UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05779589 Date: 01/07/2016
RELEASE IN PART B6
From: sbwhoeop0 [DELETE]
Sent: Thursday, March 17, 2011 7:40 PM
To: H
Subject: H: Libya, Med & big idea. Sid
Attachments: hrc memo Iibya & big idea. 031711.docx; hrc memo libya & big idea. 031711.docx
CONFIDENTIAL
March 17, 2011
For: Hillary
From: Sid
Re: Libya & Big Idea
1. No-fly! Brava! You did it! I am deeply proud and grateful.More intel to come...
2. Big idea: See the article below on a projected Union of the Mediterranean by Mustapha Tlili, research
scholar at New York University, founder and director of the NYU Center for Dialogues, and a member
of Human Rights Watch's advisory committee for the Middle East and North Africa.
Sarkozy hit upon this as an earlier ploy and has not taken it up again because he's playing demagogic
games about "multiculturalism." But this is a strategic idea to reorient thinking about integration of the
Muslim world and the West, with the US playing a critical role—the Union of the Mediterranean. Such
a Union is only possible after the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions. It can begin with initial economic
links much like the EU began with a coal and steel accord and then unfold into many other areas. After.
your trip to Tunisia and Egypt—and the opportunity that Libya will present—the US can take a
leadership role. You might consider formulating some first steps and articulating the concept. This gives
the US a new role in Europe; recasts the war on terrorism; isolates those Arab states that remain
authoritarian repressive regimes without imposing punitive measures; gives the US a hand in reform and
development in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, etc.; and offers a new incentive into the Mideast peace
process (such as it is).
'nttp://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/mtIiii2/English.
Best regards,
Mustapha Tlili
Imagining a New Mediterranean World
The Big Lie About the Libyan War: The Obama administration s
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Re: The Big Lie About the Libyan War: The Obama administrati
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Re: The Big Lie About the Libyan War: The Obama administrati
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Emails Show How Hillary Clinton Valued Input From Sidney Blumenthal
By Peter Baker
September 1, 2015
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
WASHINGTON — As secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton had access to the latest information and analysis from the nation’s premier intelligence agencies, from a corps of seasoned diplomats reporting back from every corner of the world, from a range of foreign policy experts in and out of government. And from Sidney Blumenthal.
A former journalist, White House official and longtime confidant of Mrs. Clinton’s, Mr. Blumenthal became a frequent correspondent and tipster during her time in President Obama’s cabinet, passing along news articles, inside information, political gossip, election polls, geopolitical advice and sheer speculation in a steady drumbeat of emails, according to documents released by the State Department.
In addition to memos on Libya that have drawn attention, Mr. Blumenthal weighed in freely on events in Britain, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, China, Greece, Mexico, Italy and even Kyrgyzstan, becoming a sort of unofficial early warning service for the secretary on the far-flung issues that confronted her. He also served as an informer on domestic politics, keeping her up-to-date on the latest machinations in the White House and on the campaign trail, even offering suggestions for midterm election strategy.
Mr. Blumenthal, in fact, was so prolific in his messages to “H,” as he addressed her, that he seems to be the person she heard from by email the most outside her department. Of the 4,368 emails and documents, mostly from 2010, that were posted on the State Department website on Monday night in response to a court order, a search found that 306 involved messages from Mr. Blumenthal to Mrs. Clinton or vice versa.
Mrs. Clinton was usually terse and revealed little in reply, but she indicated that she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, welcomed Mr. Blumenthal’s input outside the normal chain of command.
“I shared your emails w Bill who thought they were ‘brilliant’!” she wrote after a series of messages about elections in Britain. “Keep ’em coming when you can.”
When he was slow with a promised memo, she nudged him. “Are you still sending?” Other messages referred to late-night phone conversations.
Mr. Blumenthal’s assessments were at times bracing, especially regarding American politics. In one message, he referred to Speaker John A. Boehner as “that old scandal ridden hack Republican.”
In another, he said younger Republican lawmakers “despised” Mr. Boehner. “They are repelled by his personal behavior,” he wrote. “He is louche, alcoholic, lazy, and without any commitment to any principle.”
In several messages, Mr. Blumenthal argued that Democrats should present Mr. Boehner as the face of the Republican Party during the 2010 midterm elections. “Making Boehner the GOP poster child should be systematic and relentless,” he wrote.
Mrs. Clinton — who, as the nation’s chief diplomat, publicly stayed out of the campaign — never responded to such suggestions in the emails that were released. But she clearly followed the elections carefully as Democrats were headed to a blowout defeat.
“I’m on a plane on the way to Papua New Guinea for the next 6 hours so pls email me results as you get them,” she wrote to Mr. Blumenthal on Election Day. “Needless to say, I’m so distressed over all of this.”
Mr. Blumenthal did not hesitate to suggest aggressive pushback against the White House, including David Axelrod, then the president’s senior adviser. “Axelrod should not be a foreign policy spokesman on any issue or area,” Mr. Blumenthal wrote.
He urged Mrs. Clinton to have James B. Steinberg, her deputy at the time, tell Tom Donilon, then the national security adviser, to “rein in” Mr. Axelrod. “Axelrod has enough to do fixing the domestic messes he’s made,” he wrote.
In another message, Mr. Blumenthal forwarded a memo from David Brock, a pro-Clinton political activist, with the subject line “Memo on Impeaching Clarence Thomas,” the Supreme Court justice. It argued that a new tell-all book by a former girlfriend conflicted with Justice Thomas’s testimony during his confirmation hearings in 1991.
Mr. Blumenthal passed along political intelligence liberally. He said “Republican sources” had told him that Karl Rove had predicted that the party would nominate Mitt Romney and Haley Barbour, then the governor of Mississippi, in 2012. He said an acquaintance had had dinner with Gen. David H. Petraeus, “who freely talked about running for president.”
And he offered a scathing assessment of Martha Coakley, the Democrat running for Senate in Massachusetts in 2010, who he said was “not a very good candidate, dull, dutiful, rote.”
The emails posted on Monday, along with previous batches disclosed by the State Department, shed light on a relationship that has already drawn scrutiny from Republicans in Congress investigating the terrorist attack on an American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.
While not a State Department employee, Mr. Blumenthal was being paid by Mr. Clinton’s foundation as well as by advocacy organizations that have advanced Mrs. Clinton’s political interests.
Mr. Blumenthal has been a figure of much interest for years in Clinton circles. He was a trusted adviser to Mrs. Clinton when she was first lady, and a chief defender of her and her husband against what she once called a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
Other Clinton aides viewed him suspiciously for his conspiratorial bent; some nicknamed him “G.K.,” for grassy knoll. As Mr. Obama’s White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a Clinton veteran, blocked an effort to hire Mr. Blumenthal at the State Department.
But even if she could not put him on her staff, Mrs. Clinton clearly valued his input, at least to a degree. She used him at times as a conduit to foreign officials, particularly in Britain, where he has extensive contacts in Labour Party circles and referred to top officials like Gordon Brown, then the prime minister, by their first names.
In some of the emails, he arranged a dinner for Mrs. Clinton, himself and Shaun Woodward, then Britain’s top official on Northern Ireland. During elections that deposed Mr. Brown, Mr. Blumenthal reported real-time results from London, even informing Mrs. Clinton when the prime minister was heading to meet with the queen to step down. “Alas, poor Gordon, Heathcliffe, unloved, unlovable, suffering,” Mr. Blumenthal wrote.
Mr. Blumenthal’s advice ranged widely. After Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy was attacked by a man in a square, Mr. Blumenthal recommended that Mr. Obama call to wish him well. He urged a strong stance on Middle East peace negotiations. “Without ‘tough love,’ any support for Israel will lack credibility,” he wrote. He offered his own cheeky translation of an Iranian statement, saying it really meant: “Oh, how we miss George Bush! He was such an easy target.”
Mr. Blumenthal regularly forwarded articles by his son, the journalist Max Blumenthal, and intervened on behalf of some people with Mrs. Clinton. He encouraged her to give an interview to the author James Mann, who was writing a book about Democratic foreign policy, and he urged intervention when Israel barred the prominent scholar Noam Chomsky from entering the West Bank. “He is a U.S. citizen barred for his political views, after all,” Mr. Blumenthal wrote.
He was also Mrs. Clinton’s outlet on some of the old battles that reached back to her days in Arkansas as the wife of an up-and-coming Democrat. When Jim Johnson, a former segregationist, State Supreme Court justice and longtime foe of the Clintons, committed suicide in 2010, Mr. Blumenthal sent her a news report. “What a sad ending to the tale,” Mrs. Clinton wrote.
Mr. Blumenthal did not seem sad. He wrote that he wished Mr. Johnson’s death “were as politically conclusive” as that of a Confederate who “blew his brains out” after Appomattox. “Unfortunately, the evil Justice Jim did lives on — in the wild bigotry against Obama and even through the Supreme Court decision in the case of Citizens United, a group he helped galvanize to circulate the Whitewater hoax,” he wrote.
Mr. Blumenthal made a point of passing along articles and rumors that suggested disarray in the White House of Mrs. Clinton’s former primary rival, Mr. Obama. He sent a poll showing her with a higher approval rating than the president, and a column urging Mr. Obama to fire Mr. Emanuel, which she then forwarded to a top aide with an “fyi.”
He passed along a gossipy piece reporting that Michelle Obama had supposedly told Carla Bruni, the wife of the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, that life in the White House was “hell.”
In October 2010, just weeks before the Democratic midterm defeat, Mr. Blumenthal sent along a column by the political analyst Mark Halperin saying Washington elites of both parties had concluded that “the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters.”
Mr. Blumenthal added his own verdict. While much of the article was “twaddle,” he said, its central conclusion was “completely accurate in assessment.
By Peter Baker
September 1, 2015
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
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WASHINGTON — As secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton had access to the latest information and analysis from the nation’s premier intelligence agencies, from a corps of seasoned diplomats reporting back from every corner of the world, from a range of foreign policy experts in and out of government. And from Sidney Blumenthal.
A former journalist, White House official and longtime confidant of Mrs. Clinton’s, Mr. Blumenthal became a frequent correspondent and tipster during her time in President Obama’s cabinet, passing along news articles, inside information, political gossip, election polls, geopolitical advice and sheer speculation in a steady drumbeat of emails, according to documents released by the State Department.
In addition to memos on Libya that have drawn attention, Mr. Blumenthal weighed in freely on events in Britain, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran, China, Greece, Mexico, Italy and even Kyrgyzstan, becoming a sort of unofficial early warning service for the secretary on the far-flung issues that confronted her. He also served as an informer on domestic politics, keeping her up-to-date on the latest machinations in the White House and on the campaign trail, even offering suggestions for midterm election strategy.
Mr. Blumenthal, in fact, was so prolific in his messages to “H,” as he addressed her, that he seems to be the person she heard from by email the most outside her department. Of the 4,368 emails and documents, mostly from 2010, that were posted on the State Department website on Monday night in response to a court order, a search found that 306 involved messages from Mr. Blumenthal to Mrs. Clinton or vice versa.
Mrs. Clinton was usually terse and revealed little in reply, but she indicated that she and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, welcomed Mr. Blumenthal’s input outside the normal chain of command.
“I shared your emails w Bill who thought they were ‘brilliant’!” she wrote after a series of messages about elections in Britain. “Keep ’em coming when you can.”
When he was slow with a promised memo, she nudged him. “Are you still sending?” Other messages referred to late-night phone conversations.
Mr. Blumenthal’s assessments were at times bracing, especially regarding American politics. In one message, he referred to Speaker John A. Boehner as “that old scandal ridden hack Republican.”
In another, he said younger Republican lawmakers “despised” Mr. Boehner. “They are repelled by his personal behavior,” he wrote. “He is louche, alcoholic, lazy, and without any commitment to any principle.”
In several messages, Mr. Blumenthal argued that Democrats should present Mr. Boehner as the face of the Republican Party during the 2010 midterm elections. “Making Boehner the GOP poster child should be systematic and relentless,” he wrote.
Mrs. Clinton — who, as the nation’s chief diplomat, publicly stayed out of the campaign — never responded to such suggestions in the emails that were released. But she clearly followed the elections carefully as Democrats were headed to a blowout defeat.
“I’m on a plane on the way to Papua New Guinea for the next 6 hours so pls email me results as you get them,” she wrote to Mr. Blumenthal on Election Day. “Needless to say, I’m so distressed over all of this.”
Mr. Blumenthal did not hesitate to suggest aggressive pushback against the White House, including David Axelrod, then the president’s senior adviser. “Axelrod should not be a foreign policy spokesman on any issue or area,” Mr. Blumenthal wrote.
He urged Mrs. Clinton to have James B. Steinberg, her deputy at the time, tell Tom Donilon, then the national security adviser, to “rein in” Mr. Axelrod. “Axelrod has enough to do fixing the domestic messes he’s made,” he wrote.
In another message, Mr. Blumenthal forwarded a memo from David Brock, a pro-Clinton political activist, with the subject line “Memo on Impeaching Clarence Thomas,” the Supreme Court justice. It argued that a new tell-all book by a former girlfriend conflicted with Justice Thomas’s testimony during his confirmation hearings in 1991.
Mr. Blumenthal passed along political intelligence liberally. He said “Republican sources” had told him that Karl Rove had predicted that the party would nominate Mitt Romney and Haley Barbour, then the governor of Mississippi, in 2012. He said an acquaintance had had dinner with Gen. David H. Petraeus, “who freely talked about running for president.”
And he offered a scathing assessment of Martha Coakley, the Democrat running for Senate in Massachusetts in 2010, who he said was “not a very good candidate, dull, dutiful, rote.”
The emails posted on Monday, along with previous batches disclosed by the State Department, shed light on a relationship that has already drawn scrutiny from Republicans in Congress investigating the terrorist attack on an American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012.
While not a State Department employee, Mr. Blumenthal was being paid by Mr. Clinton’s foundation as well as by advocacy organizations that have advanced Mrs. Clinton’s political interests.
Mr. Blumenthal has been a figure of much interest for years in Clinton circles. He was a trusted adviser to Mrs. Clinton when she was first lady, and a chief defender of her and her husband against what she once called a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”
"EVERYBODY IS FAIR GAME, simply for being on the other side," Sid Blumenthal wrote in the New Yorker when the Clintons were moving into the White House. "Humiliating one's prey, not merely defeating one's foes, is central to the process." No doubt this nasty blueprint for political success struck a chord with Hillary. According to Carl Bernstein, who wrote the Hillary biography A Woman in Charge, "His was a message that Hillary could embrace, along with its author." She hired him. [1] Blumenthal helped write some of Clinton's speeches and, in 1997, went to work in the White House as assistant to the president.
And assist he did.
By the time Bill and Hillary were up to their necks in Whitewater and Jones and Monica and me, Blumenthal concluded and collected "copious research on almost every aspect of the political, professional, and private lives of Starr, his prosecutors, the Paula Jones gang, the Republicans in Congress ... and ... the individual mercenaries of the right." [2] He would eventually be questioned in detail as to how he went about collecting that "copious research."
When Monica's story came out, Blumenthal cheered blindly for his team. Like a cult follower, he blamed Hillary's vast right-wing conspiracy. "The right-wing politics that had forced the scandal were alien and unknown to much of the White House senior staff," Blumenthal wrote in The Clinton Wars, his eight-hundred-page account of his years in the Clinton White House. "To them, what the right was doing seemed far-fetched, so impossibly convoluted, that they couldn't quite credit it." [3] It was quite a stretch of the imagination that White House aides would swallow the story that my testimony -- and Monica's and Paula's and Gennifer's -- were creations of right-wing politics, but the Clintons' brainwashed minions chose to swallow it. And Hillary's boy Sid served up the bait.
-- Target: Caught in the Crosshairs of Bill and Hillary Clinton, by Kathleen Willey
Other Clinton aides viewed him suspiciously for his conspiratorial bent; some nicknamed him “G.K.,” for grassy knoll. As Mr. Obama’s White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, a Clinton veteran, blocked an effort to hire Mr. Blumenthal at the State Department.
But even if she could not put him on her staff, Mrs. Clinton clearly valued his input, at least to a degree. She used him at times as a conduit to foreign officials, particularly in Britain, where he has extensive contacts in Labour Party circles and referred to top officials like Gordon Brown, then the prime minister, by their first names.
In some of the emails, he arranged a dinner for Mrs. Clinton, himself and Shaun Woodward, then Britain’s top official on Northern Ireland. During elections that deposed Mr. Brown, Mr. Blumenthal reported real-time results from London, even informing Mrs. Clinton when the prime minister was heading to meet with the queen to step down. “Alas, poor Gordon, Heathcliffe, unloved, unlovable, suffering,” Mr. Blumenthal wrote.
Mr. Blumenthal’s advice ranged widely. After Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of Italy was attacked by a man in a square, Mr. Blumenthal recommended that Mr. Obama call to wish him well. He urged a strong stance on Middle East peace negotiations. “Without ‘tough love,’ any support for Israel will lack credibility,” he wrote. He offered his own cheeky translation of an Iranian statement, saying it really meant: “Oh, how we miss George Bush! He was such an easy target.”
Mr. Blumenthal regularly forwarded articles by his son, the journalist Max Blumenthal, and intervened on behalf of some people with Mrs. Clinton. He encouraged her to give an interview to the author James Mann, who was writing a book about Democratic foreign policy, and he urged intervention when Israel barred the prominent scholar Noam Chomsky from entering the West Bank. “He is a U.S. citizen barred for his political views, after all,” Mr. Blumenthal wrote.
He was also Mrs. Clinton’s outlet on some of the old battles that reached back to her days in Arkansas as the wife of an up-and-coming Democrat. When Jim Johnson, a former segregationist, State Supreme Court justice and longtime foe of the Clintons, committed suicide in 2010, Mr. Blumenthal sent her a news report. “What a sad ending to the tale,” Mrs. Clinton wrote.
Mr. Blumenthal did not seem sad. He wrote that he wished Mr. Johnson’s death “were as politically conclusive” as that of a Confederate who “blew his brains out” after Appomattox. “Unfortunately, the evil Justice Jim did lives on — in the wild bigotry against Obama and even through the Supreme Court decision in the case of Citizens United, a group he helped galvanize to circulate the Whitewater hoax,” he wrote.
Mr. Blumenthal made a point of passing along articles and rumors that suggested disarray in the White House of Mrs. Clinton’s former primary rival, Mr. Obama. He sent a poll showing her with a higher approval rating than the president, and a column urging Mr. Obama to fire Mr. Emanuel, which she then forwarded to a top aide with an “fyi.”
He passed along a gossipy piece reporting that Michelle Obama had supposedly told Carla Bruni, the wife of the former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, that life in the White House was “hell.”
In October 2010, just weeks before the Democratic midterm defeat, Mr. Blumenthal sent along a column by the political analyst Mark Halperin saying Washington elites of both parties had concluded that “the White House is in over its head, isolated, insular, arrogant and clueless about how to get along with or persuade members of Congress, the media, the business community or working-class voters.”
Mr. Blumenthal added his own verdict. While much of the article was “twaddle,” he said, its central conclusion was “completely accurate in assessment.
- admin
- Site Admin
- Posts: 36171
- Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am
Re: The Big Lie About the Libyan War: The Obama administrati
by admin » Thu Dec 22, 2016 3:25 am
UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05789645 Date: 12/31/2015
RELEASE IN PART B6
From: James P. Rubin [DELETE]
Sent: Sunday, March 8, 2012 3:10 PM
To: H
Subject: RE: We will always have Paris..
Hillary, I will find a few select journalists for the dinner we discussed. The name I couldn't remember was, of course,
Arthur Schlesinger. Also, Christiane interviewed a senior Iranian in geneva this week, who I think said something worth
exploring. He said Iran would accept more than NPT requirements, what he called the Japan model of permanent
human presence at their sites, in exchange for U.S. cooperation per NPT on technology. It seems to me that goes
beyond previous statements and I thought I would pass it on. Enjoyed our talk. All best, Jamie p.s. the text of the
interview should be available to your office. If not, I will find..
From: H [mailto:HDR22@clintonemail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 7:31 PM
To: 'jamesprubin [DELETE]
Subject: Re: We will always have Paris..
You're right, we will!
Sorry for the delay in responding, but I've had big problems w my blackberry, which has been having a nervous
breakdown on my dime!
I'm delighted to hear about your new job and would love to talk w you about it. I will ask my team to reach out to set up
a visit. Looking forward to catching up--all the best. H
From: James P. Rubin [DELETE]
Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2012 02:51 PM
To: H
Subject: We will always have Paris..
Greetings, the last time we saw each other was Paris, I believe, right after the fall of Qaddafi. Although Libya is still
messy, I think your efforts to keep the world's focus on removing Qaddafi and helping avoid a slaughter there
last year will be long remembered.
[DELETE]
In any event, in Paris I mentioned the possibility of arranging some off the record events with key journalists and
influential types for you in your last year as Secretary of State. Although Bloomberg is not the right place for it any
more, I am also President of the Atlantic Partnership in NYC and Washington, which could be a perfect venue for such
events, if you are still interested.
In the meantime, I did want to ask you about coming to see you in Washington in connection with my work for Andrew,
in order to promote some international opportunities for the State of New York, for which I hope you still have a soft
spot. I have also heard from some colleagues that you have set up a foreign affairs board analogous to the Pentagon's
Defense Policy Board.
[DELETE]
[DELETE] In any event, I hope I can get in to see you in Washington, or if it suited you better, on
one of your rare downtimes in New York.
Best regards, your friend,
Jamie
RELEASE IN PART B6
From: James P. Rubin [DELETE]
Sent: Sunday, March 8, 2012 3:10 PM
To: H
Subject: RE: We will always have Paris..
Hillary, I will find a few select journalists for the dinner we discussed. The name I couldn't remember was, of course,
Arthur Schlesinger. Also, Christiane interviewed a senior Iranian in geneva this week, who I think said something worth
exploring. He said Iran would accept more than NPT requirements, what he called the Japan model of permanent
human presence at their sites, in exchange for U.S. cooperation per NPT on technology. It seems to me that goes
beyond previous statements and I thought I would pass it on. Enjoyed our talk. All best, Jamie p.s. the text of the
interview should be available to your office. If not, I will find..
From: H [mailto:HDR22@clintonemail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, January 31, 2012 7:31 PM
To: 'jamesprubin [DELETE]
Subject: Re: We will always have Paris..
You're right, we will!
Sorry for the delay in responding, but I've had big problems w my blackberry, which has been having a nervous
breakdown on my dime!
I'm delighted to hear about your new job and would love to talk w you about it. I will ask my team to reach out to set up
a visit. Looking forward to catching up--all the best. H
From: James P. Rubin [DELETE]
Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2012 02:51 PM
To: H
Subject: We will always have Paris..
Greetings, the last time we saw each other was Paris, I believe, right after the fall of Qaddafi. Although Libya is still
messy, I think your efforts to keep the world's focus on removing Qaddafi and helping avoid a slaughter there
last year will be long remembered.
[DELETE]
In any event, in Paris I mentioned the possibility of arranging some off the record events with key journalists and
influential types for you in your last year as Secretary of State. Although Bloomberg is not the right place for it any
more, I am also President of the Atlantic Partnership in NYC and Washington, which could be a perfect venue for such
events, if you are still interested.
In the meantime, I did want to ask you about coming to see you in Washington in connection with my work for Andrew,
in order to promote some international opportunities for the State of New York, for which I hope you still have a soft
spot. I have also heard from some colleagues that you have set up a foreign affairs board analogous to the Pentagon's
Defense Policy Board.
[DELETE]
[DELETE] In any event, I hope I can get in to see you in Washington, or if it suited you better, on
one of your rare downtimes in New York.
Best regards, your friend,
Jamie
- admin
- Site Admin
- Posts: 36171
- Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am
Re: The Big Lie About the Libyan War: The Obama administrati
by admin » Thu Dec 22, 2016 3:30 am
UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05780242 Date: 11/30/2015
RELEASE IN PART B6
From: Mills, Cheryl D <MillsCD@state.gov>
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 5:45 PM
To:
Subject: FW: Congratulations on Libya intervention
Original Message
From: Toiv, Nora F
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 5:43 PM
To: Mills, Cheryl D
Subject: RE: Congratulations on Libya intervention
He is currently a Fellow at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, the former President of the American Refugee
Committee and a former Assistant Administrator at USAID (98-01).
Original Message
From: Mills, Cheryl D
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 5:38 PM
To: Toiv, Nora F
Subject: FW: Congratulations on Libya intervention
Can you review and revert.
Original Message
From: H [mailto:HDR22@clintonemail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 12:06 AM
To: Mills, Cheryl D
Cc: Huma Abedin
Subject: Re: Congratulations on Libya intervention
[DELETE]
Original Message
From: Mills, Cheryl D [mailto:MillsCD@state.gov]
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2011 02:03 PM
To: H
Subject: FW: Congratulations on Libya intervention
Original Message
From: Parmer, Hugh [mailto: [DELETE]
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2011 12:33 PM
To: Mills, Cheryl D
Subject: Congratulations on Libya intervention
Ms. Mills,
Please pass on my congratulations to Secretary Clinton for what was apparently her key role in persuading the
Administration to act to protect the people of Libya. [DELETE]
With all the demand on USG humanitarian resources [DELETE]
Hugh Parmer
Adjunct Professor
International Studies Program
[DELETE]
RELEASE IN PART B6
From: Mills, Cheryl D <MillsCD@state.gov>
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 5:45 PM
To:
Subject: FW: Congratulations on Libya intervention
Original Message
From: Toiv, Nora F
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 5:43 PM
To: Mills, Cheryl D
Subject: RE: Congratulations on Libya intervention
He is currently a Fellow at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, the former President of the American Refugee
Committee and a former Assistant Administrator at USAID (98-01).
Original Message
From: Mills, Cheryl D
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 5:38 PM
To: Toiv, Nora F
Subject: FW: Congratulations on Libya intervention
Can you review and revert.
Original Message
From: H [mailto:HDR22@clintonemail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 23, 2011 12:06 AM
To: Mills, Cheryl D
Cc: Huma Abedin
Subject: Re: Congratulations on Libya intervention
[DELETE]
Original Message
From: Mills, Cheryl D [mailto:MillsCD@state.gov]
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2011 02:03 PM
To: H
Subject: FW: Congratulations on Libya intervention
Original Message
From: Parmer, Hugh [mailto: [DELETE]
Sent: Monday, March 21, 2011 12:33 PM
To: Mills, Cheryl D
Subject: Congratulations on Libya intervention
Ms. Mills,
Please pass on my congratulations to Secretary Clinton for what was apparently her key role in persuading the
Administration to act to protect the people of Libya. [DELETE]
With all the demand on USG humanitarian resources [DELETE]
Hugh Parmer
Adjunct Professor
International Studies Program
[DELETE]
- admin
- Site Admin
- Posts: 36171
- Joined: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:21 am
Re: The Big Lie About the Libyan War: The Obama administrati
by admin » Thu Dec 22, 2016 3:34 am
Abducted Serbs 'killed in US air strikes' in Libya: Toll from raids targeting suspected ISIL camp in Sabratha rises to 49, including two kidnapped Serbian embassy staff.
by aljazeera.com
February 20, 2016
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
Serbia says two members of its embassy staff who were abducted in Libya in November are believed to have been among at least 49 killed in US air strikes on a suspected training camp of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.
US officials said the site targeted in Friday's strikes in Sabratha, a coastal city in western Libya, was a camp used by up to 60 fighters, including Tunisian Noureddine Chouchane, blamed for two attacks on tourists in Tunisia last year in which dozens were killed.
Sladjana Stankovic, a Serbian communications officer, and Jovica Stepic, a driver, were taken hostage on November 8 after their diplomatic convoy, including the ambassador, came under fire near Sabratha.
"Unfortunately as a consequence of this attack on the Islamic State in Libya, the two of them lost their lives," Ivica Dacic, Serbia's foreign minister, said, referring to Friday's air strike.
He said they had received information from several sources, including other intelligence services, of the deaths of Stankovic and Stepic.
The information was yet to be officially confirmed by Libyan authorities.
Dacic offered "sincere condolences to the families of the victims", saying they had been informed of the news and that the repatriation of bodies would be organised in the coming days.
Hussein al-Thwadi, the mayor of Sabratha, said Libyan authorities had sent photos of the bodies to Serbian diplomats for an initial identification.
He said the death toll from Friday's strikes had risen to 49.
It was the second US air raid in three months against ISIL in Libya, where the fighters have exploited chaos following Muammar Gaddafi's 2011 downfall to build up a presence on the southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
Libya's attorney general said on Saturday that one of six wounded survivors told prosecutors that those in the building that was hit were "members of ISIL who came to Libya recently for training and then to carry out terrorist acts in Tunisia".
But Thwadi said the building was "just a house", adding: "The house was used for meetings and other acts but not training."
Dacic said Serbian authorities had been negotiating the release of the two staff before the attack.
"The kidnappers had a financial interest," he said, adding that demands had been "impossible" to meet by either the families or the government.
He said Serbia would send a protest note to Washington DC for not informing Serbian authorities of the raid.
US officials have said they gave advance warning of the strikes to Libyan authorities, without specifying who they contacted.
Since 2014 Libya has had two competing governments, one based in Tripoli and the other, which has received international recognition, in the east.
Serbia has ties with both of Libya's governments.
Both sides are supported by loose alliances of former rebels and armed brigades.
A unity government has been nominated under a UN-backed plan, but has yet to win approval or move to Libya.
Western powers and the UN have, in the meantime, been trying to reach out to armed factions to provide security for the unity government and tackle the threat from ISIL.
The group took control of Gaddafi's home town of Sirte last year, and has carried out attacks in several other towns and cities.
Diplomats and foreign nationals have been targeted in the past for kidnappings, mostly for ransom or to demand the release of fighters being held by overseas governments.
Armed groups have also targeted foreigners.
by aljazeera.com
February 20, 2016
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Serbia says two members of its embassy staff who were abducted in Libya in November are believed to have been among at least 49 killed in US air strikes on a suspected training camp of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group.
US officials said the site targeted in Friday's strikes in Sabratha, a coastal city in western Libya, was a camp used by up to 60 fighters, including Tunisian Noureddine Chouchane, blamed for two attacks on tourists in Tunisia last year in which dozens were killed.
Sladjana Stankovic, a Serbian communications officer, and Jovica Stepic, a driver, were taken hostage on November 8 after their diplomatic convoy, including the ambassador, came under fire near Sabratha.
"Unfortunately as a consequence of this attack on the Islamic State in Libya, the two of them lost their lives," Ivica Dacic, Serbia's foreign minister, said, referring to Friday's air strike.
He said they had received information from several sources, including other intelligence services, of the deaths of Stankovic and Stepic.
The information was yet to be officially confirmed by Libyan authorities.
Dacic offered "sincere condolences to the families of the victims", saying they had been informed of the news and that the repatriation of bodies would be organised in the coming days.
Hussein al-Thwadi, the mayor of Sabratha, said Libyan authorities had sent photos of the bodies to Serbian diplomats for an initial identification.
He said the death toll from Friday's strikes had risen to 49.
It was the second US air raid in three months against ISIL in Libya, where the fighters have exploited chaos following Muammar Gaddafi's 2011 downfall to build up a presence on the southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
Libya's attorney general said on Saturday that one of six wounded survivors told prosecutors that those in the building that was hit were "members of ISIL who came to Libya recently for training and then to carry out terrorist acts in Tunisia".
But Thwadi said the building was "just a house", adding: "The house was used for meetings and other acts but not training."
Dacic said Serbian authorities had been negotiating the release of the two staff before the attack.
"The kidnappers had a financial interest," he said, adding that demands had been "impossible" to meet by either the families or the government.
He said Serbia would send a protest note to Washington DC for not informing Serbian authorities of the raid.
US officials have said they gave advance warning of the strikes to Libyan authorities, without specifying who they contacted.
Since 2014 Libya has had two competing governments, one based in Tripoli and the other, which has received international recognition, in the east.
Serbia has ties with both of Libya's governments.
Both sides are supported by loose alliances of former rebels and armed brigades.
A unity government has been nominated under a UN-backed plan, but has yet to win approval or move to Libya.
Western powers and the UN have, in the meantime, been trying to reach out to armed factions to provide security for the unity government and tackle the threat from ISIL.
The group took control of Gaddafi's home town of Sirte last year, and has carried out attacks in several other towns and cities.
Diplomats and foreign nationals have been targeted in the past for kidnappings, mostly for ransom or to demand the release of fighters being held by overseas governments.
Armed groups have also targeted foreigners.
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Re: The Big Lie About the Libyan War: The Obama administrati
by admin » Thu Dec 22, 2016 3:39 am
Department of Defense Press Briefing by Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook in the Pentagon Briefing Room
by U.S. Department of Defense Press Operations
Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook
Jan. 27, 2016
PETER COOK: Afternoon, everyone. Hope you survived Snowzilla adequately. You look -- crowd's a little smaller today. Maybe people are still trapped. But -- hope everyone's doing all right.
I wanted to begin, today, with a statement regarding – a statement from the secretary regarding Afghanistan -- again, from Secretary Carter.
"I want to thank General John Campbell for his extraordinary leadership and dedication in his dual role as commander of the United States forces Afghanistan, and as commander of the NATO Resolute Support mission.
"While many challenges remain, we have made gains over the past year that will put Afghanistan on a better path, and much of the credit for that progress rests with General Campbell.
"Under General Campbell's leadership, our forces have engaged in two important and enduring missions: our train, advise and assist support to the Afghan security forces, and our counterterrorism effort. General Campbell has taken the fight to Al Qaida and made clear our resolve to deny it safe haven.
"He has consistently identified ways to increase the capability and capacity of the Afghan forces -- forces that have shown the motivation and resiliency required to ensure the long-term success of our partnership and the security and the stability of the Afghan -- that the Afghan people deserve.
"General Campbell has presided over important milestones in our mission to enable the ANDSF, including the recent delivery of the A-29s to the Afghan military to provide close air support, which will be a key element in increasing superiority over Taliban forces.
"He has also forged strong partnerships with the Afghan unity government led by President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah, and it is clear that we have strong partners with a common vision focused on a secure and prosperous future for the Afghan people.
"For nearly 18 months, General Campbell has given his all to the mission as our top commander in Afghanistan, and his personal sacrifices on behalf of his troops and the Afghan people will be remembered by us all.
"As his tour in Afghanistan comes to a close, I want to personally thank him for everything he has done to bring us to this moment in Afghanistan, and for all that he has done throughout his extraordinary career. There will be more to say about his future in the coming days.
"The good news is that we have a deep bench. I am absolutely confident the man the president intends to nominate to take General Campbell's place when his work in Afghanistan is completed, Lieutenant General John "Mick" Nicholson, is an accomplished soldier with extensive command experience both in Afghanistan and around the world.
"He has led soldiers at all levels, from platoon to division, in airborne, ranger, mechanized, Stryker and light infantry units in five different infantry divisions and the 75th Ranger Regiment. He commanded the 82nd Airborne Division, reestablishing global response force capabilities, and commanded NATO's Allied Land Command.
"He knows what it means to lead a responsive and nimble force, and how to build the capacity of our partners to respond to immediate and long-term threats and remain adaptable to confront evolving challenges. And he understands the importance and complexity of our mission in Afghanistan, having served in multiple capacities, including chief of staff of operations for the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, and U.S. Forces Afghanistan, director of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell for the Joint Staff and deputy commander of stability of ISAF Regional Command-South.
"I am confident that General Nicholson will build upon General Campbell's hard work to secure a bright future for the Afghan people and help the government of Afghanistan strengthen a professional and capable security partner to the American people."
I also wanted to update you as well on the secretary's visit to CYBERCOM earlier today. The secretary and Chairman Dunford visited U.S. Cyber Command or CYBERCOM in Fort Meade, Maryland, this morning. They discussed a range of cyber-related topics with the leadership there, including the latest on efforts to degrade ISIL's messaging campaign.
As the secretary made clear in his remarks to the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell and in his speech in meetings with allies last week in Paris, our effort to accelerate the campaign to deliver a lasting defeat to ISIL includes targeting their use of the Internet to spread their message of hate, recruit fighters and inspire acts of terror.
CYBERCOM is charged with supporting our inter-agency partners in our whole of government effort to counter ISIL messaging in addition to several other vital aspects of the counter ISIL campaign. Secretary was able to engage directly with some of the men and women directly engaged in cyber operations. He encouraged them, the entire CYBERCOM team, to do what they can to intensify the fight against ISIL.
And with that, I'd be happy to take your questions.
Jamie.
Q: I wanted to ask you about the possibility of the U.S. expanding its counter ISIL efforts into Libya. The chairman traveling in Europe this week said that it was fair to say that the U.S. needed to take decisive military action -- he said, in conjunction with the political events in Libya.
Can you help us understand what he's talking about and what's under consideration in terms of expanding efforts against ISIL into Libya?
MR. COOK: Well, as the chairman has discussed, as the Secretary has spoken on numerous occasions, including just last week in our visit to Paris and our meetings with other members of the ISIL coalition, we are extremely worried about the metastasis of ISIL to other locations, Libya being just one of those locations.
We continue to monitor the situation there. Continue to work very closely with our coalition partners, with others in the region who have similar concerns about the situation in Libya. And I think it's fair to say that we are closely monitoring the situation. As Chairman Dunford has indicated, working with those partners and also continuing to have conversations with people on the ground as to exactly what is happening there and the threat that ISIL poses to the United States and others.
Q: Could we see an expansion into Libya that looks something like what's going on in Iraq and Syria? That is to say, more consistent air strikes and even possibly some limited ground actions?
MR. COOK: We've shown in the past a willingness to strike in Libya. We've taken out a key ISIL leader in Libya in the past. But I think Jamie, it's too soon to say at this point exactly where things will evolve. We're taking a very close look at this situation.
Again, it's not just the United States that's involved here, that has a stake in what happens in Libya. We're continuing, of course, through the State Department, to support the effort to -- to forge a government in -- in Libya, and we think that's a critical step in terms of the governance of the country to trying to address the -- the ISIL threat as well. It's not just a military solution here.
But we're going to continue to monitor it, and -- and as Chairman Dunford indicated, we see this threat in ISIL as a serious threat, and we're going to continue to -- to monitor the situation and consider what options we have moving forward.
Q: Chairman Dunford seemed to indicate that those options might be presented to the president in -- I think he said in -- in a matter of weeks. Are -- so we -- are we talking about seeing some significant stepping-up of the operations against Libya in a matter of weeks?
MR. COOK: I think we're going to continue to assess the -- the threat in Libya and respond accordingly, and the chairman and the secretary will continue to have those conversations with the president's national security team and with our partners as well, as we assess the threat in Libya.
Q: Peter?
MR. COOK: Jennifer.
Q: Can you -- can you rule out U.S. boots on the ground going to Libya? Is that (inaudible) discussion?
MR. COOK: You -- you know the situation right now. We've had -- acknowledged that there have been some U.S. forces in Libya trying to establish contact with forces on the ground so that we get a clear picture of what's happening there.
But beyond that, it's -- again, we're going to consider all of our options going forward. Right now, that's not something that's -- that's under consideration.
Q: And can you help me understand -- twice this week, Ash Carter told CNN and CNBC -- gave the impression that U.S. boots on the ground are on their way to Iraq and possibly Syria.
He told CNN, "I just went to Fort Campbell, headquarter of 101st Airborne. They're going to be the next unit going into Iraq -- whole division. This is your mission: to get the Iraqis positioned. Is that hazardous? Boots on the ground -- yeah."
That led to some confusion. Did he mean to say that a division of the 101st was going to Iraq?
MR. COOK: The deployment of the 101st -- it's been scheduled for some time. They're rotating in to replace existing forces on the ground. So hopefully there isn't any confusion there.
Q: It's not a whole division. It's a brigade.
MR. COOK: It's my understanding it's about 1,800 troops that will be moving in. And, as the secretary acknowledged to those troops, they have an important mission to carry out.
It's been planned for some time. It's going to be the same mission that's being conducted right now by the 82nd Airborne, and they have a critical role to play going forward.
And I think the secretary was making the point that those forces, while they're on the ground in Iraq trying to, again, enable Iraqi security forces to move forward, will be at risk -- will be in harm's way. I think that was the point he was trying to make in that conversation.
Q: Is there any change to their mission in terms of -- will they be closer to the front lines? Will they be embedded if the Mosul operation begins? Is there any change to their mission?
MR. COOK: Their mission will be the same as the mission that -- for the forces that they're replacing, and this is, again, an effort to enable those Iraqi security forces, as U.S. trainers were able to do with Iraqi security forces that successfully took back those parts of Ramadi.
We're looking for much the same thing out of these forces, and they -- I can tell you from our travel to Fort Campbell and our conversations with them -- are -- are ready for this mission.
They understand the importance of this mission, and they will play a critical role in enabling those Iraqi security forces as they move towards their next targets, including, ultimately, Mosul.
Q: And I -- can I just shift to China for a moment?
Secretary Kerry is over in China today, and he was quoted in talking about the disputed islands in the South China Sea -- he was quoted saying, "Let me emphasize again: the United States does not take sides on the sovereignty questions underlying the territorial disputes in the South China Sea." That is a very different tone than what we've heard from this building.
Secretary Carter has said that we will continue to fly over the disputed islands. And in fact, there has been a lot more said that suggests that we do actually take sides on this issue. So where -- how do I understand this?
MR. COOK: I think Jennifer, that careful reading of the secretary's comments on this topic, including when we were in the region, he has been very clear -- and I think you can look at his testimony as well. We don't take sides in terms of these disputes. We encourage a diplomatic resolution to these disputes.
But what he's said is that efforts to reclaim these areas and to militarize these disputed islands is counterproductive to the effort to try and get a final resolution. And in the meantime, the United States will continue to be a force for stability in the region.
And we're going to continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows. But we don't take sides in these disputes, whether it's disputes involving China or other players in the region.
Paul?
Q: Going back to Libya for a second, are there currently U.S. forces on the ground there?
MR. COOK: I'm not going to tell you exactly what the disposition of our forces are there. I can acknowledge that we've had forces on the ground previously as we've indicated, to engage in conversations with local forces to get a clearer picture of exactly what's happening there.
Q: And can you give us a better sense of what that discussion with local forces is? Is that is preparing to organize the kinds of militias we can work with? Is it meeting with political leaders to get a sense of whom supports whom? I mean, it sounds as though it's a very complicated picture with dozens if not hundreds of different kinds of militias. What exactly is the U.S. stance?
MR. COOK: It is a complicated picture and I think you've characterized pretty well what the goal would be and that is to simply get a better sense of who the players are, who might be worthy of U.S. support and support from some of our partners going forward in the fight against ISIL.
It is a complicated picture. And that's why the formation of a government is so central to the future for Libya and to also addressing the issue of ISIL in Libya. And so part of the presence -- the reason for the presence of those troops is to, again, get a sense of the forces on the ground, the players on the ground and exactly what's happening, because it is a muddled picture right now. And we -- that is one of the best ways we can get a better sense of what's happening.
Q: Have they come to any conclusions on the kinds of forces we can work with?
MR. COOK: I think they provided valuable information. And again, there's a big picture here. There are lots of players involved, there are also a lot of foreign partners that we have who are providing us critical information about what's happening in Libya and we'll continue to work closely with them. It's not the only way we're getting information on the ground.
Q: Going back to Jamie's question. I realize that ISIS is a problem in many countries beyond Iraq and Syria, but Libya, as we understand it, is the only place where they are exercising active command and control. And I wonder, given Chairman Dunford's comments, given Secretary Carter's comments, is Libya getting a greater priority, a greater sense of urgency in the anti-ISIL fight than other countries?
MR. COOK: Well, I think we've acknowledged the threat posed by ISIL as it metastasizes and Libya is clearly a place where we've seen movement of ISIL forces, of ISIL members if you will. So clearly, it's a significant concern for us.
I'm not going to say it's more of a concern than other countries at this particular point but we have seen an increase in ISIL members, ISIL-affiliated groups, if you will, in Libya, and that's a cause for concern. And -- and as a result, we're doing everything we can to monitor that situation and work with our partners, trying to get a better fix on what's happening and, again, consider our options going forward.
Aaron?
Q: A domestic question for you. Can you confirm the secretary's going to brief the budget on February 2nd and maybe give us a preview of the preview?
MR. COOK: I can confirm that the secretary will have something to say about the budget on February 2nd, yes. But I can't give you more details than that. And he'll make -- he'll make those comments here in Washington.
So, Barbara?
Q: Can we go back to Libya again?
My -- my memory may be very faulty on this. I recall -- I think it was a couple of months ago -- there was a photo that emerged, that was acknowledged, of some U.S. troops that appeared in Libya, and it was said at the time that they were asked by a local militia to please leave the area, and they did leave. they did not stay.
And I -- I acknowledge my memory maybe faulty -- that is the only instance I recall. Is what you're saying today the first time the Defense Department is now openly acknowledging that U.S. special forces have gone in on the ground in Libya to establish contact with local groups?
Because I don't recall, other than that photo -- and I may -- my memory may be faulty. So is this your first time you're saying this?
MR. COOK: I don't know if it's the first time we've said it as -- as a building, but I would just acknowledge, I think, what we've said previously -- that there have been U.S. personnel there, doing exactly what I described: trying to get a better sense of the picture there.
Q: (off-mic.) I believe, in Tripoli, but you seem to be indicating that it's much more of an enduring mission that just --
MR. COOK: (inaudible) --
Q: -- so help -- help us understand if you could --
MR. COOK: -- this is --
Q: -- what these -- the task and mission of these U.S. special forces is?
MR. COOK: -- there have been U.S. personnel in Libya, as I described --
Q: Military personnel?
MR. COOK: -- at the concurrence of -- of Libyan officials in an effort to try and explore relationships, to get a better sense of what's happening on the ground in Libya.
And, again, we've acknowledged this in the past -- small group, and they're trying to get a clearer picture of what's happening there. And they've made contact with people on the ground to try and get a better sense of not only the threat that ISIL poses there, but the dynamic on the ground in terms of the security situation.
We're looking for partners who can give us a better sense of the security situation, and it's not just the United States, of course, that has a keen interest here, Barbara. It is our foreign partners as well, and likewise, they have been able to provide us a significant amount of information as to what's happening in Libya.
And again, cause for concern for us, and that's why I think you've heard from Chairman Dunford, Secretary Carter -- been very up-front that this is a situation that does cause us concern, and we're considering what our options might be going forward should that threat – ISIL, become an even bigger threat from Libya.
Q: So you -- just to clarify, they are U.S. military personnel? These are not just random government employees? These are U.S. military personnel you're referencing?
MR. COOK: U.S. military personnel.
Q: And you are also acknowledging that you are working on -- you just said "options". So you're -- you're -- you are acknowledging you are indeed, then, working on military options to deal with ISIS in Libya?
MR. COOK: We're taking the appropriate steps, along with our partners, to assess the threat that ISIL may pose in Libya. And obviously, looking at the security situation there, and doing everything we can separately.
Very important, Barbara, the -- the diplomatic side of this -- the formation of a -- of a central government in Libya -- critically important to the future of that country, of course, and to try to stabilize the security situation.
Q: But -- but you said "options," and since you're the Defense Department spokesman, you are talking military --
MR. COOK: We are --
Q: -- I just need to make sure I understood accurately. You're talking -- your podium?
MR. COOK: We are -- yes. We -- we're looking at military options, a range of other options as a government that we can engage in to try and -- as the situation in Libya unfolds, we want to be prepared, as -- as the Department of Defense always wants to be prepared, in the event that ISIL in Libya becomes more of a threat than it is even today.
Q: And can I just follow up, also, on Mosul, if I might? So the secretary is going to have this meeting with the allies to talk about getting increased contributions.
To what -- and -- and I think Colonel Warren referenced -- you know, you're looking, in particular, at Mosul coming down the road, and the need for eight trained Iraqi brigades -- brigades.
So how much of this meeting he is going to have focuses -- and why -- on trying to get the Persian Gulf and the Middle East allies to contribute to get the Iraqi forces ready for a fight to take Mosul? How much of the meeting focuses on that?
MR. COOK: Well, I think the secretary's made clear that he's looking for contributions from as many contributors as possible -- as many countries that are engaged in the campaign -- including those, perhaps, that aren't engaged in the campaign at all right now.
So he doesn't want to single out any particular group here. But he thinks there's plenty of contributions that can be made -- and it's not just, Barbara, in the -- in the training, if you will, of those eight brigades.
There are a whole host of other things that need to be done in the counter-ISIL fight, and what the secretary and his -- and his partners at the table in Paris have -- have said about doing is to -- identifying the key capabilities that are going to be needed, going forward, in the fight against ISIL.
Again, it's not just training forces. It could involve additions to the air campaign. It could involve logistical support. It could involve the training of police. There are a whole host of things that countries could do as part of this effort -- ISR is another example -- where countries could step up and do more.
Q: If -- and not hypothetically, because as you said, many of them are doing nothing. So if that -- of the status quo continues, what is the general range of additional U.S. personnel that are needed for Iraq to be ready for Mosul?
MR. COOK: I think the secretary -- again, we -- this is a coalition. We have 26 nations, plus Iraq, in Brussels. We have seen great contributions from many members of that coalition.
The secretary believes that more can be done -- that more can be offered towards this effort -- that there should be no free riders, in his words. And -- and we'll see what comes out of Brussels.
But this is an ongoing conversation, and I think, at this point, we remain optimistic that there will be additional contributions from foreign partners that will enable this effort to move forward.
In the meantime, the United States is going to continue to do what it's been doing -- and we are the leader of this coalition right now, and contributing the most to it at this point. We're going to continue to do what we're doing to push this --
Q: (off-mic.)
MR. COOK: -- to accelerate this effort along, with the help of our partners.
Q: So how many more U.S. troops are needed?
MR. COOK: I think you know where we are right now.
Q: I don't.
MR. COOK: We're about 3,700 U.S. troops, right now, in Iraq, and that's -- that's the level, right now, that the secretary feels is the appropriate level, and if he feels like he needs to request more, then he's prepared to do that.
It depends on the circumstances, going forward, and if unique capabilities need to be brought into the fight. But this is -- that's where we are right now, and that's part of -- again, that's a calculated assessment of -- of what this campaign needs, at this moment particularly, from the U.S. side.
But if -- the secretary has said, if he sees an opportunity for us to be able to do more, and it requires additional U.S. forces, he's prepared to make that request. But he doesn't have a pending request right now.
Yes?
Q: Peter, I want to go back to Libya. You said that -- just to make it clear. You said that now the Pentagon is (inaudible) the military options to (inaudible) of ISIS fight inside Libya. Is that correct?
MR. COOK: We are always reviewing our options with regard to Libya and a whole host of other challenges facing the United States.
Q: What about you could clarify the size of the U.S. force, the military personnel who is -- who worked in Libya before or -- what is the status?
MR. COOK: It's a small number of military personnel -- I'm not going to get into the disposition right now of those forces. But we've indicated before there was a small group there to meet the diverse range of groups to get a better sense of what's happening on the ground.
Q: And when you say small group, this isn't --
MR. COOK: I'm going to leave it at that. This is a small group, Joe, I'm going to leave it at that.
Yes, Austin.
Q: Peter, at Fort Campbell in his prepared remarks, the secretary once again knocked Congress for holding up the last $49 million in Syria train and equip funds. Have there been any updates on that in terms of briefings to answer Congress' questions. And at this point, have there been any real world consequences for not having that money?
MR. COOK: Austin, let me take that question to give you a definitive update as to where that -- to my understanding, as at last check, there was still some money being held up if you will, had not been released fully. And I think in terms of real world consequences, the department and the secretary believes that that money could be well used in this effort to take the fight to ISIL, and so we'll continue our efforts to work with Congress to try and free up those funds.
Q: Thank you.
MR. COOK: Yep.
Yes.
Q: Of course.
(Laughter.)
Q: Two questions.
MR. COOK: Everyone knows who you are, Gordon, so (inaudible).
Q: (Inaudible) When you were with Secretary Carter in Afghanistan in September, he hinted talking to troops about a longer term mission for troops in Afghanistan, okay. And then we see these reports, or a report today about rethinking the idea of an exit strategy altogether.
Can you respond to this notion that the current plan which will withdraw most of the troops I believe, by the end of the year or whatever it is now, is being rethought. And I have a second question, unrelated which is, the Turks had proposed to Chairman Dunford a kind of a new, teeny program, slightly more limited, for folks inside Syria to be training somewhere and then brought back into Syria.
Has the secretary received any recommendation on that?
MR. COOK: I know that this topic came up previously. The secretary -- I'm not aware of any specific action or review that the secretary has conducted yet that I can share with you at this point. On your first question, there is no change right now to the number of U.S. forces and the current plan in place.
Ninety-eight hundred U.S. troops being reduced down, ultimately to 5,500. The pace of that will be determined by commanders on the ground and there's been no change to that. Obviously, we are going to continue to assess the security situation in Afghanistan.
The secretary is going to continue to listen very carefully to General Campbell on his assessment on what is happening in Afghanistan. But as of now, there's no change in that plan.
Q: And we have several months to go before the end of the year, but is there a point at which a decision would have to be made on not starting to draw down the 9,800 to 5,500?
MR. COOK: Again, this will be determined by commanders on the ground. I think everyone's looked at this situation, understands what -- what that end point is scheduled to be, at this -- at this moment, and is confident that we can get there, if necessary.
And, again, if there needs to be a review -- a reassessment, that will be done with -- in coordination with commanders on the ground, of course. The secretary engaging with the -- with the national security team at the -- at the White House as well.
Luis.
Q: (inaudible) -- in the nomination for General Nicholson. Is that -- is he being nominated for a fourth star, or is this going to be a three-star command now?
MR. COOK: My understanding, this would be a fourth star.
Q: And there's been a development in South America with this Zika virus that is drawing concern. Last night, the president had a meeting with his health care leadership, and also national security leaders like defense -- Deputy Defense Secretary Work was there.
What is the role that the U.S. military or the Pentagon is being asked to play as part of this health initiative to try to prevent the spread of this disease?
MR. COOK: My understanding is we've been asked -- and, again, the deputy secretary was at the White House yesterday -- we've been asked to support Health and Human Services in their efforts to convene experts and -- and stakeholders, specifically in the research area.
This is an area where the DOD has done some research in the past, and I think some of that expertise will be brought to this effort, and we'll be supporting HHS in whatever way we can.
Q: Is there any consideration to --
MR. COOK: Excuse me.
Q: -- an initiative similar to what happened with Ebola, where the U.S. military played a role in containing that disease in Africa?
MR. COOK: I don't think anyone is talking about that kind of role at this particular time. So this is a support role, again, sharing our research knowledge as -- as much as anything else, with the folks at HHS.
Okay? Jennifer.
Q: Peter, why haven't we heard from the 10 sailors who were held by Iran overnight? If you have any plans to allow them to take questions?
MR. COOK: I'll refer you to the Navy as to exactly what stage they are. My understanding is the reintegration process has been completed, and I'll leave it to the Navy -- I know that the Navy investigation is still ongoing -- as to exactly what took place.
And I think that could be -- a determination could be a factor in exactly their status at this point, and whether or not they might be made available for media interviews.
Q: And does the secretary have any reaction to the CBS report last night on the Wounded Warrior Project and how money has been wasted that was raised to help wounded warriors -- up to $1 billion? Any reaction to that?
MR. COOK: To be honest. Jennifer, I didn't see the report myself. I'm not sure if the -- the secretary did. We'll obviously look into it. The secretary would obviously be concerned about any report of malfeasance in this sort of area.
But we didn't see the report, so let me take a look and find out if -- if the secretary saw it himself.
Okay. All said? Thanks, everyone.
by U.S. Department of Defense Press Operations
Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook
Jan. 27, 2016
PETER COOK: Afternoon, everyone. Hope you survived Snowzilla adequately. You look -- crowd's a little smaller today. Maybe people are still trapped. But -- hope everyone's doing all right.
I wanted to begin, today, with a statement regarding – a statement from the secretary regarding Afghanistan -- again, from Secretary Carter.
"I want to thank General John Campbell for his extraordinary leadership and dedication in his dual role as commander of the United States forces Afghanistan, and as commander of the NATO Resolute Support mission.
"While many challenges remain, we have made gains over the past year that will put Afghanistan on a better path, and much of the credit for that progress rests with General Campbell.
"Under General Campbell's leadership, our forces have engaged in two important and enduring missions: our train, advise and assist support to the Afghan security forces, and our counterterrorism effort. General Campbell has taken the fight to Al Qaida and made clear our resolve to deny it safe haven.
"He has consistently identified ways to increase the capability and capacity of the Afghan forces -- forces that have shown the motivation and resiliency required to ensure the long-term success of our partnership and the security and the stability of the Afghan -- that the Afghan people deserve.
"General Campbell has presided over important milestones in our mission to enable the ANDSF, including the recent delivery of the A-29s to the Afghan military to provide close air support, which will be a key element in increasing superiority over Taliban forces.
"He has also forged strong partnerships with the Afghan unity government led by President Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah, and it is clear that we have strong partners with a common vision focused on a secure and prosperous future for the Afghan people.
"For nearly 18 months, General Campbell has given his all to the mission as our top commander in Afghanistan, and his personal sacrifices on behalf of his troops and the Afghan people will be remembered by us all.
"As his tour in Afghanistan comes to a close, I want to personally thank him for everything he has done to bring us to this moment in Afghanistan, and for all that he has done throughout his extraordinary career. There will be more to say about his future in the coming days.
"The good news is that we have a deep bench. I am absolutely confident the man the president intends to nominate to take General Campbell's place when his work in Afghanistan is completed, Lieutenant General John "Mick" Nicholson, is an accomplished soldier with extensive command experience both in Afghanistan and around the world.
"He has led soldiers at all levels, from platoon to division, in airborne, ranger, mechanized, Stryker and light infantry units in five different infantry divisions and the 75th Ranger Regiment. He commanded the 82nd Airborne Division, reestablishing global response force capabilities, and commanded NATO's Allied Land Command.
"He knows what it means to lead a responsive and nimble force, and how to build the capacity of our partners to respond to immediate and long-term threats and remain adaptable to confront evolving challenges. And he understands the importance and complexity of our mission in Afghanistan, having served in multiple capacities, including chief of staff of operations for the International Security Assistance Force, ISAF, and U.S. Forces Afghanistan, director of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Coordination Cell for the Joint Staff and deputy commander of stability of ISAF Regional Command-South.
"I am confident that General Nicholson will build upon General Campbell's hard work to secure a bright future for the Afghan people and help the government of Afghanistan strengthen a professional and capable security partner to the American people."
I also wanted to update you as well on the secretary's visit to CYBERCOM earlier today. The secretary and Chairman Dunford visited U.S. Cyber Command or CYBERCOM in Fort Meade, Maryland, this morning. They discussed a range of cyber-related topics with the leadership there, including the latest on efforts to degrade ISIL's messaging campaign.
As the secretary made clear in his remarks to the 101st Airborne at Fort Campbell and in his speech in meetings with allies last week in Paris, our effort to accelerate the campaign to deliver a lasting defeat to ISIL includes targeting their use of the Internet to spread their message of hate, recruit fighters and inspire acts of terror.
CYBERCOM is charged with supporting our inter-agency partners in our whole of government effort to counter ISIL messaging in addition to several other vital aspects of the counter ISIL campaign. Secretary was able to engage directly with some of the men and women directly engaged in cyber operations. He encouraged them, the entire CYBERCOM team, to do what they can to intensify the fight against ISIL.
And with that, I'd be happy to take your questions.
Jamie.
Q: I wanted to ask you about the possibility of the U.S. expanding its counter ISIL efforts into Libya. The chairman traveling in Europe this week said that it was fair to say that the U.S. needed to take decisive military action -- he said, in conjunction with the political events in Libya.
Can you help us understand what he's talking about and what's under consideration in terms of expanding efforts against ISIL into Libya?
MR. COOK: Well, as the chairman has discussed, as the Secretary has spoken on numerous occasions, including just last week in our visit to Paris and our meetings with other members of the ISIL coalition, we are extremely worried about the metastasis of ISIL to other locations, Libya being just one of those locations.
We continue to monitor the situation there. Continue to work very closely with our coalition partners, with others in the region who have similar concerns about the situation in Libya. And I think it's fair to say that we are closely monitoring the situation. As Chairman Dunford has indicated, working with those partners and also continuing to have conversations with people on the ground as to exactly what is happening there and the threat that ISIL poses to the United States and others.
Q: Could we see an expansion into Libya that looks something like what's going on in Iraq and Syria? That is to say, more consistent air strikes and even possibly some limited ground actions?
MR. COOK: We've shown in the past a willingness to strike in Libya. We've taken out a key ISIL leader in Libya in the past. But I think Jamie, it's too soon to say at this point exactly where things will evolve. We're taking a very close look at this situation.
Again, it's not just the United States that's involved here, that has a stake in what happens in Libya. We're continuing, of course, through the State Department, to support the effort to -- to forge a government in -- in Libya, and we think that's a critical step in terms of the governance of the country to trying to address the -- the ISIL threat as well. It's not just a military solution here.
But we're going to continue to monitor it, and -- and as Chairman Dunford indicated, we see this threat in ISIL as a serious threat, and we're going to continue to -- to monitor the situation and consider what options we have moving forward.
Q: Chairman Dunford seemed to indicate that those options might be presented to the president in -- I think he said in -- in a matter of weeks. Are -- so we -- are we talking about seeing some significant stepping-up of the operations against Libya in a matter of weeks?
MR. COOK: I think we're going to continue to assess the -- the threat in Libya and respond accordingly, and the chairman and the secretary will continue to have those conversations with the president's national security team and with our partners as well, as we assess the threat in Libya.
Q: Peter?
MR. COOK: Jennifer.
Q: Can you -- can you rule out U.S. boots on the ground going to Libya? Is that (inaudible) discussion?
MR. COOK: You -- you know the situation right now. We've had -- acknowledged that there have been some U.S. forces in Libya trying to establish contact with forces on the ground so that we get a clear picture of what's happening there.
But beyond that, it's -- again, we're going to consider all of our options going forward. Right now, that's not something that's -- that's under consideration.
Q: And can you help me understand -- twice this week, Ash Carter told CNN and CNBC -- gave the impression that U.S. boots on the ground are on their way to Iraq and possibly Syria.
He told CNN, "I just went to Fort Campbell, headquarter of 101st Airborne. They're going to be the next unit going into Iraq -- whole division. This is your mission: to get the Iraqis positioned. Is that hazardous? Boots on the ground -- yeah."
That led to some confusion. Did he mean to say that a division of the 101st was going to Iraq?
MR. COOK: The deployment of the 101st -- it's been scheduled for some time. They're rotating in to replace existing forces on the ground. So hopefully there isn't any confusion there.
Q: It's not a whole division. It's a brigade.
MR. COOK: It's my understanding it's about 1,800 troops that will be moving in. And, as the secretary acknowledged to those troops, they have an important mission to carry out.
It's been planned for some time. It's going to be the same mission that's being conducted right now by the 82nd Airborne, and they have a critical role to play going forward.
And I think the secretary was making the point that those forces, while they're on the ground in Iraq trying to, again, enable Iraqi security forces to move forward, will be at risk -- will be in harm's way. I think that was the point he was trying to make in that conversation.
Q: Is there any change to their mission in terms of -- will they be closer to the front lines? Will they be embedded if the Mosul operation begins? Is there any change to their mission?
MR. COOK: Their mission will be the same as the mission that -- for the forces that they're replacing, and this is, again, an effort to enable those Iraqi security forces, as U.S. trainers were able to do with Iraqi security forces that successfully took back those parts of Ramadi.
We're looking for much the same thing out of these forces, and they -- I can tell you from our travel to Fort Campbell and our conversations with them -- are -- are ready for this mission.
They understand the importance of this mission, and they will play a critical role in enabling those Iraqi security forces as they move towards their next targets, including, ultimately, Mosul.
Q: And I -- can I just shift to China for a moment?
Secretary Kerry is over in China today, and he was quoted in talking about the disputed islands in the South China Sea -- he was quoted saying, "Let me emphasize again: the United States does not take sides on the sovereignty questions underlying the territorial disputes in the South China Sea." That is a very different tone than what we've heard from this building.
Secretary Carter has said that we will continue to fly over the disputed islands. And in fact, there has been a lot more said that suggests that we do actually take sides on this issue. So where -- how do I understand this?
MR. COOK: I think Jennifer, that careful reading of the secretary's comments on this topic, including when we were in the region, he has been very clear -- and I think you can look at his testimony as well. We don't take sides in terms of these disputes. We encourage a diplomatic resolution to these disputes.
But what he's said is that efforts to reclaim these areas and to militarize these disputed islands is counterproductive to the effort to try and get a final resolution. And in the meantime, the United States will continue to be a force for stability in the region.
And we're going to continue to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows. But we don't take sides in these disputes, whether it's disputes involving China or other players in the region.
Paul?
Q: Going back to Libya for a second, are there currently U.S. forces on the ground there?
MR. COOK: I'm not going to tell you exactly what the disposition of our forces are there. I can acknowledge that we've had forces on the ground previously as we've indicated, to engage in conversations with local forces to get a clearer picture of exactly what's happening there.
Q: And can you give us a better sense of what that discussion with local forces is? Is that is preparing to organize the kinds of militias we can work with? Is it meeting with political leaders to get a sense of whom supports whom? I mean, it sounds as though it's a very complicated picture with dozens if not hundreds of different kinds of militias. What exactly is the U.S. stance?
MR. COOK: It is a complicated picture and I think you've characterized pretty well what the goal would be and that is to simply get a better sense of who the players are, who might be worthy of U.S. support and support from some of our partners going forward in the fight against ISIL.
It is a complicated picture. And that's why the formation of a government is so central to the future for Libya and to also addressing the issue of ISIL in Libya. And so part of the presence -- the reason for the presence of those troops is to, again, get a sense of the forces on the ground, the players on the ground and exactly what's happening, because it is a muddled picture right now. And we -- that is one of the best ways we can get a better sense of what's happening.
Q: Have they come to any conclusions on the kinds of forces we can work with?
MR. COOK: I think they provided valuable information. And again, there's a big picture here. There are lots of players involved, there are also a lot of foreign partners that we have who are providing us critical information about what's happening in Libya and we'll continue to work closely with them. It's not the only way we're getting information on the ground.
Q: Going back to Jamie's question. I realize that ISIS is a problem in many countries beyond Iraq and Syria, but Libya, as we understand it, is the only place where they are exercising active command and control. And I wonder, given Chairman Dunford's comments, given Secretary Carter's comments, is Libya getting a greater priority, a greater sense of urgency in the anti-ISIL fight than other countries?
MR. COOK: Well, I think we've acknowledged the threat posed by ISIL as it metastasizes and Libya is clearly a place where we've seen movement of ISIL forces, of ISIL members if you will. So clearly, it's a significant concern for us.
I'm not going to say it's more of a concern than other countries at this particular point but we have seen an increase in ISIL members, ISIL-affiliated groups, if you will, in Libya, and that's a cause for concern. And -- and as a result, we're doing everything we can to monitor that situation and work with our partners, trying to get a better fix on what's happening and, again, consider our options going forward.
Aaron?
Q: A domestic question for you. Can you confirm the secretary's going to brief the budget on February 2nd and maybe give us a preview of the preview?
MR. COOK: I can confirm that the secretary will have something to say about the budget on February 2nd, yes. But I can't give you more details than that. And he'll make -- he'll make those comments here in Washington.
So, Barbara?
Q: Can we go back to Libya again?
My -- my memory may be very faulty on this. I recall -- I think it was a couple of months ago -- there was a photo that emerged, that was acknowledged, of some U.S. troops that appeared in Libya, and it was said at the time that they were asked by a local militia to please leave the area, and they did leave. they did not stay.
And I -- I acknowledge my memory maybe faulty -- that is the only instance I recall. Is what you're saying today the first time the Defense Department is now openly acknowledging that U.S. special forces have gone in on the ground in Libya to establish contact with local groups?
Because I don't recall, other than that photo -- and I may -- my memory may be faulty. So is this your first time you're saying this?
MR. COOK: I don't know if it's the first time we've said it as -- as a building, but I would just acknowledge, I think, what we've said previously -- that there have been U.S. personnel there, doing exactly what I described: trying to get a better sense of the picture there.
Q: (off-mic.) I believe, in Tripoli, but you seem to be indicating that it's much more of an enduring mission that just --
MR. COOK: (inaudible) --
Q: -- so help -- help us understand if you could --
MR. COOK: -- this is --
Q: -- what these -- the task and mission of these U.S. special forces is?
MR. COOK: -- there have been U.S. personnel in Libya, as I described --
Q: Military personnel?
MR. COOK: -- at the concurrence of -- of Libyan officials in an effort to try and explore relationships, to get a better sense of what's happening on the ground in Libya.
And, again, we've acknowledged this in the past -- small group, and they're trying to get a clearer picture of what's happening there. And they've made contact with people on the ground to try and get a better sense of not only the threat that ISIL poses there, but the dynamic on the ground in terms of the security situation.
We're looking for partners who can give us a better sense of the security situation, and it's not just the United States, of course, that has a keen interest here, Barbara. It is our foreign partners as well, and likewise, they have been able to provide us a significant amount of information as to what's happening in Libya.
And again, cause for concern for us, and that's why I think you've heard from Chairman Dunford, Secretary Carter -- been very up-front that this is a situation that does cause us concern, and we're considering what our options might be going forward should that threat – ISIL, become an even bigger threat from Libya.
Q: So you -- just to clarify, they are U.S. military personnel? These are not just random government employees? These are U.S. military personnel you're referencing?
MR. COOK: U.S. military personnel.
Q: And you are also acknowledging that you are working on -- you just said "options". So you're -- you're -- you are acknowledging you are indeed, then, working on military options to deal with ISIS in Libya?
MR. COOK: We're taking the appropriate steps, along with our partners, to assess the threat that ISIL may pose in Libya. And obviously, looking at the security situation there, and doing everything we can separately.
Very important, Barbara, the -- the diplomatic side of this -- the formation of a -- of a central government in Libya -- critically important to the future of that country, of course, and to try to stabilize the security situation.
Q: But -- but you said "options," and since you're the Defense Department spokesman, you are talking military --
MR. COOK: We are --
Q: -- I just need to make sure I understood accurately. You're talking -- your podium?
MR. COOK: We are -- yes. We -- we're looking at military options, a range of other options as a government that we can engage in to try and -- as the situation in Libya unfolds, we want to be prepared, as -- as the Department of Defense always wants to be prepared, in the event that ISIL in Libya becomes more of a threat than it is even today.
Q: And can I just follow up, also, on Mosul, if I might? So the secretary is going to have this meeting with the allies to talk about getting increased contributions.
To what -- and -- and I think Colonel Warren referenced -- you know, you're looking, in particular, at Mosul coming down the road, and the need for eight trained Iraqi brigades -- brigades.
So how much of this meeting he is going to have focuses -- and why -- on trying to get the Persian Gulf and the Middle East allies to contribute to get the Iraqi forces ready for a fight to take Mosul? How much of the meeting focuses on that?
MR. COOK: Well, I think the secretary's made clear that he's looking for contributions from as many contributors as possible -- as many countries that are engaged in the campaign -- including those, perhaps, that aren't engaged in the campaign at all right now.
So he doesn't want to single out any particular group here. But he thinks there's plenty of contributions that can be made -- and it's not just, Barbara, in the -- in the training, if you will, of those eight brigades.
There are a whole host of other things that need to be done in the counter-ISIL fight, and what the secretary and his -- and his partners at the table in Paris have -- have said about doing is to -- identifying the key capabilities that are going to be needed, going forward, in the fight against ISIL.
Again, it's not just training forces. It could involve additions to the air campaign. It could involve logistical support. It could involve the training of police. There are a whole host of things that countries could do as part of this effort -- ISR is another example -- where countries could step up and do more.
Q: If -- and not hypothetically, because as you said, many of them are doing nothing. So if that -- of the status quo continues, what is the general range of additional U.S. personnel that are needed for Iraq to be ready for Mosul?
MR. COOK: I think the secretary -- again, we -- this is a coalition. We have 26 nations, plus Iraq, in Brussels. We have seen great contributions from many members of that coalition.
The secretary believes that more can be done -- that more can be offered towards this effort -- that there should be no free riders, in his words. And -- and we'll see what comes out of Brussels.
But this is an ongoing conversation, and I think, at this point, we remain optimistic that there will be additional contributions from foreign partners that will enable this effort to move forward.
In the meantime, the United States is going to continue to do what it's been doing -- and we are the leader of this coalition right now, and contributing the most to it at this point. We're going to continue to do what we're doing to push this --
Q: (off-mic.)
MR. COOK: -- to accelerate this effort along, with the help of our partners.
Q: So how many more U.S. troops are needed?
MR. COOK: I think you know where we are right now.
Q: I don't.
MR. COOK: We're about 3,700 U.S. troops, right now, in Iraq, and that's -- that's the level, right now, that the secretary feels is the appropriate level, and if he feels like he needs to request more, then he's prepared to do that.
It depends on the circumstances, going forward, and if unique capabilities need to be brought into the fight. But this is -- that's where we are right now, and that's part of -- again, that's a calculated assessment of -- of what this campaign needs, at this moment particularly, from the U.S. side.
But if -- the secretary has said, if he sees an opportunity for us to be able to do more, and it requires additional U.S. forces, he's prepared to make that request. But he doesn't have a pending request right now.
Yes?
Q: Peter, I want to go back to Libya. You said that -- just to make it clear. You said that now the Pentagon is (inaudible) the military options to (inaudible) of ISIS fight inside Libya. Is that correct?
MR. COOK: We are always reviewing our options with regard to Libya and a whole host of other challenges facing the United States.
Q: What about you could clarify the size of the U.S. force, the military personnel who is -- who worked in Libya before or -- what is the status?
MR. COOK: It's a small number of military personnel -- I'm not going to get into the disposition right now of those forces. But we've indicated before there was a small group there to meet the diverse range of groups to get a better sense of what's happening on the ground.
Q: And when you say small group, this isn't --
MR. COOK: I'm going to leave it at that. This is a small group, Joe, I'm going to leave it at that.
Yes, Austin.
Q: Peter, at Fort Campbell in his prepared remarks, the secretary once again knocked Congress for holding up the last $49 million in Syria train and equip funds. Have there been any updates on that in terms of briefings to answer Congress' questions. And at this point, have there been any real world consequences for not having that money?
MR. COOK: Austin, let me take that question to give you a definitive update as to where that -- to my understanding, as at last check, there was still some money being held up if you will, had not been released fully. And I think in terms of real world consequences, the department and the secretary believes that that money could be well used in this effort to take the fight to ISIL, and so we'll continue our efforts to work with Congress to try and free up those funds.
Q: Thank you.
MR. COOK: Yep.
Yes.
Q: Of course.
(Laughter.)
Q: Two questions.
MR. COOK: Everyone knows who you are, Gordon, so (inaudible).
Q: (Inaudible) When you were with Secretary Carter in Afghanistan in September, he hinted talking to troops about a longer term mission for troops in Afghanistan, okay. And then we see these reports, or a report today about rethinking the idea of an exit strategy altogether.
Can you respond to this notion that the current plan which will withdraw most of the troops I believe, by the end of the year or whatever it is now, is being rethought. And I have a second question, unrelated which is, the Turks had proposed to Chairman Dunford a kind of a new, teeny program, slightly more limited, for folks inside Syria to be training somewhere and then brought back into Syria.
Has the secretary received any recommendation on that?
MR. COOK: I know that this topic came up previously. The secretary -- I'm not aware of any specific action or review that the secretary has conducted yet that I can share with you at this point. On your first question, there is no change right now to the number of U.S. forces and the current plan in place.
Ninety-eight hundred U.S. troops being reduced down, ultimately to 5,500. The pace of that will be determined by commanders on the ground and there's been no change to that. Obviously, we are going to continue to assess the security situation in Afghanistan.
The secretary is going to continue to listen very carefully to General Campbell on his assessment on what is happening in Afghanistan. But as of now, there's no change in that plan.
Q: And we have several months to go before the end of the year, but is there a point at which a decision would have to be made on not starting to draw down the 9,800 to 5,500?
MR. COOK: Again, this will be determined by commanders on the ground. I think everyone's looked at this situation, understands what -- what that end point is scheduled to be, at this -- at this moment, and is confident that we can get there, if necessary.
And, again, if there needs to be a review -- a reassessment, that will be done with -- in coordination with commanders on the ground, of course. The secretary engaging with the -- with the national security team at the -- at the White House as well.
Luis.
Q: (inaudible) -- in the nomination for General Nicholson. Is that -- is he being nominated for a fourth star, or is this going to be a three-star command now?
MR. COOK: My understanding, this would be a fourth star.
Q: And there's been a development in South America with this Zika virus that is drawing concern. Last night, the president had a meeting with his health care leadership, and also national security leaders like defense -- Deputy Defense Secretary Work was there.
What is the role that the U.S. military or the Pentagon is being asked to play as part of this health initiative to try to prevent the spread of this disease?
MR. COOK: My understanding is we've been asked -- and, again, the deputy secretary was at the White House yesterday -- we've been asked to support Health and Human Services in their efforts to convene experts and -- and stakeholders, specifically in the research area.
This is an area where the DOD has done some research in the past, and I think some of that expertise will be brought to this effort, and we'll be supporting HHS in whatever way we can.
Q: Is there any consideration to --
MR. COOK: Excuse me.
Q: -- an initiative similar to what happened with Ebola, where the U.S. military played a role in containing that disease in Africa?
MR. COOK: I don't think anyone is talking about that kind of role at this particular time. So this is a support role, again, sharing our research knowledge as -- as much as anything else, with the folks at HHS.
Okay? Jennifer.
Q: Peter, why haven't we heard from the 10 sailors who were held by Iran overnight? If you have any plans to allow them to take questions?
MR. COOK: I'll refer you to the Navy as to exactly what stage they are. My understanding is the reintegration process has been completed, and I'll leave it to the Navy -- I know that the Navy investigation is still ongoing -- as to exactly what took place.
And I think that could be -- a determination could be a factor in exactly their status at this point, and whether or not they might be made available for media interviews.
Q: And does the secretary have any reaction to the CBS report last night on the Wounded Warrior Project and how money has been wasted that was raised to help wounded warriors -- up to $1 billion? Any reaction to that?
MR. COOK: To be honest. Jennifer, I didn't see the report myself. I'm not sure if the -- the secretary did. We'll obviously look into it. The secretary would obviously be concerned about any report of malfeasance in this sort of area.
But we didn't see the report, so let me take a look and find out if -- if the secretary saw it himself.
Okay. All said? Thanks, everyone.
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Re: The Big Lie About the Libyan War: The Obama administrati
by admin » Thu Dec 22, 2016 3:42 am
UK awaits outcome of Libya talks as it weighs military options: Downing Street waiting to see whether peace efforts succeed before joining US and France in calling for intervention
by Patrick Wintour, Diplomatic editor
1 February 2016
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
A British decision on whether to join western powers considering direct military intervention against Islamic State in Libya is likely to rest on whether long-running efforts to form a viable Libyan national unity government will materialise in the coming weeks.
The Pentagon and the French government have been pressing for direct action following a meeting in Paris last week, and Italy has said it would consider involvement. Downing Street said on Monday that no decisions had been taken regarding British troops and fended off questions about whether they would be deployed in a combat or training role.
The Ministry of Defence has not confirmed reports it is willing to send as many as 1,000 troops to the country, which has fallen into chaos following the violent overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi and allied air strikes in 2011.
Agreement on a Libyan national unity government was reached in December but so far has been rejected by rival Libyan parliaments, including the one recognised by the international community, in a dispute about ministries.
David Cameron will be reluctant to seek cross-party support in the Commons for further UK military action so soon after investing much political capital in winning support for airstrikes in Syria.
There is at present no support for airstrikes from the Africa Union, and it is likely that the Commons foreign affairs select committee will shortly produce a scathing report on the failure of western post-conflict planning after the 2011 toppling of Gaddafi.
Jeremy Corbyn, the opposition leader, is likely to oppose any intervention, and the shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn, would face a further dilemma over whether to support further military action against Isis.
If any action does go ahead it may be possible that British involvement would be so limited that it would not warrant Commons authorisation. Britain was previously active in the skies above Syria largely through surveillance and air-to-air refuelling without being involved in airstrikes. UK intelligence and special forces would not need Commons permission to operate in Libya. Britain has already sent a small number of troops to Sudan as part of an international peacekeeping force.
The talk of western military action in Libya restarted after the US defence secretary, Ash Carter, said last Thursday that allies were preparing options to prevent Isis from establishing training sites in Libya and welcoming foreign fighters in the way it had done in Iraq and Syria.
Last Friday Gen Joseph Dunford Jr, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said military officials were “looking to take decisive military action” against Isis.
The Pentagon has sent special forces to the area to look at military options to drive Isis from its base along a lengthy strip of coastline around the city of Sirte that lies between Benghazi and Tripoli.
It is claimed that as many as 3,000 Isis fighters are active in the country taking advantage of the political chaos to seize land and oilfields. The fighters may have gone to Libya because the now relatively secure Turkish-Syrian border has made it more difficult for potential recruits to join Isis in Syria.
Isis has used heavy weapons to launch attacks against a series of oil facilities and there has been an increase in suicide missions. US officials say there has been an influx of Isis fighters into Libya, partly as a result of the stronger controls on the flow of fighters into Syria from Turkey.
Italy’s defence minister, Roberta Pinotti, told Italian media last week that her country was considering joining the USs, Britain and France in military intervention to stabilise Libya. Pinotti told the Corriere della Sera newspaper that western powers would intervene only if requested to do so by Libyan authorities.
In an interview on French television Sunday, the French defence minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said there was an urgent need for a political solution in Libya. “I’ve been very worried about Libya since September 2014,” Le Drian said. “There they are just 200 miles from [the Italian island of] Lampedusa, and they are expanding.”
The French minister said there was a risk that Isis fighters would take advantage of the good weather to cross the Mediterranean and “mingle” with migrants.
“Everyone is aware of the risk that the conflict in Syria and Iraq, where we are seeing some positive results, will spread to become a new conflict in Libya,” he said. He that a political solution in Libya was “the only way to eradicate the problem”.
Le Drian concluded: “There must be a national unity government. There is a serious political process under way, supported by the UN security council. It is urgent.”
The African Union’s commissioner for peace and security, Smaïl Chergui, said of the Isis threat: “This is something that concerns us all and which demands vigorous action, but we can only do that if we have a government in place and Libyan forces that we can equip.
He said it was the union’s opinion that immediate military action “would further complicate the situation”.
In recent months the UN has struggled to persuade two groups of Libyan officials who claim to be the country’s rightful leaders to band together. On Monday the parliament that is recognised by the international community rejected a unity government proposal.
by Patrick Wintour, Diplomatic editor
1 February 2016
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A British decision on whether to join western powers considering direct military intervention against Islamic State in Libya is likely to rest on whether long-running efforts to form a viable Libyan national unity government will materialise in the coming weeks.
The Pentagon and the French government have been pressing for direct action following a meeting in Paris last week, and Italy has said it would consider involvement. Downing Street said on Monday that no decisions had been taken regarding British troops and fended off questions about whether they would be deployed in a combat or training role.
The Ministry of Defence has not confirmed reports it is willing to send as many as 1,000 troops to the country, which has fallen into chaos following the violent overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi and allied air strikes in 2011.
Agreement on a Libyan national unity government was reached in December but so far has been rejected by rival Libyan parliaments, including the one recognised by the international community, in a dispute about ministries.
David Cameron will be reluctant to seek cross-party support in the Commons for further UK military action so soon after investing much political capital in winning support for airstrikes in Syria.
There is at present no support for airstrikes from the Africa Union, and it is likely that the Commons foreign affairs select committee will shortly produce a scathing report on the failure of western post-conflict planning after the 2011 toppling of Gaddafi.
Jeremy Corbyn, the opposition leader, is likely to oppose any intervention, and the shadow foreign secretary, Hilary Benn, would face a further dilemma over whether to support further military action against Isis.
If any action does go ahead it may be possible that British involvement would be so limited that it would not warrant Commons authorisation. Britain was previously active in the skies above Syria largely through surveillance and air-to-air refuelling without being involved in airstrikes. UK intelligence and special forces would not need Commons permission to operate in Libya. Britain has already sent a small number of troops to Sudan as part of an international peacekeeping force.
The talk of western military action in Libya restarted after the US defence secretary, Ash Carter, said last Thursday that allies were preparing options to prevent Isis from establishing training sites in Libya and welcoming foreign fighters in the way it had done in Iraq and Syria.
Last Friday Gen Joseph Dunford Jr, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said military officials were “looking to take decisive military action” against Isis.
The Pentagon has sent special forces to the area to look at military options to drive Isis from its base along a lengthy strip of coastline around the city of Sirte that lies between Benghazi and Tripoli.
It is claimed that as many as 3,000 Isis fighters are active in the country taking advantage of the political chaos to seize land and oilfields. The fighters may have gone to Libya because the now relatively secure Turkish-Syrian border has made it more difficult for potential recruits to join Isis in Syria.
Isis has used heavy weapons to launch attacks against a series of oil facilities and there has been an increase in suicide missions. US officials say there has been an influx of Isis fighters into Libya, partly as a result of the stronger controls on the flow of fighters into Syria from Turkey.
Italy’s defence minister, Roberta Pinotti, told Italian media last week that her country was considering joining the USs, Britain and France in military intervention to stabilise Libya. Pinotti told the Corriere della Sera newspaper that western powers would intervene only if requested to do so by Libyan authorities.
In an interview on French television Sunday, the French defence minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said there was an urgent need for a political solution in Libya. “I’ve been very worried about Libya since September 2014,” Le Drian said. “There they are just 200 miles from [the Italian island of] Lampedusa, and they are expanding.”
The French minister said there was a risk that Isis fighters would take advantage of the good weather to cross the Mediterranean and “mingle” with migrants.
“Everyone is aware of the risk that the conflict in Syria and Iraq, where we are seeing some positive results, will spread to become a new conflict in Libya,” he said. He that a political solution in Libya was “the only way to eradicate the problem”.
Le Drian concluded: “There must be a national unity government. There is a serious political process under way, supported by the UN security council. It is urgent.”
The African Union’s commissioner for peace and security, Smaïl Chergui, said of the Isis threat: “This is something that concerns us all and which demands vigorous action, but we can only do that if we have a government in place and Libyan forces that we can equip.
He said it was the union’s opinion that immediate military action “would further complicate the situation”.
In recent months the UN has struggled to persuade two groups of Libyan officials who claim to be the country’s rightful leaders to band together. On Monday the parliament that is recognised by the international community rejected a unity government proposal.
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Re: The Big Lie About the Libyan War: The Obama administrati
by admin » Thu Dec 22, 2016 5:09 am
French special forces assisting anti-Isis efforts in Libya, say sources: Defence minister promises inquiry into information leak as French contingent said to be operating from Benghazi airport
by Chris Stephen in Tunis and Kim Willsher in Paris
24 February 2016
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Sources in Libya say French special forces are among those working against Islamic State in the country. A small French detachment has been operating from Benghazi’s Benina airport, the sources have reported, assisting forces of the internationally backed Libyan authorities in Tobruk.
According to Le Monde, special forces units, alongside France’s external security directorate, the DGSE, have been in Libya for several months, and coordinated the November US strike on Derna which killed the most senior Isis leader in the country, Iraqi Abu Nabil al-Anbari. The Pentagon has confirmed that US forces were deployed there in January.
At foreign affairs select committee hearings in London earlier this month, UK Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood declined to comment on British special forces operations, but said the RAF was flying missions over the country in preparation for possible attacks on Isis. Italy announced on Monday that it would allow armed US drones to strike Libyan targets from bases in Sicily.
Isis fighters stormed the centre of the coastal town of Sabratha on Tuesday, four days after 41 of their number were killed in a US bombing raid there, and battled through the night with local militias. The police station was overrun, and when it was recaptured militia forces found the bodies of 11 beheaded police officers.
Fighting continued at daybreak after battles around Sabratha’s hospital and football stadium, with Isis fighters redeploying to a western suburb of the city, which lies 30 miles from Tripoli.
Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French defence minister, has not commented on reports of a French presence in Libya, instead saying an inquiry would be launched into the leaking of sensitive information.
Pierre Martinet, a former DGSE officer, told France Info the development was reassuring and that he thought Le Drian must have decided to make the information public. “If not, it would have remained relatively secret and Le Drian would have said nothing.” Opening an inquiry, Martinet added, served only to confirm the revelations.
Earlier this month, a spokesman for the French president, François Hollande, said French intervention in Libya was conditional on the formation of a firm government in Tripoli, a request for French help, and an “international” coalition. Around the same time, Laurent Fabius, the French minister of foreign affairs, denied any French military involvement in Libya.
In an interview with the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche three days ago, Federica Mogherini, head of EU diplomacy, insisted that European states must wait until a legitimate Libyan government has been formed and a request for EU help received before any member state intervenes against Isis.
The Sabratha attack underlines the problems an evolving US-led coalition faces in trying to contain a rapidly expanding Isis. Hours before the Sabratha fighting, the US special envoy for combatting Isis, Brett McGurk, told reporters in Washington that the terrorist group had now prioritised Libya for recruiting, saying: “It’s trying to attract as many foreign fighters to Libya as possible.”
Analysts say Isis fighters are arriving from Tunisia and sub-Saharan Africa, mingling with thousands of migrants who are crossing the Sahara and seeking boats to Europe.
“Isis is creating a real African jihadi army, we can see mass arrivals of jihadis, they are impossible to control for the simple reason that they use the same route as migrants,” said Paris-based terrorism expert David Thomson. “The airstrikes can reduce the shock that is coming, but they need ground troops to stop it.”
US officials are still trying to determine whether last Friday’s bombing killed its primary target, Isis commander Noureddine Chouchane, who is blamed for organising the Sousse beach massacre last year in Tunisia in which 30 British tourists died.
The deaths in Friday’s airstrike of two Serbian diplomats, kidnapped by Isis last November, underlined the difficulty of bombing a militant group that bases itself in urban areas. Since the Sabratha bombing, Isis units in the coastal town of Sirte have abandoned barracks and checkpoints, clustering amid the civilian population to deter further strikes.
One Sabratha source said most of the Isis units in the city were foreign fighters, but were aided by local elements. “The Isis position in Sabratha is not as strong as maybe in other parts of Libya like Sirte, but in Sabratha they are supported by a bunch of local thugs.”
The Sabratha fighting came on a tumultuous day for Libya, with forces of the internationally recognised parliament in Tobruk recapturing large parts of the eastern city of Benghazi from Isis and allied Islamists.
Washington’s hopes for crushing Isis in Libya rest on persuading the parliament to end its civil war with the Islamist-led Libya Dawn group, which holds Tripoli, so that the country’s militias can concentrate on fighting the terrorists. But prospects of a deal faded on Tuesday, with Tobruk postponing a vote on a unity government amid allegations from some MPs of intimidation in the parliament chamber.
UN Libya envoy Martin Kobler tweeted: “Concerned by slowness of political process in Libya, overtaken by military events, must speed up to stop Daesh [Isis] expansion.”
The success of Tobruk forces in defeating Isis in Benghazi may paradoxically make the task of uniting Libya’s two governments more difficult, because it has stiffened the resolve of parliament to refuse a power-sharing deal with Tripoli.
Without a unity government in place, the Pentagon says its special forces are seeking to “partner” with individual militias for ad hoc ground-air attacks on Isis bases in Libya, even as those militias continue fighting each other. While critics say the plan is inherently unstable, the fighting in Sabratha has underlined that airstrikes alone are unlikely to inflict a decisive defeat on Isis.
by Chris Stephen in Tunis and Kim Willsher in Paris
24 February 2016
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Sources in Libya say French special forces are among those working against Islamic State in the country. A small French detachment has been operating from Benghazi’s Benina airport, the sources have reported, assisting forces of the internationally backed Libyan authorities in Tobruk.
According to Le Monde, special forces units, alongside France’s external security directorate, the DGSE, have been in Libya for several months, and coordinated the November US strike on Derna which killed the most senior Isis leader in the country, Iraqi Abu Nabil al-Anbari. The Pentagon has confirmed that US forces were deployed there in January.
At foreign affairs select committee hearings in London earlier this month, UK Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood declined to comment on British special forces operations, but said the RAF was flying missions over the country in preparation for possible attacks on Isis. Italy announced on Monday that it would allow armed US drones to strike Libyan targets from bases in Sicily.
Isis fighters stormed the centre of the coastal town of Sabratha on Tuesday, four days after 41 of their number were killed in a US bombing raid there, and battled through the night with local militias. The police station was overrun, and when it was recaptured militia forces found the bodies of 11 beheaded police officers.
Fighting continued at daybreak after battles around Sabratha’s hospital and football stadium, with Isis fighters redeploying to a western suburb of the city, which lies 30 miles from Tripoli.
Jean-Yves Le Drian, the French defence minister, has not commented on reports of a French presence in Libya, instead saying an inquiry would be launched into the leaking of sensitive information.
Pierre Martinet, a former DGSE officer, told France Info the development was reassuring and that he thought Le Drian must have decided to make the information public. “If not, it would have remained relatively secret and Le Drian would have said nothing.” Opening an inquiry, Martinet added, served only to confirm the revelations.
Earlier this month, a spokesman for the French president, François Hollande, said French intervention in Libya was conditional on the formation of a firm government in Tripoli, a request for French help, and an “international” coalition. Around the same time, Laurent Fabius, the French minister of foreign affairs, denied any French military involvement in Libya.
In an interview with the French newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche three days ago, Federica Mogherini, head of EU diplomacy, insisted that European states must wait until a legitimate Libyan government has been formed and a request for EU help received before any member state intervenes against Isis.
The Sabratha attack underlines the problems an evolving US-led coalition faces in trying to contain a rapidly expanding Isis. Hours before the Sabratha fighting, the US special envoy for combatting Isis, Brett McGurk, told reporters in Washington that the terrorist group had now prioritised Libya for recruiting, saying: “It’s trying to attract as many foreign fighters to Libya as possible.”
Analysts say Isis fighters are arriving from Tunisia and sub-Saharan Africa, mingling with thousands of migrants who are crossing the Sahara and seeking boats to Europe.
“Isis is creating a real African jihadi army, we can see mass arrivals of jihadis, they are impossible to control for the simple reason that they use the same route as migrants,” said Paris-based terrorism expert David Thomson. “The airstrikes can reduce the shock that is coming, but they need ground troops to stop it.”
US officials are still trying to determine whether last Friday’s bombing killed its primary target, Isis commander Noureddine Chouchane, who is blamed for organising the Sousse beach massacre last year in Tunisia in which 30 British tourists died.
The deaths in Friday’s airstrike of two Serbian diplomats, kidnapped by Isis last November, underlined the difficulty of bombing a militant group that bases itself in urban areas. Since the Sabratha bombing, Isis units in the coastal town of Sirte have abandoned barracks and checkpoints, clustering amid the civilian population to deter further strikes.
One Sabratha source said most of the Isis units in the city were foreign fighters, but were aided by local elements. “The Isis position in Sabratha is not as strong as maybe in other parts of Libya like Sirte, but in Sabratha they are supported by a bunch of local thugs.”
The Sabratha fighting came on a tumultuous day for Libya, with forces of the internationally recognised parliament in Tobruk recapturing large parts of the eastern city of Benghazi from Isis and allied Islamists.
Washington’s hopes for crushing Isis in Libya rest on persuading the parliament to end its civil war with the Islamist-led Libya Dawn group, which holds Tripoli, so that the country’s militias can concentrate on fighting the terrorists. But prospects of a deal faded on Tuesday, with Tobruk postponing a vote on a unity government amid allegations from some MPs of intimidation in the parliament chamber.
UN Libya envoy Martin Kobler tweeted: “Concerned by slowness of political process in Libya, overtaken by military events, must speed up to stop Daesh [Isis] expansion.”
The success of Tobruk forces in defeating Isis in Benghazi may paradoxically make the task of uniting Libya’s two governments more difficult, because it has stiffened the resolve of parliament to refuse a power-sharing deal with Tripoli.
Without a unity government in place, the Pentagon says its special forces are seeking to “partner” with individual militias for ad hoc ground-air attacks on Isis bases in Libya, even as those militias continue fighting each other. While critics say the plan is inherently unstable, the fighting in Sabratha has underlined that airstrikes alone are unlikely to inflict a decisive defeat on Isis.
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Re: The Big Lie About the Libyan War: The Obama administrati
by admin » Thu Dec 22, 2016 5:23 am
Benghazi Emails Put Focus on Hillary Clinton’s Encouragement of Adviser
by Michael S. Schmidt
June 29, 2015
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters last month that the memos about Libya she received while secretary of state from Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime adviser whom the Obama administration had barred her from hiring, had been “unsolicited.”
But email records that Mrs. Clinton, according to officials briefed on the matter, apparently failed to turn over to the State Department last fall show that she repeatedly encouraged Mr. Blumenthal to “keep ’em coming,” as she said in an August 2012 reply to a memo from him, which she called “another keeper.”
All or part of 15 Libya-related emails she sent to Mr. Blumenthal were missing from the trove of 30,000 that Mrs. Clinton provided to the State Department last year, as well as from the 847 that the department in turn provided in February to the House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. The emails were reviewed by a reporter.
The department had asked Mrs. Clinton last year for copies of all of the work-related emails she sent or received on the personal email account she exclusively used when she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. (She has said that she wiped the server clean thereafter, deleting the emails that she had not turned over to the department, which she said were personal.)
In sifting through and producing such a large number of emails, it stands to reason that some would be missed. But the fact that some of the missing correspondence contained expressions of gratitude and encouragement to Mr. Blumenthal is being seized on by Republicans, who plan to use the apparent contradiction, and the missing emails, to raise new questions about Mrs. Clinton’s credibility.
The missing email records — nine complete messages and parts of six others — were discovered after Mr. Blumenthal turned over to the House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks his own batch of Libya-related email correspondence with Mrs. Clinton.
Angered that the State Department had not already provided it with some of those emails, the committee asked the department whether it had received them from Mrs. Clinton. The department determined that it had not received all or part of 15 emails.
On Thursday, the State Department acknowledged the missing correspondence, but it did not specifically say which parts of those emails were missing.
According to officials briefed on the matter, among the emails the State Department could not find were those in which Mrs. Clinton encouraged Mr. Blumenthal to keep sending memos or in which she asked additional questions about their contents.
In response to an intelligence memo Mr. Blumenthal sent Mrs. Clinton in July 2012, she said: “Greetings from Kabul! And thanks for keeping this stuff coming!”
And, responding to a March 2012 memo, she wrote: “This strains credulity based on what I know. Any more info about it?”
Mr. Blumenthal replied, “Will seek more intel.”
A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Nick Merrill, said, “The idea that this runs counter to the assertion that the emails were unsolicited is a leap.”
“Mr. Blumenthal began emailing of his own accord,” Mr. Merrill said. “Polite acknowledgments are not tantamount to solicitation. And I think that any reasonable person who has ever had an email exchange would agree.”
Mrs. Clinton, who is running for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, has maintained that she properly complied with the State Department’s request and with federal record-keeping regulations.
The State Department has provided the House committee in recent days with at least 10 pages of emails between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Blumenthal that it had not turned over in February. These appear to show that Mrs. Clinton and her advisers took the memos and other advice from Mr. Blumenthal fairly seriously.
One also appears to suggest that Mrs. Clinton may have wanted to conceal Mr. Blumenthal’s authorship of a memo to her from someone else.
In March 2011, Mr. Blumenthal sent Mrs. Clinton a memo with the subject line, “H: Serious problems for Libyan Rebels. Sid.” As she often did, Mrs. Clinton forwarded this one to her longtime aide, Huma Abedin, asking her to print it. But in this case, Mrs. Clinton asked Ms. Abedin, “Can you print for me w/o any identifiers?”
“Yes,” Ms. Abedin replied.
Another email chain recently turned over by the State Department shows how Mrs. Clinton took under consideration Mr. Blumenthal’s public relations advice to her in anticipation of the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
“First, brava! This is a historic moment and you will be credited for realizing it,” Mr. Blumenthal said in an Aug. 22, 2011, memo to Mrs. Clinton with the subject line “Your statement post-Q.”
“When Qaddafi himself is finally removed, you should of course make a public statement before the cameras wherever you are, even in the driveway of your vacation home,” Mr. Blumenthal wrote. “You must go on camera. You must establish yourself in the historical record at this moment.”
He added: “The most important phrase is: ‘successful strategy.’ “
Mrs. Clinton forwarded the advice to one of her closest aides at the State Department, Jake Sullivan.
“Pls read below,” she wrote. “Sid makes a good case for what I should say, but it’s premised on being said after Q goes, which will make it more dramatic. That’s my hesitancy, since I’m not sure how many chances I’ll get.”
Mr. Sullivan responded that he and another senior State Department official “thought it might make sense for you to do an op-ed to run right after he falls, making this point,” and that a draft was already being written.
“You can reinforce the op-ed in all your appearances, but it makes sense to lay down something definitive, almost like the Clinton Doctrine,” Mr. Sullivan said.
That same day, though, it was a White House aide who credited the administration’s strategy, and President Obama who triumphantly declared that Libya’s future was “in the hands of its people.”
by Michael S. Schmidt
June 29, 2015
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WASHINGTON — Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters last month that the memos about Libya she received while secretary of state from Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime adviser whom the Obama administration had barred her from hiring, had been “unsolicited.”
But email records that Mrs. Clinton, according to officials briefed on the matter, apparently failed to turn over to the State Department last fall show that she repeatedly encouraged Mr. Blumenthal to “keep ’em coming,” as she said in an August 2012 reply to a memo from him, which she called “another keeper.”
All or part of 15 Libya-related emails she sent to Mr. Blumenthal were missing from the trove of 30,000 that Mrs. Clinton provided to the State Department last year, as well as from the 847 that the department in turn provided in February to the House committee investigating the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya. The emails were reviewed by a reporter.
The department had asked Mrs. Clinton last year for copies of all of the work-related emails she sent or received on the personal email account she exclusively used when she was secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. (She has said that she wiped the server clean thereafter, deleting the emails that she had not turned over to the department, which she said were personal.)
In sifting through and producing such a large number of emails, it stands to reason that some would be missed. But the fact that some of the missing correspondence contained expressions of gratitude and encouragement to Mr. Blumenthal is being seized on by Republicans, who plan to use the apparent contradiction, and the missing emails, to raise new questions about Mrs. Clinton’s credibility.
The missing email records — nine complete messages and parts of six others — were discovered after Mr. Blumenthal turned over to the House committee investigating the Benghazi attacks his own batch of Libya-related email correspondence with Mrs. Clinton.
Angered that the State Department had not already provided it with some of those emails, the committee asked the department whether it had received them from Mrs. Clinton. The department determined that it had not received all or part of 15 emails.
On Thursday, the State Department acknowledged the missing correspondence, but it did not specifically say which parts of those emails were missing.
According to officials briefed on the matter, among the emails the State Department could not find were those in which Mrs. Clinton encouraged Mr. Blumenthal to keep sending memos or in which she asked additional questions about their contents.
In response to an intelligence memo Mr. Blumenthal sent Mrs. Clinton in July 2012, she said: “Greetings from Kabul! And thanks for keeping this stuff coming!”
And, responding to a March 2012 memo, she wrote: “This strains credulity based on what I know. Any more info about it?”
Mr. Blumenthal replied, “Will seek more intel.”
A spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Nick Merrill, said, “The idea that this runs counter to the assertion that the emails were unsolicited is a leap.”
“Mr. Blumenthal began emailing of his own accord,” Mr. Merrill said. “Polite acknowledgments are not tantamount to solicitation. And I think that any reasonable person who has ever had an email exchange would agree.”
Mrs. Clinton, who is running for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, has maintained that she properly complied with the State Department’s request and with federal record-keeping regulations.
The State Department has provided the House committee in recent days with at least 10 pages of emails between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Blumenthal that it had not turned over in February. These appear to show that Mrs. Clinton and her advisers took the memos and other advice from Mr. Blumenthal fairly seriously.
One also appears to suggest that Mrs. Clinton may have wanted to conceal Mr. Blumenthal’s authorship of a memo to her from someone else.
In March 2011, Mr. Blumenthal sent Mrs. Clinton a memo with the subject line, “H: Serious problems for Libyan Rebels. Sid.” As she often did, Mrs. Clinton forwarded this one to her longtime aide, Huma Abedin, asking her to print it. But in this case, Mrs. Clinton asked Ms. Abedin, “Can you print for me w/o any identifiers?”
“Yes,” Ms. Abedin replied.
Another email chain recently turned over by the State Department shows how Mrs. Clinton took under consideration Mr. Blumenthal’s public relations advice to her in anticipation of the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
“First, brava! This is a historic moment and you will be credited for realizing it,” Mr. Blumenthal said in an Aug. 22, 2011, memo to Mrs. Clinton with the subject line “Your statement post-Q.”
“When Qaddafi himself is finally removed, you should of course make a public statement before the cameras wherever you are, even in the driveway of your vacation home,” Mr. Blumenthal wrote. “You must go on camera. You must establish yourself in the historical record at this moment.”
He added: “The most important phrase is: ‘successful strategy.’ “
Mrs. Clinton forwarded the advice to one of her closest aides at the State Department, Jake Sullivan.
“Pls read below,” she wrote. “Sid makes a good case for what I should say, but it’s premised on being said after Q goes, which will make it more dramatic. That’s my hesitancy, since I’m not sure how many chances I’ll get.”
Mr. Sullivan responded that he and another senior State Department official “thought it might make sense for you to do an op-ed to run right after he falls, making this point,” and that a draft was already being written.
“You can reinforce the op-ed in all your appearances, but it makes sense to lay down something definitive, almost like the Clinton Doctrine,” Mr. Sullivan said.
That same day, though, it was a White House aide who credited the administration’s strategy, and President Obama who triumphantly declared that Libya’s future was “in the hands of its people.”
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Re: The Big Lie About the Libyan War: The Obama administrati
by admin » Thu Dec 22, 2016 5:27 am
UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05794818 Date: 10/30/2015
RELEASE IN PART B6
From: PIR <[DELETE]
Sent: Wednesday, April 4, 2012 8:36 AM
To: H; Jake Sullivan; Huma Abedin
Cc: Lona Valmoro; PIR
Subject: Re: Libya
The timeline included in the brief might have been an earlier draft, not the final. Figuring that out.
But the comprehensive tick tock Jake had put together - which I believe he has since sent you - was done in large part for
the Warrick piece. The great detail Joby had came entirely from Jake. Joby didn't do any independent research.
Original Message
From: Evergreen
To: Jake Sullivan
To: Huma Abedin
To: PIR
Cc: Lona Valmoro
Cc: Monica Hanley
Cc: 'Russorv@state.gov'
Subject: Re: Libya
Sent: Apr 4, 2012 7:18 AM
We also need phone records and meetings w Arabs and work on Arab League resolution. The Joby Warrick piece from
10/30/11 includes more detail than our own timeline.
Original Message
From: H
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 07:16 AM
To: 'sullivanjj@state.gov' <sullivanjj@state.gov>; Huma Abedin; 'preineS [DELETE]
Cc: 'ValmoroLj@state.gov' <ValmoroLj@state.gov>; 'monica.hanley [DELETE]
'Russorv@state.gov' <Russorv@state.gov>
Subject: Re: Libya
Adding Lona, Monica and Rob who have my scheduling records. What bothers me is that S/P prepared the timeline but
it doesn't include much of what I did. So where did they get info? This is example of my continuing concern that we
don't have our records ready.
Original Message
From: H
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 07:12 AM
To: 'sullivanjj@state.gov' <sullivanjj@state.gov>; Huma Abedin; 'preines [DELETE]
Subject: Re: Libya
This timeline is totally inadequate (which bothers me about our recordkeeping). For example, I was in Paris on 3/19
when attack started. That's not on timeline. What else is missing? Pls go over it asap.
Original Message
From: H
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 07:09 AM
To: 'sullivanjj@state.gov' <sullivanjj@state.gov>; Huma Abedin; 'preines [DELETE]
Subject: Libya
Did I meet in Paris w Jabril (brought to hotel by BHL) on 3/14? It's not on timeline.
RELEASE IN PART B6
From: PIR <[DELETE]
Sent: Wednesday, April 4, 2012 8:36 AM
To: H; Jake Sullivan; Huma Abedin
Cc: Lona Valmoro; PIR
Subject: Re: Libya
The timeline included in the brief might have been an earlier draft, not the final. Figuring that out.
But the comprehensive tick tock Jake had put together - which I believe he has since sent you - was done in large part for
the Warrick piece. The great detail Joby had came entirely from Jake. Joby didn't do any independent research.
Original Message
From: Evergreen
To: Jake Sullivan
To: Huma Abedin
To: PIR
Cc: Lona Valmoro
Cc: Monica Hanley
Cc: 'Russorv@state.gov'
Subject: Re: Libya
Sent: Apr 4, 2012 7:18 AM
We also need phone records and meetings w Arabs and work on Arab League resolution. The Joby Warrick piece from
10/30/11 includes more detail than our own timeline.
Original Message
From: H
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 07:16 AM
To: 'sullivanjj@state.gov' <sullivanjj@state.gov>; Huma Abedin; 'preineS [DELETE]
Cc: 'ValmoroLj@state.gov' <ValmoroLj@state.gov>; 'monica.hanley [DELETE]
'Russorv@state.gov' <Russorv@state.gov>
Subject: Re: Libya
Adding Lona, Monica and Rob who have my scheduling records. What bothers me is that S/P prepared the timeline but
it doesn't include much of what I did. So where did they get info? This is example of my continuing concern that we
don't have our records ready.
Original Message
From: H
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 07:12 AM
To: 'sullivanjj@state.gov' <sullivanjj@state.gov>; Huma Abedin; 'preines [DELETE]
Subject: Re: Libya
This timeline is totally inadequate (which bothers me about our recordkeeping). For example, I was in Paris on 3/19
when attack started. That's not on timeline. What else is missing? Pls go over it asap.
Original Message
From: H
Sent: Wednesday, April 04, 2012 07:09 AM
To: 'sullivanjj@state.gov' <sullivanjj@state.gov>; Huma Abedin; 'preines [DELETE]
Subject: Libya
Did I meet in Paris w Jabril (brought to hotel by BHL) on 3/14? It's not on timeline.
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