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Benghazi Obama's Core Deceit
Is anyone really going to vote for this?
The basic, important facts about the Benghazi disgrace are in the public record now. American Ambassador Chris Stevens started requesting additional security as early as February. The Obama Administration not only refused additional security, it actually cut security, removing a well armed unit from the Libyan embassy in August.
The Obama Administration should have known that the danger would increase on the anniversary of September 11. But it sent no additional security for that day either. The reasoning seemed to be that President Obama did not want to inflame Muslim sensibilities with a show of American force even to defend our own diplomatic missions overseas, which are legally considered American, not foreign, soil. So he seems to have decided to rely primarily on security to be provided by the fragile, new Libyan government, which has not stabilized full control of the country. Obama's own Ambassador Stevens explicitly told the Obama Administration that Libyan security was not sufficiently reliable.
On September 11, there were no spontaneous mob protests at U.S. diplomatic missions in Libya, as President Obama and other Administration officials have tried to tell us. That is documented by records of activities at the U.S. Libyan missions, and by real time video of events, including from one or more drones flying overhead in response to developments. Around 4 pm Washington time, terrorists associated with an Al Qaeda affiliate, Ansar Al Sharia, began a well-coordinated, pre-planned, heavily armed attack with mortars and rocket propelled grenades on the American consulate in Benghazi. That whole attack was witnessed live through the video in real time in Washington DC, at the White House, at the State Department, at the Pentagon, and at the CIA.
Two nearby Navy seals, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, communicated that they were on their way to the consulate to provide help. They received orders from Washington to stand down! Knowing that American lives were at stake at the embassy, they went anyway. They ended up like General Custer hopelessly outnumbered by the attackers. But they held out for 7 hours after the attacks began, and saved many lives of diplomatic personnel, killing many terrorist attackers in the process.
During the attack, American diplomatic officials on the ground in Libya, and even the two Navy seals themselves, requested back up and rescue. Vastly superior U.S. military forces were available and ready to go less than one hour flight time away in Italy and Crete, including helicopter gunships and jet fighter planes. One security agent at the Benghazi consulate had the terrorist mortar attackers layered, which means they could have been blown away by guided missiles.
But Washington dishonorably refused to send the rescue. Again, apparently, the policy was to avoid offending the Muslim world by a further American show of force. So Navy Seals Woods and Doherty were finally overwhelmed and killed at their guns. American Ambassador Chris Stevens was captured, sodomized, and brutally murdered, dragged bloody and half naked through the streets. President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton afterward thanked the Libyan people for taking the Ambassador to the hospital.
How Stupid Do They Think We Are?
And that was just the beginning of the cover up and lies by President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and other Obama minions. For nearly two weeks, Obama and his cronies espoused to America and the world the fiction that the violence and murders in Benghazi were not terrorist attacks, but the result of Muslim rage over an unknown YouTube video trailer produced by a recent immigrant recluse in the U.S. That was to serve the broader Obama narrative that Obama had routed Al Qaeda ("he" killed Bin Laden after all) and supposedly restored Muslim respect for America, as well as to cover up the dereliction of duty in failing to provide security and send in the military rescue in Benghazi.This Benghazi dishonesty is worth recounting again not only because the whole episode is dishonorable, but because it reflects the fundamental communications strategy of the entire Obama Presidency -- abusing the American people with Calculated Deception.
President Obama actually weaved this fairy tale before the whole world in a now retrospectively foolish speech at the United Nations. Later, he sent out U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice on the Sunday talk shows to spin the same yarn.
The harsh reality for America, making the truth about Obama harder to discern, is that so much of our nation's media have fully devoted themselves to Democrat party partisanship. That starts early in school for so many so-called "journalists," who devote themselves in adolescence to "change the world" by going into such "journalism." The first stage of any third world Marxist revolution is for the guerillas to seize the radio and TV stations and announce that they are the new government. That effectively has already happened in America. Sure there are alternative outlets where the truth is propagated, such as talk radio, Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, Investors Business Daily, and other publications such as this one. But the public has to grope through the fog of denunciation by the Democrat party-controlled media to find them.
This media is now in full cover up mode for Obama's Benghazi lies, coverup, and dishonorable dereliction of duty. This was revealed in one of the most brazen episodes in American political history, where President Obama went on the national stage in debate 2 to propagate cover up lies about his Benghazi fairy tale lies. Obama bragged at that debate, "The day after the attack, Governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we're going to hunt down those who committed this crime."
The ever sharp Mitt Romney immediately caught the lie, sputtering, "the President just said something which -- which is that on the day after the attack he went into the Rose Garden and said this was an act of terror." Obama lied, "That's what I said." But Romney was stuck on the truth, "I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the President 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror." Obama's ready response, "Get the transcript."
The supposed moderator Candy Crowley of Democrat party-controlled CNN took her transparently prearranged cue and interrupted Romney to say, "He did in fact sir." Then before the entire nation, live on TV, making the pre arranged ambush too obvious, Obama ordered his minion like she was a White House press spokesman, "Can you say that a little louder, Candy?" Obeying the Boss, Crowley piped up and added "He did call it an act of terror."
But the transcript of Obama's Rose Garden comments on September 12, posted at the White House website, does not mention the words terror, terrorist or terrorism. Here is what Obama said in the video of the event on September 12:
Yesterday was already a painful day for our nation as we marked the solemn memory of the 9/11 attacks. We mourned with the families of those who were lost on that day. I visited the graves of troops who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hallowed grounds of Arlington Cemetery and had the opportunity to say thank you and visit some of our wounded warriors at Walter Reed. And then last night we learned the news of this attack in Benghazi. As Americans let us never ever forget that our freedom is only sustained because of our people who are willing to fight for it, willing to stand up for it, and in some cases willing to lay down their lives for it. Our country is only as free or as strong as the character of our people, and the service of those both civilian and military who represent us around the globe. No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values we stand for.
These words do not back up what Obama said at the debate. He did not call the Benghazi murders a terrorist act the very next day. Obama was referring to terrorism in general, including the original 9/11 attacks in New York. Obama in fact continued to maintain for another two weeks the fiction that the murders resulted form overflowing, spontaneous, Muslim anger, later telling that fairy tale to the whole world at the UN.
Obama's Comprehensive Calculated Deception
Obama finally just released his alleged second term agenda. As theWall Street Journal editorialized regarding an interview he gave on it to the Des Moines Register on October 24:
Specifically, Mr. Obama said he wants to pursue immigration reform in a second term, as well as a budget 'grand bargain' with Republicans that includes tax reform. This will come as a surprise to voters reading the President's just released 20-page brochure on his second term agenda, which makes little or no mention of these priorities. Perhaps that's why the White House first demanded that the interview be off the record, making the transcript public only after the Register editor objected in a public blog post.
After being recently spanked in a Univision interview for promising immigration reform in the 2008 campaign and then doing nothing on it even with filibuster proof Democrat congressional majorities, Obama wanted to communicate to his Hispanic base that he will pursue immigration reform in a second term, without putting it in black and white for the general public to see. But failing to lift a finger on it when he had the real chance, how can even his Hispanic base believe in him now?
In his slick second term agenda brochure, Obama tells us, "President Obama is pursuing an 'all-of-the-above' energy strategy that will produce reliable, affordable energy and take steps to protect our climate: Opening up millions of acres for exploration and development, including undiscovered oil and gas resources in the Gulf of Mexico and the Arctic."
But that assertion comes in the face of the Obama Administration's closing of half the National Petroleum Reserve in August. That National Petroleum Reserve is 23.5 million acres (the size of Indiana) on Alaska's North Slope, established by President Harding in 1923 to ensure oil supplies for the U.S. Navy. Congress transferred the reserve from state to federal ownership in 1976, and "designated it as a strategic oil and natural gas stockpile to meet the 'energy needs of the nation,'" as reported by Newsmax. But not under the Obama Administration, which has squelched production at the reserve during Obama's entire term.
The agenda brochure tells us, "It's time for a new economic patriotism, rooted in the belief that growing our economy begins with a strong, thriving middle class." But President Obama has produced during his entire term just the opposite for the middle class, a precipitous decline in median family income, from $54,983 in January, 2009 to $50,964 by June, 2012. That is a loss of $4,019 per family, or 7.3%, the equivalent of losing nearly one month's income every year. Don't forget as well President Obama's postwar record of 43 straight months with unemployment above 8%, the longest period of such unemployment since the Great Depression ended nearly 75 years ago. This is what President Obama has accomplished for the middle class so far.
The economy grew at only 2% in the third quarter, which continues Obama's record of economy growth at only half the average recovery from a recession since World War II, and only one-third of Reagan's booming recovery. That's a loss for the American people of $1.2 trillion in income so far compared to what they would have with an average post-depression recovery. That doesn't look like President Obama is "Building an Economy from the Middle Class Out," as he promises in his second term agenda brochure. Just average post-recession growth since World War II would have cut our deficit in half by itself, without any legislated tax increases or benefit cuts. While Obama says of his second term agenda, "Ours is a fight to restore the values that built the largest middle class and the strongest economy the world has ever known," the record shows he has lost that fight so far.
And the prospects are only worse without a change in course. As theWall Street Journal editorialized in its weekend October 27-28 edition, "private investment tanked in the third quarter….the decline in business investment at this stage of a recovery signals a capital strike and a return to pessimism. Business investment is a leading indicator of future job and wage growth."
But Obama's answer is to keep doing what he has been, except to sharply increase taxes on investment in a second term. He promises in his second term agenda brochure to reduce the deficit "by finally asking millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share." Those millionaires and billionaires are defined as families earning over $250,000 a year. Moreover, the Congressional Budget Office reports that in 2009, the top 1% of income earners paid 39% of all federal income taxes, while earning only 13% of the income. That's not their fair share, Mr. President? He is deliberately deceiving the public to stoke envy and resentment for votes. That too is dishonorable.
Obama says he is only asking billionaires to pay the same tax rates as their secretaries. But in 2009, in 2009 the top 1% already paid an average federal tax rate of 29%, while the middle 20% paid an average federal tax rate of only 11.1%, according to CBI. It is with a flat tax that millionaires and billionaires would pay the same tax rates as their secretaries, which is what Reagan and Steve Forbes wanted, but Obama has opposed.
These tax increases on "the rich" (a crass term that has no place in American politics) will only lose revenue, increasing rather than reducing deficits and debt. In the past 45 years, every time the capital gains tax rate has been increased, capital gains revenues have gone down rather than up. When President Bush slashed the tax rate on corporate dividends in 2003, dividend payments soared thereafter, and consequently so did the revenues from dividend taxation. Reversing that cut as Obama wants would have the opposite effect. If the tax rate increases going into effect next year for every major federal tax, except the already world leading corporate tax rate, cause a recession as I have now been joined by CBO in predicting, federal revenues overall will go down rather than up.
For those of you, or your friends and relatives, who are voting for Obama, is this pattern of dishonorable deception and dishonesty what you are supporting? If so, you will surely get what you deserve if a second Obama term ever comes to pass. Maybe more people you know need to know more about this.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Peter Ferrara is Director of Entitlement and Budget Policy at the Heartland Institute, Senior Advisor for Entitlement Reform and Budget Policy at the National Tax Limitation Foundation, Senior Fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, and General Counsel of the American Civil Rights Union. He served in the White House Office of Policy Development for President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under President George H.W. Bush. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, he is the author of America’s Ticking Bankruptcy Bomb (HarperCollins).
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