Bombshell Report: Obama Administration Was Warned of Embassy Attack and Did Nothing
According to reports from the British newspaper the Independent, the Obama administration was warned of potential attacks on U.S. embassies on the anniversary of 9/11 – and did nothing to stop them.
This, combined with the allegations that our Marines in Cairo were handcuffed on orders that they could not use ‘live ammunition’, makes the President’s failures in handling this situation even more dumbfounding.
The killings of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his staff were likely to have been the result of a serious and continuing security breach, The Independent can reveal.
American officials believe the attack was planned, but Chris Stevens had been back in the country only a short while and the details of his visit to Benghazi, where he and his staff died, were meant to be confidential.
The US administration is now facing a crisis in Libya. Sensitive documents have gone missing from the consulate in Benghazi and the supposedly secret location of the “safe house” in the city, where the staff had retreated, came under sustained mortar attack. Other such refuges across the country are no longer deemed “safe”.
Some of the missing papers from the consulate are said to list names of Libyans who are working with Americans, putting them potentially at risk from extremist groups, while some of the other documents are said to relate to oil contracts.
According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and “lockdown”, under which movement is severely restricted.
The White House is denying allegations that they had warning of a planned attack on the embassies (h/t Hot Air).
The Obama administration is flatly denying a blaring British newspaper report that the U.S. diplomats in Libya were killed as a result of a “continuing security breach,” and that “credible information” about possible attacks had been ignored.
A U.S. official told POLITICO: “There’s no intelligence indicating that the attack in Benghazi was premeditated.”…
Shawn Turner, spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, emailed: “This is absolutely wrong. We are not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent.”
Of course, they’re parsing words by specifically denying that their was intelligence on the attack in Benghazi. The Independent’s report simply states that their was credible evidence of an attack on ‘American missions’. Henceforth, security should have been heightened in all American interests abroad. But it wasn’t.
Further, their are actual indications that diplomats in Libya knew that something was afoot. As we reported Wednesday, one of the diplomats killed in the attack, Sean Smith, had expressed concerns for his safety through an online gaming forum.
But there was also a statement from Smith that seemed to hint that something was being planned against the Libyan embassy.
“We saw one of our ‘police’ that guard the compound taking pictures.”
Those actions prompted Smith to wonder about future conversations with his fellow gamers:
“Assuming we don’t die tonight.”
Those same police forces according to the Independent all scattered when the attacks began:
According to security sources the consulate had been given a “health check” in preparation for any violence connected to the 9/11 anniversary. In the event, the perimeter was breached within 15 minutes of an angry crowd starting to attack it at around 10pm on Tuesday night. There was, according to witnesses, little defence put up by the 30 or more local guards meant to protect the staff. Ali Fetori, a 59-year-old accountant who lives near by, said: “The security people just all ran away and the people in charge were the young men with guns and bombs.”
Wissam Buhmeid, the commander of the Tripoli government-sanctioned Libya’s Shield Brigade, effectively a police force for Benghazi, maintained that it was anger over the Mohamed video which made the guards abandon their post. “There were definitely people from the security forces who let the attack happen because they were themselves offended by the film; they would absolutely put their loyalty to the Prophet over the consulate. The deaths are all nothing compared to insulting the Prophet.”
There seems to be little doubt that the guards assigned to protect the embassy were involved in this coordinated attack. When the signal was given, they abandoned our men and women inside that embassy, leaving them to die.
The President has a lot of explaining to do – just as soon as he can tear himself away from those seemingly more important campaign fundraisers.
Stunning Allegations: Marines in Cairo Not Allowed to Use Live Ammunition?
This absolutely can not be true. If even a sliver of it is however, multiple people need to be fired effective immediately.
Via the Washington Free Beacon:
U.S. Marines defending the American embassy in Egypt were not permitted by the State Department to carry live ammunition, limiting their ability to respond to attacks like those this week on the U.S. consulate in Cairo.
Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson “did not permit US Marine guards to carry live ammunition,” according to multiple reports on U.S. Marine Corps blog spotted by Nightwatch. “She neutralized any US military capability that was dedicated to preserve her life and protect the US Embassy.”
If true, the reports indicate that Patterson shirked her obligation to protect U.S. interests, Nightwatch states.
“She did not defend US sovereign territory and betrayed her oath of office,” the report states. “She neutered the Marines posted to defend the embassy, trusting the Egyptians over the Marines.”
That is beyond abhorrent if true.
While the media continues to focus on Mitt Romney’s statements regarding the disgraceful respon to the attacks by the Obama administration, keep this in mind – the President may be putting the security and safety of U.S. citizens in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Egyptian security teams over the United States Marines.
Chilling Message From Diplomat Killed in Libya – "Assuming We Don’t Die Tonight"
Sean Smith, one of the American diplomats killed in the siege at the Libyan embassy last night, sent out a message that may have foreshadowed his death, and the death of three others during the attack.
Via Wired:
On Tuesday, Sean Smith, a Foreign Service Information Management Officer assigned to the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, typed a message to the director of his online gaming guild: ”Assuming we don’t die tonight. We saw one of our ‘police’ that guard the compound taking pictures.” The consulate was under siege, and within hours, a mob would attack, killing Smith along with three others, including the U.S. ambassador.
In his professional and personal life, Smith was a husband and father of two, and a 10-year veteran of the Foreign Service who had served in Baghdad, Pretoria, Montreal and The Hague. But when gaming with EVE Online guild Goonswarm, he was a popular figure known as “Vile Rat,” and alternately as “Vilerat” while volunteering as a moderator at the internet community Something Awful. Smith’s death was confirmed on Wednesday morning by the State Department and reported widely in the news media. But the first people to report Smith’s death were his friends. Their reaction was shock and mourning.
Smith not only sensed something was wrong, but he points to a setup when discussing the suspicious actions of somebody charged with protecting the embassy.
Rick Moran also wonders about a possible setup:
US Ambassador to Libya John Christopher Stevens and three other embassy employees were assassinated as their car was ambushed by gunmen while fleeing the US consulate in Benghazi, which was under attack by armed Islamists.
…
The fact that the ambassador and the other three Americans were killed while fleeing the consulate raises the question of whether he was specifically targeted for death. The attack on the consulate may have been a ruse to flush the ambassador from the compound where the gunmen, armed with RPG’s, lay in wait. But this is speculation.
Indeed, this is all merely speculation. But the fact that one of the victims worried of an attack based on a suspicious ‘policeman’ taking pictures, does call into question the possiblity that these Americans were setup and marked for murder.
America Attacked Again on 9/11 … and We Apologize?
The same Egyptian protesters that President Obama was more than willing to support during the so-called Arab Spring, mounted an unprecedented attack on an American Embassy in Cairo yesterday.
CNN reported:
Angry protesters climbed the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo on Tuesday and hauled down its American flags, replacing them with black flags with Islamic emblems.
The incident prompted U.S. security guards to fire off a volley of warning shots as a large crowd gathered outside, apparently upset about the production of a Dutch film thought to insult the Prophet Mohammed, said CNN producer Mohammed Fahmy, who was on the scene.
An embassy operator told CNN that the facility had been cleared of diplomatic personnel earlier Tuesday, ahead of the apparent threat, while Egyptian riot police were called to help secure the embassy walls.
An embassy in Libya was also attacked.
Protesters angry over an amateurish American-made video denouncing Islam attacked the United States Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Tuesday, killing a State Department officer, while Egyptian demonstrators stormed over the fortified walls of the United States Embassy here.
On the 11th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the assaults were a violent reminder that the changes sweeping the region have hardly dispelled the rage against the United States that still smolders in pockets around the Arab world.
The results? Multiple Americans were shot, while others were the victims of a rocket attack that killed the U.S. Ambassador to Libya.
The U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other embassy staff were killed in a rocket attack on their car, a Libyan official said, as they were rushed from a consular building stormed by militants denouncing a U.S.-made film insulting the Prophet Mohammad.
Gunmen had attacked and burned the U.S. consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi, a center of last year’s uprising against Muammar Gaddafi, late on Tuesday evening, killing one U.S. consular official. The building was evacuated.
The Libyan official said the ambassador, Christopher Stevens, was being driven from the consulate building to a safer location when gunmen opened fire.
Believe it or not, the response coming from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo included an apology to the extremists who had carried out the attack.
I’m going to say that again.
The Obama administration apologized to terrorists who had burned down sovereign American buildings and killed an American citizen.
The statement from the Embassy in Cairo actually apologized for “religious incitement” and for “hurting the religious feelings of Muslims”.
I wish I was making that up. Here is the statement:
Have you ever in your life thought, after two U.S. embassies were attacked and seized by radical Islamists, in which multiple Americans were shot – one fatally – and an embassy was nearly burned to the ground, exactly 11 years to the day after the worst terrorist attack in American history perpetrated by similar radical Islamists, that you would ever see an administration actually issue an apology for ‘hurting the religious feelings of Muslims’?
Oh I know they’re trying to walk it back now, but weakness has already been shown. This will go down as the single most cowardly and disgraceful response to an attack on the fundamental American right of free speech in modern history.
Worse, it crossed the bounds of a mere protest when an American was shot and killed. It is a terrorist attack. And we apologized.
President ‘Gutsy Call’ is now officially operating under a foreign policy platform in which we as a nation are subservient to terrorism and slaves to appeasement.
Indeed, the administration is working fervently to backpedal on the apology, 17 hours after the fact. But the damage is done.
Via Politico:
The Obama administration is disavowing a statement from its own Cairo embassy that seemed to apologize for anti-Muslim activity in the United States.
“The statement by Embassy Cairo was not cleared by Washington and does not reflect the views of the United States government,” an administration official told POLITICO.
…
The embassy came under widespread criticism for failing to defend free speech in the face of threats of violence. Egyptian protesters rioted anyway, breaching the embassy walls and tearing down the American flag.
The criticism has been warranted. This may go down as one of the most embarrassing days in foreign policy history, and proves that having ‘we killed Osama bin laden’ as your biggest foreign policy platform isn’t enough. Amateur hour in the White House needs to end in November.
Mental Recession 