Secretary of Defense Gates on Odessey Dawn: No vital national interest or imminent threat in Libya

If there is no threat to the United States or its interests by Libya, why are we sending our military into the skies of Iraq as part of the UN Odessey Dawn?

There had been no plans to do a post today until Secretary of Defense Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appeared on ABC 'This Week' hosted this morning by Jake Tapper. Hard to believe they paid big bucks to the former CNN correspondent Christine Amanpour to host 'This Week'when Jake Tapper is so good and she is horrible as a host. Tapper should be doing the Sunday morning ABC show every week -- we would actually get the facts not spin and be willing to watch instead of waiting for what was said to come out. Don't want to start a Sunday morning off by watching Amanpour.

Why some people still push Hillary Clinton for President is beyond us and for anyone who needs reminded read her remarks this morning from 'This Week' which are highlighted in the Hot Air article below. She doesn't understand the Constitution or the War Powers Act (WPA) any better than Obama.

Constitutional division of War Powers:

The Constitution divides war powers between the Congress and the President. This division was intended by the framers to ensure that wars would not be entered into easily: it takes two keys, not one, to start the engine of war.

The Constitution's division of powers leaves the President with some exclusive powers as Commander-in-Chief (such as decisions on the field of battle), Congress with certain other exclusive powers (such as the ability to declare war and appropriate dollars to support the war effort), and a sort of "twilight zone" of concurrent powers. In the zone of concurrent powers, the Congress might effectively limit presidential power, but in the absence of express congressional limitations the President is free to act.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires there to be:

“(1) a declaration of war,
(2) specific statutory authorization, or
(3) a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces”

before a President can send US military forces into a new conflict.

The WPA is pretty straight forward and we certainly don't see the wiggle room that Clinton has taken.  It is becoming more apparent that Clinton and Obama ignored not only the Constitution but the WPA rushing the United States into this conflict in Libya without consulting Congress. As reported earlier, Vice President Joe Biden as a Senator said that he would start impeachment against any President ignoring the WPA. Looks to us like Obama and Clinton need impeached after this fiasco in Libya ignoring the Constitutional duties and the WPA.

Clinton brags about the coalition the United States (Clinton) has put together but it is way smaller than WWII and half the size of the Bush Coalition on Iraq plus Bush spent six months getting Congressional approval before launching the strike on Iraq which is a huge difference than the Obama/Clinton days rush to war. Add to the fact that Obama launched the war effort while in Brazil by a recorded message and you have two people who are so far over their head in governing.

Obama and Clinton in this imperial administration are creating a very dangerous precedent and putting our military in harm's way without regard to Congress. A Republican President would have been aggressively attacked by the likes of Obama and Clinton when they were in the Senate for doing what those two have done.

Now we have the Secretary of Defense finally admitting there is no vital national interest or imminent threat in Libya before Odyssey Dawn was launched. Wonder if someday Gates, Obama and Hillary are going to admit that the rebels in Western Libya who they are supporting are members of Islamic Jihadists aligned with Al Qaeda? Clinton should have been the first to admit the fact since the State Department has the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) listed as a terrorist group in Libya. Why let a little detail like that stand in the way.

What started out this morning as a post about Gates and Clinton is now turning into much more. While researching the State Department Designated Terrorist Group, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), we discovered that the United States has probably been funneling arms to the rebels for sometime. Guess that little fact is the reason that Obama left the door open on arming the rebels. We also learned that On November 3, 2007, the LIFG was welcomed into Al Qaeda.  Since this LIFG is officially part of Al Qaeda so does that mean we are fighting alongside Al Qaeda now thanks to Obama and Clinton?

As mentioned earlier we are now learning that the United States has been funneling arms to this terrorist organization as they consider them rebels against Gadhafi. The CIA is really lame if they were involved in this operation because even the State Department website lists the LIFD as terrorists with known ties to Al Qaeda. The New American.com has a must read, well researched article about the LIFD:

The organization is officially on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. But according to countless news reports, the U.S. government has been covertly funneling arms to the Libyan rebels for weeks, via Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other nations.

Islamic extremists around the world have actually announced their support of the Libyan rebels as well. And as Raven Clabough pointed out in an article for The New American, a powerful coalition of leftist and globalist forces are also backing the war against Gadhafi’s regime.

The more I read from the article, the scarier all of this has become. Looks like Obama/Clinton got the United States involved in Libya on the side of Al Qaeda to oust Gadhafi. This whole effort in Libya to protect civilians makes no sense when Obama and others in Administration are saying they want Gadhafi taken out in favor of the rebels.  The UN Resolution specifically calls for civilians to be protected and forbids targeting of Gadhafi but Obama and Clinton seemed to be ignoring the UN Resolution as well. Was Gadhafi trying to rid Libya of Al Qaeda? We will probably never know the truth because we are sure not getting the truth from Obama or Clinton.

This excerpt from the The New American.com should make most Americans stop and ask the question, "What is the United States doing involved in Libya?"

The Obama administration’s UN-backed military intervention against Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi is aiding al-Qaeda, which, according to media reports citing high-level commanders in the terror group and Libyan rebel leaders, is deeply tied to the revolution. When the dust settles, the anti-American Islamic extremists could easily emerge as the new rulers of that nation, or at least a part of it. And al-Qaeda is already reportedly grabbing up  (see excerpt below) advanced military weaponry there. 

AL-QAEDA'S offshoot in North Africa has snatched surface-to-air missiles from an arsenal in Libya during the civil strife there, Chad's President says.

Idriss Deby Itno did not say how many surface-to-air missiles were stolen, but told the African weekly Jeune Afrique that he was "100 per cent sure" of his assertion.

"The Islamists of al-Qaeda took advantage of the pillaging of arsenals in the rebel zone to acquire arms, including surface-to-air missiles, which were then smuggled into their sanctuaries in Tenere," a desert region of the Sahara that stretches from northeast Niger to western Chad, Deby said in the interview.

Ironically, perhaps, Gadhafi has been claiming for weeks that al-Qaeda and drug use were responsible for the uprisings. "Bin Laden ... this is the enemy who is manipulating people," he told state television in late February. "Do not be swayed by bin Laden."

Most observers assumed the allegations were deliberate lies or the delusions of a madman trying to keep the reins of power. But it turns out that the claims of al-Qaeda involvement were at least partially correct.

The man identified in news reports as the leader of Libya’s rebellion, Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, actually battled U.S. and coalition forces during the invasion of Afghanistan a decade ago. He was captured in 2002, handed over to U.S. authorities, and eventually released in Libya in 2008. Now, al-Hasidi, with U.S. and international air support, is supposedly leading the anti-Gadhafi revolution.

A Reuters report citing Qatar-based Gulf News said earlier this month — before Western intervention became official — that senior al-Qaeda commander Abu Yahya al-Libi released a videotaped message urging rebels in Libya to continue the battle. He also warned that failure to topple the Gadhafi regime would be unacceptable.

“The Libyan people have suffered at the hands of Kaddafi for more than 40 years.... He used the Libyans as a testing ground for his violent, rambling and disgusting thoughts,” the alleged terrorist leader said in the video. "Retreating will mean decades of harsher oppression and greater injustices than what you have endured.”

The al-Qaeda leader also blasted the U.S. government and other Western regimes — now fighting the same battle he praised — for propping up dictatorships in the region. By press time, Gulf News was not able to independently verify the authenticity of the video posted on Jihadist websites.

More recently, Libyan rebel leader al-Hasidi, who fought U.S. troops in Afghanistan, offered another startling revelation. He admitted in an interview with an Italian newspaper that Islamic warriors from Libya, whom he had recruited to battle Western forces in Iraq, are now actually fighting alongside U.S. and international forces to help topple Kaddafi.

The Daily Telegraph, in an article entitled "Libyan rebel commander admits his fighters have al-Qaeda links,” quoted al-Hasidi as saying that his warriors "are patriots and good Muslims, not terrorists." He also praised al-Qaeda, saying they are “good Muslims ... fighting against the invader."

According to U.S. and British government sources cited by the paper, al-Hasidi is part of the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). The organization represents the second largest contingent of foreign fighters in Iraq battling coalition forces.

Excerpt: Please read more details at The New American.com

Ed Morrisey's comments at Hot Air from the interview this morning on ABC by Jake Tapper with Gates and Clinton are very telling about how little Hillary Clinton regards the Constitution or the War Powers Act as she spins and lies:

Gates: No vital national interest or imminent threat in Libya before Odyssey Dawn
Ed Morrisey
Hot Air
March 27, 2011, 10:15 a.m.

Jake Tapper reminds ABC why they foolishly spent money on Christiane Amanpour last year for the anchor job on This Week with a tough joint interview of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Tapper asks Gates exactly what vital national interest the US has in Libya and what kind of imminent threat to our security Moammar Gaddafi posed at the beginning of Operation Odyssey Dawn. Gates says … none in either case:

On “This Week,” ABC News’ Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper asked Gates, “Do you think Libya posed an actual or imminent threat to the United States?”

“No, no,” Gates said in a joint appearance with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. “It was not — it was not a vital national interest to the United States, but it was an interest and it was an interest for all of the reasons Secretary Clinton talked about. The engagement of the Arabs, the engagement of the Europeans, the general humanitarian question that was at stake,” he said.

(snip)

Hillary felt the need to swoop to the rescue. She claimed that Obama didn’t need to go to Congress because this coalition is so darned multilateral:

Tapper asked Clinton, “Why not go to Congress?”

“Well, we would welcome congressional support,” the Secretary said, “but I don’t think that this kind of internationally authorized intervention where we are one of a number of countries participating to enforce a humanitarian mission is the kind of unilateral action that either I or President Obama was speaking of several years ago.”

“I think that this had a limited timeframe, a very clearly defined mission which we are in the process of fulfilling,” Clinton said.

Obviously, the Secretary of State has trouble with both math and the law. There is no “multilateral” waiver in either the WPR or the Constitution, but even if there were, Obama would be the least likely President to qualify for it. This coalition is the smallest since World War II involving the US in military action, only half the size of George W. Bush’s Iraq War coalition.

She also fails vocabulary test in her claim that the mission has a limited timeframe. Later, Gates says that no one knows how long this will drag on:

On “This Week,” ABC News’ Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper asked Secretary of Defense Gates how much longer we might be there.

"Some NATO officials say this could be three months, but people in the Pentagon think it could be far longer than that. Do you think we’ll be gone by the end of the year? Will the mission be over by the end of the year?” Tapper asked

“I don’t think anybody knows the answer to that,” Gates said.

Excerpt: Read more at Hot Air

Tomorrow night you can tune in and watch Obama lie on his 'war' in Libya as he addresses the Nation. 

Obama Failures on National Security and Terrorism

Do you feel safer today from terrorists then you did in 2008? Any person who answers 'yes' to that question is not facing reality.

It should be abundently clear by now that Obama and his Administration do not want to deal with terrorists and prefer to call them 'enemy combatants' as well as trying them in Federal Court instead of by a military tribunal. What is an 'enemy combatant' compared to a terrorist? Nicer name for 'Islamic terrorists' is one answer. Getting more obvious that Obama does not want to admit that the terrorism threat against Americans in this Country is real and increasing.

We would have lost over 300 people on Christmas Day if the bomber had been able to activate his bomb, but would the Obama administration have called it a fuel tank catastrophic event that brought down the plane instead of terrorism? It was an act of terrorism which Obama couldn't hide but the DOJ rushed in to shut down questioning after ONLY 50 minutes and read Farouk Abdulmutallab his Miranda Rights. He was treated like an American citizen who broke criminal laws not as a terrorist who was set on killing over 300 people in an airplane bombing.

There is something wrong with this picture and other events in this Country that make no sense when dealing with obvious terrorist. What are Obama and Attorney General Holder trying to cover up? Is there a connection they don't want uncovered? These kind of questions would not be asked if this Administration was the least bit open and above board.

Trying the mastermind of 9/11 in the United States in Federal Court makes just as little sense and glad to see the new Governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, saying to the Obama Administration that they are not having the trials in Virginia.

Why won't Obama connect terror dots? Today's Washington Times Editorial wants to know the answer the same as most Americans.

Monday, February 1, 2010
EDITORIAL: Obama won't connect terror dots
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

When a man is apprehended with a cache of weapons, body armor, a map of a military installation and jihadist personal effects, the natural response of most Americans is to assume the situation is terrorist-related. The Obama administration says otherwise.

Lloyd R. Woodson was arrested Jan. 25 in rural New Jersey. He had been observed behaving strangely, wearing military-style fatigues and a bulletproof vest. He had a weapon modified to fire .50-caliber rounds from beneath his jacket. He had a hotel room full of weapons and ammunition. Despite all these warning signs, the immediate response from the government was that this was "not a terrorism thing."
Bureaucratic lack of concern raises a critical question: If this is not the behavior of a terrorist, what is?

It's not clear what the Obama administration thinks terrorism is, if it thinks it exists at all. The administration doggedly maintains that political, especially jihadist, violence by individuals with no international linkage is not terrorism. This definition might come as a surprise to the Unabomber, who for years was the most sought-after terrorist in America.

President Obama's knee-jerk response that the Christmas Day bombing plot was not terror-related was probably one of the factors that led Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to be Mirandized quickly and treated as a criminal suspect. It shouldn't matter that this was a domestic incident; he is a jihadist warrior, and the aircraft was his battlefield.

The same was the case with Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, charged with killing 14 persons and wounding 31 in the Fort Hood massacre. America was assured that Maj. Hasan had no foreign terrorist links, and he was not charged with committing an act of terrorism. The Obama administration's report on the shooting, released three weeks ago, avoids mentioning radical Islam as a motivating factor in his rampage. However, both Maj. Hasan and Mr. Abdulmutallab had relationships with Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is a leading member of al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula ...

Excerpt: Read More at Washington Times

Will someone explain to us why Obama refuses to acknowledge terrorists exist in this Country. Since he doesn't believe in domestic terrorist, what does he call the people who bombed the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and killed all those people. Even Clinton tabbed McVeigh and Nichols as domestic terrorists.

Why won't Obama use the word 'terrorist' to describe obvious terrorists acts against Americans? Something is wrong, very wrong and we are guessing it has to do with Obama's hidden background. Was it the way he was raised? Was he raised Muslim as he can site their prayer in their dialect with no problem? All questions that deserve answers. The man is a closed book and even his biographies have turned out to be ghost written with some facts that don't exist.

The hearings in the Senate did not go well for the Obama Administration on the Christmas Day bomber as questions were not answered to any one's satisfaction as to why Farouk was read his Miranda Rights 50 minutes after he was captured.

Yesterday Axelrod, White House aide from Chicago stated "We Have Not Lost Anything" by Giving Abdulmutallab Miranda Rights. What? That is a stupid statement to make and with no facts to back him up.

Interrogators were getting further terrorist information out of Farouk but were stopped in their tracks when the DOJ comes running in to Mirandize him. Excuse us, but we believe the information the Intelligence community was getting outweighed anything else. Farouk is a terrorist who tried to bomb a Northwest plane enroute to Detroit and kill over 300 people on board, but he is treated like a common criminal by Obama and his Administration. We ask once again "WHY?"

Axelrod: "We Have Not Lost Anything" by Giving Abdulmutallab Miranda Rights
Another White House official says a 50-minute interrogation of the Christmas Day bomber was good enough.

BY Stephen F. Hayes
January 31, 2010 11:33 AM

Top White House adviser David Axelrod believes the U.S. government properly handled the Christmas Day bomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, despite the fact that Abdulmutallab stopped talking to interrogators after having had Miranda rights read to him. In an appearance on NBC's Meet the Press, Axelrod was asked about the decision to read Abdulmutallab his rights after just 50 minutes of interrogation. "We have not lost anything as a result of how this case has been handled," Axelrod said. It was an updated version of the claim that Robert Gibbs made last week, when he said that FBI interrogators had gotten "all they could get" from Abdulmutallab in their brief session.

If the White House political and spin teams believe this is true, the actions of the FBI officers themselves suggest that the claim is not true. After a five-hour break following the first interrogation session, the FBI sent a second team to interrogate Abdulmutallab on Christmas Day -- something that would have been unnecessary if the FBI had, in fact, gotten everything it could from him.

And on Friday the Washington Post reported that Justice Department officials are still trying to get more from Abdulmutallab. The Post reported that U.S. government officials are now working on a plea bargain with Abdulmutallab's lawyers -- a deal that would allow interrogators access once again to Abdulmutallab. That wouldn't be necessary if we had gotten everything we could have gotten from him.Intelligence collection is an ongoing process.

It doesn't stop after just one interview with a terrorist. The best information often comes after a series of back-and-forth sessions with the subject that last days, even weeks. Interrogators take bits of information provided by the subject and test it against information collected from other sources -- intercepts, human collection, open source material, and other detainees -- to learn more and to fill in the intelligence picture on a particular subject or group or operation.

By allowing Abdulmutallab to remain silent, the Obama administration has chosen -- and it is a choice -- to collect less information and ultimately to know less about the al Qaeda operatives trying to kill Americans.

We have yet another example of this short-sighted approach today. According to the Associated Press, Malaysian authorities detained 10 suspected terrorists who are believed to have ties to Abdulmutallab.

Excerpt: Read More at Weekly Standard

None of us should be shocked at the lack of insight into how Islamic terrorists want to kill us by this Administration after the way they started going after the CIA immediately upon taking office.

We also believe the 9/11 Commission was wrong to suggest all these agencies like the CIA be put under control of Homeland Security. The CIA should have remained a separate entity reporting directly to the White House. The Department of Homeland Security is too large and diverse to be handled effectively. It would be hard when you have qualified people in charge of Homeland Security but the Obama appointee Napolitono doesn't fit the word qualified. When she was the Arizona Governor, she promised a lot on border security but NEVER delivered. That seems to be a qualification for this Administration -- little to no accomplishments.

How the mainstream media can continue to support and spin for the Obama Administration on national security is beyond comprehension. It is right before your eyes that this Administration from Day One and even on the campaign trail refused to acknowledge that Islamic terrorist want to kill Americans. Bad enough that Obama and his appointees don't want to acknowledge terrorists exist in this Country or come from overseas to kill us, but the media has abdicated their role in providing the facts not spin as they continue to cover for Obama on national security. Why do some members of the White House Press Corp continue to allow themselves to be spun by Press Secretary Gibbs?

Obama admnistration takes several wrong paths in dealing with terrorism
By Michael V. Hayden
Sunday, January 31, 2010

In the war on terrorism, this country faces an enemy whose theory of warfare ends the hard-won distinction in modern thought between combatant and noncombatant.


In doing that for which we have created government -- ensuring life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness -- how can we be adequately aggressive to ensure the first value, without unduly threatening the other two? This is hard. And people don't have to be lazy or stupid to get it wrong.

We got it wrong in Detroit on Christmas Day. We allowed an enemy combatant the protections of our Constitution before we had adequately interrogated him. Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab is not "an isolated extremist." He is the tip of the spear of a complex al-Qaeda plot to kill Americans in our homeland.

In the 50 minutes the FBI had to question him, agents reportedly got actionable intelligence. Good. But were there any experts on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in the room (other than Abdulmutallab)? Was there anyone intimately familiar with any National Security Agency raw traffic to, from or about the captured terrorist? Did they have a list or photos of suspected recruits?

When questioning its detainees, the CIA routinely turns the information provided over to its experts for verification and recommendations for follow-up. The responses of these experts -- "Press him more on this, he knows the details" or "First time we've heard that" -- helps set up more detailed questioning.

None of that happened in Detroit. In fact, we ensured that it wouldn't. After the first session, the FBI Mirandized Abdulmutallab and -- to preserve a potential prosecution -- sent in a "clean team" of agents who could have no knowledge of what Abdulmutallab had provided before he was given his constitutional warnings. As has been widely reported, Abdulmutallab then exercised his right to remain silent.

In retrospect, the inadvisability of this approach seems self-evident. Perhaps it didn't appear that way on Dec. 25 because we have, over the past year, become acclimated to certain patterns of thought.

Two days after his inauguration, President Obama issued an executive order that limited all interrogations by the U.S. government to the techniques authorized in the Army Field Manual. The CIA had not seen the final draft of the order, let alone been allowed to comment, before it was issued. I thought that odd since the order was less a legal document -- there was no claim that the manual exhausted the universe of lawful techniques -- than a policy one: These particular lawful techniques would be all that the country would need, at least for now.

A similar drama unfolded in April over the release of Justice Department memos that had authorized the CIA interrogation program. CIA Director Leon Panetta and several of his predecessors opposed public release of the memos in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit on the only legitimate grounds for such a stand: that the documents were legitimately still classified and their release would gravely harm national security. On this policy -- not legal -- question, the president sided with his attorney general rather than his CIA chief.

(snip)

In November, Justice announced that it intended to try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and several others in civilian courts for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The White House made clear that this was a Justice Department decision, which is odd because the decision was not legally compelled (other detainees are to be tried by military commissions) and the reasons given for making it (military trials could serve as a recruitment tool for al-Qaeda, harm relations with allies, etc.) were not legal but political.

Even tough government organizations, such as those in the intelligence community, figure out pretty quickly what their political masters think is not acceptable behavior.

(snip)

Some may celebrate that the current Justice Department's perspective on the war on terrorism has become markedly more dominant in the past year. We should probably understand the implications of that before we break out the champagne. That apparently no one recommended on Christmas Day that Abdulmutallab be handled, at least for a time, as an enemy combatant should be concerning. That our director of national intelligence, Denny Blair, bravely said as much during congressional testimony this month is cause for hope.

Actually, Blair suggested that the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), announced by the administration in August, should have been called in. A government spokesman later pointed out that the group does not yet exist.

There's a final oddity. In August, the government unveiled the HIG for questioning al-Qaeda and announced that the FBI would begin questioning CIA officers about the alleged abuses in the 2004 inspector general's report. They are apparently still getting organized for the al-Qaeda interrogations. But the interrogations of CIA personnel are well underway.

The writer was director of the CIA from 2006 to 2009.

Excerpt: Read More at Washington Post

What can you say when an Obama appointee briefing the Senate says the HIG should have been called when that group does not exist? The word 'incompetence' for this Administration on national security and terrorism comes to mind.

Wish there was an answer as to why Obama and his Administration do not want to acknowledge Islamic Terrorist want to kill Americans. If we had the answer, the dots could be put together to make sense, but then some people in this Country might have to admit that we have the weakest President ever when it comes to National Security.

Seems Obama would rather intefer with the College football BCS then handle National Security. Frightening!