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…)

Yesterday Iranian President Hassan Rouhani stated there is absolutely nothing in the Nuclear deal with Obama that references “dismantling” of centrifuges.

President Rouhani specifically called the White House liars and then Rouhani challenged the media to read the actual text of the agreement which the White House has refused to release.

Today the White House lost Fareed Zakaria.   This is an important development because Obama has admitted that Zakaria is an advisor to his administration on Iranian policy.

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(Via MediaIte) – The First Lady’s birthday party, which took place Saturday night at the White House, was hotly anticipated by the mainstream press, but was also the subject of criticism from some quarters. Her birthday also raised questions from Fox News’ Ed Henry a few weeks ago, when he wondered if taxpayers would be footing the bill for the First Lady’s extended vacation in Hawaii.

At Wednesday’s daily briefing, Jon Karl picked up that thread, asking Carney “The first lady had her 50th birthday party, and I believe you said the president picks up the cost for that party?”

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…)

I swear something has changed.   Whoever is usually in charge is now just phoning in the instructions…..    Read this and tell me that POTUS is still trying to keep up the charade:

(MediaIte)  David Remnick’s New Yorker profile of Barack Obama’s fifth year in office, published Sunday morning, includes a lengthy section on foreign policy, during which Remnick asked Obama to square his claim that al Qaeda had been “decimated” with the al Qaeda flag currently flying over Falluja, one of the cities the U.S. struggled to capture from insurgents in the Iraq War.

“The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama said, in what Remnick himself termed “an uncharacteristically flip analogy.”  (continue reading)

I’m telling you something snapped within the Obama community over that Christmas vacation because no-way in hades would they have allowed POTUS to be so obviously unpresidential.    This is gob smackingly dismissive and reflecting a complete lack of respect for the audience…. bordering on childish.

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…)

He’s not even trying to make the audience believe any more. The Lip-Syncing lip movement is 3 or 4 seconds behind the soundtrack being broadcast.

WASHINGTON DC – In a bid to calm growing privacy concerns about the government’s spying powers, President Obama outlined a series of steps Friday aimed at ushering in “concrete and substantial” reforms to the National Security Agency.

“Americans recognized that we had to adapt to a world in which a bomb could be built in a basement and our electric grid could be shut down by operators an ocean away,” the president said during a major policy speech at the Department of Justice.

“And yet,” he added, “in our rush to respond to very real and novel threats, the risks of government overreach—the possibility that we lose some of our core liberties in pursuit of security—became more pronounced.” (more…)

I’ll admit to being a little frustrated with the Charles Krauthammer’s of the world who talk about ObamaCare self-destructing because it is financially “unsustainable”.   This they also call the “death spiral” to describe the possible collapse of ObamaCare because the financial arrangements inherent within ObamaCare do not support it continuing.

Intellectually accurate.    BUT, when you think about how current political progressives operate, PROFOUNDLY NAIVE  and structurally false.

U.S. taxpayers will make up the difference between costs and revenues via the Reinsurance program:

[WSJ] Robert Laszewski—a prominent consultant to health insurance companies—recently wrote in a remarkably candid blog post that, while Obamacare is almost certain to cause insurance costs to skyrocket even higher than it already has, “insurers won’t be losing a lot of sleep over it.”  How can this be?  Because insurance companies won’t bear the cost of their own losses—at least not more than about a quarter of them.  The other three-quarters will be borne by American taxpayers. (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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