Obama’s Benghazi Investigator: An Iran Sympathizer

The freshly appointed chairman of a federal investigation into the Benghazi massacre is an apologist for Islamic terrorism who has a cozy relationship with Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.

And to add insult to injury, at press time Tuesday evening the chairman of this new State Department panel, former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, was poised to participate in a panel discussion at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on “what role the faith community can play in fighting Islamophobia.”

The news comes on the heels of a new report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism that found that “scores” of known radical Islamists met with senior Obama administration officials during hundreds of visits to the White House.

Pickering’s appointment as probe chairman was announced in the Federal Register on October 4. The State Department “Accountability Review Board” headed by Pickering is tasked with examining the circumstances surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012 deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith, and security personnel Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The problem is that Pickering has ties to the pro-Iran Islamist front group known as the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). NIAC lost an important defamation case in federal court last month in which it unsuccessfully argued the group was not a tool of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Pickering is a member of the advisory board of NIAC. He was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from May 1997 through the end of 2000, according to a 2009 report titled “Rise of the Iran Lobby,” by Clare M. Lopez of the Center for Security Policy. He’s also vice chairman of international consultancy, Hills & Co., and co-chairman of the board of directors of the International Crisis Group (whose executive committee includes George Soros).

“Ambassador Pickering’s positions on Iran include calls for bilateral talks without preconditions and a plan for a multinational uranium enrichment consortium in Iran,” Lopez writes. “Iran has proposed a similar plan to the UN Security Council. Ambassador Pickering advocates a process leading to mutual diplomatic relations between Iran and the United States.”

“U.S. national security policy is being successfully targeted by Jihadist entities hostile to American interests,” she writes. One of these groups, NIAC, is involved in “a de facto partnership” with its better known but more notorious jihadist ally “the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other organizations serving as mouthpieces for the mullahs’ party line.”

This network “includes well-known American diplomats, congressional representatives, figures from academia and the think tank world.” NIAC and its predecessor group, the American-Iranian Council, have long “functioned openly as apologists for the Iranian regime.”

CAIR is an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood and was named by the Department of Justice as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 and 2008 Holy Land Foundation trials.

The panel discussion featured Pickering, Arab American Institute president James J. Zogby, American Association for Muslim Advancement executive director Daisy Khan, and her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba Initiative.

Khan and Rauf are prime movers behind the proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.

Khan is known for her over-the-top attacks on those who question the wisdom of building a Muslim holy site so close to the place where nearly 3,000 Americans were killed in an Islamist attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Asked in 2010 if America was “Islamophobic,” Khan replied that “It’s not even Islamophobia, it’s beyond Islamophobia — it’s hate of Muslims,” she said.

Of course use of the word “Islamophobia” is a tool of intimidation, calculated to silence the so-called Islamophobe.

If one fears Islamist ideology as an irredentist, imperialist, totalitarian force, one is rational. “Phobia” implies that one who fears or is skeptical of the intentions of Muslims is mentally unbalanced. The term is used the same way American leftists use the word “racist” to shut down debate.

While two George Soros-funded nonprofits, the Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America, are working overtime to try to convince Americans that this make-believe mental illness of Islamophobia is a threat to American democracy and pluralism, the embattled Obama administration has been in damage control mode for weeks as the president’s foreign policy aimed at appeasing totalitarian Islamic theocrats collapses. The administration has been sucking up to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a 57-state (56 sovereign states and the Palestinian Authority) group that considers itself the Caliphate reborn.

Americans’ civil rights and political correctness are weapons of infiltration used by our Islamofascist enemies. Just like our Soviet Communist enemies during the Cold War, Islamists are using Americans’ goodness and their sense of fair play, including an aversion to being accused of racial stereotyping, against America.

Hard data do not support claims that Islamophobia exists in the United States.

As Jonathan S. Tobin wrote in Commentary last year: “the notion of a rising wave of hatred against Muslims is unsupported by any statistical research.”

“When you consider that Muslims claim to have about the same number of adherents in this country as Jews and that anti-Jewish crimes have always far outnumbered those committed against Muslims, the media hysteria about Islamophobia is exposed as a big lie. But even if there are fewer Muslims here than their groups claim, the conclusion is unchanged.”

And there is credible evidence that Obama, who told the UN last month that “the future does not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” is sympathetic to Islamists’ increasingly vocal demands for Saudi-style anti-blasphemy laws.

So, apparently, is Ambassador Pickering, which makes him unfit to head any probe of what happened last month in Benghazi, Libya.

Obama White House Knew Al-Qaeda Ally Hit Benghazi

Two hours after last month’s deadly assault on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, the Obama White House knew the operation had been orchestrated by Muslim terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda, new evidence demonstrates.

But that grim information failed to deter President Obama, who has consistently been more interested in golfing than in attending security briefings, from hopping onto Air Force One on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 and jetting off to Las Vegas for a campaign fundraiser.

U.S. officials reportedly monitored an audio feed of the Benghazi attack in real time, CBS News reports. FBI and State Department officials have also reviewed security camera footage recovered from the site. During the attack, U.S. forces were in place in nearby Sicily but the order to fly to Benghazi in an attempt to rescue the besieged staff at the consulate never came.

For a fortnight the Obama administration strenuously maintained the fiction that the incident in Benghazi, a terrorist stronghold, was a spontaneous popular uprising somehow inspired by an Ed Wood-quality anti-Islam video on YouTube that hardly anyone watched. Eventually the administration was forced to admit that what happened in that Libyan city was carried out by Islamic terrorists.

Leaked State Department emails dated Sept. 11, 2012, that were published yesterday show that U.S. officials knew soon after the attack that Ansar al-Sharia, a Libyan terrorist group linked to al-Qaeda, had claimed responsibility for killing four American officials including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.

The emails were sent to various national security platforms representing as many as 400 U.S. national security, military, and diplomatic officials almost as the attack was underway and concluding. Fox News reports that those platforms included the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon, the FBI, and the Director of National Intelligence.

The electronic missives were time-stamped in Eastern time and often bore the subheading SBU, which stands for “Sensitive But Unclassified.”

The initial email stamped 4:05 p.m. contains the subject line: “U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack (SBU).”

“The Regional Security Officer reports the diplomatic mission is under attack,” read the email. “Embassy Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four COM personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support … The operations Center will provide updates as available.”

A second email stamped 4:54 p.m. contains “Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi (SBU)” as a subject line.

“Embassy Tripoli reports the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi has stopped and the compound has been cleared. A response team is on site attempting to locate COM personnel.”

A third email stamped 6:07 p.m. features a subject line reading “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack (SBU).”

“Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli,” it indicates.

The three emails appear to complement early reports by the British newspaper, the Independent. That media outlet reported soon after the attack that the Obama administration had “credible” evidence that Islamist assaults were planned on U.S. missions in Libya and Egypt a full two days before they happened. The paper also reported that the administration made no effort to protect U.S. government personnel.

Authorities in Tunisia announced yesterday that they had arrested a 28-year-old Tunisian jihadist, Ali Ani al-Harzi, in connection with the Benghazi attack. Another suspect, a militant known only by his first name, Hazem, blew himself up in Cairo during a firefight with police. The man had reportedly returned from a recent trip to Libya and had a cache of weapons.

Meanwhile, with every passing day more evidence surfaces that the Obama administration isn’t serious about combating Islamism. The fact that the administration itself is a hotbed of Islamist activity could have something to do with it.

Breitbart.com’s Big Peace website reported yesterday that operatives from the Muslim Brotherhood have penetrated the Central Intelligence Agency. In July the CIA hosted a two-day training program called “Countering Violent Extremism Workshop for the National Capitol Region.”

Sessions at the seminar held at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, were conducted by officials from the CIA, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and Department of Homeland Security, alongside suspected Muslim Brotherhood operatives.

As Frontpage Magazine was nearly alone in reporting, FBI agents are no longer allowed to treat individuals associated with terrorist groups as potential threats to the nation. A recent report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism found that “scores” of known radical Islamists met with senior Obama administration officials during hundreds of visits to the White House.

And the profoundly unethical Los Angeles Times continues to withhold potentially vital information about Obama’s relationship with former Palestine Liberation Organization spokesman Rashid Khalidi, who now spends his days poisoning the minds of Columbia University students. The newspaper has a videotape under lock and key of Obama’s remarks at a 2003 banquet honoring the ex-terrorist, presumably because the contents of the recording would harm the president’s chances of reelection.

As Frontpage Magazine was first to report yesterday, the recently named chairman of the Department of State’s investigation of the Benghazi atrocities is an apologist for Islamic terrorism who has a cozy relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.

The chairman, former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, participated in a panel discussion Tuesday night in Washington, D.C. on “what role the faith community can play in fighting Islamophobia.” American Association for Muslim Advancement executive director Daisy Khan, and her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba Initiative, were also on the panel. Khan and Rauf have been prime movers behind the proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.

Pickering has ties to the pro-Iran Islamist front group known as the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). NIAC lost an important defamation case in federal court last month in which it unsuccessfully argued the group was not a tool of the Iranian government.

While the president has focused on other things, Islamism has been on the march. Fundamentalist Muslim regimes are popping up all over North Africa and the Middle East. Once a stalwart U.S. and Israeli ally, Egypt is now in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood and appears poised to transform itself into another Iran after Obama abandoned the now-deposed president Hosni Mubarak.

Communism too is on the march on Obama’s watch: Venezuela and other Latin American countries have been tilting to port while the president apologizes for past U.S. foreign policy and bows and scrapes before kings and tinpot dictators alike.

Obama looks more and more like President Jimmy Carter every day. During the malaise of the Carter years, Iran went from being a reliable U.S. ally to a totalitarian theocracy after Carter betrayed the Shah. Nicaragua fell to Communists and the Soviets rolled their tanks into Afghanistan and installed their own puppet president there.

And at about this point in 1980, Carter was also struggling in his reelection bid.

Hi Peter, watch this youtube video and see how Glenn Beck lays out everything, about Benghazi, in a crystal clear way.

2012.10.22 - TheBlazeTV - The Glenn Beck Program - Libya--The Real Story