What Difference Does It Make If We *checks notes* Finally Got a Benghazi Terrorist

AP Photo, File

I find this rather ironic. Bill and his lovely wife, the former Secretary of State, are due to answer some uncomfortable questions of their own during a formal congressional deposition in a few weeks, when another of the architects of the most infamous and memorable Hillary congressional testimony ever has finally been handed over to the United States for justice.

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...where four Americans were killed: Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. 

After more than a decade of American pursuit, Al-Bakoush landed in Virginia earlier this morning and is in custody. He will face charges later today. 

We will have more to say at a later time - but this is a massive moment for the country and a clear message from President Trump’s administration that those who attack our service members will ultimately find American justice, no matter how long it takes.

Thank you to our great partners who helped execute the mission - @AGPamBondi, @TheJusticeDept, @USAttyPirro, and @CIA@StateDept for assisting us.

  • Ambassador Chris Stevens 
  • Information Officer Sean Smith  
  • Security Officers Glen Doherty  
  • Tyrone Woods

What difference would it make if everyone suddenly had their memory refreshed? What a vicious hag Hillary Clinton is beneath that sneering, muumuu-swathed exterior?

What difference would it make if everyone remembered that President Perfect Creases said he had arrested the perpetrator responsible for the Libyan violence...

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...even as he left those people on the ground to be slaughtered in the most horrifc fashion inmaginable.

...The attack was then fed to all of them, the White House, the Pentagon, the State Dept., the CIA, through live video feed.  A later email that day reported, “Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.”  The feed showed no protest of any supposedly offensive You Tube video.

Just one hour flight time away were U.S. Air Force bases that could have been rousted in minutes to send fighter planes and attack helicopters that could have routed the attackers in minutes of fighting.  As Investors Business Daily editorialized on October 24, “Within an hour’s flight time from Libya, at the large naval air station in Sigonella, Italy, and at bases in nearby Aviano and Souda Bay, were fighters and AC 130 gunships that can be extremely effective in dispersing crowds or responding to a terrorist assault.” But the order for the rescue never came.  Maybe because Barack Obama did not want to offend Muslim sensibilities by such a show of force.

The IBD editorial summarized the situation by the next morning as follows:

When President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton stepped into the Rose Garden the morning of September 12, they likely knew [correction: they surely knew] the attack on our Benghazi consulate the day before was organized by terrorists.  They knew because they were privy to a flurry of emails among administration officials discussing the attack in real time.  Yet they said nothing about what they knew and, worse, had done nothing to mount a rescue despite American forces being less than an hour away during the seven hour blitz.  According to Fox News, 300 to 400 national security figures received these emails in real time almost as the raid was playing out and concluding.  These people work directly under the nation’s top national security, military and diplomatic officials.”

By then everyone knew how the battle of Benghazi had turned out.  The United States Ambassador to Libya, the personal representative of President Barack Obama, had been tortured, sodomized, dragged bloody through the streets of Benghazi, and murdered.  Chris Stevens, along with the two Marines and another who were murdered along with him, had volunteered to serve his country.  But under the leadership of Barack Obama, that is how his service ended.

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We were waiting on the order, an airman at Aviano said at the time.

WE COULD HAVE BEEN THERE

His squadron got the alert: a “real world mission was going down.”

The team – at Aviano Air Base in northeastern Italy – raced to the field and was briefed, as planes were armed and prepared to launch. Hundreds of miles away, fellow Americans were under attack in Benghazi.

"There were people everywhere,” said the witness, who was on the ground that night but wished to remain anonymous. “That flight line was full of people, and we were all ready to go” to Benghazi.

Only they were waiting for the order. It never came.

“The whole night we were told that we are waiting on a call,” he told Fox News.

This account is from a squadron member at Aviano the night of the Sept. 11, 2012, terror attack in Benghazi. The source, the first in his squadron to speak out publicly since that attack, is going public to explain – in his view – that more could have been done to save Americans under attack that night.

What difference would it have made?

And it seemed as if the tech giants were willing to cover the Obama administration's ass as well. Anecdotal reports came to Bingley and me of some havey-cavey mileage calculations online.

A old squadron Marine Corps friend of ours pointed out on FaceBook that the Google Map seems to have been adjusted to reflect to administrations contention that no one could get there in time. Google is saying it’s a NINETEEN HOUR FLIGHT from Aviano to Benghazi.

Damn. That has to be by State Department email retrieval time, because it’s only FOURHUNDRED AND FIFTY MILES as a crow flies. As an F-18 flies?

About a half an hour.

As an AC-130 Spectre flies?

Two hours, three MAX.

Today, a direct flight from Aviano to Benghazi checks in at 2 1/2 hours. Straight shot. Probably because no one is interested in one.

Former Congressman Jason Chaffetz even argued with AfriCom commander General Ham during the congressional hearings, 'It's not that long a flight.'

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..."The extraction took an exceptionally long amount of time," Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said while questioning Ham. "I still don't understand, with two men down by 10:00 p.m. local time and then another attack at 5:00 a.m. the next morning, how at 6:05 in the morning the Department of Defense prepares a C-17 to go down, and that doesn't actually depart Germany until 2:15 p.m. and doesn't return back to Germany until 10:19 p.m. I have flown with you from Germany to Libya. It is not that far a flight."

No one got there for them when they needed them. When they finally got there, it was too late.

It would have made a difference.

Barack Obama did what came naturally in the immediate aftermath of a ghastly tragedy.

He flew off the next evening to meet up with his rich peeps and raise that schweet cha-ching.

...By the evening of that next day, Commander-in-Chief Barack Obama was jetting off to a campaign fundraiser in Las Vegas, followed by parties with Jay-Z and Beyonce.  Chris Stevens was already out of sight, out of mind.  Except that Commander Obama could not wash off the stench of dereliction of duty, duty to far more worthy American warriors and servicemen, dereliction in failing to authorize worthy security for those who were sent in harms way under his leadership, and to order a timely rescue when he could.  For such failure, any commander serving under the commander-in-chief should be court martialed.  But the President expects you to give him four more years of such “leadership.”

Two weeks later, that same, ever urbane President of the United States was cool as a cucumber while addressing the United Nations, and shoveling more blame-the-video effluent on the graves of the Americans he had abandoned to their gruesome, horrific, and avoidable fates.

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DIS GUY

In the intervening fourteen years, only two other men have ever been apprehended for the Benghazi assaults. One of them was in 2014. 

Ahmed Abu Khattala was captured by Special Operations Forces and returned to stand trial in the US. 

He was acquitted on 14 of 18 charges in a Washington, D.C. courtroom. The judge in the case sentenced him to 22 years, saying he'd essentially be convicted of 'property crimes,' a ruling that was overturned and a sentence lengthened on appeal.

...Abu Khattala's trial began on 2 October 2017, and was expected to last five weeks.[9] In his opening statements, Khattala's lawyer, Jeffrey Robinson, denied Khattala's participation in the attacks.[18]

On 28 November 2017, a jury in Washington acquitted Abu Khattala of 14 of the 18 charges he faced after deliberating for five days following the seven-week trial. He was convicted of four lesser charges, including conspiracy to provide material support for terrorism, maliciously destroying and injuring dwellings and property as well as using and carrying a semi-automatic weapon during a crime of violence.[19]

On 27 June 2018, Abu Khattala was sentenced to 22 years in prison.[20] The judge spared him from a possible life sentence, saying he had essentially been convicted of property crimes.[21] As of 2022, Abu Khattala is incarcerated at ADX Florence, the federal supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.

Khattala's sentence was overturned in July 2022 by a DC Circuit Court of Appeals who ruled that a 22-year sentence was too short given the gravity of Khattala's crimes and the vital need to deter such crimes.[22] On 26 September 2024, Khattala was resentenced to 28 years in prison.[23]

The second man was convicted on charges much the same as those of Khattala and is serving a 19-year sentence.

...A second suspect, Mustafa Al-Imam, was captured by the U.S. military in Libya in 2017. Following a 2019 trial, he was found guilty on similar charges and sentenced to over 19 years in prison.

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Today, Zubayr al-Bakoush was in federal custody, deplaning in Virginia after the flight from Libya.

...The officials declined to discuss precisely how Al-Bakoush came into U.S. custody. Patel said Al-Bakoush was transferred into U.S. custody by foreign officials, but declined to identify the country involved. Flight records show an FBI jet left Misrata, on the Libyan coast, Thursday night and arrived at a small airport in northern Virginia early Friday.

...An indictment returned against Al-Bakoush last year alleges that on Sept. 11, 2012, he was directly involved in attacking the U.S. mission in Benghazi along with other members of Ansar Al Sharia, an Islamic extremist militia among several armed groups vying for control in Libya at the time.

The indictment contends that, within minutes of approaching the U.S. mission, Al-Bakoush “conducted surveillance activity” and “attempted to gain entry to vehicles belonging to the Mission staff.” The 13-page indictment makes no other specific claims about Al-Bakoush’s actions. He was first charged in a criminal complaint in 2015, about three years after the attack.

One of the survivors, Kris Paronto, noticed the Associated Press is still fighting a rear-guard action for the Obama regime.

They won't ever quit, and you can't ever hate them enough.

I want every last one of the scumbags who were there looking over their shoulders and under their beds. They've had over a decade of not having to worry about a thing...and now they have to.

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They all have to worry now.

It makes a difference.

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Duane Patterson 12:40 PM | February 06, 2026
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