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Paul Vallely: Boehner to Blame for Hill Inaction on Benghazi

By    |   Thursday, 24 April 2014 06:04 PM EDT

Inaction by Congress on Benghazi falls at the feet of House Speaker John Boehner, who should be pressured to resign if he does not order further investigation into the embassy attack, retired Gen. Paul E. Vallely says.

A seven-month-long study of the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya, which left four Americans dead, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, by the Citizens Commission on Benghazi revealed that the incident would have been avoided had the U.S. blocked $500 million worth of arms from the United Arab Emirates, originally intended for Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi, from being delivered to al-Qaida militants attempting to overthrow Gadhafi.

Gen. Vallely, chairman of Stand Up America and a member of the Citizens Commission on Benghazi, told J.D. Hayworth and John Bachman on "America's Forum" on Newsmax TV that it is incomprehensible "why Congress hasn't been able to get to [the bottom of] this," and there is only one recourse.

"Now we're trying to get John Boehner either to resign or to form a select committee to subpoena all of these people," Vallely said. "We've got to get to the bottom of this from the congressional stand point."

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Vallely said he could only speculate as to the potential reason why Boehner has been reticent to commission an investigative committee.

"We think in some way he knew about the arms deal and he's complicit in some of the knowledge that the administration does not want to get out and we think he knows that and he would be complicit in that," Vallely said. "Now, that's the only reason we can think of.

"[Rep.] Frank Wolf from Virginia has been our lead man over there. We have over 190 signatures in Congress for this select committee but Boehner won't do it."

In responding to similar criticism from Sen. Lindsey Graham in January, Boehner spokesman Michael Steel told Politico:

"As he has often said, the Speaker has faith in the chairmen and members of the committees of jurisdiction."

According to Vallely, in addition to an investigating deception of a possible "arms deal gone bad," he would also like Congress to look into why there was no rescue operation following the attack.

"The best we can track, they don't call it a stand down order, but General Carter Ham, says there was no stand down order," Vallely said. "But on the other hand, there was never any order to go forth and even attempt a rescue operation whether we did have assets in the Mediterranean, and we had air assets. At least we should have attempted that.

"Secretary [Leon] Panetta and even Joint Chief of Staff [Martin] Dempsey said we didn't have any assets in the area. Well, that was a lie. I mean, we're fighting over the Middle East now for all of these years and we don't have any assets in the Middle East that can be deployed as far as air or sea or even special operations? So, we know they're lying and covering up."

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Inaction by Congress on Benghazi falls at the feet of House Speaker John Boehner, who should be pressured to resign if he does not order further investigation into the embassy attack, retired Gen. Paul E. Vallely says.
john boehner, paul vallely
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2014-04-24
Thursday, 24 April 2014 06:04 PM
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