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Benghazi and State: Where do the bucks stop?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Whether Hillary’s reaction to the Accountability Review Board’s Benghazi Report upon reading it was to faint, hit her head, and suffer a rare blood clot following a concussion or whether the two sad events simply coincided and collided like asteroids in the night sky is a question we may never have answered.

The 39 page unclassified portion of the ARB report that was released to the public on December 20, 2012 was most notable for what it didn’t reveal as for what it did.  Maybe some of my unanswered questions are contained in the classified sections – but that I won’t know for years.  Unless, of course, the contents dribble out piecemeal between now and then. That’s possible. State usually leaks far less than the Pentagon or the Hill so first train your ear trumpets in those directions before leaning too hard towards Foggy Bottom.         

The report corroborates that multiple mistakes were made – not just that tragic night – but in the months before. They go deep into the heart of the system’s weaknesses.  Leadership – or actually lack thereof – is a problem the report alludes to with capital Ls although names of officials above the Assistant Secretary, or bureaucratic Firewall, as Diplopundit put it, are missing. This might be adequate for a networked organization but the State Department is institutionalized hierarchy personified and the report tells us that news of the attack was being called in as it happened to State’s 24/7 Diplomatic Security Center and relayed to the NSC and elsewhere.  At least that piece of the building apparently works as it should.

A follow up – even more scathing - 29 page report by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that appeared on December 30, 2012 tells us that the attack was reported real time to State and the information transmitted quickly to the Department of Defense. The bipartisan Senate report also highlighted ten major failings needing correction – within State, within Defense, throughout the Intelligence Community and across bureaucratic lines.  Not all of these failures are contained in the ARB findings.

Here are a few of the most striking - listed in no particular order:

• the Pentagon’s failure to provide its relatively new Africa Command with the requisite resources to conduct embassy rescue operations in its theater of operation despite the fact that the Command had specific responsibility for doing so;

• the administration’s muddled messaging during the first days after the tragedy despite the fact it was patently clear to the intelligence community from the beginning that a terrorist attack had occurred;

• Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy’s testimony in which he told the Senate Hearing that the security situation in Benghazi had been a “flashing red light” well before September 11.  This despite the fact that State had refused to provide the security needed. Yet, if it was unable to protect do so, State could have closed the Temporary Facility.  What is perhaps most troubling about Kennedy’s testimony is that he must have had a major say in the decisions – Eric Boswell, head of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and Charlene Lamb, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Diplomatic Security worked for him – and as I pointed out earlier, the State Department personifies the traditional hierarchical bureaucracy. The buck would not have stopped with either Boswell or Lamb who Peter Van Buren argues was Cheryl Mills' (Hillary's chief of staff) choice not that of the Foreign Service.  What is not said in either the ARB or the Senate report is where the funding and personnel decisions for the Benghazi facility - whatever its name - were made, how and who made them.              

Back to 2008

Before Hillary Clinton set foot in the department, she knew that it suffered from severe financial and administrative stress.  She smartly established a Deputy Secretary for Management and Resources bringing in Jack Lew - Obama's current Chief of Staff and now nominee to become the next Treasury Secretary - to fill the new position.  Lew lasted at State about a year, spent his time addressing budgetary deficiencies and much to his credit, got Congress to approve major funding increases for the beleagured department before he moved on and over to the White House.

Hillary didn’t, however, tackle other flashing yellow light administrative shortcomings – leaving management of the department and the embassies to Patrick F. Kennedy who had been brought back to State by mentor and then Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte in 2007. But before that Kennedy had been Chief of Staff at the US Transition Unit in Baghdad in 2004 where he worked for Negroponte and had held the same position in the CPA (2003) - a period of chaos in Iraq when millions upon millions of dollars disappeared.

Why Hillary kept Kennedy in the position after her arrival in 2009 is a mystery.  Anyone who was responsible for coordinating the reorganization of the foreign affairs agencies under Madeleine Albright - a real hash job whose Sandy-like after-effects reverberate today - or forbidding American Embassy officers from  attending Obama's speech in Berlin July 24, 2008 on the grounds it was partisan politics despite the fact that Americans have the freedom to assemble under the US Constitution shrieks foremost, in my view, of a serious lack of judgment. 

Deja Vu All Over Again

Then there's that thorny not-so-little issue of State's mismanagement of diplomatic security  in Africa August 7, 1998 when Al Qaeda blew up the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killing over 220 people including 12 Americans and injuring over 4,000.

The Coalition War on Welfare launches its flying wedge

By John Charles Dyer, UK Correspondent

3 Jan 2013.  The political year is off to a flying wedge start.  Work and Pensions Secretary Ian Duncan Smith leapt from the starting blocks with two salvos in support of the government’s proposed cap on benefits increases.  The good news is, life as we know it didn’t end 21 December. The bad news is, politics as usual didn’t either. 

The Wedge 

Duncan Smith alleged Welfare Fraud cost the taxpayer £10 billion.   

Duncan Smith also separately alleged benefits rose 20% while private wages only grew 12 per cent.  Duncan Smith argued this particularly unfair to those who work hard for a modest living. Low wage earners should not have to support benefits recipients in the life to which they’ve become accustomed when the private workers living standards can’t be sustained. Repeating a major Coalition theme, Duncan Smith argued work must always pay, implying when benefits rise faster than earnings it doesn’t pay to work.  

The Tory spin tent fanned out in the aftermath to reinforce Duncan Smith’s message.  Why now you ask? Parliament will vote 8 January on the government’s planned cap. Labour vociferously opposes. The polls thus far split with at least one showing the public against the government on this issue, a surprise to Tory strategists. 

What are the facts? 

Job Seekers Allowance rose at a faster rate than private wages, but at a lesser cash amount. 

One category of benefits, Job Seeker’s Allowance, rose £12 a week over a 5 year period, from £59 to £71 a week.  During that same time period average private sector wages rose £48 from £420 to £468 a week. While the private sector wage increase was 4x the benefit increase in cash terms, in percentage terms the benefit increase was 20% while the wage increase was 11.4 per cent.    

Reliable estimates put the cost of fraud at around £10 billion just as Duncan Smith alleged - but over a decade, which Duncan Smith neglected to mention.  

Certain questions may occur to you.  

It may seem miserly to begrudge society’s poorest £12 a week, but the coalition says it is all about fairness. The private sector worker didn’t get 20 per cent. Private sector pay increased less than twelve.   

Resolved: Down with Teddy Bears—and Flowers and Candlelight Vigils; Up with Good Gun Laws

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Teddy bears are sweet.  Flowers are always lovely.  Candlelight processions look good on TV news shows.  But all of them are worthless, folks, except to give survivors and observers a quick and easy feel-good experience. In short, all these photogenic gestures are a sentimental evasion of the real responsibility, a long overdue responsibility: forcing the U.S. Congress to pass the kind of gun regulations Australia passed after a mass murder some years ago. ( FYI: hunters still have access to guns Down Under, but the murder—and suicide—rate has plunged.)

Eventually the pile of teddy bears, wilting flowers and half-burnt candles is nothing but a heap of trash waiting for a garbage truck—but not, all too often, as in Newtown, before it becomes a place of pilgrimage aka gawkers’ delight, inviting more useless sentimentality.

So here’s my wish for our collective New Year.  Let’s really honor those dead children.   Let’s not continue to let ourselves be brainwashed, manipulated, bamboozled, misled, distracted, lied to, sweet-talked, bribed or blackmailed by the gun-producers’ front known as the National Rifle Association. 

And let's not forget the form of vote-stealing that is better known as vote-buying. Mere votes and ballots mean little when the NRA showers millions to counteract them.  We must do something about this, too.  It’s called organizing to defeat Representatives and Senators who let the NRA call the shots—so to speak.

This effort has to be a strong national campaign resulting in a law that holds for the whole country uniformly.  Why?  It’s too easy for the NRA and the arms industry to blackmail individual state legislatures into non-action.  In fact, post-Newtown, the blackmail is already being applied in Connecticut.  Imagine!  At the first sign of popular pressure to enact strict gun laws, the state-based weapons manufacturers threatened to punish the very state in which the massacre of the innocents occurred.  The pressure is on in other states and cities, too.  Regulate us?  Ha!  How many jobs do you want to lose?  How much tax base?  And for sure we’ll defeat any legislator who votes for the least infringement of our right to produce as many guns as we want and sell them to anyone anytime.  Is this shocking or what?    
 
Also deployed, over the years, have been some other, all-too-effective indirect ways of preventing sensible gun control. Above all, the arms industry masquerading as the National Rife Association hides behind the Constitution, flagrantly misrepresenting it in order to keep the camouflage-providing, more naive members on board.  Most everyone knows about the abuse of the archaic Second Amendment.  But there are other ways of manipulating people’s imperfect understanding the Constitution.

In a recent instance, the NRA managed to corral a treaty-killing majority of senators into signifying that they would to refuse to ratify an international treaty on arms-dealing.  In this case, as often, the specious argument (meaning lie) was that the treaty would impinge on U.S. sovereignty by overriding U.S. gun laws.  That, in fact, can’t happen.  Treaties, by law, never supercede U.S. law.  But all it takes is a little fear-mongering (“They’re going to take away your guns—and your freedom!”) and the oh-so-patriotic American  gun industry can continue to profit mightily (pardon the pun)  by putting lethal force into the hands of terrorists, oddball militias, private armies and other swarms of thieves, murderers and rapists in every lawless area of the globe—some of whom will eventually have to be put down by U.S. troops.  Not bad!  The arms-dealers get to profit from both sides!

And now they’re trying the same double-dipping at home.  Hey!  It won’t matter that every angry crazy guy in America has a semi-automatic (or two or three) plus more handguns than he has pockets for —if everyone else is armed to the teeth, too.

Wow!  These guys and their NRA front men are brilliant con artists—and the latest "helpful" proposal is one of the best yet.  The government should mandate armed guards in all schools, plus all teachers and principals should be armed—and Congress should pay for it!!!!  Glock-a-bye baby!  The new lullaby. 

I’d suggest an amendment to that bill.  Any law mandating armed guards to protect against mass killings in schools or any other public venue should include the mandatory collection of a hefty tax to pay the salaries of those gun toters.  The tax should also bring in enough revenue to pay for the victims’ hospital or burial costs—and, yes, it should top up the salaries of first responders.  And, come to think of it, how about a provision to assuage, financially, the mental anguish on the part of survivors?  So Congress, if the NRA toadies among you think that armed guards and teachers are the solution to the proliferation of slaughter in the U.S., add a big fat sales tax to the bill.  Add 25% to the cost of every weapon purchased in the U.S. (and, to take care of the loophole problem, a 25% tariff on imported guns, too).

Better yet, let’s outlaw the sale of semi-automatics (all of them, now, without loopholes), then allocate federal money to mop up such privately-held weapons (at cost plus 10%, as the Aussies did) within three months or so.  (So much for the gruesome gun-ghouls who went on a gun-buying binge after Newtown!)  Let’s institute purchase or transfer registration that applies to everyone all the time (including freebie gifts to relatives and friends) for all weapons that remain legal.  And let’s also tell the gun industry that the Pentagon won’t buy guns from companies that move off shore.

Or something like that.  I’m not about to write the legislation.  Senator Diane Feinstein can do it— and hopefully she’ll produce a stronger bill this time around.  VP Joe Biden will support it, for sure.   The big question is whether our ever-compromising president has the courage to campaign for and sign such a bill. 

Meanwhile, given the great power of ridicule,  we should start making fun of the NRA, its absurd scare campaigns, its weird notions of sportsmanship, its twisted notions of patriotism. 

How many people should die—murdered or as suicides—so some guys can shoot a lot of clay pigeons without going through the boredom of reloading? 

Is it really sport if the deer or elk hasn’t a chance to get away?

And remember this: the NRA wants us to play with teddy bears.  The NRA loves votive candles.  The gun industry is all in favor of flowers.  What they don’t want is sane, effective gun control.

 

Dave Brubeck's Legacy: Jazz Makes an Impact

By Wendi Maxwell, Guest Contributor

Wendi Maxwell, jazz vocalist and band leader, performs regularly in Northern California with her own Tres Hot Jazz Band, singing straight-ahead jazz, up-tempo swing and vocalese, sambas and ballads. You can visit her website at www.wendimaxwell.com.

The flags were at half-mast on Dave Brubeck Way. Dave Brubeck, jazz pianist, composer, and worldwide ambassador of peace, died in mid-December, one day before his 92^nd birthday. Here in Stockton, home of the Brubeck Institute, we mourned Dave’s spirit of improvisation and innovation.

 Dave was featured in the 1950s on the cover of Time magazine. His ground-breaking album “Take Five” remains one of the best-selling jazz albums of all time. His poly-tempo, poly-rhythmic compositions caused audiences to listen to jazz in an entirely new way, leaving behind standard time signatures and rhythms, and causing new musicians of all genres to find ways to break free of the habits of centuries of Western music.

In our poverty-stricken town, Dave’s impact was more immediate and more personal. A graduate of the University of the Pacific’s Conservatory of Music, Dave endowed the university with one of the world's largest and most comprehensive collections from a contemporary musician, establishing the Brubeck Institute. The archives hold correspondence, legal and business documents, recordings, manuscripts, photographs, and printed programs. But more than papers, the Institute supports active jazz performance ranging from students to world-class professionals.

I had the opportunity to meet Dave a couple of times. He was a tall, distinguished gentleman with a ready smile and twinkling eyes. When he played on stage with young musicians, he beamed love and support their way. People who met him felt he was a personal friend, even after only a couple of sentences. Those of us in the jazz community heard “Take Five” (or sang or played “Take Five”) so many times that we joked it should be the local ringtone…

The emergence of the Brubeck Institute brought local jazz into focus. Our blue-collar town of 300,000 currently boasts jazz performances and jams five nights a week. Nowadays, when a local group looks for music for a fundraising event, jazz is often the first place they turn. For a community reeling from years of financial hardship, music is solace to everyone.

Improvisation and innovation are the hallmarks of jazz, and individuals and groups across our town find themselves in the midst of innovation and improvisation at all levels. Neighborhoods and the community as a whole are banding together in unprecedented ways. I have to believe that Dave would applaud the creativity and spontaneity that’s emerging around town as we tackle some really tough problems. Maybe having jazz as the sound track of our community life is helping us come together, trust each other, and find new ways to get along.