Benghazi Whistleblower: Stop Blaming the Dead Guy for Those Murders
Remember Greg Hicks? He’s the guy who questioned Susan Rice’s dishonest talking points on Benghazi, and was retaliated against as a result. He has an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal arguing that slain ambassador Chris Stevens is being unfairly blamed for the lack of proper security:
Last week the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued its report on the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. The report concluded that the attack, which resulted in the murder of four Americans, was “preventable.” Some have been suggesting that the blame for this tragedy lies at least partly with Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the attack. This is untrue: The blame lies entirely with Washington.
. . . .
I was interviewed by the Select Committee and its staff, who were professional and thorough. I explained this sequence of events. For some reason, my explanation did not make it into the Senate report.
To sum up: Chris Stevens was not responsible for the reduction in security personnel. His requests for additional security were denied or ignored. Officials at the State and Defense Departments in Washington made the decisions that resulted in reduced security. Sen. Lindsey Graham stated on the Senate floor last week that Chris “was in Benghazi because that is where he was supposed to be doing what America wanted him to do: Try to hold Libya together.” He added, “Quit blaming the dead guy.”
Somebody get that guy another demotion!
The leftwing lies continue and the rot deepens…
Colonel Haiku (a8bbc8) — 1/23/2014 @ 8:07 amGod bless him, and strengthen him against those who prefer lies.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 1/23/2014 @ 8:09 amEverybody’s to blame except the doofuses in the Obama administration whose pipe dream (possibly literally in the case of Obama) of Arab Spring turned into Arab bloodbath? Of course.
I hope Assad stands tough and Putin stands by him. I don’t blame Iran in the least for wanting the bomb. We are not loyal to our own people. We are not competent in protecting our own people. Why should anyone else in the world expect loyalty and competence from us?
nk (dbc370) — 1/23/2014 @ 8:13 amI got the feeling that the Senate report accepted, or gave great weight to, all the spin that anyone was making, and one of the spins is to blame the Ambassador himself for getting himself killed. (that one came from the State Department, apparently)
The Ambassador had turned down – twice – an offer from the General Ham to send guards to Tripoli.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/14/191235/amb-stevens-twice-said-no-to-military.html
(Now that’s Tripoli, which the spin tends to obscure. ou have to read it very carefully to realize this is talking about Tripoli. That’s not Benghazi. But you could argue they might have traveled with him, or that would have been the next step, whatever.)
What that doesn’t get into is why he might have turned it down.
For instance, it could be that was just simply against State Department policy. Or the Libyan government wouldn’t permit it, or would have to be talked into it, and he couldn’t do that on his own.
Or the help would not be what he needed.
Sammy Finkelman (4227f2) — 1/23/2014 @ 8:21 amOther spin that the Senate reort accepts, o leans to, is that it was inspired by Cairo, and in Cairo the demonstration was about the video.
This report only endorses conclusions that nobody was fighting.
One thing nobody (important) was fighting was this half-truth that the Ambassadr had turned down one offer of sedurity help. So it got into the report.
Sammy Finkelman (4227f2) — 1/23/2014 @ 8:23 amIt would be interesting to compare reports by the senate and the House.
Meanwhile, anyone surprised that Karzai is trying to be nice to the Taliban? He knows that one day he will get zero help from the US whether he needs and wants it or not, so the sooner he doesn’t depend on it the better, but that doesn’t leave him with many good options.
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 1/23/2014 @ 8:33 amAssuming that people think it was reasonable, if not a good idea, to invade Afghanistan, I think one lesson is to never depend on other countries to finish what the US starts, at least not in the current world.
“Hello, Mr. Hicks. I’m Smith with the Internal Revenue Service and I have some questions about your tax returns from 2002-2011.”
JVW (709bc7) — 1/23/2014 @ 8:50 am3. Comment by nk (dbc370) — 1/23/2014 @ 8:13 am
I hope Assad stands tough and Putin stands by him.
Why would you want that? He’s a tyrant who, literally, uses Gestapo tactics in his prisons.
An archive was just released by Qatari-hired professionals. There hasn’t been seen such good records from a tyrannical government since the Nuremberg trials.
This is how it happened: A police official defected. His job was to notify the famiilies of dead prisoners that they were dead. The Syrian government, apparently, did not anyone escaping by having himself declared dead.
So they photographed all the dead bodies. These show evidence of torture and beatings. His job, as I interpret it, was to verify that the right person was being reported as dead, and then prepare a false cause of death to give the family.
The Nazis did that kind of thing to some political prisoners (false cause of death. That was for people that they neeeded to report were dead.)
Other tyrannies have also reported people dead of false causes, but it seems here the government was taking the extra step of making sure no one was cheating. I don’t know – maybe this goes acck some time – maybe they learned this from the KGB.
So he defected and took this archive (which, this being the early 21st century, was all digitized and capable of being copied and taken away on flash drives) with him.
The Syrian government, like the U.S. government before Bradley Manning, and even up to Edward Snowden in places, hadn’t taken precautions against individuals copying the files for their own use.
He went to the Qataris, or the Qataris were interested in him.
Now Qatar supports al Qaeda. Possibly not ISIS, (the Islamic State of Iraq and [Greater] Syria)
but what they hope will be a breakaway faction of al Qaeda.
Actually it is ISIS that is the break-away faction. Somebody got an order form Ayaman al Zawahiri in Pakistan to Al Baghdadi, who may be a real person, after all, to get out and stay out of Syria, and confine his activities to Iraq, but he refused and he now has most of the al Qaeda fighters, and al Nusra is basically a rump o a shell, pretty much joined with the Saudi-backed Islamists.
Anyway, the Qataris knew that people wouldn’t necessarily believe them, and they knew that what they had to say here was true, so they hired some really impartial people to make a report.
Sammy Finkelman (4227f2) — 1/23/2014 @ 8:55 amnk: I don’t blame Iran in the least for wanting the bomb. We are not loyal to our own people. We are not competent in protecting our own people. Why should anyone else in the world expect loyalty and competence from us.
Yes, but…
We would never be on the side of the Ayatollah anyway.
You should say maybe “I’m not surprised they are not afraid.”
The people you maybe don’t want to blame is people who otherwise would be very pro-American.
People are drifting away from the Free Syrian Army to the Saudi-backed, Prince-Bandar-run, Islamists.
By the way, the Islamicists stole American sent supplies on the pretence that the al Qaeda Islamists were going to seize them, which wasn’t true at all, they were nowehere in the vicinity,
and then the US cut off all aid to the Free Syrian Army, but in so doing it was risking not helping at all, and Saudi Arabia wanted that, so they returned the warehouses and some of the supplies to the Free Syrian Army, whatever is left of it.
More stupidity:
President Obama thinks Israel and Saudi Arabia have similar interests. There’s only this little matter of the Israeli-Palestinian dispute keeping them apart, and but for that.. (it’s in the New Yorker Magazine interview.)
I am sure this is all coming from the moles, and Saudi Arabia itself, semi-officially. They don’t have simlar interests.
Saudi Arabia does not want to see the emergence of any democracy in the Arab world – they don’t want people to get any ideas – and they also don’t want to see any let-up in the isolation of Israel, because if that was the case, people in the Arab world would ultimately start citing the Israeli political system as a model for their own government, and besides which it undercuts some of the ideology used by the Saudi monarchy..
Sammy Finkelman (4227f2) — 1/23/2014 @ 8:59 amTell me of one act of war by Assad against the United States.
Then tell me that “the jayvees” trying to take over that country have not committed acts of war against the United States.
After thatr, tell me the people who made the computer you are surfing the internet with do not use Gestapo tactics against their people.
nk (dbc370) — 1/23/2014 @ 9:02 amAnyway, I started it so I’m to blame for shifting the subject.
“Jayvees” brought me back. “The President” says that al Qaeda is now harmless. Are you calling him a liar? It was a video! And lax security measures which were the fault of the ambassador! Anybody who says otherwise is a traitor! A traitor!
BTW, did you know that the unicorn is the national animal of Scotland?
nk (dbc370) — 1/23/2014 @ 9:11 amGreetings:
At the risk of asking an unseemly question, what ever happened to the allegation that Ambassador Stevens had been raped during his ordeal at the hands of our Muslim brethren ???
As the Benghazi discussions continue, all mention of that tribulation seems to have disappeared, for factual or political reasons I do not know.
Lastly, I heard that Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Dung are reqworking the lyrics for a new version of “Four Dead in Ohio” to memorialize the Benghazi murders because they’re important too. To wit:
No soldiers or bombers coming,
11B40 (2da841) — 1/23/2014 @ 9:14 amYou’re totally on your own.
The President’s gone out golfing,
Madam Secretary’s at home.
I think it was Iran-Contra where the CIA director passed away and suddenly, before the body was even cold, a bunch of memos showed up saying it was all his idea.
Lindsey Graham…. huh. Still a douche…
steveg (794291) — 1/23/2014 @ 9:18 amIf memory serves, Ambassador Stevens was instructed by State Department officials to quit complaining about inadequate protection and to stop requesting additional security.
ropelight (ee02ef) — 1/23/2014 @ 9:20 amLindsey is with the good guys on this one. That’s him saying “Stop blaming him the dead guy”.
nk (dbc370) — 1/23/2014 @ 9:22 am“Stop blaming
nk (dbc370) — 1/23/2014 @ 9:23 amhimthe dead guy”Mr Finkelman wrote:
Mr Finkelman, the best policy we could have concerning the mess in Syria would be to keep it going on for as long as possible, without anyone winning. There’s nobody there that we should want to see win, so the best result is that so many of their fighting aged men are killed, and so much of the country is damaged that, when someone finally does emerge victorious, they’ll have so much work to do cleaning up that they won’t have the time or the resources for international mischief.
Are the regime’s people bad? Yup, sure are! Are the Islamists any better? Nope, not at all.
The foreign policy Dana (3e4784) — 1/23/2014 @ 9:36 am3, 8. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Vlad and Jinping are getting Xmas cards next year. We need help purging the scourge of mankind.
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 9:44 amMr Finkelman wrote:
Other than the Israelis — and even they are questionable — there is no one in the Middle East who is “very pro-American.” There are some people who are very pro-American dollars, but that a rather different thing.
Our greatest foreign policy failures stem from an arrogant ethno-centrism, an assumption that foreign people will think and behave according to Western models of behavior, that people reared in completely different cultures will respond like Americans. We can’t even get the French to follow our lead; how on God’s earth can we expect to get Arabs to?
The foreign policy Dana (3e4784) — 1/23/2014 @ 9:47 am12. That was an immediate report on 9/13 that did not result in further corroboration.
Walid Shoebat had a day or two later phone recorded movies of the extraction of Stevens from the lockup by the attackers. As they prepared to remove the Ambassador shouts of “He’s alive. Praise Allah.” are heard.
Another recording provided on Walid’s site at the time showed a group approaching the assembled attackers, “We’re from Morsi, don’t shoot”.
Numerous pictures were taken of the mob carrying Stevens to hospital, in a most unceremonious fashion, to be sure, but dressed. The hospital was under Islamist control, if only that evening, but he was pronounced dead on arrival.
While hard evidence is not in hand, the preponderance, at this point, would point to Steven’s capture alive in trade for the Blind Sheikh as being the likeliest goal of the attackers.
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 9:56 am19. “Our greatest foreign policy failures stem from an arrogant ethno-centrism”
Granted a number of caveats, agreed. First and foremost arrogant ethnocentricities on the part of Western and Arab experts in government.
However, an incorrigibly ignorant provincialism of American Academia encompasses this ‘arrogant ethno-centrism’ as a mere constituent malady, IMHO.
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 10:07 am“Our greatest foreign policy failures stem from an arrogant ethno-centrism”
Arrogant ethnocentrism is completely absent from France and Middle Eastern nations/cultures, just sayin.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 1/23/2014 @ 10:34 am22. Who knows how bad they’d fail if they tried to make the world safe.
Yeah, no danger of being found out.
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 10:40 amMore NASA outreach!
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 1/23/2014 @ 10:42 amJEF isn’t getting any traction with Inequality of Means so he’s pivoting again(eleventyseventh) to End Rape in College Forever!
Must be the thinking behind Decriminalize Dope. Kids’ll be to fat and baked to fart around.
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 10:46 amOT
MD in Philly (f9371b) — 1/23/2014 @ 11:30 amI’ve heard scuttle-but today that only the “front end” of healthcare(dot)gov is working, they “fixed it” enough so that people could access it and think they are signing up, but in reality the “back end” of it is still pretty nonfunctional.
I guess that would explain why there seems to be a lack of solid data on who has signed up for what.
I don’t know if it is true, and I don’t know enough about designing websites to know any better.
you would think with all the NSA talk, this would be of note;
http://narcisoscorner.blogspot.com/?view=classic
narciso (3fec35) — 1/23/2014 @ 11:31 amComment by The foreign policy Dana (3e4784) — 1/23/2014 @ 9:36 am
Mr Finkelman, the best policy we could have concerning the mess in Syria would be to keep it going on for as long as possible, without anyone winning.
Not really. And you couldn’t do that anyway, and one possible outcome might be that the principle two sides might agree to divide the country and/or enter into an alliance. In fact, I’m not sure that there’s not now an informal semi-alliance now between the Assad regime and the worst of his enemies. Assad does not want them to go away.
Saddam Hussein also let al Qaeda take over a small portion of his country after 1991, in the Kurdish area.
Also, if you do that you obviously for humanitarian reasons must be prepared to evacuate most people from the country. Only about 10% of the people from Syria are now refugees, if I am right. There’s money to take care of them, but it seems preventing or limiting refugees is the highest priority among some foreign countries.
No, the best policy is to have two or three rounds of the civil war, until all the really bad guys are gone. It might not be too hard, there’s not even too much to do. After all, if you could keep it going, you could equally well manage victories.
Are the regime’s people bad? Yup, sure are! Are the Islamists any better? Nope, not at all.
Assad should go first, because he’s got better weapons, and worse and more powerful allies, if for no other reason.
You have to plan, though, on winning the second and maybe the third round and not try too much to avoid having such rounds.
There are still are some groups to help, and there are areas outside the control of any really bad group, particularly in the suburbs of Damascus, but they are the ones who are losing.
They are Assad’s top priority. he wants to make this two sides: Al Qaeda vs Iran.
It’s actually pretty easy to use air power to stop territory from changing hands, and that could be something to do, when it comes to a direct contest between just those two. There could be some factions in the opposition that might be trusted with new territory.
The reason it’s devolving into what it is that the United States didn’t help anybody with arms, and still basically won’t. They are busy with this peace conference in Geneva. It has no purpose until Assad is prepared to leave – and by the way, saying Assad should “leave” just begs the issue – he faces war crimes trials and life in prison at best, unless they are prepared to prepare for him a place of exile, and I don’t see Kerry talking about anything like that.
Just beause Assad has not been indicted, either for the Hariri murder in Lebanon in 2005, or for what he’s done now in Syria, doesn’t mean he won’t be if he leaves power. Do they think he has the word STUPID written on his forehead??
Even if there is no evidence right now, let’s say, connecting Bashir Assad directly to the chemical weapons attacks in 2012, or the starvation and false safe conducts going on now, not to mention a whole bunch of things that happened during the course of the war, there will be if he leaves!
Obama and Kerry are just dealing in unreality, in order to avoid making decisions.
There’s no way for Bashir Assad to leave power, and keep his money and his freedom. Just like it is intolerable for him to stay in power, like Kerry says, it’s equally intolerable for him to stay out of jail. But he’s not asking him to go to jail. If Obama and Kerry were doing that, they’d at least have a policy that would have more than a snowball’s chance in hell of working.
If Assad waits too long, he could wind up dead like Qaddafi, or like Saddam Hussein. Now Assad could negotiate his way to a comfortable prison in the Hague, but he’s not being asked to!
There’s nobody there that we should want to see win, so the best result is that so many of their fighting aged men are killed,
Nobody is going to runout of menchenmaterial. Neither side did during World War I.
and so much of the country is damaged that, when someone finally does emerge victorious, they’ll have so much work to do cleaning up that they won’t have the time or the resources for international mischief.
If you have a dictatirship, what you want them to do is have some trouble exerting control, which will be the case if enemies of Assad win, and not so much for Assad.
But that situation can’t last more than 3 or 4 years.
Sammy Finkelman (1892a7) — 1/23/2014 @ 11:41 am27. The Army was already an abomination in the 70’s, but Dempsey is an overachiever.
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 11:48 amhillary clinton, who is possessed of potentially historic boobies, is personally responsible for all the dead americans what died in the benghazi
why?
cause she was in charge it was on her watch and she failed
Hillary Clinton failed and people were slaughtered cause she and her potentially historic boobies dropped the ball
simple as that
happyfeet (c60db2) — 1/23/2014 @ 11:51 am“It’s actually pretty easy to use air power to stop territory from changing hands”
Sammy – How do you think Russia would feel about that?
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 1/23/2014 @ 11:52 am28. TLDR. Think small to start and do that something well.
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 11:56 amhttp://twitchy.com/2014/01/23/seriously-wtf-nyt-magazines-planet-hillary-cover-will-haunt-your-dreams-pic/
narciso (3fec35) — 1/23/2014 @ 12:02 pmOrwell is a how to guide;
http://twitchy.com/2014/01/23/seriously-wtf-nyt-magazines-planet-hillary-cover-will-haunt-your-dreams-pic/
narciso (3fec35) — 1/23/2014 @ 12:03 pm13. Comment by steveg (794291) — 1/23/2014 @ 9:18 am
I think it was Iran-Contra where the CIA director passed away and suddenly, before the body was even cold, a bunch of memos showed up saying it was all his idea.
I think he developed what look like a stroke – difficultly in speaking – right before he was going to testify before Congress soon after Iran contra and a brain tumor was soon diagnosed, and he soon got an operation that completely ruined his abiity to communicate and think.
There were no memoes from casey that I remember but Bob Woodward visited him in the hospital – or maybe I shold say claimed to have visited him in the hospital – and claimed Casey had nodded his head when he asked if he knew about the diversion of funds to the contras.
He didn’t, because Poindexter and North didn’t tell anyone – and no money from the sale of weaons to Iran ever went to the contras (some money came from the Sultan of Brunei if I am right.)
The money went into what they said was the wrong bank account. Supposed to be off by 1 digit but I don’t know more about that story. somehow nobody noticed and tried to retrieve the money?
White House Chief of Staff and former Sectetary of the Treasury and Merrill Lynch head Donald Regan later suspected that North and Poindexter just intended to run off with the money from the profit from the sale of weapoons to Iran after January 20, 1989 – I mean nobody would even know this money existed.
Sammy Finkelman (1892a7) — 1/23/2014 @ 12:03 pm“Our greatest foreign policy failures stem from an arrogant ethno-centrism”
The Great Satan must seek to understand people and the ROOT CAUSES of their problems and conflicts.
Arrogant ethnocentrism does not exist outside the borders of the United States.
Lazy faculty lounge tripe now peddled to at least three generations of American students.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 1/23/2014 @ 12:06 pm34. Sister Toldjah “..we have reached peak stupid.”
Needs a synonym, e.g., ascended, surmounted, but on target.
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 12:16 pmThere was a memo about the sale of arms to Iran from Casper Weinberger that was supposed to be contemporaneous and had been deposited in the Library of Congress that was the basis of his indictment for perjury by Lawrence Walsh right before the 1992 election, which caused many newspaper stories about Bush not having been “out of the loop”
But it was the memo that was a lie, not his testimony so much.
The memo claimed that President Ronald Reagan had approved the sale of arms to Iran (nothing about the contras there by the way – Poindexter never said anything about that to Reagan) on January 6, 1986. Reagan’s own diary indicated he had only done that on January 17, 1986, after some details had been changed and the weapons were no longer going directly from the Defense Department to Iran.
Poindexter had actually had to tear up a Presidential finding which had prepared dated January 6. He claimed later it had been prepared by mistake. You could say he was so sure he would get his authorization, he didn’t want to lose a second.
Weinberger had further attributed to Israel the idea to sell arms to Iran in his memo. Which nobody else said. Israel had sold some arms to Iran itself, it is believed in exchange for allowing Iranian Jews to leave the country, or possibly because they thought it was less dangerous, or less permanent enemy than Iraq. But none of the other people involved described the origin of the idea that the U.S. should sell arms to Iran as coming from them, and this wouldn’t have been touted to Reagan or others as an Israeli proposal, at least without a lot of detail.
Probably Prince Bandar got him to write that in his fake contempory memo. He was a friend of his. Or Weinberger did it out of his own animus.
He also mentioned Vice President Bush was at the January 6, 1986 meeting, which he was.
The spin was that this proved that Bush I lied when he had said that he was “out of the loop” but back in 1986 “out of the loop” didn’t mean ignorant, but out of he chain of responsibility, and I can prove that by the way the phrase is used in the 1986 Almanac of American Politics’ profile of Senator Charles Mathias of Maryland.
Sammy Finkelman (1892a7) — 1/23/2014 @ 12:28 pm31 “It’s actually pretty easy to use air power to stop territory from changing hands”
Comment by daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 1/23/2014 @ 11:52 am
Sammy – How do you think Russia would feel about that?
Putin already said – at the time when Obama was threatening air strikes on Syria be3cause of Syria’s use of chemical weapons – that he wouldn’t interfere.
The only thing is, he didn’t want to actually endorse it, which Obama wanted. (in the form of voting for a United Nations Security resolution authorizing it.)
Obama wanted the UN resolution because of his concern for legality.
I know people say he doesn’t have that much concern for legality, but everything he does, he does come up with some legal justification. He might care more about “international law” anyway.
It’s also political cover. He wanted Congress to vote for it too.
Sammy Finkelman (1892a7) — 1/23/2014 @ 12:33 pmNarciso prolly already knows all this but for the rest of us:
http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/3284/alawites-syria-alevis-turkey
My guess is Hizb`allah are mainstream Shia.
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 12:33 pmComment by gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 9:56 am
the preponderance, at this point, would point to Steven’s capture alive in trade for the Blind Sheikh as being the likeliest goal of the attackers.
That wuld be totally unrealistic, and everybody would know it. Asking for his release is adifferent story – making an unmetable demand is a way of covering up the motive.
I think the motive here was simply to kill him, either because he was too good at getting the Libyan government to act responsibily you might say, or because he (and the United States in general) was interfering with the shipment of SAMs to the bad rebels in Syria.
Sammy Finkelman (1892a7) — 1/23/2014 @ 12:36 pmComment by 11B40 (2da841) — 1/23/2014 @ 9:14 am
At the risk of asking an unseemly question, what ever happened to the allegation that Ambassador Stevens had been raped during his ordeal at the hands of our Muslim brethren ???
I think evidence developed that that didn’t happen. The pictures may havehelped dispel that notion. There wass nothinbg at all supporting that idea.
It was just more disinformation, designed to make it look like it was crowd gone mad rather than somethomng planned.
As the Benghazi discussions continue, all mention of that tribulation seems to have disappeared, for factual or political reasons I do not know.
I think factual, but it is important to know why.
There never was any good source that could be pinned down that said that in the first place.
Sammy Finkelman (1892a7) — 1/23/2014 @ 12:40 pmI think the Ayatollah issued a religious ruling that Alawites are to be considered Shiites in good standing.
Sammy Finkelman (1892a7) — 1/23/2014 @ 12:47 pm41. As an I(SN)TP on the MBTI I do respect a compulsion to place the world of ‘fact’ into a network, a web of belief.
But for the most part I’ve no real clue how SF modifies his beliefs in their web. Certainly the step of verification re: ‘fact’ is weak-to-flawed.
That said, the biggest weakness is insufficient intellectual curiosity.
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 12:51 pmMr Finkelman wrote:
You really should read my site, which does have a lot on this.
There is no reason we couldn’t find a way for Mr Assad to go into some sort of comfortable exile, as long as he stayed out of politics. This was almost routinely done for people like Jean-Claude Duvalier, Augusto Pinochet and Idi Amin; the bargain was to leave before the end, in order to stop the killing, and you get away with what you got away with.
Trouble is, while such arrangements have been made in the past, we are too good and noble to do them today. And even if somehow Mr Assad was granted comfortable asylum somewhere, he still has a whole bunch of subordinates who’d get no special treatment. For them, there are only two choices: fight on and maybe win, or surrender and definitely lose, and know that their only fate is the jail cell or the grave.
The blogger Dana (3e4784) — 1/23/2014 @ 12:54 pmQuick, without looking, how many legs does the stool have left?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-23/sorry-permabulls-2014-capex-forecast-grow-slowest-pace-four-years
Gong!!!
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 1:07 pmAmb. Stevens was responsible for the NJ bridge closing too. But what diff does it make….now.
Rich (ddc02c) — 1/23/2014 @ 1:08 pmComment by MD in Philly (f9371b) — 1/23/2014 @ 8:33 am
Dead on, Doc.
askeptic (b8ab92) — 1/23/2014 @ 1:44 pmKarzai figures that with enough dough, he can buy the Taliban off long enough to ensure the safety of himself and his family.
Comment by The foreign policy Dana (3e4784) — 1/23/2014 @ 9:36 am
In that scenario, it is not inconceivable that Syria would implode, and the people would clammor to become part of “Greater Lebanon”.
askeptic (b8ab92) — 1/23/2014 @ 1:49 pmOh, the Irony!
Comment by gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 10:07 am
One leads to the other.
askeptic (b8ab92) — 1/23/2014 @ 1:54 pmAfter all, who feeds all of those warped minds into the bureaucracy?
And then the bureaucracy feeds retiring FSO’s and upper-level GS’s back into academe as visiting scholars.
Comment by Sammy Finkelman (1892a7) — 1/23/2014 @ 12:03 pm
That’s probably what Regan would have done in their places, but I don’t think men of the Naval Service (which includes officers of the USMC), have such low ethics and morals as are found daily on Wall Street.
askeptic (b8ab92) — 1/23/2014 @ 1:59 pmpart and parcel of the entire fracas;
http://www.businessinsider.com/three-questions-everyone-should-asksnowden-2014-1
narciso (3fec35) — 1/23/2014 @ 3:20 pm36-“Faculty lounge tripe” had me spitting a soda stream.
mg (31009b) — 1/23/2014 @ 3:52 pmOT: http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/23/us-usa-politics-dsouza-idUSBREA0M22W20140123
If there is any doubt in your mind a new more virulently aggressive approach is warranted to deal with Progressives and their minions in the Bureaucracy, reconsider.
At this time, I am of the belief all is fair game.
Conservatives targeted for taxes, criminal charges, Democrats like Rangel, Obama, … not even a peep.
Wake Country Club Republicans, eventually they come for you too.
Rodney King's Spirit (ca9e04) — 1/23/2014 @ 4:03 pmhttp://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/01/23/conservative-activist-okeefe-claims-cuomo-targeting-his-group/
Rodney King's Spirit (ca9e04) — 1/23/2014 @ 4:06 pm… but turds like Ryan, Boehner, McCain still talk bipartisanship.
Frankly if they made the effort to make their Progressive colleagues simply disappear, I’d be more respectful and compassionate.
They just don’t get it. This is war.
Rodney King's Spirit (ca9e04) — 1/23/2014 @ 4:07 pm56. “This is war”.
Second. While not a man of action, I suggest when the time comes, we shoot the known, probable, and potential Quislings first and let God sort them out.
I hate worrying about my back.
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 4:19 pmWith Hillary now gearing up in earnest for ’16 the chances of fair and accurate reporting of the Benghazi fiasco from the media only are slightly less than zero, and the chances of Harry Reid’s Senate truly calling spades on who’s responsible are about the same as Sharron Angle’s and Christine O’Donnell’s chances of becoming MENSA members or the Chairs of La Raza.
Lawrence Westlake (4fc30a) — 1/23/2014 @ 4:40 pmSpeak of Screwtape:
http://hotair.com/archives/2014/01/23/huckabee-on-the-rino-label-the-nazis-devalued-people-too-you-know/
Goldbach’s conjecture is become tautological.
Hucklesbee gets gut shot.
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 4:50 pmWhile my backing of Michele B. in the run up to the 2012, as well as a few antics of her own, were occasioned with mirth few of those found only in pants have worn them as well.
http://moonbattery.com/?p=41557
I’ll tell you what’s funny, the honorific ‘Honorable’ applied to these public ticks.
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 5:05 pmHad she stuck on that tack, and defunding Obamacare,
narciso (3fec35) — 1/23/2014 @ 5:08 pmhow naive we were, she was on the right track,
35. 51. “White House Chief of Staff and former Secretary of the Treasury and Merrill Lynch head Donald Regan later suspected that North and Poindexter just intended to run off with the money from the profit from the sale of weapons to Iran after January 20, 1989 – I mean nobody would even know this money existed.”
Comment by askeptic (b8ab92) — 1/23/2014 @ 1:59 pm
That’s probably what Regan would have done in their places, but I don’t think men of the Naval Service (which includes officers of the USMC), have such low ethics and morals as are found daily on Wall Street.
Not what Regan himself would have done, but what his experience in Wall Street, where they have to be very careful about embezzlement, about what people might do when lots of money wass entrusted to thm, about what can happen when there’s no audit trail, led him to worry or wonder about.
He said that. I think it was his actual opinion that that was their goal. his idea was, I guess people might ask questions till Jan 20, 1989, but then most of the internal e-mails would be destroyed or archived.
I didn’t really think so, when I read that.
Sammy Finkelman (1892a7) — 1/23/2014 @ 5:19 pm4. “What that doesn’t get into is why he might have turned it down.”
Now I read the Wall Street Journal op-ed article.
The reason Stevens turned down the offer, is first, State Department Undersecretary Patrick Kennedy had turned down an offer to have some people specially assigned to the embassy. State Department protocol required him to decline Gen. Ham’s two offers to do so, which were made after Aug. 6 – if they were really made.
Earlier, the guards were there, and had diplomatic immunity, because their stated mission was to protect the Embassy. Kennedy wanted
to change that to training Libyan forces and have Libyans protect the embassy.
Now if the special security force was continued under Defense Department auspices, which was General Ham’s offer, the security guards would lose their diplomatic immunity, and neither was there a status of forces agreement, meaning if they used any weapons, they would be they would be subject to Libyan law.
He mentioned the incident in Pakistan in 2011 when an American security contractor killed Pakistani citizens in self-defense, precipitating a crisis in U.S.-Pakistani relations. Or they might be arested for spying.
From the Op-ed piece:
Also:
Sammy Finkelman (1892a7) — 1/23/2014 @ 6:03 pm58. Yeah, and if we’re not plagued with Republican women wanting to head a ticket, we’ve got the scourge of Republican wives like those of Daniels and McDonnell.
/sarc off
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 6:17 pmYes, those who derided Christine, with a little too much relish, what is their view of Maureen,
narciso (3fec35) — 1/23/2014 @ 6:27 pmPersona non grata:
http://www.jammiewf.com/2014/ted-nugent-obama-a-subhuman-mongrel/
Jammie, reality check, you do not live in a Jain temple.
Ted is just making extry sure he doesn’t get shot by one more rabid than he(see 57).
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 6:41 pm65. I caught, some weeks back, a radio interview of the Party fave to face Al ‘the Fool’ Franken.
Money quote expressed his deep admiration for fellow businessmen, patriot Senators Bob Corker and Ron Johnson.
I hurled but did manage to pull over without incident.
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 6:47 pmTed, has a too vivid view of language, which isn’t helpful,
narciso (3fec35) — 1/23/2014 @ 6:48 pm68. Well if we could trust him to take a shot, or use 24 gauge wire with the appropriate twist, or a decorative letter opener then yeah, getting him into Sen. Levin’s chair would be a good thing.
Short of that I don’t see the bother.
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 7:34 pmWhile there may now be an even odds chance for a GOP Senate next year its a nearly empty victory.
It will mean a number of empty chairs in Government, little more.
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/23/2014 @ 7:49 pmMitch Daniels wife no patriot she
she must have other qualities
happyfeet (8ce051) — 1/23/2014 @ 9:17 pmIt is sort of disturbing to watch Sammy introduce the subject of Iran Contra to the thread and then watch him have a conversation with himself about it.
daleyrocks (bf33e9) — 1/23/2014 @ 10:11 pmI’m going to write a bookmarklet to hide Sammy’s comments. I don’t want to read them anymore.
Tanny O'Haley (c0a74e) — 1/24/2014 @ 12:07 amhttp://userscripts.org/scripts/show/37488
Install Firefox, and then add those two items to it.
I have no beef with Sammy, but there are times that this helps you focus on the commenters you enjoy the most.
Dustin (4f8389) — 1/24/2014 @ 3:35 amhttps://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/
Oops. Here is the other link I referenced in my previous comment.
Dustin (4f8389) — 1/24/2014 @ 3:37 amhere we go again;
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/investigations/bob-menendez-federal-probe-nj-senator-i-team-241721381.html
narciso (3fec35) — 1/24/2014 @ 3:51 am“The absent are always at fault.”
Smock Puppet, Gadfly, Racist-Sexist Thug, and Bon Vivant All In One Package (225d0d) — 1/24/2014 @ 5:04 am– old proverb –
diGenova and Toensing call your office… “NO, NOTHING SUSPICIOUS HERE: Obama Critic Dinesh D’Souza Indicted By Eric Holder’s DOJ”
Colonel Haiku (2603b5) — 1/24/2014 @ 5:25 amIn Davos the talk is “It feels so like 1914.”
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/24/us-markets-global-idUSBRE96S00E20140124
Better drag that ox cart out of the scrub brush and sand blast the detritus. Road trip!
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/24/2014 @ 6:09 amThe SOI ENSO index which had been stuck on Neutral all thru the Fall has made a strong move since early January into the margin of La Nina territory.
Expect Western drought and frigid Mainland east of the Rockies to settle in ’til Spring.
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/24/2014 @ 6:51 amWhere were we? Oh, ibn Dunham and Hill were in on Brennan’s scheme:
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2014/01/documents-leaked-by-egyptian-authorities-implicate-obama-and-hillary-in-supporting-terrorists/
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/24/2014 @ 6:54 amCivil Disobedience is–not giving a rip either:
http://bearingarms.com/connecticut-scrambles-for-amnesty-plan-after-realizing-that-citizens-are-refusing-to-register-their-assault-weapons-and-high-capacity-magazines/
gary gulrud (05efc5) — 1/24/2014 @ 7:05 amThe “offer” by General Ham may have been informal – how did the Democrats even find out about it? The State Department (perhaps cables were sent mentioning it) in which case they didn’t tell people why it had to be turned down.
Sammy Finkelman (d22d64) — 1/28/2014 @ 12:14 pm