There Are So Many, Where Do You Start
by James Glaser
June 24, 2013

It seemed like there was something new coming out about our government every month last year, but now, screw-ups are hitting the headlines so fast that it is hard to remember the scandal from last week.

What do you remember about Seal Team 6 and Extortion 17? Here is a refresher:

Defense & National Security

'Extortion 17' Navy SEAL families demand Congress inquest

By: Raquel Okyay

6/8/2013 06:18 PM Family members of the 38 military personnel killed in the Aug. 6, 2011 helicopter crash in Afghanistan called for a congressional investigation into the failed Navy flight operation conducted in war-ridden Afghanistan.

"On May 3, 2011 Vice President Joseph R. "Joe" Biden Jr., leaked confidential information to the media that jeopardized the lives of all Navy SEALs and their families," said Karen L. Vaughn, mother of deceased U.S. Navy SEAL Aaron C. Vaughn. SEALs are the Navy's principal special operations force and a part of the Naval Special Warfare Command and U.S. Special Operations Command.

"Aaron, who was a member of SEAL Team Six, was aboard the doomed CH47-D Chinook helicopter," she said.

Extortion 17 was the in-theater call sign of the helicopter-flight mission that was shot down by Afghan militants.

A former team leader at SEAL Team Six who spoke to Human Events under the condition of anonymity said, "There is no question that Biden's outrageous bragging outed the operators of SEAL Team Six. By throwing the spotlight on the Team, he put lives in jeopardy. The SEALs on Extortion One-Seven paid the price."

All passengers on board were killed which included 22 American special operations personnel, three members of the U.S. Air Force, five Army National Guardsmen and Army Reserve crewmen, seven Afghan commandos and one Afghan interpreter

Things are happening so fast lately that I had forgotten all about that one. However, while the parents of those Americans who died on that flight will never forget, they will have to work hard to get their story before the American people, because there are so many other stories that keep popping up.

How about the State Department and Benghazi? I know it is hard to remember what that was all about, too. Here is what ABC News reported:

When it became clear last fall that the CIA's now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story.

ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.

Here is how our government treated the families of the four men killed in that attack. From the Daily Caller:

"This has been a difficult week for the State Department and for our country. We've seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We've seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing do to with."

When Hillary Clinton spoke those words, in front of those victims' families and the whole world, she knew full well that the Benghazi attack had nothing to do with any YouTube video. Months later, when she was finally called to account for it, she actually said, "What difference does it make?"

It is hard when you are the parent of a dead American who you thought was defending our nation, and a Washington politician lies to you about what happened. It gets even harder when that politician then disregards your feelings and says it doesn't matter.

When you think about it, our government keeps doing things that seem just crazy. Did you know President Obama has troops going to Egypt and Jordan right now? They are going to help with "training." Do you know how many "trainers" we sent to Vietnam?

You want to talk about screwy things our government does, well how about supplying Mexican drug lords with guns? Sounds crazy doesn't it, but we did. Here is how the LA Times explains it.

ATF's Fast and Furious scandal

A federal operation dubbed Fast and Furious allowed weapons from the U.S. to pass into the hands of suspected gun smugglers so the arms could be traced to the higher echelons of Mexican drug cartels. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which ran the operation, has lost track of hundreds of firearms, many of which have been linked to crimes, including the fatal shooting of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in December 2010.

That's right. Guns supplied by our government were used to kill an American border patrol agent, and many, many innocent Mexican civilians.

I am sure the Boston bombings are still fresh in your minds, and you must remember that our FBI knew the people doing the bombing, that they had investigated them in the past, and that Russia had warned us about them.

Here is a good one. President Obama is arming the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Here is how Chicago Today puts it:

By Denise Williams, February 6, 2013 at 4:55 pm

There is lunacy, then there is this. The US just delivered the first four of twenty F-16 bombers to Egypt as part a $1.3 billion Foreign Military Financing program. Next up on the delivery schedule are 200 M1A1 Abrams Main Battle Tanks. To Egypt. To Muslim Brotherhood Party leader and now President of the country, Mohamed Morsi.

The Brotherhood is the political/religious group that has taken over Egypt. Somehow, President Obama thinks it is a good thing to give them more modern arms to do what? We don't know.

Now we all know about the IRS scandal. We don't know who ordered it, but we have figured out that it wasn't just a couple of rogue agents acting on their own.

Now we are talking about how Washington in secret has been recording all the phone calls we make and our e-mails, and tweets, too. We don't really know how much they record, but for sure Washington knows way more about what you and I are doing than we ever thought. President Obama says he welcomes this debate about this secret eavesdropping, but he said that only after the cat was out of the bag. Before Edward Snowden told the American people what was going on, Obama kept that a secret, too.

Now, I have covered just a few things. I didn't get into the voter fraud scandal where military votes were not counted; the 600,000+ veterans who still wait for their benefits; sexual misconduct by the State Department and the Secret Service; how the President ordered 10,000 illegal immigrants released from jail blaming it falsely on the sequester; or how some guy named Clapper and Eric Holder got caught lying to Congress. I am even sure there are a lot of other things you can remember that I forgot.

The truth is that there are so many screw-ups by our government that you lose track and forget the last one as a new one takes over the headline. That might just be the reason there are so many. One covers the other, and the White House never has to answer to any, because about the time they figure out what to say about that one, a new one pops up.

I don't know about you, but I think there are way more crazy things coming out about Obama's White House than even George Bush's. However, when I give it some thought, probably every administration has had their share of screw-ups. It's just that now we have the internet.

Today there are millions of Americans on the internet, and the internet is filled with social networks and blogs watching everything Washington does. So maybe Obama and his time in office really isn't that much different than others. Obama just happens to be plagued by a new form of communication.

We know Washington has control of our major news outlets in print and television, but they haven't figured out how to control the internet... yet. Until they do (and they will), much of what used to be covered up will be made known. So, ladies and gentlemen, hang on to your hats, because for the foreseeable future, our government's crazy screw-ups and secrets are going to be exposed faster than we can keep track of or comprehend.

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