Adaher, the poor guy, is desperate for SDMB legitimacy. He obviously likes the Dope, and is rather hurt by all the criticism he gets. But rather than take it onboard, look inward, and fix himself, he thinks maybe we’re just all wrong, and we’ll “accept” him if he proves it. And he’s failing at that, of course.
Kind of sad.
Oh, all right: adaher, we accept you! One of us! Gooble gobble, gooble gobble!
Well, you’re toggling between two different things here. Between what Rice is responsible for, and what the administration is responsible for. I don’t blame Rice that much. It’s likely that she was only given information that pointed to what she relayed that Sunday, or they flat at told her (regardless of the facts we know), THIS is what we need you to do on Sunday. So, there are some unknowns surrounding her. On the other hand, the administration put forth a narrative that was simply not true and it appears they knew it. Hell, they knew it. They just wanted to put forth a narrative that gave the administration the most cover. I think that was a really dumb idea, and even if it didn’t come back to bite them in the ass, really would not have been a much better scenario.
This is not at all clear… basically, nothing points to this, and a lot points to the “they weren’t sure” idea. Sounds like Republican pipe dreams. Why choose malice when minor incompetence in the initial PR fits the facts so much better?
Terr couldn’t explain this and I don’t see where you have either. What “cover”? How was the narrative the administration allegedly created “cover” for what really happened? How did it benefit them?
Not only that, but the bomb-throwers seem to have absolutely no real world crisis experience. In general, no matter the situation and intelligence before hand, mass confusion is pretty much the rule in the early stages of the aftermath of any sort of military or terrorist attack. It really does take time to find out exactly what happened, in pretty much all cases, even when an attack happens in the US.
I blame Tom Clancy.
Well, let’s ask him about—oh, wait! :eek:
If it was a giant spontaneous mob that gathered in response to the video, as Rice claimed, there’s only so much one could have reasonably done to foresee that and the stop them.
If it was a planned and coordinated attack by a group that had already attacked the Red Cross and the British, that falls more into the category of something they should have forseen and taken measures to stop. Don’t you think?
“Our protocols.are.designed for defense against a planned attack. This is obviously spontaneous. We have no idea what to do!!!”
Their lack of preparation and limited resources are good questions to be asking, period. Whether they used thr word “terrorism” in a timely fashion. Is freedom-fries thinking.
Personally, no. If someone is actually planning an attack, they’ll let as few people as possible know about it. If you’re trying to stage a demonstration (even a spontaneous one) you’d want to get the word out; get as many people as possible to make the biggest impact. Unless you think all those angry people just happened to come together at the same time.
So in that sense, yes, a demonstration (even a “mob”) announces itself more clearly that a coordinated attack would.
A coordinated attack might be attempt to be kept clandestine, but that’s the world out intelligence community lives in. And it wasn’t all that secret. The attackers had announced they were going to attack the Red Cross, the British and the Americans. After they checked the first two off their list, hmmm, who might be next on the list of who gets attacked?
A mob might make itself known moments before the formation, or maybe not. But even if you have the general notion that people are forming a mob, upset over some dumb video, I don’t think you’d immediately assume that 1) it will be a large crowd and 2) their is extreme violence and murder afoot.
So, the mob scenario gives the administration more cover. It’s a defense of surprise versus incompetence.
Criticism of their preparation for defense must recognize that Benghazi was not the only threatened target in the world.
Also, as far as I know, this idea that Benghazi was the obvious next item on an announced checklist comes from the guy in the 60 Minutes piece who apparently was not even actually in Benghazi as he claims. I find this particular assertion (the serial checklist claim) to be dubious.
Since the beginning of the Arab Spring there have been lots of demonstrations and mobs in that part of the world. Some have turned violent. That is also the world our intelligence community lives in.
I mean, I guess there’s a tiny bit of sense to what you’re saying, in a very limited way. But it seems like a comically trivial issue to go into coverup-land for. If there’s one lesson that has become very obvious in the past few decades of politics, it’s that it’s not the scandal that gets ya, it’s the coverup. Which isn’t to say that no one would ever attempt a coverup, but attempting one to cover up such a minor bit of the offense just seems peculiar.
It’s not like they could (or did) cover up that people had died on their watch. So there was already this big black mark for the Obama administration. So you think that they’d go into lie-about-things-and-hope-we-don’t-get-caught mode not to hide the black mark, but to make it a very very slightly less black mark?
Does that really seem more plausible than that there was just honest confusion and miscommunication in the immediate aftermath of a crisis?
Damn Reds got him too! 
So your theory is that the Administration prepared inaccurate talking points to “provide cover” to themselves, am I getting this right?
How does that square with the fact that House Republicans were the ones who originally asked for the talking points to be drafted?
I mean, if I just really screwed something up and wanted some “cover” for my error, I wouldn’t wait three days for my political opponents to ask for talking points, only to have it take a day and a half to get the “cover” story straight.
I know nobody could ever see this coming after adaher posts about something, but 60 Minutes is starting to walk away from the story in question. Specifically,
ETA: Yet another example of the liberal media lying to us.
I understand this *60 Minutes *representative will be giving a statement shortly.
Holy crap, adaher’s wrongness aura has developed the ability to affect off-board events to perpetuate itself!
And this isn’t an isolated incident. In summer in the Elections forum, adaher mentioned how Virginia voters wouldn’t go for a sleaze like Terry McAuliffe, but would prefer socially conservative but clean politicians like Ken Cuccinelli and Governor Bob McDonnell. Within a week, a scandal broke over McDonnell (and to a lesser extent Cuccinelli) accepting ‘gifts’ from Star Scientific executives.
Now, if only we can figure out how to harness this power for good…