The Great Smoky Mountain Journal

Staff Reports

Posted: Sunday, January 21, 2018 03:52 PM

OUR VIEW: While We Remember 9-11-2001 This Week Let Us Not Forget 9-11-2012

On Monday while the nation celebrated the 16th anniversary of the 9-11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center towers and Pentagon, another attack on the same day in 2012 went somewhat unnoticed, but one that needs to be remembered as well.

Monday also marked the 5th anniversary of the 2012 Benghazi attacks where Islamic militants launched a 13-hour assault from Sept. 11th to the 12th that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALS Ty Woods and Glenn Doherty.

Stephens became the first ambassador killed overseas since 1979.

We all well remember former Secretary Of State and 2016 Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton screaming at the panel "What difference does it make at this point," in reacting to criticism over how her then State Department staff handled calls for added security from the late Libyan Ambassador Christopher Stephens and the narrative that bordered on insanity in the weeks following.

Mrs. Clinton as well as the President didn't like the narrative that this terrorist attack was going to put on the heels of the Democratic National Convention in 2012. An attack allowing four Americans to die by not providing the security that was being SCREAMED for in the months prior.

A 7th grader would have looked at this and seen that this was an orchestrated terrorist attack then, and yet a college educated ambassador named Susan Rice couldn't. Without even blushing, Ms. Rice went on five TV shows in the days that followed and pushed the stupid narrative that it was all caused by an uproar over a You-Tube video criticizing Islam.

Rice wasn't alone. Clinton did it to the face of the victims’ families on the airport tarmac as the dead victims’ bodies were being returned to the United States. Months later, President Obama got up before the United Nations and did the same.

Rep. Trey Gowdy asked Gregory Hicks in 2012: “Mr. Hicks, I want to know … why in the world would Susan Rice go on five Sunday talk shows and perpetuate a demonstrably false narrative?”

Hicks simply said he was "stunned," and "his jaw dropped" when he heard her comments.
According to Hicks, "everybody in the mission" believed it was an act of terror "from the get-go."

But on Sept. 16 - five days after the attack - U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice hit the Sunday talk show circuit, peddling the theory that the strike began "spontaneously" out of protests in Egypt and was not a premeditated terrorist act.
Rice's interview on "Face the Nation" that day was preceded by the new president of Libya, Mohammed al-Magariaf, who said his government had "no doubt that this was pre-planned, predetermined."

"I've never been as embarrassed in my life, in my career, as on that day," Hicks told investigators of Rice's appearances.

Like the coyote with dynamite strapped to its body, the Obama Administration however stood behind Rice, who was quickly erased from a short list to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton earlier this year.

Hicks told congressional investigators that a team of Special Forces were prepared to fly from Tripoli to Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks but was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command Africa. That account stood in stark contrast to assertions made by the Obama administration at the time which insisted that nobody was ever told to stand down and that all available resources were utilized.

Clinton, according to Hicks, attempted to cut out the counterterrorism bureau from communications about the attack, something I'm sure she will leave out in her new book, "What Happened."

What happened Mrs. Clinton is your dereliction of duty caused the death of four Americans who were hung out to dry by liberal thinking bureaucrats in Washington D.C. including yourself because you didn't want to offend the Muslim world into thinking that, God forbid, these terrorists destroying our embassy were, hold your breath - Muslim.

Mrs. Clinton went on the "Today" Show Wednesday and told Matt Lauer to his face that Benghazi had been used as a "political football" to destroy her during the 2016 Presidential campaign. It was more than a political football it was a human tragedy.

Well let's take a quick look at this "political football" and tell you the facts:

1. Hillary Clinton blatantly lied about the entire ordeal to the victims' families, the American people, and to Congress.

She deliberately lied about the cause of the attack. The American people were told that the attack was the result of a spontaneous riot in protest of a little-seen You-Tube video that spun out of control. Anyone could see that it was obviously a planned assault by a terrorist outfit. Yet, Hillary and other members of the administration blamed the video for over a month. In addition, when presented with glaring evidence to the contrary, Clinton dug in.

2. She said it didn’t “matter." To the families of the victims who died it mattered a great deal.

When Clinton finally found time to testify before Congress about the Benghazi attack, she claimed that her lies did not matter. Despite multiple Congressmen pointing out facts of the attack that disproved the administration’s narrative, she arrogantly dismissed their questions.

To this day Clinton's arrogance over this entire ordeal probably disturbs me the most. Instead of showing contrition and feeling true remorse for the families of those lost in these attacks, her political career seemed more important to her than the truth. All that most people want from this is the truth, but in Mrs. Clinton's world view, we as Americans "can't handle the truth." This is one of many reasons the American people denied her power in 2016.

When pressed by Senator Johnson about why she had lied, she famously exploded “what difference, at this point, does it make?”

A little fact that is lost in the clean up by the press and her subordinates is she also lied under oath in these hearings, claiming she had no foreknowledge of the security situation in Benghazi. Documents and emails obtained from the State Department, bearing her signature, prove otherwise.

Her testimony five years ago made it clear that Mrs. Clinton was fully aware of what was going on and was neck deep in the administration's efforts to shift focus off terrorism and onto the moronic video theory.

She herself went on TV weeks later and apologized to the world for it.

3. The entire Benghazi “investigation” was a fraud.

After the attack, Hillary directed the State Department to conduct an internal investigation into what went wrong. That was like having a criminal on trial act as his own prosecutor, judge, and jury. The fraudulent investigation discovered nothing noteworthy, mostly because it did not interview any of the survivors of the attack, nor any of the high-ranking State Department officials involved.

Sticking only to interviewing mid-level and insulated employees, the investigation served only as an attempt to cover-up mistakes, many of which cost lives. Had the details of this come out weeks prior the election it may have meant Mitt Romney, not Barrack Obama, would have been President.

4. Hillary Clinton's State Department Could Have Done More To Stop The Attack
There is no way to blame Mrs. Clinton for the attack itself. The attack itself was by radical Jihadists who hate America and were out to do harm and kill.

However, the Benghazi attack could have likely been stopped had Mrs. Clinton and her department simply heeded the cries for help from Ambassador Stevens and his crew.

Numerous documents and emails show that the State Department, including Hillary Clinton, were well aware of the dangerous lack of security at the Consulate, yet they did nothing to remedy the situation.

Furthermore, anonymous special ops witnesses and whistleblower survivors have said that military assets were near the region and could have easily reached Benghazi in time to save lives and prevent the second attack.

The Democrats to this day have never wanted to blame any of this on Clinton, but blame Republicans for the lax security in Benghazi.

I'm sure at some point one of them, even Al Gore himself, will come forward and blame global warming for the entire event.

5. Clinton And Her Cronies Tried To Silence Whistleblowers

During the hearings of 2012 it became apparent that, along with the State Department, sought to censor the truth about what happened in Benghazi, helped along by the complicit mainstream media.

From the beginning, all attempts to uncover the truth have been stonewalled at every turn and met with lies, half-truths, or silence. Witnesses were hidden.

In an exclusive Fox News report and interview just days ago on September 12, 2017 two men from an American security company, revealed that security at the State Department's Benghazi compound was so dire the contractors were brought in to clean up the mess just two weeks before the 2012 terror attack.

They were later pressured to keep quiet by a government bureaucrat under Clinton.

Brad Owens and Jerry Torres, of Torres Advanced Enterprise Solutions, say they faced pressure to stay silent and get on the same page with the State Department with regard to the security lapses that led to the deaths of four Americans.

Their stories undermine further the State Department's account of what took place on that fateful and deadly Libyan night.

Asked if there was a specific effort by a senior State Department contracting officer to silence them, Torres said, "Absolutely, absolutely."

The few who have stepped forward claim they were threatened to remain silent. Certain members of the military who may have spoken out about Benghazi have died, disappeared, or fallen from public view in disgrace.

Mr. Hicks testified during the hearing his job performance was never called into question in over two decades of service but when it was discovered he was coming forward to testify he was exiled into no man's land by the Clinton State Department.

In simple South Georgia language, if it acts like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, then it's a duck. If it smells like a cover-up, walks like a cover-up, and talks like a cover-up, then it is a cover-up. Benghazi was a cover up and we can only pray that one day soon, no matter how long it takes, we get to the bottom of what really went down on September 11, 2012.

One interesting footnote of history, in 1974 Clinton was one of the leading voices demanding Richard Nixon come clean about what happened in Watergate. Amazing how at the time she was oh so concerned then about the truth over a few erased moments of a cassette tape. Yet, in 2012, when her backside is on the line, the response "what difference does it make" still echoes five years later to the character of her heart.

The thing is with Nixon’s involvement with Watergate, people didn't die. In the world of the Clintons, people always die when they are in charge. Thank God they are not in charge of anything again especially the White House.

So as we remember 9-11-2001 this week, let us remember another 9-11, the 9-11 of 2012 when four Americans lost their lives due to the failures of the U.S. Government.

May we never see such dereliction of duty again in protecting those in harms way.

May we also remember who the enemy was in 2001 AND in 2012. They were both the same!
 

#mayweneverforget


 

Christopher McDonald, Publisher, Editor in Charge

Great Smoky Mountain Journal

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