Revealed: what happened to Ambassador Stevens' body

 

April 27, 2013

· BY: FRANK VERNUCCIO AND LARRY ALLISON

It was revealed for the first time today that the body of murdered Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was recovered by a secret two man Special "Ops" team that was not affiliated with any of the other security entities involved in the Benghazi attack.

This team, acting under their own initiative and armed with their own weapons, undertook this mission despite very little intelligence available for this exceedingly hostile and volatile environment. The information came to light this morning on WVOX’s Vernuccio/Allison radio show.

The previously undisclosed information was provided by former Army Ranger Jack Murphy who is the co-author along with Brandon Webb of Benghazi: The Definitive Report.

Murphy described in vivid detail the events of the attack including the fact that the hired gate security unit who came from a local militia brigade were armed only with cricket bats and fled the scene when the first RPG hit the front gate of the Temporary Mission Facility (TMF) around 9:40 PM Benghazi time.

He went on to describe the rescue of the TMF personnel by members of the nearby CIA Annex led by former Navy Seal Tyrone Woods. The rescue unit operated under an informal security agreement with the State Department but the effort was initially resisted by the Chief of Base at the annex. Within ten minutes of their arrival at the TMF, Woods and his team secured the survivors of the attack and the body of Sean Smith, a State Department Communications specialist and returned to the annex without being able to locate and recover Ambassador Stevens due to the intensity of the fire in the building where he was last located and the presence of both attackers and looters who were swarming through the compound.

At approximately 1:00 AM on 09/12/2012 Benghazi time a seven man rescue unit arrived from Tripoli, led by former Navy Seal Glen Doherty, who was a friend and colleague of both Woods and the authors. They used $30,000 in cash to commandeer a private plane to fly them to Benghazi where they arrived at approximately 1:00 AM. They were detained by Libyan customs for a variety of reasons that demand further investigation and subsequently did not arrive at the annex until approximately 5:00 AM where a second intensive firefight began. Doherty linked up with Woods on the roof of one of the Annex buildings where both were killed by motor shells within ten minutes of Doherty's arrival.

With the death of the team leader Doherty, the decision was made to evacuated everyone living, wounded and dead from the annex to the Benghazi airport for ex filtration to Tripoli. Murphy disclosed that one defender of the Annex was so severely wounded that he had to be carried on the back of one of his fellow survivors.

When asked by Allison & Vernuccio why military assistance was not more available and forth coming during this nine hour fire fight, Murphy stated that the military rescue forces were not well positioned and that there was no proper planning for this kind of military eventuality. He further criticized what he characterized an attitude about appropriate security in Libya as being incompetent with a "flippant attitude" and pointedly cited Patrick F. Kennedy, Under Secretary for Management at the State Department as a major obstacle to providing levels of security commensurate with the "high risk" and "high threat" designations that the same State Department and others had bestowed on both Benghazi and Tripoli.

The U.S. House of Representatives is continuing to investigate numerous facets of the Benghazi attack, including why the U.S. military was not instructed to intervene and provide assistance to the beleaguered Americans at the compound, and why survivors of the attack have not been allowed to testify before Congress or speak to the press. (Article prepared by Allison & Vernuccio)

IF MEN WERE ANGELS….

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.”
― James Madison, The Federalist Papers #51

Last week on the day after the Boston marathon massacre the Congress failed to pass any of the gun control bills then before it. Those on the PC left went into an orgy of denunciation with threats of future political annihilation for all those who voted against the various measures that began with an assault weapons ban and a limitation on the capacity of ammunition magazines and ended with enhanced registration.

The NY Daily News in particular was in a state of inchoate rage over this vote, devoting much ink to a denunciation of all those who voted no on the basis that they did not care about the slaughtered innocents of Sandy Hook or their grieving families. On Saturday the paper’s letters to the editor led with a banner that read “The Second Amendment must go” and began with a letter that said in part:

“ ... The truth is, the entire Second Amendment should be repealed. Only then will we have real, lasting gun control.
…What is the rational reason for a nation to be so thoroughly armed? The military should be armed. The police forces should be armed. And hunters should be allowed very minimal arms to do what they do.
But to allow — no, to outright encourage — assault weapons because it’s our right? This is absurd beyond all absurdity — it is a mental illness to think this way. ”

These sentiments lie at the crux of this struggle between those who believe in the Bill of Rights and those who don’t and is reflective of the true agenda of Obama, Bloomberg and the radical progressive left.

There are a variety of reasons why this legislation failed.

This legislation in essence, targeted law abiding citizens and did nothing really substantial to stop the scourge of illegal guns in the hands of criminals and terrorists…

The bills did not substantively deal with the failure of our Mental Health system and made no provision to provide protections to the public via robust prevention to prevent violent actions of people now left on their own by politicians who once promised much but delivered little…

The bills did not address in any way the culture of mindless violence coming from Hollywood , television and the videogame industry…

The bills failed to respect the historic fundamental importance and value of the 2nd amendment and the debate often trivialized it in the same manner that other parts of the bill of rights have been ignored or disparaged by the same ideologues…

The proponents of the bills failed to convince a growing and skeptical public as to why government want and needs all of the personal data on US citizens ranging from gun ownership regulations, and regulation from Obamacare, the IRS, the EPA and others regulators, legislation or executive actions...

The bills also added up to a new massive expansion of government costing billions and enriching the public sector unions at the expense of the taxpayers...

The bills did nothing to prevent another “Sandy Hook” or “Columbine” or “Aurora” or “Tucson” and therefore were suspect for that reason alone...

The bills did not include the obvious and proven deterrent of having trained and professional personnel with weapons in and around schools...

But the most important factor in my opinion was that a growing majority of Americans no longer trusts the words, deeds or motives of many of their political leaders and media spokespeople and are demonized by them as a result of their resistance to their diktats.

Bloomberg with his “Nanny state” and “Obama with his “regulation nation” are increasingly viewed as power hungry control freaks with little respect for the historic nature and historic values of this country. They also do their cause no good by being arrogant elites who want to disarm law abiding citizens while surrounded and protected by armed bodyguards.

History has taught us that politicians who wish to take away fundamental rights including the right of self defense in a violent world are precisely those who Madison was referring to in Federalist 51. They are not doing this to protect us from the tyranny of our fellow men nor are they doing this to protect us from the tyranny of our government. They instead are trying to take away our freedoms and individual unalienable rights and in doing that are driving us inexorably towards division as a nation and the barricades.

ERLANDSSON

( This commentary was broadcast on 04/27/2013 on The Vernuccio / Allison Report on WVOX 1460 AM / http://www.wvox.com )

v

THE ONLY THINGS NECESSARY….

Edmund Burke once famously said “That the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good [people] men do nothing”

I would add two corollaries to this. The first is that the only things necessary are also “ that good people not believe that evil exists” and the second is “that good people not hear the truth.”

We have seen evil at work once again in Boston on April 15th at the Boston Marathon as yet more Americans died or were maimed and wounded at the hands of terrorists bent on carnage for the sake of God knows what. While reasonable people recognized this evil for what it was, far too many politicians saw only crass political opportunity. It did not take long for the leadership of the Democratic party to blame the attack on the sequester or the fact it was “Tax Day“. Nor did it deter “progressive” leftists such as David Sirota to openly hope on Salon.com that the bomber is a white American, because otherwise the Obama agenda re immigration, defense reductions and leaving Afghanistan would be jeopardized and Muslims might be victimized whereas white people, who have priveledge… never are. At MSNBC Chris Matthews yearned that the terror was done by right wing extremists. Barney Frank yelped that this proves that tax cuts should be discarded. The blood was not even cleansed from Boylston Street when these disgusting and inappropriate things were said or written.

For the falsely named “progressive” left ( their progress is our subjugation by the state ) there is no such thing as evil unless it can be used in a negative context with white or black conservatives, religion, traditional marriage, the right to life, the constitution, the flag, the military, gun ownership, limited government, low taxes or the belief that parents and not the state have hegemony over their children. Their sense of evil is divorced from everything decent and linked only to their toxic ideology.

The intrusion of base politics into the horror of Boston almost immediately, is in truth part of a war aimed at our national soul and national unity.

In this war for the soul of our country, we are losing the threads that have made us whole…we are losing the glue that keeps us whole… and we are in danger of losing the will to keep us whole. E Pluribus Unum is becoming E Pluribus Pluribus as we are divided by race, gender, age, religion, class, ethnicity, income and politics into a balkanize nation of warring tribes.

And while reasonable people see the truth for what it is, far too many political types either ignor the truth or distort it. The City Council of New Rochelle warps our history by banning a flag from flying over the New Rochelle Armory that was the same flag Americans first fought under at the beginning of the American Revolution. This is a flag that is still flown on US Naval vessels and at forward US Marine bases in the mountains of Afghanistan. All five Democrats on the City Council voted for this ban and then sent city workers to confiscate the flag to prevent, I assume, revolution from breaking out in New Rochelle. One Democrat leader likened the Flag known as the Gadsden Flag or the Culpepper Flag which shows a coiled snake with a yellow background and the words ”Don’t Tread on Me” to the Nazi swastika. Others likened it to the Confederate “Stars and Bars” or to the Rainbow flag of “Gay Rights”. The real reason I suspect is that the flag has become associated with the Tea Party movement which Democrats in great numbers seem to loath and wish to paint as a fascist movement.

The real fascists however are these “progressives” with their elitist “evolved”worldview that propels their every effort to make a new “Leviathan” of the state that will control our lives, our culture and our future in ways that would make Stalin blush.

Now is the time for lamentation and the expression of grief. We need as a united people to mourn our dead and comfort our afflicted. We do not need bombast or propaganda or disrespect. Every crisis is not an opportunity for political opportunism. The nation needs to heal to get past this evil assault on all of us. We need to let our laws work so that justice can prevail and defeat the demonic forces who attack us. We need to identify our enemies foreign and domestic and defeat them once and for all to prevent them from committing future evil acts against us. We need peace, sanity, a return to our historic values and rational justice within the land and we need to tell those who would divide us to go away… far away …and allow us to, in the words of Stephen Foster, to help us reach that promised land where “hard times come again no more”.

ERLANDSSON

(This commentary was broadcast on The Vernuccio/Allison Report on 04/20/2013 WVOX 1460 AM / www.wvox.com )

LORD JAMES IS DEAD

 

G.K.Chesterton once wrote about journalism …”Journalism consists largely in saying “Lord James is dead” to people who never knew Lord James was alive”

This is just another way of saying that the real proof of bad journalism is when you personally know the topic or the subject better than the journalists do causing their not so hidden bias to actually become the bigger story.

We had another classic example of this on Tuesday when two reporters from the Daily News wrote a hit piece about the new Chair of the Bronx Republican Party who in the name of full disclosure has been a friend for 20 years and is someone who once worked for me. They never had any fundamental questions of him such as what were his goals and mission for the party but instead concentrated on personal events in his life which in some instances were 30 years old in origin and over and done with… and they even got some of that information wrong.

The bottom line is that much of the press has become a vassal of either the Democratic Party or the in the case of the Bronx the sleaze that passes for elected or party officials from all parties who owe no loyalty to anyone but themselves. They are the me, my, mine party and preside unencumbered by any values, loyalty, or sense of public trust.

The press is so terrified that they will lose access to these villains that they are willing accomplices to any distortion of truth or character assassinations that their masters organize or demand. 

Arthur Schopenhauer the 18th century German philosopher once wrote that “Journalists are like dogs, when ever anything moves they begin to bark.”

The deal in NYC is and has been that in the eyes of the 4th estate that Republicans and conservatives in particular… don’t move. Tier one candidates like John Faso and Wendy Long pass like phantoms in the night without comment before an almost completely ideological press and media. Non democrats do not politically exist for much of the press and media unless they are some variation of Democrat ‘lite” and even then they are not really taken seriously if they are persons of common means and average income.

One true test of someone not on the take is if they have experienced the vicissitudes of modern life and suffered financially as well as in other ways. Today we have millions losing their jobs, their homes and their futures only partly due to their own actions and in many cases due more to the reckless policies of politicians who liberal journalists treat as rock stars.

The new Chair of the Bronx GOP is not a rock star. He is just an honest man who has had some of the ups and downs that many of us have had to face through the years. He has served the city and state and his country honorably over many decades and after 911 faced and fought terrible medical issues without complaint. Perhaps that should have been mentioned in this scurrilous piece of dreck reporting and then they could have answered their own dumb question of where the GOP found him! Both the reporters, the Daily News and the people behind this story should be ashamed of themselves…if they are capable of shame!

MARGARET THATCHER 

Margaret Thatcher died this week. She was 87 and was the first and only female Prime Minister of the UK. She also served her country as PM longer than any other in history. In the course of her three terms she brought Great Britain back from the precipice of a socialist hell and made it the fourth largest economy in the world by returning to free market economics. In the course of her tenure in office, she helped President Ronald Reagan to bring down communism in Russia and eastern Europe. She “denationalized” ( her preferred term) British Telecom, British Gas, British Airways, and Rolls Royce among others. She fought a war with Argentina and was a major partner with President Bush in liberating Kuwait from Saddam Hussein reminding him along the way ‘not to go all wobbly“. The Soviets called her the “Iron Lady” and she wore that appellation with pride. The unions hated her guts but she never let their vile vitriol deter her from what she believed was right. She did all of this with elegance and grace while skewering her opponents in the House of Commons like a master fencer who could use either the foil or the saber. She became Lady Thatcher after she left No. 10 Downing Street but then she was always a lady in the best sense of the word. We shall not see her likes again. Good show Maggie!

ERLANDSSON.

(THIS COMMENTARY CAN BE HEARD ON THE VERNUCCIO/ALLISON REPORT FOR SATURDAY 04/13/2013 10:05 AM EDT ON WVOX 1460 AM OR WORLDWIDE AT http://www.wvox.com )

NOW IS THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT MADE WORSE…

NOW IS THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT MADE WORSE…

Shakespeare would have described the political scandals in NY as follows:
Now is the winter of our discontent
made worse by the wicked deeds of the tribunes of the people!
 

New York politics and in particular NYC politics is once again on display as the epicenter of corruption and the ground zero for greed. Bill Hammond of the Daily News reported on Thursday that “The city has 43% of the state’s population but 73% of it’s crooked state officeholders”. He further stated that ” 24 of the 33 state politicians caught in the corruption eruption over the past decade live in the five boroughs” On Friday the numbers increased to 26 and 35.
 

While all of the seven arrested officials are entitled to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty… these current debacles are yet the latest examples that our politics are sick and getting sicker.
 

There are many reasons why we are experiencing this orgy of sleaze and among the most prominent is that far too many politicians have done nothing in their lives except run for office and live off the taxpayer‘s dime. When they retire their children often “inherit “ their office as if we lived in a monarchy instead of a republic.
 

Another prime reason is that government is now running campaigns instead of parties and candidates, through Campaign Finance programs. These so called reforms, which are practically a sacrament to liberals, don’t do what they are supposed to. We do not have more competition either between or within parties nor have we ended big money in our politics. One major end result has been the endless re-election of incumbents who consistently come from one dominant party. They are the only ones who can afford to hire the experts or have the expertise to navigate the maze of paperwork and mindless rules that Campaign Finance demands as it becomes the tail wagging the campaign dog. The NYC program which the Governor wants to use as a statewide model is particularly odious in this regard.
 

In addition to the above, when you analyze the present scandals, it becomes apparent that State Senator Smith, who is at the center of one mess, wanted to be able run in a Republican primary largely due to the 6 to 1 matching funds from taxpayers he would get to replenish a diminished campaign war chest made lean through high living.
 

For all practical purposes NYC now dominates the state legislature and has made both city and state a de facto one party Democratic preserve. What GOP strength remains is now diluted, out numbered and outgunned by a downstate political faction that has in many instances co-opted Republicans and the other third parties into one indistinguishable political swamp built on money, special interests and personal power. 
 

Far too many party officials don’t know how to or simply will not do the hard but fundamental work of picking good candidates, supporting them with money and manpower, and otherwise work to actually elect a candidate. The GOP, in particular has become politically sclerotic because of their dual dependencies on millionaire/billionaire candidates who have made the necessity of traditional campaigning all but obsolete and consultants who do not run campaigns to win but only to be paid.
 

Access to party lines and others powers held by party leaders and their cohorts have become items of barter or sale which enriches those at the top and leaves the voters out in the cold.
 

Once elected, many begin to finance their lifetime career in politics through so called member items or “pork” which are used to buy off specific groups who will come out every election to vote for the incumbent out of fear of losing their annual payoff. Others begin a symbiotic relationship with powerful groups like public sector unions who donate money and workers to the candidate who does their bidding through legislation or salary, pension and benefit upgrades often at the expense of the taxpayer. Others draft special legislation for specific entities or individuals who in return will reward them in any number of ways or use public monies to form tax exempt not for profit organizations for noble sounding purposes which are rarely achieved while often employing their family members including their wives and/or their girlfriends in the process. 
 

We the people are at a moment in time when we have to make a fundamental decision as to what we want from our politics and our elected officials. We can continue to mindlessly re-elect people who really don’t represent us or we can demand real representation through wholesale, dramatic and fundamental change. We and only we can make this happen. It is in our hands and our hands alone.
 

This week marked the beginning of the 2013 baseball season and throughout my life it has always marked a moment in time when somehow life becomes a little more enjoyable because we are playing and watching the most American of pastimes. It gives me a calming perspective that makes me realize that the things I value most in my life are family, friends, my faith, my country and… baseball …all the rest as Maimonides once said… is commentary!

ERLANDSSON