The Real Blame for Deaths in Libya

Exclusive: Rep. Darrell Issa and the Republicans are making political hay from last month’s killings in Libya of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. But the real blame traces back to Official Washington’s endless interventions in the Middle East, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

By Ray McGovern

If you prefer charade to reality, inquisition to investigation, trees over forest the House Government Oversight Committee hearing last Tuesday on “Security Failures of Benghazi” was the thing for you.

The hearing was the latest example of the myopic negligence and misfeasance of elected representatives too personally self-absorbed and politically self-aggrandizing to head off misbegotten wars and then too quick to blame everyone but themselves for the inevitable blowback.

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight.

“So what’s the problem?” a friend asked, as I bemoaned the narrowly focused, thoroughly politicized charges and countercharges at the hearing. “It’s just a few weeks before the election; it’s high political season; I found the whole farce entertaining.”

The problem? One is that the partisan one-upmanship of committee chair Rep. Darrell Issa, R-California, and others soft-pedaled the virtual certainty that the murder of four American officials in Libya on Sept. 11, 2012, was a harbinger of more such killings to come. Worse still, few of the committee members seemed to care.

As I listened to the inane discussion, I wanted to shout: “It’s the policy, stupid!” The tightest security measures reinforced by squads of Marines cannot compensate for the fallout from a stupid policy of bombing and violent “regime change” in Libya and elsewhere in the Muslim world.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, one of Issa’s top lieutenants, stated his “personal belief” that “with more assets, more resources, just meeting the minimum standards,” the lives of the Americans could have been saved. Unfortunately for Chaffetz and Issa, their star witness, State Department Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom, shot a wide hole, so to speak, into Chaffetz’s professed personal belief.

While joining with others in bemoaning State’s repeated refusal to honor pleas from the field for additional security in Libya, Nordstrom admitted that, even with additional security forces, the attack would not have been prevented. Nordstrom, a 14-year veteran of State’s Diplomatic Security Service, was quite specific:

“Having an extra foot of wall, or an extra half-dozen guards or agents would not have enabled us to respond to that kind of assault,” Nordstrom said. “The ferocity and intensity of the attack was nothing that we had seen in Libya, or that I had seen in my time in the Diplomatic Security Service.”

For any but the most partisan listener this key observation punctured the festive, Issa/Chaffetz carnival balloon that had assigned most of the blame for the Benghazi murders to bureaucratic indifference of State Department functionaries in Washington.

Also falling rather flat were partisan attempts to exploit understandable inconsistencies in earlier depictions of the Benghazi attack and twist them into a soft pretzel showing that the Obama administration is soft on terrorism or conducting a “cover-up.”

There is also the reality that diplomatic service in hostile parts of the world is never safe, especially after U.S. policy has stirred up or infuriated many of “the locals.” For decades, as populations have chafed under what they regard as U.S. military and political interference, U.S. embassies and other outposts have become targets for attacks, some far more lethal than the one in Benghazi.

To recall just a few such incidents: Iranian resentment at longtime U.S. support for the Shah led to the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran under President Jimmy Carter; anger at U.S. involvement in Lebanon led to bombings of the U.S. Embassy and a U.S. Marine barracks killing more than 300 under President Ronald Reagan; U.S. embassies in Africa were bombed under President Bill Clinton; and the violence was brought to the U.S. mainland on 9/11 and also against numerous U.S. facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq under George W. Bush.

John Brennan, the Avenger

However, in this political season, the Republicans want to gain some political advantage by stirring up doubts about President Barack Obama’s toughness on terrorism and the Obama administration is looking for ways to blunt those rhetorical attacks by launching retaliatory strikes in Libya or elsewhere.

Thus, it was small comfort to learn that Teflon-coated John Brennan, Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, had flown to Tripoli, hoping to unearth some interim Libyan government officials to consult with on the Benghazi attack. With the embassy’s help, he no doubt identified Libyan officials with some claim to purview over “terrorism.”

But Brennan is not about investigation. Retribution is his bag. It is likely that some Libyan interlocutor was brought forth who would give him carte blanche to retaliate against any and all those “suspected” of having had some role in the Benghazi murders.

So, look for “surgical” drone strike or Abbottabad-style special forces attack possibly before the Nov. 6 election on whomever is labeled a “suspect.” Sound wild?  It is.  However, considering Brennan’s penchant for acting-first-thinking-later, plus the entrée and extraordinary influence he enjoys with President Obama, drone and/or special forces attacks are, in my opinion, more likely than not. (This is the same Brennan, after all, who compiles for Obama lists of nominees for assassination by drone.)

If in Tuesday’s debate with ex-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, Obama is pressed, as expected on his supposed weakness in handling Benghazi, attacks on “terrorists,” real or “suspect,” become still more likely. Brennan and other White House functionaries might succeed in persuading the President that such attacks would be just what the doctor ordered for his wheezing poll numbers.

But what about tit-for-tat terrorist retaliation for those kinds of attacks? Not to worry.  With some luck, the inevitable terrorist response might not be possible until after the voting. Obama’s advisers would hardly have to remind him of the big but brief bounce after killing al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

Mindless vengeance has been a popular political sell since 9/11. And so have drones. Both dovetail neatly with Brennan’s simplistic approach to terrorism; namely, just kill the “bad guys” the comic-book moniker so often used for “suspected” militants, terrorists, insurgents and still other folks with an enduring hatred for America.

Where is Helen Thomas when we need her! She was the only journalist not to genuflect before Brennan’s inanities, and had the temerity to ask him directly to explain what motivates terrorists.

At an awkward press conference on Jan. 7, 2010, two weeks after Umar Farouk Abdulmuttalab (the so-called “underwear bomber”) slipped through Brennan’s counter-terrorism net and nearly brought down an airliner over Detroit, Helen Thomas tried to move the discussion beyond preventive gimmicks like improved body-imaging scanners and “behavior detection officers” at airports. She asked Brennan about motivation; why did Abdulmuttalab do what he did.

Thomas: “And what is the motivation? We never hear what you find out on why.”

Brennan: “Al Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton slaughter of innocents. They attract individuals like Mr. Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al-Qaeda has perverted Islam, and has corrupted the concept of Islam, so that he’s (sic) able to attract these individuals. But al Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death.”

Thomas: “And you’re saying it’s because of religion?”

Brennan: “I’m saying it’s because of an al-Qaeda organization that used the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way.”

Thomas: “Why?”

Brennan: “I think this is a long issue, but al-Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland.”

Thomas: “But you haven’t explained why.”

Seldom does anyone have the guts to explain why. There is virtually no adult discussion in our mass media about the underlying causes of terrorism. We are generally asked to take it on faith that many Muslims are hardwired at birth or through appeals to their Islamic faith to “hate America.” And, as Brennan would have us believe, that’s why they resort to violence.

Chickens Home to Roost

It was no surprise, then, that almost completely absent from the discussion at last Tuesday’s hearing was any attempt to figure out why a well-armed, well-organized group of terrorists wanted to inflict maximum damage on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi and kill the diplomats there.

Were it not for Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, impressionable listeners would have been left with the idea that the attack had nothing to do with Washington’s hare-brained, bomb-heavy policies, from which al-Qaeda and similar terrorist groups are more beneficiary than victim, as in Libya.

Not for the first time, Kucinich rose to the occasion at Tuesday’s hearing:

“You’d think that after ten years in Iraq and after eleven years in Afghanistan that the U.S. would have learned the consequences and the limits of interventionism. … Today we’re engaging in a discussion about the security failures of Benghazi. The security situation did not happen overnight because of a decision made by someone at the State Department. …

“We owe it to the diplomatic corps, who serves our nation, to start at the beginning and that’s what I shall do. Security threats in Libya, including the unchecked extremist groups who are armed to the teeth, exist because our nation spurred on a civil war destroying the security and stability of Libya. … We bombed Libya. We destroyed their army. We obliterated their police stations …  Al Qaeda expanded its presence.

“Weapons are everywhere. Thousands of shoulder-to-air missiles are on the loose. Our military intervention led to greater instability in Libya. … It’s not surprising that the State Department was not able to adequately protect our diplomats from this predictable threat. It’s not surprising and it’s also not acceptable. …

“We want to stop attacks on our embassies? Let’s stop trying to overthrow governments. This should not be a partisan issue. Let’s avoid the hype. Let’s look at the real situation here. Interventions do not make us safer. They do not protect our nation. They are themselves a threat to America.”

Congressman Kucinich went on to ask the witnesses if they knew how many shoulder-to-air missiles were on the loose in Libya. Nordstrom: “Ten to twenty thousand.”

And were the witnesses aware of al-Qaeda’s growing presence in Libya, Kucinich asked. One of the witnesses, Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, an Army Green Beret who led a 16-member Special Forces security team to protect Americans in Libya from February to August, replied that al-Qaeda’s “presence grows every day. They are certainly more established than we are.”

Bottom line: Americans are not safer; virtually no one is safer because of what the United States did to Libya to remove the regime of Muammar Gaddafi. Q.E.D.

I was able to listen to most of the hearing on my car radio, and found it difficult to contain my reaction to the farce. So I was glad to get a call from RT TV, asking me to come at once to the studio and comment on the RT news program at 5:00 p.m. I cannot say I enjoyed trying to draw out the dreary implications. But, in this case, they were clear enough to enable “instant analysis.” And those ten minutes on camera were, for me, like lancing a boil.

Dead Consciences

We are told we should not speak ill of the dead. Dead consciences, though, should be fair game. In my view, the U.S. Secretary of State did herself no credit the morning after the killing of four of her employees, when she said:

“I asked myself how could this happen? How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction? This question reflects just how complicated and, at times, how confounding the world can be. But we have to be clear-eyed, even in our grief.”

But some things are confounding only to those suppressing their own responsibility for untold death and misery abroad. Secretary Clinton continues to preen about the U.S. role in the attack on Libya. And, of Gaddafi’s gory death, she exclaimed on camera with a joyous cackle, “We came; we saw; he died.”

Can it come as a surprise to Clinton that this kind of attitude and behavior can set a tone, spawning still more violence?

The Secretary of State may, arguably, be brighter than some of her immediate predecessors, but her public remarks since the tragedy at Benghazi show her to be at least as equally bereft of conscience as Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and yes-we-think-the-price-of-a-half-million-Iraqi-children-dead-because-of-our-sanctions-is-worth-it Madeleine Albright.

Like Albright, Clinton appears to suffer from Compassion Deficit Disorder (CDD), especially when it comes to people who do not look like most Americans. (She does make occasional exceptions for annoying people like me who also merit her disdain).

Given that she is plagued with CDD, it would have been too much to expect, I suppose, for Clinton to have taken some responsibility for the murder of four of her employees much less the killing, maiming and destruction caused by the illegal attack on Libya. But if she really wants to get “clear-eyed,” holding herself accountable would be a good start.

Was it dereliction of duty for Clinton to have failed to ensure that people working for her would honor urgent requests for security reinforcement in places like Benghazi? I believe it was. The buck, after all, has to stop somewhere.

In my view, counterterrorism guru Brennan shares the blame for this and other failures. But he has a strong allergy to acknowledging such responsibility. And he enjoys more Teflon protection from his perch closer to the President in the White House.

The back-and-forth bickering over the tragedy in Benghazi has focused on so many trees that the forest never came into view. Not only did the hearing fall far short in establishing genuine accountability, it was bereft of vision. Without vision, the old proverb says, the people perish and that includes American diplomats.

The killings in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, validate that wisdom. If the U.S. does not change the way it relates to the rest of the world, and especially to the Muslim world, more and more people will perish.

If we persist on the aggressive path we are on, Americans will in no way be safer. As for our diplomats, in my view it is just a matter of time before our next embassy, consulate or residence is attacked.

Role of Congress

It is a lot easier, of course, to attack a defenseless Muslim country, like Libya, when a supine House of Representatives forfeits the prerogative reserved to Congress by the Constitution to authorize and fund wars or to refuse to authorize and fund them.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Kucinich noted that in Libya “we intervened, absent constitutional authority.” Most of his colleagues reacted with the equivalent of a deep yawn, as though Kucinich had said something “quaint” and “obsolete.” Like most of their colleagues in the House, most Oversight Committee members continue to duck this key issue, which directly involves one of the most important powers/duties given the Congress in Article I of the Constitution.

Such was their behavior last Tuesday, with most members preferring to indulge in hypocritical posturing aimed at scoring cheap political points. Palpable in that hearing room was one of the dangers our country’s Founders feared the most that, for reasons of power, position and money, legislators might eventually be seduced into the kind of cowardice and expediency that would lead them to forfeit their power and their duty to prevent a president from making war at will.

Many of those now doing their best to make political hay out of the Benghazi “scandal” are the same legislators who appealed strongly for the U.S. to bomb Libya and remove Gaddafi. This, despite it having been clear from the start that eastern Libya had become a new beachhead for al-Qaeda and other terrorists. From the start, it was highly uncertain who would fill the power vacuums in the east and in Tripoli.

In short, Oversight Committee members were among those in Congress who thought war on Libya was a great idea, with many criticizing Obama for not doing more, sooner, for “leading from behind” rather than “leading from the front.” Now, they’re making cheap political points from the consequences of a war for which they strongly pushed.

War? What War?

As Congress failed to exercise its constitutional duties to debate and vote on wars Obama, along with his Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton, took a page out of the Bush/Cheney book and jumped into a new war. Just don’t call it war, said the White House. It’s merely a “kinetic humanitarian action.”

You see, our friends in Europe covet that pure Libyan oil and Gaddafi had been a problem to the West for a long time. So, it was assumed that there would be enough anti-Gaddafi Libyans that a new “democratic” government could be created and talented diplomats, like Ambassador Christopher Stevens, could explain to “the locals” how missiles and bombs were in the long-term interest of Libyans.

On Libya, the Obama administration dissed Congress even more blatantly than Cheney and Bush did on Iraq, where there was at least the charade of a public debate, albeit perverted by false claims about Iraq’s WMD and Saddam Hussein’s ties to al-Qaeda.

And so Defense Secretary Panetta and Secretary of State Clinton stepped off cheerily to strike Libya with the same kind of post-war plan that Cheney, Bush, and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had for Iraq none.

Small wonder chaos reigns in Benghazi and other parts of the country. Can it be that privileged politicians like Clinton and Panetta and the many “one-percenters” in Congress and elsewhere really do not understand that, when the U.S. does what it did to Libya, there will be folks who don’t like it; that they will be armed; that there will be blowback; that U.S. diplomats, given an impossible task, will die?

Libya: Precedent for Syria

Constitutionally, the craven Congress is a huge part of the problem. Only a few members of the House and Senate seem to care very much when presidents act like kings and send off troops drawn largely by a poverty draft to wars not authorized (or simply rubber-stamped) by Congress.

Last Tuesday, Kucinich’s voice was alone crying in the wilderness, so to speak. (And, because of redistricting and his loss in a primary that pitted two incumbent Democrats against each other, he will not be a member of the new Congress in January.)

This matters and matters very much. At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 7, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Alabama, pursued this key issue with Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey.

Chafing ex post facto at the unauthorized nature of the war in Libya, Sessions asked repeatedly what “legal basis” would the Obama administration rely on to do in Syria what it did in Libya.

Watching that part of the testimony it seemed to me that Sessions, a conservative Southern lawyer, was not at all faking when he pronounced himself “almost breathless,” as Panetta stonewalled time after time. Panetta made it explicitly clear that the administration does not believe it needs to seek congressional approval for wars like Libya. At times he seemed to be quoting verses from the Book of Cheney.

Sessions: “I am really baffled … The only legal authority that’s required to deploy the U.S. military [in combat] is the Congress and the President and the law and the Constitution.”

Panetta: “Let me just for the record be clear again, Senator, so there is no misunderstanding. When it comes to national defense, the President has the authority under the Constitution to act to defend this country, and we will, Sir.”

(If you care about the Constitution and the rule of law, I strongly recommend that you view the entire 7-minute video clip.)

Lawyers all: Sessions, Panetta, Hillary Clinton, Obama. In my view, the latter three need to be called out on this. If they see ambiguity in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, they should explain the reasoning behind their flexible interpretation.

Cannot the legal profession give us some clarity on this key point before legally trained leaders with a penchant for abiding by the Constitution only when it suits them take our country to war in Syria without the authorization of our elected representatives?

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served as an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst for a total of 30 years, and now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

21 comments for “The Real Blame for Deaths in Libya

  1. October 20, 2012 at 20:49

    @RichardKanePhilaPA Sorry about my lingering computer literacy issue this is the site asking to investigate the new Helter Skelter conspiracy,
    http://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/22-22/14022-ambassador-stevens-is-a-hero-four-heroes-who-ended-a-helter-skelter-chain

  2. October 20, 2012 at 20:39

    @Rehmat
    I disagree that Israel did it I suspect someone else, but would like to thank you for mentioning who he was. If you google Ambassador Stevens feeding the crocodile we will learn more about what a good person he was.

    I think the Muslims are actually doing the US a favor demanding to investigate this Helter Skelter conspiracy.
    http://readersupportednews.org/pm-section/78-78/13868-as-the-rich-get-richer-two-who-were-once-desperately-poor-inspire

  3. Richard Braverman
    October 18, 2012 at 07:52

    I am glad that Congress is concerned about the four dead Americans. I am glad that Ray McGovern raises questions about the policy. However, no one, not even Dennis Kucinich, has mentioned the fifty thousand murder Libyans. All killed at the hands of the monsters that run the United States,i.e. “the Hope and Change”, “Compassionate Conservative”, and “the Chosen People” crowd.

  4. joe
    October 17, 2012 at 15:44

    the real blame is on darrell issa who is a terroist himself. He was arrested 30 years ago for stealing a car not once but twice and for pulling a handgun in one of the enccounters, which he blamed on his brother who went to jail. Also was investigated for an insurance scam in which he burned his car. What an asshole!!

  5. joe
    October 17, 2012 at 15:38

    fuck you

  6. gregorylkruse
    October 17, 2012 at 13:38

    Those four who died in Libya aren’t losers, they are heroes of the kinetic humanitarian action.

  7. Johnnie Favorite
    October 17, 2012 at 03:30

    ray mc govern = cia disinfo/limited hangouts

  8. October 16, 2012 at 19:08

    fab!! thanks

  9. Rick
    October 16, 2012 at 00:06

    Robert Parry has argued that al-quida played a role in helping W.Bush get a second term by the release of a bin laden tape 29 October 2004. The GOP is helping al-quida give the US a third Bush term with the election of a Republican President. As the economy improves Republicans focus on foreign policy.

  10. The Oracle
    October 15, 2012 at 20:08

    But what about the CIA presence at the Benghazi consulate?

    At the Republican congressional hearings, classified information was revealed by Republicans (information supporting a NY Times article) that the CIA had between a half-dozen and dozen operatives working out of the Benghazi consulate, probably tracking al Qaeda-affiliated Libyans in eastern Libya.

    Did these CIA “persons of interest” find out, and was this the real reason why such a ferocious attack was launched against the consulate?

    Was this why the Obama administration tried to tie the attack to protests over that inflammatory movie, in an attempt to divert attention away from the CIA presence at the Benghazi consulate, IOW, trying to protect that classified information immediately after the attack occurred?

  11. wbramh
    October 15, 2012 at 18:39

    Actually, one of the primary reasons why the consulate was destroyed and lives were lost can be traced directly to the $300,000,000 dollars that Mr. Issa and his Republican colleagues in Congress (most notably Paul Ryan’s budget committee) stripped last year from the security budget of U.S. embassies and consulates around the World.

    While I appreciate your argument about anti-U.S. Muslim anger being A cause of the attack, it begs the obvious question, why aren’t angry Muslims currently attacking Syrian consulates and embassies around the World? At this very moment, Mr. Assad is murdering Muslims (and specifically targeting innocent Muslim men, women and children) at a far higher rate than any other force on Earth. This is not to excuse U.S. policy, but it makes me wonder why an apparently well-liked U.S. Ambassador in Libya would be the target of mob wrath at the very moment Assad and his henchmen are murdering thousands of Muslims within the confines of Syria. Is it now okay to murder Muslims as long as you’re a Muslim yourself and you live in the same neighborhood? To me, that doesn’t sound like the word of any great prophet or sage, whether it’s Muhammad, Abraham, Jesus, Buddha or Swami Vivekananda. Sounds more like the justification of amoral thugs falsely usurping the name of great men.

    • F. G. Sanford
      October 15, 2012 at 19:50

      It’s an open secret that we, the Gulf Cooperation Council and NATO are arming and supporting the so-called “Freedom Fighters” in Syria, and they are being supported from staging areas in Turkey. The big joke is that their commanders have to issue orders in five different languages/dialects, because most of them aren’t even Syrians. They have trouble playing from the same sheet of music, and THEY are responsible for most of the civilian casualties. They’re the same “Libyan Islamic Fighting Group” terrorists we used to be fighting in Afghanistan. We used them against Qaddafi, and now, we’re using them against Syria. The real question is, “What was he doing in Benghazi, when the secure diplomatic headquarters is in Tripoli?” The story leaking out, if you care to follow the news, is that he met with a “representative of the Turkish government”, who he escorted to the gate shortly before the attack. Now, we’ve got all those known terrorist elements of the LIFG in Benghazi, we’re shipping some of them to Syria via Turkey, and all of a sudden, a formidable force shows up with heavy weapons right after a “Turkish representative” leaves the compound? Could be a connection…ya think? I’d recommend you read some work by legitimate experts on the subject. Robert Fisk of The Independent might be helpful. Another site that doesn’t carry Neocon propaganda is Voltairenet.org, if you’re interested. Like it or not, Mr. McGovern hit the nail right on the head. An entire company of Marines couldn’t have resisted that kind of firepower. Check the pictures. The buildings are completely gutted.

  12. wbramh
    October 15, 2012 at 18:12

    You’re quite the genius, aren’t you?
    I suppose you already know that earthquakes, typhoons and sunspots are also caused by Jews.
    FYI, the building in Benghazi is called a “consulate.”
    Look up the term.
    No one (other than you) has ever referred to the consulate as the “embassy.”

    You’re an excellent example of the fundamental problem plaguing the the Middle East ever since the very first religious zealot settled in the area. Nincompoops abound, no matter their religious affiliations.

    • Frances in California
      October 15, 2012 at 19:35

      Don’t be so quick to dismiss Rehmat, wbramh. Hillary, after all, is basically under house-arrest by Blackwater thugs. Everything she does is filtered by the Criminal Oligarchy . . . or she doesn’t do it.

      • wbramh
        October 15, 2012 at 22:00

        Of course. Hillary is being held under house arrest by Blackwater and a Hillary double is actually running the State Department and making her speeches for her. In fact, Ronald Reagan is still running the White House. Like Cheney, he can’t really die and both “men” were invented and built by a hi-tech robotics firm in Tel Aviv.
        You know, I used to believe the right wing had the market cornered on bigots and nincompoops.
        No more.

    • MA
      October 22, 2012 at 19:04

      sarcasm is one thing but wherever Americans are boldly killed in a spectacular,flawless attack as one in Bengazi, besides 9/11, suspicion on the “usual suspect” Israel is a must.

  13. nora king
    October 15, 2012 at 15:07

    Thanks, Ray. Your years of experience with the paterned self-seduction of US foreign policy should have sent you off the deep end long ago, but here you are, crisp, factual, even handed. You just can’t help your true patriotism from coming out…no retirement for patriots…

    The imperial presidiency plagues us. A House more interested in limiting access to abortion than in understanding real international events is happy to write checks that make them look tough. I agree that loss of Kucinich is huge. He is a voice in the wilderness, but at least he is on record with coherent, educated statements.

    Drones, such a huge concern for me as an air force daughter. The idea that the agency is sending drones out instead of risking Air Force lives in the air might superficially seem seductive to the daughter of an airman, but it is not. War needs to be declared to risk our lives. Back room strategies by covert entities have wrecked our standing in the world, depressed trade and caused so much suffering. When Kissinger illegally used a smarbomb on La Moneda in 1973 Chile, he actually could have been tried for treason under the law. Misuse of the military in undeclared wars is actually punishable by death. The founders didn’t want dictatorship. The Bush refinements on imperial presidential powers have muddied the waters, CIA drones a sad end run around the Constitution. Too bad Romney Ryan promise only pompous insanity.

    Keep makin seniors look smart.

  14. al wall
    October 15, 2012 at 14:24

    why would this war in Libya be of more concern than all the other illegal ones since ww2? someday, somewhere, someone may read our constitution. it is clearly too dangerous for our own citizens. but no where in it is there the slightest suggestion that congress has the right, authority, or prerogative to aborgate its responsibilities and duties by assigning them to another agency. i.e. president’s declaration of war, etc. the constitution is the bedrock of our country. to shred it is blatant treason.

  15. BARBBF
    October 15, 2012 at 14:00

    Ambassador Stevens Murdered By Terrorists He Helped Bring To Power

    The enthusiastic celebration of Arab Spring by the American left has at last been repudiated by the gruesome realities of Islamic Jihad. But don’t expect to hear much about this sudden intrusion of brutal fact into the left’s pathetic dabblings in American foreign policy. Politically embarrassing events such as the failure to protect American diplomats being murdered and dragged through the streets before cheering throngs rarely make for lasting headlines,especially not when a Democrat president has ignored advance warning of the threat which he more than anyone else was responsible for bringing about.

    (CLIP)

    “[Christopher Stevens] was an avid student of Islam and the Middle East,and consistently strove to build the proverbial bridge between our two cultures in the face of sometimes overwhelming antagonism and bitter misunderstanding,” said a friend of the Ambassador after his murder by the Muslim terrorists Steven’s had done so much to bring to power in Libya.

    But Greenfield prefers to describe Stevens as “… a Middle Eastern diplomat who typified the new breed going from the University of Berkeley and the Peace Corps to desks in Saudi Arabia,Egypt and Syria.” Years of self-delusion about Islam being a religion which befriends those who actively appease its most radical practitioners caused Stevens to rush back to Libya in April of 2011 when the efforts of the “formerly” Muslim President Obama to oust Muammar Gaddafi had begun to gather steam.

    However,it seems that Stevens succeeded only in offering his diplomatic services to many of the same jihadists who later dragged his corpse through Benghazi streets,all no doubt to the cheers of those members of al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood to whom Obama himself had so thoroughly apologized for the unforgivable religious affronts of the Islamophobic American public.

    http://www.exposeobama.com/2012/09/17/ambassador-stevens-murdered-by-terrorists-he-helped-bring-to-power/

  16. BARBBF
    October 15, 2012 at 13:46

    An excellent article. One of the few websites that posted any articles concerning the deaths of thousands of Libyan civilians and the ongoing “ethnic cleansing” of Black Libyans was the website BlackAgendaReports:

    http://blackagendareport.com/print/content/butchering-gaddafi-america%E2%80%99s-crime

    The Butchering of Gaddafi Is America’s Crime

    by BAR executive editor Glen Ford

    “Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton appeared like ghoulish despots at a Roman Coliseum, reveling in their Libyan gladiators’ butchery.”

    Last week the whole world saw, and every decent soul recoiled, at the true face of NATO’s answer to the Arab Spring. An elderly, helpless prisoner struggled to maintain his dignity in a screaming swirl of savages, one of whom thrusts a knife [4] up his rectum. These are Europe and America’s jihadis in the flesh. In a few minutes of joyously recorded bestiality, the rabid pack undid every carefully packaged image of NATO’s “humanitarian” project in North Africa – a horror and revelation indelibly imprinted on the global consciousness by the brutes’ own cell phones.

    Nearly eight months of incessant bombing by the air forces of nations that account for 70 percent of the world’s weapons spending, all culminating in the gang-bang slaughter of Moammar Gaddafi, his son Mutassim and his military chief of staff, outside Sirte. The NATO-armed bands then displayed the battered corpses for days in Misurata – the city that had earlier made good on its vow to “purge Black skin” through the massacre and dispersal of 30,000 darker residents of nearby Tawurgha – before disposing of the bodies in an unknown location.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-maArEMfImc&feature=related

  17. F. G. Sanford
    October 15, 2012 at 13:44

    Well said. Thanks, Mr. McGovern, for having the courage, the patriotism and the brutal honesty to illuminate the truth our leaders are so afraid to confront. Bravo!

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