Anyway, Kerry told us last week that we need to reelect Barack Obama because he knows what he's doing in the foreign policy arena. It would appear that we're about to find out if Kerry's assertions are true:
Riot police fired warning shots and tear gas early Thursday outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo to keep hundreds of protesters, while demonstrators in the Yemeni capital city of Sana'a breached a wall at the American mission, witnesses and government officials said.
The protests are the latest to roil the Middle East over the online release of a film produced in the United States that denigrates Prophet Mohammed.
Several thousand protesters demonstrated outside the embassy in Sana'a, with some breaching the embassy's security wall.
"Given recent regional developments, earlier this morning, angry protesters unfortunately flooded the security perimeter of the U.S. embassy in Sana'a, Yemen and breached the embassy's wall," according to a statement released by Yemen through its embassy in Washington.
A few observations:
- The business about the film that "denigrates the Prophet Mohammed" is, at best, a pretext.
- The more alarming incident that happened in Benghazi, in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens was assassinated at a U.S. consulate, appears to have been planned in advance and may have been a reprisal against the U.S. for taking out a senior al-Qaida leader of Libyan nationality.
- In the Kerry speech, he sneered about Romney's penchant for "outsourcing." Turns out that security at the consulate in Benghazi was outsourced, which may have led to what happened there. Cheap shots tend to boomerang.
- I do wish the news media in this country were as diligent about following the story as they are about framing it.
I have a feeling that this is going to get a whole lot more interesting, in the Chinese curse sense of the term, in the coming days.
3 comments:
From the Srate Department memo eulogizing the "outsourced" security team with the Ambassador:
Tyrone’s friends and colleagues called him “Rone,” and they relied on his courage and skill, honed over two decades as a Navy SEAL. In uniform, he served multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since 2010, he protected American diplomatic personnel in dangerous posts from Central America to the Middle East. He had the hands of a healer as well as the arm of a warrior, earning distinction as a registered nurse and certified paramedic. All our hearts go out to Tyrone’s wife Dorothy and his three sons, Tyrone Jr., Hunter, and Kai, who was born just a few months ago.
We also grieve for Glen Doherty, called Bub, and his family: his father Bernard, his mother Barbara, his brother Gregory, and his sister Kathleen. Glen was also a former Navy SEAL and an experienced paramedic. And he put his life on the line many times, protecting Americans in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other hotspots. In the end, he died the way he lived – with selfless honor and unstinting valor.
As you noted...Cheap shots tend to boomerang.
Regards,
Rich
The problem isn't outsourcing at all; sometimes that is what you have to do. The problem is when you have pompous asses like John Kerry who sneer first.
There's a larger problem, though, which is whether the reports that surfaced in the British press are true in re the government having advance warning about the "protests" and not giving the diplomatic corps a heads up. If that's true, this becomes a much bigger deal.
And I'd also note that the "outsourcing" apparently included some Libyan nationals who gave the terrorists information that they used to kill the ambassador.
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