Perhaps the findings of the now infamous Accountability Review Board (ARB), established by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to get to the bottom of what happened in Benghazi is a microcosm of a much larger problem at the State Department. In the case of the Benghazi investigation, no one was found to be accountable; the State Department itself and alone, was.
In fact, four employees who were reportedly going to take the fall, simply changed job titles and desks.
Nonetheless, the State Department was identified as the sole entity whose failings led to the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi. Another aspect to that attack was that it was perpetrated by forces either loyal to or part of the Muslim Brotherhood, which leads us to this latest find. Cables reveal that the State Department deliberately chose to believe and thereby, align with, Muslim Brotherhood officials in Egypt, one year prior to the Benghazi attack.
Via IPT News:
For example, a Sept. 20, 2011 State Department cable obtained by the IPT reports on a Muslim Brotherhood representative telling the U.S. embassy in Cairo that the “MB (Muslim Brotherhood) was not the extremist organization the West feared.”
To illustrate how absurd the notion is that the State Department was simply incompetent and didn’t know what it was doing, consider how redacted the aforementioned six-page cable is. The quote from it in bold above was practically the only verbiage that wasn’t redacted; the contents of the last four pages were completely redacted.
So, without the benefit of all the information redacted in those documents, we (and others) knew what the intentions of the Muslim Brotherhood were well before the ‘Arab Spring’ – and had been reporting on it for years. Yet, with access to the information redacted, we’re to believe the State Department didn’t know about those intentions?! Remember, this cable is but one in a list of countless examples.
Consider that on June 16, 2011, three months prior to the date on that lone cable, the connection of Huma Abedin, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff, to the Muslim Brotherhood was unequivocally proven. In fact, the Muslim Sisterhood list discovered and translated by Walid at the time, not only identified Huma’s mother Saleha as one of the 63 leaders of the Sisterhood (from Saudi Arabia) but also the wife of Egypt’s current president, Mohamed Morsi (identified as Aidalmrsi):
Najla Ali Mahmoud Mohammed’s wife of Aidalmrsi member of the Guidance Bureau
Check out what the IPT report highlights that happened two weeks after Walid’s discovery:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton listed the Brotherhood’s alleged commitment to nonviolence as among the reasons the State Department planned to expand its contacts with the group in a June 30, 2011 statement.
Giving the State Department, which Hillary has led since January of 2009, the benefit of any doubt whatsoever involves labeling it as incompetent. Really?! Incompetent?! We’re to believe that Walid knows more about Abedin’s connections than the Secretary of State, who’s known her since 1996?!
Just. Not. Possible.
How about the contents / redactions of an October 21, 2009 cable from the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt that was sent to the office of Hillary Clinton? The IPT report notes that the copy it obtained via Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request had the following excerpt redacted but was able to retrieve it via Wikileaks:
“Their (Muslim Brotherhood) goals are the same as ‘conservative’ MB’s; a religious state where Shariah is applied to all aspects of life.”
Now, if we’re to believe that the State Department’s acceptance of the Muslim Brotherhood was due to incompetence, why did it redact the aforementioned statement made by the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt before relinquishing the cable to IPT?
At what point does evidence rule out incompetence?
Once incompetence is ruled out, what are we left with?
Movie metaphor…
In this clip, Christopher Walken represents those of us who have been sounding alarm bells about the Muslim Brotherhood for years. The child whose father wants to take him to play hockey on a pond Walken knows is covered with thin ice, represents the ignorant / apathetic / Honey Boo Boo watching segment of the U.S. population, and the father of the child represents the U.S. State Department (Hillary):