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Re: US ambassador to Libya ‘killed’ in rocket attack
Very strange world.Originally posted by radon View Post
I can't help but think the current administration's fence sitting of trying to juggle both support for the Arab Spring as well as support for entrenched regimes is coming back to bite the US on the ass.
It makes me think of the cliche of "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
But I reckon the road has come to a fork, a short cut route of the US supporting the Arab Spring, or the long route of the US supporting the continuity of entrenched regimes....either way I reckon the destination is the same.Comment
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Re: US ambassador to Libya ‘killed’ in rocket attack
How do we know? Just we we send CIA into other countries to get the 'dirty work' done, how do we know it is not the Egytians or Iranians or ???Originally posted by radon View Post
And as to 'free speech', well, we seem to have our own issues within our own borders nowadays when Occupy protesters get arrested and charged as 'low-level terrorists' and former vets get 'arrested' and locked up in psych wards with no due process.
Just as we see those in the ME as a bunch of backward Koran nutty kooks, they see us as corrupt, god angering infidels. different strokes for different folks. I personally wonder what the US response will be when we 'infidels' get attacked with small drones ourselves, built with off the shelf parts, and piloted by GPS with small but lethal payloads into critical infrastructure.
Yes, it truly is a strange world.
I often wonder exactly WHAT the Obama foreign policy is... Which 'bad guy' is 'our bad guy' thus making him a 'good guy'. There seems to be no overall concept of what to do in the ME from the Obama Admin whatsoever.Originally posted by lakedaemonian View PostComment
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Re: US ambassador to Libya ‘killed’ in rocket attack
Congressman: Embassy attack in Libya was coordinated
Congressman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., went as far Wednesday to say the attack had all the hallmarks of al-Qaida.
"This was a coordinated attack, more of a commando style event. It had both coordinated fire, direct fire, indirect fire," Rogers said following an intelligence briefing on Capitol Hill.
Other sources, including officials at the Pentagon and the State Department, are also discussing the possibility that it was a planned operation, and some say several developments support the possibility.
The incident does not appear to be a random mob scene, but rather an opportunity that militants seized, sources say. The attackers used a rocket-propelled grenade, a weapon not traditionally carried by protesters, but commonly used by terrorists.
The attack is believed to have come in two waves. The first wave got inside of the compound, and a second wave penetrated a secure location inside the building. This development raises questions about how the attackers knew the location of that secure facility, sources say.
On Sept. 11, al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri put out a video eulogizing Abu Yahya al-Libi, an Islamist terrorist and high-ranking al-Qaida member, who was killed in a drone attack in June. Sources have said they believe the Libyan incident might have been revenge for the death of al-Libi.
The embassy was housed in a local building that had been contracted temporarily. It was not an "Inman" compound, which is a building designed with certain security protocols, such as "standoff" distances between the public street and the actual facility.Comment
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Re: US ambassador to Libya ‘killed’ in rocket attack
Mystery deepens over US film linked to Benghazi protests
Cast say they were misled as evidence suggests film was post- dubbed and questions arise over funding and identity of director
- Rory Carroll in Los Angeles
- guardian.co.uk,
The anti-Islamic video that inflamed mayhem in Egypt and Libya and triggered a diplomatic crisis is at the centre of a growing mystery over whether it is a real film – or was ever intended to be.
Initial reports about The Innocence of Muslims being a $5m production made by an Israeli-American director named Sam Bacile unravelled on Wednesday as ruins of the US consulate in Benghazi continued to smoulder.
Bacile – originally described as a California-based Jewish real estate developer – appeared to be a fake identity, and Hollywood could find no trace of his supposed feature-length attack on the prophet Muhammad. The blasphemous, 13-minute "trailer" posted online – a ramshackle compilation of scenes which depicted Muhammad as an illegitimate, murderous paedophile – was real, but there was growing doubt that a film existed.
The puzzle left the US and Arab world confronting the possibility the crisis was triggered, if not conjured, by a cheap trick. The one undisputed fact was that in July a video in English was posted on YouTube under the pseudonym "Sam Bacile". He entered his age as 75.
It comprised clumsily overdubbed and haphazardly-edited scenes. "Among the overdubbed words is 'Mohammed', suggesting that the footage was taken from a film about something else entirely. The footage also suggests multiple video sources — there are obvious and jarring discrepancies among actors and locations, " wrote Buzzfeed's Rosie Gray.
That analysis appeared to be bolstered when a statement in the name of cast and crew was issued, distancing them from the footage. "We are 100% not behind this film, and were grossly misled about its intent and purpose. We are shocked by the drastic re-writes of the script and lies that were told to all involved. We are deeply saddened by the tragedies that have occurred."
Cindy Lee Garcia, an actress from Bakersfield, California, who had a small role in the video, told Gawker she had no idea she was participating in an offensive spoof on the life of Muhammed when she answered an agency's casting call last summer. The script was titled Desert Warriors, she said, and contained no mention of Islam.
"It was going to be a film based on how things were 2,000 years ago. It wasn't based on anything to do with religion – it was just on how things were run in Egypt. There wasn't anything about Muhammed or Muslims or anything."
The character who on the YouTube clip was called Muhammad was in filming called "Master George," Garcia said. The words Muhammed and apparently all offensive references to Islam and Muhammed were dubbed afterwards.
The actor said she was horrified that four US embassy employees, including the ambassador, died in Benghazi. "I had nothing to do, really, with anything. Now we have people dead because of a movie I was in. It makes me sick."
She said the director, who went by the name Sam Bacile, claimed to be an Israeli real estate tycoon, but later told her he was Egyptian. He had white hair and spoke Arabic as well as English. He was keen that Master George – aka Muhmmad – be depicted in the worst possible light, she said.
Hollywood agencies said they had never heard of the film.
After a mob attacked the US compound in Benghazi, AP reported an interview with Bacile who said he was in hiding. He described himself as an Israeli-born Jewish writer. Israeli officials however said they had no record of such a person.
"Nobody knows who he is," Yigal Palmor, the spokesman for the Israeli foreign ministry, told the New York Times in a telephoned statement: "He is totally unknown in filmmaking circles in Israel. And anything he did — he is not doing it for Israel, or with Israel, or through Israel in any way." He added the filmmaker was "a complete loose cannon and an unspeakable idiot."
AP stood by its story. "We continue to report this story and gather new information to explain the origins of the movie and the individuals behind it," said AP spokesman Paul Colford. "More coverage to follow …"
Speculation centred on the possibility that Bacile was a member of Egypt's Orthodox Coptic Christian diaspora in the US. A self-described "consultant" on the film, Steve Klein, an insurance salesman from Hemet, California, gave interviewers conflicting details about Bacile and the film.
Klein, an author and anti-Islamic activist who claims to have led a "hunter-killer team" in Vietnam, was consistent in saying Bacile was not Jewish.
Jim Horn, a fellow anti-Islamic activist who knows Klein, told the Guardian Klein worked closely with expatriate Copts. "He's been helping them to stand up for themselves against Islamic terror in Egypt. That's what he does."
Origins of Provocative Video Are Shrouded
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
LOS ANGELES — The film that set off violence across North Africa was made in obscurity somewhere in the sprawl of Southern California, and promoted by a network of right-wing Christians with a history of animosity directed toward Muslims. When a 14-minute trailer of it — all that may actually exist — was posted on YouTube in June, it was barely noticed.
But when the video, with its almost comically amateurish production values, was translated into Arabic and reposted twice on YouTube in the days before Sept. 11, and promoted by leaders of the Coptic diaspora in the United States, it drew nearly one million views and set off bloody demonstrations.
The history of the film — who financed it; how it was made; and perhaps most important, how it was translated into Arabic and posted on YouTube to Muslim viewers — was shrouded Wednesday in tales of a secret Hollywood screening; a director who may or may not exist, and used a false name if he did; and actors who appeared, thanks to computer technology, to be traipsing through Middle Eastern cities. One of its main producers, Steve Klein, a Vietnam veteran whose son was severely wounded in Iraq, is notorious across California for his involvement with anti-Muslim actions, from the courts to schoolyards to a weekly show broadcast on Christian radio in the Middle East.
Yet as much of the world was denouncing the violence that had spread across the Middle East, Mr. Klein — an insurance salesman in Hemet, Calif., a small town two hours east of here — proclaimed the video a success at portraying what he has long argued was the infamy of the Muslim world, even as he chuckled at the film’s amateur production values.
“We have reached the people that we want to reach,” he said in an interview. “And I’m sure that out of the emotion that comes out of this, a small fraction of those people will come to understand just how violent Muhammad was, and also for the people who didn’t know that much about Islam. If you merely say anything that’s derogatory about Islam, then they immediately go to violence, which I’ve experienced.”
Mr. Klein has a long history of making controversial and erroneous claims about Islam. He said the film had been shown at a screening at a theater “100 yards or so” from Grauman’s Chinese Theater in Hollywood over the summer, drawing what he suggested was a depressingly small audience. He declined to specify what theater might have shown it, and theater owners in the vicinity of the busy strip said they had no record of any such showing.
The amateurish video opens with scenes of Egyptian security forces standing idle as Muslims pillage and burn the homes of Coptic Christians. Then it cuts to cartoonish scenes depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a child of uncertain parentage, a buffoon, a womanizer, a homosexual, a child molester and a greedy, bloodthirsty thug.
Even as Mr. Klein described his role in the film as incidental, James Horn, a friend who has worked with Mr. Klein in anti-Muslim activities for several years, said he believed Mr. Klein was involved in providing technical assistance to the film and advice on the script. Mr. Horn said he called Mr. Klein on Wednesday. “I said, ‘Steve, did you do this?’ He said, ‘Yep.’ ”
As the movie, “Innocence of Muslims,” drew attention across the globe, it was unclear whether a full version exists. Executives at Hollywood agencies said they had never heard of it. Hollywood unions said they had no involvement. Casting directors said they did not recognize the actors in the 14-minute YouTube clip that purports to be a trailer for a longer film. Production offices had no records for a movie of that name. There was a 2009 casting call in BackStage, however, for a film called “Desert Warrior” whose producer is listed as Sam Bassiel.
That name is quite similar to the one that Mr. Klein, in the interview, said was the director of his film. He spelled it Sam Basile, though he added that was not the director’s real name. Mr. Klein said he met Mr. Basile while scouting mosques in Southern California, “locating who I thought were terrorists.”
An actress who played the role of a mother in the film said in an interview that the director had originally told cast members that the film was “Desert Warriors” and would depict ancient life. Now, she said, she feels duped, angry and sad. “When I looked at the trailer, it was nothing like what we had done. There was not even a character named Muhammad in what we originally put together,” said the actress, who asked that her name not be used for fear of her safety.
She said she had spoken on Wednesday to the film’s director, whose last name she said was spelled Basil. She said he told her that he made the film because he was upset with Muslims killing innocent people.
The original idea for the film, Mr. Klein said, was to lure hard-core Muslims into a screening of the film thinking they were seeing a movie celebrating Islam. “And when they came in they would see this movie and see the truth, the facts, the evidence and the proof,” he said. “So I said, yeah, that’s a good idea.”
Among the film’s promoters was Terry Jones, the Gainesville, Fla., preacher whose burning of the Koran led to widespread protests in Afghanistan. Mr. Jones said Wednesday that he has not seen the full video.
Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Mr. Jones on Wednesday and asked him to consider withdrawing his support for the video. Mr. Jones described the conversation as “cordial,” but said he had not decided what he would do because he had yet to see the full film.
The Southern Poverty Law Center said Mr. Klein taught combat training to members of California’s Church at Kaweah, which the center described as a “a combustible mix of guns, extreme antigovernment politics and religious extremism” and an institution that had an “obsession with Muslims.”
Warren Campbell, the pastor of the church, said that Mr. Klein had come to the congregation twice to talk about Islam. He said the law center’s report on his church was filled “with distortions and lies.” The center also said that Mr. Klein was the founder of Courageous Christians United, which conducts demonstrations outside abortion clinics, Mormon temples and mosques. Mr. Klein also has ties to the Minuteman movement.
Mr. Horn said Mr. Klein was motivated by the near-death of his son, who Mr. Horn said had served in the United States Army in Iraq and was wounded in Falluja. “That cemented Steve’s feelings about it,” he said.
Although Mr. Horn described Mr. Klein as connected to the Coptic community in Los Angeles — and Morris Sadek, the leader of a Washington-based Coptic organization, had promoted the film on the Web — Bishop Serapion of the Coptic Orthodox Diocese of Los Angeles said he did not know of Mr. Klein. “We condemn this film,” he said. “Our Christian teaching is we have to respect people of other faiths.”
Reporting was contributed by Brooks Barnes, Michael Cieply and Ian Lovett from Los Angeles; Jason Henry from Gainesville, Fla.; Lizette Alvarez from Miami; Serge F. Kovaleski and Andrea Elliott from New York; and Elisabeth Bumiller from Washington. Kitty Bennett and Jack Styczynski contributed research from New York.Last edited by don; September 13, 2012, 06:29 AM.Comment
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Re: US ambassador to Libya ‘killed’ in rocket attack
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innocence_of_MuslimsComment
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Re: US ambassador to Libya ‘killed’ in rocket attack
a target rich environment, eh . . . .
Mr Blowback rising in Benghazi
By Pepe Escobar
"Daddy, what is blowback?"
Here's a fable to tell our children, by the fire, in a not so-distant post-apocalyptic, dystopian future.
Once upon a time, during George "Dubya" Bush's "war on terra", the Forces of Good in Afghanistan captured - and duly tortured - one evil terrorist, Abu Yahya al-Libi.
Abu Yahya al-Libi was, of course, Libyan. He slaved three years in the bowels of Bagram prison near Kabul, but somehow managed to escape that supposedly impregnable fortress in July 2005.
At the time, the Forces of Good were merrily in bed with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya - whose intelligence services, to the delight of the Bush administration, were doing their nastiest to exterminate or at least isolate al-Qaeda-style Salafi-jihadis of the al-Libi kind.
But, then, in 2011, the Forces of Good, under new administration, decided it was time to bury the oh so passe "war on terra" and dance to a new, more popular groove; humanitarian intervention, also characterized as "kinetic military action".
So al-Libi was back from the dead - now fighting side by side with the Forces of Good to topple (and eventually snuff out) "evil" Col Gaddafi. Al-Libi had become a "freedom fighter" - even though he was openly calling for Libya to become an Islamic Emirate.
The honeymoon didn't last long.
In September 2012, for the first time in three months, al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, aka The Surgeon, released a 42-minute video special to "celebrate" the 11th anniversary of 9/11, finally admitting the snuffing out of his number two.
His number two was none other than Abu Yahya al-Libi - targeted by one of US President Barack Obama's cherished drones in Waziristan on June 4.
An immediate effect of al-Zawahiri's video was that an angry armed mob, led by Islamist outfit Ansar al Sharia, set fire to the US consulate in Benghazi. The US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was killed. It didn't matter that Stevens happened to be a hero of the "NATO rebels" who had "liberated" Libya - notoriously sprinkled with Salafi-jihadis of the al-Libi kind.
Stevens was rewarded by Washington with the ambassadorial post only after "evil" Gaddafi was finally sodomized, lynched and killed by, what else, an angry mob.
So finally the blowback serpent was able to bite its own tail.
Terra, terra, terra
What happened in Benghazi may have been just an out-of-control protest against a crude, amateur, made-in-California movie produced and directed by an Israeli-American real estate developer and certified Islamophobe (an identity now being reported as a guise), financed with US$5 million from unidentified Jewish donors, depicting Islam "as a cancer" and Prophet Muhammad as a womanizer, a pedophile and most of all, a fraud. The movie was duly promoted by wacko Florida pastor and Koran-burning freak Terry Jones.
Yet the killing of the US ambassador in Libya is just an hors d'oeuvre to what may happen in Syria - where scores of "freedom fighters" supported by the CIA, the Turks and the House of Saud are al-Qaeda-linked, either via the supposedly reformist Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) or acronym-infested subcontracting gangs such as Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) or al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQIM).
So how will Washington "bring the perpetrators to justice" in Libya? After all this is the same gang that was hailed as "heroes" when they sodomized, lynched and snuffed out "evil" Gaddafi.
Asia Times Online has been warning for over a year about blowback in Libya - and potentially in Syria, where medieval Saudi sheikhs frantically issue fatwas legitimating a widespread massacre of "infidel" Alawites. This is all a rerun of the same old 1980s' Afghan jihad movie; first you call them "freedom fighters", but when they attack us they revert to being "terrorists".
Now we have NATO-armed Salafi-jihadis in Libya, and House of Saud-financed and Turkey-based Salafi-jihadis in Syria - deploying "terra" antics such as suicide bombers to bring down the Assad regime - all wired up and ready to roll. It certainly adds a new meaning to Obama's "kinetic action" gig.
Blowback - as in Afghanistan - might have taken years. This time Mr Blowback reared its ugly head in only a few months. And that's just the beginning.
So what now? Who're you gonna bomb? Who're you gonna drone to death? What about bombing Benghazi a year after condemning Gaddafi to death because he might have threatened to ... bomb Benghazi?
Ask US Secretary of State Hillary "We came, he saw, he died" Clinton, who claims to talk on behalf of the "Libyan people". Maybe she will come up with a policy of retroactively aligning the US with Gaddafi.
And since this is an electoral year, why not ask invisible former president Bush himself? After all, he proclaimed on September 20, 2001 that "either you are with us, or you are with the terra-rists."
Well, Mr Blowback would say, beware of what you get when you are in bed with the terra-rists.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_.../NI14Dj01.htmlComment
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Re: US ambassador to Libya ‘killed’ in rocket attack
Sometimes I wonder if it is less policy mistake/error/drift and more jail break due to the warden getting old.Originally posted by lakedaemonian View PostComment
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Re: US ambassador to Libya ‘killed’ in rocket attack
Last time I checked, humans are humans.Originally posted by Ghent12 View Post
Your comment reminds me of Rumsfeld's quip about the "humanity of smart bombs" as the US military started to rain down explosives on the civilians of Baghdad. Hell of a way to look for "weapons of mass destruction".
If you don't try to understand why they are attacking your Embassies and consulates, you shouldn't be surprised when they once again bring this war back onto American soil. And they will.Last edited by GRG55; September 13, 2012, 10:28 AM.Comment
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Re: US ambassador to Libya ‘killed’ in rocket attack
I am only familiar with the security protocols in the Persian Gulf. At the USA embassy in the country where I lived the areas outside the embassy building wall itself is under local security. That includes the area outside the compound security wall and the exterior spaces inside the wall of the compound. The interior of the embassy was guarded by US Marines. The use of live ammunition by the Marines has to be given by a higher authority...I understood this to be the Ambassador himself, but I am pretty sure it required consultations with Pentagon and State Dept officials first. I doubt the consular offices have the same high levels of security as the embassies.Originally posted by flintlock View Post
What I don't understand in the case of Cairo is why the security wall wasn't equipped with anti-climb provisions. I thought that would be standard practice for any USA embassy with a security wall...Comment
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Re: US ambassador to Libya ‘killed’ in rocket attack
If you think absolutely nobody should ever be killed under any circumstance, then I will not be able to pursued you otherwise. In fact, I hope that no dire situation, such as a home invasion, ever befalls you and provides the impetus for you to change your belief. If, however, you believe that there are some circumstances in which humans may be intentionally killed by others, then your first sentence is a nonissue in this discussion.Originally posted by GRG55 View Post
It does matter who you kill and why you kill them. Have they invaded your home or believably threatened to kill you? Self defense. Have they murdered someone? Capital punishment. Are they engaged in a war against your nation? Warfare. Have they started their life cycle processes inside of you? Abortion.
Those are some of the common reasons for justifying the death of another human being. You are free to pick any, all, or none of those or maybe even others as your reasons to justify the intentional killing of another human being. But if you say that no intentional killing is ever justified, then I will certainly have to disagree.
As for the reason why we are being attacked, it seems simple enough. We keep picking sides rather than staying out of the innumerable conflicts and squabbles over there. That and the barbarians can hold grudges for a very, very long time.Comment
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Re: US ambassador to Libya ‘killed’ in rocket attack
An ever increasing number of people in the Middle East, now in the millions, think this is exactly what the USA is doing to them. Get it?Originally posted by Ghent12 View PostComment
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Re: US ambassador to Libya ‘killed’ in rocket attack
And although we so casually dismiss "collateral damage", we've killed quite a few innocent people these past years in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen. We're very upset when one of ours is killed; it's headline news. Multiply that among the "barbarians" a few thousand times, without the headlines.Originally posted by Ghent12 View PostComment
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Re: US ambassador to Libya ‘killed’ in rocket attack
Yes, we're at war with a lot of people. I get it. Then again, we didn't invade Saudi Arabia, but that's why the twin towers fell. We are up against barbarians who value very, very different things from ourselves.Comment
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