Monday PM ~ TheFrontPageCover

The Front Page Cover
 2016             The truth will set you free 
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Featuring:
The Times’ Attempt to Exonerate
Hilly Clinton’s Role in Libya
Roger Aronoff
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 SHE OTTER KNOW BY NOW 
Monterey (Calif.) Herald: “Marine biologist Nancy Black was ordered to pay a $2,000 fine and serve another year on probation for being too close to a sea otter in the Monterey harbor. Black, a co-owner of Monterey Bay Whale Watch, was already on probation for a previous violation of the Marine Mammal Protection Act when the charges were brought against her. Black initially faced three to nine months’ imprisonment for violating the terms of her probation, which required that she remain at least 50 yards away from otters and other marine mammals. Her probation now extends to January 2018. “We’re just glad to have it concluded, and the court was very fair in considering all the facts,” said Mark Vermuelen, Black’s attorney. Black was in a small inflatable dinghy with photographer Suzi Eszterhas when the two women approached the otter and her pup. A Bay Net volunteer, Marge Brigadier, observed the encounter from shore and asked them to back away from the otters.” 
 -Fox News
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 'Don't Worry About It' 
Since most of the focus was on Donald slump-Trump in Thursday night's debate in Detroit, most of this analysis will focus on slump-Trump, though that can be difficult because he doesn't complete half the sentences he starts.
          There were, as always, numerous phrases that slump-Trump repeated over and over and over again. But one stood out to us as representative of his entire presidential bid: "Don't worry about it." Implication being, "I've got this, and I'll work out the details later." Oh, and, "Believe me."
          The other moment was when, for what surely was the first time in American history, a presidential candidate on a nationally televised debate stage told us there was "no problem" with the size of his, er, manhood. How utterly appalling that this boorish and crude man may in fact be the next president.
          The two things slump-Trump hates most are questioning his wealth and questioning his hands. And no jab, no matter how silly or inconsequential, goes un-parried by the thin-skinned narcissist frontrunner.
          Last week, Marco Rubio quipped, "You know what they say about men with small hands? You can't trust them."
          Last night slump-Trump fired back, "He hit my hands. Nobody has ever hit my hands." In fact, slump-Trump has been defending his small hands since 1988, when a New York satire magazine panned his book, "Art of the Deal," calling him a "short-fingered vulgarian." That running dispute was highlighted last year in Vanity Fair. Though Rubio was pushing a well-known button when mentioning slump-Trump's small hands, slump-Trump's rebuttal is just more obfuscation.
          And by the way, we guarantee Rubio regrets making the joke because it's not who he is, but slump-Trump has been in the gutter for the entire campaign. Sometimes you have to fight where your opponent is. 
          Back to the first phrase — "don't worry about it" — because it's (arguably) more defining. With few exceptions, slump-Trump offers no substantive answer to any question. To be sure, the 60-second-answer "debate" format lends itself to precisely his kind of vacuous rhetoric. But from a man trying to convince us that he can lead our nation out of the nObama malaise, is any answer more revealing than his dismissive, "Don't worry about it"? No policy. No thought. No workable prescription for making America great again. Only The slumo-Donald's mere presence and sizable, well, you know.
          His answer on H-1B visas for higher-skilled workers may typify this attitude more than anything else. "I'm changing," slump-Trump said of his position. "I'm changing it and I'm softening the position because we have to have talented people in this country."
          Mark Krikorian, an immigration hawk's immigration hawk, was  astounded: "True enough, except that we already have twice as many technical degree holders as there are tech jobs. What made slump-Trump's 'I'm changing' comment even more shameless than usual for him is that just on Sunday he held a rally featuring former Disney employees who were replaced by the very foreign worker program he's now praising." Wonder what Sen. Jeff Sessions thinks about his endorsement of slump-Trump now.
          There were also shades of Hilly Clinton being asked to release transcripts of her high-dollar speeches on Wall Street, as slump-Trump was challenged to release a transcript of his recent "off the record" conversation with the The New York Times' editorial board. In that discussion, slump-Trump has been accused of contradicting key positions he has taken on immigration, the border wall, etc. slump-Trump insisted, "I did have ... a very nice meeting. Many of those things were off the record. ... I have too much respect for that process to say, just release everything. I would not do that."
          Certainly, slump-Trump's immigration position is completely malleable, like everything else about him.
          Moderator Chris Wallace asked about slump-Trump's claims he will balance the budget — and slump-Trump trapped himself, responding with claims about hundreds of billions in savings in Medicare drug costs if we "bid properly," insisting "they have hundreds of billions of dollars in waste. ... Take a look — excuse me. You are talking about hundreds of billions of dollars."
          Unfortunately for slump-Trump, Wallace had taken a look, and responded, "You say that Medicare could save $300 billion a year negotiating lower drug prices. But Medicare total only spends $78 billion a year on drugs. Sir, that's the facts." slump-Trump stared at Wallace like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming semi.
          Wallace (and Rubio and Cruz) further trapped slump-Trump on the fact that his name-brand line of clothing is made in China and Mexico, and slump-Trump stumbled over trying to justify that.
          Another observation: slump-Trump's rebuttal every time he was pressed to respond with substance rather than fragrance was to invoke "polls," the now-trademark operating procedure of the media poll master. "slump-Donald lives by the polls every day," Ted Cruz said. slump-Trump could only bluster, "No, I don't. No, I don't." Yes, he does.
          But by far the most troubling response of the night was slump-Trump's reply to moderator Bret Baier when asked about issuing illegal orders to military personnel: "So what would you do, as commander in chief, if the U.S. military refused to carry out those orders?"
          slump-Trump responded, "They won't refuse. They're not going to refuse me. Believe me. ... If I say, 'Do it,' they're going to do it. That's what leadership is all about. ... When I say they'll do as I tell them, they'll do as I tell them. And that's very — it's very simple. It's very simple."
          Well, no, it's not. And his response to Baier betrays his confusion about his authoritarian lording over a private company with totalitarian control of a country.
          Active-duty military personnel, and those of us who have family members serving our nation in uniform, take this presidential contest more seriously than most. What slump-Trump fails to understand is that our military personnel are obligated, first and foremost, to uphold their oath "to Support and Defend" our Constitution, not their commander in chief. Our frontline fighters are not kitchen workers in a slump-Trump casino.
          Finally, when questioned by Megyn Kelly about "a class-action of over 5,000 plaintiffs" now suing slump-Trump over his fraudulent "slump-Trump University," he claimed, "We have an 'A' from the Better Business Bureau."
          Kelly corrected the record: "The rating from the Better Business Bureau was a 'D-'." Caught in yet another outright lie, slump-Trump flailed.
          But it was these words Kelly read from the court's judgment against slump-Trump that best summed up his entire presidential campaign: "The victims of con artists often sing the praises of their victimizers until they realize that they have been fleeced."
          slump-Trump's supporters are being fleeced by a con artist, and the most pressing question is, will they realize it before it is too late?
          And a footnote: In a moment of supreme hypocrisy, slump-Trump complained to Bill O'Reilly after the debate, "I think you get a little carried away with yourself."  -The Patriot Post
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The Damage 'Conservatives' in 
Washington Have done
Kevin Coach Collins
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{coachisright.com} ~ Over the past number of years we rank and file conservatives have learned a number of hard lessons. We have learned that the liberals were far more greedy and self-absorbed with “White guilt” than we could ever have imagined... We learned that Democrats really will stop at nothing to get and keep power. While both of these lessons could have been predicted, a far more profound lesson about the insidious nature of politicians has been shoved down our throats by the very people we trusted to help us fix the damage caused by Democrat governance: The “conservatives” in Washington. They have made things far worse. Watching them lie and break promises while laughing in our face has made the very word “conservative” suspect as it manifests itself in our public arena. The Republican Party has distorted the concept of “conservatism” so completely that the title “conservative,” when applied to a Washington Republican, has lost its meaning. http://www.coachisright.com/damage-conservatives-washington-done/
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The Times’ Biased Fact Check of GOP
Critique of nObamacare
Roger Aronoff
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{aim.org} ~ Once again The New York Times is peddling its own false narrative about nObamacare’s success, this time aimed at the Republican candidates... But while Margot Sanger-Katz claims to fact check Donald slump-Trump, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), it is her own reporting that needs an additional check. After all, why didn’t Sanger-Katz include statements from Hilly Clinton or Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in her nObamacare fact check? Neither the Times nor The Washington Post seems eager to print anything that might undermine the Democratic candidates on this issue. Criticizing slump-Trump for having said that insurers are making a fortune through nObamacare, Sanger-Katz writes that “The most visible part of nObamacare—the new individual insurance markets in every state—have not proved profitable for many insurers.” However, she writes, “other parts of the insurance business have flourished under nObamacare, particularly private plans sold to states for residents covered by Medicaid.” In other words, the money to be made is in government-provided insurance. Or perhaps in fraud. The Government Accountability Office reported in February that in 2014 it had submitted 12 fraudulent applications over the phone or through Healthcare.gov—yet only one of those fraudulent applications was caught by the nObama administration. “The fictitious enrollees maintained subsidized coverage throughout 2014, even though GAO sent fictitious documents, or no documents, to resolve application inconsistencies,” the GAO reports. It estimates that by April 2015 the Center for Medicaid Services had not resolved “inconsistencies” for 431,000 applications made in 2014, amounting to $1.7 billion in potential fraud.        http://www.aim.org/aim-column/the-times-biased-fact-check-of-gop-critique-of-obamacare/?utm_source=AIM+-+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=email030416&utm_medium=email
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FBI Edits Radical Islam Out of Anti-Terror Video Game:
Who Is the Real ‘Puppet’?
Clare Lopez
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{aim.org} ~ The FBI has released a new edition of its anti-terror video game, Don’t Be a Puppet, that conforms to demands from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) to exclude Islamic jihad from a list of potential terror threats... In the game, a player is asked to work through a series of numbered boxes, beginning with “What is Violent Extremism?” and finishing with “Who [sic] Do Violent Extremists Affect?” Completing the activities in each box – watching short videos, reading through short texts, taking a quick quiz – allows the player, string-by-string, to free the puppet. Despite the fact that Islamic jihadist violence ranks at the very top of global security concerns, though, it is not mentioned anywhere in the FBI’s puppet game. Instead, the game offers a psycho-babble of possible motivations including alienation, anxiety, personal frustration, and an unsupported claim about “twisting religious teachings and other beliefs to support their own goals.” Anyone who actually perseveres through the game is left with the curious sense that they have just passed a Psych 101 class rather than learned anything substantive about Islamic terror.        http://www.aim.org/guest-column/fbi-edits-radical-islam-out-of-anti-terror-video-game-who-is-the-real-puppet/?utm_source=AIM+-+Daily+Email&utm_campaign=email030416&utm_medium=email
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RINO who “Joked” about Killing Ted Cruz Now Says the GOP Must Rally around Him
ONAN COCA
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{freedomoutpost.com} ~ The RINO Senator from the great state of South Carolina, Lindsey “Grahamnesty” Graham, (R-SC) has just pulled off one of the most historic about-faces in history!... This is the same Lindsey Graham that has long mocked and derided Ted Cruz and his supporters. The same Graham that called the GOP “batsh** crazy.” The same Lindsey Graham that even “joked” about murdering Cruz in a recent speech! This is the RINO Lindsey Graham who has long fought against the conservative wing of the GOP in an effort to make our nation look more like what the Democrat Party would like us be. This very same Lindsey Graham is now so terrified of a Donald Trump presidency that he is finally turning to Ted Cruz and the conservative wing of the GOP to save the Party. After watching the returns of the Super Tuesday primary and seeing his preferred candidate, Marco Rubio (R-FL) falter. Graham admitted during a CBS interview with Charlie Rose that the best hope of saving the party and beating Hilly Clinton in November may now very well be… Ted Cruz.        http://freedomoutpost.com/rino-who-joked-about-killing-ted-cruz-now-says-the-gop-must-rally-around-him/
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Why Are U.S. Troops Still in Libya?
J.E. Dyer
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{libertyunyielding.com} ~ When is a force deployment not a military intervention?  When the nObama administration deploys the forces, apparently... Over the past month, we have witnessed a peculiar sequence of events.  On 27 January, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook confirmed that there was a “small group” of U.S. forces in Libya: Given the factionalized chaos in Libya, this is worrisome enough in itself.  In late 2015, a small group of U.S. special forces operators was promptly outed, on arrival, by the Libyan air force. Knowing that our men are still prowling Libya looking for local factions to trust shouldn’t give us a warm, fuzzy feeling. ISIS does need to be attacked and destroyed in Libya.  But we have no reason to assume that’s what is going on.  The administration has been singularly unforthcoming – even untrustworthy – on this matter.  nObama owes his military, and the American people, a vetted national objective and a properly scoped, accountable strategy.       http://libertyunyielding.com/2016/02/29/libya-what-exactly-are-our-military-forces-doing-there/
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NRA Ads Slam Hollywood Hypocrites,
Venezuela Gun Control
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{gopthedailydose.com} ~ Chris Cox, the head of the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action, is featured in the ad and attacks celebrities and other elites... “Here’s the truth about the Hollywood celebrities, political elites, and billionaires who attack the Second Amendment,” he said. “The thought of average people owning firearms makes them uncomfortable. “They don’t like how the men and women who build their office buildings, vacation homes and luxury cars … who mop their floors, clean their clothes and serve their dinner … have access to the same level of protection as their armed security guards. They want you to surrender your freedom for a false promise of government-provided security they will never rely upon themselves.” http://gopthedailydose.com/2016/03/05/nra-ads-slam-hollywood-hypocrites-venezuela-gun-control/
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N Korean Like nObama Might Believe 
His Own Fantasy
Rick Wells
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{rickwells.us} ~ With the North Korean leader having put their nuclear  program on standby, Bill Hemmer asks Lt Col Ralph Peters to explain exactly what that means and to evaluate the threat it presents... Peters reminds the audience that “part of this is for domestic North Korean consumption; part of it is this wild man young leader is miffed about the new sanctions going on, he’s angry that China didn’t prevent them.” He says, “Nonetheless, you do have to worry about Kim Jung Un. In addition whatever capability they may or may not have, and they cannot deliver nukes to the United States, right now, at this point.  What you have to worry about, Bill, is that Kim Jung Un, this crazy young leader, may not know what his real limitations are.” http://rickwells.us/archives/26928
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Clinton Campaign Writes Checks to Planned Parenthood
Bill McMorris
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{freebeacon.com} ~ Hilly Clinton paid Planned Parenthood thousands of dollars using campaign funds... The Democratic frontrunner’s federal financial disclosures reveal that America’s top abortionist received four separate payments from the Clinton campaign. The payments were filed as reimbursements for “staff time” for volunteering and get out the vote efforts, as Clinton attempted to beat back the insurgent campaign of socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) in Iowa. Clinton and Planned Parenthood did not return requests for comment about the specific nature of the payments. Planned Parenthood performs more than 300,000 abortions annually and generates 40 percent of its annual revenues through the government. The billion-dollar organization receives about $500 million from taxpayers each year through Medicaid funds and other grants. It received a large funding bonus from foreign policy agencies overseen by Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state, collecting more than $100 million for overseas services to the USAID.        http://freebeacon.com/issues/clinton-campaign-writes-checks-to-planned-parenthood/?utm_source=Freedom+Mail&utm_campaign=7e94107385-WFB_Morning_Beacon_03_05_163_4_2016&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b5e6e0e9ea-7e94107385-45611665
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Hilly Clinton Finds Another 
Official To Attack
 Josh Rogin
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{bloombergview.com} ~ The Hilly Clinton campaign has gone on the attack against the government official who conducts oversight of the State Department she used to run... accusing him of partisanship and misconduct without any direct evidence. That strategy could backfire by politicizing the role of the government’s inspectors general and undermining needed State Department reforms. This is not the first time Team Clinton has accused a federal inspector general of trying to foil her presidential ambitions. In January, the campaign publicly accused the inspector general of the intelligence community of acting in concert with two Republican senators to leak details of now-classified information found on her private e-mail server. This week, the Clinton campaign set its sights on Steve Linick, who has served as the State Department’s inspector general since 2013. Linick has never been regarded as a partisan official. President Barack nObama appointed him as the State Department IG and the Senate confirmed him. Before that appointment, the role had remained unfilled for more than 5 years and there was only an “acting” IG at state the entire time Clinton was secretary, a career foreign service officer.        http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-03-04/clinton-takes-aim-at-another-government-watchdog
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Ruled By Foreigners- US Threatened By TPP As Britain Struggles To Escape EU
Rick Wells
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Farage
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{rickwells.us} ~ Britain is a country that is currently in a situation with the European Union which closely resembles one that Hussein nObama, Paul Ryan and their oligarch comrades are in the process of putting the United States in through the TPP... MP Nigel Farage is working hard to extricate Britain from foreign dominance, as can be heard in his arguments; a loss of national sovereignty to a foreign commission, the EU. While the TPP structure may be different, the integral parts are similar, a foreign body that has executive authority over the sovereign citizens and replaces them in the decision making process in matters regarding their own nation. The solution Farage and others are backing is the Brexit. Britain’s exit from the EU, which is gaining support, with a vote scheduled for June. In the first half minute of the video Farage is describing how a promise made by British Prime Minister  David Cameron is worthless. He’s attempting to entice the British people into remaining in the EU but his words are empty. As Farage notes, anything he offers can later be struck down by the European Parliament. Cameron, who is chief the opponents to Brexit is making their case for them.     http://rickwells.us/archives/26934
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The Times’ Attempt to Exonerate
Hilly Clinton’s Role in Libya
Roger Aronoff
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{aim.org} ~ The Washington Post recently penned a major story on Hilly Clinton’s leadership on the fate of Libya, integrating positive comments from an anonymous source in order to bolster her scandal-ridden reputation. Now The New York Times has followed suit, publishing an autopsy of what went wrong in Libya that extends over 12,000 words between its two parts.
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The Times writes that they talked with more than 50 people for the story, including Americans, Libyans and Europeans, virtually all who agreed to speak on the record.  “They expressed regret, frustration and in some cases bewilderment about what went wrong and what might have been done differently.”
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The Times then asks, “Was the mistake the decision to intervene in the first place, or the mission creep from protecting civilians to ousting a dictator, or the failure to send a peacekeeping force in the aftermath?”
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The question remains, however, as to what prompted these columns. After all, both the Post and New York Times articles discuss very little about current events and largely report on Libya’s transformation into a failed state with ISIS strongholds. Clearly, these articles are meant as an attempt to explain how Libya devolved into chaos with neither President nObama, nor Mrs. Clinton, being at fault.
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The Times article offers a much more complete story of the lead-up to the intervention when compared to the Post, and it should receive credit for including Retired Rear Admiral Chuck Kubic’s account of the decision not to pursue truce talks with Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. However, the Times treats Kubic’s story superficially and tries to cast doubt upon the idea that these truce talks should have been treated seriously.
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“The Americans did not believe that the Libyans purporting to speak for the leader could actually deliver a peaceful transfer of power,” write Jo Becker and Scott Shane for the Times. “Colonel Qaddafi, the Americans thought, would simply use a cease-fire as an opportunity to regroup.” These reporters also quote a source alleging that there was “envoy proliferation.”
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However, the strength of Kubic’s account, which was brought to light by the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi (CCB), comes from the fact that he helped Qaddafi’s representatives reach the head of AFRICOM, General Carter Ham. This was no theoretical truce attempt—it was a real discussion between the two parties.
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“When I then went back to Africa Command, and I told them that the call was going to be set up, again they were doing their own due diligence,” said Kubic at our April, 2014 CCB conference. “They said, ‘We need some proof that this is real. Will he pull back his troops now from the outskirts of Benghazi?’”
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“And then Qaddafi began to pull back from Benghazi and Misrata, and we were set to, we had the phone call,” continued Kubic. “However, despite the willingness of Africa Command and how things were set for the 72-hour truce to discuss the ceasefire, the idea was shot down above AFRICOM.”
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Another major part of the Benghazi story is that the United States switched sides in the War on Terror when the nObama administration knowingly facilitated the flow of arms to al-Qaeda linked militias in Libya. But the Times casts the arms transfers as Qatar run amok, an ally who could not be curtailed by the United States. “Throughout the spring, the administration had effectively turned a blind eye as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates supplied the rebels with lethal assistance, according to then Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others,” they report. “But Mrs. Clinton had grown increasingly concerned that Qatar, in particular, was sending arms only to certain rebel factions: militias from the city of Misrata and select Islamist brigades.”
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One need only understand the case of arms dealer Marc Turi to see that the Times is peddling a false narrative.
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“Marc Turi was set up and framed for something he didn’t do, while others, who actually did collaborate with Qatar and the UAE to deliver the weapons under U.S. and NATO protection and supervision, are not only not prosecuted like Marc Turi, they’re not even mentioned,” CCB member and former CIA officer Clare Lopez told WorldNetDaily last July.
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“During the 2011 Libyan revolution, Mrs. Clinton had successfully pushed the administration to take a direct role in arming opposition groups, hoping that would persuade the Qataris to stop sending weapons to extremist rebel factions,” reports the Times. This account falsely casts the United States as arming moderate rebels, when in fact the “rebels” were linked to al Qaeda.
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“Muammar Qaddafi had given up his WMD some years before,” noted Lopez at the CCB’s 2014 conference. “He had also begun to cooperate with the United States, and with the West, to keep al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, AQIM, down. He had al Qaeda jihadis in his jails.”
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In contrast, some of the Libyan rebels were flying the black flags of jihad.
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“Officials from Libya’s moderate governing coalition were demanding that the United States stop the wealthy nation of Qatar from sending money and arms to militias aligned with Libya’s Islamist political bloc,” report Becker and Shane. “The Islamists, in turn, were accusing a rival gulf power, the United Arab Emirates, of providing similar patronage to fighters aligned with their political enemies.”
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A story about just one shipment of arms explains how these arms deals involved the highest level of Libyan governance. As discussed in our interim report, “During their visit to Tripoli, the United Arab Emirates officials discovered that half of the $1 billion worth of weapons it had financed for the rebels had, in fact, been diverted by Mustafa Abdul Jalil, the Muslim Brotherhood head of the Libyan TNC, and sold to Qaddafi.”
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A reliable source told the commission that Jalil put out a hit job on Major General Abdel Fatah Younis, Qaddafi’s former Minister of the Interior, because Younis had found out that half of the arms ended up in Qaddafi’s hands. The assassination was tasked to none other than Abu Khattala, who is now in U.S. custody because of his part in the Benghazi attacks of September 11 and September 12, 2012.
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Clearly, these events contribute to the broader story surrounding the Benghazi scandal. But instead of covering the Benghazi scandal accurately, the Times argues that Hilly Clinton is not responsible. “If the attempt to pin blame for the Benghazi attack on Mrs. Clinton would largely fail,” wrote Becker and Shane, continuing, “the notion that the Libyan intervention was among her successes had become steadily more threadbare.”
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If the Times had been interested in telling the truth about the Benghazi scandal, it would have tied the truce talks and the arming of al-Qaeda-linked rebel groups into the story of this scandal. Instead, its over 12,000-word piece steps around the scandal itself as much as possible.
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“From the earliest days of the Libya debate, Mrs. Clinton was a diligent student and unrelenting inquisitor, absorbing fat briefing books, inviting dissenting views from subordinates, studying foreign counterparts to learn how to win them over,” write Becker and Shane. “She was a pragmatist, willing to improvise—to try the bank-shot solution.”
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Pragmatist or not, Hilly Clinton and Barack nObama made distinctly poor—if not disastrous—decisions when intervening in Libya. But the mainstream media are more interested in publishing foreign policy accounts that bolster these leaders’ foreign policy bona fides. With Libya, it just isn’t possible.
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Again, the Times asked if the “mistake” was having gone into Libya in the first place, mission creep to remove Qaddafi, or failing to plan for the aftermath of Qaddafi’s removal. The answer is yes to all of the above, but the reason for the “mistakes” is what should be understood. It was nObama administration policy during the so-called Arab Spring to replace strongman allies of the U.S.—such as Qaddafi in Libya and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, who assisted in the war against al Qaeda and other jihadist groups—with Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda-linked groups that wanted to control Northern Africa. The results of the nObama/Clinton policies in the region have mostly been disastrous for the people living there, and for America’s influence in the Middle East.
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