The headlines sound promising: The entire Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Republicans and Democrats, has asked the State Department to explain what went wrong before, during and after the 9/11/12 attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi, during which the US ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed.

But there's a catch. The bi-partisan letter that went out on September 27 says: "It would be very helpful to us if we could receive responses and a briefing on these matters during the week of November 13th when the Senate is expected to go back into session."

The election is on November 6th.

Benghazigate represents a major failure of intelligence and competence in national security by the Obama administration and the American people require all the facts on the table before they choose the next commander-in-chief....

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What's that they say about a cartoon being worth 884 words?

This week's syndicated column:

Who said the following: “The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam.”

Iran’s Ahmadinejad? Egypt’s Morsi? Some little-known, fatwa-flinging cleric increasing the bounty on Salman Rushdie’s head?

None of the above. The words are President Obama’s, and he spoke them this week to the U.N. General Assembly.

No Big Media outlet reported this stunning pronouncement. It’s as if Ronald Reagan addressed the National Association of Evangelicals in 1983 and the media failed to report that he used the phrase “evil empire.” To make the comparison more direct, imagine if a Republican president declared that “the future must not belong to those who slander the messiah of Christianity” – or, for that matter, the prophet of Latter-day Saints. We would have heard all about it, and for the rest of our lives.

Of course, the Islam-Christianity comparison isn’t a perfect match, given the peculiar definition of “slander” under Islamic...

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The great Robert Conquest, whose work provides one of the windows into my forthcoming book American Betrayal, put it so elegantly:

"Not even high intelligence and a senstive spirit are of any help once the facts of a situation are deduced from a political theory and not vice versa."

In a national security context, this is called politicizing the intelligence -- making the facts fit a political narrative rather than allowing the facts to construct a narrative of their own.

The Obama administration's repeated, stubborn, hectoring insistence that the Youtube video "Innocence of Muslims" caused murder and mayhem throughout the Muslim world since 9/11/12, including the jihadist assault on the Benghazi consulate, represents one of the most flagrant displays of this malpractice, and also one of the most serious breaches of public trust. President Obama, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Jay Carney and other Obama officials all engaged in this transparent and now failed Big Lie. And so, Fox News is...

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A long overdue update on the Smolensk airplane "accident" that destroyed the heart of the pro-Western Polish leadership in April 2010 on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet massacre of 20,000 Polish officers known as the Katyn Forest Massacre. (Some earlier coverage here, here, here and here.)

The shocking news this week is that a snapped rivet was found during...

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Here is my most recent piece for Dispatch International, the brand new weekly newspaper edited by Lars Hedegaard, available in English, Danish, Swedish and German. (Subscription information here)

Our motto is taken from Thomas Jefferson: Freedom of the press cannot be limited without being lost.

"Now Playing in Washington: More Lies from Tariq Ramadan"

WASHINGTON, DC -- When I read that Tariq Ramadan would be speaking at a local bookstore in Washington, DC on September 11, the juxtaposition gave me a jolt. Was Ramadan – the world-famous and Left-celebrated Muslim “intellectual” banned from France for six months in the 1990s for alleged terror ties, and later from the US for six years (2004-2010) for reasons said to include charitable donations to HAMAS – really an appropriate choice for this darkest of anniversaries? But there was something...

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All you need to know about the about Mona Eltahawy (with spray can) is that she describes herself as "a liberal, secular Muslim" -- except when it comes to free speech.

On Wednesday the 26th and Thursday the 27th at 8pm, Glenn Beck's The Blaze TV will debut a two-part documentary, The Project, which I've had the privilege of participating in with an all-star cast, including: Michele Bachmann, Stephen Coughlin, M. Stanton Evans, Louie Gohmert, Sebastian Gorka, John Guandolo, Andrew C. McCarthy, Patrick Poole, and Erick Stackelbeck.

Below watch two individuals -- one a NY state senator, one an Israeli UN ambassador -- stand up and walk out on enemies of civilization. Both men are both to be commended.

But what about the rest who remained?



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Army chief of staff Odierno's so-called response to SSG Sitton's letter is below.

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More on the story of SSG Sitton from the Tampa Tribune -- specifically, the US military's response:

LARGO — Cheryl Sitton's questions are simple. To her, the answers should be, too.

And so far, she's not satisfied with what top U.S. military officials have explained in the wake of the death of her son, U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Matthew Sitton. So she'd like the chance to talk to them in person.

On June 4, Matthew Sitton wrote a letter to U.S. Rep. C.W. Bill Young. In it, Sitton asked for help. For months, he wrote, his platoon had been mandated to patrol empty fields and compounds littered with explosives. His objections, and requests for an explanation, were disregarded. He was told to quit complaining.

About two months after writing that email, Sitton stepped on an explosive and died. He was 26.

Young, deeply disturbed by Sitton's message and subsequent death, sought...

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Michelle Malkin and Ilana Mercer have ripped David Brooks and Peggy Noonan for either slobbering over Obama or raking Mitt Romney, both along MSM lines, all the while impersonating or assuming a conservative guise. Something to take into consideration, too, is the heavily oracular voice, particularly notable on Noonan's part.

Well, how did PN's reading of the fiery signs and entrails fare last time around?

I went back to the Noonan's "case for Barack Obama" piece of October 30, 2008, where she possibly, coyly, maybe, maybe not joined a line of other conservative reputationists...

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An Army team carries the transfer case containing the remains of Army Staff Sgt. Matthew S. Sitton of Largo, Fla., upon arrival at Dover Air Force Base, Del., on August 4, 2012.

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Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) joins Rep. C.W. "Bill" Jones (R-FL) in calling for a withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan before the 2014 deadline.

From the Congressional Record, September 19, 2012:

BRING OUR TROOPS HOME IN 2013

(Mr. JONES asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute.)

Mr. JONES. Mr. Speaker, today I had the privilege and honor to visit Walter Reed Hospital to say thank you to our wounded from Afghanistan and Iraq, and I saw those who have lost both arms and legs. It’s just so sad to go there.

That brings me today to the floor to thank the chairman of the Armed Services Appropriations Committee, C.W. ‘‘Bill’’ Young, who has come...

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SSG Matthew Sitton (1986-2012)

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Below is an extraordinary, heart-stopping and historic letter. It is a letter SSG Matthew Sitton sent to U.S. Rep. C.W. "Bill" Young after his commanders in Afghanistan told him to "quit whining" about orders to lead patrols without objective "through,  for lack of a better term, basically a mine field on a daily basis," as Sitton wrote. Twice daily basis, in fact. On August 2, 2012, Sitton and another US soldier were killed in one the IED-riddled field he spoke of. Eighty-one-year-old Rep. Young, who attends the same church in Florida...

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This week's syndicated column:

What’s wrong with the following Associated Press headline? “Charlie Hebdo cartoon spurs French gov’t to order embassies, schools to close.”

Cartoons of Muhammad in the satirical French weekly Charlie Hebdo didn’t send France into lockdown. Their publication this week was a simple exercise in free speech on Islam, which Muslims in France and everywhere else in the world oppose as a violation of Islamic law (Shariah). It is Islamic rage over the fact that Islamic law is not dominant everywhere, all the time – Muslims’ signal weapon against a timid West – that drove French authorities to take security precautions, not the publication of cartoons.

What’s wrong with the following headline? “Cinemaniac: Feds question loon who set Muslim world on fire.” Again, this headline in the New York Post leaves the actual pyromaniacs out of the picture, instead demonizing an individual who made a film about Muhammad – his lawful right. Muslims set “the world” (American...

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What's wrong with the following statement?

Charlie Hebdo, the satirical French weekly, published a page of Mohammed cartoons today, sending France into lockdown.

What's wrong is this: The publication of the cartoons did not send France into lockdown. The publication of the cartoons simply exercised freedom of expression, which Muslims in France and everywhere else in the world contest as a violation of Islamic law. It is uncontrollable Islamic rage and aggression over the fact that Islamic law is not dominant everywhere all the time -- their signal weapon against the timidity of the West -- that drove French authorities to take security precautions -- particularly with Friday "prayers" coming around again. This is war. Islam is attempting  to dominate the West by attacking the basis of the West: freedom of speech. Charlie Hebdo, gonzo, "alternate," Leftist (probably)...

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AP Photo: Lance Cpl. Greg Buckley Jr.'s father Greg, foreground, and mother Marina are escorted from St. Agnes Cathedral after his funeral Mass, Saturday, Aug. 18, 2012, in Rockville Center, N.Y.. Buckley Jr. was barely 21 years old when he was killed in an attack by a policeman in Afghanistan.

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Paul Sperry rakes the Pentagon response to jihad inside the wire -- more "sensitivity" training -- in the New York Post this week (must have been Prince Talal's day off).

Top officials believe culturally offensive behavior is the motivation behind the killings, so it’s stepped up Islamic sensitivity training for our troops.

"Top officials" should be relieved of duty, ASAP. They have lost their minds if they ever had any. Or, to be more accurate,...

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During Geert Wilders' Islamic blasphemy trial, which the Dutch judiciary conducted as proxies of the umma (transnational Islam) -- Wilders was acquitted, finally -- Afshin Ellian, an Iranian-born, 46-year-old law professor, poet, columnist and professor of citizenship, social cohesion and multiculturalism at the University of Leiden, gave an interview to Metronieuws. The invaluable Gates of Vienna translated the 2010 interview with Ellian, which contains what I find to be one of the most striking observations of our time:



Ellian:

"If you cannot say that the Islam is a backward religion and that Muhammad is a criminal, then you are living in an Islamic country, my friend, because there you...

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In this address (click "Read More" if you don't see it), the excellent Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MI) makes the crucial, overlooked connections between Islamic sharia speech restrictions -- as systemically promoted by the Islamic bloc countries of the OIC and the Obama administration -- and how the violence across the Middle East this week fits into the OIC-Obama-Clinton strategy to enforce sharia speech restrictions even on Americans, despite our First Amendment rights.   

It's important to realize sharia's prohibition of criticism of Islam is basic Islam: There is nothing "radical" about it. Indeed, it is this basic Islamic censorship that is at the crux of why Islam itself -- not "Islamism," not "radical Islam," not "Islamists," but Islam -- is an existential threat to the survival of any free society. It is why free societies, once penetrated by a Muslim demographic over 1 percent, begin to lose their liberties as a means of "accommodating" -- appeasing --  their...

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Joseph E. Schmitz (above), former Inspector General of the Pentagon and fellow Team B II co-author of Shariah: The Threat to America, elevates our way of thinking about the divide between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney regarding the essentially American principle of free speech codified in the First Amendment.

He writes:

The dichotomy between the Obama approach and the Romney approach is a classic manifestation of what C.S. Lewis coined as, “The Principle of First and Second Things.”   First things are core values that define who you are.  Second things, e.g., survival and money, are also very important.  According to the Principle of First and Second Thing, if you only focus on second things, as important as they are, in the end you fail to achieve those second things -- and in the process you lose your first things.  “You...

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Ansur al Sharia (Guardians of Sharia) is believed to have been involved in the military assault on the US consulate in Benghazi on 9/11 that killed four Americans including Ambassador Christtopher Steven. The Iranian government Press TV video shows a (very) armed demonstration in Benghazi in early June 2012 by Ansur al Sharia to demand a sharia state. As the correspondent sums up: "Libyan Islamic groups who played a major role in the revolution that unseated dictator Muamar Qaddafi were severely repressed under his rule. They believe that the revolution was started as part of the jihad against God's enemies and that process is ongoing until the country is totally and utterly liberated from non-Islamic values."

A decent summary of the scene, despite the source.

Why can't John McCain get it through his head?

...

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This week's syndicated newspaper column:

Two historic attacks on U.S. territory marked the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks – and what happened? The Obama administration surrendered our constitutional principles.

The first was a “blasphemy” riot that breached the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, whereupon thugs burned the American flag and hoisted in its place the traditional black flag of Islam that flies over al-Qaida and other jihad movements.

The second was a military-style assault against the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, believed to have been mounted by a militia known as Ansar al-Sharia (“Partisans of Islamic Law”), which formed in the U.S.-supported anti-Gadhafi revolution. Christopher Stevens, U.S. ambassador to Libya and former point man to the al-Qaida-linked revolutionaries, and three staff...

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Shameful.

From Reuters:

General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, spoke with Pastor Terry Jones by phone on Wednesday and asked him to withdraw his support for a film whose portrayal of the Prophet Mohammad has sparked violent protests - including one that ended with the death of America's envoy to Libya. "In the brief call, Gen. Dempsey expressed his concerns over the nature of the film, the tensions it will inflame and the violence it will cause," Dempsey's spokesman, Colonel Dave Lapan, told Reuters. "He asked Mr. Jones to consider withdrawing his support for the film." U.S. military officials are concerned that the film could inflame tensions in Afghanistan, where 74,000 U.S. troops are fighting. The Taliban earlier on Wednesday called on Afghans to prepare for a fight against Americans and urged insurgents...

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From a joint statement by Sens. Graham, Lieberman and McCain on the burning of the US consulate in Benghazi and murders of the US ambassador and three staffers.

“Yesterday's attack is a tragic and terrible reminder that – despite the hopes of the Arab Spring – the forces of violent extremism in the Middle East are far from defeated, and that the revolutions inspired by millions of people who dream of freedom and democracy can still be hijacked by small groups of violent extremists who are eager to kill to advance their evil ideology."

The main "hope" on the part of Tweedles Dum, Dum and Dee is that there in fact exist "millions of people" who dream of freedom  -- not "huriyya" --  and democracy  -- not sharia -- in the Middle East.

Alas, there is no evidence of the senators' dream-millions of Muslims with a deep and abiding connection to the values and principles the senators espouse. That's because such Judeo-Christian-derived values and principles are at odds with...

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Ansur al Sharia gunboat parade for sharia in Benghazi, June 2012

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The late Ambassador Christopher Stevens was the US point man with the "rebels" in Benghazi --  the jihadists of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and other "flickers" of al Qaeda in Libya. Multiple reports are now attributing the attack on Benghazi consulate attack that killed the US ambassador, one staffer and, I have also read, two Marines to a group called Ansar al-Sharia, a "brigade" identified with al Qaeda as well.

From a very detailed eyewitness report by a self-professed rebel-veteran of the Libyan revolution  from France24:

In the past few months, [Ansar al Sharia] it’s become increasingly powerful and well-known. Like the rest of the brigades in Benghazi, they theoretically ensure security only when the local government asks them to do so. The hospital, which was in dire need of security, recently asked for their help, and since they’ve been guarding it, there’s been no more trouble there....

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The Clintons with racehorse owner and Saudi Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, one of the three Saudi princes featured in Walid Shoebat's report (below) who were thought to be financiers of 9/11, and who died within days of each other in 2002. 

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Walid Shoebat's absolutely must-read report on the drastic omissions in the 9/11 Commission's report breaks new ground with the story of the three Saudi princes named by Abu Zubaydah under interrogation who all met unlikely ends within days of each other in 2002 -- as though in response to US private pressure on the Saudis to take care of the 9/11 "problem" themselves. But that's just the sickening beginning.

Shoebat writes:

On the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Americans should come to grips with the fact that those responsible for attacking us have not been brought to justice. Yes, Osama bin...

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Reuters photo and caption: "Protesters attempt to raise a Salafist flag with Arabic words that read, "There is no God but Allah and Mohammad is his prophet" after pulling down an American flag at the U.S. embassy in Cairo September 11, 2012. Egyptian protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. embassy in Cairo on Tuesday and some pulled down the American flag during a protest over what they said was a film being produced in the United States that was insulting to the Prophet Mohammad, witnesses said."

The US response is posted at the website of the US Embassy in Cairo:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn...

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Kurt Eichenwald examines recently declassified documents regarding multiple warnings President Bush received prior to 9/11 and comes to an "inescapable conclusion," as he writes in today's New York Times. "The administration’s reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed."

Why did Bush ignore these warnings? Eichenwald:

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day.

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WND' Jerome Corsi reports on a major development in the Obama birth certificate forgery investigation that takes the evidence to an unassailably high level of confirmation:

Israel Science and Technology, the national database and directory of science and technology-related websites in Israel, has published an article asserting the long-form birth certificate released by the White House is a forged document.

The article does more than assert: "The analyses presented below reveal without a doubt that the Long-Form Birth Certificate of Mr. Obama is a fabricated, fake and forged document."

The website that has published this article was established by Israel Hanukoglu, Ph. D., when he was Science Advisor to Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu (1996-1999). Hanukoglu, a professor of biochemistry and molecular...

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My most recent syndicated column:

Back in 2008, during the peak illusory powers of Barack Obama as the post-partisan hopester-and-changer, the media consistently failed to report that the statist beliefs of the Democratic presidential nominee came straight from the socialist playbook. In many cases, the media probably didn’t realize it themselves.

At the same time, though, there was, and is, a feeling that such labeling is taboo. Even after an October surprise, a question from “Joe the Plumber,” prompted candidate Obama to reveal his inner redistributionist – “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody,” Obama told “Joe” in 2008 – the S-word was verboten.

I took issue with this taboo at the time and even got called a “Red baiter” on national TV for asking whether Barack Obama would take the country “in a socialist direction.”

The answer, of course, was yes: The state is more involved in our economy and lives than ever before, and not just because...

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LTG James Terry:"The closer you are in terms of relationship and friendship with the Afghan partners, the safer you are." Ok, general. You go first.

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From the Stars and Stripes:



WASHINGTON – The United States will help the Afghan government recheck the entire 352,000-member Afghan security force in the wake of an upsurge of attacks against international troops by Afghans in uniform, the No. 2 U.S. general in the country said Wednesday.

“We’re going back through, along with our partners up here at [the Afghan interior and defense ministries,] a lot of information out there to try to pull together patterns,” said Lt. Gen. James Terry, commander of ISAF Joint Command.

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About Afghanistan. With President Obama shifting rhetorically and Candidate Romney remaining silent or  resorting to platitudes, the so-called "good" so-called "war on terror" in the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan is the political orphan of the 2012 campaign. Sniping over withdrawal dates is no substitute for grown-up discussion of the utterly and completely failed COIN strategy of nation-building on the backs of the US military, of strapping leftist, Kum-bay-a theories of "world peace" to the body armor of Americans and Australians and Brits and the rest, and sending them out into the IED-mined field of jihad. Really get to the know the people, said their commanders. Take off those ballistic glasses, and protect them from everything that can hurt them, said the generals. And dump hundreds of millions of dollars down the drain while you're at it.

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The Matthews en famille in Nantucket

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For last week's column on the hypocritical "white" media, I chose Brian Williams as my poster-child illustration. Just as apt a choice for Top "Whiteness" Media Hypocrite (if not miles and miles better, as this WND story below demonstrates) is the always undelectable Chris Matthews.

Picking up in the middle (but read it all):



Matthews says he’s also troubled by racially polarized neighborhoods.

“Aren’t you surprised we haven’t integrated in terms of residence, living together, door to door?” he said during one of his “Hardball” episodes last decade. “It’s still a black neighborhood (there) and a white neighborhood here.”

Matthews ought to know. He and his wife live in a predominantly white zip code in the leafy and affluent suburbs of Chevy Chase, Md. Just 5 percent of his neighbors are black, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

His million-dollar home [DW: likely "multi"-million] is nowhere near the “ghettos” where Matthews, the self-anointed, prime-time champion of racial equality, suggests more whites need to live.

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