Podcasts about benghazi committee

This topic of this special episode of the Understanding Congress podcast is a recent book by a former Hill staffer. It is titled Fire Alarm: The Investigation of the U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi (Lexington Books, 2023)The author is Bradley F. Podliska is an Assistant Professor of Military and Security Studies at the U.S. Air Force Air Command and Staff College in Montgomery, Alabama. Brad is a retired U.S. Air Force Reserve intelligence officer with the rank of lieutenant colonel. He was deployed to Iraq in 2008 and also worked as an intelligence analyst for the Department of Defense.Dr. Podliska is a former investigator for the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi. He is the author of two books, and that latter experience working on the Hill formed the basis for his book, Fire Alarm: The Investigation of the U.S. House Select Committee on Benghazi.Kevin Kosar:Welcome to Understanding Congress, a podcast about the first branch of government. Congress is a notoriously complex institution, and few Americans think well of it. But Congress is essential to our republic. It is a place where our pluralistic society is supposed to work out its differences and come to agreement about what our laws should be.And that is why we are here: to discuss our national legislature and to think about ways to upgrade it so it can better serve our nation. I am your host, Kevin Kosar, and I'm a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington DC.Professor Podliska, welcome to the podcast.Bradley Podliska:Thank you, Kevin, for having me. I appreciate being here.Kevin Kosar:You were an investigator for the House of Representatives. I introduced you as a professor, but you had on-the-ground experience inside Congress as an investigator for the House of Representatives. For audience members who have never heard of that position, what do House investigators do? And how did you get to that position?Bradley Podliska:Investigators are another term for subject matter experts, usually based on their executive branch experience. The role of an investigator is to interview witnesses, request documents, analyze those documents and then provide new information back to the members for the committee so they can conduct their investigation. Now with that said, the titles when it comes to the Benghazi Committee were completely and totally arbitrary. Attorneys had “counsel” in their title and if you were a non-attorney, you either had the title of investigator, professional staff member, or advisor, but we all did the same work. So we were all analyzing documents, we were all interviewing witnesses, and then we were reporting the results to the committee members.In my particular case, I spent 17 years in the intelligence community and the Defense Department, and I knew someone that had known the Republican staff director of the Benghazi committee for over two decades. So I submitted a resume and I was hired soon thereafter, and this is a point I actually make in my book Fire Alarm, which is that you're basically hired on perceived party loyalty. I refer to this as a non-compensatory dimension. In other words, merit is a secondary condition. You might be the best person for a job, but if you are not perceived as a partisan, you are not going to be hired in the first place. This is done is through those personal connections that I talked about. I am not aware of any staff member that was hired on the Benghazi committee that either did not have prior Capitol Hill experience or did not know somebody on the committee itself.Kevin Kosar:And that...

Twenty years ago today, less than a month after 9/11, then-President George W. Bush addressed the nation to announce the US-led invasion of Afghanistan."Good afternoon. On my orders, the United States military has begun strikes against al-Qaeda terrorist training camps and military installations of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan," Bush said.Related: 'Why don't you have mercy?': Afghanistan's Hazara people increasingly face eviction, violence under Taliban ruleFast forward two decades, and this year in August, Afghanistan fell to the Taliban again, followed by an address to the nation by President Joe Biden announcing the end of the war."Our mission in Afghanistan has taking many missteps, made many missteps, over the past two decades," said Biden. "I'm now the fourth American president to preside over war in Afghanistan. Two Democrats and two Republicans. I will not pass this responsibility onto a fifth president."Related: The Afghan government and the US lost popular support over corruption in Afghanistan, investigator general saysNow, Illinois Democratic Senator Tammy Duckworth, herself a veteran, has called for a commission to study the past 20 years of US involvement in Afghanistan. She joined The World's host Marco Werman from Washington to explain what it entails.Marco Werman: You've called your proposal, senator, the Afghanistan War Study Commission. What do you hope it will achieve?Sen. Tammy Duckworth: Well, I hope that it will achieve a comprehensive look at the various errors that have been made by all the different folks involved and gives us the lessons learned so that we don't enter into another quagmire like the one we've been in for 20 years in Afghanistan. We know that the United States will be involved in future conflicts. We need to make sure that we don't get ourselves into a situation where we spend 20 years at war in a country, only to come away and have the people who were in charge when we got there put back in charge when we leave.There have already been a series of lessons learned, reports on the Afghanistan war. How will your committee and investigation be different?Well, the key thing is that I want it to be completely nonpartisan, not bipartisan, but nonpartisan. I've served on bipartisan commissions before. I served on the Benghazi Commission, for example. That was bipartisan, but it was highly political. I want this to be a real, cold-hard facts look. I don't want anybody on a commission that was in any position of decision making or authority during those 20 years. So, not a past secretary of defense who was in charge at the time, not a previous president, not a member of Congress. This needs to be someone who can lead this commission, much like the 9/11 Commission, and bring us the lessons learned, whether it is the legislative branch failing to reauthorize a new authorization for use of military force or presidents choosing to do a troop surge or the corruption, trying to do nation building with the military as opposed to nation building with the State Department. All of the things that led us to where we are today. What we really need to do is make sure that we do this in a systematic way. I think the 9/11 Commission is a great example of the kind of work that can be done. And it must produce actionable recommendations. Like what? What would you see as an actionable recommendation?Well, I think, if you look at contracting, a significant portion of what happened is corruption within the Afghanistan government, within their national security forces. We know about the ghost soldiers in that we paid for the salaries of many, many thousands of so-called Afghan national security forces who never existed, and in fact, were on the books only, and their commanders collected that money. That corruption piece is really important. We certainly need to do an actionable recommendation for Congress [that] would be any type of authorization for use of military force must sunset after three years or must sunset after five years. You must have a new look at a new debate, instead of keeping an old one that lasts 20 years. So, there are things that can be done. You were on the committee that investigated the disaster at the US embassy in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012. That turned out to be a deeply politicized committee. What did you learn from that?Not to make it bipartisan. Make it nonpartisan. Don't let the politicians get involved. And if you watch the Benghazi Commission and watch my questioning, you'll see that I tried really hard to keep my questions and my focus solely on, what are the lessons learned that we never have an ambassador get killed in that way, so that we never have an embassy that's not listening to the intelligence community or is overriding what military leaders are saying, "hey, we should be doing this." It was my experience on the Benghazi Committee that led me to say, "Hey, what this needs is complete independence." I don't want it to be bipartisan, I want it to be nonpartisan, and I don't want anybody that had any skin in the game in terms of they were part of the decision-making process to be part of this of this analysis. It needs to be a cold, hard, independent look, with real actionable recommendations coming out of it. That's how we can best serve the American people with this commission. Senator, when do you think the committee would present its findings? And are you worried that if it takes a few years, a report on what went wrong from 2001 to 2021 might not be must-read material anymore?Well, I think it will be must-read materials. I mean, I'm still looking at lessons learned from the Civil War. You know, when I was an ROTC cadet, they took us to Gettysburg and we reenacted all of the battles and talked about the lessons learned from Gettysburg. In a 21st century army, we were learning about Gettysburg. I think lessons learned here will be relevant for many, many more decades into our nation's future. But what I do want to come out of it is, in addition to the long-term results, I think there will be many-short term findings that we can find out right away. For example, one of the things that we're hearing is that, I've known this, but it's the State Department that calls for the evacuation of civilians on the ground. what's called the noncombatant evacuation operations. The decision to start that is not the DOD [Department of Defense]. It's actually the State Department. So, there are some things that are more short-term lessons learned that we can get the results of in the next months or the first six months, the first 12 months of this commission. Some things are going to take many years for us to get the results for. But I think we're going to see findings and results coming out all along the way, even as the commission continues to work.Finally, you've been a senator since 2017. Prior to that, we must remember you were deployed to Iraq. That was 2004. And then later that year, your Blackhawk helicopter came under attack from an insurgent rocket, a horrific attack that left you a double amputee. How much did your own experience energize a desire to not leave any stones unturned from the last 20 years of war in Afghanistan?My personal experience is the core of who I am. I should have died on that day in Iraq, and my buddies didn't give up on me. And those same buddies later on returned and did more deployments. And that was really at the heart of why I wanted this commission, because our troops, over the last 20 years, many of them have had three, four, five, six, seven, I've heard of 10, 12 deployments. And every time we asked our troops to go overseas and they stand up and they salute, and they say, "Yes, sir," and they packed their rucksacks and they go. And I feel like we, who are here at home, just haven't lived up to the dedication and the sacrifices that these troops made. And one of the things that we can do is to make sure we don't make the same mistakes ever again if there are lessons can be learned. And so, yeah, my experience as a soldier does drive me now, because I feel that I owe my life to the men who saved me. And that means that now that I am in this position as a United States senator, that I'm not going to shirk that duty, so that, you know, my buddies have sons and daughters who are serving. And maybe someday one of my two girls will serve. And I want to make sure that we do right by them. And one of the things we can do is to have a cold, hard look when we make mistakes, learn those lessons and let's not make them again. This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. 

When Obama said that no matter what America was, it is no longer a Christian nation, we didn’t believe him. But when you see all the pagan images in DC, you  realize we may never have been a Christian nation. The leaders of our country are under a satanic anointing.  Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, and […]

Where there is NO vision the people perish.  Coach presents a Bible Study on Vision today. Faith without works is dead. We are trying to live out pre-written history.  We spend too much time star gazing.  “Things are only going to get worse.”  We are making no attempt to do anything about it. Pass the […]

Independent investigative journalism, broadcasting, trouble-making and muckraking with Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com

Independent investigative journalism, broadcasting, trouble-making and muckraking with Brad Friedman of BradBlog.com

It's been a while, but after THIS week, Getting Hammered sounds like JUST what the doctor ordered (point of order, I am The Doctor). Join Steve Hamilton and his special guest host Lu Esposito tonight for an unorthodox look at this week's news, things that didn't make the news, and anything else we feel like. We'll break down the Benghazi Committee hearing, there's a hurricane headed for TX, beavers jumping out of planes even.So grab a cold one and join us at the bar, it's Friday Night and we're Getting Hammered!

Reality bites the Benghazi Committee, Jeb! Bush and the brother who kept us safe, and Paul Ryan's Work-Life Balance. Note: this podcast was recorded Friday morning and is released with less polishing than usual. Audio glitches are the fault of the producers. :DSupport the show (https://www.paypal.me/proleftpodcast)

On today's episode:Hillary Clinton showed the world that she is ready to be the next President of the United States of America. After nearly 12 hours of testimony from the Republicans on the Benghazi Committee, Clinton stands on solid ground, unscathed and possibly added a few more supporters to her campaign.Singer Adele is back with new music!It's Friday and that means it's time for another episode from Underground Soundz Music on Spreaker! Thank you Blocsonic and FMA!

CIvil Chat with Lee looks at Thursday's Benghazi Committee Hearing with Hilary Clinton. What to expect? How credible is this? The host also looks at the so-called Freedom Caucus on the damage this group brings to Congress and the well being of the United States of America. The "Do Nothing" Congress will even do LESS with this uncompromising group of extremists in Congress. 

Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) on the Benghazi special committee testimony and the outlook for choosing a new House Speaker.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Civil Chat with Lee looks at the upcoming Democratic debate in Sin City Nevada.  What will be the talking points? How will Bernie and Hilary fare? The host looks at the popularity of Ben Carson despite his most recent crazy statements. Six things to watch for in the first Democratic debate and the troubles of Trey Gowdy and the Benghazi Committee.  

Clarence M. Mitchell, IV, known to WBAL listeners as "C4," brings a lifetime of political experiences and relationships to WBAL Radio.

This week, we bombed some folks. Specifically, a Doctors Without Border hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. President Barack Obama finally came out with an apology, but why the hell did this happen in the first place? Meanwhile, you've heard of the Benghazi Committee, you might know about the Planned Parenthood Committee, but what if we had a Congressional committee focused on reducing gun violence in America? Rep. Mike Thompson (D-CA) joins us and explains. Finally, if you've watched any televised sports or televised anything -- you may be aware of the existence of Draft Kings and Fan Duel. Is the sudden ubiquity of big money fantasy sports making you question reality as well? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

A portion of our Young Turks Main Show from September 30, 2015. For more go to http://www.tytmembership.com. Rep Kevin McCarthy is gearing up for a run to become the next Speaker, so he went on Hannity's show to prove his Conservative accolades. Video of McCarthy claiming that the Benghazi Committee was put together to tear down Hillary Clinton's campaign, and he's on board for that kind of leadership. During the Planned Parenthood hearing, Rep Grothman asked what the purpose is of Planned Parenthood since as a guy, he can go anywhere for healthcare. Bernie Sanders spoke out about how Pres Obama took too long to realize that the GOP hates him and will never work with him. John is comforted by Sanders recognizing the atmosphere, since Obama didn't. Jeb Bush spoke with an NFL show on SiriusXM and voiced his support for the Redskins name. Video of his answer, claiming that Native American tribes don't find it offensive, either. Coincidentally, Redskins owner Dan Snyder recently gave $100,000 to the Super PAC that supports Jeb. Ana joins Ben for SCS. Apple app store has rejected an app called Drones Plus, that shows areas where drone strikes have happened. Apple claimed it was excessively crude, unentertaining, or objectionable content. 8 players from Iran's female soccer team are being accused of being men posing as women. Iran is very open to gender reassignment surgery and trans issues. Ben isn't buying that these players are transgender women, but simply men being put on the team as ringers. Discussion about the potential of this becoming an issue in American sports. The Saudi prince accused of raping a woman in his Beverly Hills home has posted the $300K bail and flew out of the country on a private jet. Ana doesn't think it's likely that he'll return to face the rape charges.

Bill Bennett and Marc Thiessen on Jordan now waging war on Islamic State. Dennis Prager with David Pryce Jones on what is driving Islamic State to use such evil tactics. Hugh Hewitt and Jim Talent on the Obama Administration's bungling Middle East agenda. Bill Bennett and Jonah Goldberg on Obama's attempt to please both the Saudis and the Environmental Lobby. Hewitt and Mike Pompeo on the never-ending Benghazi Committee. Prager and Douglas Feith on Obama's latest attempt to cut funds for the military. Newt Gingrich's top-notch speech at the Iowa Freedom Forum regarding the war on Islamic State. Mike Gallagher spoke with Speaker Gingrich about his speech.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Rep. Trey Gowdy comments on the opening of his select committee investigating Benghazi.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.