The intelligence report on the terrorist attacks on our consulate in Benghazi on 9/11/2012 went over like a lead balloon today. Secretary Clinton didn’t show up. She’s home with a “concussion” (doctor’s orders) after a “fall” from being “dehydrated.” Three strikes and your out.
Jeez, people will believe anything. Here’s the facts…
The last major stronghold for the Gaddafi loyalists was Benghazi. This city was their Alamo. It was defended with the most fervor and was the last city to fall during the insurrection. It’s where all the hard core supporters of Gaddafi gathered for their last stand.
Benghazi remains apart from the rest of Libya as a rebel enclave. Al Queda maintains half a dozen training camps within the city itself. That’s why we had a CIA operation ongoing there at “the annex.” The CIA is mostly concerned about the 20,000 shoulder launched missiles that were misplaced during the chaos of the civil war.
Any one of these could bring down an aircraft. There is a very real danger that these weapons could be distributed to rebels and Al Quedia affiliates throughout the region, if they have not already been so.
Even though the rest of Libya might support the U.S. as the benefactor of their revolution, the citizens of Benghazi hate the U.S. as the murders of Gaddafi. Even before the 9/11/2012 assault on the U.S. consulate, there had been violence and threats against the U.S. and British consulates.
The Brits shut down their operation and moved out of Benghazi as did the Red Cross.
Libya at large has degenerated into a modern Middle Age chaos of cities controlled by hundreds of competing warlords. Gaddafi may have been a ruthless dictator, but at least he kept law and order and some semblance of a central government. The only way Libya will return to the status of a nation is for a full occupation on the order of what was done to Iraq.
Ironically, Benghazi is one of the most stable regions in the country right now relative to the unlawful state of the rest of Libya where random groups of insurgents enforce laws as they see fit, often with a religious fervor.
The Obama administration doesn’t want people to know that the Arab Spring failed in Libya. The Republicans are only slightly less anxious for the news to get out because they supported arming the rebel factions and taking down the Gaddafi regime.
The media is the most reluctant of all to tell the truth because they were the driving force behind the rebel elements. In hindsight, everybody was wrong to one extent or another, and nobody wants to admit this.
Put bluntly, the Arab Spring was an abject failure. Egypt is controlled by a legislature that is 1/3rd Muslim Brotherhood and another 1/3rd even more extreme Islamists. Egypt has gone from a moderate western style nation to a fundamentalist Islamic state.
Libya was strictly Islamic to begin with, and now they are an even more extreme Shariah state.
Nobody in Washington wants to admit that. The events in Benghazi threaten their comfy reality with the raw horror that is the truth.
The anticlimax of the hearings today speak volumes.
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