Unless they are fighting even bigger enemy like Russia or Syria. Then, US and Al Q are BFF’s.
It’s a side note but it was funny - today, number of Kurds (Turkey, Iraq and Syria) were protesting at Toronto US Embassy (this one is open, BTW) suggesting that Obama should not send money to Al Q in Syria to fight Assad b/c what happens is that Kurds (as always) get the short end of the stick. At one point, radio show host (happens to be a known “liberal” Muslim dude) and a couple of Kurdish protest organizers were in total shock and disbelief repeating throughout the show a phrase “I don’t get it. I just don get it.” - the topic was US policy in Middle East
The point is that on some Iraqi Dope message board, there’s a guy who claims in a conspiracy style that someone knew ahead of time there will be some bombing happening and didn’t share intel.
How could it NOT be retaliation? It’s clearly linked to the accusation that it caused the Benghazi attack. He was prosecuted as a foreign policy publicity stunt based on a lie.
Isn’t it silly to assume anyone had special knowledge of the Benghazi attacks when one year later we close 19 embassies because we have no idea what threat we might face?
I went back and checked the NYT coverage from that day, a year ago. The movie and its protests were all over the ME, the US embassy in Cairo had protesters crawling over the wall and ransacking embassy grounds and then the same thing happened in Benghazi. Everyone thought it was protesters.
If we can’t get any reliable intel now, why would we have had it a year ago in Benghazi? These conspiracy theories about Rice trying to make it look like a protest are transparent as hell. The whole world thought it was a protest because it was a protest. Militants used the protest as cover. We didn’t have intel then and we don’t have intel now beyond, “close the middle east! There might be an attack!”
They knew they fucked it up on day one. There is no rational excuse for sending Rice out in front of cameras with disinformation. They lied plain and simple.
Yes I am sure of it and i don’t think it’s any type of risky bet. But as the USA is willing to bet the lives of its own people by it’s own ‘terror from the skies’ approach across the Muslim world. Create the terrorists with drones and then institute mass surveillance to ‘protect us’ from them. And people fall for this.
Cutting this sort of shit out would do more for saving all those preciosu american lives than my opinions expressed on a message board.
And in more general terms I do not believe the ‘terrorist threat’ comes even vaguely close to justifying the USA, the UK or anyone instituting a mass surveillance State. It’s a tool shaped for the hands of tyranny. It’s absolutely frightening and it is absolutely out of control.
If the price of safety is Big Brother then yes, I’m prepared to accept successful terrorist attacks.
Not that I have seen one single scintilla of proof that the NSA mass surveillance has successfully saved one life.
I’m quite taken aback by the sheer gutlessness of people nowadays - practically insisting on throwing away their privacy, their right not to have their every digital move scrutinised.
I can’t but help think how many more lives would be saved if we had always on video monitoring of our living rooms through the TV.
"As I said before, she made an appearance at the request of the White House in which she gave her best understanding of the intelligence that had been provided to her,"Obama said at the press conference, defending the statements the ambassador to the U.N. made regarding the Benghazi attack.
From CBS:But I have obtained twelve different versions of those talking points that shows that they were dramatically edited by the administration take a look at two of them. On the left a draft initially written by the CIA on the right one it was used by the White House the final version. What was taken out all references to al-Qaeda.
It was a deliberate, calculated lie on the part of the White house and they used Susan Rice to deliver it and then abused the legal system to put a film maker in jail.
When did I claim that anyone had special knowledge of the Benghazi attacks? I’m saying that, because of the Benghazi attacks, the US government is more sensitive to the threats of attacks on embassies, and so the shutting down of the embassies was to prevent something like Benghazi from happening again.
It wasn’t. The drafts show a pissing contest between the FBI and the State Department. The change you’re talking about pretty much changed “militants linked to al-Qaeda” to “militants”.
Here’s the actual e-mails showing the way the talking points developed. It’s not really the way you’re describing it:
But, really, if you read it, this is the standard bureaucratic bullshit that happens whenever you have individuals from different agencies or divisions contributing to a document. You get a watered down version that really doesn’t say much. It’s not partisan politics. It’s bureaucratic politics. If you’ve ever worked in some agency that does stuff interdepartmentally, it should be familiar.
as stated above it was the CIA’s assessment that the WH blew off. Those would be the people on the ground in Libya tasked with dealing with terrorists.
Nice* picture in that article of dead bodies wrapped up for burial the way Islam prescribes (except the faces shouldn’t have been showing). Just one problem. Corpses who have been killed by Sarin generally aren’t nearly that (facially) pretty, and can’t be easily wrapped up that way. I’m skeptical.
