In President Obama’s ‘Arab Spring’ speech he is quoted as saying:

“For all the challenges that lie ahead, we see many reasons to be hopeful. In Egypt, we see it in the efforts of young people who led protests. In Syria, we see it in the courage of those who brave bullets while chanting, ‘peaceful,’ ‘peaceful.’ In Benghazi, a city threatened with destruction, we see it in the courthouse square where people gather to celebrate the freedoms that they had never known. Across the region, those rights that we take for granted are being claimed with joy by those who are prying lose the grip of an iron fist.”

That was May 19, 2011. What he failed to mention in this quote was the people “prying lose the grip of an iron fist”, we now find out, were of dubious moral turpitude. The New york Times reports:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants, according to United States officials and foreign diplomats.

No evidence has emerged linking the weapons provided by the Qataris during the uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to the attack that killed four Americans at the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in September.

 

Here’s the best part:

American officials say that the United Arab Emirates first approached the Obama administration during the early months of the Libyan uprising, asking for permission to ship American-built weapons that the United States had supplied for the emirates’ use. The administration rejected that request, but instead urged the emirates to ship weapons to Libya that could not be traced to the United States.

“The U.A.E. was asking for clearance to send U.S. weapons,” said one former official. “We told them it’s O.K. to ship other weapons.”

Libyans murdered his ambassador. But there is no evidence the weapons came from the United States. According to local reports the F.B.I. spent three hours at the consulate almost three weeks after the murders.

As for the assertion “In Syria, we see it in the courage of those who brave bullets while chanting, ‘peaceful,’ ‘peaceful.’ ”

His Syrian opposition is murdering prisoners. (Warning extremely graphic.)

What’s a tin-horn dictator to do? Why, dust off the chemical weapons, of course.

Meanwhile, the Egyptians ran Mursi out of the palace.

The Turks, the ones that wouldn’t allow the 4th Infantry into Iraq, acquired patriot missile batteries.

Iran, that bastion of Liberty, Democracy, and progress nearly melted down a reactor:

According to our intelligence sources, Russian scientists and engineers were rushed from Moscow to Bushehr when Russian leaders including Vladimir Putin were warned that the danger of an explosion at Bushehr was high. Neither Moscow nor Tehran reported what was happening. Now they are racing against the clock to get the reactor back on stream.

The cause:

“Indicators showed that some small external parts were… in the [Bushehr] reactor vessel….” They were identified as “bolts beneath the fuel cells.”

More like spare change.

Actual quote from “The Audacity of Hope” [pg. 261]: Of course, not all my conversations in immigrant communities follow this easy pattern. In the wake of 9/11, my meetings with Arab and Pakistani Americans, for example, have a more urgent quality, for the stories of detentions and FBI questioning and hard stares from neighbors have shaken their sense of security and belonging. They have been reminded that the history of immigration in this country has a dark underbelly; they need specific assurances that their citizenship really means something, that America has learned the right lessons from the Japanese internments during World War II, and that I will stand with them should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.

I swear, this guy is the Anti-Midas.