One of the central ironies of Glenn Beck’s self-designated role as a resolute truth-teller is his constant beseeching of his audience not to just blindly trust the things that he says on air but to actually do their own homework and verify it for themselves because, if his listeners actually did that, his reputation for truth-telling would quickly evaporate.
Take his rant today when he claimed (falsely) that he had never before called for President Obama to be impeached but is doing so now because Obama has supposedly waived a law so that he can supply weapons to al Qaeda in Syria.
The story originated from The Washington Examiner which reported that:
President Obama waived a provision of federal law designed to prevent the supply of arms to terrorist groups to clear the way for the U.S. to provide military assistance to “vetted” opposition groups fighting Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
Some elements of the Syrian opposition are associated with radical Islamic terrorist groups, including al Qaeda, which was responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks in New York, Washington, D.C., and Shanksville, Pa., in 2001. Assad’s regime is backed by Iran and Hezbollah.
The president, citing his authority under the Arms Export Control Act, announced today that he would “waive the prohibitions in sections 40 and 40A of the AECA related to such a transaction.”
Apparently doing no research of its own, Beck’s The Blaze simply repeated these claims as fact as did Beck himself, citing them to accuse Obama of treason and demand his impeachment:
President Obama did, in fact, issue such a waiver … for the purpose of providing “non-lethal” defensive assistance to help protect against any possible future chemical weapons attacks:
Today, the President signed a Presidential Determination exercising his authority to waive certain restrictions under the Arms Export Control Act. This action will allow the U.S. Government to provide or license, where appropriate, certain non-lethal assistance inside or related to Syria. This includes: 1) chemical weapons-related personal protective equipment to international organizations, including the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, for the conduct of their operations; 2) chemical weapons-related life-saving assistance for organizations implementing Department of State or U.S. Agency for International Development programs to strengthen local Syrian health care providers’ ability to prepare for and respond to any use of chemical weapons; and 3) defensive chemical weapons-related training and personal protective equipment to select vetted members of the Syrian opposition, including the Supreme Military Council, to protect against the use of chemical weapons. This action is part of longstanding and ongoing efforts to provide life-saving chemical weapons-related assistance to people in need in Syria.
It seems that, for Glenn Beck, legally providing assistance and equipment designed to help protect and respond to the use of chemical weapons in Syria is now an impeachable offense.
