Iraq invaders threaten nuke attack on Israel……

WASHINGTON – The well-organized army of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, claims it has access to nuclear weapons and a will to use them to “liberate” Palestine from Israel as part of its “Islamic Spring,” according to a WND source in the region.

Franklin Lamb, an international lawyer based in Beirut and Damascus, said the move is part of the ISIS aim of creating a caliphate under strict Islamic law, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to Iraq.

Lamb, who has access to ISIS fighters and sympathizers, said ISIS has been working with a “new specialized” unit organized at the beginning of 2013 to focus “exclusively on destroying the Zionist regime occupying Palestine.”

Lamb added that the ISIS “Al-Quds Unit” is working to broaden its influence in more than 60 Palestinian camps and gatherings from Gaza, across “Occupied Palestine,” or Israel, to Jordan and from Lebanon up to the north of Syria “seeking to enlist support as it prepares to liberate Palestine.”

ISIS is also know as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Sham. “Sham,” or “Greater Syria,” refers to Cyprus, Palestine, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and southern Turkey.

ISIS also is known as DAASH, the Arabic acronym for al-Dawlah al-Islamiyah fi al-Iraq wa-al Sham.

The Sunni militant group, which has taken over much of the Sunni region of Iraq, could leave the Shia-dominated region of the country and head toward Jordan and Turkey.

Lamb said that in Iraq alone, some 6 million Iraqi Sunnis recently have become supportive of the ISIS lightning strikes in the Sunni portion of the country.

Some of the Sunni supporters are secular, such as the Naqshbandia Army of former top officials of executed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. As WND reported, the Sunni group may have given ISIS access to its ongoing sarin production facility in northwestern Iraq.

WND also reported ISIS already has captured towns bordering Iraq and Turkey.

The militant group also has steamrolled through the Iraqi desert in the west and taken over the major al-Walid crossing with Syria and the Turaibil crossing into Jordan.

Lamb said ISIS has established a capital for its caliphate in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

“The Islamist organization believes it currently has massive regional support for its rapidly expanding ‘revolution of the oppressed,’” Lamb said.

ISIS estimates it will take 72 months to “liberate” “Occupied Palestine,” or Israel, according to Lamb.

Lamb quoted an ISIS member as saying: “Zionists call us masked, sociopathic murderers, but we are much more complicated and representative of those seeking justice than they portray us.

“Are we more barbaric than the Zionist terrorists who massacred at Dier Yassin, Shatila, twice at Qana, and committed dozens of other massacres? History will judge us after we free Palestine.”

Lamb said ISIS can do what no other Arab, Muslim or Western backers of resistance have been able to accomplish.

He quoted the ISIS member as saying: “All countries in this region are playing the sectarian card just as they have long played the Palestinian card, but the difference with ISIS is that we are serious about Palestine and they are not. Tel Aviv will fall as fast as Mosul when the time is right.”

The WND source said ISIS appears “eager” to fight Israeli armed forces “in the near future despite expectation that the regime will use nuclear weapons.”

“Do you think that we do not have access to nuclear devices?” Lamb quoted the ISIS member as saying. “The Zionists know that we do, and if we ever believe they are about to use theirs, we will not hesitate. After the Zionists are gone, Palestine will have to be decontaminated and rebuilt just like areas where there has been radiation released.”

ISIS access to nuclear weapons could come from Sunni Pakistan, which is home to more than 30 terrorist groups. Pakistan possibly has transferred nuclear weapons to the chief bankroller of its nuclear development program, Sunni Saudi Arabia, as WND previously has reported.

The Saudis, who also have provided billions of dollars to ISIS, have threatened to acquire nuclear weapons if Iran were to develop its own.

The WND source said ISIS denies any interest in training and directing foreign fighters to attack Europe, claiming its goals are to establish the al-Sham caliphate and “liberate Palestine.”

The source said the West, and especially the Israelis, may already be aware of ISIS plans and tactics to take over “Palestine.” He said Western intelligence sources were in possession of an “encyclopedia of information” obtained by Iraqi intelligence less than 48 hours before Mosul fell two weeks ago.

He said an ISIS messenger who was captured and “under Iraqi torture” turned over more than 160 computer flash sticks with the detailed information.

“The U.S. intelligence community is still decrypting and analyzing the flash sticks,” Lamb said.

He indicated that the information already has been handed over to members of Congress, some of whom are sharing it with the Israeli Embassy in Washington.

“The current sense on Capitol Hill is reported to be that the Obama administration is not in the mood to share anything with Israel these days and certainly not with the Netanyahu regime which it loathes,” he said.

Lamb said only time will tell whether or not ISIS reaches both of its objectives. He added that if the “Zionist regime” can be ejected from Palestine, it will set in motion “historic currents” that will be “rather different from the Ehud Olmert-Condoleezza Rice fantasy of ‘a New Middle East.’

“In any event,” Lamb said, “it is unlikely that Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, Lebanon among other countries in this region are going to look much like what George Bush and Dick Cheney and their still active neo-con advisers had in mind when they were beating the drums for a U.S. invasion of Iraq, Libya and now Syria and Iran.”

Muslim Brotherhood claim: We’ve got ‘goods on Obama’ ….

Son of jailed leader says evidence could put U.S. president in prison…

The claim came as the Obama administration, with the assistance of Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and the open involvement of the No. 2 man at the U.S. State Department, made a concerted effort to see Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt released.

In an interview with the News Agency Anatolia in Turkey, Saad Al-Shater, the son of imprisoned Muslim Brotherhood leader Khairat Al-Shater, said his father “had in his hand” evidence that will put Obama in prison.

In a thinly veiled threat, Saad Al-Shater said a U.S. delegation was sent to Cairo by Obama to press for the release of the imprisoned Muslim Brotherhood leaders, including his father to prevent the release of explosive information.

Arabic-speaking former PLO member Walid Shoebat has translated the report by the Turkish News Agency Anatolia as follows:

In an interview with the Anatolia News Agency, Saad Al-Shater, the son of a Muslim Brotherhood leader, the detained Khairat Al-Shater, said that his father had in his hand evidence that will land the head of United States of America, President Obama, in prison. He stressed that the senior U.S. delegation currently visiting Egypt, knows full well that the fate, future, interests and reputation of their country is in the hands of his father, and they know that he owns the information, documents and recordings that incriminate and would condemn their country. Such documents, he says, were placed in the hands of people who were entrusted inside and outside Egypt, and that the release of his father is the only way for them to prevent a great catastrophe. He stated that a warning was sent threatening to show how the U.S. administration was directly connected. The evidence was sent through intermediaries which caused them to change their attitude and corrected their position, and that they have taken serious steps to prove good faith. Saad also said that his father’s safety is more important to the Americans than is the safety of Mohamed Morsi.

Writing in his blog, Shoebat noted that six different Arabic sources confirmed the interview with Saad Al-Shater and the report of Al-Shater’s claims.

Shoebat said the interview with Saad Al-Shater was Aug. 7, making it likely the reference to the “senior U.S. delegation currently visiting Egypt” was about the trip by McCain, Graham and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns.

On Aug. 6, with interim Egyptian Vice President Mohamed ElBaradei, the former general director of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, McCain and Graham called Khairat Al-Shater and other jailed Muslim Brotherhood leaders “political prisoners.” They told reporters in Cairo that failing to release Muslim Brotherhood prisoners would be “a huge mistake.”

Egypt’s interim president, Adly Mansour, rebuffed the U.S. delegation’s request, telling reporters in Cairo that it constituted an “unacceptable interference in internal politics.”

On Aug. 6, the Associated Press reported the Egyptian government planned to prosecute Khairat Al-Shater and the other imprisoned Muslim Brotherhood leaders on charges of inciting violence last December when Muslim Brotherhood members attacked sit-in protestors outside then-President Mohamed Morsi’s office, resulting in the deaths of 10 people.

ABC News reported that Burns traveled separately late Sunday night, Aug. 4, to the notorious Tora Prison in the middle of Cairo to meet with Khairat Al-Shater, despite claims by the Muslim Brotherhood that Al-Shater refused to meet.

In an Aug. 6 interview with CNN in Egypt, McCain mentioned jailed Khairat Al-Shater, an openly acknowledged Muslim Brotherhood leader, when asked about individuals who could successfully negotiate a future Egyptian government.

Shoebat has published evidence documenting Khairat Al-Shater has been implicated in weapons trafficking through the Sinai and into Gaza as well as negotiating prisoner releases in exchange for terrorists.

Former U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova, legal representative for Benghazi whistleblower Mark Thompson, claimed this week that intelligence officers with knowledge of the attack on the Benghazi consulate believe it was was tied to 400 surface-to-air missiles intended for Syrian rebels that U.S. officials feared could be used to shoot down an airliner or attack a U.S. embassy.

Two weeks after the Benghazi attack, WND was the first to report sources claiming the Benghazi compound was an intelligence and planning center the CIA used to recruit and arm Islamic rebels to fight Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

NEW RUSSIAN GAS MASKS/NEW NBC FILTERS/NEW CARRY & STORAGE TOTES..Only $19.95

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That’s exactly what an overzealous former Soviet entrepreneur with newly-minted capitalist dreams must have counted on when he arranged to bring over a couple of million of them to sell for big bucks to anxious Americans after 9/11. He didn’t anticipate, however, how short our American memories are – and that, by the time they got here, most of us had forgotten why we thought we might need them! As a result, not only are these masks highly effective against the threat of nuclear, biological or chemical attack, they are also versatile and affordable enough to use when burning leaves or cleaning a putrid, mold-covered basement.

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North Korea EMP attack could destroy U.S. – right now!!….

‘Red Dawn’ scenario is kid’s play compared with this scenario.

North Korea now has an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of delivering a nuclear weapon to the United States, as demonstrated by their successful launch and orbiting of a satellite on Dec. 12, the Washington Times reports.

In fact, the Times report says, “North Korea is a mortal nuclear threat to the United States – right now.”

It’s not just the threat of conventional nuclear attack that has experts worried. Nor is the North Korea invasion scenario in the new remake of “Red Dawn” a realistic risk.
The real concern is that North Korea now has miniaturized nuclear weapons for ballistic missile delivery and armed missiles with nuclear warheads that could destroy the U.S. in a single blow with an EMP attack that would send the U.S. back to 19th century technology a la the NBC TV show “Revolution.”

And North Korea is hardly the only threat to destroy what some other nations and rogue players call “the Great Satan.”

Imagine if all the lights in America went off – never to come back on again.

Imagine if all the computers in America got fried – never to come back on again.

Imagine if all the cars in America dependent on fancy circuitry wouldn’t start – ever again.

Imagine if the grocery stores and the gas stations had to close up – for good.

That’s the kind of scenario an EMP attack can cause. The scenarios suggest massive starvation, lawlessness and chaos beyond anything Americans can imagine.
Scientists and other experts have warned for years that the nation’s electrical grid system, together with other critical infrastructures that have an almost complete dependency on electricity and electronic components, are highly vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse event, either from natural or man-made causes.

However, Congress and the administrations of previous and current presidents largely have ignored those warnings.

Events such as the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack on the United States, then the devastating Hurricane Katrina and more recently Hurricane Sandy revealed vulnerabilities to those infrastructures, for a time heightened that concern.

Nevertheless, none of this was enough to awaken policymakers who seem more preoccupied with making you less safe by restricting your ability to get firearms.

Make no mistake about it: An EMP attack poses the biggest threat to U.S. national and economic security in our lifetime.
An electromagnetic pulse attack on our critical infrastructures, either from an impending solar storm of serious intensity expected between 2012 and 2014 or from a high-altitude nuclear explosion, could have long-term catastrophic consequences for our society and our way of life.

A few years ago, a congressional commission went into considerable depth on those consequences to our electricity-dependent infrastructures that include not only the power grid itself but also telecommunications, our banking and finance system, our transportation system that delivers the very food and water on which our society depends on a daily basis, and the fuel needed to keep our houses warm in the winter and air-conditioned during the summer.

While these critical infrastructures continue to face such an impending crisis, Congress basically has ignored its own commission report and instead has treated the threat of an electromagnetic pulse event as a political football to be weighed against the need to establish an antiballistic missile system. Out of the debate, nothing has happened in either direction.

India warns Kashmiris of possible nuclear attack…..

Officials in Indian-controlled Kashmir are warning residents to be prepared for a possible nuclear war by building build bomb-proof basements and collecting two weeks’ worth of food and water.
Local officials said the advisory was routine, though it was the first time it had been published in a newspaper. They said it did not signal new concerns about a nuclear attack in the region, repeatedly fought over by nuclear-armed rivals India and Pakistan.
A series of deadly skirmishes along the cease-fire line in recent weeks has heightened tensions between the two countries, and the timing of the advisory surprised many residents in Srinagar, the main city in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
“This is fueling an atmosphere of fear. Educating people is fine but not this brazen way,” said resident Fayaz Ahmed.
The notice, published Monday by the Kashmir police in the Greater Kashmir newspaper, advised people to build toilet-equipped basements large enough to house their entire families for two weeks. If there is no basement, residents should construct bunkers in their front yards, the notice advised.
The shelters should be stocked with candles, battery-operated lights and radios, it said, adding that stores of nonperishable food and water should be regularly replaced to ensure it is fresh.
The notice said that during a nuclear attack, motorists should dive out of their cars toward the blast to save themselves from being crushed by their soon-to-be tumbling vehicles.
“Expect some initial disorientation as the blast wave may blow down and carry away many prominent and familiar features,” it advises.
It also warns residents to keep people contaminated by fallout out of their shelters.
Yoginder Kaul, inspector-general at the civil defense and state disaster response force, said the advisory was part of a normal campaign to educate the public, and the information has been available on a government website for some time.
“We routinely train and educate people regarding different natural and man-made disasters and that’s our duty. This advertisement too was part of such a campaign. Please, let’s not read into this beyond that. Let it be clear that this is purely in the nature of educating people and not connected with anything else,” he said.
Both India and Pakistan claim the divided Kashmir region in its entirety and have fought two wars over it.
Earlier this month, three Pakistani soldiers and two Indian soldiers were killed in the worst bout of fighting in Kashmir since a cease-fire accord was signed by the countries in 2003.
In light of the violence, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Sunday he was reviewing future ties with Pakistan.

Pearl Harbor…Dec 7th, 1941…Will History repeat and once again we suffer….

U.S. Relied on Firm Using Unarmed Guards for Diplomatic Security in Libya….

The State Department’s decision to hire Blue Mountain Group to guard the ill-fated U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, entrusted security tasks to a little-known British company instead of the large firms it usually uses in overseas danger zones.
The contract was largely based on expediency, U.S. officials have said, since no
one knew how long the temporary mission would remain in the Libyan city. The cradle of last year’s uprising that ended Muammar Gaddafi’s 42-year rule, Benghazi has been plagued by rising violence in recent months.

Security practices at the diplomatic compound, where Blue Mountain guards patrolled with flashlights and batons instead of guns, have come under U.S. government scrutiny in the wake of the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Federal contract data shows that the Benghazi security contract, worth up to $783,284, was listed as a “miscellaneous” award, not as part of the large master State Department contract that covers protection for overseas embassies.

“Blue Mountain was virtually unknown to the circles that studied private security contractors working for the United States, before the events in Benghazi,” said Charles Tiefer, a commissioner at the Commission on Wartime Contracting, which studied U.S. contracting in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Several British government sources said that they were unfamiliar with Blue Mountain, which is based in Wales. They said British authorities used a different contractor for security protection in Libya.

Fred Burton, vice president of intelligence at the Stratfor consulting firm and a former U.S. diplomatic security agent, said he did not know Blue Mountain, but it likely got State Department work because it was already working in Libya.

“They may have been the path of least resistance,” he said.

Blue Mountain was able to work in Libya because it forged a business alliance with a local security firm, as required by Libyan regulations.

Eric Nordstrom, former regional security officer for the U.S. Embassy in Libya, testified at a congressional hearing last week that contracting out for security in the eastern Libyan city “was largely based on our concern of how long we would be in Benghazi. We were concerned that if we retained or brought on board full-time employees we would have to then find a position for them if that post ever went away.”

In describing the challenges of hiring private security at Benghazi, he added: “It’s my understanding that there was a very high turnover with those people.”

GUARDS OF BENGHAZI
Blue Mountain hired about 20 Libyan men – including some who say they had minimal training – to screen visitors and help patrol the mission at Benghazi, according to Reuters interviews.

Some of the guards sustained injuries and said they were ill-prepared to protect themselves or others when heavily armed militants last month stormed the rented villa that was serving as the mission.

They also described being hired by Blue Mountain after a casual recruiting and screening process.

State Department security officials had their own concerns about some of the guards at the mission months before the recent attack, according to emails obtained by Reuters this week. One guard who had been recently fired and another on the company’s payroll were suspected of throwing a homemade bomb into the U.S. compound in April. They were questioned but not charged.

The State Department has declined to comment on the company other than confirming it was the contractor in Benghazi. Blue Mountain did not respond to numerous emails and phone calls, and a person answering the phone at its office in Carmarthen, Wales, said the company would not discuss the issue.

Previously known as Pilgrim Elite, Blue Mountain says on its website that it offers security services and professional training and has operated in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan.

The website once listed General Motors as a client, and a GM spokeswoman in Detroit told Reuters that Blue Mountain’s work for the company was “on a very limited basis and mostly in the UK.”

A Blue Mountain recruiter posted a notice on a security website in 2011 seeking employees with visas to work in Libya.

The State Department contract for “local guard” services in Benghazi took effect in March 2012. Several of Blue Mountain’s Libyan employees told Reuters that they had no prior security training or experience.
“I was never a revolutionary or a fighter, I have never picked up a weapon during the war or after it,” said Abdelaziz al-Majbiri, 28, who was shot in the legs during the Sept. 11 assault.

The Libyan commander in charge of the local guards at the mission was a former English teacher who said he heard about Blue Mountain from a neighbor. “I don’t have a background in security, I’ve never held a gun in my life,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity out of fear for his safety.

When hired, the commander said he was told “you have great English and get along with everyone and are punctual; we want you to be a guard commander.”

The unarmed guards were told to sound the alarm over the radio and then run for cover if there was an attack, a Libyan who acted as a supervisor for the Blue Mountain local guard team at the mission said during an interview with Reuters.

He also displayed a medal embossed with “Department of State” and a horseman carrying Libyan and U.S. flags. “They thanked us for our help and also gave us this medal as an appreciation,” he said.

Despite their inexperience, the Blue Mountain guards said they feared the Americans were not concerned enough about security.

“We used to tell the Americans who spoke to us on many occasions that we needed more support in security, because it felt thin on the ground. But they didn’t seem to be so worried, and (were) confident that no one will dare to come close to the consulate,” one guard said.
‘DOWN IN THE WEEDS’

Tiefer, who is also a government contracting law professor at the University of Baltimore, said the Benghazi contract paled in comparison to other State Department security awards.

“This is down in the weeds,” he said in a telephone interview.

Most State Department work goes to eight large private security firms with vast experience.

In the late summer of 2011, after Libyan rebels took control of Tripoli, Blue Mountain guards were seen working security at the Corinthia Hotel and its sister Palm City residential compound in the Libyan capital.

A United Press International report indicated that Blue Mountain and its local partner, Eclipse, also were competing for contracts guarding oil fields.

Blue Mountain and Eclipse parted ways in the spring over problems with Tripoli contracts, several sources familiar with the matter said.

The severed relationship may have prevented Blue Mountain from getting additional work in Libya, which required the local affiliation.

On a social network website earlier this year, a Blue Mountain official described the firm as “one of the few companies certified and legally allowed to work in Libya.”

Blue Mountain Chief Executive Officer Nigel Thomas, a former British special forces member, did not respond to emails or phone calls.

© 2012 Thomson/Reuters. All rights reserved.

REPORT: Al-Qaida, Gitmo Alum Involved in Deadly Embassy Attack

The deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya that killed four Americans was directly tied to al-Qaida and involved a former detainee at the Guantanamo Bay prison, intelligence sources told Fox News.

The information comes as a top Obama White House official described the assault for the first time as a “terrorist attack” — and Republican lawmakers intensified their questioning of administration officials on security issues and whether consulate security personnel had communicated with extremists before the attack occurred.

The White House has long claimed the assault had been a “spontaneous” act.

“Yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy,” Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said on Wednesday during a Senate hearing, Fox reports.

But Olsen echoed administration colleagues in saying U.S. officials have no specific intelligence about “significant advanced planning or coordination” for the attack.

His statement, however, goes beyond White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, saying the Sept. 11 attack on the consulate was spontaneous.

Olsen is the first top White House official to call the strike an act of terrorism, Fox reports.

Intelligence sources told Fox that Sufyan Ben Qumu is thought to have been involved — and even may have led the Benghazi attack, which killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Qumu, a Libyan, was released from the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2007 and transferred into Libyan custody on the condition that he is kept in jail. His Guantanamo files also show he has ties to the financiers behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Olson, repeating Wednesday that the FBI is handling the Benghazi investigation, also acknowledged the attack could lead back to al-Qaida and its affiliates.

“We are looking at indications that individuals involved in the attack may have had connections to al-Qaida or al-Qaida’s affiliates, in particular al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb,” he said at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Fox reports.

“The facts that we have now indicate that this was an opportunistic attack on our embassy, the attack began and evolved and escalated over several hours,” Olson said, according to Fox.

But Olsen sidestepped a question from Maine Sen. Susan Collins about whether communication had occurred between extremist elements and the local consulate guards, Reuters reports.

“I think that would be better addressed in the session that we’re going to have tomorrow,” Olsen told the Republican senator, Reuters reports. U.S. officials said the possibility of such collusion is part of their investigation.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper are to brief lawmakers in a closed session on Thursday.

Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers said on Wednesday that they agreed with Libyan officials who said the attack was preplanned.

“You don’t bring rocket-propelled grenades and heavy weapons to spontaneous demonstrations,” Arizona Sen. John McCain told Reuters.

“I think it was a preplanned event to have occurred probably on 9/11,” Republican Rep. Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee chairman, told Reuters. “It seemed well-coordinated.”

He described the assault as an “al Qaida-style attack.”

There was command-and-control on the ground, with initial reports showing clearly that the attackers were moving toward specific targets on the compound, Rogers said.

“They had objectives. They had targets they were working toward. They were using military-style movements,” he told Reuters. “I just look at that and think I don’t know how you say that that wasn’t a pre-planned event when you have that kind of coordination.”

Obama administration officials say U.S. intelligence agencies had not seen any warnings to indicate the consulate was going to be attacked.

In fact, Press Secretary Carney said earlier on Wednesday that there was still “no evidence of a preplanned or pre-meditated attack,” which occurred on the 11th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.

“I made that clear last week, Ambassador Rice made that clear Sunday,” Carney said at the daily White House press briefing.

Rice appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and four other morning talk shows to say the attack was “spontaneous” and was sparked by an early protest that day outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, over an anti-Islamic video.

“It was a reaction to a video that had nothing to do with the United States,” Rice told Fox on Sunday. “The best information and the best assessment we have today is that this was not a pre-planned, pre-meditated attack. What happened initially was that it was a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo.”

That account clashed with claims by the Libyan president that the attack was in fact premeditated, Fox reports.

Other sources, including an intelligence source in Libya who spoke to Fox on Wednesday, have echoed those claims. The intelligence source even said that, contrary to the suggestion by the Obama administration, no major protest in Benghazi occurred before the deadly attack at the U.S. consulate.

A U.S. official did not dispute the claim, Fox reports.

Meanwhile, other new details emerged on security arrangements at the Benghazi consulate, Reuters reports. Five civilian American security officers were stationed at the consulate, congressional aides said on condition of anonymity.

The State Department said it had contracted with a private security firm, U.K.-based Blue Mountain Group, to hire Libyan nationals to carry out security measures at the Benghazi consulate. Their jobs included operating metal detectors and sweeping cars for explosives.

On Wednesday, Republican lawmakers also pressed their questions on U.S. security arrangements in a region where weapons, including sophisticated arms looted from arsenals assembled by the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, were widely available.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard McKeon said he was “really concerned about the lack of support that the ambassador had, the lack of protection.”

“We had no military personnel there” in Benghazi, McKeon said after a closed-door briefing from Pentagon officials, Reuters reports.

He said this was “inconceivable” after an attack on the compound earlier in the year.

Clinton defended the security arrangements earlier this week.

“Let me assure you that our security in Benghazi included a unit of host government security forces, as well as a local guard force of the kind that we rely on in many places around the world,” she said on Tuesday.

Also on Wednesday, FBI investigators arrived in Libya after an initial delay over security concerns. The investigation team should reach Benghazi before the end of the week, U.S. officials said.

Their goal is to determine what happened on the ground and who was responsible.

The Religion of Peace…17 Afghans beheaded in insurgent attack on party

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Insurgents beheaded 17 civilians in a Taliban-controlled area of southern Afghanistan, apparently because they attended a dance party that flouted the extreme brand of Islam embraced by the militants, officials said Monday.

The killings, in a district where U.S. Marines have battled the Taliban for years, were a reminder of how much power the insurgent group still wields in the south — particularly as international forces draw down and hand areas over to Afghan forces.

The victims were part of a large group that had gathered late Sunday in Helmand province’s Musa Qala district for a celebration involving music and dancing, said district government chief Neyamatullah Khan. He said the Taliban slaughtered them to show their disapproval of the event.

All of the bodies were decapitated but it was not clear if they had been shot first, said provincial government spokesman Daoud Ahmadi.

Information was only trickling out slowly because the area where the killings occurred is largely Taliban controlled, Khan said. The Taliban spokesman for southern Afghanistan could not be reached for comment.

Many Afghans and international observers have expressed worries that the Taliban’s brutal interpretation of Islamic justice will return as international forces withdraw. Under the Taliban, who ruled the country from 1996 to 2001, all music and film was banned as un-Islamic, and women were barred from leaving their homes without a male family member as an escort.

Helmand is one of the areas seeing the largest reduction in U.S. troops, as the force increase ordered up by President Barack Obama departs. The U.S. started drawing down forces from a peak of nearly 103,000 last year, and plans to have decreased to 68,000 troops in country by October.

One of the most worrying trends to accompany the drawdown has been a surge in attacks by Afghan forces against their international allies, and another shooting came on Monday morning, though it appeared to be accidental.

Two American soldiers were shot and killed by one of their Afghan colleagues in the east, military officials said, bringing to 12 the number of international troops — all Americans — to die at the hands of their local allies this month.

But Afghan officials said Monday’s attack in Laghman province was a separate case from the rash of recent insider attacks on international forces, because it appeared to have been unintentional.

The incident unfolded when a group of U.S. and Afghan soldiers came under attack, said Noman Hatefi, a spokesman for the Afghan army corps in eastern Afghanistan. When the troops returned fire and ran to take up fighting positions, an Afghan soldier fell and accidentally discharged his weapon, killing two American soldiers with the stray bullets, he said.

“He didn’t do this intentionally. But then the commander of the (Afghan) unit started shouting at him, ‘What did you do? You killed two NATO soldiers!’ And so he threw down his weapon and started to run,” Hatefi added. The U.S. troops had already called in air support to help with the insurgent attack and the aircraft fired on the escaping soldier from above, killing him, Hatefi said.

NATO spokesman Lt. Col. Hagen Messer of Germany confirmed that two international soldiers were killed by an Afghan soldier in Laghman province, but declined to give further comment.

Insider attacks have been a problem for the U.S.-led military coalition for years, but it has exploded recently into a crisis. There have been at least 33 such attacks so far this year, killing 42 coalition members, mostly Americans. Last year there were 21 attacks, killing 35; and in 2010 there were 11 attacks with 20 deaths.

The chief spokesman for NATO forces in the country said coalition forces were not pulling back from collaborating with the Afghans because of the attacks.

“We are not going to reduce the close relationship with our Afghan partners,” Brig. Gen. Gunter Katz told reporters in the capital.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said that he could not confirm any link between the attacker in Monday’s shooting and the insurgency. In previous insider attacks, the Taliban have quickly claimed responsibility and named the assailants. Mujahid did not comment on the other attacks in the south, which is watched over by a different Taliban spokesman.

Meanwhile, Helmand officials reported that 10 Afghan soldiers were killed in an attack on a checkpoint in the south, and five were either kidnapped or joined their assailants.

Ahmadi, the provincial spokesman, said insurgents attacked the checkpoint in Washir district Sunday evening. Another four soldiers were wounded he said. The Afghan Defense Ministry said the checkpoint was attacked by more than 100 insurgents.

Ahmadi said the five missing soldiers left with the insurgents but it was unclear if they were kidnapped or went voluntarily.

6 Reasons Liberal Attacks on Romney Won’t Work

#1 – Obama has no record to stand on.
“We tried that and it didn’t work,” Obama said in reference to ‘top down’ economic policies. “Just like we’ve tried their plan, we tried our plan…and it worked.”
I’m not even going to touch on the amount of spending that happened under Bush, but for Obama to claim it ‘worked’ is completely asinine.
Obama made that remark in Oakland, CA – a city that sported a 13.7% unemployment rate in May.
Unemployment just rose to 8.3% as far as the least descriptive statistic goes, but if you look at the further-encompassing U-6 unemployment rate, unemployment really just went up to 15.2%.
Should we even touch on the fact that he’s added over $5 trillion to the national debt in his first 3.5 years?
#2 – The attacks are lies and spins.
The most obvious series of ads involve Bain Capital’s GST Steel, which Obama claims Romney loaded with debt for personal profit.
Before Bain invested in the steel company, GST went from having 4,500 employees in 1970 to having 1,000 by the late 80’s. The entire steel industry lost 200,000 jobs in the years leading up to GST’s buyout in 1993, and Armco, the company Bain bought the plant from, lost $641 million in the same year.
B.C. Huselton, a former vice president at GST, told the WSJ that the Armco CEO said, “Look, we either try to sell it, or we’ve got to shut it down.” That was in 1990 – 3 years before Bain touched it.
Bain came along in 1993, purchased it for $80 million, and dumped $100 million dollars into it. The investment held the company afloat, but as the global need for GST products waned throughout the 90’s, they found themselves in serious trouble. By 1997, workers went on strike, “shooting bottle rockets at guards,” and by 2001, the company went bankrupt.
Attacking a successful private-equity firm for the closure of one steel company that was riddled with problems is almost entirely worthless.
#3 – The attacks on Romney carry no weight.
Word broke out that Romney was a high school bully to a classmate, John Lauber, but the ‘victim’s’ sister never knew of the incident. “The family of John Lauber is releasing a statement saying the portrayal of John is factually incorrect and we are aggrieved that he would be used to further a political agenda,” the family said.
And Romney was also attacked as a dog-hater of sorts for going on vacation and strapping his dog to the top of his car. The dog was never injured, and the family claimed he loved it.
The funny thing about this is that Romney never ate dog like Obama did growing up in Indonesia.
#4 – Obama’s campaign is extremely negative.
A July 28 article in the New York Times noted that Obama has run negative commercials 118,775 times since April, compared to 56,128 positive commercial runs.
In the same time, Romney ran 51,973 negative ads, and 11,921 positive ads.
Neither of these numbers reflect super PAC ads that undoubtedly play a substantial role, but all of the attacking makes one wonder, “Why does he have to attack so much? Does he not have the ability as an incumbent to brag about his accomplishments?”
No – because they are few and far between, and ultimately not that impressive.
So much for the guy that promised a new kind of politics…
#5 – Obama does the same thing.
I’ll go ahead and say it: Romney outsourced money at the very least. There has been a substantial amount of back and forth on this issue after the Obama campaign released their ad, “The Problem,” but I don’t care what anyone says, Bain Capital dollars went overseas any way you look at it, at least to Global-Tech appliances in the form of a $14.2 million investment. Then again, Romney was a businessman looking for profits.
Bud how can Obama call Romney an outsourcer? According to a CNSNews.com article, titled, “Obama Administration Outsourced Jobs with Stimulus Funding,” millions of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act went to foreign companies or domestic companies expanding abroad.
$39 million went to North Carolina based LED manufacturer, Cree Inc., a company that expanded to have half of its employees located in China that promised to “invest here [China] for both human talent and the most state-of-the-art technologies.”
$91 million went to Eurus America, whose wind farm was “actually built by British firm RES Americas and is now being run by EnXco, and American subsidiary of the French energy firm EDF Energies Nouvelles.”
A $337 million loan guarantee went to Sempra Energy that bought a reported 800,000 Chinese solar panels.
A $500 million loan guarantee went to Finnish automaker Fisker Automotive to help Fisker establish US manufacturing presence. Fisker never established an American factory.
You can argue that much of the stimulus either helped Americans or stayed here completely, or that the guaranteed loan money will come back to America, but he undoubtedly sent a substantial amount of money abroad. For those that completely disagree – why didn’t the stimulus take unemployment down to the 6% we were promised by this year?
#6 – The racism just isn’t there.
Liberals are always ready to drop a race card. For evidence, look at the new ad from Mitt Romney attacking Obama for waiving the work requirement for welfare assistance; many have come out and attacked Romney as racist.
MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said, “The pictures of the wholesome family there concerned about welfare cheating are white people. And the implication here is pretty clear that the people that are getting these welfare checks without working are not white people. This is the old stuff that Romney is resorting to here. It’s familiar territory. It’s Willie Horton’s stuff it’s the same old stuff Reagan used to engage in, talk about welfare queens and young bucks waiting in line with their food stamps to get vodka. I lived through all of that stuff. I know all the code. This is code.”
This is the same Chris Matthews that also said he is “uncomfortable” calling fallen soldiers “heroes.”
The numbers concerning welfare are very clear; it isn’t about race, it’s about spending money we don’t have.
CORRECTION: Chris Hayes was uncomfortable calling fallen military ‘heroes,’ not Chris Matthews.