"C110 had the ability to be there, in my opinion, in 4 to 6 hours..."

Were they? Kerry Picket snags this clip from a Fox News exclusive last night for Breitbart, but pay close attention to the timing expressed by the Benghazi survivor/witness, and remember the attack didn’t stay constant: A special operations member who witnessed the attack on the U.S. Mission unfold in Benghazi, Libya on September 11 last [...]

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Gratitude.

Three people were wounded in a car bomb attack on the French embassy in Tripoli, including one 13-year-old girl, and Libyan investigators say they’ve never seen anything like this before in Tripoli. “Why would France be targeted?” asks the CNN host in this clip covering the car-bomb attack against the French embassy in Tripoli. That’s [...]

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"Act with more freedom"?

Some American politicians want the US and NATO to intervene on behalf of the Syrian opposition seeking to defeat dictator Bashar al-Assad, while others fear the assistance will only serve to enable Islamist terror networks that have gained the upper hand in the rebellion. The question may be moot after today, however, as there may [...]

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"I think the opposition needs more help in order to convince him.”

Has the Obama administration decided to intervene in Syria? CBS News reports that the White House is now floating trial balloons about providing direct aid to the rebels fighting the Bashar Assad regime — “non-lethal” aid, but aid nonetheless. Even non-lethal aid allows the rebels to use other resources to improve their arms capability, and [...]

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State of play.

If Syrian rebels wanted to send a message to Bashar Assad’s allies as well as the regime, they succeeded today. Rebels conducted a suicide-bomb attack on a checkpoint in Damascus, near both the Russian embassy and the regime’s Ba’ath Party headquarters. But there may be a message for more than just Assad and Russia, as [...]

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Hmmmm.

Daniel Freedman thinks so, and even credits the Arab Spring — in a kind of backhand manner.  In yesterday’s New York Daily News, Freedman notes that incoming Secretary of State John Kerry has pledged to make Israeli-Palestinian peace talks a high priority, a traditional pledge that goes back for decades at Foggy Bottom.  Kerry has [...]

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Looking for "strategic axis" with ...

Yesterday, the Washington Post reported that Iran had agreed to new P-5+1 talks and expressed openness to direct negotiations with the US.  Today, the AP reports … not so much.  Iran’s real ruler — Supreme Ayatollah Ali Khameini — categorically rejected negotiations with the US, and might make the rest of the WaPo report yesterday [...]

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Plus ça change ...

Hey, remember when the man who ran Egypt ruled as a dictator with the excuse of continuing “emergency decrees” and had the Army as his hatchet men?  Meet the new boss, same as the old boss: Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi declared a state [...]

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Plus, Jonah Goldberg on why it matters.

Hillary Clinton’s testy “What difference at this point does it make?” response to Ron Johnson certainly had the media in awe, which as Allahpundit noted yesterday is both unsurprising and a little discouraging.  These are supposed to be the people eager to “hold the powerful to account” and/or “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” [...]

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UN warns conflict becoming "overtly sectarian."

Change in direction, or political cover?  Either way, the Assad regime won’t be happy to hear Vladimir Putin talk about how the impulse for change after 40 years of single-family rule is understandable. At the same time, Putin’s statement earlier today isn’t exactly a reversal of Russian policy, either: Russia realizes changes in Syria are [...]

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... Assad does what he'll eventually have to do.

If you oppose American military intervention in Syria, only the topline question of the new Washington Post/ABC News poll will cheer you up.  Almost three out of four respondents oppose any direct US intervention in the civil war, but those numbers flip when almost any significant change in the status quo is proposed: While Americans [...]

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Deja vu.

They’re only about 10% of the rebel forces attempting to dislodge that noted reformer Bashar al-Assad, CNN’s Nick Paton Walsh reports, but Jabhat al-Nusra is the most effective and powerful part of the insurrection against the Iranian-backed dictator. The only problem for the US is that they’re closely affiliated with al-Qaeda in Iraq, which has [...]

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"[N]one of those security agents blasted a single bullet from a single pistol or rifle at all in defense of the Ambassador—nothing.”

How well prepared was the security team at the Benghazi consulate on the night of September 11th, in an area known to be rife with terrorist activity, on the anniversary of the al-Qaeda attacks that killed almost 3,000 people eleven years earlier?  According to a source who heard the closed-door testimony in the Senate about [...]

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The ultimate question for dictators.

We knew it would come down to this eventually.  In the wake of continuing, and perhaps strengthening, demonstrations and protests against his dictatorial decrees, Mohamed Morsi has authorized the Egyptian military to secure Cairo: Egypt’s President Mohamed Mursi, facing street protests over his attempts to push through a new constitution, will soon authorise the armed [...]

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"The people want to topple the regime!"

Perhaps Mohamed Morsi thought that a show of strength and resolve in a nationally-televised speech to his Egyptian subjects would impress them enough to stop protesting his “temporary” seizure of dictatorial power.  If so, the President-turned-Pharaoh miscalculated — perhaps badly.  After a defiant speech in which Morsi accused protesters of being Mubarakites, the streets again [...]

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Meanwhile, at the White House ....

The protests in Egypt have turned violent, but so far the Egyptian army has remained mainly on the sidelines.  The Republican Guard deployed armored vehicles and elite troops to the presidential palace yesterday, but stood by while opponents to Mohamed Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood attacked each other in the street.  Today, the army has [...]

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Now they tell us.

Oopsie! In what has to be one of the least-shocking outcomes of Barack Obama’s Libyan adventure, the New York Times reports that his administration secretly gave approval of weapons shipments to Libyan resistance fighters, only to learn that the weapons ended up arming Islamist terror networks.  Who could have seen that coming, right? The Obama [...]

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Inevitable.

What happens when you take a disillusioned electorate that has discovered it elected a would-be dictator, and the group that wanted a dictator all along?  Inevitably, you get what happened overnight in Cairo.  Clashes between growing legions of protesters and Muslim Brotherhood counterprotesters killed five people and wounded hundreds more, while Mohamed Morsi called in [...]

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"This is the last warning before we lay siege on the presidential palace."

It looks as though those pro-Morsi counterprotests by the recently-ascendant Muslim Brotherhood didn’t work out as planned.  Instead of convincing Egyptians to give Morsi a chance to use his pharaoh-esque powers to deliver democracy as promised, opponents are once again filling the streets of Cairo — and today plan to march on Morsi’s palace to [...]

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Pharaoh Morsi?

As expected, Egypt’s ad-hoc constitutional panel approved a draft that enraged all but the Islamists on the committee to the extent that they withdrew in protest earlier. The passage of the proposal hasn’t helped Mohamed Morsi this morning, as even clerics denounced him in Friday prayers as a new pharaoh. CNN expects even bigger protests [...]

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Democracy.

The political crisis in Egypt escalated over the last 24 hours, with moves on both sides showing a widening gulf between the promise of a democratic revolution and the reality of an Islamist power grab.  Mohamed Morsi’s constitutional assembly, controlled by the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamist allies, voted this morning to boot 11 dissenting members [...]

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Deja vu.

Say, this has a familiar ring to it.  Protesters fill Tahrir Square to demonstrate against the head of state who uses an “emergency” to claim dictatorial powers, police deploy teargas, and rocks get thrown at the US Embassy.  The last time this happened, Barack Obama demanded the resignation of the Egyptian head of state. What [...]

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Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Say, how has Barack Obama’s Arab Spring policy worked out for us so far?  Well, we bombed one dictator out of power in Libya, which set that nation free … to have terrorist networks openly operate and control the eastern part of the country, which resulted in the sacking of our consulate in Benghazi, and [...]

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Will it stay in Vegas?

And those are the kinder thoughts that the editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal had for Barack Obama in their lead editorial yesterday.  Those conclusions refer to Obama’s overall performance on the economy and foreign policy.  When they get down to specifics on Benghazi, the anger pulses through every sentence (via Twitchy): The official explanation [...]

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