I dunno about the “cue balls” thing. I can almost imagine Biden saying something like that, or at least Jason Sudeikis’s caricature of Joe Biden on SNL. But here’s a taste of the impartiality in the linked story:
I see it as a total mountain out of a mole hill (at least re: the “cover-up” and “not calling it a terrorist attack” angle). It was early days, things were chaotic, they didn’t know what was going on, and they were trying to get info. together and have something to tell the public. If this had been some police investigation here in a US city, the cops would have simply told the press, “It’s too early to say; we’ll make a statement once we’ve done a full investigation.” But you can’t do that for something of this scale; you have to start talking, using your preliminary information. It got clarified later. Big deal.
Now, if they want to have a genuine complaint, I think one would be about whether security at the facility was up to snuff, especially considering the still-chaotic state of affairs in Libya. That’s a perfectly valid point, and our security protocols for this sort of thing need to be reviewed. If someone who was in charge of managing that security screwed up, then there should be consequences. Not unlike how we did a massive review of security procedures after 9/11. (Although, strangely, no one ever lost their job from those security/intel failures.)
The fact that this is the worst the GOP can come up with speaks to what a great job Obama is doing.
He didn’t properly attribute the motives of some murderers soon enough after the murder happened. That’s what they have? Really?
There are so many conflicting stories over this, and the administration has put out such a confusing message about it, that it’s really hard to figure out what to think.
One story out today is that the security agents at the annex near the consulate heard the gunfire from the consulate and phoned in a request to their superiors to go to the aid of those under attack. They were told to ‘stand down’. They went anyway, and rescued the survivors and brought back the body of one of the casualties to the annex.
According to this eyewitness, ex-Navy Seal Tyrone Woods, a security team had a visual on the mortar site attacking them, and had it designated by laser. They called for an AC130 gunship to take out the mortar position, and the request was refused. Eventually, the mortar fire killed two more Americans.
CIA Operators were denied request for help during Benghazi attack, sources say
Now, this kind of crap happens during conflicts. Stories of HQ not getting the ‘big picture’ and sitting on their hands while people died are as old as warfare. I believe it happened in Afghanistan during the Bush administration at least once. So that doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s something here that’s worth prosecuting.
However… As more information comes out about just how much information was flying around that night, it becomes harder to believe the administration’s claim that they honestly believed it was part of a riot and a spontaneous attack. The State Department watched events unfold in real time. The CIA was being given situation reports during the whole thing. Mortar teams are generally not part of spontaneous riots. Apparently there were also surveillance drones over the location and they provided real-time information back to the CIA.
However, Jake Tapper has reported that General Petraeus, head of the CIA, said today: "“No one at any level in CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are inaccurate.” This would seem to indicate that the agent who claimed that his requests for help were denied was not telling the truth. Or that the information about the request never made it high enough for Petraeus to be aware of it. Or, it could indicate that the request wasn’t made to the CIA, but perhaps to the State Department, and the refusal came from them.
Also, CNN is reporting that E-mails were sent to the White House and the State Department notifying them of the attack while it was happening. The link above shows photos of those E-mails, which also say that a terrorist group had claimed credit for the attack. So the White House knew about the attack, knew it wasn’t a riot, and knew that a terrorist organization had claimed credit for it the same night that it happened, yet continued to push the ‘Hate video sparked a mob’ storyline for nine more days until so much information had leaked out that they were forced to backtrack.
Of course, we all know that if this had happened during the Bush administration, this board would be lit up like a Christmas Tree with threads about it.
One disturbing but unrelated piece of information mentioned in the article: The collapse of the Libyan government has resulted in as many as 20,000 SA-7 MANPADS going missing. These are shoulder-fired weapons that can bring down a commercial aircraft. That’s what the CIA operators were doing in Libya - trying to find these things.
I remember the outrage on this board when news came out that weapons caches had not been secured in Iraq. This seems to be a much bigger deal: If even 1% of those missiles fall into terrorist hands, they could quite literally shut down commercial aviation all over the world. There is no amount of TSA security that will be able to stop someone from firing a missile at a jet a mile away from an airport. Can you imagine the panic if two or three commercial jets are brought down with missiles on the same day? And then if commercial flying starts again, another jet or two comes down shortly thereafter? It’ll cripple passenger aviation.
This is an SA-7 in Libya: [url=http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R2wtJSDHzf0/TiEzH2AmUjI/AAAAAAAAWdU/fv6W19vLyx4/s1600/sa7.jpg They look pretty easy to smuggle, if you ask me. This is something we should really be worried about.
As yet another low for the loathsome, despicable right wing nuts, which, due to the influence and echo chamber of Fox News and right wing talk shows, is becoming an increasingly large part of the Republican party.
There is nothing to see here folks. Even if the worst of what the morons are accusing Obama of is true, I don’t care. It’s such an insignificant little piece of shit news that we should not be spending one more second talking about it.
If a Republican President had lied about such an attack and attributed to some video, instead of immediately calling it a terrorist attack, the knuckle draggers and mouthbreathers from the Right would have no problem with it, and would likely make up a story that “He didn’t immediately call it a terrorist attack due to some security issues that we are not privy to. He did it for our own good. USA! USA! USA!”
I simply cannot express how much I loathe the part of the Republican party which peddles these shit fake outrages. Fuck off to all these miserable human beings.
Thank goodness that the Administration chooses to wait until they know the facts rather than publish the name of any group that claims responsibility. That would be really stupid.
This is NOTHING like Watergate. The suggestion that it is in no way shows a sustainable analogy.
And so far, Obama doesn’t seem to have done anything wrong concerning the assasinations. I surely wish that Congress had supported more money for security for our embassies, but even Congress couldn’t have known. It does make Ryan look a little foolish to have voted down funds for more security.
I do tire of anyone who claim to be able to read other people’s every motive. You can guess, but you can’t know.
Just tune in to Fox News. They’ll simplify everything and tell you what to to think.
Is there any equivalence between the situation in Iraq (where we had an army) and Libya (where we presumably have a handful of CIA agents)?
Can I ask the opposite question here? How do conservatives see this? If I understand correctly the conservative theory is the Obama administration knew in advance that there was going to be a terrorist attack against the Benghazi embassy and decided to let it happen. Can some conservative explain why they would do that?
That is disturbing.
How does that have anything to do with this situation? We did not invade Libya with thousands of ground troops. We contributed advisors and air power.
Just because some shit goes south somewhere in the world, it doesn’t mean we could have prevented it. Likewise, if Pakistan’s nukes suddenly go missing, we can hardly be blamed, despite the fact that we have an ongoing (rocky) military involvement in that country.
I think the conservative view is that (a) terrorists attacked the consulate (b) the Obama administration knew this as soon as it started happening (c) they instead blamed the violence on a spontaneous protest spurred on by the dumb video on Youtube (d) for the reason of … ??? (I never got that part of their story.)
Basically, they seem pissed that several different reads of the situation were told to the public, and therefore, the administration MUST be covering something up…
Modern conservatives don’t bother with reasons or logical arguments. They just point and scream. Obama… Libya… Didn’t say terrorist… coverup… Marxism…
It’s a position grounded in the lower gut, not the brain.
I don’t know what the ‘conservatives’ are saying, but for me, it’s just weakens the perception that Libya is was a success and our job there is over. Nutjob video = not US fault. US being attacked just for the sake of being the US = Libya still in volatile transition with lots of violence - which isn’t news (consulate already attacked once before, British attacked, Red Cross attacked), but it never rose to general public knowledge until an American Ambassador was killed.
And yet the next day there was a huge demonstration in Benghazi in favor of the US, and the crowd actually raided the Ansar al-Shariah compound (unarmed in the face of gunfire from inside) and set it on fire. Now, I wonder…was this ever actually reported in the mainstream media in the US? I don’t remember seeing or hearing it outside of the blogosphere…wonder why?
It was a week or so later (the storming of the militia compound), and I don’t remember it being reported on big networks, but I did read about it soon after it happened. Surely it was at some time.
(Googles). Fox, BBC, CBS, Yahoo all reported when it happened. Here’s the Fox link.
Regardless, I’d still agree your point remains about lack of reporting. I don’t know why it’s not reported more because it seems like a good story. The Libyan ‘people’ want those militias to integrate into the Libyan Gov’t, but the militia’s have resisted and attacked Western diplomats and organizations because they don’t want a pro-West Government. The masses fought back. It culminated on Sep 11 with the attack on the consulate and annex and the later storming of the militia compound on Sep 21.
Obviously the situation is being politicized for votes on Fox News.
I can sum up what I think about conservative outrage over what happened in Benghazi in two words:
Crocodile tears.
None of these people really care about the victims. If they weren’t just partisan hypocrites trying to score political points, then they’d be calling it an intelligence failure along the lines of the 1983 Beirut Embassy Bombing that killed 63 people, including 17 Americans.
But Reagan is a hero to GOP supporters, so they’d never make that comparison.
3000 Americans were killed on US soil during Bush’s watch, and he attacked a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 in response. Result: over 4000 US military deaths, and around 100,000 Iraqi deaths. Most Republicans had no problem with that.
4 Americans are killed in Libya during Obama’s watch, and it’s a big deal that the Obama administration didn’t immediately jump to conclusions about who was responsible? Give me a break.
It is simply just pure manufactured outrage from the Right.
Even if that were true, so what? What difference does it make?
The most plausible explanations for a cover-up depends on what you think actually happened in Benghazi.
If it turns out that requests for more security and/or help during the actual attack were turned down by anyone close to Obama, the rationale for a cover-up is clear.
A cover-up could also be the result of internal fighting between government departments seeking to pass blame.
The most likely reason for cover-up, if indeed one exists at all, is simply that Obama has been selling the narrative that under his watch al-Qaida has been ‘on the run’. With bin Laden dead and drone strikes having crippled the organization, Obama has made America safer and has made great strides towards winning the ‘war on terror’. That’s a significant electoral ‘win’ for Obama, as it totally eliminates one of the Republican’s standard talking points against Democrats - that they are weak on defense.
But if al-Qaida or an affiliated group managed to kill a U.S. ambassador and sack a consulate, that calls the whole narrative into question, or at least opens up the war on terror as a campaign issue for Republicans. In addition, the Obama administration supported the Libyan revolution, and if al-Qaida is now running rampant in Libya, that casts doubt on that enterprise as well. At least as a campaign issue.
The timing of the attack, coming right before an election, was very unfortunate. You can see how Obama’s campaign advisers might have suggested not exactly a cover-up, but a plausible alternative scenario intended to merely delay the truth for a few weeks until it wouldn’t matter in the election.
I’m not saying that happened, but you wanted to know what the right thinks the motivation for a cover-up might be, so there you go.
By the way, aren’t any of you civil libertarians on the left at all bothered that a filmmaker was hauled out of his home at night and is being held in jail with his first court date scheduled for several days after the election? Yes, I know he was technically in violation of his probation, but it seems to me pretty likely that the probation thing was used to enable the highly-publicized arrest.
People aren’t generally hauled out of their homes by a large group of officers, with media present, for a probation violation.
Personally speaking, the guys a douche who violated his probation, and generally acted like a dick. He’ll get a trial. He isn’t being held in a torture dungeon or something. I’m ok with it.