Really?

Apparently so. Here is their spin: The greatest threat, in their estimation, was an IED attack. In June 2012, the compound was in fact attacked by an IED, but didn't do much damage.

Ergo, since Chris Stevens and Sean Smith were not killed with an IED, they're claiming... the security worked. Their security, keyed to that threat (and apparently only that threat), did not fail to stop a bomb that didn't exist.

Things our Protect Obama Media (POM) won't highlight: even the owners of the villa serving as the consulate were surprised at how little security there was.

The WSJ has a story that NBC of course will not touch about the "miscues" in security at Benghazi.

U.S. officials issued alerts and ordered security precautions in neighboring Egypt ahead of protests and violence on Sept. 11, but largely overlooked the possibility of trouble at other diplomatic postings in the region. . . .

The U.S. didnÂ’t seriously consider sending in the military during the attack. It summoned rapid-response teams of Marines only after the U.S. ambassador was dead. State Department officials said they doubted the Pentagon could have mobilized a rescue force quickly enough to make a difference during the fighting. The Pentagon waited for guidance from State, which is responsible for diplomatic security, a senior military official said.

Adding a new dimension to the chain of events, the siege also engulfed what officials now describe as a secret safe house used by American officials and security personnel involved in sensitive government programs after last yearÂ’s Libyan revolution.

Even when that building, also known as the “annex,” came under attack, U.S. officials were reluctant to divulge its existence, and the secrecy complicated the Libyan response and the eventual American evacuation, according to Libyan security officials.

More:

The State Department chose to maintain only limited security in Benghazi, Libya, despite months of sporadic attacks there on U.S. and other Western missions.

That is a scandal of the first order, which in any unbiased media environment would be the biggest story of the year and reason to demand a full explanation from the White House. Did Obama and his advisers incorrectly assess the ongoing threat of jihadists, lack sufficient intelligence on the ground in Libya (after chest-thumping about our leading-from-behind strategy in the war) and fail to grasp that blaming a video is only feeding into the mentality of the jihadists (i.e., the West is to blame for violence)?

Now, letÂ’s see how the administration, either by mendacity or incompetence, put out a false story of the attacks, which is now shredding day by day.

The media understands fully that this story is a fiasco for Obama. That's why they won't report it.

In the old days, I think the media just sensed that they ought not cover some stories.

I don't think that's happening here. I think the relationship between the media and Obama is so close that he's directly said to them, more or less, "My presidency is at risk if you push this." And I think most of them have explicitly decided their job is actually to PROTECT OBAMA.

Posted by: Ace at 10:37 AM | Comments (257)
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Warning: Al Jazeera link. Excerpt:

Reports say more than 17 people have died as demonstrations against an anti-Islam video erupted across Pakistan, a day after protesters tried to storm the US embassy in the capital, Islamabad.

Tens of thousands of Pakistanis took to the streets across the country after the government called an impromptu public holiday to let people protest under the banner of "Love the Prophet Day".

In Karachi, armed protesters among a group of 15,000 fired on police, killing two officers, as at least 10 protesters died in the violence. The crowd also burned six cinemas, two banks, a KFC and five police vehicles.

Crowds armed with clubs and bamboo poles converged on the Firdaus picture house, "smashing it up and setting furniture ablaze", according to Gohar Ali, a police officer.

A holiday with a body count.

France is having none of this.

In France, where the publication of cartoons denigrating the Prophet stoked anger over an anti-Islam video made in California, the authorities banned all protests over the issue.

"There will be strictly no exceptions. Demonstrations will be banned and broken up," said Interior Minister Manuel Valls.

Although that may seem itself to be a repudiation of free speech rights, you can't simply ignore all history (and concurrent "protests" in other countries) and pretend you don't know that "protest" means "arson, riots, and murders."

In Malaysia, they're protesting both America and France.

About 3,000 Muslims marched on the US embassy in Malaysia on Friday, burning an American flag, over a US-made film that has sparked anger in the Islamic world.

Although there was no violence, angry demonstrators declared their willingness to sacrifice their lives to defend the honour of Prophet Mohammed and warned "there will be consequences" over the film.

...

Protesters shouted "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest) and held up signs denouncing the film, America and Jews.

One placard read: "Obama, our patience has its limit. Don't blame us if your citizens die. Blame yourself. U started it!"

Demonstrators handed a memo to an American embassy official, demanding a US apology, "maximum sentences" for the movie-makers and an investigation into whether there was a "planned agenda to provoke hatred and anger towards Muslims".

Hey, remember when the media used to piously tell us that it was a shame Americans weren't more interested in foreign news, and how they'd sure like to cover more of it?

That seems to have gone out the door lately, eh?

Because there is a full American embargo on this. This is Drudge linking reports from around the world. The American media is still in 47% Wonderland.

AP does digest a series of reports from all over the world.

The chant "Obama, Obama, we're all Osama" shows up at a lot of "protests." Including Norway.

But the media doesn't want to tell you that Obama's supposed Charm Offensive, combined with his Apology Gambit, isn't working. So this is officially non-news.

PROTECT

OBAMA

Posted by: Ace at 10:07 AM | Comments (201)
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Two videos below; the first is the money segment. Bret Baier notes that on the day the Administration half-admits they've lied about Libya, the New York Times doesn't run a single story about it-- not even one about Libya, generally.

One congressmen meanwhile suggests Obama is simply lying.

"You hate to think that the president would purposely mislead the American people, but it sure looks like it to me," House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon, R-Calif., said.

McKeon was among several top-ranking lawmakers who expressed frustration following a briefing with administration officials late Thursday. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said he learned "nothing" from it, claiming the administration is still blaming an anti-Islam film on YouTube for the attack that killed four Americans including the U.S. ambassador.

The White House has been sending mixed signals. Press Secretary Jay Carney for the first time Thursday called the strike terrorism. Obama, though, continued to cite the anti-Islam film when asked about the attack during a voter forum hosted by Univision.

"There are going to be different circumstances in different countries. And so I don't want to speak to something until we have all the information. What we do know is that the natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video were used as an excuse by extremists to see if they can also directly harm U.S. interests," he said.

But McCain retorted: "It's not the video. It's the Islamists who are pushing this video."

Posted by: Ace at 09:33 AM | Comments (199)
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This is their Saturday Night Live on Thursday night show. Which has always been a cost-saving move, putting on a cheap segment from a show they're already producing instead of buying another show (which would probably fail, like most of their shows fail).

At Newsbusters.

Boycotts never work but I really, really want to get a national boycott of NBC going. Just take them out. They're barely hanging in as a network anyway. They are ready to fall, ready to become some kind of half-network like the CW.

Just to show how obnoxious they are, last night a segment on "Rock Center" (Brian Williams' bonus-round bias show) took on "the partisan press," by which they mean FoxNews. They did throw in one CYA clip, very short, of Ed Schultz, to pretend they were offering a nonpartisan view of "the partisan press," but the overwhelming emphasis was on FoxNews. And definitely not their little demented liberal sister channel MSNBC, where "real journalists" from NBC routinely appear in order to suggest that MSNBC is a real news channel.

They are so close to bankruptcy. And they're so obnoxious. It's not that the rest of these channels aren't biased. It's just at some point we need to make an example of one of them -- I think the old expression goes pour encourager les autres (You have to hang an admiral once in a while to encourage the others).

And I don't mean boycott their news. I mean boycott everything here. The whole thing. All of it. Put it under. Bankrupt it.

More than any other channel, NBC has cast itself as the Urban Liberal Network. And they are in the ratings cellar, and have been for years.

Conservatives who like The Office are helping keep this outfit afloat. Time to pull the plug and let it all go down the drain.

more...

Posted by: Ace at 08:37 AM | Comments (381)
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There was a bit of a scare last night as reports broke that Mitt Romney's supposed huge cash advantage had not only disappeared, but Obama had turned the tables on him completely.

After dominating the fundraising race for much of the summer, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney started the fall campaign sprint with a little more than $50 million available to spend and a large loan to repay, campaign-finance reports filed Thursday show.

Romney raised nearly $67 million in August and spent nearly as much, according to his filings with the Federal Election commission.

President Obama spent even more, burning through nearly all of the $84.8 million he raised in August, but he ended the month with nearly $89 million in cash reserves. Overall, Obama and the Democratic Party raised about $114 million in August, edging past the $111.6 million haul by Romney and the Republican Party.

Before this developed into a full blown freak-out, Reince dropped the hammer.

NEWSFLASH - Cash On HandRNC - 76.5 millDNC - 7.1 mill

— Reince Priebus (@Reince) September 21, 2012

More August Facts NC spent 21.9M and RNC spent 47.8M; RNC raised 35.6M and DNC raised 13.6M; Final Cash on Hand RNC 76.5M - DNC 7.1M.

— Reince Priebus (@Reince) September 21, 2012

This breaks down to:
DNC + Obama = $95.9 Million cash on hand.
RNC + Romney = $127 Million cash on hand.

Regardless, it wouldn't hurt to toss Romney some coin for the homestretch.

Posted by: JohnE. at 07:55 AM | Comments (175)
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Alternate title: The Slow Death of the American Republic, A Continuing Series.

The November 6 election is still seven weeks away, but early, in-person voting begins in two states on Friday, even as Democrats and Republicans battle in court over controversial plans to limit such voting before Election Day.

Idaho and South Dakota are the first states to begin early voting on Friday, although North Carolina has been accepting absentee ballots by mail since September 6. By the end of September, 30 states will have begun either in-person or absentee voting, and eventually all the states will join in.

Much of the focus of the early voting period will be on the politically divided states of Ohio and Florida, which could be crucial in deciding the race between Democratic President Barack Obama and Republican Mitt Romney.

This is, in a word, insanity.

Yes, we should make accommodations for absentee voting if you have a reason to be away from home on election day, for seniors/disabled for whom it would be a real hardship to get to a polling place and of course the military. Beyond that it's outrageous.

Aside from the obvious potential for fraud, even legitimately cast ballots at this point represent a danger to the integrity of results. We're 7 weeks out and haven't had a single debate yet. A million things could happen between now and then that would cause some one to reconsider their choice for President or any other office on the ballot. Voters should have access to the same information and see the full campaign play out.

Just think how some elections might have changed if early voting had been allowed on this scale earlier.

In 1980 Ronald Reagan trailed Jimmy Carter well into October and two moments in the debates are credited with boosting Reagan ("Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" and Carter's, "I was talking to my daughter Amy...." both came in the debate less than a week before the election).

Of course that might not have happened had Gerald Ford not said in a 1976 debate against Carter, ‘There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford Administration’.

If getting to a polling place on a designated day is too much for you (other than the instances above), perhaps you aren't all that committed to the process and shouldn't be voting.

Posted by: DrewM at 06:53 AM | Comments (233)
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A new Gallup poll released today shows Americans' distrust of the media has hit a new high. This survey was conducted from September 6-9, so the shameful Benghazi coverage isn't even accounted for.

Americans' distrust in the media hit a new high this year, with 60% saying they have little or no trust in the mass media to report the news fully, accurately, and fairly. Distrust is up from the past few years, when Americans were already more negative about the media than they had been in years prior to 2004.

I know, you’re wondering how in the world 40 percent of Americans could possibly have “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of “trust and confidence in the news media to report the news accurately and fairly.”

What is perhaps even less surprising is that only 26 percent of Republicans and 31 percent of independents have a “great deal” or “a fair amount” of trust in the media. Yet 58 percent of Democrats have a “great deal” or “a fair amount” of trust in the media.

Alright, so most Democrats blindly trust the mainstream media. They can at least recognize the bad economic news reported nearly every day, right? Well, no. They can't.

Study: Only 15 Percent Of Democrats Believe Economic News Is Bad

New data found that just 15 percent of Democrats believe that recent economic news is mostly poor, a percentage that took a significant drop from the 31 percent of Democrats polled last month who did think that economic news was mostly bad. According to the study, the 15-percent clip is among the lowest percentages during President Barack ObamaÂ’s nearly four years in office.

So there you have it. The reality-based community, ladies and gents.

Posted by: JohnE. at 06:24 AM | Comments (182)
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Via Robert Caruso (a good Twitter follow for national security news and rants). Bottom line thus far seems to be an overly optimistic view of Libyan security forces.

There are some truly stupid remarks by officials in this piece.

State Department officials said security for the consulate was frequently reviewed and was deemed sufficient to counter what U.S. officials considered to be the most likely threat at the time: a limited hit-and-run attack with rocket-propelled grenades or improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

There was a string of attacks in Benghazi in the months before Sept. 11, including a June 6 IED explosion outside the consulate compound. "These types of incidents were the ones that were our principal concerns," a senior State Department official said. Based on the outcome of the June 6 attack, in which a perimeter wall was damaged but no Americans hurt, a second State Department official added: "Our security plan worked."

It never occurred to these "experts" that the bad guys would notice that their tactics weren't working and that they'd step up their efforts? Have we learned nothing in over a decade of war in Muslim countries? Of course these terrorists learn and adapt. What did the State Department think? That they'd give up attacking us?

This is our history, we get smug in our superiority and we defend against the last attack as if the enemy doesn't learn and evolve. All the proof you need of this is a quick trip to your local airport. We've spent billions of dollars on manpower and machinery, inconvenienced hundreds of millions of passengers, all to stop the last attack (which by the way, used weapons that were legal to carry on at the time).

But wait! There's more!

A State Department official said Washington doesn't control the travels of ambassadors within countries where they are posted. But some current and former U.S. officials say it was a mistake for the administration to put so much faith in the Libyans to provide adequate security so soon after the revolution, and questioned why more robust contingency plans weren't in place.

One senior State Department official described the Benghazi consulate as a "temporary office" that security officers treated as a "subsidiary" of the embassy in Tripoli, where more strenuous procedures and precautions were in place. "So Tripoli had the plan and the idea was that these people would just fall back on Tripoli, which they did in this situation, so it worked," the official said.

"It worked"? Is Janet "The System Worked" Napolitano moonlighting at State now? In what way can a plan that left a consulate burned and looted and 4 dead Americans, including the Ambassador be said to have worked? What the hell would "the plan failed" have looked like?

How is this acceptable thinking? How can people who think this way be left in charge to devise the next plan? No wonder we were caught flatfooted.

Notable for what's not in this story? Any mention of a protest that either got out of hand or that the terrorists used as cover for their attack. Quite the opposite in fact.

Ethan Chorin, an American development economist working with U.S. and Libyan officials on a hospital in Benghazi, said he spoke by phone to Mr. Stevens about an hour before the assault, and the ambassador told him there was "no indication of trouble" following the protests in Egypt. Mr. Chorin said a subsequent conversation he had with the ambassador's security officer was cut short by what the officer said was a serious problem. Several minutes later, he could hear explosions from his hotel room across town as the assault began.

So there was no "trouble" at the Consulate an hour before the attack but we're to believe one sprang up and then from that sprang a complex and heavily armed attack?

From the changing stories about the bin Laden raid to the "leaks" over our efforts against Iran to Benghazi, this administration simply can not be trusted to tell the truth about national security.

Posted by: DrewM at 05:22 AM | Comments (155)
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Happy Friday.

Today is officially the last day of summer. Make it good.

Many liberals (and even some conservatives) are pimping the idea that Romney is having the worst month ever and that he might as well quit now. That is, objectively, the stupidest, least supportable conclusion one could draw from the events of the past month. The status quo prevails.

Coincidentally, U.S. distrust in media hits 60 percent, a new high.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:50 AM | Comments (324)
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When the Moon Sets Over Afghanistan

The Taliban may be ignorant but they're not stupid. And more and more we no longer completely own the night there.

It was no coincidence that the Camp Bastion attack happened on a moonless night.

A key realization: the enemy uses cheap night vision gear in the form of cameras that have night functions.  When our IR lasers, our IR strobes, our IR illumination or our IR spotlights are radiating, they can easily be seen using cheap digital cameras.  I recently told this to some Norwegian soldiers, who were as surprised as our soldiers to learn it.  I learned this from the enemy, not from our guys.  The Taliban even use smart phone cameras to watch for invisible lasers.  The enemy in Afghanistan has been caught using cameras for night vision.  It is just a stroke of common sense: I have been doing it for eight years since I noticed an IR laser one night in Iraq.

A Norwegian trooper explained that one dark night in Afghanistan, they got ambushed with accurate but distant machinegun fire.  When they turned off their IR strobes, the fire ended.  When they turned the IR strobes back on, the fires resumed.  When they turned them off for good, it was over.

Many of our people believe that the enemy does not use night vision.  There was a time when this was true, but the war has matured and this is now false.  If your firefly is strobing on your helmet, or if you are carrying a cracked IR chemlight, do not be surprised if you take accurate fire during a black night.  When JTACs mark targets with IR lasers, or when aircraft such as Predators lase for Hellfire shots or for target ID, they look like purple or green sunbeams through night vision optics and they are crazy bright.  You cannot miss them.

Pretty much any digital camera is sensitive to near infrared light (NIR) - so much so that manufacturers usually add on an IR cut filter to block most of it out...but most is not all.

You can easily check this by looking at a TV remote with any smartphone camera and you'll be able to see the IR pulses clearly. Likewise it's quite easy to see anyone walking around with IR strobes, lasers, or night-vision illuminators.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:24 PM | Comments (517)
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