Monday, February 11, 2013

Our Commander In Chief is MIA

The confirmation hearings for John Brennan for CIA head as well as Benghazi testimony from current CIA head Leon Panetta and General Dempsey have not only raised more questions about the Benghazi terror attack, but they proved our commander-in-chief was missing in action.

Panetta testified "He (Obama) knew generally what was deployed out there but as to specifics about time, etc., etc., he left that up to us." Yes, Obama the great military tactician who made the critical decision to kill Osama bin-Laden made no decisions when our embassy in Libya came under attack.

General Dempsey testimony was as follows: McCain interrupted, "You never heard of Ambassador Stevens's repeated warnings?" "I had, through General Ham," responded Dempsey, referring to the commander of AFRICOM. "But we never received a request for support from the State Department, which would have allowed us to put forces--" McCain snapped "So it's the State Department's fault?" "I'm not blaming the State Department," Dempsey responded. Dempsey later admitted it would have been a huge oversight if Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had not seen any of the cables from Ambassador Stevens wanting more security.

It was also revealed that Panetta and Dempsey supported a gunrunning program from Libya to Syria (via Turkey) to support rebel fighters. Clinton and the White House denied this activity had ever taken place since it has been widely reported that this led directly to guns getting in the hands of terrorists who attacked the U.S. embassy in Libya.

Brennan has also received scrutiny over his anti-terrorism drone program which has escalated under Obama’s watch. Some concerns raised are as follows: 1. the administration’s approval to kill American terrorists abroad without due process. Remember the Left’s outrage over the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation techniques (EIT) and their claims this was violation of the civil liberties of terrorists. Liberals cannot have it both ways; if EIT was a violation of civil liberties than so is killing terrorists, especially Americans. To date, the Obama administration has killed three Americans – two known terrorists and one who was deemed collateral damage 2. The drone program of killing terrorists has replaced the capture and interrogation methods used under Bush. This means our intelligence department is obtaining no intelligence. The Obama administration has only captured one al Qaida terrorist to date. 3. The drone program is high-profile and attracts a lot of media attention, but the Obama Administration has relied on its use extensively while neglecting other parts of valuable counter-terrorism strategy – such as gaining intelligence from capturing terrorists and drone strikes do nothing to stop radical ideology, state sponsorship of terrorism, or terrorist’s ability to exploit ungoverned spaces. 4. Perhaps the biggest concern of the CIA during the Brennan years is it has suffered from both leaks and a casual attitude towards national security secrets that may have harmed American interests abroad. Many leaks were made to the New York Times so they can publish stories about Obama being tough on terrorism.

So we now know a little more about the truth. First, Obama was too busy campaigning to be bothered by the Benghazi attack. Secondly, Obama is also unwilling to admit his gunrunning strategy to Syria provided the terrorists the weapons to carry out the attack in Benghazi. And finally, if all of this is not bad enough the Obama drone policy is not only hypocritical about civil liberties, it is failing in many ways to obtain intelligence and contain the spread of extremism.

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