Senate panel approves US ambassador to Libya

Published May 14, 2013

Associated Press

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has approved President Barack Obama's nominee to serve as U.S. ambassador to Libya.

The panel on a voice vote Tuesday approved Deborah Kay Jones, a career diplomat who has served in Kuwait, Argentina, Syria, Iraq and Turkey. If confirmed by the full Senate, Jones would fill the post that has been vacant for nearly eight months since the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens.

Insurgents attacked the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 last year, killing Stevens and three other Americans.

The Obama administration's response to the attacks has been the subject of a long-running and bitter dispute with congressional Republicans. The GOP has accused the administration of trying to cover up details of the assault.

View the original article here

Welcome to bizzaroworld -- Iran to preside over UN Disarmament Panel

• 

In case you didn’t think the UN could get even more bizarre (and dangerous), try this one. Iran will soon become the President of the Conference on Disarmament. The Iranians rotate into the job for four weeks near the end of May.  

Their qualification for the position?  Iran is the member state that comes next in the English alphabet after Indonesia.

Iran will have the task of managing the 2013 Conference agenda, which includes “the cessation of the nuclear arms race and nuclear disarmament.”  

Now the proverbial foxes guard the chicken coop. It would be funny, except that the Iranian fox really intends to devour the chickens.

On the one hand, since the mullahs running the country are engaged in a mad race to acquire nuclear arms, chairing a meeting on disarmament may be a bit of a struggle.  

On the other hand, the Conference just talks, and talking for its own sake is an Iranian art form.

The UN Charter says the organization is sworn to maintain international peace and security.  The Conference on Disarmament is “the world's single multilateral forum for disarmament negotiations.”  

According to the UN, “the Conference is funded from the UN regular budget, reports to the General Assembly and receives guidance from it.” 

That’s the theory.

But somewhere along the line these institutions got very lost. Now the proverbial foxes guard the chicken coop. It would be funny, except that the Iranian fox really intends to devour the chickens.

This isn’t the first time that the Conference on Disarmament has faced similar controversy.  

In July 2011 it was North Korea’s turn to take the helm. Not surprisingly, North Korea took the appointment as a sign of approval.  Its representative announced that the country was “very much committed to the Conference” and that “he would do everything in his capacity to move the Conference on Disarmament forward.”

So fast forward.  We find an ever more aggressive North Korea sharing nuclear know-how with like-minded belligerents, such as Iran and Syria.

When North Korea took the helm, Iran’s representative told the Conference: “I would like to congratulate the distinguished ambassador of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea for the assumption of the presidency and assuring him of my delegation’s full support and cooperation.”  

You can be sure that the North Korean rep will deliver an equally flowery welcome when Iran dons the crown.

This also isn’t the first time that the UN has appointed Iran to a position of authority wildly at odds with its reprehensible record. 

In 2010 Iran was elected to the UN Commission on the Status of Women – the UN’s top women’s rights body. Iranian laws that permit women to be stoned for alleged adultery? Irrelevant.

The saddest part of this charade is that these countries and their despotic leaders take sustenance from acquiring such formal trappings and basking in the accompanying diplomatic niceties. 

The United States is a member of the Conference on Disarmament.  We don’t need another administration speech that the “door is still open” but “the window is closing.”  With an Iranian poised to preside, we need to leave.

Anne Bayefsky is director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust. Follow her on Twitter @AnneBayefsky.

Related Stories

American Citizen Arrested in Iran, Family Says

U.N. Officials: Iran to Assemble Thousands of Nuclear Centrifuges Next Month

UN-linked disarmament panel taps Iran to lead talks

5 Iranian Officials Released by U.S. Return to Iran

U.S. Officials Found Clues Revealing Iran Nuclear Site

White House: Iran Is at a Crossroads Over Its Nuclear Program

Iran Says It Test-Fires Longest-Range Missiles

U.S. Will Unveil Iranian Interference Information Next Week

View the original article here

House panel releases set of questions for IRS, ahead of hearing on targeting Tea Party

• 

The House Ways and Means Committee this weekend released a timeline of interactions with the IRS and a list of 10 questions it will ask agency officials in an upcoming hearing -- following the agency acknowledging Friday that it targeted conservative political groups during the 2012 election season.

“The IRS absolutely must be non-partisan in its enforcement of our tax laws,” committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., said late Saturday. “The committee …will hold the IRS accountable for its actions.”   

The tax-collecting agency on Friday acknowledged it flagged the groups for additional review to see whether they were violating their tax-exempt status. 

On Saturday, a draft of an inspector general's report, to be released in full later this week, shows senior Internal Revenue Service officials knew agents were targeting Tea Party groups as early as 2011. That information seemingly contradicts public statements by the IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman.

The timeline shows that Louisiana Rep. Charles Boustany, chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee on Oversight, sent a letter to Shulman on Oct. 6, 2011, requesting information “regarding the tax-exempt sector.”

The timeline ends with a March 12, 2012, entry stating the IRS responded “with no mention of knowledge of targeting conservative groups.”

“Since the inception of this investigation, the Ways and Means Committee has persistently pushed the IRS to explain why it appeared to be unfairly targeting some political groups over others -- a charge they repeatedly denied,” Boustany said Saturday. “My greatest concern is what would have come from this blatant abuse of power if Ways and Means, as well as others, had not spoken up.”

Camp said within hours of the IRS acknowledgement Friday that his committee would hold a hearing on the issue.

Among the expected question, according to a committee document obtained by Fox News is: What steps, if any, has the IRS taken to ensure that the targeting of individuals and organizations does not occur in the future?

Another question is: When was the IRS commissioner made “aware of these unlawful practices, what steps were taken, if any, to halt the harassment of conservative organizations? Who was disciplined regarding these practices, if anyone?”

View the original article here

Obama administration to provide emails on CIA’s Libya talking points to Senate panel

The Obama administration has agreed to provide emails pertaining to the controversial CIA talking points which critics say pushed an inaccurate picture of what happened during the terror attack last September in Benghazi, a congressional source tells Fox News.

“We expect that will be done early next week,” the source said, adding the administration has agreed to the Senate Intelligence Committee’s request to review the emails.

The source did not immediately make clear whether members of the committee would go into a room and read the emails, or whether hard copies would be permanently supplied to the committee.

The source noted that the committee has already seen details on how the controversial talking points were changed from their original drafting. Terms like Al Qaeda were stripped out, which led Republican lawmakers to charge the talking points were deliberately watered down -- it’s unclear which versions of the talking points members of the Senate committee might see.

The intelligence community’s talking points were provided to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice and formed the basis of her controversial comments on all the major Sunday talk shows five days after the attack. During those shows, she asserted that the attack was a “spontaneous” reaction to protests elsewhere in the region and was a demonstration that spun out of control.

Fox News first reported there was no demonstration at the consulate. Rice and others have since acknowledged there was no protest in Benghazi before the attack on the U.S. consulate and CIA annex.

The latest effort appears to be aimed at trying to appease Republicans and ease the pressure on White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan’s nomination for CIA director.

At his confirmation hearing earlier this month, Brennan faced a barrage of questions from both sides of the aisle – some about Benghazi, but many about the administration’s drone program. Some have sought additional legal documents to back up the targeted killing of Americans overseas, an issue that still could leave Brennan vulnerable to Democratic resistance on the committee.

View the original article here