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Philippine Muslims Say Locals Joining Fight Against Malaysia

Philippine Muslims who invaded Malaysia’s eastern state of Sabah last month suffered no casualties from an aerial and ground assault and are receiving help from local Filipinos, the clan leader’s wife said today.

Malaysian forces continued searching for followers of Jamalul Kiram, who asserts he’s the Sulu sultan, after launching the attack yesterday to end a four-week incursion that has killed more than 30 people. Kiram’s 214 supporters in Sabah survived the assault and are receiving support from Filipinos who live in the state, according to his wife, Fatima Kiram.

“Filipino civilians in Sabah have been helping the group of Agbimuddin Kiram in the battle,” Fatima Kiram said by phone, referring to Jamalul’s brother, who is leading the sultan’s group on the ground. “Otherwise his group can’t fight a battalion of Malaysian forces.”

The battle to reclaim territory on Borneo Island that the sultanate lost more than a century ago erupted weeks before elections in both countries. It also comes as Philippine President Benigno Aquino aims to conclude a peace deal with a Muslim separatist group that Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak helped to broker.

Jamalul Kiram, who has a home in Manila and is receiving dialysis treatment for kidney failure, called today for direct talks with Aquino to end the incursion. His brother Agbimuddin Kiram is “ready to die,” Jamalul Kiram told DzMM radio today from Manila. “I won’t ask him to come home.”

‘Wasted Opportunity’
Aquino, in a visit to nearby Mindanao island today, said the incident was starting to hurt relations with Malaysia. The Kirams had “dragged” the nation into the dispute, he said.

“Our relationship was getting better and better and then this came along,” Aquino said, referring to Malaysia. “It could be a wasted opportunity.”

Najib said yesterday’s attacks came after negotiations with the Kirams failed. Three F-18 and five Hawk fighter aircraft were used in the attack, state-run Bernama reported.

About 800,000 Filipinos live in Sabah, Malaysia’s second- biggest state by land area that has about 3.1 million people, according to Malaysia government statistics. In Tawau district, where the fighting is centered, about half of the population is considered “non-Malaysian citizens,” the data show.

Kiram’s group is starting to blend in with local Sabahans, Malaysia’s TV3 news channel reported, citing police. Security forces detained four people with Malaysian passports in Semporna today suspected of helping Kiram’s group, it said.

Search Expanded
Malaysian police officers and soldiers expanded their search to other parts of Sabah’s eastern coastline, police inspector-general Ismail Omar said in a televised briefing today. Security forces shot dead one insurgent in an exchange of fire, he said, adding that no Malaysian police or soldiers were killed in yesterday’s operation.

Eight Malaysian police officers and 24 Kiram loyalists have been killed in shootouts since March 1. Malaysia Foreign Minister Anifah Aman said after meeting Philippine counterpart Albert del Rosario that his government considers Kiram’s group “terrorists.” Del Rosario disagreed with the label, while acknowledging that “acts of terrorism” may have taken place.

The two countries will form a naval blockade to prevent more Filipinos heading to Sabah to reinforce the insurgents, the Philippine Department of Foreign Affairs said in an e-mailed statement. An exit channel should be created for women and children caught in the fighting, it said.

Peace Quest
“We’ll continue to explore avenues that will possibly lead to a peaceful resolution despite what has happened,” Abigail Valte, a spokeswoman for Aquino, told reporters in Manila today.

Developments in Sabah aren’t significant enough to affect the supply-demand balance in the palm oil industry, Plantation Industries and Commodities Minister Bernard Dompok said at a conference in Kuala Lumpur yesterday. Indonesia evacuated more than 600 workers from palm-oil plantations in Sabah, the Jakarta Post reported today.

Malaysia’s benchmark stock index, the FTSE Bursa Malaysia KLCI (FBMKLCI) Index, rose 0.4 percent as of 2:30 p.m., poised for its highest close since Jan. 18.

The Philippines will hold elections for its 285-member House of Representatives and half of its 24 Senate seats on May 13. Najib must dissolve parliament by April 28 and hold elections within 60 days as his ruling coalition seeks to maintain a 55-year grip on power.

The Sulu Sultanate, which dates back to the 14th century, says it leased Sabah to the British North Borneo Company in 1878, an agreement that Malaysia views as a secession of the region. Sabah fell under British control after World War II and joined Malaysia in 1963, shortly after the sultanate ceded sovereignty to the Philippines.

Peace Deal
The incident comes several months after Najib’s government helped Aquino reach a peace deal with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, a Muslim separatist group in the southern Philippines. The Moro National Liberation Front, a splinter rebel group, called the accord -- which will expand the country’s autonomous Muslim region -- a conspiracy between Aquino and Najib for Malaysia to retain sovereignty of Sabah.

“Any agreement will be problematic and will be questioned” because Sabah wasn’t included in the self-governing region, said Rommel Banlaoi, executive director of the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research.

Aquino risks putting the country in “total chaos” if he orders the arrest of Jamalul Kiram, said Nur Misuari, chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front.

“It’s unbecoming for a head of state to be siding with the enemy of his people,” Misuari said yesterday. “What kind of leader are you if you abandon your own people for the sake of his friendship with colonial troublemaker Malaysia?”

Technology Shapes Kenyan Elections

The Internet and social media in Kenya, which played a central role in this year's elections by allowing Kenyans to question candidates, took on a new function Tuesday—spreading messages of peace to avert new bloodshed.

After millions of Kenyans cast their ballots Monday, a platform that had been designed to help them locate polling stations began circulating messages against the violence that marred election results five years ago. "Thank you for keeping the peace," the message read.

"Last elections we saw a lot of problems come up, so now we are doing our part to keep the peace and share ...

Turkish Businesses Look for Improved Ties With Libya

Turkish businesses have been lobbying for almost a year to receive compensation for work they had to abandon during the uprising that ousted former Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi. Now it seems their efforts are going to be rewarded as Libya and Turkey move to improve political and economic ties, reflecting Turkey’s increasing clout in the region. Turkish businessmen have been prowling the halls of Libyan ministries and patrolling the marble-floored corridors of Tripoli’s five-star hotels for months to find people who can help get them paid what they are owed for contracts abandoned during the revolution.

Until recently their efforts had not met with much success. The new government has been struggling to solve bigger immediate challenges than reimbursing Turks. But on a recent visit to Turkey, Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zidan pledged to slash through the red tape.

As Libya seeks to rebuild, Turkish companies will play a big role - if for no other reason than cost. Turkish firms can do the work for less than their European rivals, said Libyan lawmaker Abdurahman Al-Shater.

“The advantage of the Turks is not political influence, it is price-wise, the Turkish contractors in the price and the quality much cheaper than if you compare it with UK companies or France or Italy or Greece,” said Al-Shater.

More than 3,000 Turkish nationals evacuated Libya in February 2011, and the debt owed to about 100 Turkish firms is estimated at $20 million. The Ankara government has mounted a concerted campaign to get its businessmen, mostly in the construction sector, to be paid ahead of those from other countries. And it seems to have worked.

About half the outstanding contract payments owed to Turkish firms will be forthcoming in weeks, with some compensation for breach of contract [restitution] paid, as well. But to get the money, Turkish firms will have to begin work again on the abandoned projects.

Libyan-Turkish trade last year stood at around $2.5 billion and Turkish firms are eager to see that grow. At last year’s Libya-Build exhibition, more than 400 of the 800 foreign companies participating were Turkish. The debt settlement is a reflection of Turkey’s growing political clout in the region. Since the Arab Spring uprisings, Turkey has been pursuing an ambitious foreign policy and Turkey’s construction sector is positioning itself as a key player in rebuilding the region’s post-conflict economies.

Richard Griffiths, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Libya, does not agree entirely with lawmaker Shater’s view that there are no politics involved.

“Certainly with the Turks it is a mixture of the two. They have found what I believe is the perfect the combination of political support, which is not too overbearing, and also the effort which I, of course, would like to see from the US companies that they are very much here, engaged and present," said Griffiths. "When there is a delegation or trade show or event you will always find the largest group are the Turks and frankly they are the ones who are reaping the rewards for it.”

For many Libyans there is a natural affinity with Turkey. Islamist modernizers see Turkey as a model: a modern, commercially successful democratic Muslim state.

And for Libyans who fear the growing interest of Gulf countries with a tendency to involve themselves in Libya’s internal politics, Turkey is a useful counter-weight.

President Margriet, Sorry, Margarief

The body of Libya’s bloodthirsty tyrant, Muamar Gaddafi, naked on the concrete floor of a meat locker in Sirte on 20 October 2011, was the shocking start of the Democratic Republic of Libya.

“The tyrant is dead. Long live the new President, “spoke Dr. Ahmed Tabuli, the Libyan ambassador to The Hague during his ceremonial reception on the occasion of the celebration of two years revolution. But who in the world knows the new president, a certain Dr. Margarief Muhammad, a professor of electrical engineering from Atlanta, Georgia U.S.?

His Excellency Tabuli’s face exuded fear about what once was and what still is to come. Once upon a time even this ambassador was handpicked and appointed to the post in The Hague by this bloody tyrant Gaddafi himself.

The new leaders of the Democratic Republic of Libya walked around in dark western business suits rather that Gaddafi’s flamboyant colorful flowing desert robes which became his trademark. Nowhere was even a glimpse of a Bedouin tent either.

In 1981, actor Anthony Quinn shaped the formidable image of Omar Mukhtar with his performance in “The Lion of the Desert” which became the role model for guerrilla leaders of Libya. The brave struggle against Mussolini’s murderous violence and Rodolfo Graziani ruthless troops transformed the terrible Omar Mukhtar into the spiritual father of Colonel Muamar Gaddafi.

Gaddafi became the hero and liberator of his Bedouin people and finally, in his delusional megalomania, the hero of all oppressed on earth. Revolutionary Irish in Belfast, Lockerbie bomb explosions and attacks on wicked nightclubs became the plight of Gaddafi’s holy war. He did not hesitate to engage the enemy, the great Satan, staring him straight in the face, even if it were the U.S.A…

Following a terrorist attack on a nightclub in Berlin on April 15, 1986, President Ronald Reagan ordered the bombing of “terrorist sites” in Jamahiriya, ” a Gaddafi residence.

About 60 people were killed, including an adopted daughter of Gaddafi. Muamar rose to the occasion as an immortal martyr who proudly stood his ground, and was portrayed among the ruins with the flesh torn body of his daughter in his arms.

But the stalwart super hero of the people, the great Solomon of peace, prosperity and wisdom, turned into a bloodthirsty tyrant, greedily scraping every penny he could steal from government coffers.

His sons ruled the enslaved even harsher, as an implacable Rehoboam, with a knout and a whip and funneled hundreds of billions to offshore accounts through ingenious corporate structures in Amsterdam, trust companies and banks on Curacao and in Austria.

Pecunia non olet always was and still remained the Vespasian device of the trading nation of The Netherlands. Oil invest and Green Stream BV at Strawinskylaan Amsterdam, facilitated the Gaddafi clan with the construction and exploitation of world’s longest subsea pipeline, while Haskoning BV built ports. Both companies did business for billions of dollars.

President Muhammad Margarief has to step into Gaddafi’s giant shoes or rather desert slippers. . Damen Ship yards got a little job for eight 48–foot coastguard boats to patrol the 2,000-mile long Mediterranean coastline. The crews, eight men per boat, will also be trained in the Netherlands . It can hardly be called a mega order.

The invoice for the sixty revolution casualties, who languished for months in Dutch hospitals, is still not completely paid. Less than two third has been received of the six million Euro’s outstanding, leaving money strapped hospitals with ugly and unwelcome losses.

Gaddafi’s nasty hang over will be on President Muhammad Margarief coat tails for a long time to come.

Margarief may want to try the flowing robes of a galebya instead…

Venezuela President Hugo Chavez dies after battle with cancer

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the fiery populist who declared a socialist revolution in his country, crusaded against U.S. influence and championed a leftist revival across Latin America, died Tuesday at age 58 after a nearly two-year bout with cancer.

The socialist leader's 14-year rule of the South American country, during which he severed ties with Israel, supported the Palestinian cause and backed Iran's right to a nuclear energy program, has come to an end.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro, surrounded by other government officials, announced the death in a national television broadcast. He said Chavez died at in Caracas at 4:25 P.M. local time.

Chavez's corpse will lie in state through Friday when a public funeral will be held with invited guests from across Latin America, Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said late on Tuesday.

He declared seven days of mourning for the leader who died of cancer and said Chavez's body would be transferred from hospital to a military academy on Wednesday.

Chavez was a fighter. The former paratroop commander and fiery populist waged continual battle for his socialist ideals and outsmarted his rivals time and again, defeating a coup attempt, winning re-election three times and using his country's vast oil wealth to his political advantage.

A self-described "subversive," Chavez fashioned himself after the 19th Century independence leader Simon Bolivar and renamed his country the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

He called himself a "humble soldier" in a battle for socialism and against U.S. hegemony. He thrived on confrontation with Washington and his political opponents at home, and used those conflicts to rally his followers.

Almost the only adversary it seemed he couldn't beat was cancer.

During more than 14 years in office, his leftist politics and grandiose style polarized Venezuelans. The barrel-chested leader electrified crowds with his booming voice, and won admiration among the poor with government social programs and a folksy, nationalistic style.

His opponents seethed at the larger-than-life character who demonized them on television and ordered the expropriation of farms and businesses. Many in the middle class cringed at his bombast and complained about rising crime, soaring inflation and government economic controls.

Before his struggle with cancer, he appeared on television almost daily, frequently speaking for hours and breaking into song or philosophical discourse. He often wore the bright red of his United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or the fatigues and red beret of his army days. He had donned the same uniform in 1992 while leading an ill-fated coup attempt that first landed him in jail and then launched his political career.

The rest of the world watched as the country with the world's biggest proven oil reserves took a turn to the left under its unconventional leader, who considered himself above all else a revolutionary.

"I'm still a subversive," the president told The Associated Press in a 2007 interview, recalling his days as a rebel soldier. "I think the entire world has to be subverted."

Chavez was a master communicator and savvy political strategist, and managed to turn his struggle against cancer into a rallying cry, until the illness finally defeated him.

Strained ties with Jewish community

The Jewish community of Venezuela has had strained relationships with the government following a flood of attacks against Jewish houses of worship in 2009. Venezuelan police officers were among those implicated in the attacks.

Venezuela severed ties with Israel following Israel's three-week Gaza operation, Cast Lead, launched in December 2008, expelling the Israeli ambassador and staff.

In May 2010, following Israeli navy clashes with a flotilla trying to evade the country's blockade that resulted in the deaths of nine Turkish activists, Chavez called Israel a “genocidal state” in a national broadcast and said the Mossad was trying to kill him.

“Israel is financing the Venezuelan opposition. There are even groups of Israeli terrorists, of the Mossad, who are after me trying to kill me,” he said.

In the same speech, Chavez sent “greetings and respect” to the local Jewish community.

“They know they have our affection and respect," he said, adding, "I doubt very much that a Venezuelan Jew would support such an atrocity.”

Championing the poor

From the start, Chavez billed himself as the heir of Simon Bolivar, who led much of South America to independence. He often spoke beneath a portrait of Bolivar and presented replicas of the liberator's sword to allies. He built a soaring mausoleum in Caracas to house the remains of "El Libertador."

Chavez also was inspired by his mentor Fidel Castro and took on the Cuban leader's role as Washington's chief antagonist in the Western Hemisphere after the ailing Castro turned over the presidency to his brother Raul in 2006. Like Castro, Chavez vilified U.S.-style capitalism while forming alliances throughout Latin America and with distant powers such as Russia, China and Iran.

Supporters eagerly raised Chavez to the pantheon of revolutionary legends ranging from Castro to Argentine-born rebel Ernesto "Che" Guevara. Chavez nurtured that cult of personality, and even as he stayed out of sight for long stretches fighting cancer, his out-sized image appeared on buildings and billboard throughout Venezuela. The airwaves boomed with his baritone mantra: "I am a nation." Supporters carried posters and wore masks of his eyes, chanting, "I am Chavez."

In the battles Chavez waged at home and abroad, he captivated his base by championing his country's poor.

"This is the path: the hard, long path, filled with doubts, filled with errors, filled with bitterness, but this is the path," Chavez told his backers in 2011. "The path is this: socialism."

He invested Venezuela's oil wealth into social programs including state-run food markets, cash benefits for poor families, free health clinics and education programs. Chavez also organized poor neighborhoods into community councils that aided his party's political machine.

Official statistics showed poverty rates declined from 50 percent at the beginning of Chavez's first term in 1999 to 32 percent in the second half of 2011.

Chavez also won support through sheer charisma and a flair for drama.

He ordered Bolivar's sword removed from the Central Bank to unsheathe at key moments, and once raised it before militia troops urging them to be ready to "give your lives, if you have to, for the Bolivarian Revolution!"

On television, he would lambast his opponents as "oligarchs," scold his aides, tell jokes, reminisce about his childhood, lecture Venezuelans on socialism and make sudden announcements, such as expelling the U.S. ambassador or ordering tanks to Venezuela's border with Colombia. Sometimes he would burst into baritone renditions of folk songs.

Chavez carried his in-your-face style to the world stage as well. In a 2006 speech to the UN General Assembly, he called U.S. President George W. Bush the devil, saying the podium reeked of sulfur after the U.S. president's address.

At a summit in 2007, he repeatedly called Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar a fascist, prompting Spain's King Juan Carlos to snap at Chavez, "Why don't you shut up?"

Critics saw Chavez as a typical Latin American caudillo, a strongman who ruled through force of personality and showed disdain for democratic rules. Chavez concentrated power in his hands as his allies dominated the congress and justices seen as doing his bidding controlled the Supreme Court.

Chavez insisted Venezuela remained a vibrant democracy and denied trying to restrict free speech. But some opponents faced criminal charges and were driven into exile. Chavez's government forced one opposition-aligned television channel, RCTV, off the air by refusing to renew its license.

While Chavez trumpeted plans for communes and an egalitarian society, his rhetoric regularly conflicted with reality. Despite government seizures of companies and farmland, the balance between Venezuela's public and private sectors changed little during his presidency. And even as the poor saw their incomes rise, those gains were blunted while the country's currency weakened amid the economic controls he imposed.

Nonetheless, Chavez maintained a core of supporters who stayed loyal to their "comandante" until the end.

"Chavez masterfully exploits the disenchantment of people who feel excluded ... and he feeds on controversy whenever he can," Cristina Marcano and Alberto Barrera Tyszka wrote in their book "Hugo Chavez: The Definitive Biography of Venezuela's Controversial President."

The son of schoolteachers

Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias was born on July 28, 1954, in the rural town of Sabaneta in Venezuela's western plains. He was the son of a schoolteacher father and was the second of six brothers. His mother was also a schoolteacher who met her husband at age 16.

Hugo and his older brother Adan grew up with their grandmother, Rosa Ines, in a home with a dirt floor, mud walls and a roof made of palm fronds.

Chavez was a fine baseball player and hoped he might one day pitch in the U.S. major leagues. When he joined the military at age 17, he aimed to keep honing his baseball skills in the capital.

But between his army duties and drills, the young soldier immersed himself in the history of Bolivar and other Venezuelan heroes who had overthrown Spanish rule, and his political ideas began to take shape.

Chavez burst into public view in 1992 as a paratroop commander leading a military rebellion that brought tanks to the presidential palace. The coup collapsed and the plotters were imprisoned.

When Chavez was allowed to speak on television, he said his movement had only failed "for now." Chavez's short speech, and especially those two defiant words, seared him into the memory of Venezuelans and became a springboard for his career.

Venezuelan President Rafael Caldera, long an advocate of political reconciliation, dropped charges against Chavez and other coup plotters in 1994 and released them from prison.

Chavez then organized a new political party and ran for president in 1998, pledging to clean up Venezuela's entrenched corruption and shatter its traditional two-party system. At age 44, he became the country's youngest president in four decades of democracy with 56 percent of the vote.

After he took office on February 2, 1999, Chavez called for a new constitution, and an assembly filled with his allies drafted the document. Among various changes, it lengthened presidential terms from five years to six and changed the country's name to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

Chavez was re-elected in 2000 in an election called under the new constitution. His increasingly confrontational style and close ties to Cuba, however, disenchanted many of the middle-class supporters who had voted for him, and the next several years saw bold attempts by opponents to dislodge him from power.

In 2002, he survived a short-lived coup, which began after large anti-Chavez street protests ended in shootings and bloodshed. Dissident military officers alarmed by Chavez's growing ties to Cuba detained the president and announced he had resigned. But within two days, he returned to power with the help of military loyalists amid massive protests by his supporters.

Chavez emerged a stronger president. He defeated an opposition-led strike that paralyzed the country's oil industry and fired thousands of state oil company employees.

The coup also turned Chavez more decidedly against the U.S. government, which had swiftly recognized the provisional leader who briefly replaced him. He created political and trade alliances that excluded the U.S., and he cozied up to Iran and Syria in large part, it seemed, due to their shared antagonism toward the U.S. government.

Despite the souring relationship, Chavez kept selling the bulk of Venezuela's oil to the United States.

By 2005, Chavez was espousing a new, vaguely defined "21st-century socialism." Yet the agenda didn't involve a sudden overhaul to the country's economic order, and some businesspeople continued to prosper. Those with lucrative ties to the government came to be known as the "Bolivarian bourgeoisie."

Against U.S. domination

After easily winning re-election in 2006, Chavez began calling for a "multi-polar world" free of U.S. domination, part of an expanded international agenda. He boosted oil shipments to China, set up joint factories with Iran to produce tractors and cars, and sealed arms deals with Russia for assault rifles, helicopters and fighter jets. He focused on building alliances throughout Latin America and injected new energy into the region's left. Allies were elected in Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina and other countries.

Chavez also cemented relationships with island countries in the Caribbean by selling them oil on preferential terms while severing ties with Israel, supporting the Palestinian cause and backing Iran's right to a nuclear energy program.

All the while, Chavez emphasized that it was necessary to prepare for any potential conflict with the "empire," his term for the United States.

He told the AP in 2007 that he loved the movie "Gladiator."

"It's confronting the empire, and confronting evil. ... And you end up relating to that gladiator," Chavez said as he drove across Venezuela's southern plains.

He said he felt a deep connection to those plains where he grew up, and that when died he hoped to be buried in the savanna.

"A man from the plains, from these great open spaces ... tends to be a nomad, tends not to see barriers. You don't see barriers from childhood on. What you see is the horizon," Chavez said.

Chavez wasn't shy about flaunting his government's achievements, such as free health clinics staffed by Cuban doctors, new public housing and laptops for needy children.

But even Chavez acknowledged in 2011 that one of his government's greatest weaknesses was a "lack of efficiency." He called it "a big error that many times has put in danger the government's policies."

Running a revolution ultimately left little time for a personal life. His second marriage, to journalist Marisabel Rodriguez, deteriorated in the early years of his presidency, and they divorced in 2004. In addition to their one daughter, Rosines, Chavez had three children from his first marriage, which ended before he ran for office. His daughters Maria and Rosa often appeared at his side at official events and during his trips.

Chavez acknowledged after he was diagnosed with cancer in June 2011 that he had recklessly neglected his health. He had taken to staying up late and drinking as many as 40 cups of coffee a day. He regularly summoned his Cabinet ministers to the presidential palace late at night.

Even as he appeared with head shaved while undergoing chemotherapy, he never revealed the exact location of tumors that were removed from his pelvic region, or the exact type of cancer.

Chavez exerted himself for one final election campaign in 2012 after saying tests showed he was cancer-free, and defeated younger challenger Henrique Capriles. With another six-year term in hand, he promised to keep pressing for revolutionary changes.

But two months later, he went to Cuba for a fourth cancer-related surgery, blowing a kiss to his country as he boarded the plane.

After a 10-week absence, the government announced that Chavez had returned to Venezuela and was being treated at a military hospital in Caracas. He was never seen again in public.

In his final years, Chavez frequently said Venezuela was well on its way toward socialism, and at least in his mind, there was no turning back.

His political movement, however, was mostly a one-man phenomenon. Only three days before his final surgery, Chavez named Vice President Nicolas Maduro as his chosen successor.

Now, it will be up to Venezuelans to determine whether the Chavismo movement can survive, and how it will evolve, without the leader who inspired it.

Panetta blames lack of intelligence for Benghazi attack

Arguing that the Pentagon was prepared for a wide range of contingencies, the US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta today blamed the lack of "specific intelligence" for the inability to quickly respond to the terrorist attack at US Consulate in Libya last year.

The September 11 terrorist attack on the Consulate in Libyan capital of Benghazi killed US Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

"On that tragic day, as always, the Department of Defence was prepared for a wide range of contingencies? Unfortunately, there was no specific intelligence or indications of an imminent attack on US facilities in Benghazi.

"Frankly without an adequate warning, there was not enough time given the speed of the attack for armed military assets to respond," Panetta told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
In his probably last testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee as the Defence Secretary, Panetta argued that that the US was not dealing with a prolonged or continuous assault, which could have been brought to an end by a US military response.

"Time, distance, the lack of an adequate warning, events that moved very quickly on the ground prevented a more immediate response," he said while responding to a volley of questions from agitated members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"Even if we were able to get the F-16s or the AC-130s over the target in time, the mission still depends on accurate information about what targets they're supposed to hit. And we had no forward air controllers there. We had no communications with US personnel on the ground. And as a matter of fact, we had no idea where the Ambassador was at that point to be able to kind of conduct any kind of attacks on the ground," he argued.

General Martin Dempsey, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff too appeared before the Congressional Committee to testify on the tragic Benghazi attack.

Top Republican Senator John McCain, entered into a heated debate with Dempsey. "I have to admit it's one of the more bizarre statements that I have ever seen in my years in this committee. When you're talking about the Benghazi issue, you say, 'We positioned our forces in a way that was informed by and consistent with available threat estimates.'

"Then you go on to say, 'Our military was appropriately responsive,' even though seven hours passed and two Americans died at the end of that. Then you go on and say, 'We did what our posture and capabilities allowed'," McCain said quoting from the earlier statement of Dempsey.