Day: September 20, 2012

Obama called Sufyan Ben Qumu “ally of sorts,”

Aside robbyba

Obama called Sufyan Ben Qumu “ally of sorts,” was mastermind of the al Qaeda attack on our Libyan consulate

Libya attacker was released from Gitmo. But more important, Obamaconsidered him “ally of sorts,” according to NYT.http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/09/19/Qumu-attacker-Libya-ally-of-sorts-US

 

REPORT: TERRORIST BEHIND AMBASSADOR MURDER ‘ALLY OF SORTS’ TO OBAMA ADMIN

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by BEN SHAPIRO 19 Sep 2012, 4:51 PM PDT 80 POST A COMMENT

TONIGHT, BRET BAIER OF FOX NEWS REPORTED THAT INTELLIGENCE SOURCES BELIEVE THAT THE MASTERMIND OF THE AL QAEDA ATTACK ON OUR LIBYAN CONSULATE IS ONE SUFYAN BEN QUMU. QUMU WAS A TANK DRIVER IN THE LIBYAN ARMY; HE WAS A DRUG ADDICT AND SPENT TIME IN PRISON. FROM THERE, HE FLED TO EGYPT, THEN WENT TO AFGHANISTAN AND JOINED UP WITH OSAMA BIN LADEN. HE LATER JOINED THE TALIBAN, AND WAS CAPTURED IN PAKISTAN, THEN TURNED OVER TO THE UNITED STATES. QUMU WAS RELEASED FROM GUANTANAMO BAY IN 2007 TO THE QADDAFI-LED LIBYAN GOVERNMENT, ON THE CONDITION THAT LIBYA AND THE US COULD REACH A “SATISFACTORY AGREEMENT … THAT ALLOWS ACCESS TO DETAINEE AND/OR ACCESS TO EXPLOITED INTELLIGENCE.” IN 2008, AS THE QADDAFI GOVERNMENT MADE NICE WITH THE LIBYAN REBELS, QUMU WAS RELEASED.

That’s where the story gets even more interesting. The Obama administration promptly labeled Qumu an “ally of sorts,” according to the New York Times – that despite the fact that as of 2005, he was known as a “medium to high risk … likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and allies.” What made him an ally? According to the Times, that status change was due to the Obama administration’s “remarkable turnabout resulting from shifting American policies rather than any obvious change in Mr. Qumu.” As a leader of the Libyan rebels, head of the Darnah Brigade, Qumu received support from NATO. And unnamed Western observers, according to the Times, felt that Qumu wasn’t a real threat: “We’re more worried about Al Qaeda infiltration from outside than the indigenous ones … Most of them have a local agenda so they don’t present as much as a threat to the West.”
This is the Obama perspective of the Islamist Spring in a nutshell: the administration preferred not to see with whom it was allying, instead hoping against hope that Islamists were good, decent, kind people who could be reasoned with. Qumu was none of the above. And now our ambassador to Libya is dead at the hands of a man we funded. For years, the left blamed the Reagan administration for failing to keep track of Osama Bin Laden in the years after the mujahedeen fought the Soviets out of Afghanistan. They claimed that US backing of Muslim terrorist groups paved the way for Taliban rule and terrorist growth. Certainly that claim is true for President Obama, whose quixotic support for the Libyan rebellion has already borne bloody fruit.

#Obama misleading about Navy SEALs killed in Libya and al-Qaida connections

Obama admin misled on role two former SEALS killed in Libya attack –http://bit.ly/R17NJH
9:50 PM – 19 Sep 12 · Details

U.S. officials clarify administration description of two heroes in Libya attack

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Ex-Navy Seals weren’t part of ambassador’s security detail but rose to occasion, officials now confirm
UPDATED 21:58 PM EDT, SEPTEMBER 19, 2012 | BY JOHN SOLOMON
Why It Matters:
The Obama administration’s initial account of the Libyan consulate attack didn’t give the full story about two ex-Navy SEALs who helped repel the security breach until they were killed. Now officials are confirming those two heroes’ real jobs at the embassy along with evidence of ties between the attack and al-Qaida.
The two former Navy SEALs killed in last week’s attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi were not part of Ambassador Chris Stevens’ official security detail but took up arms in an effort to protect the facility when it was overrun by insurgents, U.S. officials tell the Washington Guardian.
The two former SEALS,  Tyrone Woods, 41, and Glen Doherty, 42, were not employed by the State Department diplomatic security office and instead were what is known as personal service contractors who had other duties related to security, the officials said.
They stepped into action, however, when Stevens became separated from the small security detail normally assigned to protect him when he traveled from the more fortified embassy in Tripoli to Benghazi, the officials said.
The two ex-Seals and others engaged in a lengthy firefight with the extremists who attacked the compound, a fight that stretched from the inner area of the consulate to an outside annex and a nearby safe house — a location that the insurgents appeared to know about, the officials said.
The officials provided the information to the Washington Guardian, saying they feared the Obama administration’s scant description of the episode left a misimpression that the two ex-Navy SEALs might have been responsible for the ambassador’s personal safety or become separated from him.
“Woods and Doherty weren’t part of the detail, nor were they personally responsible for the ambassador’s security, but they stepped into the breach when the attacks occurred and their actions saved others lives — and they shouldn’t be lumped in with the security detail,” one senior official said, speaking only on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the State Department.
The administration has not fully described the two former Navy SEALs’ activities, characterizing  their work only vaguely  as being security related. “Our embassies could not carry on our critical work around the world without the service and sacrifice of brave people like Tyrone and Glen,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said after the attacks.
As recently as Sunday, UN Ambassador Susan Rice gave a similar description. “Two of the four Americans who were killed were there providing security. That was their function. And indeed, there were many other colleagues who were doing the same with them,” Rice told ABC’s This Week program.
In fact, officials said, the two men were personal service contractors whose official function was described as “embassy security,” but whose work did not involve personal protection of the ambassador or perimeter security of the compound.
The details emerged the same day that U.S. officials confirmed in public a Washington Guardian story Friday that U.S. intelligence believes al-Qaida or its affiliates played a role in the attack. “We are looking at indications that individuals involved in the attack may have had connections to Al Qaeda or Al Qaeda’s affiliates,” Matt Olsen, the director of the National Counterrorism Center, told lawmakers.
Administration officials had downplayed al-Qaida connections shortly after the attack.
Many U.S. agencies in foreign hotspots like Benghazi rely on and even share contract workers with special skills like those of retired Navy SEALs for security, reconnaissance and threat assessments.
Unlike full embassies such as the one in Tripoli, consulates like Benghazi usually don’t have a contingent of Marines to provide security, and private contractors help fulfill some of those responsibilities. The Washington Guardian reported last week concerns about the embassy security that predated the deadly attack.
Those briefed on the latest intelligence say investigators are trying to determine when and why Stevens’ official State Department security team got separated from the ambassador when the attacks occurred the evening of Sept. 11.
The separation of the team from the ambassador remains one of the more serious matters under review, the officials said.
In addition, while the administration has downplayed any link to al-Qaida, there is evidence some of  the attackers were affiliated with another group that sympathizes with al-Qaida and has grown more influential in Libya and other parts of north Africa.
State Department officials did not respond to emails or phone calls seeking comment Wednesday.
The current evidence leads U.S. intelligence to believe that a band of Islamist extremists with some ties to the north African affiliate of al-Qaida had accumulated a stash of weapons and extra human muscle, performed some reconnaissance to identify possible U.S. targets, and may have even infiltrated the Libyan security forces that help protect the consulate in hopes of eventually conducting a terrorist operation somewhere in Benghazi.
However, U.S. intelligence does not believe — at present — that the attackers specifically targeted Stevens, official said. Instead, they think the attackers sprang into action when, seeing crowds forming outside the consulate on Sept. 11, they perceived an opportunity to carry out a terrorist attack, officials said.
“Yes, they were killed in a terrorist attack on our embassy,” Olsen told the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee on Wednesday. “The best information we have now, the facts that we have now, indicates an opportunistic attack on our embassy.”
U.S. officials say they have some evidence at least one of the attackers had prior connections to al-Qaida’s senior leadership and that others were linked to a sympathetic spinoff group in northern Africa known as al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, which is gaining influence in Libya.
Specifically, U.S. intelligence is investigating whether there is any connection to an al-Qaida-linked player named Sufyan Ben Qumu, who was captured by U.S. officials after the September 11, 2001 attacks and held at Guantanamo Bay for years before being released to Libyan authorities by the Bush administration in 2007. Qumu has emerged in recent months as an increasingly influential Islamist figure in eastern Libya, near Benghazi.
Fox News reported Wednesday night he might be a mastermind of the attack, but U.S. intelligence officials said such conclusions are premature.
“There’s an active effort to uncover those individuals and groups who were responsible for the attack. Any suggestion that a leading suspect or ‘mastermind’ of the attack has been identified at this point is premature.  It is safe to assume that any significant extremist in Eastern Libya is going to be under a lot of scrutiny right now,” one U.S. intelligence official told the Washington Guardian.

#Obama Failing to Stop Nuclear Iran, Syria

Mr. #Obama, after 4 years the Iran nuclear program is still alive and well. http://goo.gl/dNBex #pennsylvania #bigten #gm
10:01 PM – 19 Sep 12 · Details

Obama Failing to Stop Nuclear Iran, Syria

Wednesday, 29 Aug 2012 09:26 PM
By Todd Beamon and Kathleen Walter
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President Barack Obama’s policy on Iran obtaining nuclear weapons “has been a real failure,” former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton tells Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview from the Republican National Convention in Tampa.

“He has run a three-and-a-half year campaign, as opposed to governing, and his policy on the Iranian nuclear weapons front in particular has been a real failure,” Bolton tells Newsmax. “He’s proceeded on the assumption that he could negotiate Iran out of its program. That was never going to happen.”

Bolton said that the latest International Atomic Energy Association’s (IAEA) report on Iranian nuclear development, due out this week, will document further uranium deposits at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, which is buried deep beneath rock and soil to protect it from air strikes, among other developments.

Editor’s Note: Obama is Furious About This Book. Get “No Easy Day” Just $4.95 With Special Offer.

“The conclusion from that is that despite economic sanctions, despite political efforts by the Obama administration, Iran continues to make steady progress toward that objective of nuclear weapons. The threat not only remains but is growing.”

Bolton, who urged Israel last month to retaliate against Iran for the killing of Israeli tourists in Bulgaria, said on Wednesday that “Israel will hold off until the very last minute but, ultimately, the decision on whether or when to strike Iran will be based on physics not on American politics.

“There’s a lot of speculation that they will strike before our election. I don’t pretend to have to insider information but I think they’ll wait until they don’t think they can wait any longer. If that’s before the election, fine; if that’s after the election, fine, from their perspective.”

Any such attack, Bolton said, “would be at the very outer limit of Israel’s capacity. We, obviously, have a much greater capacity.”

Obama’s poor leadership is even more acute on Syria and its leader, President Bashar al-Assad, Bolton said.

“He has operated under the assumption that Russia shared our objective to take Assad out of power. That was never true. Russia has vetoed three U.N. Security Council sanctions. We have not identified leaders among the opposition forces that we can really trust – and we have no certainty that they will not themselves conduct a bloodbath in Syria if the Assad regime falls. Not to mention, what happens to Syria’s very large stocks of chemical weapons.”

Because of the president’s ineffectiveness in foreign policy, “the rest of the world, friend and foe alike, sees a weaker America, in retreat from its global responsibilities,” Bolton said. “Polls have been taken in countries around the world that show that America has less respect under Obama” than President George W. Bush.

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“Even in countries where Obama has made a special effort, like in Egypt, where he made a famous speech early in his administration about the U.S. and Islam, the U.S. has a lower favorability rating today than when George Bush left office.

“What it proves is that America must protect its interest in the world,” Bolton concluded. “It is better to be respected than to be loved.”

Read more on Newsmax.com: NMX: Bolton: Obama Failing to Stop Nuclear Iran, Syria
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama’s Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

Syria’s Secular and Islamist Rebels: Who Are the Saudis and the Qataris Arming

10:18 PM – 18 Sep 12 · Details

Syria’s Secular and Islamist Rebels: Who Are the Saudis and the Qataris Arming?

Out of Istanbul, the two Gulf states play a game of conflicting favorites that is getting in the way creating a unified rebel force to topple the Assad regime
By RANIA ABOUZEID / IDLIB PROVINCE | September 18, 2012 | 27
Unrest in Syria

MARCO LONGARI / AFP / GETTY IMAGES
Syrian rebels take position during clashes with regime forces in the northern city of Aleppo on Sept. 14, 2012
Vast swaths of northern Syria, especially in the province of Idlib, have slipped out of the hands of President Bashar Assad, if not quite out of his reach. The area is now a de facto liberated zone, though the daily attacks by Damascus’ air force and the shelling from the handful of checkpoints and bases regime forces have fallen back to are reminders that the rebel hold on the territory remains fluid and fragile.
What is remarkable is that this substantial strip of “free” Syria has been patched together in the past 18 months by military defectors, students, tradesmen, farmers and pharmacists who have not only withstood the Syrian army’s withering fire but in some instances repelled it using a hodgepodge of limited, light weaponry. The feat is even more amazing when one considers the disarray among the outside powers supplying arms to the loosely allied band of rebels.
As TIME reports here, disorder and distrust plague two of the rebels’ international patrons: Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The two Gulf powerhouses are no longer on the same page when it comes to determining who among the plethora of mushrooming Syrian rebel groups should be armed. The rift surfaced in August, with the alleged Saudi and Qatari representatives in charge of funneling free weaponry to the rebels clearly backing different factions among the groups — including various shades of secular and Islamist militias — under the broad umbrella that is the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

Read more: http://world.time.com/2012/09/18/syrias-secular-and-islamist-rebels-who-are-the-saudis-and-the-qataris-arming/#ixzz26yJUkfI3