Valerie Jarrett Gave Benghazi Stand-Down Order
IBDEditorials.com
Scandal: The omnipresent power behind the throne some have called the president's Rasputin had the power to call off three strikes against Osama bin Laden. She may have used that power again the night four Americans died in Benghazi.
The Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack on our diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, came while America failed to mount a rescue mission despite sufficient time and assets. Included in that disaster were the unaccounted whereabouts of President Obama during eight critical hours, the lack of Situation Room photos, the failure by the president to follow up with subordinates before his trip to Las Vegas and the fabricated story that the whole thing was prompted by an Internet video.
Columnist Charles Krauthammer said recently on "The O'Reilly Factor" that the "biggest scandal of all" regarding that Benghazi slaughter has yet to emerge.
"I think there is a bigger story here ... that will in time come out," Krauthammer said. "The biggest scandal of all, the biggest question is: What was the president doing in those eight hours?"
The columnist noted: "He had a routine meeting at 5 o'clock. He never after, during the eight hours when our guys have their lives in danger, he never called the secretary of defense, he never calls the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, he never calls the CIA director."
One of the people Obama always talks to is Valerie Jarrett. She emerged from the same Chicago cauldron of radicalism where Obama got his ideological baptism.
The Iranian-born Jarrett (her parents were American-born expatriates) is the only staff member who regularly follows the president home from the West Wing to the residence and one of the few people allowed to call the president by his first name.
Her influence is shown by an account in Richard Miniter's book "Leading From Behind: The Reluctant President and the Advisors Who Decide for Him."
It relates that at the urging of Jarrett, Obama canceled the operation to kill Osama bin Laden three times before approving the Navy SEAL mission in Pakistan on May 2, 2011. Seems she was concerned about political harm to Obama if the mission failed.
Miniter writes that the president canceled the kill mission in January 2011, again in February and a third time in March, in each instance at the urging of Jarrett. Miniter cites a source within the Joint Special Operations Command who had direct knowledge of the operation and its planning.
Edward Klein, author of "The Amateur," a best-selling book about Obama, asked Obama if he ran every decision by Jarrett, and the president responded, "Absolutely."
A former foreign editor of Newsweek and editor of the New York Times Magazine, Klein describes Jarrett as "ground zero in the Obama operation, the first couple's friend and consigliere."
Did Obama run the Benghazi decision not to send help past Jarrett that night?
We do know Obama had a face-to-face briefing from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, early in the evening.
After dinner in his living quarters, Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed Iran and other issues in a two-hour phone call.
Present as the call was made, reports blogger Chip Jones at Conservative Report Online, was Valerie Jarrett, who, as the call was ending, went from the living quarters to the White House Situation Room, where the attack in Benghazi was being monitored by Dempsey, Panetta and other top-ranking officials.
What she may have said and whether the president sent her is unknown. We do know the president retired for the night, and no rescue mission was launched.
Once before, Jarrett had called off the military for political purposes. She may have done it that night as well — an action that would answer many questions and may be what the White House is really hiding.