EGYPT – Egypt will hold a presidential vote before parliamentary polls, President Adly Mansour said on Sunday, in a change to a political roadmap that could pave the way for the swift election of army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

Parliamentary elections were supposed to be held first under the timetable drawn up after the army overthrew President Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood in July following mass protests against his rule.

The decision to revise the order of elections is likely to deepen tensions in Egypt, which is struggling to cope with waves of political violence. Forty-nine people were killed in anti-government marches on Saturday, the third anniversary of the popular uprising that toppled autocrat Hosni Mubarak. (more…)

EGYPT – There has been a large car bomb explosion in the Egyptian capital Cairo, near the city’s police headquarters, officials say.

More photo from the bombing pic.twitter.com/tQ294fq7dl

— Magdy Samaan (@MagdySamaan) January 24, 2014

At least three people were killed and more than 30 wounded, according to officials.

Eyewitnesses speak of smoke rising over the city centre, and there are reports of gunfire after the blast.

Newspaper reports say the front of the police building has been damaged and emergency services are at the scene. (more…)

GREG HICKS – Shifting blame to our dead ambassador is wrong on the facts. I know—I was there.

Last week the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued its report on the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. The report concluded that the attack, which resulted in the murder of four Americans, was “preventable.”

Some have been suggesting that the blame for this tragedy lies at least partly with Ambassador Chris Stevens, who was killed in the attack. This is untrue: The blame lies entirely with Washington.

The report states that retired Gen. Carter Ham, then-commander of the U.S. Africa Command (Africom) headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, twice offered to “sustain” the special forces security team in Tripoli and that Chris twice “declined.”

Since Chris cannot speak, I want to explain the reasons and timing for his responses to Gen. Ham. As the deputy chief of mission, I was kept informed by Chris or was present throughout the process. (more…)

Most people know al-Qaeda (as a terror entity) has evolved over the past 10+ years.   Recently the Obama administration has doggedly tried to parse and obfuscate around a principle that CORE al-Qaeda has been destroyed.

This claim is essential to framing any success around the Obama administration’s foreign policy and defense effort.     However, the claim is false and the success simply does not exist.

al-Qaeda is NOT on the run.

As a network of affiliated enterprises, with the same ideological goal, it has grown in influence specifically as a direct result of their own evolutionary intentions.

CORE al-Qaeda, or a centralized body from which all decision making stemmed, was never their intent.   al-Qaeda intended for terrorism to be “cellular” or operationally self-sustaining and widespread.    Bin Laden specifically intended the network to be a group of ideologically aligned but unaffiliated franchises all working on a common approach. (more…)

In the fall of 2012 when the Muslim Brotherhood manipulated the election, and lied to the Egyptian people about the severity of their Islamist intentions, they elected President Morsi.  

John Kerry, President Obama, and former President Bill Clinton were thrilled; and proclaimed it was a joyous Democracy.

Over the next year the Muslim Brotherhood proclaimed Sharia Law would determine their ideological governance.   Morsi visited Iran to align himself with the hardliners.  President Morsi and the radical Islamists began killing Coptic Christians, Crucifying people in front of the President’s palace, and Morsi removed the authority of the judiciary who were trying to stop his ideological advances.   Morsi changed law by dictatorial fiat to allow him to rule as a dictator.

In the fall of 2013 the secular majority of Egyptian people begged the military to rid them of this Islamist regime which was killing it’s own citizens.   They begged for freedom knowing they were duped into exchanging one form of poor freedom governance in Mubarak, for an even worse loss of freedom in Morsi.

The military listened.   They removed Morsi, dispatched the Muslim Brotherood, eliminated radical hardline Islamic extremism, and put al-Qaeda affiliated Muhammed al-Zawahiri back in jail.  

After a period of internal turmoil as the military got the radical jihadists under control, the military leaders then moved to hold elections to vote on a constitution to protect freedom.  This “freedom constitution” was approved by 98% of those who voted in the election. (more…)

Outlined in new documents obtained by The Investigative Project on Terrorism we find confirmation the State Dept coordinated the entry of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood delegation into the U.S. in April of 2012.   Using a designation “Expedited Entry -or- Port Courtesy, normally reserved for high-ranking visiting government officials and dignitaries” which allowed them to skip basic airport inspections.

It’s no secret, either in the U.S. or in Egypt, that President Obama and Secretary Clinton were key allies to Egyptian Islamist President Morsi prior to his ouster from office.

The U.S. support for Morsi was a source of anger amid secular Egyptians against the United States administration for supporting the Islamists within the Muslim Brotherhood.

That mainstream anger eventually led to the Egyptian military acting on behalf of the majority of Egyptian citizens to remove the Islamist head from power.   In addition they reinstated the controls on the Brotherhood which Morsi had removed and put al-Qaeda’s Muhammed al-Zawahiri back behind bars. (more…)

CAIRO – More than 98 percent of voters backed a new Egyptian constitution in a referendum this week, authorities said on Saturday, though the turnout was lower than some officials had indicated, with under 40 percent of the electorate taking part.

The vote advances a transition plan that the military-backed government unveiled after deposing Islamist president Mohamed Morsi last July following mass unrest over his rule.

“Now that God has supported us in legalizing our constitution, we ask for his aid in achieving the remaining two stages of the road map: the presidential and parliamentary elections,” said Nabil Salib, head of the Supreme Election Committee.

The “yes” vote was 98.1 percent, and 38.6 percent of eligible voters took part, Salib told reporters. (more…)

(Via Breitbart) The government watchdog group that revealed that President Barack Obama failed to attend over half of his daily intelligence briefings (known officially as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB) released a devastating Benghazi timeline Wednesday.

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Absolutely desperate to shield former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from accountability MSNBC goes ‘all in’ to blame Ambassador Stevens for his own death in Benghazi Libya.

https://www.mrctv.org/videos/katty-kay-fallible-ambassador-stevens-blame-his-own-death-hillary-hook

The Democrat chaired Senate Intelligence Committee released an outline yesterday placing the blame and failure to protect the State Dept. Benghazi consulate squarely on the shoulders of the State Dept itself.

As head of the State Department during 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012 Hillary Clinton carries the burden of accountability. (more…)

I have not had the opportunity to review the entire report – this article below is from the Washington Post.  All Senate Committees are chaired by Democrats.

WASHINGTON DC – A long-delayed Senate Intelligence Committee report released Wednesday faulted both the State Department and the intelligence community for not preventing attacks on two outposts in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including a U.S. ambassador, about 16 months ago.

The bipartisan report laid out more than a dozen findings regarding the assaults on a diplomatic compound and a CIA annex in the city. It said the State Department failed to increase security at its mission despite warnings, and blamed intelligence agencies for not sharing information about the existence of the CIA outpost with the U.S. military.

The committee determined that the U.S. military command in Africa didn’t know about the CIA annex and that the Pentagon didn’t have the resources in place to defend the State Department compound in an emergency.

“The attacks were preventable, based on extensive intelligence reporting on the terrorist activity in Libya — to include prior threats and attacks against Western targets — and given the known security shortfalls at the U.S. Mission,” the panel said in a statement. (more…)