Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden

The President was in Wisconsin today and he told the crowd that “al Qaeda has been decimated”. Well, the original definition of the word is “reduced by ten percent” so he might be correct. From the Washington Times;

The president made the ire-inducing remark during a campaign stop at Austin Straubel International Airport Thursday morning where he spoke to a crowd of some 2,600 people. Obama, wearing a flight-jacket, addressed Hurricane Sandy relief efforts, then touched on the economy but highlighted what he framed as his accomplishments in foreign policy, including smiting Osama bin Laden and yes, “decimating al Qaeda.”

Well, there might be some argument on that point, if he meant decimated in the more modern sense. Like from the Chinese;

Chinese state media say Chinese Muslim separatists from the far northwestern region of Xinjiang are fighting alongside al-Qaida and other extremist groups opposed to Syria’s government.

Or the Spanish;

Spanish police have arrested six members of an al-Qaeda cell in Barcelona that was dedicated to providing a related terrorist cell in Germany with large numbers of stolen passports.

Or the Iraqis;

Al-Qaida is rebuilding in Iraq and has set up training camps for insurgents in the nation’s western deserts as the extremist group seizes on regional instability and government security failures to regain strength, officials say.

Iraq has seen a jump in al-Qaida attacks over the last 10 weeks, and officials believe most of the fighters are former prisoners who have either escaped from jail or were released by Iraqi authorities for lack of evidence after the U.S. military withdrawal last December. Many are said to be Saudi or from Sunni-dominated Gulf states.

Or the president’s own Secretary of Defense;

Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar Dine are two militant groups suspected of human rights violations after they claimed autonomy in northern Mali following an early 2012 coup. U.N. officials said there were alleged reports of at least three recent summary executions, eight amputations and two floggings in northern Mali.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said al-Qaida must not be allowed to gain a foothold or “develop a command-and-control capability” in countries like Mali. “I believe the effort now ought to be to work with nations in that region to ensure that al-Qaida does not develop that kind of base in Mali,” he said.

Should we worry about the Burkha Brigade?

Al Qaeda has formed an all-female ‘Burkha Brigade’ whose cadres are being trained to infiltrate and hit military bases and official buildings in the Western nations as they are less likely to attract suspicion than men.

A film posted by fanatics online shows the all-female unit of Al Qaeda using a fearsome array of weapons, including machine-guns, grenade rocket launchers and sniper rifles during their training session at an unknown place.

The women are thought to have been recruited from the war-torn Russian republic of Chechnya by an Al Qaeda-linked group, with bases in Pakistan and Afghanistan, British tabloid The Sun reported on Sunday.

I don’t think “decimated” means what the President thinks it means.

ROS sends us a link to our buddy, Gateway Pundit, who reports that Buck McKeon chairman of the House Armed Services Committee is telling the President to prove that he ordered the military to protect Americans at the Benghazi consulate and that somehow someone besides his staff fumbled;

I find it implausible that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Commander of U.S. Africa Command, and the Commander of U.S. European Command would have ignored a direct order from the Commander in Chief. Therefore, could you please clarify:

•To whom did you issue this first directive and how was this directive communicated to the military and other agencies – verbally or in writing?
• At any time on September 11, 2012, did you specifically direct the military to move available assets into Libya to ensure the safety of U.S. personnel in Benghazi? If so, which assets did you order to Libya?
• At any time on September 11, 2012, other than ISR assets, did you provide the authority for the military to take any and all necessary measures to secure U.S. personnel, including specifically the authority to enter Libyan airspace?

It goes on so you should read the whole thing.

In relation to Benghazi, I thought I’d give you some insight into the types of crap that ends up in my inbox. This clown sends me an email almost everyday, and there’s about a hundred bloggers on the CC list, as if we’re interested in what the untrained ape has to say, but this what we’re up against in the election;

Nothing is more pathetic than ignorant republicans and tea party idiots playing Monday morning quarterback and 2nd guessing Obama’s foreign policy and military decisions – especially when they only know about 2 percent of the facts on the timeline of events surrounding the Benghazi tragedy 7 weeks ago.

Listening to Mitt Romney prattle about foreign policy and middle east diplomacy is like listening to Newt Gingrich for marital advice. Romney has hired 24 foreign policy advisors – 17 of them worked for George w. Bush during his disgraceful 8 year presidency. Romney could not find Egypt, Syria or Libya on a world map if his life depended on it. Mitt Romney could not attain President Obama’s knowledge of foreign policy if Romney lived to the age of 500.

Obama got Osama because George W. Bush and Dick Cheney couldn’t close a screen door.

I guess he forgot about the “Monday morning quarterbacking” that went on during the Bush Administration, like Harry Reid, Wesley Clark and Jon Soltz on MSNBC every night calling the “surge” a failure in Iraq before the troops had even been partially deployed. And, oh, by the way, seven weeks after 9-11-2001, the Taliban had already been removed from the seat of power in Afghanistan. Obama hasn’t even closed down any terrorist camps in Libya.

Here’s the troll’s email address. I’ve asked him to remove me from his email list, and he hasn’t so maybe you can convince him that it was a bad idea; John Rebstock jrebstock@comcast.net.

Fox News’ Catherine Herridge is reporting that they’ve uncovered a cable marked “Secret” that describes an emergency meeting the staff had in the Benghazi consulate a scant few weeks before the lethal September 11th attack which warned that the consulate would be unable to withstand a coordinated attack from the scads of terrorist training camps that were in the area;

According to a review of the cable addressed to the Office of the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Emergency Action Committee was also briefed “on the location of approximately ten Islamist militias and AQ training camps within Benghazi … these groups ran the spectrum from Islamist militias, such as the QRF Brigade and Ansar al-Sharia, to ‘Takfirist thugs.’” Each U.S. mission has a so-called Emergency Action Committee that is responsible for security measures and emergency planning.

So, we know how much of an impact that discussion of people on the ground had on Washington. If I’m not mistaken, since that meeting and the cable, the State Department withdrew military personnel from Libya who were previously designated to react to security threats.

While the administration’s public statements have suggested that the attack came without warning, the Aug. 16 cable seems to undercut those claims. It was a direct warning to the State Department that the Benghazi consulate was vulnerable to attack, that it could not be defended and that the presence of anti-U.S. militias and Al Qaeda was well-known to the U.S. intelligence community.

That’s pretty typical of all of this administration’s policies. Everyday is like today. If there’s no attack on the consulate today, there won’t be one tomorrow. Just like they were unable to prevent green-on-blue attacks in Afghanistan. When the possibility of an increase in attacks was foretold last year, they ignored it, resulting in scores of deaths of American troops this year, just to give the impression that US forces trusted the Afghans.

Who knows what other information they’re sitting on today that will blow up in our faces and cost more American lives later.