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Clinton Bears Responsibility Over Benghazi Attack, Cheney Says - Businessweek

Posted: 18 May 2014 08:39 AM PDT

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bears responsibility for the attacks on a U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, and will be held accountable should she run for president in 2016, former Vice President Dick Cheney said.

"It's a major issue," Cheney, who served under President George W. Bush, said in an interview on the "Fox News Sunday" TV program. "I don't think we've heard the last of it yet."

The Republican-controlled House voted this month to create a select committee to continue investigating the Sept. 11, 2012, attacks, which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. The panel will probe whether President Barack Obama's administration intentionally misled the public when officials initially asserted the violence didn't stem from planned terrorism. The officials later said it did.

Democrats say the attack and the administration's comments on it have been thoroughly vetted.

"It's a hunting mission for a lynch mob," Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is chairman of the chamber's intelligence committee, said on CNN's "State of the Union."

She said questions about the attacks have been "answered to the satisfaction" of her committee, citing past hearings and four reports.

Ukraine Crisis

Clinton, whose 2008 presidential run was derailed by the surging popularity of fellow Democratic candidate Obama, has said she'll make a decision on a 2016 White House run by the end of this year.

Cheney, who was vice president from 2001 to 2009, also criticized Obama for his handling of the crisis in Ukraine. Obama has "demonstrated repeatedly" that he can "be pushed around" by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Cheney said.

Putin is "taking advantage of this opportunity when he thinks we have a weak president to try to restore some of the old Soviet Union," Cheney told Fox News.

The U.S. and U.K. imposed sanctions on Russian companies and individuals in Putin's inner circle after he annexed the Crimean peninsula in March.

Rebel Fighting

Fighting is escalating in Ukraine's eastern regions as the country's government pursues a national-unity discussion without the participation of separatists. Unofficial referendums on secession earlier this month in Donetsk and Luhansk ended with rebels declaring independence. The violence is threatening to disrupt Ukraine's May 25 presidential election, which the U.S., European Union and NATO say is being undermined by Russian intervention.

The government in Kiev and its allies in the U.S. and EU have rejected the secession referendums as illegal, and accuse Putin of stirring unrest after annexing Crimea. NATO says Putin still has 40,000 troops arrayed on Ukraine's border and hasn't fulfilled promises to pull them back.

Cheney, who before his stint as vice president served as a U.S. secretary of defense and in the U.S. House of Representatives, appeared on the Fox program with his wife, Lynne Cheney. She is the author of "James Madison: A Life Reconsidered," a new book examining the life and legacy of the fourth U.S. president.

To contact the reporters on this story: Alan Bjerga in Washington at abjerga@bloomberg.net; Greg Giroux in Washington at ggiroux@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Romaine Bostick at rbostick@bloomberg.net Don Frederick, Bernard Kohn

Nigeria kidnapped schoolgirls: will the Nigerian government do a prisoner swap ... - Telegraph.co.uk

Posted: 18 May 2014 09:10 AM PDT

Boko Haram's bushfighters may not have the skills of the SAS, but what they do not lack is ruthlessness.

^{Chris McManus' captors shot him dead during a rescue attempt}

Diplomats believe that at the first sign of an armed rescue attempt, the group will slaughter its captives straightaway – just as they did in the joint British-Nigerian effort to free Chris McManus, the British hostage shot dead during a rescue attempt in March 2012.

Likewise, if the girls are split up into separate groups – possibly eight or more – a successful operation to recapture one could lead immediately to reprisals against the others.

Somali pirates have already pioneered this technique, and it has been successful in keeping special forces attacks on their hostages to a minimum.

No foreign government, of course, is anxious to spell out these difficulties too publicly. But only last week, US officials privately conceded that a rescue operation was not an option.

That, in other words, leaves two other options, neither admittedly attractive.

Option one is to simply sit it out, and gamble that Boko Haram might eventually just hand the girls back. Even jihadist groups have an image to think about, and it might just calculate that killing the girls or selling them into slavery might actually discredit them in the eyes of fellow radicals, making it harder to get outside help when they need it.

But that would also amount to doing nothing, and given that Mr Jonathan has already been accused of doing just that for the past month, it would not be politically attractive.

Option two, then is to do a trade, which seems to be what Boko Haram is pushing for. Already, the group is making public gestures at compromise – last week, it said it wanted the release of all its prisoners, including senior militants, but on Sunday, sources close to the group told The Telegraph that it had reduced that demand to just low-level fighters and the wives and children of sect members, many of whom have been detained purely to put pressure on the sect members themselves.

Human rights groups say the Nigerian government should never have detained wives and children in the first place, and that many of the low-level prisoners are either ignorant, brainwashed foot soldiers or mere innocents caught up in Nigerian army sweeps. The Nigerian government, of course, denies that.

Right now, though, it might want to think again. For it might just give a fig-leaf of credibility to what in any event will feel like a very dirty deal.

Kredit: www.nst.com.my

Ahad, 18 Mei 2014