From: CNS News
The mother of diplomat Sean Smith, who was killed in the Benghazi terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2012, said that at her son’s memorial service President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Ambassador Susan Rice told her that the attack occurred because of an anti-Muslim video, although evidence now shows the White House was told by the CIA “that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated in the attack” and that the agency never mentioned a “video.”
It is also now known that White House and State Department officials edited the talking points provided by the CIA to remove any references to the al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia and earlier warnings from the agency about terrorist threats against the Benghazi compound. The talking points, in their various versions, never mentioned the anti-Muslim video touted by the president, Clinton and Rice.
Sean Smith, killed in the Benghazi terrorist attack, was 34 years old and worked for the U.S. Foreign Service as an Information Management Officer. He was married and had two children. The memorial service for Smith and the other three Americans killed occurred on Sept. 14 at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama spoke at the service.
Sean Smith’s mother, Pat Smith, was interviewed on The O’Reilly Factor on May 9 about congressional hearings into the attack and new testimony by whistleblowers about what happened on Sept. 11, 2012.
Part of the exchange between host Bill O’Reilly and Pat Smith about events at the memorial service is presented below:
Bill O’Reilly: “Did Hillary Clinton say anything to you? Did President Obama, did they say anything to you on that day?”
Pat Smith: “Oh yes, they all told me about the reason that this happened was the video. Every one of them told me that.”
O’Reilly: “They actually told you it was the video? Both Secretary of State Clinton and the president told you it was the videotape?"
Pat Smith: “Yes, they actually did, and Susan Rice also.”
O’Reilly: “Face to face?”
Pat Smith: “Nose to nose. I was with – they were hugging me."
O’Reilly: “And that was 3 days after the attack, correct? The 14th?"
Pat Smith: “Well, whenever it was – it was at the ceremony [at Andrews Air Force base].”
O’Reilly: “September 14, three days after the attack.”
While the talking points used by the Obama administration do not mention a video, Secretary Clinton did issue a statement on Sept. 11, while the attack was still ongoing in Benghazi, stating that, “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.”
When CNSNews.com asked the State Department who gave Clinton that information, while the Benghazi attack was still unfolding, spokesman Patrick Ventrell would not answer.
Showing posts with label State Department. Show all posts
Showing posts with label State Department. Show all posts
Friday, May 10, 2013
Thursday, February 14, 2013
Report: Hagel Said State Department Controlled by Israel
From: The Washington Free Beacon
Fox News Channel on Tuesday reported that secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel failed to disclose to the United States Senate speeches delivered to controversial groups such as the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee as well as James Zogby’s Arab American Institute.
Meanwhile, a 2007 speech then-Sen. Hagel delivered at Rutgers University in New Jersey as he tested the waters for a presidential run is drawing fresh scrutiny.
Hagel said the U.S. Department of State was an adjunct of the Israeli foreign minister’s office, according to a contemporaneous report of the event.
Republican political consultant and Hagel supporter George Ajjan wrote about the March 2, 2007, speech on his website the following day, writing a description “point by point through some of the more important elements of his speech.”
“Point six“:
“If I wrote it, then that’s what happened at the time,” Ajjan told the Free Beacon.
He added that the event, which was cosponsored by the Rutgers University Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the American Iranian Council, was closed to the press.
“When [Hagel] said the State Department was becoming an adjunct of the Israeli ministry, I think that was during the Q&A,” said Ajjan. “Even in the blog, I was surprised that he said that. It was a very bold statement.”
Ajjan said he has “been a supporter of Hagel for a long time” and admired his opposition to the Iraq war in particular.
“Back in ’07, I was hoping that he was going to throw his hat in the ring for the Republican presidential primaries,” he said.
Ajjan, who ran for Congress in 2004, added he would still support a Hagel presidential bid today.
“I’d be delighted to see Hagel mount some sort of third party candidacy,” he said. “If he makes it through these confirmation hearings you really couldn’t ask for a better pedigree.”
On his Twitter feed, Ajjan expresses criticism of neoconservatives, Israel, and the war on terror that is commonplace among Hagel supporters.
Rutgers University and a spokesperson for Hagel did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
Update (2:55 p.m.): BuzzFeed found and published Hagel’s prepared remarks for the event, which can be read here, but not the question and answer section of the event. The Washington Free Beacon is still working to obtain a transcript of that portion of the event.
Fox News Channel on Tuesday reported that secretary of defense nominee Chuck Hagel failed to disclose to the United States Senate speeches delivered to controversial groups such as the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee as well as James Zogby’s Arab American Institute.
Meanwhile, a 2007 speech then-Sen. Hagel delivered at Rutgers University in New Jersey as he tested the waters for a presidential run is drawing fresh scrutiny.
Hagel said the U.S. Department of State was an adjunct of the Israeli foreign minister’s office, according to a contemporaneous report of the event.
Republican political consultant and Hagel supporter George Ajjan wrote about the March 2, 2007, speech on his website the following day, writing a description “point by point through some of the more important elements of his speech.”
“Point six“:
The State Department has become adjunct to the Israeli Foreign Minister’s office…Reached by phone, Ajjan confirmed his 2007 account of the event, saying he was “taking notes as [Hagel] was speaking.”
Wow. A very bold statement by Hagel bound to further raise the ire of the “Jewish Lobby” (yawn…), but it does express his strong belief in a comprehensive solution to problems in the Middle East. Hagel mentioned this theme several times – comprehensive, he said, in the sense that all tools should be used to achieve American foreign policy objectives (diplomatic, political, economic, and military), but also comprehensive in the James Baker sense of addressing the Arab-Israeli conflict holistically as both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have proved too lazy and too incompetent to do.
“If I wrote it, then that’s what happened at the time,” Ajjan told the Free Beacon.
He added that the event, which was cosponsored by the Rutgers University Center for Middle Eastern Studies and the American Iranian Council, was closed to the press.
“When [Hagel] said the State Department was becoming an adjunct of the Israeli ministry, I think that was during the Q&A,” said Ajjan. “Even in the blog, I was surprised that he said that. It was a very bold statement.”
Ajjan said he has “been a supporter of Hagel for a long time” and admired his opposition to the Iraq war in particular.
“Back in ’07, I was hoping that he was going to throw his hat in the ring for the Republican presidential primaries,” he said.
Ajjan, who ran for Congress in 2004, added he would still support a Hagel presidential bid today.
“I’d be delighted to see Hagel mount some sort of third party candidacy,” he said. “If he makes it through these confirmation hearings you really couldn’t ask for a better pedigree.”
On his Twitter feed, Ajjan expresses criticism of neoconservatives, Israel, and the war on terror that is commonplace among Hagel supporters.
Rutgers University and a spokesperson for Hagel did not respond to requests for comment by press time.
Update (2:55 p.m.): BuzzFeed found and published Hagel’s prepared remarks for the event, which can be read here, but not the question and answer section of the event. The Washington Free Beacon is still working to obtain a transcript of that portion of the event.
Monday, October 08, 2012
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
US Foreign Policy: Abandoning Middle Eastern Christianity
From: AINA
The US State Department has quietly ceased cataloging violations of religious freedom in its "Country Reports on Human Rights." Of course, it's just a coincidence that this comes at a time when Washington is allying with radical Islamists in Libya, Syria, and Iraq. As CNS reports:
"The U.S. State Department removed the sections covering religious freedom from the Country Reports on Human Rights that it released on May 24, three months past the statutory deadline Congress set for the release of these reports.
"The new human rights reports--purged of the sections that discuss the status of religious freedom in each of the countries covered--are also the human rights reports that include the period that covered the Arab Spring and its aftermath.
"Thus, the reports do not provide in-depth coverage of what has happened to Christians and other religious minorities in predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East that saw the rise of revolutionary movements in 2011 in which Islamist forces played an instrumental role.
"For the first time ever, the State Department simply eliminated the section of religious freedom in its reports covering 2011 and instead referred the public to the 2010 International Religious Freedom Report -- a full two years behind the times -- or to the annual report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which was released last September and covers events in 2010 but not 2011."
Part of the reason could be that the state of religious freedom in the US isn't all that great since the Obama administration tried to force Catholic institutions -- hospitals, clinics, etc. -- to provide the "full-range" of contraceptive services, including abortion, to their employees. Then there's the Chick-fil-a controversy, where the city governments of Chicago, New York, and San Francisco want to punish the company whose CEO opposes gay marriage on religious grounds.
Hostility to organized religion -- unless you're a Unitarian, or one of these guys -- has long been a feature of contemporary American liberalism, but the kind of radical anti-clericalism that has roiled Europe (and Mexico) hasn't reared its ugly head in this country until now. The Catholic Church is a favorite anti-clericalist target, but the State Department isn't discriminating on sectarian grounds: they've simply eliminated accounts of all anti-Christian measures taken by foreign governments from their Country Reports.
This makes sense, if you think about it: after all, if you're allying with radical Islamists in order to overthrow the government of Syria -- which has long been a bulwark against Islamic jihadists in the Middle East -- then official propaganda has got to reflect this strategy.
In Egypt, where we're trying to retain some influence in the wake of longtime ally Hosni Mubarak's ouster, the Islamists have gone on a rampage, burning Coptic Christian churches, murdering churchgoers, and making it impossible for a public Christian presence to exist alongside the Muslim majority. As the Muslim Brotherhood takes the presidency and the parliament, with US support, the country's Christians have plenty of reason to worry -- or emigrate.
In Libya, where a supposedly "secular" party won a plurality in the elections after US-backed rebels took power, one of their first public pronouncements was to disavow the secular label -- and reinstate polygamy.
You're only allowed four, but hey, don't be a hog. And in an economic reform that may resonate in certain quarters in Washington, the charging of interest by banks is controversial if not yet forbidden. Persecution of Libya's Christians has remained the one constant since the fall of Gadhafi, and vigilante violence is on the uptick.
In Syria, the anti-Christian jihad is well underway, churches are being occupied and ransacked by the rebels and Christian communities targeted in a sectarian "cleansing" campaign:
"Asked whether it was the Free Syrian Army that was telling Christians to get out, Agnes Miriam, Mother Superior of the Monastery of St. James at Qara in the Diocese of Homs, said, 'Yes … it was the commander on the ground, Abdel Salam Harba, who decided that there was to be no more negotiations with Christians.'
"She said Christians refused to back the rebels, so the rebels used them as human shields."
The Vatican has echoed the Mother Superior's human shields charge, but the Obama administration is an unlikely source of sympathy for the plight of Syria's Catholics, given their war on the Church here on the home front. Indeed, anti-Catholicism is back in fashion in this country, particularly among the sort of secular liberals likely to be strong supporters of the President. Why should the Obamaites be concerned about the fate of Syrian Christians at the hands of US-backedjihadists rebels? There's no political pay-off.
I know this argument isn't going to be popular with my liberal-lefty readers, of which there are plenty, but listen: this is a deadly dangerous geopolitical game our grand strategists in Washington are playing. From North Africa to the mountain passes of Afghanistan, this administration is linking up with radical Sunni Islamists, some of which are openly associated with or sympathetic to Al Qaeda, as a prelude to their coming showdown with the Iranian Shi'ite theocracy. Their regime-change operation in Syria is but a dress rehearsal for a much wider and more devastating conflict.
Washington's playing the Sunni card condemns the peoples of the Middle East to the tyranny of sharia law: it means the utter destruction of ancient Christian communities from Tripoli to Chaldea. This has been a consistent pattern of US foreign policy since the Bush administration, which, after all, launched our disastrous invasion of Iraq and thus condemned its heretofore safe and relatively free Christian community to death.
It is undeniable that the Obama administration's strenuous efforts to attach itself to the coattails of the "Arab Spring" have radically accelerated the threat: indeed, it is fair to say that one of the main consequences of our "successful" policy has been and will continue to be a regional Christian pogrom. The only question is whether this is the inevitable albeit inadvertent consequence of a broader policy, or an intentional campaign to eradicate Christianity from the Middle East.
So where are the much-vaunted and politically powerful "Christian" groups in the US, who are supposed to exert so much influence over the Republican party and its candidates? While the Christians of the Middle East are sinking beneath an Islamist wave, as Washington cheers (and funds the jihadists), such Christian "leaders" as the Rev. John Hagee are too busy anticipating World War III and supporting Israel to notice.
As this administration pursues a policy that puts the Christians of the Middle East and North Africa in mortal danger, where oh where is the so-called Religious Right? They're carrying the banner of Mitt Romney, who wants the US to openly arm the Syrian rebels. Being a former Mormon bishop and all, Romney no doubt knows about the existence of the tiny Mormon community in Syria: is he concerned about their fate when the jihadists come to town? From the tone of this Mormon propaganda -- no.
In Syria, and throughout the region, it is the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches that will be razed to the ground as radical Sunnis backed by the US take power and impose sharia law. If these groups have any lobbying power in the US, I have yet to see them exercise it on behalf of their beleaguered co-religionists. The mainstream media in the Western world, no friend of organized religion of any sort, is content to close its collective eye to the pogrom, whilst cheerleading and covering up for the supposedly heroic rebels. This BBC reporter doesn't hesitate to ask a nun reporting rebel atrocities if she knows "many people consider you a liar." Imagine some reporter -- particularly one from the BBC -- saying that to a Kosovar during the Balkan war. It would never have happened.
If the Obama administration is trying to reinforce the wacky idea that the President is really a secret Muslim, then they are certainly doing a bang-up job of it. As for me, my view is that, like all statists, the Obamaites are hostile to all religion, just on general principles. The church, after all, is a rival power center to the State. In any case, sympathy for the plight of Christians in the Middle East is not likely to be found in those quarters -- but, Christ Almighty, what about the rest of the country? Have we completely lost our moral compass, or is the triumph of militant secularism so complete that we can comfortably ignore our own government's war on Christianity in the Middle East?
"The U.S. State Department removed the sections covering religious freedom from the Country Reports on Human Rights that it released on May 24, three months past the statutory deadline Congress set for the release of these reports.
"The new human rights reports--purged of the sections that discuss the status of religious freedom in each of the countries covered--are also the human rights reports that include the period that covered the Arab Spring and its aftermath.
"Thus, the reports do not provide in-depth coverage of what has happened to Christians and other religious minorities in predominantly Muslim countries in the Middle East that saw the rise of revolutionary movements in 2011 in which Islamist forces played an instrumental role.
"For the first time ever, the State Department simply eliminated the section of religious freedom in its reports covering 2011 and instead referred the public to the 2010 International Religious Freedom Report -- a full two years behind the times -- or to the annual report of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), which was released last September and covers events in 2010 but not 2011."
Part of the reason could be that the state of religious freedom in the US isn't all that great since the Obama administration tried to force Catholic institutions -- hospitals, clinics, etc. -- to provide the "full-range" of contraceptive services, including abortion, to their employees. Then there's the Chick-fil-a controversy, where the city governments of Chicago, New York, and San Francisco want to punish the company whose CEO opposes gay marriage on religious grounds.
Hostility to organized religion -- unless you're a Unitarian, or one of these guys -- has long been a feature of contemporary American liberalism, but the kind of radical anti-clericalism that has roiled Europe (and Mexico) hasn't reared its ugly head in this country until now. The Catholic Church is a favorite anti-clericalist target, but the State Department isn't discriminating on sectarian grounds: they've simply eliminated accounts of all anti-Christian measures taken by foreign governments from their Country Reports.
This makes sense, if you think about it: after all, if you're allying with radical Islamists in order to overthrow the government of Syria -- which has long been a bulwark against Islamic jihadists in the Middle East -- then official propaganda has got to reflect this strategy.
In Egypt, where we're trying to retain some influence in the wake of longtime ally Hosni Mubarak's ouster, the Islamists have gone on a rampage, burning Coptic Christian churches, murdering churchgoers, and making it impossible for a public Christian presence to exist alongside the Muslim majority. As the Muslim Brotherhood takes the presidency and the parliament, with US support, the country's Christians have plenty of reason to worry -- or emigrate.
In Libya, where a supposedly "secular" party won a plurality in the elections after US-backed rebels took power, one of their first public pronouncements was to disavow the secular label -- and reinstate polygamy.
You're only allowed four, but hey, don't be a hog. And in an economic reform that may resonate in certain quarters in Washington, the charging of interest by banks is controversial if not yet forbidden. Persecution of Libya's Christians has remained the one constant since the fall of Gadhafi, and vigilante violence is on the uptick.
In Syria, the anti-Christian jihad is well underway, churches are being occupied and ransacked by the rebels and Christian communities targeted in a sectarian "cleansing" campaign:
"Asked whether it was the Free Syrian Army that was telling Christians to get out, Agnes Miriam, Mother Superior of the Monastery of St. James at Qara in the Diocese of Homs, said, 'Yes … it was the commander on the ground, Abdel Salam Harba, who decided that there was to be no more negotiations with Christians.'
"She said Christians refused to back the rebels, so the rebels used them as human shields."
The Vatican has echoed the Mother Superior's human shields charge, but the Obama administration is an unlikely source of sympathy for the plight of Syria's Catholics, given their war on the Church here on the home front. Indeed, anti-Catholicism is back in fashion in this country, particularly among the sort of secular liberals likely to be strong supporters of the President. Why should the Obamaites be concerned about the fate of Syrian Christians at the hands of US-backed
I know this argument isn't going to be popular with my liberal-lefty readers, of which there are plenty, but listen: this is a deadly dangerous geopolitical game our grand strategists in Washington are playing. From North Africa to the mountain passes of Afghanistan, this administration is linking up with radical Sunni Islamists, some of which are openly associated with or sympathetic to Al Qaeda, as a prelude to their coming showdown with the Iranian Shi'ite theocracy. Their regime-change operation in Syria is but a dress rehearsal for a much wider and more devastating conflict.
Washington's playing the Sunni card condemns the peoples of the Middle East to the tyranny of sharia law: it means the utter destruction of ancient Christian communities from Tripoli to Chaldea. This has been a consistent pattern of US foreign policy since the Bush administration, which, after all, launched our disastrous invasion of Iraq and thus condemned its heretofore safe and relatively free Christian community to death.
It is undeniable that the Obama administration's strenuous efforts to attach itself to the coattails of the "Arab Spring" have radically accelerated the threat: indeed, it is fair to say that one of the main consequences of our "successful" policy has been and will continue to be a regional Christian pogrom. The only question is whether this is the inevitable albeit inadvertent consequence of a broader policy, or an intentional campaign to eradicate Christianity from the Middle East.
So where are the much-vaunted and politically powerful "Christian" groups in the US, who are supposed to exert so much influence over the Republican party and its candidates? While the Christians of the Middle East are sinking beneath an Islamist wave, as Washington cheers (and funds the jihadists), such Christian "leaders" as the Rev. John Hagee are too busy anticipating World War III and supporting Israel to notice.
As this administration pursues a policy that puts the Christians of the Middle East and North Africa in mortal danger, where oh where is the so-called Religious Right? They're carrying the banner of Mitt Romney, who wants the US to openly arm the Syrian rebels. Being a former Mormon bishop and all, Romney no doubt knows about the existence of the tiny Mormon community in Syria: is he concerned about their fate when the jihadists come to town? From the tone of this Mormon propaganda -- no.
In Syria, and throughout the region, it is the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches that will be razed to the ground as radical Sunnis backed by the US take power and impose sharia law. If these groups have any lobbying power in the US, I have yet to see them exercise it on behalf of their beleaguered co-religionists. The mainstream media in the Western world, no friend of organized religion of any sort, is content to close its collective eye to the pogrom, whilst cheerleading and covering up for the supposedly heroic rebels. This BBC reporter doesn't hesitate to ask a nun reporting rebel atrocities if she knows "many people consider you a liar." Imagine some reporter -- particularly one from the BBC -- saying that to a Kosovar during the Balkan war. It would never have happened.
If the Obama administration is trying to reinforce the wacky idea that the President is really a secret Muslim, then they are certainly doing a bang-up job of it. As for me, my view is that, like all statists, the Obamaites are hostile to all religion, just on general principles. The church, after all, is a rival power center to the State. In any case, sympathy for the plight of Christians in the Middle East is not likely to be found in those quarters -- but, Christ Almighty, what about the rest of the country? Have we completely lost our moral compass, or is the triumph of militant secularism so complete that we can comfortably ignore our own government's war on Christianity in the Middle East?
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