In Libya and elsewhere, poor leadership
To the editor:
Leadership requires discipline. Let's examine our president's leadership skills, or management skills, whichever you prefer.
First, it's widely reported our president rarely holds Cabinet meetings. Second, he does not attend security briefings.
Look at the party thrown by the General Services Administration in Las Vegas as an example: The party wasted taxpayer money because of lack of leadership at the highest levels.
Then there's the Justice Department. Some brilliant strategist within the department thought it was a good idea to sell guns to the drug cartels in Mexico to determine where they went. One of our Border Patrol agents was killed by the drug cartels using weapons obtained from our own government. This was covered up for more than a year, and only Fox News covered it. Only a small portion of our voting public is aware of it. It is called "Fast and Furious."
More recently, an American ambassador and three other Americans were killed when they were assigned to go to the most dangerous place on earth today. The State Department evidently never read intelligence briefings before assigning the team to Libya. They were assigned to live in a U.S. consulate in Benghazi where more terrorists were born and raised than any place on the planet - with no security.
For some reason unknown to the public, the president and his team initially told us the senseless murders were carried out because someone had made a movie trailer about the Muslim prophet, and that trailer caused spontaneous rioting.
This happened on Sept. 11, the 11th anniversary of the terrorist attacks on New York and the Pentagon - a date of infamy. Nobody in the administration could connect the dots because they never read the intelligence reports or attended intelligence briefings on Libya.
The evidence now clearly shows this attack was well-planned and executed by terrorists. If President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had been briefed or had read the intelligence reports, action could have been taken to preserve the lives of four Americans.
This is truly a lack of leadership.
KENT CLIFFORD
LAS VEGAS
Kent Clifford is the former commander of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Intelligence Bureau.
Defend our freedoms
To the editor:
No matter how disgusting, stupid, degrading, inaccurate and inflammatory - and every other nasty word in the dictionary which could be used - the recent anti-Muslim video may be, that video must continue to be shown again and again until Islam understands that it cannot destroy the U.S. Constitution and take away our right of free speech.
If our leaders do not take that position, we might as well shred our Constitution and become slaves of Islam. This is a fight we must win.
JASON G. BRENT
LAS VEGAS
Dangerous hotheads
To the editor:
About the anti-American riots wracking the Arab world:
As I see it, America is not the problem. The rioters are.
For thousands of years, Muslim hotheads have massacred people of other faiths and burned their holy books and places of worship. But let anyone say a word against their faith, and they throw a murderous tantrum. Who do they think they are?
Granted, any religion unchecked will breed religious bullies, but Muslim extremists take the cake. They even blow themselves up over doctrinal differences. Every day there is another Shiite or Sunni suicide bomber who butchers his fellow Muslims. And in the name of Allah.
Can't decent, peace-loving Muslims restrain the madness in their midst? Someone had better find a way to stop these fanatics before they drag all us into a nuclear Armageddon.
GLEN B. DUNNING
LAS VEGAS
