Tyrone Woods was one of the men murdered at the State Department facility in Benghazi, Libya. His father,Charles Woods, was spoken to at the memorial service (at Andrews Air Force Base) by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden.
Charles Woods did not perceive very much remorse or genuine sympathy on the part of these politicians. While assessing someone’s genuine level of sympathy is of course a subjective matter, what is not subjective is the actual words that are spoken…and the following words, according to Mr Woods, were spoken by Hillary Clinton:
“we’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video.”
We know now, of course, that the Benghazi attack was a pre-planned terrorist operation that had little if anything to do with the video in question. All the evidence, furthermore, is that the Obama administration was aware or should have been aware of this fact at the time, and that their strident and repeated public assertions to the contrary were either reflections of incompetence and opinion-jumping, or were actual deliberate lies. But even if it had been true that the attacks were in response to fury over the video, this would not have justified Hillary’s above statement in any way. Tyron Woods and the others were not murdered by a filmmaker; they were murdered by violent radical Muslims.
What Hillary said is directly analogous to a WWII government official attempting to comfort the grieving father of a soldier killed in battle with Nazi forces by saying:
“we’re going to have Charlie Chaplin arrested and prosecuted for making that movie (The Great Dictator) that got the Nazis so upset with us”
Hillary’s remarks should be offensive not only to all Americans but also to all people everywhere who care about individual freedom.
And what is this about a Secretary of State and a President reaching down N levels into the bureaucracy and demanding that a probation violator be arrested because of his political “crimes”? This is something we would have expected in the Third Reich or in Stalin’s Russia, not in the United States of America.
This administration’s handling of the Benghazi affair makes very clear, as if it wasn’t clear enough already, just how little respect this administration has for the lives and liberties of citizens.
These people are truly morally deficient, in a major way.
Related:
–my post What Century is This?
–Don Sensing, a former Army artillery officer, on the Benghazi attack and Flash traffic
I am reading around the Net that Obama may have been actively arming al Queda and the SEALs had laser targeted these terrorists, with a C130 Spector gunship overhead and forthem to not get the clearance to fire had to come from the President. Nothing proven though – yet.
This Administration is composed of totalitarian wannabes. In addition, these despicable people are moral lepers of the worst kind.
The problem is that the US government has shied away from doing the first step in confronting this problem and that is in identifying the difference between targets of war and their human shields. The questions are simple:
1. Do you believe that your religious courts have universal jurisdiction?
2. Do you believe that your religious justice system has the right to enforce physical penalties such as beatings, amputations, and even death, independent of, and even in spite of secular law?
3. Do you believe that ordinary believers are proper enforcers of religious court judgments of physical punishment?
If people answer yes to number 1, that’s not a big deal. They are merely potential problems without further yes answers
If people answer yes to number 2, they should be excluded from the West absent some sort of religious agreement that holds such enforcement actions in abeyance.
If people answer yes to number 3, they are self-nominating as judicial officers and when they act in that capacity should be treated as if they were officers of a foreign court come over to impose foreign law on us.
I have no doubt that there are plenty of muslims who could pass a reasonable screening test. I am confident that these are the majority of muslims. But we don’t even ask the questions. We have known for over a decade that we need to but we simply don’t do it. This is profoundly disrespectful of all those who have died.
Sorry, I find that quote from Hillary Clinton highly implausible. Maybe she said they would prosecute “those responsible” and maybe the father also thought she held the filmmaker responsible, in her comments, but I truly doubt that she promised to prosecute the filmmaker. C’mon, do you really believe that the Secretary of State would make such a promise to the father? Even as she was repeating to the world over and over again that the making of the film was legal under American law, but reprehensible in her opinion? Even though the fallout of the administration trying to interfere with the local police in California or wherever this guy lives would be a huge and unnecessary scandal?
You people really believe what you want to believe. I’m very sorry for this guy and I understand him even believing, in his time of grief, that that is what she implied, but I can’t believe that YOU do.
Sorry, I find that quote from Hillary Clinton highly implausible.
Let’s see if she denies saying it.
Doggo…it’s been several days since Charles Wood’s statement was reported. One would think that if it were incorrect, her office would have already issued a disclaimer.
The attempt to blame the violence on the video was very strong on the part of the Obama administration in the period after the attack, including something like 5 appearances on news programs by the UN ambassador to transmit that message.
Regarding “interference with the local police,” the charges on which the guy was on probation were *federal* charges.
Why would she bother denying it, only to set herself up to be accused by you people of “calling a grieving father a liar?” assuming she even knows that he made that claim. She won’t deny it and that will be your “proof,” but I just want to warn you that you look really foolish to people who are not zealots. George Bush never denied that he personally planned the September 11th attacks to help out a Jewish real estate magnate either. Just try applying some common sense. Even if everyone in the Obama administration is as nefarious as you imagine, they wouldn’t want their fingerprints anywhere near the arrest nor the release of the filmmaker. How does it help them in any way that he was arrested?
It doesn’t, Doggo – but the fact that he was arrested, and the arrest was so public … any comment by HRC would be superfluous. The blame on the filmmaker was trumpeted pretty thuroughly by the administration’s designated mouthpiece on the Sunday morning political shows. What Charles Woods reported was congruent with the Obama administration party line in the days following the Benghazi debacle.
Although your point about accusation and denial is taken. One of the stories told about LBJ was about him (IIRC) directing one of his political flunkies to accuse an opponent of committing a sexually indecent act, and saying, “I just want to hear him deny it.”
From PowerLine:
“Based on his decades of service as a federal prosecutor, (Bill Otis) tells me that that probation violators routinely get a pass on violations far more serious and suggestive of renewed criminality than making a perfectly legal (and, some would think, First Amendment-protected) video. But the producer of this particular video was hustled off to the slammer in no time.
The government’s motive is not difficult to discern. As Bill explains, Team Obama wanted to maintain, and embellish upon, its campaign narrative that anti-American terrorists have been largely vanquished, and that the attack Benghazi was not terrorism, but rather a spontaneous response to an internet video mocking Islam.”
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2012/10/benghazigate-produces-a-whiff-of-tyranny.php
It would be harder to believe if Obama hadn’t mentioned the film 6 times at the UN, if both hadn’t broadcast an apology to Pakistan (paid with our tax money), and if both seemed to understand the 1st Amendment. This is how you do it – this is how opposing opinions are treated. I’m not so sure that is how our leaders believe they should be.
A comprehensive article on the Benghazi affair in The Jerusalem Times:
http://blogs.jpost.com/content/benghazi-october-surprise
Multiple press organizations had covered the fact that the terms of his probation included 1) not using the internet and 2) not using any fake identities, based on his original conviction for fraud. It was obvious to everyone that he had violated both. Gee, I’m so surprised that the federal prosecutors didn’t just let the obvious evidence of his parole violation slide.
I’m sure his arrest was “political,” but it was the mundane politics of the prosecutor’s office not wanting to be seen ignoring a clear probation violation that was pointed out by the press in a very high profile way. I’m sure the federal prosecutor would also rather have NOT arrested him, but that would have sent a rather bad message to other parolees, and would make them seem to give him preferential treatment…which I’m sure somehow could have been spun into an indictment of the Obama administration by you guys.
In good faith, Doggo, it is you who sound like the unthinking zealot. You are throwing anything you can against the wall hoping something will stick and keep the skirts of your beloved president clean. (How’s that for a mixed metaphor!) You ignore everything you can’t spin, and, without any justification whatsoever, pyschoanalyze Mr. Woods from afar and assume he can’t understand plain English. (I wonder whether you would have done the same to Cindy Sheehan.) Your “arguments” are so finely spun (the prosecutor’s not wanting to seem soft to other paroless!) they can only be produced by a person trying desperately to convince himself of something he really doesn’t believe in his heart. BTW, the filmmaker in question was not on parole; he was on probation, a key leagal distinction.
Silly me. I know in my town when the press covers someone violating the law on camera, the police often just let it slide. It fits with the image they want to project.
So I’m sure you are right, A week AFTER the white house had started calling the Benghazi attack an act of terror, Hillary Clinton called up the federal prosecutor, “Hey, go arrest that filmmaker on trumped up (but legitimate) charges, so we can whip up a whole new round of coverage about Benghazi in general, and that bring more focus to that thing we said originally but aren’t saying anymore.”
Don’t worry; I’ll leave you to your echo chamber, now. I was just trying to help you out by letting you know you sound a little goofy and desperate to those of us on the outside.
Silly right wingers! Prosecutorial discretion is for *immigration* violations, not *probation* violations!
That’s why people who sneak in to the country can give their full names and U.S. addresses in any newspaper interview, tv interview, or testimony before Congress before vanishing back into the shadows, confident that if federal prosecutors take any action it will be to sue any state or local jurisdiction that tries to get immigration laws enforced.
In the case of a violation of probation after conviction for a white collar crime, by contrast, the feds are Constitutionally obligated to arrest the violator in front of a camera crew and have the President denounce the scoundrel in front of the world.
Doggo, your loyalty has been noticed and the $534 billion green energy contract you have bid on has been closed to further bidding. Welcome to the family.
Just in case you are still listening, Doggo, let me correct your facts. Nakoula (let’s at least give him the dignity of using his name) was arrested very late on the night of September 26, one day after BO, in his UN speech, blamed the attack in Benghazi on Nakoula’s film multiple times. Had someone in BO’s Administration also called it a terror attack? Perhaps, but, God knows, BO often speaks with forked tongue.
At the ceremony at which the bodies of the victims of the Benghazi terrorist attack were returned HC declared:
“This has been a difficult week for the State Department and for our country. We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing to do with.”
HC’s statement is, of course, cleverly worded. She does not, in so many words, blame the video for the Benghazi attack. She blames it for “rage and violence directed at American embassies.” This gives the impression that she’s blaming the video for the Benghazi attack, but gives her an out, since Benghazi was a consulate, not an embassy. Again, BO’s Administration speaks with forked tongue. The same goes for HC’s declaring the film legal, while promising Mr. Woods to go after Nakoula.
Even so, you want us to believe you, not Mr. Woods, because you find HC’s saying what he said she said “highly implausible?” It’s highly plausible given what the woman said (and/or implied) in public at the same ceremony. Of course, the fact that Nakoula actually was arrested and is in still in stir this very moment is just a coincidence, the result of a Federal Attorney’s get tough approach with probation violators. (BTW, another factual error, Nakoula did not violate the law; he violated his probation.)
You must assume that Mr. Woods was either in a stupor or is just plain dumb to believe he misunderstood HC, and you have no evidence for either. In fact, you make about a zillion assumptions in all your “arguments” based, as far as I can tell, only on some vague general ideas about how the world operates (or should operate) — ideas designed, of course, to spare your beloved BO from any responsibility for anything bad that happens.
Once again, it’s you who sounds “goofy.” Please go back and join your fellow True Believers in the Pauline Kael Memorial Echo Chamber and leave us alone to have sensible discussions about reality.
Doggo – The Hilary quote isn’t a quote. It is a paraphrase by the father of one of the dead. Quotation marks are appropriate in that Charles Woods said those words, not Hillary Clinton. Perhaps that might ease your mind on that issue. I’m not sure what you’re trying to get at with Nakoula. He’s a federal probationer. Normal procedure is for him to get a phone call and come in during normal working hours. Instead, a county police force that is in horrible financial shape (as is all of California) paid 5 officers to pay a midnight visit to Nakoula’s home while the press was notified. This sends all kinds of messages, none of them good.
Nakoula’s outside of range of Islamist assassins for now and we’ll eventually find out whether he got prior authorization to do the things he did. He might have. He might not have. The actual terms of his probation (I’ve read them) say that he can do all of this but only with prior approval. Was prior approval given? I am doubtful but that’s going to come out in his revocation hearing after the election. In any case, dumping the blame off on Nakoula doesn’t make sense. He was just a convenient fellow in the wrong place at the wrong time. The attack didn’t really have anything to do with Nakoula’s video. And if Hillary Clinton didn’t know it by the funeral, she should have as a matter of basic competence.
So go read Nakoula’s probation terms if you don’t trust my characterization of them. But don’t continue discussing Nakoula and what he did wrong without figuring out the facts. You currently don’t seem to have them.
I’m pretty confident that a probation officer would not give someone convicted of fraud “prior authorization” to use a fake name for any reason, let alone a business venture (which a movie is). But you can rest your hopes on that theory, if you like.
I didn’t realize that you guys had gone so far as to convince yourselves that Nakoula was a good guy. It doesn’t bother you that he tried to direct the inevitable backlash from the movie towards Jews, by telling the press (after the violence had already started) that the director was an Israeli Jew and that the movie was funded by 100 wealthy American Jews–when neither of those things was true? It doesn’t bother you that he lied to the actors about the nature of the movie– putting their lives at risk– but used a fake name, probably to protect himself and his family? I suppose his original fraud conviction was some Obama plot, too?
I don’t recall that anyone has indicated they like him or what he did. That is beside the point. The issues are his treatment and the official use of this trailer as the proximate cause of what was a preplanned terrorist attack that killed diplomatic personnel, including a US ambassador. His apparent probation violation did not merit setting him up as a revenge target through a media staged video op and the film was never the cause of any terrorist attack. That just doesn’t seem that complicated to me.
Mike
Doggo – Whether Nakoula violated parole is subject to a judicial hearing. It’s customary for neutral, sober, honest people to withhold judgment until evidence is actually produced and then judge one way or another. This holds true even when the accused is a thief and a con man. It’s just part of the normal innocent until proven guilty american standard of justice. It is even more important to hold that standard when powerful people are visibly, publicly putting their thumb on the scales of justice to convict an accused before he’s had his day in court. If you have a problem with innocent until proven guilty and my adherence to that standard that says more about you than me.