Blog Heap of Links for the day 4 October 2012

Three weeks after the attack that killed four Americans in this city, the investigation of its causes remains in its initial stages, with just a handful of suspects detained, the crime scenes minimally secured and Walid Faraj waiting for a phone call from someone, anyone, asking him what he saw on the night he was injured while protecting the U.S. diplomatic post here.

Faraj, a member of the militia that local officials tasked with securing Americans in Benghazi, said he saw the attack nearly from start to finish. But neither American nor Libyan investigators have paid him a visit, even as he fears that the perpetrators know who he is.

President Barack Obama has ordered the CIA and the Pentagon to hunt down the terrorists who attacked the US consulate in Libya.

It's unclear what the president plans to do once the perpetrators of the September 11 assault in Benghazi are found, but he has mobilized the military's Joint Special Operations Command to help carry out the mission.

[Comment by War News Updates editor: More proof that the White House now knows that this was a terrorist attack by an Al Qaeda affiliated group and not a spontaneous demonstration and riot over some obscure YouTube video. But sending a hit squad to (I guess) Libya is President Obama's response to this attack ..... hmmmm .... how times have changed because if past Presidents did this ... they were usually called "cowboys".]

Operation Fast and Furious was not the only gun walking program. Univision shed some light on another, Operation Castaway, centered around Hugh Crumpler, a 65 year old Vietnam War vet. Guns from this operation were found in Honduras, Puerto Rico, and Colombia. … Like in Fast and Furious, it appears the ATF made no attempt to interdict the weapons. … Guns from Castaway were found in Colombia. Fast and Furious guns were found in the same raid.

"An American investigative committee visited the site where the US ambassador was killed," a defence ministry official in Benghazi told AFP, confirming that the team included FBI agents. … "About 20 Americans dressed in civilian clothing came and we were asked to protect them until they leave Benghazi," said a commander of the Libya Shield brigade, a former rebel unit under defence ministry command. "They arrived in the early morning and worked for three hours collecting evidence,"

Senator Reid’s office claimed Governor Romney’s staff told the Boston Globe he “would not honor exemptions” President Obama granted under his new non-deportation policy.

Instead, the staff said “he would honor deportation exemptions issued by the Obama administration before his inauguration.”

The Washington Times tried to reach out to Senator Reid’s office but haven’t received an answer. The release online still contains the phrase but got rid of the quotation marks around it.

Blitzer read portions of a letter sent by House Oversight Committee members Reps. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) to Sec. Hillary Clinton in which they reveal their knowledge that the mission in Libya made repeated requests for increased security after having come under attack several times in recent months. They say that those resources were withheld by Washington.

“It’s also important to note that the Republican appropriation Congress gave the administration $300 million less than it asked for for the State Department, including funding for security,” said Pelosi.

“Are you suggesting that there was a financial aspect to what happened in Benghazi, Libya,” Blitzer asked. “That the U.S. was not enough money to protect American diplomats?”

"One should note that setting fires to forests in the countries of the European Union is a new tendency in al-Qaeda's strategy of a 'thousand cuts'," Alexander Bortnikov said, according to state news agency RIA Novosti, at a meeting of heads of security agencies. "This method allows (al-Qaeda) to inflict significant economic and moral damage without serious preliminary preparations, technical equipment or significant expenses." [Already been suspected of happening in the USA.]

New research finds that the average political sound bite—defined as any footage of a candidate speaking uninterrupted—has dropped to just eight seconds.

No one knows for sure why Agent Zapata and Agent Avila, assigned to the US Embassy, were asked to travel on road 57, a road controlled by the Zeta Cartel and extremely dangerous. They didn’t even know why they were given the mission to retrieve electronic surveillance equipment. The urgency made it even more suspicious.

“Why Jaime and me?” said Ms. Avila-Villalobos. “It wasn’t our operation. It was equipment that could have been sent in some other way.”

Agent Avila immediately asked his supervisors why they wanted them to travel on this risky road given the security issues. The supervisors claimed there weren’t any security issues. However, the United States State Department had forbidden any US Embassy employee from traveling on that road.

“Why send them by themselves?” asks Mary Zapata, Agent Zapata’s mother.

Here is what happened in Agent Avila’s own words.

Hello, it's just me Donna,

Here in Oklahoma where obama did not carry a single county in 2008, he is running ads. Especially, the one with clinton, which is just insane--because ain't nobody hates clinton like us Okies, we knew how bad he and hillary were from the decades of him being Head Bubba in Charge of Arkansas. We had a huge lawsuit against Arkansas/Tyson Foods over chicken farms/slaughter/waste being dumped in one of the most beautiful rivers in the world. I am not a huge environmentalist, but, just plain wrong is wrong, at some point, the Tysons have enough profit. I will starve to death before I buy a d@mn thing with a Tyson label on it.

BTW, the happiest people on the planet when bj and hillary went to DC to do his Prezidentin and Predation, were the people of Arkansas. With Tyson money and the Arkansas mafia, there was no way to get him out of there otherwise.

That wasn't a debate so much as Mitt Romney just took Obama for a cross country drive strapped to the roof of his car. -Mark Hemingway @Heminator

Barack Obama, after his first head-to-head debate against Mitt Romney. [Photo at link]

"…these guys in the Obama camp, they're not going go down without swinging. They're going pull something," former Governor Sarah Palin warned after tonight's debate.

“I’m going to say something controversial here. Obama arrived in Denver at 2:00 p.m. today, just a few hours before the debate started,” Gore said. “Romney did his debate prep in Denver. When you go to 5,000 feet and you only have a few hours to adjust — I don’t know, maybe … [inaudible].”

“First, the polls showing him behind were in danger of becoming self-fulfilling prophecies by demoralizing Republicans,” Will continued. “I think he probably stopped that in its tracks tonight. Second, he wanted to use this forum to correct what he thinks are serious misrepresentations of his program, particularly regarding Medicare and regarding taxes and the scope of the tax cuts and the revenue neutrality and all of that. Third, he want to make the philosophical statement — he knows this is a country where self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals two-to-one. So, he used several times, particularly in his closing statement his opportunity to say, ‘Do you believe in the government is the allocator of resources as an opportunity, or do you believe in the market? And I think most Republicans are content to go to the country and say, ‘Let’s vote on that.’” -George Will

Obama slumped his shoulders, smiled mostly to himself, and for some reason kept staring down. He was that guy at the meeting who's surreptitiously checking his email.

"…AARP has never consented to the use of its name by any candidate or political campaign,” AARP vice president John Hishta said in a statement immediately after the debate.

Obama isn't an idiot, but his intellectual abilities center on blame shifting, reading other's pablum eloquently, and self advancement.

Those abilities don't really sell oneself well when you are already the most powerful man in the world.