This morning I read a commentary by conservative commentator Andrew P. Napolitano about the report of the House Select Committee on Benghazi.  The commentary, which is pasted below, is a discouraging example of how the masses are played by the two parties.  (They also are played by the media and academia, which along with the two parties, form a de facto propaganda ministry.)

Most of what Napolitano writes is true.  The problem is that it is selective and leaves out facts that would be damaging to his side.  Of course the left does the same thing. 

The conventional wisdom about such partisan slanting is that the whole truth eventually comes out as the masses listen to one side and then the other.  But that's not the way it works.  First, most people stay within their own echo chamber (e.g. Fox News) and don't hear what's said in another echo chamber (e.g. CNN), or vice versa.  Second, what is often said by both sides is—excuse the language—nothing but bullcrap (NBB). 

Thus, the effect is as follows:  NBB + NBB = 2NBB  

The effect is not:  NBB + NBB = Truth

Napolitano says that "Benghazi was the unintended consequence of [Hillary] Clinton's private war against Libyan strongman Col. Moammar Gadhafi."  Actually, the private war against Gadhafi began with Ronald Reagan, whose administration was so obsessed with the strongman that it had considered assassinating him. 

Moreover, Napolitano fails to mention that conservatives, especially those on talk radio, had excoriated Barack Obama for not immediately taking the opportunity of the so-called Arab Spring to overthrow the Libyan regime and other regimes and replace them with democracies, a la Iraq.  How'd that work out? 

Conservative talk-radio host Laura Ingraham is an example.  She has been ranting about the folly of regime change, yet she is a former speechwriter for Ronald Reagan who had advocated for regime change.  Oops!  But she doesn't have to worry about her audience leaving her echo chamber and discovering the truth.

Those who forget history aren't about to spend time reading history to see what they've forgotten.  As such, a lot of commentators and reporters have forgotten the uproar in 2009 over Gadhafi erecting a large Bedouin tent on the grounds of a mansion in New Jersey, in preparation for his first visit to the United Nations.  A Huffington Post article at the time (pasted below) claimed that the mansion was owned by Donald Trump. 

Whether that connection to Trump is true or NBB, you can be assured that if the Democratic press were to remember the account, it would be headline news in all of the echo chambers on the left.

Hillary's Illegal War In Libya And Arms Supply To Terrorists

By Andrew P. Napolitano

The 800-plus-page report of the House Select Committee on Benghazi was released earlier this week. It slams former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her willful indifference to her obligation to repel military-style attacks on American interests and personnel at the U.S. Consulate and a nearby CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya. She particularly failed to save the lives of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three of his colleagues, all under her care and control while she was secretary of state.

The report also slams Clinton for her repeated lies about the cause of the attacks. After she told her daughter in an email that the Benghazi consulate had been attacked by an organized terrorist group using heavy military hardware, she told her colleagues at the State Department that the attacks were a spontaneous overreaction by locals to an American-made internet video about the Prophet Muhammad.

After telling that lie, she sent another email, this one to the Egyptian foreign minister, repeating what she had truthfully told her daughter.

The Obama administration then spread the "internet video-inspired" myth by dispatching Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., to repeat it to five Sunday morning American television talk shows. This was met with profound disbelief in the diplomatic and intelligence communities. Yet, still unwilling to acknowledge the truth publicly, Clinton then retold the myth to the families of the four dead Americans in the presence of their loved ones' bodies as the bodies were being reverently removed from a U.S. transfer plane at Joint Base Andrews.

What does all this say about the character of Clinton? How cold and heartless is she? How can she expect voters to reward her with the presidency when she failed to lift a finger to save Americans and then she repeatedly lied in public about her failures — while being truthful about them in private?

Yet the committee's report is incomplete and has aroused dissent from some Republican members of the committee. The essence of their dissent is that the unstated and unacknowledged but true mission of the committee was not to reveal facts but to conceal them. There is ample evidence to support their argument that Benghazi was the unintended consequence of Clinton's private war against Libyan strongman Col. Moammar Gadhafi.

Yet the report does not delve into that.

The war against Gadhafi was, of course, never declared by Congress. It was conceived by Clinton, approved by President Barack Obama and agreed to by leadership in both houses of Congress and from both major political parties. It was supposed to be the crown jewel of Clinton's foreign policy stewardship — ousting the dictator, replacing him with a democracy, putting no American boots on the ground and avoiding American bloodshed.

As is often the case in war, particularly illegal ones and especially secret ones, there were unintended consequences. Here the consequences have been the destruction of the government of an American ally, the imposition of mob-ruled chaos in Libya, the empowerment of terror groups in the Middle East, the deaths of innocent American civilians, the rejection of the rule of law and the obfuscation of the truth.

One of those who signed off on this secret war was the person who appointed the committee and its senior staff with personal loyalists — former House Speaker John Boehner. Another is a former congressman whose wife personally prospered from all this by serving as the go-between in the delivery of military hardware from Western sources to terror groups on the ground.

The method of those who authorized the secret war was for Clinton to issue waivers — as the secretary of state may do — to the U.S., NATO and U.N. embargo of arms sales to Libya. What did this do? Instead of issuing waivers so as to permit arms to be sold to a friendly government, Clinton and her colleagues conspired to get arms into the hands of terrorist organizations masquerading as local militias. The CIA warned her about this, but she was indifferent to the warnings.

Those who signed off on this war and its methodology were arguably conspirators in an effort to provide material support to terrorist organizations by supplying them with military equipment, allegedly to be used to topple the Gadhafi government. That is a felony — and the beneficial or strategic use of the weapons is not a defense to the charge of providing them to terror groups.

How dangerous and reckless was Clinton? She ignored the CIA's advice and let the weapons spread among deranged madmen and committed killers. Who in the intelligence community would work for her in light of this behavior? Ambassador Stevens and the others were killed by heavy military hardware that Clinton and her colleagues permitted to make its way into the hands of terror groups.

Though Clinton was the creator of the conspiracy and remained at its heart and hoped to ride it triumphantly into the White House — and though she bears more blame than any other conspirator — the committee's work fails as a seeker of the whole truth.

The truth is that some of the committee's congressional allies set in motion the awful events that led to the tragedy in Benghazi. The truth is that these people will probably escape accountability for their lawless behavior. The truth is that Congress knows that the president wages secret wars and it does nothing to stop them. The truth is that Hillary Clinton put her own political ambitions above fidelity to the rule of law and properly doing her job.

The truth is that the House Select Committee on Benghazi concealed more truth than it revealed. Yet the government is supposed to work for us. Aren't we entitled to know what the government has done in our names?

Source: Illegal War and Disguised Truth

Copyright © 2015 Subsidium LLC . All Rights Reserved.

Gaddafi Tent: Bedford Orders Work To Be Stopped On Libyan Dictator's Tent At Donald Trump Estate

 11/22/2009 05:12 am ET | Updated May 25, 2011

UPDATE - 9:37 p.m. EST:
WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — The Libyan government has pitched a tent in suburban New York that leader Moammar Gadhafi may use for entertaining, according to a State Department official. The bedouin-style tent is on Donald Trump's estate, according to the Journal News.

However, an attorney for the town of Bedford, around 43 miles north of Manhattan, told the Journal News that the town ordered work to be stopped at the site late Tuesday because no permits were sought for the temporary residence.

Attorney Joel Sachs said officials found workers constructing the tent but could not communicate with them because they didn't speak English. He said they gave the order to stop the work to the property's caretaker. Sachs did not immediately return a phone call Tuesday evening.

—————————

Muammar Gaddafi is making preparations to stay at the Bedford, New York, estate owned by Donald Trump during the Libyan leader's visit to the United States this week, a source with direct knowledge of the arrangement tells the Huffington Post.

Gaddafi's Bedouin-style tent, the source says, is to be pitched on the lavish Seven Springs property that Trump has owned since 1995. An aide to Trump denied the report. It is "totally untrue," said Rhona Graff, a spokesman for the real estate mogul.

Pressed whether Gaddafi was planning to stay at Seven Springs, Graff only said that the Libyan leader wasn't there currently. "He is not there to my knowledge," she said. "He is not there." The spokeswoman noted that Seven Springs is not Trump's primary residence, though neighbors said that his children spend time there regularly.

The source who knew about the arrangement, who is a resident of Bedford, says that Gaddafi's people are already in the process of setting up a tent, though plans could potentially be upended by bad publicity. ABC News reported earlier on Tuesday that Gaddafi had indeed chosen the posh New York suburb as the site of his stay during his visit while he attends the United Nations General Assembly. The news organization did not specify where in Bedford he was staying. Another resident in the town told the Huffington Post that a news helicopter was now visible over Seven Springs.

Officials in Bedford are being tight-lipped about the arrangement. A spokesperson for the Bedford Hills police department declined to comment on the matter. "I'm not going to confirm or deny anything," said Sgt. Tom Diebold, referring the Huffington Post to the Secret Service. Calls there were not immediately returned.

By settling in Bedford, Gaddafi has apparently put to end a bruising and lengthy search for a place to stay during his week in the United States. The Libyan leader had tried to pitch his famous tent in Manhattan's Central Park, but city officials rejected his request. Earlier Gaddafi had tried to set up a temporary residence in Englewood, New Jersey, only to run into opposition from the local mayor and other officials. His efforts to book a hotel room in New York City — including the Helmsley Hotel and the Pierre — were equally fruitless, leading to speculation that Gaddafi would simply stay at the home of Libya's ambassador to the U.N. while in town.

The 213-acre Seven Springs estate one of the gems in the Trump portfolio. The spot, which sits atop the high point of Bedford, includes a 39,000-square-foot mansion and was formerly owned by the Rockefeller family.