DOWNLOADS: (109)

PLAYS: (432)

Embed

The man who was vice president during the Sept. 11 attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in 2001 says that last year's attack in Benghazi was "one of the worst incidences, frankly, that I can recall in my career."

In an interview on Fox News on Monday, former Vice President Dick Cheney accused President Barack Obama and his administration of lying about the attack in Benghazi and then staging a cover up to hide the lies.

"They lied," Cheney said. "They claimed it was because of a demonstration video so that they wouldn’t have to admit it was really all about their incompetence."

"I think it’s one of the worst incidents, frankly, that I can recall in my career," he insisted. "If they told the truth about Benghazi, that it was a terrorist attack by an Al-Qaeda-led group, it would destroy the confidence that was the basis of his campaign for reelection."

"They were trying to perpetuate this fiction that there was no terrorist threat because they got bin Laden and that's a lie."

DOWNLOADS: (192)

PLAYS: (2970)

Embed

I'm not sure what else Rep. Adam Smith expected to hear from host Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday this weekend, since his network has been in full fake Benghazi outrage mode ever since the attacks in Libya, and taking the insanity to new heights ever since ABC helped legitimize the witch hunt last week -- but I was glad to see Wallace get some push back for continually parroting the GOP's talking points.

Wallace's response to some of Smith's criticisms was to say "I'm not a potted plant." That's always the case when he has a Democrat on the air. Every once in a while he decides to stop acting like one when a Republican is on.

Congressman Tears Into Fox News Host For Obsessing Over Benghazi Talking Points:

Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) tore into Fox News’ Chris Wallace and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) for obsessing over the talking points U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used when talking to the media in the days following the attack in Benghazi, Libya rather than focusing on identifying the perpetrators of the killings. “I think the desire of the Republicans to create a scandal here has really undermined any ability to have a credible look at what actually happened,” Smith said during an appearance on Fox News Sunday alongside Rogers.

While acknowledging that the administration’s initial assessment of Bengazi did not reflect what officials later learned about the incident, Smith criticized Fox for suggesting that that Rice’s remarks on five Sunday news shows presented a definitive picture of the events of Sep. 11, 2012.

“[The administration] didn’t reach conclusions the way you just presented that was that by the Sunday afterwards that the administration said here is what happened, here is our conclusion,” Smith explained. “But the president never said, no terrorism, no Al Qaeda. There was a dispute about how soon to lead to specific conclusions that now is being made into Watergate and Iran-Contra.” Read on...

As they went onto explain, President Obama and Hillary Clinton did describe the attacks as terrorism. For anyone having trouble keeping track of the latest round of lies, Media Matters has updates here: The Truth About The Right's Latest Benghazi Attacks .

As Smith rightfully noted during his interview, it would be a lot more productive if they focused on what actually happened and finding those that perpetrated the attacks, rather than debating how a memo was put together. Instead, now it's not just Fox, but all of our corporate media has decided to turn this into the next big "scandal." It's disgusting to watch to put it mildly.

Transcript via Fox below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (21)

PLAYS: (64)

Embed

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-MI) on Sunday insisted that "no one is calling for military action in Syria" even though several lawmakers have called for a strike on the country's air defenses to create a no-fly zone.

During an interview on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) if the United States should "stand by and watch the slaughter continue" without taking military action.

"I have met with [Department of Defense] officials, I have looked at what the options -- at what the way the civil war is going, at how fractured the opposition is, at how Al-Qaeda is a huge part of that opposition," Smith explained. "And it's not that I'm not sure. Right now, my position is, if we were to go in there and try to arm rebel groups, it would make the situation worse and there would be an enormous risk of us getting dragged into a war that we don't know the first thing about how it would come out."

"Nobody is calling for military action in Syria. No one," Rogers declared. "There are some great options... This is not something we should be arguing about."

In fact, Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Carl Levin (D-MI) suggested earlier this month that the U.S. should take out part of Syria's air defenses to create a no-fly zone.

"No one should think that the United States has to act alone, put boots on the ground, or destroy every Syrian air defense system to make a difference for the better in Syria," McCain explained. "We have more limited options at our disposal -- including limited military options -- that can make a positive impact on this crisis."

"We could use our precision strike capabilities to target Assad's aircraft and SCUD missile launchers on the ground without our pilots having to fly into the teeth of Syria's air defenses. Similar weapons could be used to selectively destroy artillery pieces and make Assad's forces think twice about remaining at their posts. We could also use Patriot missile batteries outside of Syria to help protect safe zones inside of Syria from Assad's aerial bombing and missile attacks."

DOWNLOADS: (87)

PLAYS: (241)

Embed

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham can't seem to make up his mind on whether the United States ought to be sending ground troops into Syria, since he just contradicted himself from the statements he made to Foreign Policy last month during an interview with Bob Schieffer on CBS this Sunday. He has, however, been consistent with beating the war drums and giving dire warnings about the consequences of the United States failing to insert ourselves into the middle of their civil war.

Graham continued the fearmongering on this Sunday's Face the Nation, telling the audience they should be concerned about everything from more terrorist attacks in the United States, to extremists taking over the country and getting a hold of weapons of mass destruction.

Graham also claimed he's really worried about "all hell breaking loose" in the region if the United States fails to intervene. I hate to break it to you Lindsey, but you're a whole lot of years and a dollar short on that one. That ship sailed a long time ago.

I've got a proposal for Graham and his fellow warmongering buddy John McCain -- you first. If the two of you want to lead the charge inserting yourselves into another country's civil war without the support of the international community, you go lead the troops over there and take a spot on the front lines of the battlefield. Let us know how that works out for you.

Full transcript below the fold via CBS.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (132)

PLAYS: (977)

Embed

Former CIA Deputy Director Phillip Mudd on Sunday told Fox News that Boston bombing suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev should be charged as a murderer because the crime looked more like the 1999 massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado than an attack planned by al Qaeda.

During an interview on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked Mudd if there were signs that al Qaeda was behind the Boston Marathon bombing.

"The only fingerprint I've seen might have possible have been ideology, but not operations," Mudd explained. "But every step of the way here was pretty rudimentary. For example, if you look at some of those initial photos, you've got a kid with a hoodie and a cap. If he wants to obscure himself, the hoodie goes on, the cap forward."

"If he had operational training, I want to know who did it because they were amateurs."

Mudd added that he feared that people were being too quick to categorize the crime as terrorism.

"This looks more to me like Columbine than it does al Qaeda," the counter terrorism expert observed. "Two kids who radicalized between themselves in a closed circle go out and commit murder. I would charge these guys as murders, not terrorists."

Wallace pressed Mudd on how he could dismiss the fact that Dzokhar Tsarnaev's brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, spent six months in Russia "where there are a lot of radicals."

"I'm not writing that off," Mudd insisted. "What I'm saying is we want to categorize this... with a simple term, and at looking at the psychology of clusters like this -- which I did for 20 years -- the psychology is not that simple. It's two kids who decided, for whatever ideology, that they wanted to commit murder. And the murder piece is significant as the terrorism piece."

DOWNLOADS: (92)

PLAYS: (386)

Embed

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) says that Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzokhar Tsarnaev should be treated as an enemy combatant and does not deserve to be informed of his Miranda rights to remain silent because the "battlefield is now in the United States."

In an interview on Sunday, Fox News host Chris Wallace asked Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA) if Tsarnaev should be treated as a criminal or an enemy combatant.

Feinstein argued that providing a Miranda warning to the suspect, who is a U.S. citizen, was "the only legal way to proceed."

"I do not believe that under the military commission law that he is eligible for that," she explained. "It would be unconstitutional to do that."

But King disagreed, saying that Tsarnaev "should be treated as a enemy combatant for the purpose of interrogation."

"The reason for it is there are so many questions unanswered, there are so many potential links to terrorism here," he continued. "Also, the battlefield is now in the United States. So, I believe he is an enemy combatant."

The New York Republican added that the suspect would be tried in a civilian court and the statements taken during interrogations could not be used against him in the trial.

"But right now he is one of the only links we have in any Chechen involvement in the al Qaeda movement, in the overall Islamist movement. And we don't know, are there other conspirators out there? Are there other explosives out there? Where did they get their radicalization? Are there mosques, imams that we should be looking at? Who did his brother meet with when he was in Russia, in Chechnya? These are only questions that I believe can be obtained if he does not get is Miranda rights."

DOWNLOADS: (118)

PLAYS: (699)

Embed

Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert (R) on Wednesday connected the Monday bombings in Boston to the immigration debate and warned that "radical Islamists" were "being trained to come in and act like Hispanics."

During an interview on C-SPAN, host Greta Wodele Brawner asked the Texas Republican about a bipartisan "Gang of Eight" proposal in the Senate that would increase funding for border security by $5.5 billion over ten years and establish a 13-year pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

"What I first thought after my prayers went for the victims and the families in Boston is, 'My gosh, we've seen this in Israel,'" Gohmert recalled. "And after Israel had to suffer the slings and arrows and the deaths and the maimings... Finally the Israeli people said, 'You know what? Enough.' They built, over 70 percent of it is just a fence, and the rest is a wall, prevents snipers from knocking off their kids. And they finally stopped the domestic violence from people that wanted to destroy them."

"And I'm concerned we need to do that as well," he insited.

Pressing Gohmert, the C-SPAN host noted that Rep. Steve King (-R-IA) had speculated that the Boston bombings were perpetrated by a "foreign national" and that Congress should proceed with caution on immigration reform.

"We know that al Qaeda has camps with the drug cartels on the other side of the Mexican border," Gohmert agreed. "We know that people are now being trained to come in and act like Hispanics when they're radical Islamists. We know these things are happening, and it's just insane to not protect ourselves and make sure that people come in -- as most people do, they want the freedoms we have."

(h/t: Think Progress)

DOWNLOADS: (107)

PLAYS: (927)

Embed

After first attacking former Rep. Barney Frank and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer's remarks about the Boston Marathon bombings as being "irresponsible" -- because lord knows no one on Fox would ever try to make a political issue out of a tragedy -- and they really hate it if someone makes a valid point about the need for civil servants like policemen and firefighters and the taxes required to pay their salaries -- Sean Hannity asked his guest, Rudy Giuliani about who he thought was responsible for the attack.

I'm sure Mr-a-Noun-a-Verb-and-Nine-Eleven made him very sad with this response.

GIULIANI: My hunch, is that it's homegrown...

HANNITY: Explain what that means, when you say homegrown...

GIULIANI: I don’t think this is orchestrated by al Qaeda or any of their offshoots in Africa or other places from there. I think frankly if it was, we would’ve picked it up because it would’ve had to been communicated internationally.

Waiting for the attacks on Giuliani from the right to start in 10... 9...

DOWNLOADS: (142)

PLAYS: (1181)

Embed

Former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich says that President Barack Obama's policies are allowing a "worldwide virus" of terrorism from places like North Africa and Syria to destabilize the planet and "potentially" infect Europe and the United States.

Gingrich on Sunday told CNN's Candy Crowley that a recent hostage crisis at a gas plant in Algeria was evidence that terrorism was more like a virus than "Whac-A-Mole."

"I think we haven't had any honest epidemiology," he explained. "We're trying to hunt down 5,000 people in al Qaeda, there is a potential pool of 65 to 100 million recruits... They're spreading across the whole planet, from the Philippines to, frankly, the United States. And I think we greatly underestimate how many places you're going to have trouble in the next decade."

"We talk about the Iranian potential nuclear weapon, Pakistan is probably building more nuclear weapons than any other country in the world right now," he continued. "Pakistan is a very fragile system which could disintegrate at any time. We're not prepared for that. The whole challenge of the Persian Gulf, we're not prepared for that. The level of violence in Syria."

The former House Speaker argued that Obama was advocating a "minimalist approach to the world" by nominating Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) to be secretary of state and secretary of defense.

"Neither of them nor the president have a positive vision of how you're going to deal with a worldwide virus that is increasingly destabilizing the planet," he opined.

"And that's what's happening from Pakistan through North Africa to Syria, and I think potentially in Europe and the United States."

DOWNLOADS: (147)

PLAYS: (754)

Embed

The hosts of Fox & Friends on Friday slammed former Democratic Vice President Al Gore for being a "great American businessman" and selling his Current TV network to the "clearly anti-American" Al Jazeera network instead of former Fox News host Glenn Beck.

On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Gore had turned down an offer from Beck's The Blaze before deciding to accept $500 million to hand over Current TV to Al Jazeera.

Fox Business host Stuart Varney told the Fox & Friends hosts that Gore was guilty of "gross hypocrisy" for trying to sell his network before tax rates went up in 2013.

"Here's Al Gore -- extremely wealthy, ultra-leftist -- he's scrambling to book a profit on the sale of his TV network last year, when the tax rates are low," Varney opined. "That is hypocrisy."

Co-host Alisyn Camerota noted that Gore had been "desperately trying" to sell the network but the deal closed on Jan. 2 so it would be subject to the higher tax rates.

"You don't even have to say the word hypocrisy, you just have to say the statement," co-host Brian Kilmead quipped. "People at home use the word hypocrisy in their own kitchen, in their bathrobe with rollers in their hair."

But the detail that really seemed to outrage the Fox News personalities was that Gore shot down their former colleague, Glenn Beck, when he tried to buy Current TV.

"Glenn Beck wants to buy this TV network, so Al says, 'No, we're very sensitive to the network's not being aligned with our point of view,'" Varney explained. "In other words, 'Get lost, Glenn Beck,' but 'Okay, big oil, the sheikhdom of Qatar.'"

"Al Jazeera! That's their point of view?" Kilmeade exclaimed. "You can see more eye-to-eye with Al Jazeera than Glenn Beck -- Mr. Red, White and Blue?"

"May I move to the disgrace of this situation?" Varney continued. "This is the former Vice President of the United States of America, and he sells his news network to a clearly anti-American news channel called Al Jazeera. Are you kidding me?"

"That is just crazy," co-host Steve Doocy agreed. "But, you know what? Being a great American businessman, he was -- his first instinct, like Brian pointed out -- he was trying to save as much money as he could. We don't like the tax policy that he likes, but that was his inclination."

During a second Fox News segment later in the morning, guest Matt McCall said that Gore was now linked with terrorists because he was doing business with Al Jazeera.

"Remember after 9/11, al-Qaeda," McCall remarked. "That's who they gave the voice too, really? I mean, again, this is somebody who ran for president of the United States, he's trying to back the green, he's trying to back our country. At the same time, he's selling out to a country -- not saying Qatar's bad -- but they do have the support behind them of some of these terrorist groups and they let them get their voice across on their network."

"So, to me, he's now associating himself with al-Qaeda," he added. "And to me, that is actually disgusting what he is doing."

According to a 2005 report, a classified transcript indicated that then-President George W. Bush told then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair that he wanted to bomb Al Jazeera's headquarters in Qatar in 2004 because of the network's negative coverage of the Iraq war. The classified transcript came after the U.S. military fired a missile at offices the television network was using in Iraq in 2003. At the time, officials said that they believed the building was being used by al-Qaeda.

After launching Current TV in 2004, Fox News owner News Corporation -- and CEO Rupert Murdoch -- agreed to pay the network lucrative licensing fees and distribute it to 20 million homes through its DirectTV broadcast satellite service provider.

(h/t: Mediaite)