The Love Pentagon - as in the
Petraeus-Broadwell-Kelley-Allen-FBI shirtless
torso guy - is the farce that keeps on giving. But
this should really not be about sex, lies and
emails. This should be about Benghazi.
Scandal or not, General David Petraeus
finally accepted to testify, at a still
unspecified date, to the Senate Intelligence
Committee, about the 9/11, 2012 attack on the US
consulate in Libya in which ambassador Chris
Stevens and three other Americans were killed; he
may eventually be asked about what the CIA had
been up to before, during and after the attack.
As for President Obama, in his first press
conference after re-election he has warned
Republicans - who have been trying to
twist Benghazi to their
own purposes for weeks now - to "go after me"; for
them to go after UN ambassador Susan Rice, "who
had nothing to do with Benghazi, and was simply
making a presentation based on intelligence that
she had received", and to "besmirch her
reputation", that's "outrageous."
More
than Republicans having a problem with the
President, it's more like Petraeus having a
problem with the nation. Deeply in denial
Republicans will obviously freak out when Petraeus
tells the Senate exactly what he told the White
House two months ago. The General - and later
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, plus Susan
Rice - they all said the Benghazi attack was to be
blamed on that pathetic Prophet Muhammad YouTube
video.
By that time Petraeus' steamy
affair his Biog Babe, Paula Broadwell, was already
history. But he arguably didn't know he was
already ensnared by the Tampa socialite Jill
Kelley-inspired FBI investigation over Paula's
harassing emails. And then, last week, the
investigation miraculously surfaced, immediately
after Election Day and just as he's scheduled to
testify to the Senate. He may have failed in his
calculations to save his job. But there's no
reason to doubt he will pull off a smooth
performance at his Benghazi special.
A
lean, mean killing machine The notion that
the now disgraced General will come clean
regarding the current CIA modus operandi is as
fanciful as Paula Broadwell playing Snow White.
Since Petraeus was appointed director of the CIA
by Obama, the agency has morphed into a full-blown
paramilitary killing machine - not exactly a haven
for HUMINT (human intelligence). It's all about
secret, shadowy black ops, unmonitored by the
Executive, the Legislative, the Judiciary, the
media; virtually out of control.
This
hardcore militarization of the CIA implies the
agency never acknowledging the Drone Wars. Not to
mention how its targeted assassinations, from the
Horn of Africa to the Arabian Peninsula and the
Pakistani tribal areas, are chosen; and who is
lucky enough to live (or die) another day. What
makes is even more absurd is that the CIA is also
entrusted by the White House to impartially
analyze its own shadow war enterprise.
That inevitably brings us back to Benghazi
- and that bombshell Fox News report
quoting an anonymous Washington source stating
that the consulate had a "CIA annex", where three
Libyan militia warriors, as in Salafi-jihadis,
were being "detained", aka undergoing Dick
Cheney-style recreational water activities.
As for the interrogation sessions, that
was the responsibility of contractors, a shady
collection of "former" Special Ops - as the CIA
itself later reminded public opinion that it "has
not had detention authority since January 2009,
when Executive Order 13491 was issued."
Yet other previous "guests" in Benghazi
included fighters from across Northern Africa and
the Middle East. To sum it all up; this "annex"
was the CIA's top black hole in all of Northern
Africa.
So here we have a "secret" CIA
safe house attached to a consulate - and obviously
not responding to the State Department - staffed
with "former" or current Special Forces
contractors accepting "renditions" and engaging in
"detention" and certainly torture practices that
are illegal under American law. They were all
there working for Petraeus - and not Hillary
Clinton.
And this may not have been the
only one of such holiday resorts - as Special
Forces keep roaming Northern Africa and the CIA
happens to keep a safe house also in Somalia.
Let's bet a cellar full of Chateau Petrus
that The General will keep absolutely mum about
all this in his upcoming Senate testimony. The
General will repeat that the Prophet Muhammad
video did it in Benghazi.
And then
there's Boobghazi Boobghazi still beats
Benghazi in all the ratings. No wonder; what with
Biog Babe Paula and her virtual catfight with
steamy Lebanese-American Jill Kelley, aka Jill
Khawam, aka Gilberte J Kelley, aka Gigi Khawam,
aka Gigi Kelley and her unpaid "social event
planning" gig at the CENTCOM base in Tampa,
Florida, not to mention the excruciatingly
laborious exchange of up to 30 emails a day,
everyday, with General John Allen over no less
than three years. No wonder Allen could not keep
his steady hands on that pesky Taliban problem.
The Tampa Bay Times is having a field day
after another describing the morphing of "South
Tampa's decades-long reputation for genteel
hospitality toward the military"; the paper says
that "ground zero" for the new sexy shenanigans
"is not the Pentagon, but a mansion on Bayshore
Boulevard inhabited by a family with lavish
appetites and gigantic debts"; that is, the
Kelleys.
With so much salacious turpitude
on offer, it's hard to concentrate on foreign
policy. Yet Benghazi may be just the hors d'oeuvre
to what's brewing in Syria.
Benghazi - as
well as the middle of the desert backwater Darnah
- fueled the NATO rebel war in Libya with
countless Salafi-jihadis, including those directly
linked to al-Qaeda via the "former" Libya Islamic
Fighting Group (LIFG).
There is no
question that ambassador Chris Stevens was in
close contact with this powerful "rebel" strand -
including Islamist superstar Abdelhakim Belhadj.
After Colonel Gaddafi was captured, sodomized and
killed by the "rebels" - with ample previous
support of American missiles and Qatari Special
Forces on the ground - Libyan Islamists, with
Belhaj on the forefront, started to smuggle fully
weaponized Salafi-jihadis for the Syrian rebels
fighting the Assad government.
It took a
while but finally Hillary and the State Department
woke up to the potential blowback. This was one of
the key reasons why Hillary pressed for a remix of
the Syrian opposition leadership, enshrined this
past weekend in Doha.
At his press
conference, Obama stuck to platitudes on Syria, as
in "we have been extensively engaged with the
international community" and "constantly
consulting with the opposition" as well as Turkey,
Jordan and Israel (significantly, Obama did not
mention key anti-Assad Gulf Cooperation Council
players Saudi Arabia and Qatar). He warned about
"extremist elements" within the Syrian opposition,
and did not commit to weaponize them. At least on
the record.
This Friday a new Syria
donors' conference - the follow-up to Hillary's
Friends of Syria bash - begins in London. That's
when the West will be formally introduced to the
new opposition leader, Moaz al-Khatib - which
Western corporate media, in unison, is frantically
selling as a "moderate", with "impeccable
revolutionary credentials", who will, in his own
words, lead Syria towards a "civic state".
This is as ridiculous as the Boobghazi
farce. Al-Khatib has already said that Syria's
problems will be solved with "weapons". France -
which under Hollande remains as pathetically
neo-colonial as under King Sarko - already
recognized him and the new opposition set-up,
essentially created under pressure by the US and
Qatar compounded with vague promises of cash.
Al-Khatib - the former imam of the Umayyad
mosque in Damascus, a position he would have never
obtained without being vetted by Syrian
intelligence - is known to have called for jihad
to rescue the Muslim world (here
it is, in Arabic, but nothing Google Translate
could not handle). And then the
clincher; he is sure that Facebook is a
US-Israeli plot.
With frenemies like the
US, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, Syria
certainly does not need enemies. As for blowback,
brace yourselves; what happened in Benghazi is
just the hors d'oeuvres to be offered by
increasingly rampaging frenemies of the US. Can't
count on Petraeus and Allen to defend the
homeland? Well, there's always four-star groupie
Jill Kelley.
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