The Citizens Commission on Benghazi, a self-selected group of former top military officers, attorneys, CIA insiders and think-tankers, released their 7 month review of the deadly 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack concluding that it could have been prevented if the U.S. hadn’t been helping to arm al-Qaeda militias throughout Libya a year earlier.
Clare Lopez, a former CIA officer told David Martosko at the Daily Mail, UK, that “The U.S. switched sides in the war on terror. . .knowingly facilitating the provision of weapons to known al-Qaeda militias and figures.” The Obama administration failed to stop half of a $1 billion United Arab Emirates arms shipment from reaching terrorists. “Remember, these weapons. . .were permitted to enter by our armed forces who were blockading the approaches from air and sea. The intelligence community was part of that, the Department of State [Hillary Clinton] was part of that, and certainly that means that top leaders, our national security leadership, and potentially Congress, if they were briefed on this, also knew about it.” Obama and Senior Congressional members, “deliberately and knowingly pursued a policy that provided material support to terrorist organizations in order to topple Muammar Gaddafi who had been working closely with the West actively to suppress al-Qaeda.”
Retired Rear Admiral Chuck Kubic said that those weapons are now “all in Syria. Gaddafi wasn’t a good guy, but he was being marginalized. Guddafi actually offered to abdicate shortly after the beginning of a 2011 rebellion. But the U.S. ignored his calls for a truce, ultimately backing the horse that would later kill a US ambassador.”
The White House refused to let the Pentagon pursue it seriously. Gaddafi only wanted two conditions to step down: permission to keep fighting al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and the lifting of sanctions against him, his family, and those loyal to him. “We had a leader [Obama] who had won the Nobel Peace Prize but who was unwilling to give peace a chance for 72 hours.” Gaddafi responded to the rebuff by pulling his forces back from key rebel held cities such as Benghazi.
According to a senior FBI source, Admiral James Lyons says the raid on the Benghazi compound was intended as a kidnapping exercise to grab and exchange Ambassador Chris Stevens for the blind sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman who is serving a life sentence for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center garage. Unfortunately, the attack escalated, leading to the deaths of Stevens and three US personnel.
As far as the Obama administration’s claim that they lacked the resources to mount a counterattack in time to save lives, they lied. According to Lyons the US had a “130 man unit at Sigonella AFB in Italy that were ready to go,” with a flight time of roughly one hour.
Former CIA officer Wayne Simmons says that those killed in the attack believed they were going to be saved, that they would be rescued. “I know who made the decision to leave our war fighters that and be blown up. And then to have one of the most powerful politicians in our country [Hillary Clinton] sit there and say, ‘What difference does it make,’ should be an alarm bell for all Americans.”
Even though the Commission called for a Select Congressional Committee to investigate the Benghazi episode and 189 House members signed on to a bill to create the Committee, Speaker of the House John Boehner blocked it, leaving one reason to ask why? What is Boehner attempting to hide? Is it possible that Boehner and other top Congressional leaders knew the truth all along?
