Can capitalism and individual freedom be preserved in a post-national world? Because the Republican Party stood for both, we supported it. We tolerated its deplorable weaknesses – chiefly its habit of being far too nice to the Left, and its incessant god-bothering.

The Constitutional Republic has now been so corrupted it cannot be purified. But it is still the best ever political idea. Its principles need to be re-established in a changed world.  

So let’s imagine it possible to remake the Republican Party better to suit the times; to turn the GOP into a GNP – a Grand New Party. What would it look like? About half of GOP membership at present is made up of Evangelical and “born again” Christians. In our ideal reconstitution, they are cut out. In their stead we would bring in a host of Libertarians. They would need to be Libertarians prepared to adopt for as long as necessary a sensible foreign policy and accept a strong defense. (Is this make-believe already becoming too farfetched?)

Certain issues would be left out of the Party platform: abortion and gay marriage, as prime instances. The law has to come in somewhere in the matter of abortion, but the issue has been confused by religious dogma and is best omitted from the agenda of the Great Abstract Gathering (GAG) called to rebuild the Republican Party.

Assuming that there will be national borders for a while yet, a new immigration policy would be given much thought. It would have to be realistic, enforceable, but humane; true to the melting-pot idea as engraved on the Statue of Liberty. The new Libertarian membership would be invited to contribute massively and energetically to this debate in particular.

To cement the alliance between secular conservatives and the new large Libertarian element, an instant consensus would be sought on free market principles, tending towards an extremist position on the rejection of “regulation” – the old Republican Party’s euphemism for government meddling with the market.

Comment and suggestions for the agenda of the GAG, outlines of desirable policies, opinions as to whether the Republican Party could be revived and returned to power, are invited.

Meanwhile here is an old prophecy that deplorably came true (hat-tip, our reader and commenter Frank):

Millions of voters who have resided in America their whole lives have immigrated without moving an inch. They don’t live in the country of their birth even if they’ve never travelled outside its borders. This is not your father’s America. It’s not even your older brother’s. 

So writes Daniel Flynn, in an article at Front Page.

The electorate that voted Ronald Reagan into the presidency in 1980 was 88 percent white, ten percent black, and two percent Hispanic. The body politic that reelected Barack Obama in 2012 was 72 percent white, thirteen percent black, ten percent Hispanic, three percent Asian, and two percent “other” …

But –

The changing complexion of America may be the most superficial of the major demographic shifts. Getting married and bringing children into the world are less popular now than at any point in U.S. history. In 1980, just 18 percent of births occurred to women not married to their child’s father. Now, that figure exceeds 40 percent. Without a daddy in their house, many single mothers look for a daddy in the White House. …

So many Americans now depend on government for food, shelter, retirement, education, health care, and even jobs that the party of government almost guarantees itself a majority long before the campaign has started. Consider that in 1980 slightly more than twenty million Americans received food stamps. In 2012, the number approaches fifty million. From bailed-out Toledo autoworkers to the comfortably unemployed approaching 99 weeks of benefits in Detroit to Georgetown co-eds desiring free birth control, the Democrat constituency is the coalition of the bought. …

Republicans Tuesday suddenly came to grips with the changes that have been slowly transforming the United States of America. …

There has been a revolution within the form.

The nation’s name remains the same. Its habits, and inhabitants, have changed beyond recognition. 

A majority of Americans chose socialism. They may not call it that, but that is what they’re getting with their choice of Obama.

As Daniel Flynn says, the transformation of America did not come suddenly. The November 2012 election was only the consummating event. Preparation for it started decades ago. To choose an arbitrary date, one might say 1968. But the realization that it has happened has come suddenly to the Republican Party.

The change came to the West in general.

Since the advent of the “New Left”, generations of children have been educated to believe that socialism is good, capitalism is bad. In American public schools, the teaching of every branch of the humanities is an indoctrination of socialism. American history is taught as a shameful tale. The books of modern fiction prescribed for student reading more often than not carry the messages of the left: anti-capitalism, egalitarianism, environmentalism, multiculturalism. The nation state and military strength are bad. Pacifism and world socialist government are good. Business is a bad thing. (“Making a profit is a disease in our society”, declares that icon of the left, Noam Chomsky.) The person who succeeds in making money in business is ipso facto a bad person.

All this they were taught. It was a long concerted campaign. “The  long march through the institutions” (the slogan that became a program, first uttered by Antonio Gramsci, founder of the Italian Communist Party) was patiently undertaken by the footsoldiers of the left, and steadily achieved. One by one the institutions were conquered: the schools and universities, many of the churches (easily turned from irrationalism to irrationalism, from one faith to another), the media, the entertainment industry; in Europe, and parts of America, even the police and the courts of law; eventually the government, and so the military and the intelligence services.

And conservatives did not notice the march. Or if they noticed it, they didn’t think it worth the effort to stop it. And now it cannot be reversed. It is a one-directional movement, a political ratchet.

So America goes socialist. The spectacle of other societies failing under socialism/communism/collectivism/statism should, in reason, make Americans shudder, not emulate them. But it hasn’t. Americans have caught the disease that is destroying the West.

What is its name?

As a failure to notice that socialist experiments have failed, it’s mental blindness.

As a failure to understand why they’ve failed, it’s mental feebleness.

As an open-eyed, fully conscious commitment to self-destruction, it is, in the medical term, suicidal ideation.

Democracy kills itself.

Yesterday, by a majority of 1,057,148* (a figure we have just derived from the Drudge Report), Americans chose to give up liberty by re-electing the socialist Islam-lover Barack Obama to the presidency.

And so “government of the people, by the people, for the people” is perishing, contrary to President Lincoln’s hope.

It is no wild exaggeration but a sober truth that Obama prefers to govern in the manner of a tyrant, against liberty in principle, and destructive of it in practice.

Thomas Sowell gives a few of many possible examples of Obama’s contempt for American Constitutional democracy:

The checks and balances of the Constitution have been evaded time and time again by the Obama administration, undermining the fundamental right of the people to determine the laws that govern them, through their elected representatives.

You do not have a self-governing people when huge laws are passed too fast for the public to even know what is in them.

You do not have a self-governing people when “czars” are created by Executive Orders, so that individuals wielding vast powers equal to, or greater than, the powers of Cabinet members do not have to be vetted and confirmed by the people’s elected representatives in the Senate, as Cabinet members must be.

You do not have a self-governing people when decisions to take military action are referred to the United Nations and the Arab League, but not to the Congress of the United States, elected by the American people, whose blood and treasure are squandered.You do not have a self-governing people when a so-called “consumer protection” agency is created to be financed by the unelected officials of the Federal Reserve System, which can create its own money out of thin air, instead of being financed by appropriations voted by elected members of Congress who have to justify their priorities and trade-offs to the taxpaying public.

You do not have a self-governing people when laws passed by the Congress, signed by previous Presidents, and approved by the federal courts, can have the current President waive whatever sections he does not like, and refuse to enforce those sections, despite his oath to see that the laws are faithfully executed.

Barack Obama … has refused to carry out sections of the immigration laws that he does not like, unilaterally creating de facto amnesty for those illegal immigrants he has chosen to be exempt from the law. The issue is not — repeat, NOT — the wisdom or justice of this President’s immigration policy, but the seizing of arbitrary powers not granted to any President by the Constitution of the United States.

You do not have a self-governing people if President Obama succeeds in having international treaties under United Nations auspices govern the way Americans live their lives, whether with gun control laws or other laws. …

The desire to circumvent the will of the American people was revealed even more ominously when Barack Obama said to Russian President Medvedev – when he thought the microphone was off – that, after he is reelected and need never face the voters again, he can be more “flexible” with the Russians about missile defense.

There are other signs of Obama’s contempt for American Constitutional democracy, but these should be more than enough. Dare we risk how far he will go when he never has to face the voters again, and can appoint Supreme Court justices who can rubber stamp his power grabs?

A majority of 1,057,148 chose to force the nation to risk it.

America is no longer the political embodiment of the idea of liberty.

Thomas Sowell ends by asking rhetorically –

Will this still be America in 2016?

No.

* Later numbers of popular and electoral college votes may be found here.

In an article summarizing what is known about the events of 9/11/12 in Benghazi, Libya, where the US mission and CIA center were attacked and the ambassador and three other Americans killed, Mark Baisley raises not only the obvious questions but some new and awful possibilities. He writes at Townhall:

Ambassador Christopher Stevens had been found dead around 1:00AM by locals who sought to loot the embassy compound. Thinking he may yet be alive, they drove him to a medical center where doctors tried unsuccessfully to revive him from the effects of smoke asphyxiation.

So not necessarily “found dead’. If the doctors are telling the truth that they thought he might be revivable when he reached the hospital, it means that what we are seeing in the pictures is not the gross mishandling of a corpse, which would be bad enough, but the possible savage abuse of a living man, the high representative of the United States of America.

Having been subjected to weeks of YouTube video apologetics and obfuscation, the American electorate naturally has questions for the Commander-In-Chief.

Why was the site securityteam removed from Benghazi one month before the attack, in conflict with expert advice and requests?

Why would the Ambassador to Libya be meeting with the Consul General of Turkey?

Why was there no U.S. military response to an attack on American assets, including the assassination of a United States ambassador?

Why was America treated to such a hard-sell explanation of a YouTube video?

Why is the filmmaker in jail?

Why did the State Department produce a television ad about the YouTube video that was broadcast in Pakistan?

I can surmise three possible explanations, having received mountains of information and speculation …

Theory 1. There actually was reason to believe initially that the attack on the Benghazi consulate was motivated by anger at the YouTube video. CIA Director David Petraeus briefed members of Congress on September 14 that the YouTube video incited mob action against the Benghazi facility. Earlier on September 11, a mob had indeed stormed the U.S. Embassy in nearby Egypt. Americans heard little of that event because the Cairo embassy is built like a fortress and no Americans were hurt. The Washington Times reported that a witness in Benghazi “saw the militants gathering around 20 youths from nearby to chant against the film.” While the Administration has since learned the truth, they have simply been stalling the revelation of more accurate information in the face of an intense re-election campaign.

We discount this theory. It isn’t even worth considering. We know intelligence reached Washington very soon after the onslaught began that it was an attack  by a terrorist organization. And there are witness reports that there had been no protest demonstration.

Theory 2. Ambassador Stevens was set up for assassination. In this scenario, the Benghazi consulate is actually a front for the CIA annex which is gathering weapons left over from the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. Those weapons are being shipped to Turkey in order to supply Syrian rebels in their quest to effect the same fate for President Bashar al-Assad. Fox News has reported on the initial shipment to the port town of Iskenderun, Turkey, a scant 25 miles from the Syrian border.

The theory here is that the Turkish General Consul lured Stevens to Benghazi for a late-day meeting where they knew of the relatively small security force in place to protect him. The timing of September 11 was important for using the YouTube video as a ready-made cover story.

This is a new twist to the story. That Turkish consul, whom we had thought a mere walk-on in the drama, a visitor calling on normal diplomatic business, having a quiet meeting with Ambassador Stevens who then politely walked him out to the street to see him off, actually played a central part in the plot? If so, the meeting was what the Ambassador had gone to Benghazi for on that critical day, and the Turk got him there in order to have him killed.

The theory raises new questions. Why would the Turks want Ambassador Stevens killed? The Turks want to aid the Syrian rebels. The Turks would surely want arms to reach the rebels. If Ambassador Stevens  was organizing shipments of arms to Turkey to be passed on to the rebels, was he not a valuable asset to the Turks?

But wait. It gets worse.

The complicity of the Obama Administration is reflected in the lack of a military response and the hard campaigning of the YouTube video to the American people.

The Obama administration was actually complicit in the luring of their own Ambassador – one, let’s remember, who shared Obama’s sentimental attachment to Islam and the Arab world – to his atrocious death?

We have blamed Obama’s policies. We have blamed his refusal to see the evil in Islam, or to acknowledge that Islam is waging jihad against America; but we had not thought that Obama and his gang actually wanted Ambassador Stevens murdered. Why would they? But the facts stare us in the face: he was denied adequate protection. When he asked for more they gave him less.The truth is being covered up. So what is it they feel so desperately needs to be covered up?

The third theory has Obama less guilty but far more helplessly incompetent  and weak:

Theory 3. The Obama Administration and the Clinton State Department are incompetent actors who prefer dreams of a utopian world over the harsh reality of extremists who take joy in killing. They assume the best about our enemies and the worst about patriotic Americans. When realizing that our facilities and people were under attack, the community organizer found himself frighteningly in the position of Commander In Chief. Barack Obama brags about the killing of Osama Bin Laden on the campaign trail. But we have all heard the rumors that Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton presented the President with the OBL mission only after it was well underway. They reportedly excluded White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett who is rumored to have stood in the way of previous opportunities to get Bin Laden.

An Alinskyite community organizer suddenly has to give orders as Commander In Chief of the armed might of the USA. How could he be capable of it?  But he would not have needed to find himself in such a crisis if his policies, formulated at leisure over four years and shaped by a lifetime of leftist ideology, hadn’t led to the critical moment. He is as guilty as he would be if his active connivance at the massacre, an actual plot involving him and the Turkish consul, were to be uncovered.

The defeat of the United States by Muslim terrorists in Benghazi on 9/11/12 had been prepared as a defeat in Washington, D.C. over the last four years – the duration of this Obama presidency. It is not only unsurprising that it happened ( though it remains profoundly shocking), but something of the sort – a massacre of American diplomats and operatives in at least one Arab country – should even have been expected; because America’s Muslim enemies are at the wheel of the ship of state, guiding it on to the rocks.

The National Security apparatus of the United States is deeply penetrated and is being dangerously manipulated by a hostile foreign threat. This necessarily means that significant foreign policy decisions involving the Islamic world … will serve to advance the cause of our enemies.

This is from an article by John Guandolo at Breitbart:

Over the last several years, the presence of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) operatives working inside the federal government advising our senior leaders has been definitively documented …

See, for instance, our posts The State-whisperer, August 16, 2012, concerning Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s closest adviser, Muslim Brotherhood associate Huma Abedin; and Obama gang submits to America’s enemy, June 14, 2012.

The success of the MB’s influence operation from within our government is now manifesting itself with national and global implications for the security of America and its citizens.

In July of this year, the CIA hosted a 2-day training program at its headquarters in Langley, Virginia entitled “Countering Violent Extremism Workshop for the National Capitol Region.”

Present at this conference were local, state, and federal officials from nearly every law enforcement, military, and intelligence organization around the Washington Metropolitan area. In addition to the senior CIA, FBI, and DHS officials conducting the training, members of the Muslim community moderated and led the training throughout the 2-day program. Notable among these was Imam Mohammed Magid who participated in speaking about “Building Communities of Trust: A Local Example of a Partnership between the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) and Law Enforcement.”

How was Imam Magid vetted to speak at CIA Headquarters? And who vetted him?

The ADAMS Center is a Muslim Brotherhood front organization …  Imam Magid is the Executive Director of the ADAMS Center. He is also the President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the largest Muslim Brotherhood organization in the U.S. which was found to be a financial support entity for Hamas in the largest terrorism financing and Hamas trial in U.S. history (US v Holy Land Foundation, Dallas, 2008).

Having Magid advise and teach U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials can only be aptly described as insane.

Insane, yes  – unless there is a terribly sane and sober plan by the administration itself to deliver the country to Islam.

According to officials at Langley who were willing to speak on the condition of anonymity, this is an outrage – but none of the leaders on the inside seem to understand the gravity of this threat.

To say the fox is in the hen house would be an understatement.

But the insanity does not end there. Imam Mohammed Magid continues to be a guest in the White House, works with the National Security Council, advises the Secretary of State, is on the DHS Homeland Security Advisory Working Group, and has received an award from the FBI. Magid continues to be treated by American leaders as if he is a friend, yet he is the leader of the largest MB front in the U.S. which financially supports the terrorist organization Hamas. …

When, over a long period of time, American leadership works side by side with and are advised by individuals and organizations who are proven to be hostile to the United States, it is no wonder the shooting at Ft Hood was called a “crime” by the FBI not an “act of terrorism” and why it was called “workplace violence” by Pentagon officials writing the after action reports. It is no wonder DHS and others in our government define the threat as “violent extremism” (which is actually a meaningless term) instead of calling it what it actually is – the Muslim Brotherhood’s jihadi movement in the United States which is a support network for terrorists.

And, it is no wonder that a military attack by Al Qaeda on an American consulate in Libya would be identified by the Obama Administration as the result of a YouTube video which was “offensive to Muslims” instead of what it truly was. Sadly, the amazing heroism of the men who battled over 200 Al Qaeda fighters for 6 hours is getting lost in the shuffle.

And it is no wonder that the attack took place, and no wonder that it was a victory for the Muslim Arab terrorist attackers.

Recently, Counter Terrorism Czar John Brennan scoffed at the idea the Muslim Brotherhood has penetrated the U.S. government. At what point will Mr. Brennan be held accountable for willfully failing to perform his duty and uphold his Oath to the Constitution. When will the other leaders such as the Secretary of State, the Director of Central Intelligence, the FBI Director, and the President be held to account for this egregious and treasonous behavior? …

One can only hope that a Romney Administration will take bold and decisive actions to purge the government of our enemies and those who willfully [or] unwittingly support them.

Right. And take measures to ensure that such penetration of government by an enemy can never happen again.

This poem, titled Mesopotamia 1917, by Rudyard Kipling, is quoted by Scott Johnson at PowerLine in connection with the tragedy of Benghazi, where Americans were left to die. We share Scott Johnson’s feeling for the aptness of it.

They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,

The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:

But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,

Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?

 

They shall not return to us; the strong men coldly slain

In sight of help denied from day to day:

But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,

Are they too strong and wise to put away?

 

Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide–

Never while the bars of sunset hold.

But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,

Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?

 

Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour:

When the storm is ended shall we find

How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power

By the favour and contrivance of their kind?

 

Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,

Even while they make a show of fear,

Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends,

To conform and re-establish each career?

 

Their lives cannot repay us – their death could not undo–

The shame that they have laid upon our race.

But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,

Shall we leave it unabated in its place?

Do not miss Mark Steyn’s column on Obama’s Big Government handling of Hurricane Sandy and the Benghazi crisis.

Each of Mark Steyn’s columns as it appears seems to be his best ever. This one is no exception.

Here’s a slice of it to taste:

In political terms, Hurricane Sandy and the Benghazi consulate debacle exemplify at home and abroad the fundamental unseriousness of the United States in the Obama era. In the days after Sandy hit, Barack Obama was generally agreed to have performed well. He had himself photographed in the White House Situation Room, nodding thoughtfully to bureaucrats (“John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; Tony Blinken, National Security Advisor to the Vice President; David Agnew, Director for Intergovernmental Affairs”) and Tweeted it to his 3.2 million followers. He appeared in New Jersey wearing a bomber jacket rather than a suit to demonstrate that when the going gets tough the tough get out a monogrammed Air Force One bomber jacket. He announced that he’d instructed his officials to answer all calls within 15 minutes because in America “we leave nobody behind.” By doing all this, the president “shows” he “cares” – which is true in the sense that in Benghazi he was willing to leave the entire consulate staff behind, and nobody had their calls answered within seven hours, because presumably he didn’t care. So John Brennan, the Counterterrorism guy, and Tony Blinken, the National Security honcho, briefed the president on the stiff breeze, but on Sept. 11, 2012, when a little counterterrorism was called for, nobody bothered calling the Counterterrorism Security Group, the senior U.S. counterterrorism bureaucracy. …

No hurricane hit my county. Indeed, no hurricane hit New Hampshire. No hurricane hit “17 states,” the number of states supposedly “affected” by Sandy at its peak. A hurricane hit a few coastal counties of New Jersey, New York and a couple of other states, and that’s it. Everyone else had slightly windier-than-usual wind – and yet they were out of power for days … because of a decrepit and vulnerable above-the-ground electrical distribution system that ought to be a national embarrassment to any developed society. …

Our government is more expensive than any government in history – and we have nothing to show for it. … One Obama [stimulus] bill spent a little shy of a trillion dollars, and no one can point to a single thing it built. Washington … spends $188 million an hour that it doesn’t have … And yet, mysteriously, multitrillion-dollar Big Government Obama-style can’t do anything except sluice food stamps to the dependent class, lavish benefits and early retirement packages to the bureaucrats that service them, and so-called government “investment” to approved Obama cronies.

So you can have Big Government bigger (or, anyway, more expensive) than any government’s ever been, and the lights still go out in 17 states – because your president spent 6 trillion bucks, and all the country got was a lousy Air Force One bomber jacket for him to wear while posing for a Twitpic answering the phone with his concerned expression.

Even in those few parts of the Northeast that can legitimately claim to have been clobbered by Sandy, Big Government made it worse. Last week, Nanny Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, rivaled his own personal best for worst mayoral performance … This is a man who spends his days micromanaging the amount of soda New Yorkers are allowed to have in their beverage containers rather than, say, the amount of ocean New Yorkers are allowed to have in their subway system … Imagine if this preening buffoon had expended as much executive energy on flood protection for the electrical grid and transit system as he does on approved quantities of carbonated beverages. But that’s leadership 21st-century style: When the going gets tough, the tough ban trans fats.

Back in Benghazi, the president who looks so cool in a bomber jacket declined to answer his beleaguered diplomats’ calls for help – even though he had aircraft and Special Forces in the region. Too bad. He’s all jacket and no bombers. This, too, is an example of America’s uniquely profligate impotence. When something goes screwy at a ramshackle consulate halfway round the globe, very few governments have the technological capacity to watch it unfold in real time. Even fewer have deployable military assets only a couple of hours away. What is the point of unmanned drones, of military bases around the planet, of elite Special Forces trained to the peak of perfection if the president and the vast bloated federal bureaucracy cannot rouse themselves to action? What is the point of outspending Russia, Britain, France, China, Germany and every middle-rank military power combined if, when it matters, America cannot urge into the air one plane with a couple of dozen commandoes? … In Washington the head of the world’s biggest “counterterrorism” bureaucracy briefs the president on flood damage and downed trees. …

Barack Obama and Joe Biden won’t even try [to fix things] …  therefore a vote for Obama is a vote for the certainty of national collapse. Look at Lower Manhattan in the dark, and try to imagine what America might look like after the rest of the planet decides it no longer needs the dollar as global reserve currency. For four years, we have had a president who can spend everything but build nothing. Nothing but debt, dependency, and decay.

So vote the wind-bags out. Obama and Biden.

And treat yourself. Read it all.  It’s very funny and at the same time very serious – which, as its author says, the Obama administration is not. And the American electorate must decide whether to get serious in time to save itself.

In different ways the response to Hurricane Sandy and Benghazi exemplify the fundamental unseriousness of the superpower at twilight. Whether or not to get serious is the choice facing the electorate Tuesday. 

But let him keep the bomber jacket.

Administrations in the past wisely set up resources to cope with the unexpected in foreign lands if and when US assets came under attack. A Foreign Emergency Support Team would be ready and quickly dispatched.

Just the thing to send when a US ambassador is in mortal danger, or a CIA center is attacked with guns and mortars.

So such a team was sent to Banghazi, Libya, on 9/11/12? Worked swiftly and decisively to save Ambassador Chris Stevens’s life? Threw off the murderous raiders from the mission compound and the CIA center?

Well, no.

It went but failed?

No.

What happened then?

It was not sent. It was not even alerted. Its commanders were not even consulted.

This is from Fox News:

Top State Department officials [including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton?] decided not to send an interagency rapid response unit designed to respond to terrorist attacks known as a FEST team, a Foreign Emergency Support Team. This team from the State Department and CIA has a military Joint Special Operations Command element to it and has been routinely deployed to assist in investigations – for instance, after the USS Cole bombing and the bombings at the U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

“After” doesn’t sound so good, but those attacks were sudden. There was no advance warning of any kind. Unlike Benghazi, where there were warninsg of many kinds for months before the onslaught came, and on the very day (as we explain below). But the King was in his counting-house (for a moment, but left it because the figures were bad and he’s  bad at figures anyway and prefers to play golf); the Queen was in the parlor eating whole grain bread and honey; and the maids-in-waiting of the cabinet were all hung out to dry. So no one took any notice of warnings or cries for help.

At least a FEST team arriving after the attack was over could have secured the crime scene.

That team, these counterterrorism officials argue, could have helped the FBI gain access to the site in Benghazi faster. It ultimately took the FBI 24 days.

“The response process was isolated at the most senior level,” according to one intelligence source. “Counterterrorism professionals were not consulted and a decision was taken to send the FBI on its own without the enablers that would have allowed its agents to gain access to the site in Benghazi in a timely manner.” The FBI team did not get on the ground in Benghazi for several weeks after the attack and at that point any “evidence” had been rifled through by looters and journalists.

There is another resource, the need for which was anticipated by past administrations, called the Counterterrorism Security Group. It too was cut out of the loop.

Further, the Counterterrorism Security Group, or CSG, was never asked to meet that night or in subsequent days, according to two separate counterterrorism officials, as first reported by CBS News. The CSG is composed of experts on terrorism from across government agencies and makes recommendations to the deputies who assist the president’s Cabinet in formulating a response to crises involving terrorism.

The CSG has still not been consulted.

Now about the warnings. The Fox News report adds:

There were reports from eyewitnesses in Benghazi on Sept. 11 that an armed militia was gathering three hours before the attack on the consulate began at 9:47 p.m.

And this is from Foreign Policy, by Harald Doornbos and Jenan Moussa:

More than six weeks after the shocking assault on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi – and nearly a month after an FBI team arrived to collect evidence about the attack – the battle-scarred, fire-damaged compound where Ambassador Chris Stevens and another Foreign Service officer lost their lives on Sept. 11 still holds sensitive documents and other relics of that traumatic final day, including drafts of two letters worrying that the compound was under “troubling” surveillance and complaining that the Libyan government failed to fulfill requests for additional security.

When we visited on Oct. 26 to prepare a story for Dubai based Al Aan TV, we found not only Stevens’s personal copy of the Aug. 6 New Yorker, lying on remnants of the bed in the safe room where Stevens spent his final hours, but several ash-strewn documents beneath rubble in the looted Tactical Operations Center, one of the four main buildings of the partially destroyed compound. Some of the documents – such as an email from Stevens to his political officer in Benghazi and a flight itinerary sent to Sean Smith, a U.S. diplomat slain in the attack – are clearly marked as State Department correspondence. Others are unsigned printouts of messages to local and national Libyan authorities. The two unsigned draft letters are both dated Sept. 11 and express strong fears about the security situation at the compound on what would turn out to be a tragic day. They also indicate that Stevens and his team had officially requested additional security at the Benghazi compound for his visit — and that they apparently did not feel it was being provided.

Not only were two terrorist organizations, connected to each other and to al-Qaeda employed by the State Department as guards – one to protect the Ambassador and his team, the other to meet the Marines flown from Tripoli to reinforce the CIA at their secret house – but also the Libyan police were relied on for security, and the police were no more to be trusted than the terrorists:

One letter, written on Sept. 11 and addressed to Mohamed Obeidi, the head of the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ office in Benghazi, reads:

“Finally, early this morning at 0643, September 11, 2012, one of our diligent guards made a troubling report. Near our main gate, a member of the police force was seen in the upper level of a building across from our compound. It is reported that this person was photographing the inside of the U.S. special mission and furthermore that this person was part of the police unit sent to protect the mission. The police car stationed where this event occurred was number 322.”

The account accords with a message written by [sean] Smith, the IT officer who was killed in the assault, on a gaming forum on Sept. 11. “Assuming we don’t die tonight. We saw one of our ‘police’ that guard the compound taking pictures,” he wrote hours before the assault. …

Obeidi, the Libyan official named on one of the printouts, said he had not received any such letter, adding, “I did not even know that the U.S. ambassador was visiting Benghazi.” However, a spokesman for the Benghazi police confirmed that the ministry had notified the police of the ambassador’s visit. “We did not receive that letter from the U.S. consulate. We received a letter from Ministry of Foreign Affairs Benghazi asking for additional security measures around consulate during visit of the ambassador. And the police provided all extra security which was asked for,” the spokesman said.

Did they? Maybe, but were the policemen any more efficacious than a paper umbrella in a rainstorm? And were they also affiliated with al-Qaeda?

Since the fall of Muammar al-Qaddafi’s regime, the country’s powerful militias have often run roughshod over the police and national army — and often coopted these institutions for their own purposes. U.S. officials were certainly well aware of the sway that various militias held over Benghazi, given that the consulate’s external security was supposed to be provided by the Islamist-leaning February 17 brigade.

What exactly happened that night is still a mystery. Libyans have pointed fingers at Ansar al-Sharia, a hard-line Islamist group with al Qaeda sympathies, if not ties. Ansar al-Sharia has denied involvement, but some of its members were spotted at the consulate.

The document also suggests that the U.S. consulate had asked Libyan authorities on Sept. 9 for extra security measures in preparation for Stevens’ visit, but that the Libyans had failed to provide promised support.

“On Sunday, September 9, 2012, the U.S. mission requested additional police support at our compound for the duration of U.S. ambassador Chris Stevens’ visit. We requested daily, twenty-four hour police protection at the front and rear of the U.S. mission as well as a roving patrol. In addition we requested the services of a police explosive detection dog,” the letter reads.

“We were given assurances from the highest authorities in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that all due support would be provided for Ambassador Stevens’ visit to Benghazi. However, we are saddened to report that we have only received an occasional police presence at our main gate. Many hours pass when we have no police support at all.”

The letter concludes with a request to the Libyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs to look into the incident of the policeman conducting surveillance, and the absence of requested security measures. “We submit this report to you with the hopes that an official inquiry can be made into this incident and that the U.S. Mission may receive the requested police support,” the letter reads.

A number of other documents were found on the floor inside the TOC building. They are partly covered with ash, but legible.

A second letter is addressed to Benghazi’s police chief and also concerns the police surveillance of the U.S. consulate on the morning of Sept. 11. The letter also requests an investigation of the incident, and states that the consulate “takes this opportunity to renew to the Benghazi Police the assurances of its highest consideration and hopes for increased cooperation.” Benghazi’s head of police, Brigadier Hussain Abu Hmeidah, was fired by the government in Tripoli one week after the consulate attack. However, Abu Hmeidah refused to step down and is still serving as the head of police. He is currently on sick leave, according to his office manager, Captain Seraj Eddine al-Sheikhi, and was unavailable for comment.

The man who officially was appointed to succeed Abu Hmeidah as Benghazi’s police chief, Salah Doghman, said in a Sept 19 interview with Reuters: “This is a mess … When you go to the police headquarters, you will find there no police. The people in charge are not at their desks. They have refused to let me take up my job.”…

These letters were found a month and a half after the attack, despite a visit to the compound by FBI investigators. …

The continued threat to U.S. personnel in Benghazi may be the reason these documents escaped the FBI’s attention. With suspected militants still roaming the streets, FBI investigators only had limited time to check the consulate compound. According to a Benghazi resident who resides near the consulate, the FBI team spent only three hours examining the compound. …

They could have simply scooped up all documents and taken them away.

During their short visit, FBI agents apparently mapped the compound by gluing small pieces of yellow paper with different letters on it next to each room in the TOC building. Next to the room where the letters and most documents were found, a yellow paper marks it room “D.” Above the paper, somebody has carved a swastika in the blackened wall.

Villa C, which was used as Stevens’ residence during his stay in Benghazi, is located 50 meters from the TOC building. Here, an open window leads to the safe haven — a sealed-off part of Villa C where Stevens and Smith suffocated to death. On the destroyed bed lay the Aug. 6, 2012, copy of the New Yorker. The magazine’s cover carries a label with Stevens’s name and his diplomatic mailing address.

A few meters to the right is the safe haven’s bathroom. Everything here is blackened by smoke. One of the two white toilets is covered with bloodstains. On the mirror in the bathroom, an unknown person has written a macabre text in a thin layer of ash. “I am Chris from the dead,” it reads.

May the memory of Ambassador Chris Stevens long haunt President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and the Democratic Party!

US Ambassador Christopher Stevens murdered in Libya

Why are we posting so much, so often, on the events of 9/11/12 in Benghazi, Libya?

Because what happened there is extremely grave. The US ambassador’s death was an enormity committed against the United States of America. The deliberate sacrifice of American soldiers was also deeply criminal. These were grave deeds, but gravest of all is the probability that these events were the result of treason.

Treason committed by whom? By the President of the United States of America.

Could any American in the history of the Union have believed such a thing to be possible? Or even thinkable?

We are not alone in thinking the unthinkable. See Roger L. Simon’s thoughts on the subject here at PJ Media.

He writes:

Our Constitution defines it [treason] this way: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” Aid and comfort to the enemy — what is that? When you ascribe an action to the protest of a video when it is actuality a planned terror attack by Ansar al-Shariah, an established offshoot of al-Qaeda (if that’s not your “enemy,” then who) — and you knew that all along, you watched it live without doing anything, and then you told those who wanted to help to “stand down”? Meanwhile, our government may have been conspiring to arm another offshoot of al-Qaeda in Syria. How much more treasonous can you get? Benedict Arnold was a piker.

And Bob Owens considers the question of treason in the highest places also at PJ Media. Some of his conjectures as to what happened when the secret CIA center was attacked are even more shocking than the revelations that have been leaking out slowly over the last few weeks. If what he surmises is right, then a charge of treason against President Obama is fully justified.

He writes:

For starters, we now know that not a single American life should have been lost. Trucks with with the Islamist cell’s logo and with heavy machine guns mounted on them took up blocking positions around the consulate no later than 8:00 p.m., according to Libyan eyewitnesses. These so-called “technicals” did not let anyone in or out for one hour and 40 minutes, until the attack began at 9:40 p.m. local time.

In that time, air assets based in Italy, Sicily, and the Mediterranean Sea could have easily dispatched the forces preparing for an attack, using precision weapons to destroy these logo-identified blocking vehicles. There is every reason to believe that the timely launch of air assets would have destroyed the attacking force as they prepared for their assault, without the loss of a single American life. For reasons as yet unknown, these easily identifiable enemy assets massing for an attack on the U.S. consulate were met with indifference by U.S. forces.

Our CIA assets, which seem to have been composed of former SEALs and other special operations personnel, conducted an unsupported rescue mission under fire. They saved the lives of the remaining consulate staff and recovered the body of Sean Smith, whom they then escorted back to their safehouse a mile away.

Once there, they came under fire again — including fire from a terrorist team armed with mortars. Then something truly extraordinary and troubling took place:

“At that point, they called again for military support and help because they were taking fire at the CIA safe house, or annex. The request was denied. There were no communications problems at the annex, according to those present at the compound. The team was in constant radio contact with their headquarters. In fact, at least one member of the team was on the roof of the annex manning a heavy machine gun when mortars were fired at the CIA compound. The security officer had a laser on the target that was firing, and repeatedly requested back-up support from a Spectre gunship, which is commonly used by U.S. special operations forces to provide support to special operation teams on the ground involved in intense firefights.”

After reading this, I was simply stunned. According to the article, an American CIA agent had a laser on a target and was attempting to call in close air support — and was denied. While this article never explicitly says so, some have suggested that the “security officer” in the article was Ty Woods, soon to be killed by that same mortar.

Let’s unpack this.

In this context, there are two ways to “lase” a target. One is simply using a visible laser designator/laser sight to point out the target’s location. The second is the use of a laser target designator (LTD), which is a far more sophisticated device. An LTD uses coded pulses of a band of light not visible to the human eye, and these pulses communicate and synchronize with an aircraft-mounted module to direct a finite and fairly exclusive family of air-launched guided weapons. 

If the CIA officer was lasing a target with the laser designator/laser sight on his weapon, one might argue (and some have) that this was an act of improvisation — a hope that the visible lasing would convince the mortar team to flee their position in fear of being bombed. This position is not without merit but overlooks two salient facts. The first is that these security officers lasing the target were manning a heavy machine gun, which presumably would have the reach and power to eliminate the mortar team, or at least suppress it, without air support. It also overlooks the fact that the article directly states that the target was being lased for a specific asset, a “Spectre.” 

Airborne gunships have been around since the Vietnam war, when C-47 transport planes were first equipped with port-side mounted miniguns for close air support missions, becoming AC-47s. By 1967, a desire to improve upon the concept involved replacing the aged twin-engine C-47 base aircraft with the four-engine C-130, which had greater speed, more fuel, and a greater capacity for weapons and ammunition. These AC130s carried various nicknames, including “Spooky” (inherited from the AC-47) and “Spectre,” the latter of which has been the most publicly recognizable name of these powerful ground support aircraft.

If the CIA operators were using an LTD, it additionally means that air assets were not in Italy or Sicily on the ground. It means that strike aircraft were overhead, and were denied permission to fire from someone in the chain of command. LTDs must sync with overhead aircraft; they have no deterrent effect since they use a spectrum of light we cannot see and can only communicate with craft overhead.

I will caution that this is highly speculative, but an LTD would presumably not be used for just any variant of the C-130-based gunships. While we did have AC-130 gunships based close to Benghazi, they would not make the best use of targets lit by an LTD. The AC-130 uses guns, not guided weapons. [But] the same cannot be be said of another “Spectre” variant, the MC-130W.

The MC-130W is built to use precision-guided weapons, including the GBU-44/B Viper Strike glide bomb and the AGM-175 Griffin missile. Both are laser-guided weapons that can be directed using a ground-based LTD. Both are weapons designed to be highly accurate, with small warheads to greatly reduce the danger of collateral damage. They are precisely the kind of weapon an experienced CIA operator would call in if they wanted to reduce the threat of collateral damage, like the kind of damage that might be caused by firing an HMG from a rooftop.

If this is what occurred, it seems that even in weapon selection, the primary concern of the HMG operator was saving innocent lives.

But we do not know at this time which actually occurred. Based upon the information we can glean, we’re left with two most probable outcomes.

Either the Obama administration refused to launch close-air support aircraft from nearby bases that could have eliminated enemy forces attacking Americans trapped on the ground, or we had close air support aircraft overhead that could have taken out the terrorists that had Americans under fire with precision weapons — and the administration refused to let them fire.

The moral cowardice of both decisions is unconscionable. …

Retired Admiral James Lyons notes various sources claiming: ”One of Stevens’ main missions in Libya was to facilitate the transfer of much of Gadhafi’s military equipment, including the deadly SA-7 — portable SAMs — to Islamists and other al-Qaeda-affiliated groups fighting the Assad Regime in Syria.”

Barack Obama has long had a cozy relationship with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and their alliance with Islamists in Syria battling Bashir Assad has been criticized before. If Ambassador Stevens was facilitating weapons transfers from Libya to Syrian Islamist forces aligned with al-Qaeda, via his Turkish alliance, then we are at a troubling, perhaps catastrophic point in this republic’s history.

We have been at war with the Islamist hydra of al-Qaeda for more than a decade, and now sources are accusing a sitting president of arming this enemy.

18 USC § 2381 provides us with a legal threshold for treason: “Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

Providing munitions to al-Qaeda-aligned Islamist forces would seem to meet that standard. The Obama administration has the most damaging charge of all to which it must answer, and can be offered no quarter.

*

Aggravating the frustration and fury of those who want the truth about what happened and punishment of those to blame for it, is the unbearable indifference that Obama and Hillary Clinton have displayed to the suffering of the murdered men and their families, as well as to the fact that America was attacked and the battle thrown away or gifted to the enemy.

Mark Steyn’s comments highlight their vicious, shallow, self-important, impenetrable insouciance – and their cruel, glib lies:

Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods fought all night against overwhelming odds, and died on a rooftop in a benighted jihadist hell hole while Obama retired early to rest up before his big Vegas campaign stop. …

Ty Woods, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith and Chris Stevens were left to die, and a decision taken to blame an entirely irrelevant video and, as Secretary Clinton threatened, “have that person arrested.” And, in the weeks that followed, the government of the United States lied to its own citizens as thoroughly and energetically as any totalitarian state, complete with the midnight knock-on-the-door from not-so-secret policemen sent to haul the designated fall guy into custody.

And “that person” – a horrid little anti-Semite who invented a Jewish film-maker for him in turn to accuse, but nonetheless one who is entirely innocent of the murder of Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith, of the sacrifice of Woods and Doherty – is sitting in a prison cell in California, having had these crimes heaped on his head by the great political messiah of the Democratic Party, Barack Hussein Obama. Even for such a victim of injustice and political persecution decent men and women must express outrage.

And for these grave, these monstrous wrongs in foreign lands, the real perpetrators  – be they the President of the United States and the most highly placed members of his administration – need to be punished with the full force of the law.

Postscript 10/31/12:  It now emerges that Glen Doherty was one of the 8 Marines sent from Tripoli, met by a (terrorist) escort, delayed by the escort for 45 minutes at the Benghazi airport, and eventually taken to the secret annex which soon after their arrival was pounded with mortars, one of which killed him.

Come let us mock at the great

That had such burdens on the mind

And toiled so hard and late

To leave some monument behind,

Nor thought of the levelling wind. …

Mock mockers after that

That would not lift a hand maybe

To help good, wise or great

To bar that foul storm out, for we

Traffic in mockery.

-W.B.Yeats

It seems that the murderers of Ambassador Stevens and four of his staff are protected from retribution by the lies the Obama administration has told about the tragic event.

How this is possible emerges from a round-up of reports in GlobalPost on the leader of a terrorist organization that attacked the US consulate in Benghazi:

Ahmed Abu Khattala, who was identified by a witness and officials as one of the Islamist militia commanders leading the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, has denied being involved.

Khattala told Reuters in an interview that he was present during the incident but wasn’t one of the ringleaders.

Present while his militiamen were violently attacking the consulate, but not “involved”? Just a bystander looking on, bemused – or amused – by the antics of the killers?

According to the Associated Press, Khattala describes himself as a founder and commander of the Abu Obaida Bin Jarrah.

He told the AP in a separate interview that he went to the site of the attack to rescue men he had been informed were trapped inside.

Ah, he was there to rescue the US ambassador, was he?

The New York Times noted that “just days after President Obama reasserted his vow to bring those responsible to justice, Mr. Abu Khattala spent two leisurely hours on Thursday evening at a crowded luxury hotel, sipping a strawberry frappe on a patio and scoffing at the threats coming from the American and Libyan governments.”

So that’s what America has been reduced to by Obama’s policy towards the Arab revolutionary states: a toothless old blusterer, like the Libyan “government”, whose threats need not be taken seriously. And are obviously not being carried out, or not with great dispatch anyway. Maybe sometime, one day, someone will be sent by the State Department to take some action against Khattala.

Indeed, Khattala said, “These reports say that no one knows where I am and that I am hiding,” according to Reuters. “But here I am in the open, sitting in a hotel with you. I’m even going to pick up my sister’s kids from school soon.” …

The Times classified Khattala’s manner as defiant. No authority has questioned him on the attack, he told The Times, and he has no plans to go into hiding.

Taunt, taunt the USA.

“All this talk is baseless,” Khattala told the AP. “I am in Benghazi, have a job and live my life normally. I have not been accused by any party with any allegations … I am not a fugitive or in hiding.”

Meanwhile, US government sources told Reuters that Khattala is being probed as a suspect in the attacks, though investigators are not clear what role he played.

Isn’t the – totally invisible – probing meant to find out what role he played?

A Libyan interior ministry official with knowledge of the investigation told Reuters that Khattala was photographed at the consulate on Sept. 11, but there was not enough evidence for an arrest. The official said, “Just because someone is there doesn’t mean they were behind it.”

But they were there. They were in it – a massive armed attack in which four Americans, including the representative of the United States, were murdered. Every one of the participants should be targeted for punishment.

Khattala’s account of the attack … alleged that the assault grew out of a spontaneous protest when Libyan or American guards inside the consulate’s compound fired on the protesters, provoking them.

Only there was no protest. Khattala is seizing on the lie that the Obama administration has been telling. If they now call him a liar, they accuse themselves.

Mock, mock the USA.