The Conservative press is buzzing again with more damning claims about the brutal murder of Ambassador Stevens and the destruction of the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. While the Congress and the main stream media seem to have placed the events of September 11, 2012 on the back burner, Conservatives are once again promoting the claims of Retired Four Star Admiral James Lyons, who is unflinching in his belief that Barack Obama was part of a pre-planned and deadly criminal conspiracy that led to the events in Libya and the death of Chris Stevens, Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods and Sean Smith.
Lyons was merciless in his accusations against President Obama :
“[T]he attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi… was the result of a bungled abduction attempt…. the first stage of an international prisoner exchange… [that] would have ensured the release of Omar Abdel Rahman, the ‘Blind Sheik’…”
The Admiral and his supporters on the right have been claiming for months that Libya was part of a bungled White House planned hostage exchange conceived and executed by the President and the Muslim Brotherhood. Not only have they accused Mr. Obama and members of his Administration of plans to trade Ambassador Stevens for the imprisoned Blind Sheikh, but prominent, outspoken Conservatives including Glen Beck have accused the Ambassador of heading a major gun running operation to illegally supply high tech weapons to members of the Syrian resistance with ties to al Qaeda and other Islamist terror groups.
While the American public has still not received any real answers about the events in Libya other than obfuscation and denial by the White House, we do know enough to be concerned. Well known journalist, recognized expert on terrorism, Arabic speaking student of Islamic law, and contributor to The Inquisitr , Raymond Ibrahim published detailed warnings about plans to attack American Embassies in the Middle East to force Obama and the United States to release Omar Abdel Rahman. Ibrahim published his information several days before the attack on the Embassy in Cairo and the destruction of the Benghazi Consulate. Sadly, his warnings were totally ignored.
Even normally soft spoken former member of the Bush Administration, Condoleezza Rice felt the need to address the events in Benghazi and question the truth of the Obama narrative on the Consulate attack:
“When you hear Secretary Clinton talk about an Accountability Review Board, that’s what they will look at. It is headed by five retired officers…I think they’ll do a good job, but we need to know, and those decisions– it’s not clear where they were made in the State Department…The regional security officer is the head diplomatic security officer in the consulate. This one had come back in July, he had reportedly asked that some additional security be kept on the ground, so something didn’t get right in terms of the decisions about security on the ground prior to the attack.”
Now our Ambassador is dead, the high tech arsenal of Qaddafi, including chemical weapons and deadly ground to air missiles capable of bringing down a jet, are in the hands dangerous terrorists and Egypt now has a Shariah based Constitution. 60,000 innocents have been butchered in Syria and the best America can do is to arm terrorists who will unleash the same chaos on the people of Syria that they visited on the good citizens of Libya.
The time has come for someone to start telling the truth about what happened in Libya. Hillary Clinton managed to get out of testifying before Congress and the media is doing its best to bury the issues. The only people even willing to discuss the events in Libya are Conservatives talking heads like Glen Beck and angry former Admirals like James Lyons. They are reduced to making distasteful accusations against the President that no one will even consider taking seriously. Its business as usual in Washington and the world continues to burn.
Ibrahim, who is a fair man and by no means an extremist, raised serious questions about the conduct of the Obama Administration in the Middle East. Questions that frankly, need to be answered:
“These are the questions the media and the Obama administration need to be answering—not obsessing over a second-rate YouTube video and questioning hard won American freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment. They should be explaining why it is that, after four years of appeasing the Islamic world in ways unprecedented, including by helping oust America’s longstanding allies like Egypt’s Mubarak to empower Islamists, all we have to show for it are dead and violated Americans, stormed embassies, burned U.S. flags, and greater anti-American sentiment than ever before.”
Note: A Happy Birthday to my mother in Italy, Mrs. Patrica Bachner, who asked me the questions about Libya that inspired this article. Happy Birthday, Mom!