“Let us erect a standard to which the wise and honest may repair.”
– George Washington
Since 2003, America’s political left has led the rallying cry, from foaming mouths, roars loud and furious, “Bush lied, people died!” The political right coined the phrase Bush derangement syndrome to explain the malady. The mainstream media has made cornering politicians seeking higher office and demanding a denunciation and apology for supporting President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 to topple Iraqi dictator and serial human rights abuser, Saddam Hussein, a right of passage.
Jeb Bush, trying to rev up a Presidential run this year, has stumbled over how to navigate the question, while the punditry class evaluates his performance, finding anything other than a complete renunciation of his brother’s Iraq decision and begging for absolution acceptable. The media, left-leaning, but even more so holding to a belief that, as journalists, they serve as the pure of heart, the truth-seekers for a world desperately in need of the bright light of the TRUTH. The anger and righteousness over the Iraq war decision rest on a belief that President Bush and his administration used cherry-picked or outright fabricated intelligence information to sell invading Iraq to Congress and the American people.
Thus we enter the world of cherry-picking intelligence or even outright fabricated intelligence – the many shades of lying to promote a political agenda. On September 16, 2015 CENTCOM commander, General Lloyd Austin III, appeared before the Senates Armed Services committee to report on progress in the fight against the Islamic State. Headlines blare about the failure of the US military to get a $500 million program to train and equip “Syrian moderates” rebels to fight the Islamic State inside of Syria running successfully. General Austin reported that only 4 or 5 US-trained Syrian fighters are in Syria, with the initial 54 fighters sent in back in July being captured or killed by Al-Qaeda aligned affiliates. I suspect they might not have been “moderates” to start with and walked off, after receiving training and weapons.
In Iraq our effort to defeat the Islamic State lies in disarray too. Recently, reports emerged of more than 50 US intelligence analysts in Iraq lodging complaints to the IG’s office, alleging that higher up in CENTCOM their intelligence reports are being altered to present a rosier picture of how the war against the Islamic State is progressing.
At the lead of the arming “Syrian moderates” cheerleaders, one can always find Senator John McCain, the most vocal true-believer in the arming “Syrian moderates” project. McCain frequently uses the failure to arm “Syrian moderates” a few years ago to sanctimoniously berate President Obama’s dismal handling of the Islamic State threat.
However, the truth to reemerge recently, which McCain and Secretary of State, John Kerry ignored back in 2013 , when the drumbeat for US intervention in Syria reached crescendo pitch, is that from the beginning of the Syrian civil war, the radical jihadists and Islamists played an outsized role, not moderates. Several questions need to be answered, first, if Kerry and McCain weren’t relying on US intelligence information, whose information were they relying on and why? Or were they just cherry-picking intelligence to advance their political agenda?
Once again I’m going to bring up Elizabeth O’Bagy, Syria subject matter expert, who blazed a trail across America’s cable news channels back in 2013, as the font of all knowledge on the rebel forces in Syria. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) obviously skimped on vetting her, because as O’Bagy’s connection, working as the political director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force (SETF) became known, the ISW fired O’Bagy for lying on her resumé. O’Bagy had claimed a doctorate degree, which she did not possess. After a few days of media sensationalism, O’Bagy disappeared from the headlines and settled into a nice cozy job working as a legislative assistant for John McCain. Yes, in 2013 he hired a woman with connections to some group with close ties to the rebels in Syria and a just outed liar. No worries, right?
In 2013, McCain, Kerry and the White House relied on information from the SETF and O’Bagy rather than vetted intelligence from our government. There were reports that the State Department was funding O’Bagy’s Syria research. Both Kerry and McCain cited O’Bagy’s Wall Street Journal op-ed as a definitive accurate source. (my posts in the archives at the right for 2013 contain numerous links on the Syrian moderate lies)
Let’s move to another scandal plaguing Washington – Hillary Clinton and her private email server in her home. There she was running this private server and no one in the Kerry State Department did a thing to secure that server or those emails once they found out about it, instead they’ve run interference for Hillary Clinton. In her usual covering her butt mode, Clinton hired some small IT firm to manage her server only after Sidney Blumenthal’s email had been hacked by a Romanian hacker, Guccifer. With the recent State Department release of the emails that Hillary did turn over to them, we know she relied on unvetted information from Blumenthal rather than actual vetted intelligence from our intelligence agencies.
Step back further to Benghazi and there’s the White House weaving a false narrative blaming the attack on that US embassy outpost in Benghazi on incitement over some obscure film from some Coptic filmmaker in America. This White House took the Clinton propaganda “spin machine” and turned it into a full-fledged fiction-writing effort, which they refer to as “the narrative”.
So, looking back at the “Syrian moderate”lie and the Obama administration lie over the sarin attack in Syria in 2013 – there again, another lie – President Obama blamed Assad before the UN investigation was even complete. Intelligence information indicated Syrian rebels possessed WMD capability too, but it ‘s easier to go with blaming Assad the Butcher to advance the policy for US involvement in the conflict. Yes, Assad has committed atrocities too, but to pretend jihadist nuts are “moderates” and arm them is insanity!
McCain still pushes for arming them and still has O’Bagy whispering sweet “Syrian moderate” lies in his ears – to the tune of a government salary of over $80,000 a year. Not bad for a young woman who lied about her academic credentials. He is the go to invite on all the cable news shows as the Republican senior statesman and expert on foreign policy .
So, we now have those 50 intelligence analysts complaining about CENTCOM officials altering intelligence reports to fit the Obama narrative, a DIA chief forced to retire last year, because he refused to cook the books on intelligence, a Republican “war hero” Senator, who believes some young woman aligned to a Syrian rebel lobbying group over official vetted intelligence and one can only wonder why no one in the press is connecting all these dots.
We, being the American people, but most especially our military, who put their lives on the line to carry out these misguided foreign policies, have been left with nothing but a shell of a constitutional Republic. This isn’t about a partisan divide in Washington, it’s about wholesale corruption. The folks the media turns to as senior statesmen, like John McCain and John Kerry, are at best clueless nincompoops, but they are dangerous liars and dangerously reckless to rely on some lobbying group filled with young Syrian rebel sympathizers (or Islamist sympathizers – hard to tell) rather than carefully vetted information from our own intelligence agencies, especially when that information from the two sources differed so dramatically.
Late night shows recently started inviting Hillary Clinton on and they’re writing scripts to turn her email scandal into nothing more than a right-wing partisan joke. Yes, they are aiding her in burnishing her lies and criminal conduct into little more than just little bad decisions and a laughing matter.
Last year I contacted several reporters, even that big kahuna of cable news, Bill O’Reilly, and I couldn’t get a single reporter to even talk to me or ask me for details. I had offered them the real names to the people mentioned in my story. Not a single taker, yet they fight over interviews with Hillary Clinton, toss her softball questions, debate over how many lies she told and yet most of them would still vote for her. Bill O’Reilly falls all over himself blabbering on about how he wants to be “fair” to Hillary Clinton and I wonder why he and his crack staff didn’t even bother to ask me for names and details – no response whatsoever.
I shouldn’t be surprised at our lazy journalists – they missed O’Bagy and didn’t bother to check out her background, in fact, I still want to know her entire background and whether she underwent a formal security background check or if McCain waived that. Hillary has had Huma Abedin, with direct connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, by her side for years and Abedin was handling top secret information. Again, did Abedin ever undergo a formal security background check?
Reporters don’t even bother to challenge John McCain on his foreign policy “expertise” and in this latest CENTCOM testimony by General Austin, there’s an Obama-appointed general, carrying out a fool’s mission hunting for “Syrian moderates” to train, and the cable news pundits invite McCain on to rail about the CENTCOM commander and Obama administration failure… There have been mostly radical jihadists among the Syrian rebels from the beginning and McCain should know that. He’s the chairman of the Senate of Armed Services Committee, so assuredly he gets intelligence information from the US military.
The acceptance of lying by our government officials coincides with the acceptance of lying in our culture. Having spent every day since the Impeachment Scandal in 98-99 wondering how I could be attacked in my own home over posting comments on the Excite message boards (Messages of mhere tabbed on my home page) and not having any power or way to prove what happened, all I can say is at some point Americans need to face the truth – they have allowed their government to be taken over by corrupt liars, venal power-hungry sociopaths and foreign influence peddlers and agents.
Long ago, I used to believe that the rule of law protected every American citizen. Thinking about all the lies and cherry-picked and fabricated intelligence making headlines brought me full-circle to my own situation. I think about, if the power of the Presidency was used to silence, me, a homemaker who challenged the Clinton spinmeisters during impeachment – on a stupid online message board, then is any citizen really safe?
I wonder how safe I will be if that lying, conniving woman is elected President in her own right and doesn’t have to borrow power from her husband. Once again I will state that my Messages of mhere story is the TRUTH. Long ago when I was in the Army, I held a “Secret security clearance”, after an official security background check, and since then, my record is- I was a homemaker, a devoted volunteer, don’t have even a speeding ticket on my record and I like to do needlework, cook, and read a lot. I challenge any journalist to vet my information and dig into what happened to me – of course, the retired general who was sent to attack me was fed lies about me obviously, otherwise he would not have taken on the mission of silencing me – my best guess is I was cast as an internet terrorist or part of some right-wing militia (those were popular in the 90s) and assuredly he would lie to salvage his reputation too. Every time I see that lying witch on TV, laughing and making light of her LIES, I get disgusted. She really is thatwitch2016! I want to expose what happened to me in the Fall of ’98 and early ’99. So sick of LIARS!!!
libertybelle diaries 