Dots

From the very first day that the Arab spring began, many observers (including me) warned that Barack Obama's naive view of the events would lead to serious problems in the Middle East. But Obama and his supporters on the Left believed that a group liberal college students using Facebook and Twitter could defeat well-organized and well armed Islamists in the political arena. They were wrong.

Now, as Israel rightly acts to stop cross border rocket attacks by Hamas and at the same time remove long range rockets from their weapons cache, the region's temperature heats up dangerously. Arab Spring-like protests in Jordon are on the rise. The Obama-supported Islamist government in Egypt is making noises about supporting Hamas militarily, and Syria is launching rockets (however inadvertently) into Israel.

In the aftermath of Benghazi, some curious things are happening with regard to our military and intelligence leadership in the region. Richard Fernandez explains:

Meanwhile the Obama administration is carrying out an undeclared personnel revamp of key military and intelligence figures in the Middle East.

RADM Charles Gaouette, USN, Commander of the Stennis battlegroup, recalled Oct 17, 2012 as his force entered the Fifth Fleet’s area of operations. “The Fifth Fleet of the United States Navy is responsible for naval forces in the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Arabian Sea, and coast off East Africa as far south as Kenya.”

General Carter Ham, USA, AfricaCom. Replacement announced Oct 18, 2012.

General John Allen, USMC, ISAF Commander, linked to ‘inappropriate’ emails, mid-November, 2012.

David Petraeus, Director, Central Intelligence Agency, resigned November 9, 2012.

General William E. Ward USA, former AfricaCom commander, demotion announced Nov 13, 2012.

All of these changes occurred after Benghazi and some of the players may have been directly involved in any order to "stand down" as the consulate was under attack. Are these changes directly linked to Benghazi, and if so, how? If they are not, does it make sense to replace five flag officers at such perilous time?

The dots just keep popping up but "the most transparent administration ever" is trying very hard to discourage us from connecting them. Let's hope that a few people in congress and possibly one or two real journalists will try. Benghazigate is a true scandal and has all of the elements of Watergate—shady activity, an administration cover-up, good people doing what appear to be very odd things, firings, and one more thing that Watergate didn't have: one dead U.S Ambassador and three other dead Americans.

Where are Woodward and Bernstein when you need them?

Update:
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Today, General David Patraeus, head of the CIA at the time, testified under oath that he knew that Benghazi was a terrorist attack from the beginning, and yet, someone changed the story line over the 11 days that followed the attack. Jennifer Rubin comments:

Sometimes a dastardly conspiracy is just a dastardly conspiracy. Indeed the Benghazi episode, at least the response to the attack, is beginning to look more and more like the work of a partisan cabal afraid of upsetting the president’s reelection prospects, exactly as conservative critics have been saying for two months.

Of course, supporters of the President scoff at this, but provide absolutely no explanation for the misinformation campaign except to say that things we unclear. No. They. Weren't. And any indication to the contrary was purposeful deception on the part of Barack Obama, Jay Carney, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice, not to mention dozens of other Obama flaks. The question is why?

Again, Rubin asks a few pertinent questions relative to the talking points that caused the administration to insist that Benghazi was a movie review gone bad:

Watergate had the tape with the 18 1/2-minute gap, and now we have the mystery of the talking points. This raises a slew of questions including these:

* If they were changed, who changed them?

* Why were they changed?

* Did the president know or approve of the changes?

* If Petraeus saw that they were changed, why did he not come forward sooner?

* If other senior officials were aware of the change in story, why didn’t they alert others, Congress or the American people?

* What was national security adviser Thomas Donilon’s role in this?

* Did U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice have access to the original talking points and/or was she aware they had been changed?

* If she didn’t know anything other than the talking points and had no operational responsibility for Benghazi, what was she doing on the talk-show circuit on Sept. 16?

* What information did the secretary of state have and when did she have it. If she, like Petraeus, knew what the real origin of the attack was, why weren’t she and her press staff being more forthright with the public?

* Fox reports that Petraeus’s agency “determined immediately that ‘Al Qaeda involvement’ was suspected.” If the CIA knew immediately that it was a terrorist attack, why did the White House press secretary insist on Sept. 14 it was all about the anti-Muslim video? Why did the president take the same approach in interviews with Univision and “60 Minutes”?