U.S. Ambassador to Libya Killed in Rocket Attack (1 Viewer)

[Aerial Assault]

Once again.. the nutjobs think they have found the ultimate conspiracy, only to come out looking like buffoons.

Broken record.

In the end, they only helped Hillary.

And massively so. The whole thing was basically a nine-hour commercial for why she'd make an excellent president. What utter and complete idiots.

 

[Bucky86]

 

[Doctor Detroit]

Once again.. the nutjobs think they have found the ultimate conspiracy, only to come out looking like buffoons.

Broken record.

In the end, they only helped Hillary.

And massively so. The whole thing was basically a nine-hour commercial for why she'd make an excellent president. What utter and complete idiots.

Yeah I was thinking the same thing, seems to have backfired in their faces pretty badly. If they would have just stuck to the primary line of questioning, she would have been done hours ago. This became a snipe hunt about four hours ago and the joke is on the GOP.

 

[matuski]

Once again.. the nutjobs think they have found the ultimate conspiracy, only to come out looking like buffoons.

Broken record.

In the end, they only helped Hillary.

And massively so. The whole thing was basically a nine-hour commercial for why she'd make an excellent president. What utter and complete idiots.

Yeah I was thinking the same thing, seems to have backfired in their faces pretty badly. If they would have just stuck to the primary line of questioning, she would have been done hours ago. This became a snipe hunt about four hours ago and the joke is on the GOP.

If only someone could have seen this coming....

 

[Rove!]

The amount of crow to be eaten in this thread could cure world hunger. It made Pittstownthreadkiller quit the internet, so some good did come out of it. 88 pages of pure hell.

For those claiming that it was a video or that it wasn't clear that this was a planned terrorist attack or that the government didn't immediately know that...how does that crow taste?

U mad bro?

Mad that the initial response of the administration to a terrorist attack and killing an ambassador was basically an assault on the first amendment and an apology? That those in power concocted a phony narrative and sold it to the media and the UN? That it took three years and an smoking gun to finally admit that they lied..

Maybe a little

 

[Aerial Assault]

Once again.. the nutjobs think they have found the ultimate conspiracy, only to come out looking like buffoons.

Broken record.

In the end, they only helped Hillary.

And massively so. The whole thing was basically a nine-hour an eleven-hour commercial for why she'd make an excellent president. What utter and complete idiots.

My mistake. And Jesus.

 

[rascal]

Can I get a cliff notes version of this whole ordeal...tia. I quit reading about shortly after the attack.

 

[Mr. Pickles]

Can I get a cliff notes version of this whole ordeal...tia. I quit reading about shortly after the attack.

Summary: http://youtu.be/ZDBCiZKZi_g

 

[joffer]

but we need the truth

 

[Rove!]

but we need the truth

"We know the video had nothing to do with the attack". HRC 9/12/2012.

 

[Chaka]

but we need the truth

"We know the video had nothing to do with the attack". HRC 9/12/2012.

And?

 

[Todd Andrews]

lol, KooK GOP shoots itself in the ###.

 

[pantagrapher]

I guess it's fitting Rove goes down with the ship.

 

[Todd Andrews]

BS on Benghazi.

 

[msommer]

 

[otello]

This was the fog of war. My own assessment careened from the video had something to do with it, the video had nothing to do with it; it may have affected some people, it didnt affect other people. So I was trying to make sense of it. And I think that the investigations that have been carried out basically conclude we cant say that everybody was influenced and we cant say everybody wasnt, but what the intelligence community said was spontaneous protests, and that is what at the time they thought."

 

[TobiasFunke]

This was the fog of war. My own assessment careened from the video had something to do with it, the video had nothing to do with it; it may have affected some people, it didnt affect other people. So I was trying to make sense of it. And I think that the investigations that have been carried out basically conclude we cant say that everybody was influenced and we cant say everybody wasnt, but what the intelligence community said was spontaneous protests, and that is what at the time they thought."

Seems dubious, Hillary. I say the far more likely explanation is a vast conspiracy involving hundreds of CIA, State Department and White House Officials, conceived and then rolled out fully formed within hours of the attacks, one which would almost certainly be exposed at some point and would be of marginal benefit to the administration anyway. Yeah, that totally makes sense.

 

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

If anyone wants to understand the actual events around the video vs terrorist arguments, here's a really nice time line of statements and information gathered in one place.

IMO the Administration weaseled for 8-10 days, conflating this attack with the spontaneous video-related attacks elsewhere in the region until it was completely clear it was not a demonstration gone amok.

However, some of the attackers, including one of the main planners, have said that while the attack was not spontaneous the video was in fact a/the motivating factor.

 

[timschochet]

but we need the truth

"We know the video had nothing to do with the attack". HRC 9/12/2012.

She didn't lie; that's what she believed that night, but as she explained yesterday it changed again the next day. If you understand the fact that there were several protests all over the Muslim world involving the video, this is entirely plausible. What's not plausible is this crackpot notion that Clinton would attempt to deliberately deceive the American public about this- why? The four Americans were dead one way or the other. She was always going to have to answer for that. In point of fact the video had a LOT to do with the attack. At least one of the terrorists involved says it was his motivation.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

BS on Benghazi.

(Loathe to do this but anyway...)

Here are six points of utter B.S. that drive us absolutely head-smacking crazy:

...The anti-Islam video had something to do with the attack. On the day of the attack, one of us (Malcolm Nance) was leaving Abu Dhabi for Benghazi and Tripoli to conduct a security assessment that was canceled as news of massive protests in Cairo culminated with the U.S. Embassy compound being stormed. News networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya showed the Muslim world aflame with disgust over the insulting video Innocence of Muslims. From within the punchbowl, everything around us looked like punch. It was not until much later that we learned the terrorist group used the outrage of the video as a mask to conduct a preplanned attack. That’s the nature of terrorism.

...

There are several different discussions about the attack and they overlap and people get confused.

What actually happened - the US government itself long ago abandoned the notion that the movie had anything whatsoever to do with the attack. It had zero to do with it. The best that can be argued is that Ansar took the moment of chaos in Cairo to launch an attack and provide an additional coup by making it appear that it was the outrage of the movie. If you accept that then we the US gov fell into that in spades as we used our moral authority and influence, even our own president, to talk about the outrage and blasphemy in the movie. I'm never sure why this version is better to believe but I can believe it. None of it is good.

What the US gov actually believed happened at the time of the attack. - IMO there was just a ton of confirmation bias going on in the US gov. The intelligence and military, CIA/DOD, were reporting it was militia. The media was reporting it was movie related. We know the US gov believed the media reports because they took steps to ask Google to pull the Innocence movie (whole other issue) but they wouldn't have done that if they did not believe that to be true. I don't know why Obama continued to maintain the movie business at the UN but my thought is it was because it fit his original premise when he came in as president. Somehow facts did not penetrate. Then you've got political consultants like Ben Rhodes actually crafting NSA memos on what would benefit the president instead of the facts and Rice who really was not working in the subject and going out on Sunday morning to basically report what she had been told. You've got the NSA telling our politicians what to say when the NSA should have been warning them about the security situation in Libya in the first place. And the NSA should not be crafting political memos, period.

Then we have a policy of intervention in Libya, causing the same kind of widespread chaos and partition that we've seen in Iraq, with terrorist militia filling the vacuum, only much faster, without of course losing American lives but then again also not attempting to fix what we had broken, use of Blackwater as private security for a State Dept mission, a CIA annex, gun running to Syria and Libya as part of all this, a concerted refusal as policy to provide military security in the face of a growing threat in which all our allies removed their diplomatic presence, and we have a real failure in American foreign policy of which the attack at the mission was just the denouement. It would be good to have a sober discussion about it but as the Congressional committee just proved and this thread proved that is impossible.

 

[Todd Andrews]

BS on Benghazi.

(Loathe to do this but anyway...)

Here are six points of utter B.S. that drive us absolutely head-smacking crazy:

...The anti-Islam video had something to do with the attack. On the day of the attack, one of us (Malcolm Nance) was leaving Abu Dhabi for Benghazi and Tripoli to conduct a security assessment that was canceled as news of massive protests in Cairo culminated with the U.S. Embassy compound being stormed. News networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya showed the Muslim world aflame with disgust over the insulting video Innocence of Muslims. From within the punchbowl, everything around us looked like punch. It was not until much later that we learned the terrorist group used the outrage of the video as a mask to conduct a preplanned attack. That’s the nature of terrorism.

...

There are several different discussions about the attack and they overlap and people get confused.

What actually happened - the US government itself long ago abandoned the notion that the movie had anything whatsoever to do with the attack. It had zero to do with it. The best that can be argued is that Ansar took the moment of chaos in Cairo to launch an attack and provide an additional coup by making it appear that it was the outrage of teh movie. If you accept that then we the US gov fell into that in spades as we used our moral authority and influence, even our own president, to talk about the outrage and blasphemy in the movie. I'm never sure why this version is better to believe buy I can believe it. None of it is good.

What the US gov actually believed happened at the time of the attack. - IMO there was just a ton of confirmation bias going on in the US gov. The intelligence and military, CIA/DOD, were reporting it was militia. The media was reporting it was movie related. We know the US gov believed the media reports because they took steps to ask Google to pull the Innocence movie (whole other issue) but they wouldn't have done that if they did not believe that to be true. I don't know why Obama continued to maintain the movie business at the UN but my thought is it was because it fit his original premise when he came in as president. Somehow facts did not penetrate. Then you've got political consultants like Ben Rhodes actually crafting NSA memos on what would benefit the president instead of the facts and Rice who really was not working in the subject and going out on Sunday morning to basically report what she had been told.

Then we have a policy of intervention in Libya, causing the same kind of widespread chaos and partition that we've seen in Iraq, only much faster, without of course losing American lives but then again also not attempting to fix what we had broken, use of Blackwater as private security for a State Dept mission, a CIA annex, gun running to Syria and Libya as part of all this, and we have a real failure in American foreign policy of which the attack at the mission was just the denouement. It would be good to have a sober discussion about it but as the Congressional committee just proved and this thread proved that is impossible.

Of course it is impossible. The GOP Congress had cut something liek $300 million from embassy security before the attack in Benghazi. They certainly dont want to explore the real issue of security.

 

[Rove!]

but we need the truth

"We know the video had nothing to do with the attack". HRC 9/12/2012.

And?

And they told the world another story and apologized for the first amendment.

If the world didn't already know, they have confirmation that the USA is basically full of ####

 

[Dinsy Ejotuz]

And they told the world another story and apologized for the first amendment.

If the world didn't already know, they have confirmation that the USA is basically full of ####

Posting on a public message board could be politically unwise, Congressman Pompeo.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

BS on Benghazi.

(Loathe to do this but anyway...)

Here are six points of utter B.S. that drive us absolutely head-smacking crazy:

...The anti-Islam video had something to do with the attack. On the day of the attack, one of us (Malcolm Nance) was leaving Abu Dhabi for Benghazi and Tripoli to conduct a security assessment that was canceled as news of massive protests in Cairo culminated with the U.S. Embassy compound being stormed. News networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya showed the Muslim world aflame with disgust over the insulting video Innocence of Muslims. From within the punchbowl, everything around us looked like punch. It was not until much later that we learned the terrorist group used the outrage of the video as a mask to conduct a preplanned attack. That’s the nature of terrorism.

...

There are several different discussions about the attack and they overlap and people get confused.

What actually happened - the US government itself long ago abandoned the notion that the movie had anything whatsoever to do with the attack. It had zero to do with it. The best that can be argued is that Ansar took the moment of chaos in Cairo to launch an attack and provide an additional coup by making it appear that it was the outrage of teh movie. If you accept that then we the US gov fell into that in spades as we used our moral authority and influence, even our own president, to talk about the outrage and blasphemy in the movie. I'm never sure why this version is better to believe buy I can believe it. None of it is good.

What the US gov actually believed happened at the time of the attack. - IMO there was just a ton of confirmation bias going on in the US gov. The intelligence and military, CIA/DOD, were reporting it was militia. The media was reporting it was movie related. We know the US gov believed the media reports because they took steps to ask Google to pull the Innocence movie (whole other issue) but they wouldn't have done that if they did not believe that to be true. I don't know why Obama continued to maintain the movie business at the UN but my thought is it was because it fit his original premise when he came in as president. Somehow facts did not penetrate. Then you've got political consultants like Ben Rhodes actually crafting NSA memos on what would benefit the president instead of the facts and Rice who really was not working in the subject and going out on Sunday morning to basically report what she had been told.

Then we have a policy of intervention in Libya, causing the same kind of widespread chaos and partition that we've seen in Iraq, only much faster, without of course losing American lives but then again also not attempting to fix what we had broken, use of Blackwater as private security for a State Dept mission, a CIA annex, gun running to Syria and Libya as part of all this, and we have a real failure in American foreign policy of which the attack at the mission was just the denouement. It would be good to have a sober discussion about it but as the Congressional committee just proved and this thread proved that is impossible.

Of course it is impossible. The GOP Congress had cut something liek $300 million from embassy security before the attack in Benghazi. They certainly dont want to explore the real issue of security.

Right. And I should have mentioned that there was many a Republican like John McCain who wanted intervention. That policy failure is theirs as well.

 

[Rove!]

BS on Benghazi.

(Loathe to do this but anyway...)

Here are six points of utter B.S. that drive us absolutely head-smacking crazy:

...The anti-Islam video had something to do with the attack. On the day of the attack, one of us (Malcolm Nance) was leaving Abu Dhabi for Benghazi and Tripoli to conduct a security assessment that was canceled as news of massive protests in Cairo culminated with the U.S. Embassy compound being stormed. News networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya showed the Muslim world aflame with disgust over the insulting video Innocence of Muslims. From within the punchbowl, everything around us looked like punch. It was not until much later that we learned the terrorist group used the outrage of the video as a mask to conduct a preplanned attack. That’s the nature of terrorism.

...

There are several different discussions about the attack and they overlap and people get confused.

What actually happened - the US government itself long ago abandoned the notion that the movie had anything whatsoever to do with the attack. It had zero to do with it. The best that can be argued is that Ansar took the moment of chaos in Cairo to launch an attack and provide an additional coup by making it appear that it was the outrage of teh movie. If you accept that then we the US gov fell into that in spades as we used our moral authority and influence, even our own president, to talk about the outrage and blasphemy in the movie. I'm never sure why this version is better to believe buy I can believe it. None of it is good.

What the US gov actually believed happened at the time of the attack. - IMO there was just a ton of confirmation bias going on in the US gov. The intelligence and military, CIA/DOD, were reporting it was militia. The media was reporting it was movie related. We know the US gov believed the media reports because they took steps to ask Google to pull the Innocence movie (whole other issue) but they wouldn't have done that if they did not believe that to be true. I don't know why Obama continued to maintain the movie business at the UN but my thought is it was because it fit his original premise when he came in as president. Somehow facts did not penetrate. Then you've got political consultants like Ben Rhodes actually crafting NSA memos on what would benefit the president instead of the facts and Rice who really was not working in the subject and going out on Sunday morning to basically report what she had been told.

Then we have a policy of intervention in Libya, causing the same kind of widespread chaos and partition that we've seen in Iraq, only much faster, without of course losing American lives but then again also not attempting to fix what we had broken, use of Blackwater as private security for a State Dept mission, a CIA annex, gun running to Syria and Libya as part of all this, and we have a real failure in American foreign policy of which the attack at the mission was just the denouement. It would be good to have a sober discussion about it but as the Congressional committee just proved and this thread proved that is impossible.

Of course it is impossible. The GOP Congress had cut something liek $300 million from embassy security before the attack in Benghazi. They certainly dont want to explore the real issue of security.

Utter KooK talking point...even HRC didn't mention it because this has long ago been debunked

 

[timschochet]

Saints you sound quite reasonable now, which is good. But didn't you spent most of your time in this thread behaving as if every one of the several conspiracy theories that came out of this, no matter how absurd, was plausible? It seemed to me like you began your analysis with the assumption that Obama and Hillary were at the very least guilty of SOMETHING and it was only a question of determining what it was. You have done the same with Hillary regarding both the email story and her foundation.

 

[Ookie Pringle]

but we need the truth

"We know the video had nothing to do with the attack". HRC 9/12/2012.

She didn't lie; that's what she believed that night, but as she explained yesterday it changed again the next day. If you understand the fact that there were several protests all over the Muslim world involving the video, this is entirely plausible. What's not plausible is this crackpot notion that Clinton would attempt to deliberately deceive the American public about this- why? The four Americans were dead one way or the other. She was always going to have to answer for that.In point of fact the video had a LOT to do with the attack. At least one of the terrorists involved says it was his motivation.

I believe one of the Congressmen read an email from Hillary to her family the night of the attack were she stated it was an Al-Qaeda type of attack. She knew damn well the video had nothing to do with it that night.

 

[timschochet]

but we need the truth

"We know the video had nothing to do with the attack". HRC 9/12/2012.

She didn't lie; that's what she believed that night, but as she explained yesterday it changed again the next day. If you understand the fact that there were several protests all over the Muslim world involving the video, this is entirely plausible. What's not plausible is this crackpot notion that Clinton would attempt to deliberately deceive the American public about this- why? The four Americans were dead one way or the other. She was always going to have to answer for that.In point of fact the video had a LOT to do with the attack. At least one of the terrorists involved says it was his motivation.

I believe one of the Congressmen read an email from Hillary to her family the night of the attack were she stated it was an Al-Qaeda type of attack. She knew damn well the video had nothing to do with it that night.

No she didn't. It was to Chelsea BTW.

 

[Rove!]

BS on Benghazi.

(Loathe to do this but anyway...)

Here are six points of utter B.S. that drive us absolutely head-smacking crazy:

...The anti-Islam video had something to do with the attack. On the day of the attack, one of us (Malcolm Nance) was leaving Abu Dhabi for Benghazi and Tripoli to conduct a security assessment that was canceled as news of massive protests in Cairo culminated with the U.S. Embassy compound being stormed. News networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya showed the Muslim world aflame with disgust over the insulting video Innocence of Muslims. From within the punchbowl, everything around us looked like punch. It was not until much later that we learned the terrorist group used the outrage of the video as a mask to conduct a preplanned attack. That’s the nature of terrorism.

...

There are several different discussions about the attack and they overlap and people get confused.

What actually happened - the US government itself long ago abandoned the notion that the movie had anything whatsoever to do with the attack. It had zero to do with it. The best that can be argued is that Ansar took the moment of chaos in Cairo to launch an attack and provide an additional coup by making it appear that it was the outrage of the movie. If you accept that then we the US gov fell into that in spades as we used our moral authority and influence, even our own president, to talk about the outrage and blasphemy in the movie. I'm never sure why this version is better to believe buy I can believe it. None of it is good.

What the US gov actually believed happened at the time of the attack. - IMO there was just a ton of confirmation bias going on in the US gov. The intelligence and military, CIA/DOD, were reporting it was militia. The media was reporting it was movie related. We know the US gov believed the media reports because they took steps to ask Google to pull the Innocence movie (whole other issue) but they wouldn't have done that if they did not believe that to be true. I don't know why Obama continued to maintain the movie business at the UN but my thought is it was because it fit his original premise when he came in as president. Somehow facts did not penetrate. Then you've got political consultants like Ben Rhodes actually crafting NSA memos on what would benefit the president instead of the facts and Rice who really was not working in the subject and going out on Sunday morning to basically report what she had been told. You've got the NSA telling our politicians what to say when the NSA should have been warning them about the security situation in Libya in the first place.

Then we have a policy of intervention in Libya, causing the same kind of widespread chaos and partition that we've seen in Iraq, with terrorist militia filling the vacuum, only much faster, without of course losing American lives but then again also not attempting to fix what we had broken, use of Blackwater as private security for a State Dept mission, a CIA annex, gun running to Syria and Libya as part of all this, a concerted refusal as policy to provide military security in the face of a growing threat in which all our allies removed their diplomatic presence, and we have a real failure in American foreign policy of which the attack at the mission was just the denouement. It would be good to have a sober discussion about it but as the Congressional committee just proved and this thread proved that is impossible.

No confirmation bias

Hillary said on 9/12 we KNOW the video has nothing to with the attack

While the attack was still taking place she is saying that it's an Al Quaeda like attack

The people on the ground at the embassy are telling them exactly what was happening

There was zero evidence that it was anything but a coordinated attack, and not some racially stereotyped protest that gets violent because Muslims...

 

[Todd Andrews]

BS on Benghazi.

(Loathe to do this but anyway...)

Here are six points of utter B.S. that drive us absolutely head-smacking crazy:

...The anti-Islam video had something to do with the attack. On the day of the attack, one of us (Malcolm Nance) was leaving Abu Dhabi for Benghazi and Tripoli to conduct a security assessment that was canceled as news of massive protests in Cairo culminated with the U.S. Embassy compound being stormed. News networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya showed the Muslim world aflame with disgust over the insulting video Innocence of Muslims. From within the punchbowl, everything around us looked like punch. It was not until much later that we learned the terrorist group used the outrage of the video as a mask to conduct a preplanned attack. That’s the nature of terrorism.

...

There are several different discussions about the attack and they overlap and people get confused.

What actually happened - the US government itself long ago abandoned the notion that the movie had anything whatsoever to do with the attack. It had zero to do with it. The best that can be argued is that Ansar took the moment of chaos in Cairo to launch an attack and provide an additional coup by making it appear that it was the outrage of the movie. If you accept that then we the US gov fell into that in spades as we used our moral authority and influence, even our own president, to talk about the outrage and blasphemy in the movie. I'm never sure why this version is better to believe buy I can believe it. None of it is good.

What the US gov actually believed happened at the time of the attack. - IMO there was just a ton of confirmation bias going on in the US gov. The intelligence and military, CIA/DOD, were reporting it was militia. The media was reporting it was movie related. We know the US gov believed the media reports because they took steps to ask Google to pull the Innocence movie (whole other issue) but they wouldn't have done that if they did not believe that to be true. I don't know why Obama continued to maintain the movie business at the UN but my thought is it was because it fit his original premise when he came in as president. Somehow facts did not penetrate. Then you've got political consultants like Ben Rhodes actually crafting NSA memos on what would benefit the president instead of the facts and Rice who really was not working in the subject and going out on Sunday morning to basically report what she had been told. You've got the NSA telling our politicians what to say when the NSA should have been warning them about the security situation in Libya in the first place.

Then we have a policy of intervention in Libya, causing the same kind of widespread chaos and partition that we've seen in Iraq, with terrorist militia filling the vacuum, only much faster, without of course losing American lives but then again also not attempting to fix what we had broken, use of Blackwater as private security for a State Dept mission, a CIA annex, gun running to Syria and Libya as part of all this, a concerted refusal as policy to provide military security in the face of a growing threat in which all our allies removed their diplomatic presence, and we have a real failure in American foreign policy of which the attack at the mission was just the denouement. It would be good to have a sober discussion about it but as the Congressional committee just proved and this thread proved that is impossible.

No confirmation bias

Hillary said on 9/12 we KNOW the video has nothing to with the attack

While the attack was still taking place she is saying that it's an Al Quaeda like attack

The people on the ground at the embassy are telling them exactly what was happening

There was zero evidence that it was anything but a coordinated attack, and not some racially stereotyped protest that gets violent because Muslims...

So?

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

Saints you sound quite reasonable now, which is good. But didn't you spent most of your time in this thread behaving as if every one of the several conspiracy theories that came out of this, no matter how absurd, was plausible? It seemed to me like you began your analysis with the assumption that Obama and Hillary were at the very least guilty of SOMETHING and it was only a question of determining what it was. You have done the same with Hillary regarding both the email story and her foundation.

Tim you believe in the conspiracy of conspiracies. I will leave at that. Yes I was very interested in the issue of what role the movie really played. We know a whole lot more now. Khattala has been captured and indicted and we have a much bigger record to deal with now. I also don't think I've changed my position, I just think people hear 'movie had nothing to do with it' and then leap into their assigned argument points about 'Obama fixing the election' vs 'Republican wingnuttery.'

 

[Rove!]

BS on Benghazi.

(Loathe to do this but anyway...)

Here are six points of utter B.S. that drive us absolutely head-smacking crazy:

...The anti-Islam video had something to do with the attack. On the day of the attack, one of us (Malcolm Nance) was leaving Abu Dhabi for Benghazi and Tripoli to conduct a security assessment that was canceled as news of massive protests in Cairo culminated with the U.S. Embassy compound being stormed. News networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya showed the Muslim world aflame with disgust over the insulting video Innocence of Muslims. From within the punchbowl, everything around us looked like punch. It was not until much later that we learned the terrorist group used the outrage of the video as a mask to conduct a preplanned attack. That’s the nature of terrorism.

...

There are several different discussions about the attack and they overlap and people get confused.

What actually happened - the US government itself long ago abandoned the notion that the movie had anything whatsoever to do with the attack. It had zero to do with it. The best that can be argued is that Ansar took the moment of chaos in Cairo to launch an attack and provide an additional coup by making it appear that it was the outrage of teh movie. If you accept that then we the US gov fell into that in spades as we used our moral authority and influence, even our own president, to talk about the outrage and blasphemy in the movie. I'm never sure why this version is better to believe buy I can believe it. None of it is good.

What the US gov actually believed happened at the time of the attack. - IMO there was just a ton of confirmation bias going on in the US gov. The intelligence and military, CIA/DOD, were reporting it was militia. The media was reporting it was movie related. We know the US gov believed the media reports because they took steps to ask Google to pull the Innocence movie (whole other issue) but they wouldn't have done that if they did not believe that to be true. I don't know why Obama continued to maintain the movie business at the UN but my thought is it was because it fit his original premise when he came in as president. Somehow facts did not penetrate. Then you've got political consultants like Ben Rhodes actually crafting NSA memos on what would benefit the president instead of the facts and Rice who really was not working in the subject and going out on Sunday morning to basically report what she had been told.

Then we have a policy of intervention in Libya, causing the same kind of widespread chaos and partition that we've seen in Iraq, only much faster, without of course losing American lives but then again also not attempting to fix what we had broken, use of Blackwater as private security for a State Dept mission, a CIA annex, gun running to Syria and Libya as part of all this, and we have a real failure in American foreign policy of which the attack at the mission was just the denouement. It would be good to have a sober discussion about it but as the Congressional committee just proved and this thread proved that is impossible.

Of course it is impossible. The GOP Congress had cut something liek $300 million from embassy security before the attack in Benghazi. They certainly dont want to explore the real issue of security.

Right. And I should have mentioned that there was many a Republican like John McCain who wanted intervention. That policy failure is theirs as well.

This has been a barrier to finding out how rotten our policy has been. I look forward to the daythat warmongering ####### gets booted out of office

 

[TobiasFunke]

BS on Benghazi.

(Loathe to do this but anyway...)

Here are six points of utter B.S. that drive us absolutely head-smacking crazy:

...The anti-Islam video had something to do with the attack. On the day of the attack, one of us (Malcolm Nance) was leaving Abu Dhabi for Benghazi and Tripoli to conduct a security assessment that was canceled as news of massive protests in Cairo culminated with the U.S. Embassy compound being stormed. News networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya showed the Muslim world aflame with disgust over the insulting video Innocence of Muslims. From within the punchbowl, everything around us looked like punch. It was not until much later that we learned the terrorist group used the outrage of the video as a mask to conduct a preplanned attack. That’s the nature of terrorism.

...

There are several different discussions about the attack and they overlap and people get confused.

What actually happened - the US government itself long ago abandoned the notion that the movie had anything whatsoever to do with the attack. It had zero to do with it. The best that can be argued is that Ansar took the moment of chaos in Cairo to launch an attack and provide an additional coup by making it appear that it was the outrage of the movie. If you accept that then we the US gov fell into that in spades as we used our moral authority and influence, even our own president, to talk about the outrage and blasphemy in the movie. I'm never sure why this version is better to believe buy I can believe it. None of it is good.

What the US gov actually believed happened at the time of the attack. - IMO there was just a ton of confirmation bias going on in the US gov. The intelligence and military, CIA/DOD, were reporting it was militia. The media was reporting it was movie related. We know the US gov believed the media reports because they took steps to ask Google to pull the Innocence movie (whole other issue) but they wouldn't have done that if they did not believe that to be true. I don't know why Obama continued to maintain the movie business at the UN but my thought is it was because it fit his original premise when he came in as president. Somehow facts did not penetrate. Then you've got political consultants like Ben Rhodes actually crafting NSA memos on what would benefit the president instead of the facts and Rice who really was not working in the subject and going out on Sunday morning to basically report what she had been told. You've got the NSA telling our politicians what to say when the NSA should have been warning them about the security situation in Libya in the first place.

Then we have a policy of intervention in Libya, causing the same kind of widespread chaos and partition that we've seen in Iraq, with terrorist militia filling the vacuum, only much faster, without of course losing American lives but then again also not attempting to fix what we had broken, use of Blackwater as private security for a State Dept mission, a CIA annex, gun running to Syria and Libya as part of all this, a concerted refusal as policy to provide military security in the face of a growing threat in which all our allies removed their diplomatic presence, and we have a real failure in American foreign policy of which the attack at the mission was just the denouement. It would be good to have a sober discussion about it but as the Congressional committee just proved and this thread proved that is impossible.

No confirmation bias

Hillary said on 9/12 we KNOW the video has nothing to with the attack

While the attack was still taking place she is saying that it's an Al Quaeda like attack

The people on the ground at the embassy are telling them exactly what was happening

There was zero evidence that it was anything but a coordinated attack, and not some racially stereotyped protest that gets violent because Muslims...

Here's an article about testimony from the CIA Deputy Director clearly explaining that CIA analysts thought the attack was linked to the protest.

So ... unfortunate but not purposely dishonest mistake resulting from confusion in the hours and days after a terrorist attack? Or is it your position that the Obama administration enlisted hundreds of analysts and officials across a number of agencies to launch a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the nature of the attack for purposes of political gain? Gotta be one of the two- unfortunate but honest confusion in the "fog of war" (as literally everyone involved has testified repeatedly) or massive administration conspiracy for purposes of some marginal political gain that continues unabated and leak-free to this day?

 

[Ookie Pringle]

but we need the truth

"We know the video had nothing to do with the attack". HRC 9/12/2012.

She didn't lie; that's what she believed that night, but as she explained yesterday it changed again the next day. If you understand the fact that there were several protests all over the Muslim world involving the video, this is entirely plausible. What's not plausible is this crackpot notion that Clinton would attempt to deliberately deceive the American public about this- why? The four Americans were dead one way or the other. She was always going to have to answer for that.In point of fact the video had a LOT to do with the attack. At least one of the terrorists involved says it was his motivation.

I believe one of the Congressmen read an email from Hillary to her family the night of the attack were she stated it was an Al-Qaeda type of attack. She knew damn well the video had nothing to do with it that night.

No she didn't. It was to Chelsea BTW.

I assume you don't have a problem with her lying to the families of the men killed in that attack when she met them at the plane that delivered their bodies days after the attack.

 

[pantagrapher]

Yeah but she never had Ambassador Stevens over her house for drinks. You can't deny that.

 

[boots11234]

but we need the truth

"We know the video had nothing to do with the attack". HRC 9/12/2012.

She didn't lie; that's what she believed that night, but as she explained yesterday it changed again the next day. If you understand the fact that there were several protests all over the Muslim world involving the video, this is entirely plausible. What's not plausible is this crackpot notion that Clinton would attempt to deliberately deceive the American public about this- why? The four Americans were dead one way or the other. She was always going to have to answer for that. In point of fact the video had a LOT to do with the attack. At least one of the terrorists involved says it was his motivation.

If that is the case then surly you must also believe Bush AND Congress didn't lie about WMD before we attacked Iraq. Am I right?

 

[Chaka]

but we need the truth

"We know the video had nothing to do with the attack". HRC 9/12/2012.

And?

And they told the world another story and apologized for the first amendment.

If the world didn't already know, they have confirmation that the USA is basically full of ####

I think the world knew we were full of #### a looooooooooooooooong time ago. Even before the whole "We know Iraq has WMDs and the 9/11 terrorists are there." fiasco. Remember that one? Ahhhh, good times.

And I am not really sure what your whole first amendment thing is, seems like you keep throwing it against the wall hoping some of it will stick.

 

[Rove!]

BS on Benghazi.

(Loathe to do this but anyway...)

Here are six points of utter B.S. that drive us absolutely head-smacking crazy:

...The anti-Islam video had something to do with the attack. On the day of the attack, one of us (Malcolm Nance) was leaving Abu Dhabi for Benghazi and Tripoli to conduct a security assessment that was canceled as news of massive protests in Cairo culminated with the U.S. Embassy compound being stormed. News networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya showed the Muslim world aflame with disgust over the insulting video Innocence of Muslims. From within the punchbowl, everything around us looked like punch. It was not until much later that we learned the terrorist group used the outrage of the video as a mask to conduct a preplanned attack. That’s the nature of terrorism.

...

There are several different discussions about the attack and they overlap and people get confused.

What actually happened - the US government itself long ago abandoned the notion that the movie had anything whatsoever to do with the attack. It had zero to do with it. The best that can be argued is that Ansar took the moment of chaos in Cairo to launch an attack and provide an additional coup by making it appear that it was the outrage of the movie. If you accept that then we the US gov fell into that in spades as we used our moral authority and influence, even our own president, to talk about the outrage and blasphemy in the movie. I'm never sure why this version is better to believe buy I can believe it. None of it is good.

What the US gov actually believed happened at the time of the attack. - IMO there was just a ton of confirmation bias going on in the US gov. The intelligence and military, CIA/DOD, were reporting it was militia. The media was reporting it was movie related. We know the US gov believed the media reports because they took steps to ask Google to pull the Innocence movie (whole other issue) but they wouldn't have done that if they did not believe that to be true. I don't know why Obama continued to maintain the movie business at the UN but my thought is it was because it fit his original premise when he came in as president. Somehow facts did not penetrate. Then you've got political consultants like Ben Rhodes actually crafting NSA memos on what would benefit the president instead of the facts and Rice who really was not working in the subject and going out on Sunday morning to basically report what she had been told. You've got the NSA telling our politicians what to say when the NSA should have been warning them about the security situation in Libya in the first place.

Then we have a policy of intervention in Libya, causing the same kind of widespread chaos and partition that we've seen in Iraq, with terrorist militia filling the vacuum, only much faster, without of course losing American lives but then again also not attempting to fix what we had broken, use of Blackwater as private security for a State Dept mission, a CIA annex, gun running to Syria and Libya as part of all this, a concerted refusal as policy to provide military security in the face of a growing threat in which all our allies removed their diplomatic presence, and we have a real failure in American foreign policy of which the attack at the mission was just the denouement. It would be good to have a sober discussion about it but as the Congressional committee just proved and this thread proved that is impossible.

No confirmation bias

Hillary said on 9/12 we KNOW the video has nothing to with the attack

While the attack was still taking place she is saying that it's an Al Quaeda like attack

The people on the ground at the embassy are telling them exactly what was happening

There was zero evidence that it was anything but a coordinated attack, and not some racially stereotyped protest that gets violent because Muslims...

Here's an article about testimony from the CIA Deputy Director clearly explaining that CIA analysts thought the attack was linked to the protest.

So ... unfortunate but not purposely dishonest mistake resulting from confusion in the hours and days after a terrorist attack? Or is it your position that the Obama administration enlisted hundreds of analysts and officials across a number of agencies to launch a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the nature of the attack for purposes of political gain? Gotta be one of the two- unfortunate but honest confusion in the "fog of war" (as literally everyone involved has testified repeatedly) or massive administration conspiracy for purposes of some marginal political gain that continues unabated and leak-free to this day?

The same analysts that assured us that Iraq had WMDs? The same analysts that told us that an aspirin factory in Sudan was a joint chemical weapons operation between Osama and Saddam? The same agency that operated secret prisons....yeah, let's trust those guys, they wouldn't make stuff up to cover whatever illegal #### they're into...

 

[pantagrapher]

but we need the truth

"We know the video had nothing to do with the attack". HRC 9/12/2012.

She didn't lie; that's what she believed that night, but as she explained yesterday it changed again the next day. If you understand the fact that there were several protests all over the Muslim world involving the video, this is entirely plausible. What's not plausible is this crackpot notion that Clinton would attempt to deliberately deceive the American public about this- why? The four Americans were dead one way or the other. She was always going to have to answer for that.In point of fact the video had a LOT to do with the attack. At least one of the terrorists involved says it was his motivation.

If that is the case then surly you must also believe Bush AND Congress didn't lie about WMD before we attacked Iraq. Am I right?

Not sure we ever had a proper investigation into that.

 

[JZilla]

BS on Benghazi.

(Loathe to do this but anyway...)

Here are six points of utter B.S. that drive us absolutely head-smacking crazy:

...The anti-Islam video had something to do with the attack. On the day of the attack, one of us (Malcolm Nance) was leaving Abu Dhabi for Benghazi and Tripoli to conduct a security assessment that was canceled as news of massive protests in Cairo culminated with the U.S. Embassy compound being stormed. News networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya showed the Muslim world aflame with disgust over the insulting video Innocence of Muslims. From within the punchbowl, everything around us looked like punch. It was not until much later that we learned the terrorist group used the outrage of the video as a mask to conduct a preplanned attack. That’s the nature of terrorism.

...

There are several different discussions about the attack and they overlap and people get confused.

What actually happened - the US government itself long ago abandoned the notion that the movie had anything whatsoever to do with the attack. It had zero to do with it. The best that can be argued is that Ansar took the moment of chaos in Cairo to launch an attack and provide an additional coup by making it appear that it was the outrage of the movie. If you accept that then we the US gov fell into that in spades as we used our moral authority and influence, even our own president, to talk about the outrage and blasphemy in the movie. I'm never sure why this version is better to believe buy I can believe it. None of it is good.

What the US gov actually believed happened at the time of the attack. - IMO there was just a ton of confirmation bias going on in the US gov. The intelligence and military, CIA/DOD, were reporting it was militia. The media was reporting it was movie related. We know the US gov believed the media reports because they took steps to ask Google to pull the Innocence movie (whole other issue) but they wouldn't have done that if they did not believe that to be true. I don't know why Obama continued to maintain the movie business at the UN but my thought is it was because it fit his original premise when he came in as president. Somehow facts did not penetrate. Then you've got political consultants like Ben Rhodes actually crafting NSA memos on what would benefit the president instead of the facts and Rice who really was not working in the subject and going out on Sunday morning to basically report what she had been told. You've got the NSA telling our politicians what to say when the NSA should have been warning them about the security situation in Libya in the first place.

Then we have a policy of intervention in Libya, causing the same kind of widespread chaos and partition that we've seen in Iraq, with terrorist militia filling the vacuum, only much faster, without of course losing American lives but then again also not attempting to fix what we had broken, use of Blackwater as private security for a State Dept mission, a CIA annex, gun running to Syria and Libya as part of all this, a concerted refusal as policy to provide military security in the face of a growing threat in which all our allies removed their diplomatic presence, and we have a real failure in American foreign policy of which the attack at the mission was just the denouement. It would be good to have a sober discussion about it but as the Congressional committee just proved and this thread proved that is impossible.

No confirmation bias

Hillary said on 9/12 we KNOW the video has nothing to with the attack

While the attack was still taking place she is saying that it's an Al Quaeda like attack

The people on the ground at the embassy are telling them exactly what was happening

There was zero evidence that it was anything but a coordinated attack, and not some racially stereotyped protest that gets violent because Muslims...

Here's an article about testimony from the CIA Deputy Director clearly explaining that CIA analysts thought the attack was linked to the protest.

So ... unfortunate but not purposely dishonest mistake resulting from confusion in the hours and days after a terrorist attack? Or is it your position that the Obama administration enlisted hundreds of analysts and officials across a number of agencies to launch a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the nature of the attack for purposes of political gain? Gotta be one of the two- unfortunate but honest confusion in the "fog of war" (as literally everyone involved has testified repeatedly) or massive administration conspiracy for purposes of some marginal political gain that continues unabated and leak-free to this day?

The same analysts that assured us that Iraq had WMDs? The same analysts that told us that an aspirin factory in Sudan was a joint chemical weapons operation between Osama and Saddam? The same agency that operated secret prisons....yeah, let's trust those guys, they wouldn't make stuff up to cover whatever illegal #### they're into their ineptitude...

FYP

 

[TobiasFunke]

BS on Benghazi.

(Loathe to do this but anyway...)

Here are six points of utter B.S. that drive us absolutely head-smacking crazy:

...The anti-Islam video had something to do with the attack. On the day of the attack, one of us (Malcolm Nance) was leaving Abu Dhabi for Benghazi and Tripoli to conduct a security assessment that was canceled as news of massive protests in Cairo culminated with the U.S. Embassy compound being stormed. News networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya showed the Muslim world aflame with disgust over the insulting video Innocence of Muslims. From within the punchbowl, everything around us looked like punch. It was not until much later that we learned the terrorist group used the outrage of the video as a mask to conduct a preplanned attack. That’s the nature of terrorism.

...

There are several different discussions about the attack and they overlap and people get confused.

What actually happened - the US government itself long ago abandoned the notion that the movie had anything whatsoever to do with the attack. It had zero to do with it. The best that can be argued is that Ansar took the moment of chaos in Cairo to launch an attack and provide an additional coup by making it appear that it was the outrage of the movie. If you accept that then we the US gov fell into that in spades as we used our moral authority and influence, even our own president, to talk about the outrage and blasphemy in the movie. I'm never sure why this version is better to believe buy I can believe it. None of it is good.

What the US gov actually believed happened at the time of the attack. - IMO there was just a ton of confirmation bias going on in the US gov. The intelligence and military, CIA/DOD, were reporting it was militia. The media was reporting it was movie related. We know the US gov believed the media reports because they took steps to ask Google to pull the Innocence movie (whole other issue) but they wouldn't have done that if they did not believe that to be true. I don't know why Obama continued to maintain the movie business at the UN but my thought is it was because it fit his original premise when he came in as president. Somehow facts did not penetrate. Then you've got political consultants like Ben Rhodes actually crafting NSA memos on what would benefit the president instead of the facts and Rice who really was not working in the subject and going out on Sunday morning to basically report what she had been told. You've got the NSA telling our politicians what to say when the NSA should have been warning them about the security situation in Libya in the first place.

Then we have a policy of intervention in Libya, causing the same kind of widespread chaos and partition that we've seen in Iraq, with terrorist militia filling the vacuum, only much faster, without of course losing American lives but then again also not attempting to fix what we had broken, use of Blackwater as private security for a State Dept mission, a CIA annex, gun running to Syria and Libya as part of all this, a concerted refusal as policy to provide military security in the face of a growing threat in which all our allies removed their diplomatic presence, and we have a real failure in American foreign policy of which the attack at the mission was just the denouement. It would be good to have a sober discussion about it but as the Congressional committee just proved and this thread proved that is impossible.

No confirmation bias

Hillary said on 9/12 we KNOW the video has nothing to with the attack

While the attack was still taking place she is saying that it's an Al Quaeda like attack

The people on the ground at the embassy are telling them exactly what was happening

There was zero evidence that it was anything but a coordinated attack, and not some racially stereotyped protest that gets violent because Muslims...

Here's an article about testimony from the CIA Deputy Director clearly explaining that CIA analysts thought the attack was linked to the protest.

So ... unfortunate but not purposely dishonest mistake resulting from confusion in the hours and days after a terrorist attack? Or is it your position that the Obama administration enlisted hundreds of analysts and officials across a number of agencies to launch a deliberate attempt to misrepresent the nature of the attack for purposes of political gain? Gotta be one of the two- unfortunate but honest confusion in the "fog of war" (as literally everyone involved has testified repeatedly) or massive administration conspiracy for purposes of some marginal political gain that continues unabated and leak-free to this day?

The same analysts that assured us that Iraq had WMDs? The same analysts that told us that an aspirin factory in Sudan was a joint chemical weapons operation between Osama and Saddam? The same agency that operated secret prisons....yeah, let's trust those guys, they wouldn't make stuff up to cover whatever illegal #### they're into...

I'm confused. Are you going with unfortunate mistake or deliberate conspiracy theory? You seem to be contradicting yourself here. Sounds like the latter but I'm not totally sure.

You realize that for the latter to be true it wouldn't just be the CIA in on it, right? The State Department and the White House would have to be in on it too. And they would have had to put their heads together and come up with this plan within hours of the attack. And all of them (including lifelong civil servants, some of whom were almost certainly Republicans) would have had to sign on for this conspiracy in order to ... what was the reason for it again? Some vague political gain that would somehow result from describing it as a protest and not a coordinated terrorist attack?

Is that what you think happened? If not please feel free to correct this account.

 

[timschochet]

but we need the truth

"We know the video had nothing to do with the attack". HRC 9/12/2012.

She didn't lie; that's what she believed that night, but as she explained yesterday it changed again the next day. If you understand the fact that there were several protests all over the Muslim world involving the video, this is entirely plausible. What's not plausible is this crackpot notion that Clinton would attempt to deliberately deceive the American public about this- why? The four Americans were dead one way or the other. She was always going to have to answer for that. In point of fact the video had a LOT to do with the attack. At least one of the terrorists involved says it was his motivation.

If that is the case then surly you must also believe Bush AND Congress didn't lie about WMD before we attacked Iraq. Am I right?

You are. I don't think they lied. However, it's very different because it wasn't during the fog of war.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

BS on Benghazi.

(Loathe to do this but anyway...)

Here are six points of utter B.S. that drive us absolutely head-smacking crazy:

...The anti-Islam video had something to do with the attack. On the day of the attack, one of us (Malcolm Nance) was leaving Abu Dhabi for Benghazi and Tripoli to conduct a security assessment that was canceled as news of massive protests in Cairo culminated with the U.S. Embassy compound being stormed. News networks Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya showed the Muslim world aflame with disgust over the insulting video Innocence of Muslims. From within the punchbowl, everything around us looked like punch. It was not until much later that we learned the terrorist group used the outrage of the video as a mask to conduct a preplanned attack. That’s the nature of terrorism.

...

There are several different discussions about the attack and they overlap and people get confused.

What actually happened - the US government itself long ago abandoned the notion that the movie had anything whatsoever to do with the attack. It had zero to do with it. The best that can be argued is that Ansar took the moment of chaos in Cairo to launch an attack and provide an additional coup by making it appear that it was the outrage of the movie. If you accept that then we the US gov fell into that in spades as we used our moral authority and influence, even our own president, to talk about the outrage and blasphemy in the movie. I'm never sure why this version is better to believe buy I can believe it. None of it is good.

What the US gov actually believed happened at the time of the attack. - IMO there was just a ton of confirmation bias going on in the US gov. The intelligence and military, CIA/DOD, were reporting it was militia. The media was reporting it was movie related. We know the US gov believed the media reports because they took steps to ask Google to pull the Innocence movie (whole other issue) but they wouldn't have done that if they did not believe that to be true. I don't know why Obama continued to maintain the movie business at the UN but my thought is it was because it fit his original premise when he came in as president. Somehow facts did not penetrate. Then you've got political consultants like Ben Rhodes actually crafting NSA memos on what would benefit the president instead of the facts and Rice who really was not working in the subject and going out on Sunday morning to basically report what she had been told. You've got the NSA telling our politicians what to say when the NSA should have been warning them about the security situation in Libya in the first place.

Then we have a policy of intervention in Libya, causing the same kind of widespread chaos and partition that we've seen in Iraq, with terrorist militia filling the vacuum, only much faster, without of course losing American lives but then again also not attempting to fix what we had broken, use of Blackwater as private security for a State Dept mission, a CIA annex, gun running to Syria and Libya as part of all this, a concerted refusal as policy to provide military security in the face of a growing threat in which all our allies removed their diplomatic presence, and we have a real failure in American foreign policy of which the attack at the mission was just the denouement. It would be good to have a sober discussion about it but as the Congressional committee just proved and this thread proved that is impossible.

No confirmation bias

Hillary said on 9/12 we KNOW the video has nothing to with the attack

While the attack was still taking place she is saying that it's an Al Quaeda like attack

The people on the ground at the embassy are telling them exactly what was happening

There was zero evidence that it was anything but a coordinated attack, and not some racially stereotyped protest that gets violent because Muslims...

Then why go to google with a takedown request (not a demand, which they could not do)?

I am not sure why the version that the administration actually believed the media reports (which itself was mixed in its reporting, as at one point Hillary says that CNN reported that State had received a cable saying that it was a terrorist/militia attack...) is better for the administration. Yes the intelligence and internal correspondence points to the knowledge that it was terrorist/militia and in retrospect that's clear, established really. But the media was conflating Cairo with Benghazi, and that might very well have been the intent of the attackers. Are you really going to tell me that you don't think that this administration didn't want to believe it was because of the movie and that they were incapable of truly believing it?

You have to come up with something supporting the leap from they knew or should have known it was terrorist/militia to that they deliberately fixed the message to help them in the election. That's the charge that everyone wants to fight over. Hillary produced one email reflecting a joint phone call with the president, it was redacted for executive privilege but it could have said anything. You've got the Rhodes memo, which doesn't appear to be base on intelligence and could also be the NSA covering its own record and manipulating the administration (which again is bad), what else?

If you look at the administration's and Obama's policy going back to 2009 they believed that "smart power" - things like respect for religion and culture, lack of hard military presence abroad, the message and the messenger - all of that falls into their believing that a "soft" issue like outrage over a movie took precedence over traditional "hard" issues like military presence, security, arming guerrillas, national chaos. In retrospect after looking at this stuff so much it would not surprise me in the least that they fell into this no matter how many DOD memos they received telling them the opposite. It's like the Bush administration in reverse.

This also fits with the continual denial of creating any sign of a military presence in Benghazi, they did not want a hard armed US force presence in the city, that never changed even up until the last moment. Even the CIA station chief told his Blackwater men to stand down (which they eventually ignored) and my guess was that wasn't on his own initiative but reflected some order going back well before the attacks.

 

[JZilla]

A little junior college insight into the intelligence situation in the Middle East

We watched Iraq like HAWKS - surely as closely as any other country in the world - for 12-13 years, 1990 until we went in for the supposed WMDs. They really thought that #### was there. Saddam WANTED people to think he had it.. so the Iranians would leave him alone.. but we really should have known the deal at that point anyway.

Par for the course over there really. Why? We kicked the Soviets' butts and a lot of that was through superior intelligence gathering. We were all over it. The difference now, IMO... We don't have the brown people to put on the ground in the ME. The CIA has got pretty much nothin

 

[TPW]

Benghazi Incident Summarized

- Numerous requests for increased security by staff in Libya in 2012 were either ignored or overlooked.

- When the attack and death of the ambassador occurred during the height of the 2012 presidential campaign, a campaign in which the president placed a great deal of emphasis on how the world had become safer under his leadership, the Obama administration and the Department of State were utterly desperate to deflect from the increasing chaos in Libya in the wake of their overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi the preceding year and their amateur hour performance leading up to the incident. Hence, the bald-faced lies offered to the public about the attack being part of a spontaneous protest of a YouTube video.

- Congressional Republicans seized upon the issue but instead of focusing on the technical merits of the case have by and large strung it out and used it as an attempt to politically damage Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. This attempt has been as ineffectual as most other congressional Republican undertakings these days.

- During the course of ongoing investigations it was discovered that the then Secretary of State had maintained a private e-mail server and handled classified materials in a manner not consistent with federal law. This remains the only aspect of the entire affair which retains any potential for negative consequences for Hillary Clinton.

Bottom line: Clinton and Obama are incompetent, rotten liars and the Republicans are useless.

 

[RBM]

Holy #### you nut job Ds are doubling down on the lie.

Making complete fools of yourselves.

 

[TobiasFunke]

Benghazi Incident Summarized

- Numerous requests for increased security by staff in Libya in 2012 were either ignored or overlooked.

- When the attack and death of the ambassador occurred during the height of the 2012 presidential campaign, a campaign in which the president placed a great deal of emphasis on how the world had become safer under his leadership, the Obama administration and the Department of State were utterly desperate to deflect from the increasing chaos in Libya in the wake of their overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi the preceding year and their amateur hour performance leading up to the incident. Hence, the bald-faced lies offered to the public about the attack being part of a spontaneous protest of a YouTube video.

- Congressional Republicans seized upon the issue but instead of focusing on the technical merits of the case have by and large strung it out and used it as an attempt to politically damage Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. This attempt has been as ineffectual as most other congressional Republican undertakings these days.

- During the course of ongoing investigations it was discovered that the then Secretary of State had maintained a private e-mail server and handled classified materials in a manner not consistent with federal law. This remains the only aspect of the entire affair which retains any potential for negative consequences for Hillary Clinton.

Bottom line: Clinton and Obama are incompetent, rotten liars and the Republicans are useless.

And the CIA. Don't forget about them too!

Also the Rand Corporation, in conjunction with the saucer people, under the supervision of the reverse vampires.

 

[timschochet]

Benghazi Incident Summarized

- Numerous requests for increased security by staff in Libya in 2012 were either ignored or overlooked.

- When the attack and death of the ambassador occurred during the height of the 2012 presidential campaign, a campaign in which the president placed a great deal of emphasis on how the world had become safer under his leadership, the Obama administration and the Department of State were utterly desperate to deflect from the increasing chaos in Libya in the wake of their overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi the preceding year and their amateur hour performance leading up to the incident. Hence, the bald-faced lies offered to the public about the attack being part of a spontaneous protest of a YouTube video.

- Congressional Republicans seized upon the issue but instead of focusing on the technical merits of the case have by and large strung it out and used it as an attempt to politically damage Hillary Clinton's presidential bid. This attempt has been as ineffectual as most other congressional Republican undertakings these days.

- During the course of ongoing investigations it was discovered that the then Secretary of State had maintained a private e-mail server and handled classified materials in a manner not consistent with federal law. This remains the only aspect of the entire affair which retains any potential for negative consequences for Hillary Clinton.

Bottom line: Clinton and Obama are incompetent, rotten liars and the Republicans are useless.

Its always fascinating to me how Clinton and Obama get accused of being both incompetent and yet at the same time able to manufacture all sorts of deceptive lies that involve massive cover ups by large parts of the government.

 

[TPW]

I said nothing about a grand cover up. It was as straight forward, simple lie. The YouTube video had absolutely nothing to do with the incident and they damn well knew it.

 

[timschochet]

I said nothing about a grand cover up. It was as straight forward, simple lie. The YouTube video had absolutely nothing to do with the incident and they damn well knew it.

ive always thought so.ETA- you edited it!