Movie Review: '13 Hours,' A Great Movie and an Enormous, Enormous Problem for Hillary

At AoSHQ:

13 Hours is, doubtless, the best film of Michael Bay's career. It's also an objectively good movie.

Let me get to the politics first. The film is not blatantly political. Do not doubt, however, that it does not have an overt political meaning. It's overt -- just not in-your-face.

The film is filled with the heroes wondering "When is someone coming to help us?"

There are shots of planes lying dormant while Americans are being shot to pieces.

There is an exchange where one soldier (actually, ex-soldiers working for the CIA called G.S.R.'s) says to the other, "I just saw on the news, they're saying this is because of a protest."

The other says: "I didn't see any protest."

And neither does the filmgoer-- there is no protest. There is simply a coordinated attack which starts out of nowhere. It's obvious what this is from the start; there is no "fog of war," at least not about what started this...

Keep reading.

Plus, Manohla Dargis has the high-brow cultural review at the New York Times, ignoring the politics but confirming that this is a major film, and director Bay's a chest-pounding patriot. See, "The NYT review of '13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi'."

'13 Hours' — New Benghazi Movie Reignites Debate Over Democrats' 'Stand-Down' Order (TRAILER)

The film opens tonight in the O.C., and I guess in late-night showings nationwide. Then general release tomorrow.

It's gonna be great!

At Politico, "New Benghazi movie reignites ‘stand-down’ order debate":

The creators of a new Hollywood blockbuster about the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack are renewing the politically explosive allegation that commandos called to defend the U.S. compound were told to “stand down” — a claim Democrats say has no basis in fact.

With Michael Bay’s “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” set to premiere Thursday, the five surviving members of the six-man Benghazi security team have blitzed the airwaves to promote the film and renew their assertion that a top CIA officer delayed them from immediately answering State Department distress calls. Three even testified to the same before the House Select Committee on Benghazi last spring, several sources have confirmed to POLITICO.

“There is no sensationalism in that: We were told to ‘stand down,’” said former Special Forces Officer Kris Paronto, one of the CIA contractors who fought that night, in an interview with Politico. “Those words were used verbatim — 100 percent. … If the truth of it affects someone’s political career? Well, I’m sorry. It happens.”

Top Democrats on the Benghazi panel, however, said that’s more movie fantasy than reality.

“If the film portrays them as having ordered a stand-down, it’s clearly at odds with the facts,” said Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), whose district includes Hollywood and who sits on the committee. “If the film portrays those who went to rescue people at the diplomatic facility as doing so in disregard of orders, that’s also plainly at odds with the facts. … It may make for good entertainment; it doesn’t make for a well-informed public.”

Lawmakers have grappled with the question of a stand-down order before, and several bipartisan reports on the attacks have found no evidence of such a command being passed down the chain. Moreover, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the CIA and the Defense Department have long dismissed the idea that anyone would have held back help.

But the renewed allegations have forced lawmakers to wrestle with the issue again, and Republicans in particular may find themselves in an awkward spot. If GOP members of the Benghazi panel dispute Paronto’s assertion, they could look like they’re disparaging Americans who fought and died in service of the country. But if they side with Paronto, investigators would directly contradict some big-name intelligence officials, including former CIA Director David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who say no one was ordered to stand down...

Or course the Dems gave the stand-down order. Just like they lied about the random anti-Muslim video that started it all. They'll do anything to win elections, even sacrifice American lives.

More.

Woman at Hillary Clinton 4th of July Parade Wears Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul Stickers with Benghazi Sign in Hand

Gotta be some deeper significance. You know, the surge in populism this season.

Seen on Twitter:

Waiting for Hillary to appear at a parade - this woman wearing Bernie and Rand stickers with Benghazi sign in hand pic.twitter.com/hoOX8aUZ2v

— Katie Hinman (@khinman) July 4, 2015

Secret Memo Shows Leftist Contributors Souring on Hillary Clinton Campaign (VIDEO)

I love it!

This is not only major, it's no surprise.

Hillary's crashing on multiple fronts. And it's still early!

At Politico, "Secret effort to sell Hillary Clinton to rich liberals: Campaign targets unenthusiastic donors on the party’s left":

Hillary Clinton’s allies are working to win over unenthusiastic rich liberals by pitting her against the Koch brothers and prospective GOP rivals rather than more progressive Democrats, according to a draft of a secret memo obtained by POLITICO.

The memo was prepared for Clinton enforcer David Brock ahead of a major donor meeting in April in San Francisco. But the concerns it reveals about liberal donors’ coolness toward her presidential candidacy — with some even holding out hope for a robust primary challenge from the left — are just as acute today, Clinton allies say.

Winning over such donors is seen as critical to Clinton’s White House prospects.

The Clinton forces are counting on a constellation of allied outside groups to raise as much as $500 million to take on a Republican big-money machine that has been raking in cash from dozens of super-rich and highly engaged partisans. By contrast, the main super PAC supporting Clinton, Priorities USA Action, has struggled to collect million-dollar checks.

Part of the donors’ reluctance stems from liberal queasiness about the expanding role of big money in politics since the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision. But there’s also some discomfort with Clinton, the former New York senator and secretary of state, who is seen as too hawkish on foreign policy and insufficiently progressive on key issues like fighting climate change, income inequality and the role of big money in politics. Additionally, Democratic finance operatives say, efforts to rustle up seven-figure checks are suffering from a lack of a single, unifying enemy on the right.

All those concerns are addressed in the Brock memo, which appears to have been drafted in preparation for his appearance at the annual spring meeting of the Democracy Alliance — a major liberal donor club — in April in San Francisco. The memo is written as a question-and-answer exchange between Brock and Democracy Alliance donors.

The memo suggests that Brock, who has built a fleet of deep-pocketed groups aligned with Clinton, is taking a conciliatory approach to assuage donors’ concerns — conceding she’s not as liberal as some donors wish but emphasizing her progressiveness in public service and minimizing the prospects of a vigorous Democratic primary.

“You say the Kochs represent all that is bad in this broken system, yet our presumptive nominee is in the pocket of big Wall Street banks,” begins one of the memo’s hypothetical donor questions. “Aren’t we going to have a hard time going after the Kochs’ big money when some could argue that Sec. Clinton is bank rolled by Wall Street and therefore there is a pox on both our houses?”

The answer Brock should give, according to the memo: “It is no secret that Sec. Clinton is fair-left and not far-left. I think it is safe to say that there will be a dramatic difference between Sec. Clinton and whoever is the Republican opponent. She has spent a lifetime advocating for women and children and fighting for the middle class and there is not one GOP candidate who has that record.”

Brock did not dispute the authenticity of the memo, which leaves a pair of questions about the internal politics of the Clinton big-money effort unanswered. But he declined to comment on the memo, or whether it reflected his fundraising approach or his presentation at the Democracy Alliance gathering, which was closed to the news media.

The three-day meeting of the Democracy Alliance — a group that includes more than 100 individual and institutional donors and various unions — took place at San Francisco’s Four Seasons Hotel just as Clinton officially launched her campaign.

Heh, when leftist big-money hypocrites are worried about forking over big money to Hillary, you know something's not right in leftist la-la land.

More.

PREVIOUSLY: "Hillary Clinton Crashes in Public Opinion."

Hillary Clinton Crashes in Public Opinion

Her ratings are tanking.

At CNN, via Memeorandum, "Poll: New speed bumps for Clinton."

Clinton Campaigning in a Bubble, Largely Isolated from Real People

At McClatchy:

CONFIRMED: http://t.co/VTJMBzMPjF Hillary Clinton's home-brewed server contained now classified info on #Benghazi. pic.twitter.com/aq8qrBdNdz

— Reince Priebus (@Reince) May 23, 2015

CEDAR FALLS, IOWA — Here’s how Hillary Clinton campaigned for president this week: She took a private 15-minute tour of a bike shop that had closed for her visit. She spoke to four small business owners chosen by her staff in front of an audience of 20, also chosen by her staff. She answered a few questions from the media following weeks of silence.

And after a little more than an hour, Clinton was off, whisked away by aides and Secret Service agents, into a minivan and on to the next event.

Members of the public who wanted to go inside the building to support her, oppose her or merely ask a question of her were left outside on an unseasonably cool Iowa day. Most didn’t bother showing up.

“I am troubled that so far in this caucus cycle she hasn’t had any public town halls,” said Chris Schwartz, a liberal activist from Waterloo, as he stood outside the bike store hoping to talk to Clinton about trade. “If she had a public town hall then we wouldn’t be out here. We would much rather be in there engaging with her.”

Welcome to Hillary Clinton 2.0. Mindful of her defeat by Barack Obama in 2008, Clinton has embraced a new strategy – one that so far does not include town-hall meetings and campaign rallies, media interviews, even public events.

Instead, she holds small controlled events with a handful of potential voters in homes, businesses and schools. She repeats many of the same lines (“I want to be your champion” is a favorite), participants are handpicked by her staff or the event host, and topics are dictated by her campaign.

Brent Johnson, 35, the owner of Bike Tech, said Clinton campaign staffers walked into the shop a week earlier and asked him if he’d be interested in hosting an event. He and the three roundtable participants were on a conference call with the campaign the day before to hear Clinton’s “basic talking points” about helping small businesses. A campaign aide says they found guests through the small business community.

Clinton’s approach – made possible by her lack of strong competition for the Democratic nomination – comes as she works to relate to working American families after years of being criticized as an out-of-touch Washington insider garnering hefty paychecks for her speeches and books.

But the campaign to show the world that she’s never forgotten her middle-class, Middle America sensibilities can be a tough sell from inside a bubble of armored cars, Secret Service agents and wary aides.

“It’s going to come back and haunt her,” said Eric Herzik, chairman of the political science department at the University of Nevada, Reno. “I think it will backfire.”

She can't talk about her record. She's a walking radioactive meltdown of scandal baggage and political corruption.

More.

Hillary's Failed War of Choice in Libya

Cut through all the partisan crap and what's now happening with the Benghazi attack is the ultimate clusterfuck which proves conservatives right all along back in 2012.

At Instapundit, "HILLARY’S FAILED WAR OF CHOICE IN LIBYA: Email calls Clinton ‘public face of US effort in Libya’":

This is a modified limited hangout. Everything you get is sanitized, and none of the worst stuff is being released. And given that this stuff is actually fairly bad, that may provide a sense of what they’re holding back.

Click through to read the whole thing.

The French (Jihad) Connection

Remember the Jews fleeing France for Israel?

Well, it's largely due to the threat from Islamic jihad.

More on that from Theodore Dalrymple, at City Journal:

If cannabis were legal in France, Mehdi Nemmouche would be safely in Algeria, instead of under lock and key awaiting extradition to Belgium. Nemmouche was on his way to his father’s native Algeria when French customs agents in Marseille searched the bus on which he had travelled from Amsterdam. They were looking for drugs.

What they found instead in Nemmouche’s possession was a Kalashnikov rifle, a revolver, lots of ammunition, a gas mask, a short video of the weapons in his possession accompanied by a verbal commentary (probably in his voice) on the recent murder of four Jews at the Jewish Museum in Brussels, clothing similar to that worn by the perpetrator of that attack, and a white flag with the words Islamic State of Iraq and of the Levant in Arabic inscribed on it. No man is guilty until proven so in a court of law, of course, but the prosecuting authorities allowed themselves to say that the presumptive evidence against Nemmouche was very strong...

Wonderful. Just wonderful.

Continue reading.

New York Times Claims Abu Khattala Launched #Benghazi Attack in Retaliation for 'Innocence of Muslims' Video

Well, the president promised to bring the perpetrators to justice, almost two years ago. And you gotta love the timing. Sure does help Hillary Clinton's battlespace preparation, to say nothing of getting the administration's Iraq debacle out of the headlines.

The main story's at Wall Street Journal, "U.S. Forces Capture Key Benghazi Suspect Grabbed in a Nighttime Raid, Ahmed Abu Khattala Faces Possible Death Penalty." And from Barbara Starr at CNN:



But the the big deal here is how the New York Times joins Clinton's battlespace prep with this unsourced report, citing "private conversations," in which Abu Khattala is said to have launched the Benghazi attack to take "revenge" against the "Innocence of Muslims" video --- the controversial online film which was the basis for the administration's Susan Rice talking points after the attack of September 11, 1012.

See, "A Brazen Figure in Benghazi Holds an Attack’s Secrets Apprehension of Ahmed Abu Khattala May Begin to Answer Questions on Assault":

But for all his brazenness, Mr. Abu Khattala also holds many tantalizing secrets for the Americans investigating and debating the attack.

His apprehension by United States military commandos and law enforcement agents may finally begin to address some of the persistent questions about who carried out the attack and why. Those questions have spawned a small industry of conspiracy theories, political scandals, talk radio broadcasts, and a continuing congressional investigation.

Despite extensive speculation about the role of Al Qaeda in directing the attack in Libya, Mr. Abu Khattala is a local Islamist militant, with no known connections to international terrorist groups, according to American officials briefed on the criminal investigation and intelligence reporting, as well as other Benghazi Islamists who know him.

In interviews, Mr. Abu Khattala professed his admiration for Osama bin Laden and blamed American foreign policy for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. But he remained a distant admirer, having spent most of his adult life jailed for his extremism under Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

During the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi, Mr. Abu Khattala formed his own militia, which played a small role in the NATO-backed uprising. But within a few months, he had pulled his small band back from the front, deeming most of his fellow Islamists insufficiently committed to establishing a puritanical theocracy and too close to the West.

After Colonel Qaddafi fell, Mr. Abu Khattala was one of the disgruntled veterans of the uprising who kept Benghazi on edge. Though he had friends among the militia leaders of the city who were close to American and British diplomats who took residence in the city, he kept his distance from foreign diplomats and rallied his own supporters to protest what he viewed as foreign interference in Libya’s affairs.

What he did in the period just before the attack has remained unclear. But Mr. Abu Khattala told other Libyans in private conversations during the night of the attack that he was moved to attack the diplomatic mission to take revenge for an insult to Islam in an American-made online video.

An earlier demonstration venting anger over the video outside the American Embassy in Cairo had culminated in a breach of its walls, and it dominated Arab news coverage. Mr. Abu Khattala told both fellow Islamist fighters and others that the attack in Benghazi was retaliation for the same insulting video, according to people who heard him...

Keep reading.

Well obviously these unnamed sources from "private conversations" just aren't going to fly, considering such an explosive issue.

The fact is, according to Stephen Hayes, in contrast to administration claims, the intelligence community's "talking points didn't once mention the anti-Islam video that Rice placed at the center of her narrative."

With this questionable report from the New York Times, White House hacks and Obama's media lapdogs can once again deny the facts debunking the "Innocence of Muslims" narrative. It's a classic protection gambit for the White House and it plays perfectly into Hillary Clinton's book tour media rollout, which is frankly nothing more than an early presidential campaign tour.