Justin's Political Corner
Exposing The Myths Behind The Right-Wing’s Trumped Up Benghazi “Cover Up”
MYTH: The White House And State Department Edited References To Terrorism Out Of Talking Points For Political Purposes
FACT: The CIA Signed Off On The Changes For Tactical, Not Political Reasons. Gen. David Petraeus, former head of the CIA, testified in November that the intelligence community signed off on the final draft of the talking points, and that references to terrorist groups in Libya were removed in order to avoid tipping off those groups. [The New York Times, 11/16/12]
FACT: President Obama Had Already Referred To The Attacks As An Act Of Terror. On September 12, President Obama referred to the attacks as an act of terror when he spoke from the White House Rose Garden. One day later, Obama again referred to acts of terror at a campaign event. These comments undermine the myth that edits to a document that were made on September 14, after Obama had already labeled the attack an act of terror, demonstrate that the administration was trying to downplay the role that terrorism played. [Media Matters for America, 5/10/13]
MYTH: Benghazi Whistleblower Gregory Hicks Is Being Prohibited From Talking To Investigators And Members Of Congress
FACT: Hicks Was Interviewed Twice As Part Of The State Department’s Independent Internal Investigation. After Gregory Hicks sat down for an initial interview with the State Department’s Accountability Review Board, he asked for a follow-up interview to expand on issues that he felt needed amplification. And he was granted one. [Media Matters for America, 5/9/13]
FACT: Hicks Was Only Told He Was Not Allowed To Speak With A Member Of Congress Without A State Department Attorney Present. Following the attacks, Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) traveled to Libya, seeking to interview witnesses and survivor, including Hicks. Hicks testified that the State Department had instructed him not to speak to Chaffetz without a State attorney present — a condition Hicks says was unusual, but which the State Department says is standard procedure. Hicks ended up speaking to Chaffetz without a State Department attorney present because, according to his testimony, the lawyer lacked the proper security clearance. [Media Matters for America, 5/9/13]
MYTH: Cheryl Mills Tried To Intimidate Hicks After His Meeting With Chaffetz
FACT: Hicks Admitted Mills Offered No Criticism Or Reprimand, Only That She Had Asked For A Report. While being questioned by Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), Hicks elaborated on a phone call from Cheryl Mills, at the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s chief-of-staff. Hicks made clear that he had received no direct criticism from Mills. It was the “tone of the conversation,” he testified, that led him to believe Mills was unhappy with him. But MSBNC reported that Philippe Reines confirmed to them that he witnessed the conversation and that it was supportive. [Media Matters for America, 5/11/13; MSNBC.com, 5/8/13]
FACT: Congressional Republicans Are Falsely Framing The Phone Call As “Threatening.” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) repeatedly asked Hicks if Mills was “upset” with him during the phone call. Hicks answered in the affirmative. After Hicks finished describing his phone call with Mills, Jordan immediately characterized it as an act of retribution for not going along with the “cover-up.” Rep. Ronald DeSantis (R-FL) told Hicks at one point that “we need to know who actually gave the order to stand down. I’d like to know why you’ve been demoted, why they — the secretary’s chief of staff called you and spoke with you the way she did.” [Media Matters for America, 5/11/13]
MYTH: Hicks Is Being Punished For Speaking Out And Has Been Demoted And Received Criticism Of His Mmanagement Style
FACT: Hicks Testified That He Voluntarily Chose Not To Return To Libya And That The Overriding Reason Was Because Of His Family. During his testimony, Hicks said that “based on criticism that I received, I felt that if I went back, I would never be comfortable working there, and in addition, my family really didn’t want me to go back. We had endured a year of separation when I was in Afghanistan in 2006 and 2007. That was the overriding factor. So I voluntarily curtailed.” [House Oversight Committee Hearing, 5/8/13, via Nexis]
FACT: Embassy Staff Told ThinkProgress That People Were Upset With Hicks’ Management Style Before The Attacks. State Department employees, who spoke to ThinkProgress on the condition of anonymity, said that the staff was upset with Hicks’ performance since he was first assigned to Tripoli on July 31. Contrary to Hicks’ claim that he was demoted out of retribution, the sources said that Assistant Secretary Jones’ meetings with the staff prior to Oct. 2 were “entirely” focused on Hicks’ performance as a manager. [“EXCLUSIVE: Embassy Staff Undercut ‘Whistleblower’ Testimony On Benghazi,” ThinkProgress, 5/10/13]
MYTH: The White House Refused To Send A Second Team To Benghazi Because Of Political Motivations
FACT: The Decision Was Made By The Head Of The Military’s Africa Command, Who Was Concerned About Embassy Security In Tripoli. Diplomats on the ground the night of the attacks were concerned about threats to the Tripoli embassy complex, and a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed that the assessment of Special Operations Command Africa leadership at the time was that “it was more important for those guys to be in Tripoli” for embassy security. [Media Matters for America, 5/09/13]
FACT: Additional Reinforcements Would Not Have Been Able To Get To Benghazi Before The Second Attack Was Concluded. Transcripts of an interview Hicks gave to congressional investigators show that he said that the flight these special forces were scheduled to take, but did not, was scheduled to take off after 6:00 a.m., local time — approximately 45 minutes after the attack at the CIA annex that killed two people. [Media Matters for America, 5/7/13]
h/t: MMFA
Those who are trying to make the Benghazi tragedy into a scandal for the Obama administration really ought to decide what story line they want to sell.
Actually, by “those” I mean Republicans, and by “the Obama administration” I mean Hillary Clinton. The only coherent purpose I can discern in all of this is to sully Clinton’s record as secretary of state in case she runs for president in 2016.
The hearing convened Wednesday by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) produced a riveting narrative of the chaotic events in Libya last September. But what was the supposedly unforgivable crime?
Did Clinton’s State Department fail to provide adequate security for the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi? In retrospect, obviously so. But the three diplomats who testified at the hearing gave no evidence that this failure sprang from anything other than the need to use limited resources as efficiently as possible.
House Republicans who voted to cut funding for State Department security should understand that their philosophy — small government is always better — has consequences. Bureaucrats have to make judgment calls. Sometimes they will be wrong.
Well, then, maybe the transgression is that administration officials, for some unfathomable reason, willfully lied when they said the attack was in reaction to an anti-Islam video produced in the United States and disseminated on the Internet.
The problem is that there were, in fact, tumultuous anti-American demonstrations taking place in cities throughout the Muslim world because of the video. President Obama labeled the Benghazi assault an act of terror almost immediately — as Mitt Romney learned in the second presidential debate — but it was hard to imagine that the attack was completely unrelated to what was happening in Cairo, Tunis, Khartoum and Jakarta.
I knew when the moment the GOP screechers were screaming about Benghazi back in September 2012 (and will go on forever), it was just another manufactured scandal to harm Obama, Clinton, and the Democrats.
President Obama said on Tuesday that his he still believes that the Guantánamo Bay prison does not serve American security interests and said that his administration will try again to close Gitmo.
“It is not a surprise to me that we’ve got problems in Guantánamo,” Obama said when asked during a White House press conference about the ongoing hunger strike crisis there. “I think it is critical for us to understand that Guantánamo is not necessary to keep America safe,” he added, pledging to take another shot at closing Gitmo:
OBAMA: It needs to be closed. Now Congress determined that they would not let us close it and despite the fact that there are a number of folks who are in Guantánamo who the courts have said could be returned to their country origin or potentially a third country. I’m going to go back at this. I’ve asked my team to review everything that’s currently being done in Guantánamo, everything that we can do administratively and I’m going to reengage with Congress to try to make the case that this is not something that’s in the best interests of the American people. And it’s not sustainable.
Obama signed an executive order in January 2009 vowing to close Gitmo within one year but largely because of congressional intransigence, the facility remains open today, housing 166 inmates, of whom 100 are currently on hunger strike. The State Department reassigned the special envoy for closing Gitmo in January and Obama did not reappoint anyone to fill the position.
However, the Obama administration does have some room to maneuver. Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) recently urged the White House to take steps to repatriate some of the 56 Yemeni detainees who are cleared for release. The U.S. halted the Yemeni process after it was learned that militants in the country trained the so-called underwear bomber in 2009; but new Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s eagerness to take on al-Qaeda could calm recidivism fears.
Of the 100 Gitmo detainees on hunger strike, 21 are being force-fed, a process that the American Medical Association and a bipartisan detainee expert task force have condemned.
Chechnya is a region in the large isthmus between the Black and Caspian Seas north of the Georgia and Armenia in the North Caucuses Mountains. It can be said to stand on the gate between east and west, with Russia to the north and Iran and Turkey only several hundred miles south. Most ethnic Chechens, by far the largest ethnic group, adhere to Sunni Islam. Ethnic Russians, mostly of transplanted Cossack origin, are predominantly Orthodox Christians. The region is also home to other smaller populations of eastern Caucuses peoples. Chechnya was part of the Ottoman Empire and then the Persian Empire until the early 19th century when it was ceded to Russia following their victory in the Russo-Persian War in 1813.
Chechnya has been host to conflict for centuries because of its strategic position between Russia and far eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire and the Middle or Near East. It sits atop the natural barrier of the Caucuses Mountains between two seas. Chechnya has been the site of many instances of brutal ethnic and religious oppression by the Ottomans, Persians, Russian Empire, the USSR, and the Russian Republic, as well as by regional separatist or independence leaders, in an effort to control or keep hold of the region. As a result, inhabitants are quite divided between political, ethnic, and religious allegiances. Roughly speaking, Chechnya has a history similar to regions such as Bosnia and Kosovo, which are subject to much the same tensions.
Chechnya has been fighting on-and-off for independence from Russia for over 200 years. It was briefly independent following the Russian Revolution in 1921. Following the Nazi invasion of Russia in 1940, Chechnya again declared independence until Stalin re-established control in 1944, followed by a brutal purge and mass Siberian deportations. The years following the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991 were particularly violent as many Chechen groups fought again for independence from the Russian Republic, though the region has been under firm Russian control since 1999. However, this control has led some Chechen separatist groups to turn to terrorism.
Since 1999, Chechnya-linked groups have been involved in at least a dozen terror attacks, the majority of which have taken place in or been aimed at Russia. A Chechen group seized a grade school in Beslan, Russia in 2004, resulting in the deaths of 330 hostages, most of them children. In 2008, Chechen rebels took 130 hostages in a movie theatre in Moscow, all of whom died along with their captors following a botched rescue attempt by Russian security forces. In 2010, two female suicide bombers killed 39 in an attack at a train station near the Moscow headquarters of the FSB, Russia’s main intelligence agency.
There is evidence that some Chechen separatist groups may have links to Al-Qaeda. Many ethnic Chechen fighters fought alongside the mujahedeen, including Osama Bin Laden, in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Chechens also fought alongside the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan against the U.S. and Northern Alliance fighters in 2001. The Taliban government was one of the few in the world to recognize Chechen independence. Russia has claimed it holds direct evidence of links between Chechen rebels and Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Many question this link and cite it as a ploy to ensure the west sees Chechen rebels as terrorists and the west elicits no resistance in return from Russia when it pursues its own terrorists elsewhere.
The U.S. government lists the Islamic Independent Peacekeeping Brigade as a source for funding for Islamist Chechan rebels and has ties to Al-Qaeda. America also lists the Special Purpose Islamic Regiment and Riyadus-Salikhin Brigade of Chechen Martyrs as terror groups.
Tensions on the Korean peninsula are nothing new — historically, North Korea frequently rattles its saber for one reason for another. But the recent escalation in tensions between the North and South have experts worried that this time might be different, that the threat of the United States being drawn into a devastating war with the nuclear-armed North is real in a way that it might not normally be. At the very least, it’s worth paying special attention this time around.
The escalation of tensions began in mid-February, when North Korea conducted its third-ever nuclear test. While the North’s ability to strike the United States is limited at best, the Obama administration interpreted the test as a violation of international law, and pushed throughstricter, though still porous, sanctions on North Korean elites.
North Korea responded in turn by threatening to nullify the armistice that ended the original Korean War, reverting the North and South to a legal state of war. Two days ago, it shut off the last remaining line of communication between the two Korean militaries, warning that “Not words but only arms will work on the U.S. and the South Korean puppet forces.”
Thursday night, the United States responded in kind, conducting a bombing drill with two B-2 bombers over South Korea. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel described the thinking behind the move: “The North Koreans have to understand that what they’re doing is very dangerous.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un got the message Friday morning. He ordered his country’s missile arsenal be readied to strike South Korea and the United States if necessary. While North Korean Unha-3 missiles could theoretically reach the West Coast, it’s not clear the missiles actually work. Moreover, North Korea lacks the technology to arm the missiles with nuclear warheads and to deliver them accurately even if they can get them in proper working order.
So how is this different from the last 60-odd years of North Korean provocations? Many think it isn’t. Writing in the National Interest, Rajon Menon says the current Northern provocations are an example of the Hermit Kingdom’s “measured madness,” an attempt to wring more concessions out of an overcompensating international community.
But North Korea experts Victor Cha and David Kang disagree. They argue that Kim Jong Un’s inexperience (he’s only been running the country since December 2011), together with the South’s new President and more aggressive military stance, means there’s a greater risk (not certainty by any stretch, but risk) of escalation this time around:
So why worry? Two reasons. First, North Korea has a penchant for testing new South Korean presidents. A new one was just inaugurated in February, and since 1992, the North has welcomed these five new leaders by disturbing the peace. Whether in the form of missile launches, submarine incursions, or naval clashes, these North Korean provocations were met by each newly elected South Korean president with patience rather than pique. The difference today is that South Korea is no longer turning the other cheek…for half a century, neither side believed that the benefits of starting a major war outweighed the costs. The worry is that the new North Korean leader might not hold to the same logic, given his youth and inexperience.
So how do we know where this is going? The Washington Post’s Max Fisher suggests that you watch the joint North-South Kaesong Industrial Plant, which he believes the North would shut down in advance of any war. Of course, states have gone to war with far less economic foresight, though there are other reasons to believe the North won’t go as far as war. It’s likely we’ll just have to wait and nervously see.
Barack Obama is due to land at Tel Aviv airport on Wednesday for a three-day visit to Israel and Palestine that the White House – anxious to set low-to-zero expectations of tangible outcomes – has billed primarily as a listening exercise.
Talks between the US president and the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, are expected to focus on Iran, Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The president will also travel to Ramallah to meet Palestinian leaders.
Israeli air space will close for about an hour for the arrival of Air Force One. Obama will be greeted by Netanyahu, who was sworn in this week as leader of the new Israeli government; President Shimon Peres; other senior politicians and dignitaries; a contingent of Israeli soldiers; and a military orchestra.
The US president’s first task is to inspect an Iron Dome mobile missile defence unit – funded by the US – that has been brought to Ben Gurion airport. He will then fly to Jerusalem by helicopter, though most of his entourage of 600 will travel by road, requiring the closure of the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway.
The day will be dominated by at least five hours of talks between Obama and Netanyahu. Despite the lack of personal warmth between the two leaders it will be the tenth time they have met face to face since both took office in early 2008. No other world leader has clocked up as many meetings with Obama.
Some US and Israeli officials say the trip is also aimed at recalibrating the tetchy relationship between the two leaders at the start of their second terms and building trust on both sides.
The White House has said it is a “chance to connect with the Israeli people”, who are largely distrustful of Obama. A poll published last week in the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv found that only 10% of Israelis had a favourable attitude towards Obama, with 17% defining their attitude towards the US president as “hateful”.
As part of his overture, Obama will deliver his keynote speech of the visit to an invited audience of Israeli university students at the International Convention Centre in Jerusalem on Thursday.
He will travel to Ramallah to meet the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the prime minister, Salaam Fayyad. The seven-mile journey will be made by heliicopter, thus avoiding crossing the 24ft-high concrete separation wall that snakes through Jerusalem, separating off parts of the east of the city and the West Bank. However, the president will have a bird’s-eye view of the barrier and some of the 130-plus Jewish settlements that punctuate the West Bank landscape.
Many Palestinians are hostile to Obama, believing he failed to live up to early pledges to halt Israeli colonisation of the West Bank and tried to obstruct their quest for recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations. On Tuesday, scuffles broke out between anti-Obama protesters and police near the Muqata, the presidential compound in Ramallah where Thursday’s meeting is due to take place. Many posters bearing Obama’s face have been torn or painted over.
Both Israelis and Palestinians are sceptical about the chances of any real movement on the decades-old conflict. A poll published in the Jerusalem Post on Tuesday suggested eight out of 10 Israelis do not believe that Obama will succeed in brokering a peace deal in the next four years.
Obama’s itinerary for his 50-hour visit includes visits to the Israel Museum to view the Dead Sea Scrolls, Israel’s haunting Holocaust memorial Yad Vashem, and the graves of Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism, and the assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.
Obama will make a second trip – again by helicopter – to the Palestinian territories on Friday to visit the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.
His entourage has taken over the historic King David hotel, which overlooks the walls of Jerusalem’s Old City.
h/t: The Guardian
Apparently, President Obama and John Brennan aren’t the only secret Muslim agents in the administration.
Yesterday, Vic Eliason of Voice of Christian Youth America interviewed Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly about Chuck Hagel, who is set to be confirmed as secretary of defense later today. Adding to the other ridiculous, last-ditch efforts to sink Hagel’s nomination, Eliason asked Schlafly about wild allegations “that Mr. Hagel has become or has been a part of Islam, he’s Islamic.” Rather than specifically address Eliason’s question, Schlafly said that since Obama “gives a pass to Islam” in “his attack on religion,” Americans “have to be on guard on that all the time.”
The two then went on to praise Hagel-critic Jerome Corsi of WorldNetDaily, who must be taking a break from his usual endeavors of exposing Obama’s foreign birthplace, secret Muslim faith and gay past.
Later, Schlafly compared the American policy of Cold War deterrence to the current policy for “dealing with the Islam,” while noting that “the Muslims are different” than the Soviets as “they seem to like to commit suicide.”
Schlafly’s classification of all Muslims as terrorists was part of a bizarre argument that criticized Hagel for supposedly seeking to do away with America’s nuclear arsenal that she claims we need to scare terrorists who also are not at all afraid of our nuclear weapons.
Schlafly: I want to point out one difference between dealing with the Communists and dealing with the Islam. When the Communists in Russia were in charge we had a policy called mutually assured destruction which we called MAD and it was that they knew that if they dropped a bomb on New York City we’d hit back and wipe them out and that was supposed to deter them from doing any bad attack. But the Muslims are different; they seem to like to commit suicide. I don’t think they are going to be deterred by that type of an attitude and we have to make sure that we have the weapons that are enough to scare them that they never attack in the first place.
h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW
Senate Republicans today chose to uphold a filibuster against Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel, despite many of them previously pledging that they would be willing to allow him to be confirmed.
Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Jeff Sessions (R-AL), and John Cornyn (R-TX) all voted against cloture, despite their pleas during the Bush administration that a president’s Cabinet nominees should receive an up-or-down vote.
Four Republicans, Sens. Thad Cochran (R-MS), Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) and Mike Johanns (R-NE), voted to break the filibuster. The final vote was 58-40, with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) voting present, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) not voting at all, and Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) voting “no” as a procedural move so that he can bring another vote to the floor at a later date.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) had originally scheduled the cloture vote for tomorrow morning, but surprised many by pushing it up to this afternoon. Earlier today, Reid took to the Senate floor to lambaste his Republican colleagues for delaying an up-or-down vote on Hagel, the first filibuster of a Secretary of Defense nominee.
Prior to the roll call’s beginning, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) attempted to explain that the vote that was set to take place was the vote “to confirm Chuck Hagel,” rather than merely being a procedural vote. Inhofe also claimed that a 60-vote margin was common practice, rendering the actions of the Republicans not a filibuster. However, the motion was still filed by Reid as cloture — the ending of debate — rather than the actual confirmation of Hagel, as laid out be Levin before voting. This leaves the door open for Hagel’s nomination to remain on the Senate floor and renders the GOP’s actions a filibuster under the Senate’s rules.
While Senate Republicans are opposed to voting on Hagel today, they seem to believe that they’ll change their minds after the Senate returns from its President’s Day recess in 10 days. This morning, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said that he expected to be willing to move Hagel forward at that time, “unless there’s some bombshell that he likes blood sucking vampires.” Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and John McCain (R-AZ) said roughly the same thing today, leaving their votes against Hagel today confusing.
During Republican Chuck Hagel’s defense secretary confirmation hearing on Thursday, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) chose to use a large portion of his five minutes ofquestioning to play a YouTube video of Hagel in an Al Jazeera interview from 2009.
Hagel’s original statement at a Senate session held on July 31, 2006 described the conflict in Israel as “a sickening slaughter on both sides” that Hagel said “must end.” However, Cruz highlighted Hagel’s “sickening slaughter” remark and his agreement with a caller who referenced “war crimes.”
Hagel, a former senator from Nebraska, navigated questions from his own party regarding his record, including his stance on the defense budget, nuclear weapons and the Middle East.
h/t: Huffington Post
The Senate this afternoon overwhelmingly voted in favor of approving John Kerry’s nomination to become Secretary of State, with only three Senators — Cruz (R-TX), Cornyn (R-TX), and Inhofe (R-OK) — voting against their colleague. Earlier today, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee moved forward Kerry to the full Senate unanimously, reflecting the relative ease that Kerry has had in ascending to Obama’s second term cabinet.
Kerry has spent the last twenty-eight years in the Senate representing Massachusetts, all of them serving on the Foreign Relations committee, the last four as Chairman. The closeness inforeign policy vision that he shares with the Obama administration made Kerry one of the most likely choices to take the reins of State for the next four years. The ties between the two during Kerry’s chairman ship was close enough that former Sen. Gary Hart once called Kerry effectively “the congressional secretary of state.”
Kerry is the first of the President’s nominees to be confirmed following his inaugural. Kerry and current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have been speaking “almost daily” to prepare him to move into the 7th floor office in Foggy Bottom. Secretary Clinton will be stepping down following her last day on the job, Friday, Feb. 1.
Starting then, Kerry will have a full diplomatic plate, including pending negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, managing a rising China, limiting fallout from the Arab Spring in the Middle East, and advancing international action on climate change. In meeting these challenges, Kerry will find himself working closely with his replacement as Chairman on the Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ).
H/T: Think Progress
President Barack Obama has settled on Chuck Hagel, a Republican and former U.S. senator from Nebraska, to succeed Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, with an announcement expected Monday, Democratic officials tell POLITICO.
The choice of Hagel, who opposed his party on the Iraq war as a senator, is likely to ignite a raucous confirmation battle, since several Democratic interest groups and prominent Republicans have voiced strong opposition since Hagel’s vetting for the job was reported five weeks ago.
A Democratic aide described the White House’s logic for choosing Hagel, age 66: “Chuck Hagel is a decorated war hero who would be the first enlisted soldier and Vietnam veteran to go on to serve as Secretary of Defense. He had the courage to break with his party during the Iraq War, and would help bring the war in Afghanistan to an end while building the military we need for the future.
“He has been a champion for troops, veterans and military families through his service at the VA and USO, and his leadership on behalf of the post-9/11 G.I. Bill. The President knows him well, has travelled with him to Iraq and Afghanistan, trusts him, and believes he represents the proud tradition of a strong, bipartisan foreign policy in the United States.”
Obama, who is due back at the White House at 10:45 a.m. Sunday, is expected to announce his nomination of Hagel on Monday, as his first public appearance after the continuation of his Hawaii vacation.
President Barack Obama has chosen U.S. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts to be the next Secretary of State, a source has told Sun-Times columnist Michael Sneed.
His replacement as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee will be Democrat U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the Sneed source said.
h/t: Sun-Times.com
(CNN) — The United States is to deploy 400 troops and two Patriot air-defense missile batteries to Turkey in the coming weeks to defend against potential threats from Syria, defense officials said Friday.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta signed the order en route to Turkey, where he is visiting Incirlik Air Base, Pentagon spokesman George Little told reporters.
h/t: CNN.com
President Obama has not yet even made a final determination on whom he will appoint to serve as his administration’s secretary of state during his second term, but Congressional Republicans are already severely concerned about one possible nominee: Susan Rice, who currently serves as ambassador to the United Nations. Even though the House of Representatives has no role whatsoever in the appointment or confirmation of cabinet-level appointments, 97 House Republicans have signed a letter to President Obama opposing the possible nomination of Ambassador Rice to head the Department of State, presumably because House Republicans have never had anything better to do since their 2010 ascension besides attack the president for things he hasn’t even done yet.
The opposition to the potential nomination of Ambassador Rice is rooted in Republican desperation to turn the tragedy in Benghazi into a scandal for the Obama administration. The Romney campaign was licking its chops at the prospect of attacking President Obama on Benghazi until facts stubbornly got in the way. Joe Scarborough decided to interrupt an entire broadcast and repeated the word “Benghazi” no fewer than 23 times on air. And now, Republicans have it in for Susan Rice, who, according to the previously mentioned letter, is too incompetent to head up the state department:
“Though Ambassador Rice has been our Representative to the U.N., we believe her misleading statements over the days and weeks following the attack on our embassy in Libya that led to the deaths of Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans caused irreparable damage to her credibility both at home and around the world,” the letter reads, later adding: “Ambassador Rice is widely viewed as having either willfully or incompetently misled the American public in the Benghazi affair.”The accusations of incompetence leveled against Rice derive from her appearance on Sunday morning talk shows, in which she attributed the incident at Benghazi to protests against a sacrilegious anti-Islam movie, rather than a premeditated attack. Rice, of course, was simply repeating the most current intelligence assessments available at the time, but that hasn’t stopped Republicans in the House, as well as Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, from trying to stop any potential nomination of her in its tracks before it even gets started.
And yet, on January 26, 2005, Condoleezza Rice was confirmed by the Senate by a vote of 85-13. Voting in favor? Lindsey Graham, as well as John McCain. Why? Because they, like so many of their Republican colleagues, are nothing more than hypocrites who believe that their past actions and statements can simply slip down the memory hole without anyone remembering.
Legendary civil rights leader and current Congressman James Clyburn (D-S.C.) felt that the accusations against Rice smacked of racial dog whistles—and given the way Republicans have acted since President Obama was first elected, that argument certainly holds weight. However, I feel it is preferable to compare this situation to the last time a black woman with the last name of Rice was considered for an appointment as secretary of state.
