Tag Archives: STATE DEPARTMENT

May 5, 2013 · 3:02 PM

Utah Congressman Claims Benghazi Witnesses Are Being Threatened But Can’t Cite Any Examples

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT)

The TP article below demonstrates how this has become the latest GOP playbook:  Accuse the POTUS of everything under the sun (and hope that something sticks) but proof or facts are not an option…

Think Progress

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) accused the Department of State of repeated threats and intimidation against witnesses to last year’s attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. But when pressed by Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace for examples, he could offer none.

Asked about a claim by a witness’s lawyer that whistle-blowers had been blocked from testifying (a claim rejected by the Department of State), Chaffetz said that “more than one” witness has indeed been “suppressed” by the Obama administration.

WALLACE: Tell me–a direct threat, a direct act of intimidation against a potential witness?

CHAFFETZ: Yes, and I think we’ll probably…

WALLACE: Tell me one… tell what’s been said.

CHAFFETZ: There are people, more than one, that have felt intimidation from the State Department.

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-MA) quickly debunked his colleague: “There’ve been two attorneys involved here, the only reason they haven’t received information is that they haven’t asked for it yet… there has not been a request for documents from these attorneys to the State Department.”

The only “retaliation,” Lynch noted, was that one of the witnesses wants a reassignment and a promotion and feels he’s being retaliated against because has not yet gotten the promotion.

Watch the video:

As Media Matters has previously noted, Victoria Toensing, the Republican attorney making the initial claims has been peddling Benghazi conspiracy theories for months, including a November Fox News op/ed in which she attempted to draw a link between the attack and the resignation of former CIA director David Petraeus.

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December 19, 2012 · 2:54 PM

The Benghazi report: Big trouble for Hillary Clinton?

Hillary Clinton won't testify as scheduled at congressional Benghazi hearings due to a concussion.

Hillary Clinton won’t testify as scheduled at congressional Benghazi hearings due to a concussion.

Let there be no doubt about it.  This will in no way hinder the Secretary of State’s excellent record nor will it be a problem if she decides to run in 2016.

Hillary Clinton has been an outstanding public servant for decades and a few rumblings from the other side, in an effort to derail anything with Barack Obama’s name on it, will be an epic fail.

The Week

An independent inquiry faults missteps by the State Department in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens.

“So much for any presidential aspirations Hillary Clinton may be entertaining for 2016,” says Janet Shan atHinterland Gazette. An independent review board investigating the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, released its unclassified report late Tuesday. (Read the whole thing below.) The upshot? “Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies” at high levels of the State Department contributed to the death of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens. As secretary of state, that’s a pretty big stain on Clinton’s reputation.

The board, led by former diplomat Thomas Pickering and retired Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, eventually concluded that blame for the American deaths rests “solely and completely with the terrorists,” and pointedly “did not find reasonable cause to determine that any individual U.S. government employee breached his or her duty.” But the board did fault the State Department for relying on unseasoned U.S. security personnel and Libyan militias to protect Stevens, ignoring requests for more guards, failing to make needed security upgrades, not adjusting to the deteriorating situation in Benghazi, and for poor intra-agency coordination. Clinton was expected to testify before Congress about the report on Thursday, but begged out, citing a concussion sustained during a fall last week while she was fighting a stomach bug.

Conservatives aren’t buying it. With U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice pulling out of the running for Clinton’s job and CIA Director David Petraeus ousted amid a sex scandal, “Clinton is the latest scapegoat for ongoing frustrations over Benghazi,” says Alexander Abad-Santos at The Atlantic Wire. And since the report declined to name new victims to destroy in their Benghazi-gate crusade, they’re making do with “Concussiongate.”

Well really, Clinton is bowing out from yet another round of Benghazi hearings, this time because of a supposed concussion, “and we’re supposed to just take her word for it”? says Jim Treacher at The Daily Caller. “If she has a concussion, let’s see the medical report.” Imagine the outrage if Clinton predecessors Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice had called in sick for Iraq War hearings. Yes, “Clinton’s story beggars belief,” says the New York Post in an editorial. Thissupposed concussion “looks like one of the most transparent dodges in the history of diplomacy,” and Republicans must insist she testify later if not now.

Give me a break, says Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice. Clinton is faking an illness? Theseconservatives “are fixated on creating crises where they aren’t any,” and doing so in a “cravenly partisan” manner. Congratulations, or something: Your paranoia has earned you a coveted spot in our “Get a Life” club.

In the end, Clinton will probably emerge from this relatively unscathed, says The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. Before she gets another chance to testify, she will likely “leave the Obama cabinet with sky-high approval ratings and an eye on the 2016 presidential nomination,” and at this point, “it’s logical for her not to want to dwell on the worst debacle of her tenure at State.”

Read the report for yourself:

Benghazi Report

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July 22, 2012 · 3:10 PM

Top Clinton Aide Threatened After Bachmann Allegations

Seriously now, it’s time to rein in Looney Bachmann.  She needs to be removed from the Intelligence Committee ASAP.

Think Progress

The New York Post reports Sunday that Huma Abedin, a top aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was placed under security by authorities after an “unspecified threat.”

The source of the threat is not clear — he was “described as a Muslim man” — but the Post linked the incident to widely-repudiated allegations made by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) tying Abedin to the Muslim Brotherhood and suggesting her  nefarious influence on the U.S. government.

New York police and the State Department reportedly questioned the man, who was not charged, according to the Post

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May 29, 2012 · 8:50 AM

GOP ‘Appalled’ Over Obama Granting Castro’s Daughter Visa, Ignores Trips Under Bush

Another case of Obama Derangement Syndrome…

Think Progress

When the State Department granted the head of Cuba’s National Center for Sex Education, Mariela Castro Espín, a visa to chair a panel on LGBT issues at the Latin American Studies Association in San Francisco later this week, the Republican response was as obvious as the Cuban LGBT activist’s relations to the Caribbean island’s Communist dictators. Her father is Cuban President Raúl Castro, her uncle is revolutionary leader and longtime dictator Fidel Castro, and the Republicans were “appalled.”

“The State Department needs to wake up from its delusional love fest with the dictators in Havana,” said right-wing House Foreign Affairs chair Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL). Republican Members of Congress released web videos and organized conference callsdenouncing the visa as “outrageous.”

Even presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney got in on the action, releasing a statement accusing the Obama administration of “a slap in the face to all those brave individuals in Cuba who are enduring relentless persecution.”

Ros-Lehtinen and Reps. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL), David Rivera (R-FL) and Albio Sires (R-NJ)  wrote a strongly-worded letter to the State Department saying:

The administration’s appalling decision to allow regime agents into the U.S. directly contradicts Congressional intent and longstanding U.S. foreign policy.

If it’s “longstanding U.S. foreign policy” to deny Mariela Castro a visa to enter the U.S., someone forgot to tell President George W. Bush. The Bush administration granted Castro not one but three visas to enter the U.S. in 2001 and 2002. State Department spokesman William Ostick  told the Miami Herald:

Mariela Castro visited once in 2001 and twice in 2002. I can’t discuss her visas specifically, but you can assume she needed one to travel.

An Obama surrogate, Freddy Balsera, told the Herald:

In fact, the top State Department Official in charge of Latin America at the time was a Cuban American. Where was their criticism then? Nowhere, because ultimately this is all about politics for them.

A ThinkProgress search of the Lexis Nexis news database for Mariela Castro’s name during 2001 and 2002 returned no results relevant to her trips to the U.S.

Former attendees at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) said that Cuba has long been a presence at LASA conferences. This year, the State Department accepted 60 visas, denied 11, and is still processing 6.  A State spokesman said visas couldn’t be rejected simply because “we don’t like you.”

LASA’s president  told the Associated Press that Castro’s appearance at the conference was “an academic issue, not a political issue,” and that she’d answered a call for papers like any other conference speaker.

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May 5, 2011 · 12:39 AM

Doctored bin Laden corpse photos go viral, global

United States Capitol in daylight

Image via Wikipedia

I understand that most  Congressmen and Senators in the Capitol are dumber than a pile of bricks.  I get that. 

I understand that they need their Congressional or Senatorial aides to assist them and break things down to the lowest common denominator for them, but give me a break!  Were all the Congressional and senatorial aides off duty today?

Those pictures were not authorized or distributed by the State Department or the Administration.  Could it be that people like my Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) are so filled with blood lust that they just had to see and then pass along unauthorized pictures of the bin Laden killings?

What a bunch of dumb phucks!  Who elects these people?  Oh, nevermind!

Associated Press

The images are bloody, grotesque and convincing:  Osama bin Laden lies dead, the left side of his head blasted away. But the pictures are fakes.

Doctored photos purporting to show bin Laden’s corpse rocketed around the world on television, online via social media and in print almost as soon as his death was announced.

The pictures have spread without regard for their origin or whether the images are real. Meanwhile, scammers have piggybacked on the popularity of the images and spiked supposed online links with computer viruses.

Newsrooms and the public have been left in the tough spot of deciding what to believe when software has made doctoring photographs easier than ever. And the hunger for visual evidence of bin Laden’s death may only grow now that President Barack Obama has said the government’s photos will remain classified.

“I don’t think society tolerates the invisible anymore,” said Fred Ritchin, a professor of photography at New York University who has written about digital technology undermining trust in the veracity of photographs. “Everything has to be imaged.”

The photos on the Internet did not come from the operation that killed bin Laden, according to a senior defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the mission was classified.

Still, the appetite for images remains. In perhaps the most widely distributed photo, a bloodied bin Laden appears to be missing his left eye, and he is grimacing as if he died in pain. The White House says bin Laden was shot above his left eye.

Reuters reported on its photography blog that the mouth, ear and beard in the picture exactly matched a photo the news agency had snapped of bin Laden at a news conference in 1998. The upper half of the face appears to be from a different corpse.

Another photo released on the website liveleak.com shows bin Laden lying on his back with a wound over one eye as a soldier with an American flag insignia on his shoulder stands over the body. The photo is in green and black, as if taken with a night vision lens.

The website has since retracted the photo, which liveleak.com indicated was made with a photo of bin Laden digitally stitched into a still from the 2001 movie Black Hawk Down.

Another picture, by far the most gruesome, shows an extremely bloody face that resembles bin Laden with most of the skull missing and brain visible.

The spread of fake photos and the ease of making them have forced news organizations to be more vigilant than ever.

“The challenge here is these techniques are quite sophisticated,” said Santiago Lyon, director of photography for The Associated Press. “A good Photoshop forger … can make it very difficult at first glance to detect whether an image has been manipulated or not.”

Experienced photo editors can often spot telltale inconsistencies such as shifts in color, contrast or light source that signal a fake, Lyon said.

Continue reading here…

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May 3, 2011 · 7:02 AM

‘Behind The Scenes’ White House Press Briefing On The Osama Bin Laden Operation (Highlights)

I watched this briefing on television yesterday and was amazed at the information that was forthcoming about the Osama bin Laden raid and his subsequent demise.  Below are highlights of the briefing.  

The full 49 minute briefing can be found here…

H/t: Democratic Underground

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November 28, 2010 · 4:51 PM

Senators, Liz Cheney want WikiLeaks leakers prosecuted

Raw Story

WikiLeaks hasn’t even released the latest round of US government documents and already politicians and pundits are calling for prosecutions.

The latest release from the WikiLeaks website is expected to include as many as 250,000 secret diplomatic cables.

The Obama administration warned Wednesday that the documents could damage US relations with friends and allies.

“Leaking the material is deplorable,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News’ Chris Wallace Sunday. “I agree with the Pentagon’s assessment that the people at WikiLeaks could have blood on their hands.”

“I don’t know what the cables may say but it’s just a — we’re at war. I mean the world is getting dangerous by the day and the people who do this are really low on the food chain as far as I’m concerned. If you can prosecute them, let’s try.”

Sen. Clair McCaskill (D-MO) agreed. “Lindsey’s right,” she said. “The people who are leaking these documents need a gut check about their patriotism and I think they’re enjoying the attention they’re getting but, frankly, it’s coming at a very high price in terms of protecting our men and women in uniform.”

“I hope that we can figure out where this is coming from and go after them with the force of law,” McCaskill said.

Also appearing on Fox News Sunday, former State Department official Liz Cheney called for the government to go after the leakers.

“I think, once again, the government of Iceland ought to shut down that [WikiLeaks] website,” Cheney said. “I think they ought to stop allowing the stuff to come out of the website in Iceland. I think that the administration ought to be focused very much on prosecuting those responsible.”

Continue reading here…

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November 6, 2010 · 1:21 AM

Meet “President” Hillary Clinton

Politico

We all know that Hillary Clinton came close to winning the Democratic nomination for president of the United States in 2008. She wasn’t successful, but some people clearly haven’t forgotten about what could have been.  

The secretary of state joined New Zealand Prime Minister John Phillip Key and New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray Stuart McCully for remarks Thursday at Wellington’s Parliament Theatrette, and the prime minister made a little slip-up.  

“And we, in a purely bilateral basis, have concerns about the fact that Australia” has a free-trade agreement, began Key. “They’re a very important part of our market in New Zealand, so we see Trans-Pacific Partnership as a very important item to be completed if at all possible. So, President Clinton …” (See: Forget VP: Clinton World Eyes 2016)  

Laughter — and applause — ensued, according to the State Department’s transcript, and Key was forced to correct himself.  

“I’m sorry. Secretary Clinton — great,” he said. “I thank you for your time here in New Zealand, and I look forward to seeing President Obama when he is here in Japan next week.”

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August 25, 2010 · 8:48 AM

State Department compares Park 51 Imam to Shirley Sherrod

 

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo makes a great point: 

Is Imam Rauf the Muslim Shirley Sherrod?

And do I need a calendar to remember who to hate next week?

Foreign Policy – The Cable

The State Department’s top spokesman cautioned reporters Tuesday not to take snippets of edited remarks on the Internet by the “Ground Zero mosque” imam and use them to brand him a radical, lest they repeat the mistakes made by the media in calling former USDA official Shirley Sherrod a racist based on edited clips of her promoted on conservative websites.

Imam Feisal Rauf, the spiritual leader of the proposed Park 51 community center in lower Manhattan, is on his State Department-sponsored trip to the Persian Gulf right now, giving speeches in Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates about what it’s like to be a Muslim in America.

Rauf has been traveling on behalf of the department since 2007 on trips sponsored by both the Obama and George W. Bush administrations. He belongs to the progressive Sufi sect of Islam and has been praised as a bridge-builder even by conservative pro-Israel bloggers, such as the Atlantic‘s Jeffrey Goldberg, who has had extensive interactions with him.

But activists who oppose the Park 51 project have pointed to various statements by Rauf to build the case that he’s dangerous radical. For example, yesterday Pamela Geller of the blog Atlas Shrugs posted a clip of excerpts from a speech Rauf gave in 2005. Those excerpts include Rauf saying:

We tend to forget, in the West, that the United States has more Muslim blood on its hands than al Qaida has on its hands of innocent non Muslims. You may remember that the US-led sanctions against Iraq led to the death of over half a million Iraqi children. This has been documented by the United Nations. And when Madeleine Albright, who has become a friend of mine over the last couple of years, when she was Secretary of State and was asked whether this was worth it, said it was worth it. [emphasis Geller's]

P.J. Crowley, the assistant secretary of state for public affairs, told reporters Tuesday that they shouldn’t be quick to take those remarks out of context.

“I would just caution any of you that choose to write on this, that once again you have a case where a blogger has pulled out one passage from a very lengthy speech. If you read the entire speech, you will discover exactly why we think he is rightly participating in this national speaking tour.”

The Cable asked Crowley directly, “Is he the Muslim Shirley Sherrod?”

Crowley responded, “That’s a good cautionary tale for everybody.”   Continue reading…

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