends on what communications were held by whom. And who did know. And who said which things to which people. Peggy Noonan, in her column said, ‘Look, if the president goes after certain people. targets them rhetorically and then somehow the IRS goes after them, for either further inspection, or for denial of tax-exempt status. Then that — that sends a signal that might be necessary.’

Romney on Benghazi:

LENO: Now Benghazi. This is, of course, lingering. Is this a case of a cover-up being worse than the crime?

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ROMNEY: It depends on what happens with regards to the actions and what we learn about that. But clearly, yeah — the talking points, the White House changing the — or the State Department changing the talking points.

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American people were misled as to what happened. That’s a real concern and the fact that it’s been very difficult to pull out over the ensuing months. But I also think that in my own view that biggest question — and I don’t know the answer to this — is we have American men and women serving our country in a  hostile place, and there was no effort to rescue them. And some say, ‘Well, we couldn’t have gotten there anyway.’ Well, you know –

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LENO: No effort was made at all? Or the effort failed, or the effort did not get there in time?

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ROMNEY: No. Well, there wasn’t an effort made, that we know of.  There were special forces that indicated from Tripoli they could have been brought by C-30s — and a C-130 rather, and brought in to help in a rescue effort. They were told to stand down. And the question is, well, why? Who told you that? What was the chain of command that came from? And my own view is that, that’s something worth looking at. If an American is in harm’s way, particularly one who’s serving our country. Gosh, we ought to go with every effort we have to protect that individual.

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Romney also said Benghazi would come back and haunt former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton if she decides to run in 2016.

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“I think if Hillary Clinton is the nominee of the Democratic party, there will be a careful inspection of her record as Secretary of State. And that may or may not include mistakes made in one area or another,” Hillary Clinton said.

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Romney also said Clinton’s records on human rights is questionable.

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“I think the broader brush will be has this administration advanced the cause of America’s interests globally and freedom in human rights around the world?” Romney questioned. “If you look at North Korea, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Egypt, the major parts of Latin America, North Africa. Things have not gotten better for our interests, or for the cause of human rights. And that I think is going to be a much bigger question. And probably is the president’s largest legacy of concern, or failure is what’s happened around the world in these last five years.”

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Leno asked Romney what he would praise President Obama about, to which the former governor answered his handling of the Boston terror attack. However, Romney didn’t praise Obama for too long and made it clear he is “not a fan.”

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“I’m not a fan of the president, in case you didn’t know that,” Romney said. “But look, I believe he cares for the country and wants to make America a better place for the American people. But I think he’s not being successful as he would have hoped to have been.”

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“I wish he were more focused on doing what’s necessary to keep America strong and to grow our economy and to get people back to work. There are a lot of people hurting,” Romney said.

Related Videos:

Bill Maher On IRS Scandal: “Is It Unreasonable To Target An Anti-Tax Group?” Krauthammer On IRS Commissioner: “You’ve Got To Be A Knave Or A Fool To Say That And An Idiot To Believe It” Carney vs. Piers Morgan: “You’re Concocting Scandals Here That Don’t Exist”

Tukey Pleads For Help With Refugees

By Kevin Sullivan
The Washington Post

YAYLADAGI, Turkey — Facing one of the world’s largest refugee crises in decades, Turkish officials are urgently appealing for international financial assistance and calling on wealthy nations, particularly the United States and the countries of Europe, to start accepting large numbers of Syrian refugees.

The stance marks a shift for the Turkish government, which had long insisted that Ankara would manage and pay for the refu­gee crisis on its own as a matter of national pride. But with the cost to Turkey hitting $1.5 billion, an estimated 400,000 refugees in the country and a total of 1 million expected by the end of the year, pressure is building. Turkey is even willing to organize an airlift, Ankara officials said, but no country seems eager to receive the refugees.

Photo: Syrian refugees in Iskenderun, Turkey, are processed for departure to Egypt. An estimated 400,000 Syrian refugees are in Turkey, and a total of 1 million are expected by the end of the year. The crisis has cost the Ankara government nearly $1.5 billion.  Photo: Jahi Chikwendiu / The Washington Post

“The international community should not only provide assistance to foot the bill, but they need to step up and open their countries to these refugees,” said Levent Gumrukcu, a Foreign Ministry spokesman. “They have utterly failed the test of providing an effective response.”

The civil war in Syria and its spillover across the region are expected to dominate President Obama’s White House meeting Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep ­Tayyip Erdogan.

Washington has provided $44 million for humanitarian organizations helping Syrian refugees in Turkey, as part of a total of $510 million in aid for Syrians affected by the war.  State Department officials said that they had received no formal request from Turkey or the United Nations to accept Syrian refugees but that they were “ready to consider” such a request. At this point, they said, most refugees would still probably prefer to wait for a chance to return home than be airlifted to a distant land.

But those in Turkey’s refu­gee camps see few prospects of going home soon.

Samia Faido ran from her Syrian village two years ago, seven months pregnant and terrified, just before the government bulldozed her home and torched her family’s apple and olives trees.

Now she and her husband have a Turkish-born toddler, their four older kids are learning Turkish, and they have settled into a life that is starting to feel alarmingly permanent.

“When I first came here, I thought I was going to be here for maybe a month,” said Faido, 30, sitting in her cheerfully decorated tent, within sight of the dry hills of her homeland. “Every night I go to sleep hoping that we will wake up to good news in Syria, but it’s always just more bombing and shelling.”

She and her family were among the first group of 252 refugees who arrived at the border seeking shelter in April 2011. Now they live in two adjacent white tents on the shady grounds of a former tobacco factory that has been transformed into a camp community of nearly 3,000 people.

The Faidos’ camp is less than a mile from the Syrian border, and armed officers stand at the gate, guarding against anti-refugee violence. Tall metal walls topped with coils of razor wire surround the place.

Still, life here feels settled, and measured by the rhythms of any small town: births and deaths, weddings and funerals, prayer and play.

Pretty, peach-colored buildings dot the grounds, serving as dormitories for refugees and communal toilet and shower facilities. Children play soccer in courtyards, older men play backgammon, and peacocks wander here and there in the shade of tall pine trees.

It has all the trappings of municipal life: schools, health clinics and mosques; electricity supply for every tent; and a system of local government to settle disputes. Periodic episodes of violence have taken place in some of the Turkish camps, but refugees mostly have settled into a peaceful, if monotonous, routine.

A fast-growing crisis

About half the Syrian refugees in Turkey live outside camps, often in crowded and miserable conditions. More than 700 people live in a wedding hall in the once-quiet border town of Reyhanli, and thousands are crammed into warehouses and rented apartments in towns all along the border.

Public fears about the refu­gee crisis deepened when a car bombing last weekend killed more than 50 people in Reyhanli. The motive for the attack is not known, but the Turkish government blamed it on forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Some critics complain that the 17 refu­gee camps across the country are becoming de facto Turkish towns. Government officials rejected that, saying that all the Syrian refugees will have to leave eventually.

But with the war in Syria showing no sign of ending, and ­anti-refugee sentiment among Turks on the rise, officials here concede that many of the 400,000 refugees now in the country could be living in Turkey for years.

Panos Moumtzis, the U.N. refugee agency’s regional coordinator for Syria, said the United Nations has no plans for a Syrian airlift. But, he added, the crisis is growing so fast — with about 3.5 million refugees expected across the region by the end of the year — that officials might have to reevaluate all options.

Kelly Clements, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, said that neither Turkey nor the United Nations had formally asked the United States to take Syrian refugees.

State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell, noting that the United States has the world’s largest refugee resettlement program, said, “We are ready to consider any Syrian refugee for U.S. resettlement” who is referred by the United Nations.

But Lavinia Limon, chief executive of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, said the cost and logistics — including security screening for every refu­gee, which can take a year or longer — make it nearly impossible to imagine that the United States could take enough refugees to “make a dent” in the problem.

“If I were advising the Obama administration, I would tell them, ‘You’d be crazy to be even thinking about this,’ and I’m a refu­gee advocate,” said Limon, who helped coordinate the 1999 Kosovo airlift, the last time there was a major airlift of refugees, as an official in the Clinton administration.

Monotonous camp life

In their camp, Faido and her husband, Ghassan, have tried to re-create the life of their Syrian farmhouse. Brightly colored plastic matting covers the floor, where the children — four girls and a boy, all under 11 — have learned to set their juice cups carefully so they don’t tip over on the uneven ground.

The tents are about 10 feet square, big enough to walk around comfortably, with two tiny refrigerators, a small electric oven and a gas-powered stove top, and almost everyone has a television hooked to a satellite dish.

Faido said the surreal nature of life in a camp is always close by. She said that when she takes Tala, her 22-month-old, into the town outside the camp gates, the toddler is terrified by cars — because there are none in the camp.

Faido said the Turks have been generous hosts. The children’s school building is spotlessly clean and smells of fresh paint. The Turkish government and the U.N. World Food Program provide the family about $53 a month in spending money.

The government paid for Mediya, the Faidos’ 11-year-old daughter, to take a 10-day school trip to the Turkish seaside city of Izmir. The girl said that the last time she saw the sea was a week before the family fled their village; she was taken there by an uncle who Faido said was later killed by the Assad regime.

Ghassan Faido said that he struggles against boredom and that he misses his old life as a farmer. By Turkish law, the refugees are not allowed to work, but he said he met a man who hires him once in a while to help tend his olive trees. Now Faido mainly passes the days at home, at the camp mosque or talking to other men who also have lost everything.

Lately they have been mourning eight friends who arrived with them at the camp two years ago. A few months ago, the friends decided they couldn’t take the monotony of camp life anymore, so they went back to Syria. Faido said word recently reached camp that all of them were killed in a May 2 massacre by pro-government forces in the seaside village of Baida.

“I try not to think a lot about staying here,” he said. “I keep thinking that this has to end soon. But this could take a very long time.”

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Turkey says world must act against Syria after bombings

By Jonathon Burch | Reuters

Relatives of Huseyin Guduk, 30, who was killed in yesterday’s car bombings, mourn in the town of Reyhanli of Hatay province near the Turkish-Syrian border May 12, 2013. REUTERS/Umit Bekta

REYHANLI, Turkey (Reuters) – Turkey accused a group with links to Syrian intelligence of carrying out car bombings that killed 46 people in a Turkish border town, and said on Sunday it was time for the world to act against the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The two car bombs, which ripped through crowded shopping streets in Reyhanli on Saturday, increased fears that Syria’s civil war is dragging in neighboring states, despite renewed diplomatic moves to end it.

Damascus denied involvement, but Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said those behind the attacks were from an “old Marxist terrorist organization” with ties to Assad’s administration.

“It is time for the international community to act together against this regime,” he told a news conference during a visit to Berlin.

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said in a speech broadcast later on Turkish television: “We will not lose our calm heads, we will not depart common sense, and we will not fall into the trap they’re trying to push us into.”

But he added: “Whoever targets Turkey will sooner or later pay the price.”

NATO-member Turkey has fired back at Syrian government forces when mortars have landed on its soil, but despite its strong words has appeared reluctant to bring its considerable military might to bear in the conflict.

It is struggling to cope with more than 300,000 refugees but is not alone in fearing the impact of Syria’s war, which is stirring the Middle East’s cauldron of sectarian, religious and nationalist struggles.

“We, like Jordan, are hosting hundreds of thousands of Syrians. Security risks to neighboring countries are rising,” Davutoglu said.

DIPLOMATIC EFFORTS

The bombings took place as prospects appeared to improve for diplomacy to try to end the war, after Moscow and Washington announced a joint effort to bring government and rebels to an international conference.

Officials from Syria’s opposition coalition, in crisis since its president resigned in March, said it would meet in Istanbul on May 23 to decide whether to participate.

A Syrian opposition group said the toll from two years of civil war had risen to at least 82,000 dead and 12,500 missing.

Syrian Information Minister Omran Zubi, speaking on state TV, held Turkey responsible for the bloodshed in Syria by aiding al Qaeda-led rebels. He said Damascus had no hand in Saturday’s bombings.

“Syria did not and will never do such a act because our values do not allow this. It is not anyone’s right to hurl unfounded accusations,” he said.

Authorities have arrested nine people, all Turkish citizens and including the alleged mastermind of the attacks, Turkey’s deputy prime minister Besir Atalay told reporters.

Interior Minister Muammer Guler said the bombings – the deadliest incident on Turkish soil since Syria’s war began – were carried out by a group with direct links to Syria’s Mukhabarat intelligence agency.

The blasts scattered concrete blocks and smashed cars as far as three streets away.

LOCAL ANGER

There was a heavy police and military presence on Sunday in Reyhanli, where security forces cordoned off both blast sites while bulldozers shifted the rubble and shattered glass.

Men stood loitering around the town, looking on and discussing, often heatedly, the previous day’s events.

There was palpable anger against the tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in the town, which has become a logistics base for the rebels fighting Assad just over the border.

As the conflict has dragged on, local people have grown increasingly resentful over stretched economic resources and the violence being brought to their door.

Some smashed Syrian car windows, and others railed against Turkey’s foreign policy.

“We don’t want the Syrians here any more. They can’t stay here. Whether we even wanted them or not, they can’t stay after this,” said a teacher in Reyhanli, who gave his name as Mustafa.

He said the prime minister’s Syria policy was to blame.

“It’s Tayyip Erdogan’s politics that have done this. Turkey should never have got involved in this mess. We have a 900-km (550-mile) border with Syria. They come and go in wherever they like. Everyone here is in fear.”

Syrian families stayed inside their homes on Sunday, too afraid to come out.

SUNNI-SHI’ITE TENSIONS

Davutoglu said the Reyhanli bombers were believed to be from the same group that carried out an attack on the Syrian coastal town of Banias a week ago in which at least 62 people were killed.

Syria’s conflict has fuelled confrontation across the region between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, with Shi’ite Iran supporting Assad, and Sunni powers like Saudi Arabia backing the rebels.

Israel launched air strikes a week ago, aimed at stopping Iranian missiles near Damascus from reaching Tehran’s Lebanese allies Hezbollah for possible use against the Jewish state.

Days later, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah said his forces would support any Syrian effort to recapture the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, raising the prospect of renewed conflict after decades of calm on that border.

In a separate development on Sunday, Syrian rebels freed four Filipino U.N. peacekeepers whom they had captured on the ceasefire line between Syria and the Golan last week.

(Additional reporting by Mehmet Emin Caliskan in Reyhanli, Ece Toksabay in Istanbul and Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

From Benghazi to Syria: Obama’s Bush-league mistakes in foreign policy

By Walter Shapiro

Most second-term presidents become fixated on global affairs because the world beyond our shores, with all its strife and misery, often seems more malleable than life in Washington, with its fractious Congress and waning electoral mandate. The trick, though, for a foreign policy president, is to be good at it—and these days those skills appear to be eluding Barack Obama.

This week’s biggest rebuke to Obama foreign policy was not Wednesday’s House hearing on Benghazi with its wrenching narrative of the September night that Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed in Libya. Nor was it Friday morning’s revelation  of new Benghazi-related documents. More embarrassing was a front-page article in last Sunday’s New York Times detailing how Obama erred last August when he impetuously declared that Syria’s use of chemical weapons in its civil war would be a “red line.”

It’s a simple rule: Presidents should never make threats until they have worked out how they would enforce them. But Obama violated it with his stern but ill-considered warning to Syrian strongman Bashar Assad. The Times article quotes one anonymous top government official claiming, “What Obama said in August was unscripted” and “nuance got completely dropped.” Barry Pavel, a former national security adviser to Obama, said flatly, “I’m not convinced it was thought through.”

You know you’re in trouble when you can’t even get your walk-back story straight. Stung by the worldwide derision that met President Obama’s fudging and fumbling of his chemical-weapons red line in Syria, the White House leaked to the New York Times that Obama’s initial statement had been unprepared, unscripted and therefore unserious.

President Obama’s “Pink Line” in Syria

Current and former foreign policy advisers usually fall on their swords to protect a president’s reputation for sagacity. Only long afterward, when the “if only he had listened to me” memoirs are published, do we finally get a glimpse of what really happened in the White House. That’s why it’s telling that Obama insiders are already willing to trash the president for his all-bluster “red line” rhetoric.

The reason for the finger-pointing at Obama is that America is now caught in a loose-lips-create-slips dilemma. Without any good policy options available and a growing isolationist mood among voters, Obama must decide what to do in response to highly probable evidence that forces loyal to Assad used banned chemical weapons. Arming the rebels, many of whom are Islamic militants, carries its own risk, yet doing nothing makes America appear feckless and irresolute.

Playing for time, Obama has been reduced to linguistic hair-splitting. Asked at a Tuesday press conference about perceptions that Syria has crossed his supposed red line, Obama said lamely, “I don’t make decisions based on ‘perceived.’ And I can’t organize international coalitions around ‘perceived.’ We’ve tried that in the past, by the way, and it didn’t work out well.”

That, of course, was a reference to George W. Bush and his fallacious weapons-of-mass-destruction pretext for the Iraq War. As a presidential candidate, Obama presented himself as the antithesis of this kind of shoot-first foreign policy impetuousness. But, as president, it’s startling how much Obama resembles Bush in many aspects of national security policy.

Take Guantanamo, where currently about 100 of the remaining detainees are waging a hunger strike. Asked at a recent press conference about the Bush-era Cuban detention camp that he has repeatedly vowed to close, Obama sounded more like an outside critic than a president: “It hurts us in terms of international standing. … It is a recruitment tool for extremists. It needs to be closed.”

Despite intermittant efforts by Obama since taking office, Congress has refused to allow the president to close Guantanamo. But that does not make Obama a helpless bystander with no control over this symbolic blot on America’s international reputation.

The president has refused to use his existing legal authority (using waivers from the Defense Department) to repatriate 86 low-risk detainees, mostly from Yemen, whose cases have been reviewed by American authorities. Some of these prisoners were rank-and-file al-Qaida soldiers back in 2001, and others were probably picked up by mistake. But today these detainees would be less of a threat sent back to their home countries then they are as enduring symbols of an American gulag on Guantanamo.

Then there are the drones. Bush may have initiated the airborne assassination program in  2004, but Obama has made it a hallmark of his response to terrorism. With his drone policy, Obama has embraced three of the worst aspects of Bush-era national security policy: an obsession with secrecy; a contorted view of legal norms, especially the definition of “imminent threat”; and a refusal to consider that American tactics may create more terrorists than they kill. In Pakistan alone, based on the best independent statistics, Obama has ordered six times as many drone strikes as ever Bush did.

The silence from most Democrats on these troubling aspects of Obama foreign policy has been dispiriting. Had Bush made toothless threats to Syria, force-fed prisoners in Guantanamo or rained death from the air in Pakistan on a weekly basis, liberals in Congress would be sputtering with outrage. Instead, with a few conspicuous exceptions—like Oregon Senator Ron Wyden on drones—the dominant feeling appears to be that if Obama does it, it has to be right.

Ever since George McGovern lost 49 states to Richard Nixon in 1972, Democrats have cowered in terror at the thought of being branded as soft on national security. This may partly explain Obama’s timorousness on Guantanamo and the president’s embrace of drone strikes as a way of being tough against terrorists without risking American casualties.

The Republican obsession with Benghazi is rooted in the belief that the Obama administration was reluctant to label the 2012 Libyan attacks as “terrorism” because that would undermine the president’s narrative in an election year. Wednesday’s hearing—built around the testimony of three mid-level State Department officials—failed to prove anything close to causation. On Friday morning, however, ABC News reported that the State Department had insisted references to prior warnings on terrorism should be airbrushed out of the initial CIA talking points on the Banghazi attack.

This was the briefing document that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who drew the short straw as the administration’s TV talker, relied on when she made the rounds of Sunday-morning interviews the week of the attacks. Now, based on the ABC News story,  it seems clear that Victoria Nuland, a career foreign service officer who was Hillary Clinton’s spokesperson at State, had insisted to the White House that these talking points be watered down.

Even now, so much about Benghazi remains murky, including how big a scandal it will actually prove to be. Were Nuland’s editing suggestions primarily designed to politically protect Obama and Clinton? Or was this, at its core, a Washington bureaucratic battle over which agency should be blamed for the deaths in Libya—State or the CIA?

Security was obviously lax in Benghazi. But was that because Stevens was a fearless diplomat who hated hunkering down behind concrete walls? Or was this related to the CIA’s still-mysterious role on the ground in Benghazi? And did the administration’s self-congratulatory belief in the Libyan revolution play a role in the relaxation of vigilence? Remember, Libya was Obama’s success story from the “Arab spring”—the nation where a dictator was toppled by America boldly leading from behind.

Despite the documents discovered by ABC News, my guess is that the tragedy in Benghazi and its muddled aftermath had far more to do with human error than major-league conspiracy. In fact, given the way that Obama has handled his “red line” in Syria, the case for human error seems quite compelling.

Many American Feel “Less Safe”

Injured people and debris lie on the sidewalk near the  Boston Marathon finish line following an explosion in Boston, Monday, April 15,  2013

In the September 11, 2012 terror attack on the U.S. in Benghazi, Libya, Ambassador Chris Stevens (right, above) was killed, along with State Department staffer Sean Smith and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

President Obama’s “Pink Line” in Syria

You know you’re in trouble when you can’t even get your walk-back story straight. Stung by the worldwide derision that met President Obama’s fudging and fumbling of his chemical-weapons red line in Syria, the White House leaked to the New York Times that Obama’s initial statement had been unprepared, unscripted and therefore unserious.

The next day Jay Carney said precisely the opposite: “Red line” was intended and deliberate.

Above: Jay Carney

By Charles Krauthammer

Which is it? Who knows? Perhaps Obama used the term last August to look tough, sound like a real world leader, never expecting that Syria would do something so crazy. He would have it both ways: sound decisive but never have to deliver.

Or perhaps he thought that Syria might actually use chemical weapons one day, at which point he would think of something.

So far he’s thought of nothing. Instead he’s backed himself into a corner: Be forced into a war he is firmly resolved to avoid, or lose credibility, which for a superpower on whose word relies the safety of a dozen allies is not just embarrassing but dangerous.

In his recent rambling news conference, Obama said that he needed certainty about the crossing of the red line to keep the “international community” behind him. This is absurd. The “international community” is a fiction, especially in Syria. Russia, Iran and Hezbollah are calling the shots.

Nor, he averred, could he act until he could be sure of everything down to the “chain of custody” of the sarin gas.

What is this? “CSI: Damascus”? It’s a savage civil war. The antagonists don’t exactly stand down for forensic sampling.

Some countries have real red lines. Israel has no friends on either side of this regional Sunni-Shiite conflict, but it will not permit the alteration of its strategic military balance with Hezbollah, which is already brimming with 60,000 rockets aimed at Israel.

Everyone in the region knows that the transfer of chemical weapons to Hezbollah or the acquisition of the Fateh-110 missile, with the accuracy and range to hit the heart of Tel Aviv, is a red line. Hence the punishing Israeli airstrikes around Damascus on advanced weaponry making its way to Hezbollah.

The risk to Israel is less a counterattack from Damascus than from Hezbollah. Bashar al-Assad of Syria doesn’t need a new front with Israel. Syria remembers not just its thorough defeat at the hands of Israel in 1967 and 1973 but also its humiliation in the skies over the Bekaa Valley in 1982 when it challenged Israeli air dominance. In a two-day dogfight, Israel shot down 60 Syrian planes and lost none.

Israel’s real concern is a Hezbollah attack. But Hezbollah has already stretched itself thin by sending fighters into Syria to save Assad. And it knows that war with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would be far more devastating than its 2006 war with the tepid and tentative Ehud Olmert.

Most important, Iran, Hezbollah’s master, wants to keep Hezbollah’s missile arsenal intact and in reserve for retaliation against — and thus deterrence of — a possible Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program.

These are complicated, inherently risky calculations. But living in the midst of this cauldron, Israel has no choice. It must act.

America does have a choice. It can afford to stay out. And at this late date, it probably will.

Early in the war, before the rise of the jihadists to dominance within the Syrian opposition, intervention might have brought down Assad and produced a decent successor government friendly to America and non-belligerent to its neighbors.

Today our only hope seems to be supporting and arming Salim Idriss, the one rebel commander who speaks in moderate, tolerant tones. But he could easily turn, or could be overwhelmed by the jihadists. As they say in the Middle East, you don’t buy allies here. It’s strictly a rental.

Israel’s successful strikes around Damascus show that a Western no-fly zone would not require a massive Libyan-style campaign to take out all Syrian air defenses. Syrian helicopters and planes could be grounded more simply with attacks on runways, depots and idle aircraft alone, carried out, if not by fighters, by cruise missiles and other standoff weaponry.

But even that may be too much for a president who has assured his country that the tide of war is receding. At this late date, supporting proxies may be the only reasonable option left. It’s perversely self-vindicating. Wait long enough, and all other options disappear. As do red lines.

Read more from Charles Krauthammer’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

Charles Krauthammer

Prayer and Meditation for Friday, May 10, 2013 — “Do not be afraid, go on speaking and do not be silent — for I am with you”

Saint Paul Writing His Epistles, 16th century painting. Most scholars think Paul actually dictated his letters to a secretary.

Friday of the Sixth Week of Easter Lectionary: 295

Reading 1 Acts 18:9-18

One night while Paul was in Corinth, the Lord said to him in a vision, “Do not be afraid. Go on speaking, and do not be silent, for I am with you. No one will attack and harm you, for I have many people in this city.” He settled there for a year and a half and taught the word of God among them.

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But when Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews rose up together against Paul and brought him to the tribunal, saying, “This man is inducing people to worship God contrary to the law.” When Paul was about to reply, Gallio spoke to the Jews, “If it were a matter of some crime or malicious fraud, I should with reason hear the complaint of you Jews; but since it is a question of arguments over doctrine and titles and your own law, see to it yourselves. I do not wish to be a judge of such matters.” And he drove them away from the tribunal. They all seized Sosthenes, the synagogue official, and beat him in full view of the tribunal. But none of this was of concern to Gallio.

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Paul remained for quite some time, and after saying farewell to the brothers he sailed for Syria, together with Priscilla and Aquila. At Cenchreae he had shaved his head because he had taken a vow.

Responsorial Psalm PS 47:2-3, 4-5, 6-7

R. (8a) God is king of all the earth. or: R. Alleluia. All you peoples, clap your hands, shout to God with cries of gladness, For the LORD, the Most High, the awesome, is the great king over all the earth. R. God is king of all the earth. or: R. Alleluia. He brings people under us; nations under our feet. He chooses for us our inheritance, the glory of Jacob, whom he loves. R. God is king of all the earth. or: R. Alleluia. God mounts his throne amid shouts of joy; the LORD, amid trumpet blasts. Sing praise to God, sing praise; sing praise to our king, sing praise. R. God is king of all the earth. or: R. Alleluia.

Gospel Jn 16:20-23

Jesus said to his disciples: “Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn, while the world rejoices; you will grieve, but your grief will become joy. When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived; but when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy that a child has been born into the world. So you also are now in anguish. But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy away from you. On that day you will not question me about anything. Amen, amen, I say to you, whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.”

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Homily Ideas
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One gets the notion in this first reading that Jesus said “Do not be afraid” so often that Paul started to hear the Lord’s voice in his sleep!

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Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we knew Jesus that well!

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Many folks in our modern society suffer with enormous worry and anxiety. But Christians are told over and over and over again: “Do not be afraid for I am with you.”

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All the Saints are fearless. Why can’t we just follow them?

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Padre Pio said, “If you are worried: PRAY. Once you are praying, why do you worry?”

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Every time my priest friend meets someone filled with worry and anxiety, he asks them, “When did you last go to confession and eat the Body of Christ?”

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It is the same as saying, “When did you last follow the instructions Jesus, the disciples and two thousand years filled with saints that showed us and told us how to live?”

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Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him.  (John 6:56)

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This reading also gives us a hint that Jesus would tell us not to worry too much about doctrinal issues because he says to Paul in a dream, “but since it is a question of arguments over doctrine and titles and your own law” handle it yourself!

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Jesus wants us to spread the Good News: not constantly argue about who is more right or who is more correct in their practice or doctrine.

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It is almost as if Jesus says, “Don’t sweat the small stuff.”

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In times of trouble we are often reminded to pray. My favorite prayer to calm a storm is:

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God, I offer myself to Thee-
To build with me
and to do with me as Thou wilt.
Relieve me of the bondage of self,
that I may better do Thy will.
Take away my difficulties,
that victory over them may bear witness
to those I would help of Thy Power,
Thy Love, and Thy Way of life.
May I do Thy will always!
Thank you, God, Amen!

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Many also pray the “Serenity Prayer.”

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“God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change,
the courage to change the things we can,
and wisdom to know the difference.”

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John Francis Carey
Peace and Freedom

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Related:

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“Pray, hope, and don’t worry”

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Prayer and Meditation for Tuesday, May 7, 2013 — “Do not harm to yourself …. Do not be afraid …  the Advocate will come to you”

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“What in God’s Name Is The Holy Spirit”?

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Prayer and Meditation for Saturday, April 13, 2013: Jesus Is Steering Our Boat; “Do Not Be Afraid”

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Prayer and Meditation for Saturday, April 27, 2013: “If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”

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Prayer and Meditation for Friday, April 19, 2013, Conversion of Saul (And The Founder of Alcoholics Anonymous) and “Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him.”

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“Pray, pray to the Lord with me, because the whole world needs prayer. And every day, when your heart especially feels the loneliness of life, pray. Pray to the Lord, because even God needs our prayers.”

- St. Pio of Pietrelcina

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“Pray, hope, and don’t worry. Worry is useless. God is merciful and will hear your prayer.”

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- St. Pio of  Pietrelcina

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Above: Paul’s Third Missionary journey.

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http://www.welcometohosanna.com/PAULS_MISSIONARY_JOURNEYS/3mission_3.html

Why Were Lives Lost During Benghazi Attack on September 11, 2012? Mother of One Says of Hillary Clinton: “I Blame Her”

Pat Smith’s son Sean Smith, a State Department information officer, was one of four Americans killed during the attack.

Video:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/201
3/05/07/mother_of_slain_benghazi_victim
_rips_hillary_clinton_i_blame_her.html

JAKE TAPPER: One woman still looking for answers is Pat Smith. Her son, State Department Information Officer Sean Smith was one of the four Americans killed. Pat, thanks so much for being here. I know this is not an easy time. How are you holding up?

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PAT SMITH, MOTHER OF SEAN SMITH, KILLED IN BENGHAZI: Terrible. I cry every night. I don’t sleep at night. I need answers.

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TAPPER: What do you want answers to? What do you not know?

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SMITH: Why was there no security for him? When they were supposed to have security and the security that they did have was called back. It just — things do not add up and I’m just told lies.

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TAPPER: Last week, you heard this in the piece the White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said that Benghazi happened a long time ago.

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SMITH: Yes, it did.

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TAPPER: Eight months ago.

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SMITH: Yes.

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TAPPER: What is your reaction to that?

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SMITH: Why don’t they have answers by now? They’ve had plenty of time to come up with something other than the things they have not told me.

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TAPPER: Are you concerned at all that the hearings and Benghazi that has become a political issue, the Republicans have turned it into a political issue. The Democrats have turned it into a political issue as opposed to being a scandal and a tragedy apart from politics?

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SMITH: Of course, it’s political. That’s the way it’s been. That’s how they’re treating it. That’s what they’re doing with it. They’re making it into something that — why don’t they just do their job? They didn’t do their job and now they’re hiding behind the word political and going from there.

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TAPPER: You have expressed disappointment in the past because President Obama, then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, all of them came to you, talked to you.
SMITH: Yes.

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TAPPER: And then you haven’t heard from them. Have you heard from anybody in the Obama administration? Have you gotten any outreach or any answers at all?

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SMITH: I got one telephone call from a clerk that was a couple days after it happened. He was reading to me from the time line, which I already had. And that was it. And since then, all they have told me is that I am not part of the immediate family so they don’t want to tell me anything.

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TAPPER: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified about the Benghazi tragedy shortly before she left office. I want to play a little bit of what she said.

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(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

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HILLARY CLINTON, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: With all due respect, the fact is, we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator.

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(END VIDEO CLIP)

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TAPPER: What was your reaction to that?

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SMITH: Well, that’s what I want to know. Why did it happen? And she is in charge. Why couldn’t she do something about it? I blame her.

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TAPPER: You blame Secretary of State Clinton.

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SMITH: Yes.

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TAPPER: Why?

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SMITH: Because that’s her department. She is supposed to be on top of it. Yet she claims she knows nothing. It wasn’t told to her. Well, who is running the place?

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifying about the attacks before a Senate committee in January.

Sean Smith, killed at Benghazi

Related:

Former top diplomat in Libya will testify before a House committee on Benghazi terrorist attack

Sen. Lindsey Graham: “I Think the Dam Is About to Break on Benghazi Coverup”

Lawmaker Hear Testimony Today on U.S. Response To Benghazi Terror Raid That Took Four American Lives

In the September 11, 2012 terror attack on the U.S. in Benghazi, Libya, Ambassador Chris Stevens (right, above) was killed, along with State Department staffer Sean Smith and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

From left: Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods and Sean Smith died in the September 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Libya

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton testifies on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks against the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. (Andrew Harnik/The Washington Times)

The Benghazi attacks set off a nearly global display of Anti-American resolve and protest among Islamists.

Above: Just a few days after the Tuesday, September 11, 2012 attack at Benghazi, on Sunday, September 16, 2012, Susan Rice went on all five major Sunday TV News talk shows and used talking points that minimized the known terrorist threat and involvement in the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others.

Daily Show host Jon Stewart was not at all happy with horrible explanation given by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice

*

Obama’s “Charm Offensive” Derailed By White House Spokesman, The Occasionally Charming Jay Carney

Lawmakers Hear Testimony Today on U.S. Response To Benghazi Terror Raid That Took Four American Lives

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testifying about the attacks before a Senate committee in January.

By Siobhan Hughes
The Wall Street Journal

WASHINGTON—A hearing Wednesday called by House Republicans is likely to renew the focus on questions about the Obama administration’s response to the attacks last year in Libya that killed four Americans.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hear from three State Department officials, including one who is expected to say military actions could have been taken during the September 2012 attacks in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, an information officer and two former Navy SEALs.

“There’s still a lot more we need to learn about what happened, why it happened, how it happened, because the administration has stonewalled this at every step,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican.

Democrats see a politically motivated attempt to keep alive an eight-month-old story, and said the hearing would shed little new light on events.

“We had a very thorough review of what happened in Libya: They looked at the military aspects as well as the security and diplomatic aspects and they found nothing,” said Virginia Rep. Gerry Connolly, a committee Democrat.

An Accountability Review Board convened by former Secretary of State  Hillary Clinton concluded the State Department’s response reflected “systemic failures” in the handling of security and faulted a “lack of proactive senior leadership.”

Last month, House Republicans released a report that said the White House and State Department altered “talking points” prepared immediately after attacks to protect the administration from criticism.

Three State Department officials will offer their own perspectives Wednesday. Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in Libya, told congressional investigators last month the U.S. might have prevented a second attack that killed the two former Navy SEALs if the military had been able to get a fighter jet to Benghazi as soon as possible. His comments were contained in a partial transcript released earlier this week by Republicans on the committee.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) said that he expected the hearing to reveal that some of the witnesses had experienced retaliation from the State Department: “That’s important—you want people to step forward and give the truth, and they shouldn’t be nervous about doing that.”

A State Department official said that wasn’t the case. “Our policy of not tolerating retaliation against whistleblowers is very clear,” the official said.

Mr. Hicks also said some special-forces personnel were preparing to board a Libyan government aircraft the night of the attack, but were told to stand down by regional military commanders because they lacked the authority. The plane wouldn’t have gotten to Benghazi before the attack was over, Republicans concede.

A State Department official said “no one is more determined than the State Department family to bring those who perpetrated this attack to justice.”

A Pentagon spokesman said the Defense Department has “cooperated fully” with Congress and the review board. “We have repeatedly stated that while department officials started taking action immediately after learning that an attack was under way at the American facility there, our forces were unable to reach it in time to intervene to stop the attacks,” the spokesman said.

In a written statement distributed by the State Department, Ret. Admiral Mike Mullen and Tom Pickering, a former ambassador, who led the review board, said, “We had unfettered access to everyone and everything including all the documentation we needed. Our marching orders were to get to the bottom of what happened, and that’s what we did.”

Eric Nordstrom, a diplomatic security officer and former regional security officer in Libya, and Mark Thompson, the acting deputy assistant secretary for counterterrorism, also will testify.

Democrats complain that they have not been permitted to interview Mr. Thompson. “It is clearly a one-sided hearing,” said Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the committee.

Write to Siobhan Hughes at siobhan.hughes@dowjones.com

Related:

Former top diplomat in Libya will testify before a House committee on Benghazi terrorist attack

Sen. Lindsey Graham: “I Think the Dam Is About to Break on Benghazi Coverup”

In the September 11, 2012 terror attack on the U.S. in Benghazi, Libya, Ambassador Chris Stevens (right, above) was killed, along with State Department staffer Sean Smith and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

From left: Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods and Sean Smith died in the September 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Libya

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton testifies on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks against the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. (Andrew Harnik/The Washington Times)

The Benghazi attacks set off a nearly global display of Anti-American resolve and protest among Islamists.

Above: Just a few days after the Tuesday, September 11, 2012 attack at Benghazi, on Sunday, September 16, 2012, Susan Rice went on all five major Sunday TV News talk shows and used talking points that minimized the known terrorist threat and involvement in the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others.

Daily Show host Jon Stewart was not at all happy with horrible explanation given by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice

*

Obama’s “Charm Offensive” Derailed By White House Spokesman, The Occasionally Charming Jay Carney

Sen. Lindsey Graham: “I Think the Dam Is About to Break on Benghazi Coverup”

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. Chris Kleponis/Getty Images

BY: Washington Free Beacon Staff May 7, 2013 12:16 pm

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) wrote Tuesday he believes major revelations about the lead up to the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, are imminent, in a Facebook message:

“I think the dam is about to break on Benghazi. We’re going to find a system failure before, during, and after the attacks.

“We’re going to find political manipulation seven weeks before an election. We’re going to find people asleep at the switch when it comes to the State Department, including Hillary Clinton.

“The bond that has been broken between those who serve us in harms way and the government they serve is huge — and to me every bit as damaging as Watergate.”

The post links to a Washington Post column by Marc A. Thiessen on the Benghazi whistleblowers.

A number of major news stories have broken in the last week about the attack, including the news that a team of U.S. Special Forces that was preparing to respond to the attack was told to stand down by the U.S. Special Forces Command Africa.

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By Marc A. Thiessen
The Washington Post

The Obama administration wants to consign the Benghazi terrorist attack to the history books, but this week three State Department officials will tell Congress that the Obama administration’s version of history is false — and that the falsehoods it told the American people were willful and deliberate.One of the whistleblowers, Mark Thompson, deputy coordinator for operations in the State Department’s counterterrorism bureau, was in direct, real-time communication with people on the ground during the Sept. 11, 2012, attack in Libya, before he was locked out of the room. Yet despite his firsthand knowledge of how the attack unfolded, he was not interviewed by the State Department’s Accountability Review Board, even though he asked to be. According to sources I spoke with, Thompson will testify that the circumstances under which Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans died have been “purposefully misrepresented” by the administration and that “all their public statements from the initial account to the talking points [that Ambassador  Susan Rice used on the Sunday shows] were false, and they knew it.”

Gregory Hicks, the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya at the time of the attack, will apparently back up that charge. This weekend, Rep. Darryl Issa (R-Calif.), who heads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, revealed some of what Hicks told congressional investigators: “My jaw hit the floor as I watched [Susan Rice speak] …. I’ve never been as embarrassed in my life, in my career, as on that day. . . . I never reported a demonstration; I reported an attack on the consulate.”What was even more jaw-dropping was that no one from the State Department contacted Hicks before Rice’s interviews on the Sunday shows. Hicks says he was “personally known” to Rice’s staff and “I could have been called. . . . I could have said, ‘No, that’s not the right thing.’ That phone call was never made.” The next day, Hicks told investigators, he called Beth Jones, acting assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, and asked her, “ ‘Why did Ambassador Rice say that?’ And Beth Jones said, ‘I don’t know.’”Hicks told congressional investigators that Stevens’ final report before he died was to say, “Greg, we are under attack.” Incredibly, though, Hicks has not even been allowed to see the classified Accountability Review Board report. Perhaps the Obama administration is afraid to let him review its “findings” for fear he will uncover more falsehoods.Last week, State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell dismissed the whistleblowers, declaring there has already been a thorough investigation into the attack “and that should be enough.” Well, apparently the man who was second in command at our embassy in Libya disagrees.

In addition to getting to the bottom of what the administration knew about Benghazi, and when they knew it, Congress needs get to the bottom of the coverup, which is apparently ongoing. Victoria Toensing, a lawyer for one of the whistleblowers, told Fox News  the whistleblowers have been threatened with career-ending reprisals if they furnish new information about the Benghazi attacks to Congress. Who threatened them? What were they told would happen to them? And who else was pressured not to testify?

White House spokesman Jay Carney last week tried to dismiss Benghazi as something that “happened a long time ago.” With all respect, the attack took place just eight months ago. To the families who woke up this morning without sons and husbands and fathers by their side, it does not feel like “a long time ago.”

Moreover, eight months later, we still have not gotten the full story of what happened. If all the facts are out, and the administration truly has nothing to hide, why has it reportedly tried to silence these career State Department officials?

Perhaps most disturbing is the fact that eight months have passed since Benghazi and still nothing has been done about it. Our country suffered a coordinated terrorist attack on an American diplomatic facility. A U.S. ambassador was killed at the hands of our terrorist enemies. Yet no one has been brought to justice — nor has justice been delivered to anyone.

Maybe before the Obama administration closes the book on Benghazi, it ought to tell the truth about what happened — and then actually do something to avenge these dead Americans. Because when a president seems more intent to sweep a terrorist attack under the rug than he is to respond to it, it sends a message of weakness to our enemies and invites new attacks.

Read more from Marc Thiessen’s archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

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Related:

Former top diplomat in Libya will testify before a House committee on Benghazi terrorist attack

In the September 11, 2012 terror attack on the U.S. in Benghazi, Libya, Ambassador Chris Stevens (right, above) was killed, along with State Department staffer Sean Smith and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

From left: Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods and Sean Smith died in the September 11, 2012 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Libya

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton testifies on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Jan. 23, 2013, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks against the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. (Andrew Harnik/The Washington Times)

The Benghazi attacks set off a nearly global display of Anti-American resolve and protest among Islamists.

Above: Just a few days after the Tuesday, September 11, 2012 attack at Benghazi, on Sunday, September 16, 2012, Susan Rice went on all five major Sunday TV News talk shows and used talking points that minimized the known terrorist threat and involvement in the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others.

Daily Show host Jon Stewart was not at all happy with horrible explanation given by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice

*

Obama’s “Charm Offensive” Derailed By White House Spokesman, The Occasionally Charming Jay Carney

Will Syria Lash Out At Israel in Retaliation for Weekend Air Strikes, Perhaps Through Third Party Like Hamas?

By   Avi Issacharoff   
The Tower Magazine

Two mortar shells struck Israel’s Golan Heights on Monday in the early evening local time. Though the IDF described the mortars as accidental spillover from fighting across the border in Syria, they are bound to deepen fears of escalating violence in the region.

On Friday and Sunday Israel reportedly struck Iranian and Hezbollah assets based in Syria. The Israelis have subsequently made extensive efforts to dampen tensions – IAF jets had conducted the air strikes from Lebanese air space, staying out of Syria – but nonetheless Damascus has been signaling that it may escalate the situation.

Most pointedly, Syrian state TV announced today that President Bashar al-Assad was activating Palestinian groups to retaliate against Israel.

Al-Ikhbariya announced that the government had given a green light to Palestinian groups to conduct “operations” against Israeli targets on the Golan Heights. Hezbollah-linked media, meanwhile, reported that Lebanon and Syria had established “popular committees” ready to fight Israel in the region.

United Nations “Blue Helmets” continue to monitor the Golan Heights

The Kuwaiti daily newspaper Al Rai, quoting sources close to Assad, reported that the Syrian leader had used Russian backchannels to tell the Israelis that Damascus would react if Israel struck Syria again. Syria, they said, would consider any such act a declaration of war and would contemplate firing surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles at Israel.

Syrian sources told a range of media outlets that Damascus had deployed missile batteries aimed at Israel that could respond to any further Israeli actions.

Errant mortars and other projectiles from Syria have fallen on the Golan Heights a number of times over the two-year Syrian civil war. After Monday’s incident Israel filed a complaint against the UN observer force monitoring the two countries’ border.

Israeli troops were filmed operating on the Golan today:

http://www.thetower.org/exclusive-assad-green-lights-palestinian
-operations-against-israel-on-the-golan-heights-threatens-missile-attacks-syrian-tv/