Annoying does not seem to adequately identify the frustration projected toward the U.S. media anymore. “Willfully Blind” seemingly seems entirely more appropriate.
Back in 2011 when Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Power and eventually President Obama, engaged in a decision to strike militarily against Gaddaffi in support of Libyan opposition forces (later determined to be al-Qaeda), Jeh Johnson was part of President Obama’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) as Johnson represented the chief legal counsel to the Pentagon.
A little known fact about that controversial time is that Jeh Johnson, the legal counsel, told President Obama his military action was illegal. Yes, Jeh Johnson as part of the OLC told Obama the executive office lacked legal authority to strike militarily against Libya because the Libyan uprising posed no direct threat to the United States, and President Obama had not requested congressional authority.
This was in June of 2011, this was even reported in the NEW YORK TIMES:
WASHINGTON — President Obama rejected the views of top lawyers at the Pentagon and the Justice Department when he decided that he had the legal authority to continue American military participation in the air war in Libya without Congressional authorization, according to officials familiar with internal administration deliberations.
Jeh C. Johnson, the Pentagon general counsel, and Caroline D. Krass, the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, had told the White House that they believed that the United States military’s activities in the NATO-led air war amounted to “hostilities.” Under the War Powers Resolution, that would have required Mr. Obama to terminate or scale back the mission after May 20.
But Mr. Obama decided instead to adopt the legal analysis of several other senior members of his legal team — including the White House counsel, Robert Bauer, and the State Department legal adviser, Harold H. Koh — who argued that the United States military’s activities fell short of “hostilities.” Under that view, Mr. Obama needed no permission from Congress to continue the mission unchanged. (link)
Fast forward to February 2015 – The explosive rise of radical Islam in Libya has captured a considerable amount of attention since 21 Coptic Christians were beheaded last week by ISIS. Simultaneous to this, the White House held a three day conference on combatting “violent extremism”, and yet the same team who organized he conference went out of their way to insure the topic was not “Islamic extremism”.
And so the stage is set for former OLC member, and current Department of Homeland Security head, Jeh Johnson, to make the Sunday TV talk show circuit which he did. Secretary Johnson made appearances on ABC’s “This Week”, NBC’s “Meet The Press“, CBS’s “Face The Nation“, and FOX’s “Fox News Sunday“.
So there were four opportunities to ask Jeh Johnson specifically about Libya and contrast or inquire about the crisis inside Libya today against Johnson’s prior warnings to President Obama that military intervention was unconstitutional.
Do you think a single media pundit asked the question?
Apparently the entire media apparatus are incapable of seeing the pertinence….. or something.
Because if they did,….. well,….. it might just expose the fact that Jeh Johnson’s current position of DHS secretary was a quid-pro-quo payoff for keeping his mouth shut after President Obama dismissed his legal advice in 2011.
