Hero or Something Else

“He wasn’t simply a hostage. He was a prisoner of war.” — National Security Adviser Susan Rice

In writing this post I am not accusing recently released Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl of anything, but I believe that many questions need to be answered.

Top Obama administration officials on Sunday praised the diplomatic and military efforts to recover Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, a prisoner of war in Afghanistan, saying it was an “extraordinary” and “life-saving” mission while disagreeing with the arguments that officials negotiated with terrorists and failed to inform Congress.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and National Security Adviser Susan Rice made their comments roughly 24 hours after Americans learned that Bergdahl was recovered in exchange for the release of five Taliban detainees at the U.S. prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

On May 31, 2014, U.S. officials from the White House and Pentagon announced that Bergdahl had been released by his captors and recovered by U.S. special operations forces in eastern Afghanistan. The release was brokered by the American, Qatar and Afghanistan governments with the Taliban, in exchange for five Guantanamo Bay detainees transferred to Qatari custody for at least one year. On 10:30 a.m. (EDST) May 31, 2014, Bergdahl was handed over by 18 Taliban members to a U.S. Navy Seal team in eastern Afghanistan, near Khost on the Pakistani border, in what was described as a "peaceful handover.

On June 1 Bergdahl arrived at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, a facility that treats serious war injuries from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, a U.S. Defense official said. His “reintegration process” will include “time for him to tell his story, decompress, and to reconnect with his family through telephone calls and video conferences,” a senior Defense official said.

When Bergdahl is ready to leave Landstuhl he will be transported to Brooke Medical Center in San Antonio.

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Sunday that the United States saw “an opening” and acted quickly to rescue Sgt. Bergdahl.

“We believed that the information we had, the intelligence we had, was such that Sgt. Bergdahl safety and health were both in jeopardy and in particular his health deteriorating,” Hagel said. “It was our judgment that if we could find an opening and move very quickly with that opening, that we needed to get him out of there essentially to save his life. I know President Obama feels very strongly about that, I do as well.”

According to U.S. government officials, Sgt. Bergdahl was the only remaining American soldier captured in recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. His release was part of a negotiation that includes the release of five Afghan detainees who are held in the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. The BCC reports that the detainees have already been freed, and on Saturday Obama said that they would be transported to Qatar.

The U.S. has released five Taliban prisoners kept at Guantanamo Bay — all of them either senior Taliban figures or Taliban officials with connections to Taliban leaders, and all labeled by the Pentagon as highly dangerous to the security of the U.S. and its allies if released. They are:

Mohammad Fazl, the former Taliban defense minister during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, chief of staff of the Taliban army, and commander of its 22nd Division. According to a U.S. Department of Defense document obtained by Wikileaks, Fazl is believed to be an associate of Supreme Taliban Commander Mullah Omar and was “wanted by the UN for possible war crimes including the murder of thousands of Shiites,” surrendered to the Northern Alliance commander Gen. Dostum in November 2001.

“Detainee is assessed to be a HIGH risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests, and allies,” his Guantanamo detainee file reads. “If released, detainee would likely rejoin the Taliban and establish ties with ACM [anti-coalition militia] elements participating in hostilities against US and Coalition forces in Afghanistan.”

Mullah Norullah Noori, a former Taliban military commander and Taliban governor of two Afghan provinces, who led Taliban forces against U.S. and coalition troops and was also “wanted by the United Nations (UN) for possible war crimes including the murder of thousands of Shiite Muslims” as Fazl was, according to Noori’s Guantanamo prisoner file as obtained and posted by Wikileaks. He is also believed to be associated with Supreme Taliban Commander Mullah Omar.

Noori commanded the Taliban in the northern city of Mazar e-Sharif. Like Fazl, he surrendered to Gen. Dostum in 2001.

Rated a “HIGH” threat to U.S. security interests if released, Noori is or was associated with members of al Qaeda, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, and Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin.

Mohammed Nabi, another senior Taliban official with ties to al Qaeda, the Haqqani Network, Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, and other anti-U.S., Taliban-allied groups, according to his Guantanamo Bay file as posted by Wikileaks.

Also rated as a “HIGH” security threat if released, Nabi fought with the Mujahideen against the Soviets. After that, he told the Americans who captured and detained him, he was an off-and-on Taliban member in the early 2000s, worked for the chief of the Taliban’s Border Department, which controlled smuggling. In early spring of 2002, he left the Taliban to sell used cars in a small village near Khost and became a CIA informant.

According to his Defense Dept. file, Nabi was involved in attacks against U.S. and coalition forces and facilitated smuggling routes for the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Khairullah Khairkhwa, a direct associate of Osama bin Laden according to his Defense Dept. detainee file obtained by Wikileaks, and a senior Taliban military commander who also served as the Taliban’s minister of Interior and the governor of Herat.

He represented the Taliban at meetings with Iranian officials seeking to support actions against U.S. and coalition forces after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to the document. He attended a meeting at the direction of bin Laden, reportedly accompanied by members of Hamas, the document says, and is believed to have been one of the major opium lords of western Afghanistan.

In 2002, he sought to negotiate an integration into the new government through Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai who has been accused of corruption and drug smuggling, but was arrested by Pakistani border patrol and released by Pakistan into U.S. custody.

He is also deemed a “HIGH” threat if released.

Abdul Haq Wasiq, the Taliban’s former deputy minister of intelligence, had direct connections to Taliban leadership and was “central to the Taliban’s efforts to form alliances with other Islamic fundamentalist groups” to fight against U.S. and coalition forces, according to his Defense Dept. file obtained by Wikileaks.

He also used his position to support al Qaeda, assist Taliban personnel in eluding capture, and arranged for al Qaeda members to train Taliban intelligence staff, according to the file.

He seems to have later turned informant, as his file notes that Wasiq was arrested after a meeting with two Americans and a translator, in which he was supposed to deliver information leading to the capture of Mullah Omar. Shortly after the meeting, U.S. forces arrested him.

“Trading five senior Taliban leaders from detention in Guantanamo Bay for Berghdal’s release may have consequences for the rest of our forces and all Americans. Our terrorist adversaries now have a strong incentive to capture Americans. That incentive will put our forces in Afghanistan and around the world at even greater risk,” said House Armed Services Chairman Howard P. “Buck” McKeon, R-Calif., and Senate Armed Services Ranking Member James Inhofe, R-Okla., in a joint statement.

“In executing this transfer, the President also clearly violated laws which require him to notify Congress thirty days before any transfer of terrorists from Guantanamo Bay and to explain how the threat posed by such terrorists has been substantially mitigated. Our joy at Sergeant Berghdal’s release is tempered by the fact that President Obama chose to ignore the law, not to mention sound policy, to achieve it,” they said in the joint statement.

A senior administration official responded: “Due to a near-term opportunity to save Sergeant Bergdahl’s life, we moved as quickly as possible. The administration determined that given these unique and exigent circumstances, such a transfer should go forward notwithstanding the notice requirement” of the National Defense Authorization Act, the law in which Congress levied the Guantanamo-transfer restrictions.

The detainees left Guantanamo in the afternoon of May 31^st for Qatar, which will take them into custody. After that, it’s not clear exactly what their status will be.

Of course there is great jubilation in Bergdahl’s home town of Hailey, Idaho. Understandably his parents and friends have expressed great joy at his release. This is to be expected. His father has even studied Pashto, the language of the Taliban, so he could communicate with his son who according to reports has trouble speaking English after his five years in captivity.

A recent article by CBS News asked the Question; Is Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl a hero or a deserter?

“While tattered yellow ribbons still adorn utility poles in his native Hailey, Idaho, others are expressing conflicting thoughts about Bergdahl's plight as the war winds down, with President Barack Obama threatening to withdraw all U.S. troops by year's end unless the Afghan government signs a crucial security agreement.

They are convinced that on June 30, 2009, just a few months after he arrived in Afghanistan, Bergdahl willingly walked away from his unit, which was deployed in Paktika province in eastern Afghanistan, adjacent to the border with Pakistan. While they do want Bergdahl home, they think he should have to answer allegations that he deserted his unit.”

…

“Rolling Stone magazine quoted emails Bergdahl is said to have sent to his parents that suggest he was disillusioned with America's mission in Afghanistan, had lost faith in the U.S. Army's mission there and was considering desertion.

Bergdahl told his parents he was "ashamed to even be American." Bergdahl, who mailed home boxes containing his uniform and books, also wrote: "The future is too good to waste on lies. And life is way too short to care for the damnation of others, as well as to spend it helping fools with their ideas that are wrong."

The Associated Press could not independently authenticate the emails published by the magazine in 2012. Bergdahl's family has not commented on the allegations of desertion, according to Col. Tim Marsano, a spokesman for the Idaho National Guard. Marsano is in regular contact with Bergdahl's mother, Jani, and father, Bob, who has grown a long, thick beard and has worked to learn Pashto, the language spoken by his son's captors.

A senior Defense Department official said that if Bergdahl is released, it could be determined that he has more than paid for leaving his unit - if that's what really happened - "and there's every indicator that he did."

Still, it's a conundrum for commanders under the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the equal application of the law, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the Bergdahl case.

Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School, said if there is evidence that Bergdahl left his unit without permission, he could be charged with being absent without leave (AWOL) or desertion.”

Bowe was reportedly “disillusioned” when he went missing. In an interview with Rolling Stone in 2012, Bowe’s family shared the sergeant’s final email­ to his parents:

“I am ashamed to be an American. And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools. The US army is the biggest joke the world has to laugh at. It is the army of liars, backstabbers, fools, and bullies. The few good SGTs are getting out as soon as they can, and they are telling us privates to do the same. These people need help, yet what they get is the most conceited country in the world telling them that they are nothing and that they are stupid, that they have no idea how to live.”

Bergdahl’s parents also spoke Saturday at the White House and expressed gratitude for their son’s pending return. His father, Robert, said Bergdahl is having trouble speaking English after the trauma he endured.

Robert Bergdahl, Bowe’s dad, who enjoys passing along pro-Taliban anti-American “invader” tweets for Taliban spokesperson Abdulqahar Balkhi and whose Twitter feed is an odd mix of anti-American and anti-war sentiments, Bible verses, strange quotes, and hippie-dippy tree-hugging weirdness, took it upon himself to celebrate his son’s release by sending a Tweet to the spokesman for his son’s captors.

The Tweet read: “@ABalkhi I am still working to free all Guantanamo prisoners. God will repay for the death of every Afghan child, Ameen [sic].” The Tweet was quickly deleted, but not before being captured on the Twitchy feed.

Bergdahl the elder’s correspondence with the Taliban’s spokesperson certainly coincides with Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s alleged sentiments prior to his ‘capture.’ According to emails quoted in Rolling Stone magazine, Bowe told his parents he was “ashamed to even be American,” and that he was disgusted with the U.S. mission in Afghanistan and with the Army.

According to a report in the Christian Science Monitor:

“In his final message, Bergdahl refers to having mailed home boxes with his uniforms and books.

“Feel free to open them, and use them,” he wrote.

Later that night, Bowe Bergdahl’s father Bob Bergdahl, a UPS truck driver, sent his son an email from their home in Hailey, Idaho, with the subject line: OBEY YOUR CONSCIENCE!

"Dear Bowe," he wrote. "In matters of life and death, and especially at war, it is never safe to ignore ones' conscience. Ethics demands obedience to our conscience. It is best to also have a systematic oral defense of what our conscience demands. Stand with like-minded men when possible. dad."

…

“In the early-morning hours of June 30th, according to soldiers in the unit, Bowe approached his team leader not long after he got off guard duty and asked his superior a simple question: If I were to leave the base, would it cause problems if I took my sensitive equipment?

“Yes, his team leader responded – if you took your rifle and night-vision goggles, that would cause problems.

“Bowe returned to his barracks, a roughly built bunker of plywood and sandbags. He gathered up water, a knife, his digital camera and his diary. Then he slipped off the outpost.”

When his absence was discovered, Bergdahl was listed as “DUSTWUN” – Duty Status: Whereabouts Unknown.”

A Report by NBC News states:

“Two years ago, Bergdahl was handed over to members of the Quetta Shura, or council — the decision-making body of the militants — for his scheduled release in exchange for five Taliban commanders being held by the U.S. at Guantanamo Bay, said a senior Taliban commander affiliated with the Haqqani network, a major militant faction of the Afghan Taliban.

"The talks at that time failed, and he was again handed over to his captors, and that's why he didn't trust when [he] was told about his likely release," the Taliban commander told NBC News on the phone from Afghanistan.

But this time, “our talks finally proved successful for [a] prisoners' swap. We returned our valued guest to his countrymen and they released our people.” said the Taliban commander.

"The talks at that time failed, and he was again handed over to his captors, and that's why he didn't trust when [he] was told about his likely release," the Taliban commander told NBC News on the phone from Afghanistan.

But this time, “our talks finally proved successful for [a] prisoners' swap. We returned our valued guest to his countrymen and they released our people.” said the Taliban commander.”

Russ Vaughn writing in American Thinker states:

“Obama got his pig, and I make no apology for that description of PFC Bergdahl (he was promoted to sergeant while being held captive) for this is where this discussion turns deadly serious. As a former non-commissioned officer who served in combat with another airborne unit, my first reaction upon hearing of Bergdahl’s desertion many years ago was, get him back, give him a fair court-martial and put him in front of a firing squad. Good, honorable paratroopers lost their lives searching for this treasonous bastard. Various sources from Bergdahl’s unit, the 501st Airborne Infantry are reporting in around the Web with this information:

PFC Matthew Michael Martinek, Staff Sgt. Kurt Robert Curtiss, SSG Clayton Bowen, PFC Morris Walker, SSG Michael Murphrey, 2LT Darryn Andrews, were all KIA from our unit who died looking for Bergdahl. Many others from various units were wounded or killed while actively looking for Bergdahl.”

(You can read more and see the photos by clicking here)

“Those deaths, every single one, are on Bergdahl’s head. For the squeamish among you who find my opinion too harsh, here’s Article 85 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the statutory regulation dealing with desertion:

(c) Any person found guilty of desertion or attempt to desert shall be punished, if the offense is committed in time of war, by death or such other punishment as a court-martial may direct, but if the desertion or attempt to desert occurs at any other time, by such punishment, other than death, as a court-martial may direct.

And there is damning evidence against PFC Bergdahl from those in his unit. He made no secret of his disillusionment with America, sending emails to his parents, one of which contained this statement, “The system is wrong. I am ashamed to be an american. And the title of US soldier is just the lie of fools. I am sorry for everything here”

Notice that non-capitalization of "American". A fellow trooper, Jason Fry, has reported that Bergdahl told him, "If this deployment is lame, I'm just going to walk off into the mountains of Pakistan."

So yes, we can court-martial this dishonorable deserter whose selfish views and actions caused all those unnecessary deaths and take his life or lock him away for the rest of it for the simple reason that the son of a bitch walked out on his band of brothers in an active combat zone in an act of betrayal that caused the deaths of his brothers in arms who willingly went in search of him, to save his sorry, weasel ass. Those events have immeasurable consequences on those both above and below his rank that he deserted. There is no greater crime that a combat infantryman can commit than desertion to the enemy on the battlefield. Were he to be judged by his fellow paratroopers, he’d be dead in the blink of an eye for the deaths that he caused. He willingly manipulated and violated the code of, “No man left behind,” for his own selfish sense of fulfillment that proved deadly to troopers in the 501st Infantry, and who knows how many more in special operations, who sent in patrols for years trying to find this weak-ass traitor.

As a viewer of the HBO series “Homeland” I cannot help but see the parallels between the fictional series and Sgt. Bergdahl’s story. In the series Nicholas Brody, a Marine Sgt. (played by Damian Lewis) was taken prisoner by al Qaeda and eventually converted to Islam. After five years he was released and returned to the United States as a sleeper terrorist with the mission of killing the Vice President who had authorized a drone attack on the headquarters of the al Qaeda commander killing his young son.

Like the HBO series, this real life story revolves around an American soldier who got taken as a Prisoner of War by terrorists while battling on foreign soil. Having spent five years in captivity (and having grown a large beard a la Damian Lewis' on-screen character), Bergdahl just got released and is now heading back to his homeland in Hailey, Idaho.

But the comparisons don't end there. In fact, this is only the beginning. After he was captured in Afghanistan by Haqqanigroup terrorists, his then-19-year-old lover Monica Lee actively participated in protests to get him freed. But as years went by, the efforts waned and she got on with her life. Bergdahl himself told her in one of the messages his captors let him sent out to not wait for him.

Having thought that Bergdahl may never return, she began dating someone new. But yesterday she was told that Bergdahl is not only alive but has been freed and will soon be heading back home.

While the news brought of joy and relief for her, she quickly realized how awkward a situation would become when she comes face to face with her returning ex who may not know that she is now with someone else. This is basically what happens in the critically acclaimed HBO series.

Something to watch out for- the Homeland protagonist was turned by al-Qaeda while in captivity. Although rumors of Bergdahl assisting his captors did make the rounds in 2010, let's hope that's not actually the case here.

I say the following fully respecting the fact that Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and his family/loved ones might have an extremely understandably different opinion on the situation:

1. The people we exchanged for Sgt. Bergdahl will end up running terrorist operations in Afghanistan if we’re lucky, and Afghanistan and abroad if we are not. And they will likely be doing it considerably sooner than a year from now.
2. The Taliban will step up their kidnapping campaigns, because from their point of view said campaigns have been proven to work.
3. Democratic, liberal, and progressive partisans like Alan Combs will freak if you point out either #1 or #2 to them.

It’s a heck of a thing when your only hope is maybe they put a remote tracker in one guy’s gut or some other techno-thriller nonsense. Unfortunately, no, this is not a Tom Clancy novel and we do not have a Jack Ryan in office. And I’m sorry that I have to be the one that gets to tell people hard truths like rewarding kidnapping gets more people kidnapped. But apparently telling people the things that they don’t want to hear is part of the entire ‘Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy’ thing.

All of this while Marine Sgt. Andrew Tahmooressi languishes in a Mexican prison chained to a bed. Tahmooressi was not a deserter. He is still in Marines as a reservist and has been said to be hero on the battlefield. What will his Commander-in-Chief do for this Marine?

Extortion 17

“I think we have more machinery of government than is necessary, too many parasites living on the labor of the industrious.” — Thomas Jefferson, letter to William Ludlow — 1824

On August 6, 2011 a U.S. Boeing CH-47 Chinook military helicopter, with the call sign Extortion 17, was shot down while transporting a quick reaction force attempting to reinforce an engaged unit of Army Rangers in Wardak province, west of Kabul, Afghanistan. The resulting crash killed all 38 people on board—25 American special operations personnel, five United States Army National Guard and Army Reserve crewmen, seven Afghan commandos, and one Afghan interpreter — as well as a U.S. military working dog.

Of the Navy SEALs that were killed 15 were members of the Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU), also known as SEAL Team Six. This unit is also known for having carried out the Operation Neptune Spear, which resulted in the killing of Osama Bin Laden; however, none of the SEALs killed participated in the operation. The other two Navy SEALs killed in the helicopter shootdown were from a West Coast-based SEAL unit. The five other Navy personnel were NSW support personnel. In addition to the NSW losses, three AFSOC operators died in the crash, one Combat Controller and two Pararescuemen, all members of the 24th Special Tactics Squadron. Their deaths are the greatest single loss of life ever suffered by the U.S. Special Operations community in the 24-year history of the U.S. Special Operations Command.

A source from the Navy's special operations community described the reaction as, "Shock and disbelief. There's no precedent for this. It's the worst day in our history by a mile." The previous highest U.S. death toll from a single incident in the war also came from a rocket attack on a Chinook helicopter carrying Navy SEALs during Operation Red Wings on June 28, 2005. In that incident sixteen Navy SEALs and Army special operations troops were killed and three more SEALs were killed in fighting on the ground.

According to a September 22, 2011 report by The London Mail:

“The first images of the Chinook wreckage were revealed today, at the same time five more American troops were killed in Afghanistan by a roadside bomb that exploded in the southern part of the country.

The news was confirmed as the Pentagon released the names of the 30 soldiers who died when the Chinook they were flying in was shot down by Taliban militants.

The U.S. military and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) did not give details regarding the five troops who were killed in the roadside bomb other than it happened in the south of the country.

A Pentagon spokesman in Washington said all the victims were Americans.

It means that at least 50 foreign troops have been killed so far in August.

Coalition forces finished recovering the victims' remains and big sections of the Chinook wreckage yesterday. Yet small, twisted pieces of the CH-47 remain scattered on both sides of a slow-flowing river in Wardak province where it crashed before dawn on Saturday.

Eye witnesses to the crash describe seeing the chopper burst into flames and break apart before falling from the sky.

Farhad, a local resident, said that the helicopter was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade fired from a nearby knoll as it was preparing to land

As soon as it was hit, it started burning,' he said, standing in a field still littered with small pieces of the chopper, including a part of a scorched rifle stamped 'Made in Germany' and a piece of charred paper with typewritten first aid instructions.

'After it started burning, it crashed. It came down in three pieces,' he added. 'We could see it burning from our homes.'

Gul Agha, another resident of Tangi Valley, also said that after the helicopter crashed, parts were burning on either side of the Tangi River. Some of the debris also ended up on a nearby hillside, he said.

'When the helicopter came at night, the Taliban were hiding in the bushes around the area,' he said.

He said coalition forces worked several days to remove victims' remains. Then they blew up sections of the helicopter into smaller pieces, loaded them on trucks and took them from the site, he said.”

Please click on the above link to the Mail Online so see the photos of the men killed in this attack.

On August 8, 2011 a memorial service was held for the victims of Extortion 17 who lost their lives in the Tangi Valley on August 6, 2011. The ceremony took place at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. It had the usual cadre of dignitaries with ranking military giving flower speeches to the assembled audience of soldiers. Of course there were also chaplains of the Judeo-Christian community. But there was also a Muslin Imam chaplain invited to say a few spiritual words.. He delivered his words in Arabic. When, later, the assembled soldiers and family members were told what he said from a translation they were not only astonished — they were disgusted. Here was what this Muslim cleric said over the flag draped coffins on the ramp. The following is the certified translation of what the Muslim cleric chants:

“Amen, I shelter in Allah from the devil who has been cast with stones. In the name of Allah the merciful forgiver. The companions of the “fire” (The sinners and infidels who are fodder for hell fire) are not equal with the companions of heaven.

The companions of heaven (Muslims) are the winners. Had we sent this Koran to a mountain you would have seen the mountain prostrated in fear of Allah (mocking the God of Moses).

Such examples are what we present to the people; to the people, so that they would think (repent and convert to Islam).

Blessings are to your God (Allah) the God of glory of what they describe.

And peace be upon the messengers (prophets) and thanks be to Allah the lord of both universes (mankind and Jinn).”

The fact that a Muslim ceremony was included is not the point, what is, are the words spoken over members of our lost warrior team by a Muslim in uniform, flown in especially for the event. The Imam’s words were not only insulting, it was undoubtedly an attempt to curry favor with our enemies at the expense of American heroes and their families. It not only denigrates the faith of the fallen, it damns them to hell.

The Commander-in-Chief and his Administration is once again revealed for their true loyalties, and their concerted efforts to denigrate and dismantle our military. Military morale is at an all-time low, we wonder why!

How do you think the families felt hearing a translation of what was said? Their loved ones in flag draped coffins being damned to hell by a Muslim in uniform. Ft. Hood quickly jumps to mind, as does the way Obama and his crew prioritizes its message to the world — damned be the American families and their grief and beliefs.

Then ask yourself why this administration insisted upon this type of funerary “ramp” service. Who thought this up? Who made this happen? Why did the content of the Muslim sermon not get vetted before it was spoken over the souls of our fallen warriors? Did they think we would not eventually know what was said over the souls of our heroes, those who lived up to the ultimate extent of their oaths?

With the hearings on Benghazi restarted last Wednesday in the House of Representatives, one must seriously question the motives and loyalties of our federal leadership concerning the interaction America has with the Muslim community worldwide and the failed foreign policy of Hillary Clinton and Barrack H. Obama. It is time for all Americans to stand up and take notice.

Here is what Lt. Col. and former Congressman (R-FL) Allen West had to say about Extortion 17 on May 10, 2012:

“Back in 2003 as a combat battalion commander in Iraq, I made a decision that changed the course of my life. I took an action to protect the men under my command by firing my service 9 mm Beretta pistol over the head of an Iraqi policeman who we heard had been supporting insurgent forces with information leading to ambushes against our unit.

Left-wing progressives have stupidly called me a “war criminal,” and they unfortunately misinterpreted my departure from the military. Just so those chuckleheads know, I did not resign. I retired with full honors, benefits, rank and title. The problem for some critics of the war on terror is that they fail to understand we are not playing hopscotch but are engaged in battle with a non-state, non-uniformed enemy.

I understood that and will always stand by my action in 2003. Here was my response when asked if I would take the same action: “If it is about the lives and safety of my men, I would go through hell with a gasoline can.”

My Dad and older brother both served in combat, the former in World War II and the latter in Vietnam. They were enlisted servicemen, and I was the first commissioned officer in the family. (Now my nephew is the second.) Right before I headed off to Fort Sill, Okla., my Dad and brother taught me that as an officer and a commander, my first responsibility would be the well-being of my men.

The lesson they conveyed to me is that if my troops knew I would train them hard but never use them for my personal advancement, I would be a successful leader. We would always accomplish our mission.

Tough questions about Extortion 17

This week America has been confronted with tough questions about leadership.

The first queries came on Thursday at the National Press Club. I attended a press conference moderated by Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch. The subject was the horrific special operations mission of Aug. 6, 2011, call sign Extortion 17.

America suffered its single greatest loss of special operators – 22 Navy SEALS of the famous SEAL Team VI, five crewmembers of a U.S. Army CH-47 and three U.S. Air Force tactical controllers. Parents of four of the fallen warriors were at the press conference, which was live-streamed on www.trentovision.tv.

The event called attention to the importance of leadership because appalling, systemic failures in leadership resulted in this tragedy:

• Why was the quick reaction force called into action that day?
• Why were they transported in a CH-47D instead of the typical Special Operations MH-47 aircraft? Why was a CH-47D sent into the hot landing zone of a three-hour firefight?
• Why were there no pre-assault fires or accompanying attack helicopter support for Extortion 17?
• How did the Taliban know these special operators were going into that river valley hotbed in Wardak province?
• Why were seven Afghan commandos switched out at the last minute for this mission and the manifest never changed?

And most egregious, who made the decision to let a Muslim cleric give a prayer at the ramp ceremony for these fallen American warriors – a disrespectful scene made clear when one sees the video with translation?

Thanks to media bias, we do not hear much about Afghanistan, especially the fact that 79 percent of the deaths and nearly 15,000 casualties in Afghanistan have occurred during President Obama’s tenure as the commander-in-chief.”

Family members are questioning the circumstances surrounding the Extortion 17 mission, including the lead up to the deployment, the failed execution of the mission and what happened afterwards. This video of the memorial service has been characterized by some of the families who lost their sons in the failed Extortion 17 mission as “rubbing salt into an open wound”.

America’s most elite special operations team, was sent to their slaughter in the most obscenely mismanaged military failure in recent Naval history. 93 days after Seal Team 6 got Osama Bin Laden (we should not even know this) they were stupidly sent to their death in what was probably an Al Qaeda planned ambush. Vice President Joe Biden, in his self-aggrandizing manner, put the targets on their backs, Obama‘s “Rules of Engagement” let it happen. They were sent into a landing zone in the middle of 3 hour long battle, in a slow moving 28-year-old CH-47D Chinook because our military does not have enough MH-47s and with no pre-landing suppressive fire (those troublesome rules of engagement again).

In the 11 years we have been waging war in Afghanistan, 79% of those killed or wounded have been under Obama’s leadership. During the 8 years of the Bush administration, 2072 American soldiers came home wounded from Iraq/Afghanistan. In only the last 3 years under Obama, 14,977 American soldiers have come home wounded. Obama increases the number of American soldiers being wounded in action almost as fast as he increases our debt!

Who would you rather have in charge if your son or daughter was serving in our military?. American sons and daughters volunteer to fight to defend the country they love; not to be sent in to be sacrificed or slaughtered because of some radical leftist president’s ideological love-fest with radical Muslims.

Did you ever stop to wonder what Obama and Clinton were trying so hard to cover up in Benghazi? (I mean, besides their sheer incompetence) Perhaps, as reported it is the shipment heavy weapons and anti-aircraft missiles to Syria?

On May 9, 2013 family members along with military men and politicians held a press conference expressing their concern over the events leading to and following Extortion 17. Larry Klayman, of Freedom Watch, moderated the press conference and some of the parents gave moving speeches regarding the loss of their sons. Stand Up America’s Paul E. Vallely and many others spoke in support of the fallen warriors. Billy and Karen Vaughn with their daughter Tara and their granddaughter Annabelle were in attendance, along with Charlie and Mary Lou Strange, Doug and Shawne Hamburger with their son Jeremy, and Mr. Sidh Douangdara, all family members of some of the fallen heroes of “Extortion 17″.

Also speaking were Lt. Gen. Tom McInerney, Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, Navy SEAL Ben Smith, Capt. Larry Bailey, Adm. “Ace” Lyons, former Congressman Lt. Col Allen West, and Brigitte Gabriel of ACT. Two Representatives from Congress also showed their support by attending for as long as they could, they were Michelle Bachman (R-MN) and Louie Gomert (R-TX). Tom Trento of United West recorded the event and provides us with the video below. Billy and Karen Vaughn provided the “Ramp Ceremony” video that was edited and captioned by Larry Klayman of Freedom Watch.

While this event received little or no coverage in the mainstream media is no surprise. Even Fox was reticent in their coverage with only a few moments on their morning show Fox and Friends. Here is a brief on what was conveyed by the family and our retired military community:

• How President Obama and Vice President Biden, having disclosed on May 4, 2011, that Navy SEAL Team VI carried out the successful raid on Bin Laden’s compound resulting in the master terrorist’s death, put a retaliatory target on the backs of the fallen heroes.
• How and why high-level military officials sent these Navy SEAL Team VI heroes into battle without special operations aviation and proper air support.
• How and why middle-level military brass carries out too many ill-prepared missions to boost their standing with top-level military brass and the Commander-in-Chief in order that they can be promoted.
• How the military restricts special operations servicemen and others from engaging in timely return fire when fired upon by the Taliban and other terrorist groups and interests, thus jeopardizing the servicemen’s lives.
• How and why the denial of requested pre-assault fire may have contributed to the shoot down of the Navy SEAL Team VI helicopter and the death of these special operations servicemen.
• How Afghani forces accompanying the Navy SEAL Team VI servicemen on the helicopter were not properly vetted and how they possibly disclosed classified information to the Taliban about the mission, resulting in the shoot down of the helicopter.
• How military brass, while prohibiting any mention of a Judeo-Christian God, invited a Muslim cleric to the funeral for the fallen Navy SEAL Team VI heroes who disparaged in Arabic the memory of these servicemen by damning them as infidels to Allah.

You can watch a video of the entire press conference by clicking here.

Not only do the families of those killed in the Tangi River Valley on August 6, 2011 deserve answers to these and other questions so do we the people.

We not only need to know the truth about Extortion 17 we need to know the truth about Benghazi. We need to know the truth about gun-running to Syria. We need to know the truth about the IRS targeting conservative and Tea Party 501-Cs. We need to know the truth about Gunwalking to Mexico and the death of Brian Terry. We need to know the truth about the Justice Department secretly tapping AP reporters to find out who their sources are.

As long as Obama is served by a sycophantic press we must rely on Congressional hearings.

Are We Heading for Benghazigate?

“[A] good moral character is the first essential in a man, and that the habits contracted at your age are generally indelible, and your conduct here may stamp your character through life. It is therefore highly important that you should endeavor not only to be learned but virtuous.” — George Washington, letter to Steptoe Washington — 1790

Yesterday during President Obama’s meandering press conference he stated, when asked by a reporter, that he was not aware of any efforts by the government to muzzle the four alleged State Department and CIA whistle-blowers who wanted to testify to Congress as to what they knew of the Bengasi terrorist attack that killed or Ambassador and three others. If yu believe Obama’s statement I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you at a good price.

For months now, Republican lawmakers have been wondering about the status of the survivors of last September’s terrorist attack in Benghazi that resulted in the death of the four Americans, and why it is that Congress has not been afforded more access to them. In March, Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested that the Obama administration was engaged in specifically blocking access to these witnesses, and that the witnesses had even been told to “keep quiet” — a notion that the administration blithely dismissed and Democrats once more pooh-poohed as the mere partisan pish-tosh of those petty Republicans.

When Ambassador Chris Stevens was planning to visit Benghazi last September, the February 17 Martyrs Brigade, which the State Department had hired to help protect Americans there, delivered a message: They were no longer going to support the movement of U.S. personnel in the city — including the movement of Stevens.

"In addition," said a report released last week by the chairmen of the House committees on Foreign Relations, Oversight, Armed Services, Judiciary, and Intelligence, "on Sept. 8, 2012, just days before Ambassador Stevens arrived in Benghazi, the February 17 Martyrs Brigade told State Department officials that the group would no longer support U.S. movements in the city, including the ambassador's visit."

A footnote in the report attributes this information to an internal State Department email. The footnote says: "Email from Alec Henderson to John B. Martinec, 'RE: Benghazi QRF agreement,' (Sep. 9, 2012, 11:31 p.m.)."

Martinec was then the State Department's regional security officer (RSO) at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli and, thus, the ambassador's top security adviser.

Despite this email, Stevens went ahead with his trip to Benghazi, arriving there on Sept. 10. At the time, there were three State Department diplomatic security officers deployed on temporary duty at the department's Benghazi mission. Stevens brought another two with him from Tripoli — bringing the total State Department security contingent in Benghazi to five people.

“The Board found that Ambassador Stevens made the decision to travel to Benghazi independently of Washington, per standard practice," said the State Department's Accountability Review Board report released on Dec. 18."

“Plans for the ambassador's trip provided for minimal close protection security support and were not shared thoroughly with the embassy's country team, who were not fully aware of planned movements off compound," said the ARB report.

On Oct. 10, 2012, the House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee took testimony from Eric Nordstrom, who served as the RSO at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli from Sept. 21, 2011, until July 26, 2012 — leaving the country six weeks before the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack. The committee did not take testimony from John Martinec, who was RSO at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli on Sept. 11, 2012.

Nor has any congressional committee taken testimony from the five State Department Diplomatic Security officers in Benghazi with Stevens on Sept. 11, 2012.

Why not? These are American heroes. Why can't America hear their stories?

“The board determined that U.S. personnel on the ground in Benghazi performed with courage and readiness to risk their lives to protect their colleagues, in a near impossible situation," said the State Department ARB report.

“While our country spent Sept. 11, 2012, remembering the terrorist attacks that took place 11 years earlier, brave Americans posted at U.S. government facilities in Benghazi, Libya, were fighting for their lives against a terrorist assault," said a report released on Dec. 30 by the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

Last Friday, House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa publicly released a letter he sent to Secretary of State John Kerry detailing a number of ways the State Department was interfering with his committee's investigation of Benghazi. These included refusing to give the committee unfettered access to Benghazi-related documents and declining to even advise would-be State Department whistleblowers that they have a legal right to talk to Congress.

Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., has proposed a plan to end State's stonewalling. He is the principal sponsor of legislation to create a House Select Committee on the Terrorist Attack in Benghazi. This committee would be comprised of members of both parties and have full power to subpoena documents and compel testimony from personnel in the State Department and other government agencies.

Already, 134 House Republicans — a majority of the Republican caucus — have joined as co-sponsors of Wolf's legislation.

"It is clear that the administration just wants the issue of Benghazi to go away, but I sincerely hope that Congress will not aid this White House cover-up of the mistakes made by high-level members of the administration that cost four brave Americans their lives," Wolf said Tuesday.

The December 2011 issue of State Magazine — the State Department's in-house publication — proudly named the diplomatic security agents who travelled with Chris Stevens to Benghazi that year when he established a special mission there during the Libyan revolution. Any American with an Internet hookup can look up the identities of these State Department heroes — and even see photographs of some of them.

But, as of today, the State Department has only named four of the Americans who were in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012. These are the four the terrorists succeeded in murdering: Stevens, Information Management Officer Sean Smith and former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty.

In a March 16^th interview with Fox News Senator Graham said “"the bottom line is they feel that they can't come forth, they've been told to be quiet." The Fox News report goes on:

“Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, in an extensive interview with Fox News, alleged that the injured survivors of the Benghazi terror attack have been "told to be quiet" and feel they can't come forward to tell their stories -- as he urged the House to subpoena the administration for details if necessary.

The South Carolina senator said he’s “had contact” with some of the survivors, calling their story “chilling.” He told Fox News that "the bottom line is they feel that they can't come forth, they've been told to be quiet."

The White House is denying any attempt to exert pressure on the surviving victims.

"I'm sure that the White House is not preventing anyone from speaking," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said, when asked about the survivors.

But Graham said he thinks the administration is “trying to cover it up,” citing the valuable information the survivors hold.”

The latest update from Fox News, however, reports that at least four career officials from the State Department and CIA are lawyering up as they prepare to provide “sensitive” information about the Benghazi attack to Congress, and that Obama administration officials have served some of these witnesses with not-so-subtle hints about the consequences of coming forward: Nice career you’ve got there. Shame if anything were to happen to it. The Fox News report states:

“Victoria Toensing, a former Justice Department official and Republican counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, is now representing one of the State Department employees. She told Fox News her client and some of the others, who consider themselves whistle-blowers, have been threatened by unnamed Obama administration officials.

“I’m not talking generally, I’m talking specifically about Benghazi – that people have been threatened,” Toensing said in an interview Monday. “And not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA.”

“It’s frightening, and they’re doing some very despicable threats to people,” she said. “Not ‘we’re going to kill you,’ or not ‘we’re going to prosecute you tomorrow,’ but they’re taking career people and making them well aware that their careers will be over [if they cooperate with congressional investigators].” …

Rep. Darrell Issa, the Republican from California who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, wrote to Secretary of State John Kerry on Friday to complain that the department has not provided a process by which attorneys like Toensing can receive the security clearances necessary for them to review classified documents and other key evidence.”

Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy said on Sunday that more Benghazi hearings are coming in short order — and that he thinks they’re likely showcase some “explosive” revelations (if, that is, the media should condescend to take notice in any other capacity than the ever-dismissive, “My, these Republicans are certainly determined to discredit Hillary Clinton!”):

“There are more Benghazi hearings coming; I think they’re going to be explosive,” Mr. Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican who is a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told Fox’s Uma Pemmaraju.

Mr. Gowdy wasn’t able to give out too many details, but he hinted that the public for the first time might hear from witnesses to the terror attack that left four Americans dead. …

Mr. Gowdy added that in a trial, “direct evidence, direct testimony by eyewitnesses is always the most compelling.”

“Trust me when I tell you you will want to follow the hearings that are coming up,” he reiterated.”

This kabuki dance has been going on for 8 months since Ambassador Stevens was brutally murdered in Bengasi during a planned terrorist attack that was blamed on a YouTube video. While Obama was campaigning for his reelection and Hillary Clinton was trying to cover her behind the main stream media gave both of them a pass.

A special operations member who witnessed the attack on the U.S. Mission unfold in Benghazi, Libya on September 11 last year, as well as debriefed those who took part in the response, spoke with Fox News’ Adam Housley on Monday night and revealed information that directly contradicts the administration’s insistence that there was not enough time nor resources to send to Benghazi to help State Department employees, contractors, and intel operatives who were under a terrorist attack. FNC kept their source’s identity hidden, as witnesses to the Benghazi attack have reportedly been intimidated by the administration into silence. The assault left four Americans dead, including U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens.

“I know for a fact that C110 was doing a training exercise not in the region of northern Africa but in Europe and they have the ability to react and respond,” the special ops member told FNC.

The C110 is a 40-man special operations commanders and extremists force. They are capable of rapid response and deployment and are specifically trained for Benghazi attack-like incidents. The night of the attack, according to the special op, they were training 3 & 1/2 hours away in Croatia.

“We have the ability to load out, get on birds, at a minimum stage. C110 had the ability to be there, in my opinion, in 4 to 6 hours from their European theater to react. They would have been there before the second attack,” he said, adding, “And you hear a whole bunch of advisers say, ‘We wouldn’t have sent them there, because the security was an unknown situation.’ If it’s an unknown situation, at a minimum, you send forces there to facilitate the exfill—medical, injuries. We could have sent a C130 to provide medical evacuation for the injured.”

All true — but consider that what we think of as the attack on the Benghazi consulate was actually two separate attacks. The first on the consulate began at 9:30 pm, when the first shots were fired, and was over by 11 pm. Security reinforcements from Tripoli arrived at the fallback annex at 1:45 am, about 4 hours after the first attack began and slightly under 3 hours after it ended. Shortly after, a second attack hits the annex and lasts for a little over an hour, when Glenn Doherty and Tyrone Woods were killed.

Now, if the C110 group had been called to Benghazi from Europe right at 9:30 pm, they might have arrived in time to fight the second attack on the annex — but only just barely, based on the estimate of this survivor/witness; 4 hours would have been 1:30 am. The security detail from Tripoli, which was much closer, had only just arrived in time for the second firefight, at 1:45. Bear in mind, though, that the Tripoli detachment came on their own rather than waiting for orders from State, which were not forthcoming anyway:

Instead, seven men who were American reinforcements in Tripoli, along with Agent Glenn Doherty, commandeered a jet and flew to Benghazi. Ultimately, Doherty and Tyrone Woods would be killed on the roof of the CIA annex.

The special op member told Fox News, “If it wasn’t for that decision, I think we would be talking completely different about this situation. I think you would be looking at 20 plus hostages captured by AQ or you would be looking at a lot of dead Americans in Benghazi.”

In other words, they weren’t even calling Tripoli, let alone Europe.

The better question in this case isn’t the status of response forces in Europe. It’s why the State Department ignored multiple security warnings from the late Ambassador, why the Obama administration couldn’t figure out that the anniversary of 9/11 would be a critical day to prepare against attacks, and why the US ignored the warning signs that had led all other Western nations to leave Benghazi before our consulate got sacked. By the time of the actual attack on 9/11, it was too late in more ways than one for the US to respond. The red lights had been flashing for weeks or even months, and everyone ignored them almost to the last moment.

The better question in this case isn’t the status of response forces in Europe. It’s why the State Department ignored multiple security warnings from the late Ambassador, why the Obama administration couldn’t figure out that the anniversary of 9/11 would be a critical day to prepare against attacks, and why the US ignored the warning signs that had led all other Western nations to leave Benghazi before our consulate got sacked. By the time of the actual attack on 9/11, it was too late in more ways than one for the US to respond. The red lights had been flashing for weeks or even months, and everyone ignored them almost to the last moment.

Former U.S. Attorney Joe DiGenova appeared on the radio show “Mornings on the Mall” on WMAL-FM in Washington, D.C. Monday, where he told hosts Larry O’Connor and Brian Wilson that the U.S. Department of State is preventing Benghazi whistle-blowers from getting adequate legal representation.

And if the whistle-blowers don’t have attorneys, many of them are unlikely to speak out.

DiGenova explained:

“Victoria Toensing, my partner, has just been retained by one of the Department of State whistle-blowers who are going to appear before the Issa committee. On April 26, Congressman Issa sent a letter to the new Secretary of State John Kerry demanding that the lawyers who are going to represent these whistle-blowers be given clearances so they can talk to their clients in the committee about classified information. The Department of State is refusing to grant clearances to Victoria and other people who want to represent the whistle-blowers in an attempt to prevent the testimony. There’s going to be a constitutional showdown here. Congress is going to win. The administration’s effort to cover up what happened at Benghazi is going to fail.

“The whistle-blowers are out there. These are great Americans; they are heroes. They were on the ground in Benghazi, they want to tell their story, and the administration is going to do everything it can to stop them from testifying under oath in public. They want to protect Hillary [Clinton] and the president, that’s what this is all about.”

Amazingly, DiGenova says, Toensing has received top secret clearance from other high-profile cases as recently as this year, but the government will not clear her on Benghazi.

“This is so outrageous,” DiGenova said, arguing there would be mass outrage if the president were Republican.”

On Tuesday, Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John McCain (R-AZ) called for a Senate select committee to investigate the circumstances surrounding the Benghazi terrorist attack. Their press release criticized the administration for alleged intimidation of witnesses from the incident:

“Revelations about witnesses being afraid to testify and military assets that could have been deployed in a timely fashion justify appointing a joint select committee. In light of these new revelations it is imperative that we learn everything we can from what happened before, during and after the attacks. We cannot allow those who serve our nation to feel abandoned when under attack, or by Congress afterwards.”

In his press conference on Tuesday President Obama said he was “not familiar” with reports of intimidation and threats to such witnesses. According to Toensing, the attorney for one of the State Department employees, “her client and some of the others, who consider themselves whistle-blowers, have been threatened by unnamed Obama administration officials I'm not talking generally, I'm talking specifically about Benghazi — that people have been threatened. And not just the State Department. People have been threatened at the CIA.”

According to an interview on Fox and Friends on Tuesday morning Toensing declined to name her client. She also refused to say whether the individual was on the ground in Benghazi on the night of Sept. 11, 2012, when terrorist attacks on two U.S. installations in the Libyan city killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.

However, Toensing disclosed that her client has pertinent information on all three time periods investigators consider relevant to the attacks: the months that led up to the attack, when pleas by the ambassador and his staff for enhanced security in Benghazi were mostly rejected by senior officers at the State Department; the eight-hour time frame in which the attacks unfolded, and the eight-day period that followed the attacks, when Obama administration officials incorrectly described them as the result of a spontaneous protest over a video.

"It's frightening, and they're doing some very despicable threats to people," she said. "Not 'we're going to kill you,' or not 'we're going to prosecute you tomorrow,' but they're taking career people and making them well aware that their careers will be over [if they cooperate with congressional investigators]."

If Benghazi is "old news" and congressional hearings are "a partisan witch hunt," why the threats? Why keep the 34 men and women who were in Benghazi and evacuated after the attacks from talking to Congress?

Benghazi isn't the only bloody disaster being covered up by the Obama administration. As I reported in two blog posts (9/27/2012 and 10/26/2012) last fall, three days after the deadly siege on our consulate in Libya, the Taliban waged an intricately coordinated, brutal attack on Camp Bastion in Afghanistan. Two heroic U.S. Marines — Lt. Col. Christopher Raible and Sgt. Bradley Atwell — were killed in the battle. Many surviving Marines have been honored for their brave, quick-thinking actions to save their comrades and civilians caught in the crossfire.

As Michelle Malkin reports in her latest column:

“Family members are angry that military brass are still trying to suppress details of the fateful budget and strategic decisions that led to the attack. But they won't stay silent. "This is political," one Camp Bastion relative told me this week. "Just like Benghazi, they don't want people to know."

In case you were sleeping or had forgotten: The meticulously coordinated siege at Camp Bastion by 15 Taliban infiltrators -- dressed in American combat fatigues and armed with assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades and other weapons -- resulted not only in two deaths and nearly a dozen injuries, but also in the most devastating loss of U.S. airpower since Vietnam. Camp Bastion is Britain's main military base in Afghanistan; it's adjacent to our Marines' Camp Leatherneck.

Eight irreplaceable U.S. aircraft were destroyed or put out of action during the raid. A trio of refueling stations was decimated; a half-dozen hangars were damaged. The attack came exactly six months after a failed jihadi suicide attack targeting former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Camp Bastion family members are hearing that U.S. and British military leaders left their loved ones vulnerable to attack by outsourcing watchtower security on the base to soldiers from Tonga, who were known to fall asleep on the job. Deborah Hatheway, aunt of Sgt. Atwell and the family's spokesperson, is naming names and mincing no words. She says Major General Charles "Mark" Gurganus, who recently returned to the U.S. after commanding coalition forces in Afghanistan, was ultimately responsible for skimping on security patrols. "He might as well have made it easier for the Taliban by cutting the perimeter fence himself and putting out the welcome mat," Hatheway told me.

This is the same Gurganus who ordered Marines to disarm -- immediately after the failed jihadi attack on Panetta last year -- because he wanted them "to look just like our (unarmed) Afghan partners."

The question isn't whether the Obama administration's narrative about what happened before, during, and after the attacks is unraveling. It is. The question is does anyone in the rest of the media care about the truth?

When Rep. Trey Gowdy said over the weekend that new hearings on Benghazi by the Government Oversight Committee would be "explosive," he apparently wasn't exaggerating. There is also the special operations member who has claimed that the Obama administration could have flown military assets to Benghazi within 4 hours — plenty of time to deal with the second attack on the safe house.

This is why the administration just wishes Benghazi would just go away. So much of what they said about it has been contradicted or shown to be false, that getting to the truth is now a necessity. Americans died and Congress wants answers. This next round of hearings should give us some interesting ones.

Of course Obama said that he "will look into it." Or as Hillary Clinton coldly stated in testimony in front of the Senate Committee, “there dead now, so what difference does it make.” I am sure Democrats challenging her in 2016 (if she runs) will use this phrase over and over again.

In both of these cases the mainstream media has been silent as to the potential of a cover-up. Harken back to 1972 when several persons were arrested for breaking into the Democratic National Committee’s Headquarters at the Watergate Complex in Washington, D.C. It did not take the press long to determine that these burglars were employed by the White House and thus began the scandal known as Watergate, a scandal that would lead to weeks of Congressional hearings and the eventual resignation of Richard Nixon from the Presidency. Suppose for a moment the reporters has called the White House and Nixon’s Chief of Staff had told them he knew of no such event and he would look into it and the reporters accepted that reply and went on chasing other stories. The difference between then and now is that the MSM, especially the Washington Post and New York Times, did not like Richard Nixon and the same MSM has too much invested in Barack Obama to push the Benghazi or Camp Bastion cover-ups.

With the majority of House Republicans co-sponsoring Wolf's legislation for a special committee, the only thing standing between the American people and the real story of Benghazi is a leadership decision from House Speaker John Boehner.

Boehner must impanel this special investigative committee so it can compel the administration to tell the full truth about Benghazi — the American people, especially the families of the fallen and wounded deserve it.

It’s Time to Pull the Plug on Afghanistan

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclination, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” — John Adams

The recent alleged shooting of 16 Afghan villagers by a US Army soldier has brought the war in Afghanistan into sharp focus. While tragic, and perhaps criminal, this shooting was not to be unexpected. With constant deployments of our troops in a mission that seems to have no real goal, the insane rules of engagement, the corruption within the Afghan government, and the daily death and maiming of our soldiers this incident is probably long overdue. Human beings are not perfect and our soldiers are human beings. They are not robots who can stand and be killed without having an adverse reaction.

As we hit the 10 1/2 year mark in Afghanistan, the state of trust and confidence between the coalition and the Afghan people is at perhaps its lowest ebb, and support for the war effort is wavering across the political spectrum. Given this, it appears time to reconsider the current status of our effort there — what have we accomplished, and what do we still hope and reasonably expect to accomplish? — as well as what the future may and should hold. Below the fold are some questions that need to be considered about our objectives, accomplishments, and expectations in Afghanistan. This list is not exhaustive by any means, and I certainly don’t claim to have all of the answers; in fact, I may not have any of them. However, they do need to be carefully thought about, and answered, at some point in the immediate future.

First, and perhaps most importantly, it’s critical to note that what the New York Times has called a recent “cascade of missteps and offenses” by the coalition (from the “Kill Team,” to the urinating Marines, to the inadvertent Qur'an burning, to last weekend’s inexcusable slaughter of sleeping civilians by one rogue and evidently disturbed soldier) should not obscure the indisputable fact that moral high ground still exists in this struggle, and that the coalition is firmly in occupation of it. Taliban spokespersons, among others, can condemn coalition actions as loudly as they wish (and, in such cases as this weekend’s massacre, condemnations are correct); however, while those acts ruin lives and tarnish the coalition image, they do not propel us from the high ground. Further, those condemnations do not change the fact that those who wage war on civilians daily, killing indiscriminately, throwing acid in the faces of young girls who dare attend school, opening fire on those attending a memorial for this weekend’s slain civilians, and carrying out all other manners of true atrocities.

As Brian Padden writes for the Voice of America:

“Candace Rondeaux, a security analyst with the International Crisis Group in Kabul, says it is both ironic and not surprising that the Taliban would attempt retaliatory strikes for the killing of civilians.

“They have been responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths in Afghanistan over the years, but they do have a much more command of the propaganda value of these events than I think international forces do, and they do find ways to exploit these kinds of moments,” Rondeaux said.

Also Tuesday, hundreds of university students in the eastern city of in Jalalabad protested the killings. Some of the demonstrators chanted "Death to America” and "Death to Obama."

U.S. officials had warned the incident could lead to a surge in anti-American violence in the war-torn country. But the response so far has been muted compared with the public outrage that followed last month’s inadvertent burning of Qurans at an American military base. That led to a week of violent protests and deadly attacks against U.S. forces.”

However, simply fighting those who carry out such atrocities is not a reason to spend ten years, billions of dollars, or thousands of lives halfway across the world — and while breaking the Taliban’s despotic hold on Afghanistan’s government and its people was an added bonus to the initial combat operations in that country, the atrocities committed by that government against its own people was not our initial impetus for war (had it been, we would of course have acted militarily against the Taliban government well before the end of 2001). Colonel Ralph Peters stated several months ago in an interview with Bill O’Reilly: “We went into Afghanistan to drive the roaches out of the motel not to rebuild the motel.” Now we are not only rebuilding the motel but the entire infrastructure and economy of Afghanistan.

As obvious as it is to say, the impetus for war was, of course, the 9/11 attacks, carried out by an al Qaeda that had found safe haven in that Taliban-led country — and now, in the midst of that “cascade of missteps” by soldiers on the ground, those higher up the chain are attempting negotiate an end to the war effort that will almost certainly include some sort of power-sharing role for the Taliban in post-war Afghanistan.

Given this state of affairs, and the dwindling support at home for what had been termed the “real war on terror” by those opposed to the Iraq war, it’s clear that the effort in Afghanistan needs to be reconsidered. Despite a refocusing of national attention on Afghanistan in 2008-2009 (a topic dealt with in more detail below), several questions appear to have gone unanswered at that time, as well as both before and since. The most important of these questions seems the simplest on the surface: what is our goal there? However, after ten years of fighting, that question is both inexcusably and overwhelmingly difficult to answer — and that and several other questions need to be considered both quickly and completely, and the answers should factor heavily into the U.S.’s decision about our next move(s) in Afghanistan.

Several of the questions below will be corollaries to the original question about our goal in Afghanistan, but the lingering silence in response to this most basic inquiry has swollen to 800-lb gorilla proportions. Some of the questions below may also seem simplistic or pedantic; however, I’m trying to start from square one here, and these are some basic inquiries that need to be made. 10 1/2 years have gone by since ODA 555 became the first coalition boots on the ground in Afghanistan. Soldiers have been sent there and to Iraq so many times that many are using both hands to count their total number of combat deployments. These ten years of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan haven’t been conventional in nature; rather, they have required constant vigilance due to the human terrain involved being an often unrecognizable blend of friendly, neutral, and enemy — not to mention the constant threat of IEDs (given this fact, it’s frankly more surprising to me that incidents like this weekend’s atrocity haven’t happened more frequently, not that such a massacre was carried out at all).

As Dan Drezner writing in Foreign Policy has noted, “It’s tough to sound hawkish on a conflict where your rationale for being there has evaporated.” That apparent “evaporation” is reflected in the maddening answerability of the simple question posed above.

Here are a few other questions to consider while we chew on that one:

1. What is the desired end state in Afghanistan? Certainly (hopefully) it isn’t a unified country that operates as a western-style (and pro-western) democracy, because that dish simply isn’t on the menu at the Reality Diner. Afghanistan is and will continue to be far more splintered than that, with tribes and networks holding power and operating in different regions Are we willing to accept Taliban power sharing? Based on the ongoing efforts to engage the Taliban in negotiations, it seems safe to assume that we are (this will also be addressed below). What other components of a post-U.S. Afghanistan do we have in place or in motion, and what do we still hope to put in place before 2014, which is not only when we are scheduled to leave, but when President Karzai reaches his term limit? As this is considered, it is important to remember that the closer we come to the announced 2014 date of security handover and withdrawal, the less influence we will have over the situation there, both strategically and politically.

2. What was our initial goal and desired end state in Afghanistan (ca. 2001) and how does the current state of affairs measure up? It’s an inarguable truth that the best laid plans don’t survive first contact. However, despite media prematurely spewing the term “quagmire” all over the airwaves in October 2001, the lightning-fast initial phase of combat operations went exceptionally well. The Northern Alliance was trained and mobilized, al Qaeda disrupted, and Kabul taken from the Taliban all in a matter of weeks. Following that initial success, we stood up the Karzai government and began a decade of rotating conventional and Special Operations Forces (SOF) troops in and out of the operations theater, making modest gains in improving quality of life, access to education and health care, and infrastructure, while playing counter-network whack-a-mole and dealing with a growing insurgency fueled by domestic and cross-border sources. What was our initial goal at the time? What was our desired end state? At what point did we come close to achieving it, and how have our actions of the last ten years moved us closer to achieving it? This plays into the next question:

3. What goals have the last ten years of operations in Afghanistan been in pursuit of? This may seem simple — undermining and disrupting al Qaeda, the Taliban, the Haqqani network, and other organizations opposed to coalition efforts in Afghanistan; improving infrastructure and quality of life; and ensuring that we left Afghanistan with a functioning government and a national security force that was sufficiently trained to be able to protect that government and the nation’s people. However, while laudable goals, which of these have been achieved, and which are achievable?

4. How did we get from the goals and mission scope of 2001 to those of 2012? At what point, if at all, did we shift the goal posts, changing our original strategy and desired end state and? If we didn’t, should we have? There can be no question that focusing on Iraq, particularly from 2003-2008, caused Afghanistan to play a distant second fiddle, particularly when it came to media attention and the allocation of finite military resources like special operations units. This reduced our macro-level effort in Afghanistan to the strategic equivalent of treading water, trading some lives and some more money for what amounted to little more than a continuation of the status quo. Once Iraq was hauled back from the brink in 2007-2008, the outgoing Bush and incoming Obama administrations focused more resources and attention on Afghanistan, but to what end? How were the goals put in place in 2008-2009 different from those forecast in 2001, and why?

Believe it or not, this essay isn’t meant as a personal indictment of President Obama, whose rhetoric on Afghanistan during the 2008 election was backed by almost no knowledge of the situation there whatsoever (despite being chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Europe, which has jurisdiction over NATO — and, therefore, the operations in Afghanistan — Obama never once held a hearing). Upon taking office, though, Obama was brought up to speed on coalition efforts there, and his decision to largely continue the strategy laid out at the end of the Bush administration demonstrated both the emptiness of his campaign rhetoric, and the apparent prudence of the Bush/Gates direction based on ground truth in-theater.

However, though the Afghanistan ‘surge’ put in motion by Bush and Gates, and implemented by Obama, put more boots on the ground in-country, thus allowing for more counterinsurgency and stability operations to be conducted, there was no clear communication of just what the goal there was, how it could be achieved, and how or why it differed from our original reason for invading.

Joshua Foust writes in Salon:

“In a speech outlining his strategy for the war, President Obama boiled it down to three goals: Deny al-Qaida safe haven; prevent the Taliban from overthrowing the government; and build up the Afghan security forces so they can take over as U.S. troops leave. It is a remarkable framework, defined as much by absence as by accomplishment, and in terms so vague as to be impossible to achieve definitively. But it is also a fundamentally political strategic framework, focused on the Afghan government as the defining characteristic of any future Afghan state.”

Ten years of military operations, including efforts at counterinsurgency and the use of all tiers of special operations forces to conduct high-value and time-sensitive target hits, are not carried out for no reason or in pursuit of no goal. However, at some point did (or have) such operations become self-serving, conducted simply for their own sake, and toward no larger end? Last August’s loss of 31 American service members in a single helicopter shoot-down (including twenty Tier One operators) that took place in the midst of an operation to catch a man who was functionally middle management within the Afghan Taliban seems to be a microcosm of just this issue. At what point — and how — did the Afghan strategy change so radically that middle-of-the-food-chain Taliban personalities were valued so highly that the tip of America’s uniformed spear was deployed against them? And, if we are in fact negotiating with the Taliban on post-withdrawal power sharing, how can we justify continuing to risk such personnel in action against a group we are actively working to bring to and keep at the negotiating table? Which takes us to question 5:

5. Was removing the Taliban from any form of political power (or eliminating it altogether) an original goal of the U.S.’s efforts in Afghanistan? It seems clear that, absent a sudden spontaneous combustion of every Taliban sympathizer in Afghanistan (and across the border in Pakistan), there will be some sort of arrangement that allows the Afghan Taliban to remain not only viable, but in a position of some power following the coalition withdrawal. If removing the Taliban from power and destroying their ability to regenerate and regain some level of political influence in Afghanistan was an original goal of the coalition effort there, then is there any measure by which we can say we haven’t failed? The role of the Taliban and their threat to the U.S. and its interests should neither be over — nor understated. Their greatest offense for us was their creation of a safe harbor for al Qaeda, which allowed the latter to plan and carry out international terror acts. Now, al Qaeda’s presence is reduced (though it appears to be growing in scope worldwide, if the many claims of “franchises” are to be believed), while the Taliban continues to regenerate.

Further, with their withdrawal from negotiations in the wake of last weekend’s massacre, and what appears to be unity among Afghans (for once) on a position — that of the coalition needing to leave as quickly as possible — it seems even more likely that the fragmented Afghanistan we leave behind will have at its titular helm a virtual corruptocracy, and among its power brokers groups like the Taliban.

6. What are the Afghan National Security Forces capable of? Besides killing coalition troops, of course. Will the Afghan National Security Force (ANSF — ANA and ANP) crumble as soon as their coalition trainers and partners leave? Or are we getting enough quality recruits, and training them quickly and thoroughly enough, that they will be able to provide a measure of security for residents of at least some portions of Afghanistan? If violence picks up again upon the coalition’s departure from the country, how long will the ANSF last before death and desertion decimate its ranks?

These are only a few questions, primarily asked from the 30,000 foot level or higher. As I noted above, many may seem simplistic, particularly to any readers who have an in-depth knowledge of our Afghan strategy and events on that front. However, they need to be asked — a fact which itself suggests they haven’t been given their due consideration to date.

At the bottom line, we have this fact: the Afghan people largely have better lives and more rights than they did under Taliban control in 2001 and before. However, altruism alone doesn’t justify ten years of blood and treasure. America needs to figure out what it’s doing in Afghanistan besides treading water and waiting for 2014, and it needs to decide which options have the best chance of ensuring the best possible outcome for the security and benefit of America and her interests — because, while altruistic achievement may be a nice bonus, when it comes to a decade-long war it’s the strategic benefit and safeguarded security of the participant that matter most. Given this, if we aren’t on track to significantly improve our strategic outlook and the security of our homeland and our interests by remaining in Afghanistan any longer than we absolutely must, and we should begin plans to draw down forces even more quickly than previously planned.