Awwww. Politics just ain’t fair, is it, babycakes?
ETA: Clarified, nevermind. 
I think the main problem with your argument is that we hear conservatives repeating what you typed here on every single issue, from a terrorist attack in Libya to Obama’s NCAA picks. “UConn in the Final Four? Come on, Mr. President! Do you really expect the American people are so dumb to swallow your dishonesty?”
The Libyan claim is that they told US officials a few days before the attack that they had concerns about some of the militias and extremist groups in the area. Not “Hey, we have a hot tip that on 9/11, the consulate will be attacked”.
Libyan security officers were the front guards at the consulate (the building wasn’t intended as a permanent diplomatic outpost, it was a temporary place we moved into during the revolution and thus wasn’t set up or built like a “real” consulate). If the Libyan government knew that the consulate was on the verge of attack, they personally handled it very poorly. In reality, neither side likely had actionable intelligence of an attack there and then.
Whenever I read something like this, a question that pops to mind is: Is the Obama Administration more or less truthful than the Cheney-Rove Administration?
Will you answer that, Starving Artist ?
Objection, Your Honor.
Fox’s online news site, while admittedly with a somewhat right wing slant, is a pretty straightforward news site and nothing like the Fox News cable program. You can check it out for yourself at foxnews.com. For the record I can’t stand Fox’s news and commentary shows/personalities and don’t watch any of them.
Assuming you haven’t drunk the “Bush Lied” Kool-Aid regarding Iraq, which would require you to believe that Bush alone amongst all the world’s intelligence services and heads of state, knew Hussein didn’t have WMD and deliberately lied about it in order to get us into war there, then yes, I would say that the Obama administration is definitely less honest than the Bush administration. And I say that as a person who originally believed that despite his politics Obama would turn out to be a pretty stand up guy. Still, he’s nowhere near Clinton-esque in his dishonesty, and I find him far less objectionable than either Clinton as a result.
Looking at the opinion page is hilarious. Yes, there is perhaps a hint of a right-wing slant… let’s see if anyone can identify the bias:
So, believing that the Bush administration intentionally misled the public on WMDs in Iraq is drinking the Kool Aid. Not buying into an ill-sourced and poorly described story coming out less than a week after recent events is being a dupe of the Obama administration.
By the way, I recently heard that the Iraqis weren’t ordering aluminum tubes at all. They had put in a massive order for paper towel tubes. Apparently they were undertaking a huge study on anatomy and physiology, and they needed paper towel tubes for some reason.
CNN:
**Swing state poll: Romney favors rich
Borger: What’s wrong with Romney
Opinion: Mitt not better off as Latino
Obama 50%-Romney 45% in new poll
Letterman gets Obama’s take**
Carter grandson: 'Poetic justice’
Ticker: Ryan says words 'inarticulate’
Opinion: It’s Not Over For Romney - Yes, the candidate’s remarks were politically inept, but Tim Stanley says the race remains close…
**A newly revealed, centuries-old papyrus fragment **suggests that some early Christians might have believed Jesus was married.
Not seein’ a whole lot of difference in bias there between Fox’s online news service and that of CNN…apart from the fact that 99% of the nation’s mainstream media shares CNN’s bias.
Furthermore, I didn’t say that Fox’s online news site was free of bias; I said it was a reliable reporter of news and that it had little in common with the bombast and factual inaccuracies of Fox News’ television programming. As with the MSM, Fox News online’s bias is evident mainly in which stories it chooses to cover. Which is good, because otherwise most people would hear nary a discouraging word when it comes to Obama.
As I said already - you might have noticed had you been paying attention - I don’t have a problem with the Obama administration not knowing what really happened. What I have a problem with is that it continues to try to hold on to a scenario that increasingly appears false, and which happens to protect Obama from suffering the effects of continuing al Qaeda assaults and American intelligence failure in the face of the upcoming election.
I think it’s interesting to note that despite having much, much more evidence than Joe Paterno had, and knowing full well what other horrific crimes Sandusky was guilty of, the Sandusky jury still arrived at the same conclusion I did, namely that the evidence did not support a conclusion of rape in the shower room incident. You might recall the shower room rape charge was one of only three charges that Sandusky was acquitted of. Had the hysterical nitwits in the Paterno thread perhaps been more willing to look at the evidence as calmly and objectively as the Sandusky jury evidently did, it would not have been necessary to hit them over the head with a paper towel tube to get the point across.
I like turtles.
Unless of course the electorate doesn’t blame Obama for the state of the economy today. Have you seen Congress’ approval rating? It’s around 12%. Could it be that people blame them instead? Anyway, sorry for the hijack.
What makes it increasingly appear false? Only unsubstantiated statements have been made regarding whether or not the attack was pre-planned or if we had any specific warnings about the possibility of one. If there had been a piece of substantiated evidence here, and another one there, and then some more the next day, you might have a point. But this is not the case. The fact is as of now, no one knows exactly what happened in this incident. Now, for all I know, the attacks were week or months in the making and you are exactly correct in your assumptions. But that is all they are for now. Assumptions.
The fact that the administration continues to cling to the position that the attack was spontaneous despite increasing evidence that it was a planned terrorist attack is what makes it appear increasingly false to me. Curiously enough, in this article Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center stated during a Senate hearing that the attack was a “terrorist attack”, which counters administration claims that an inflamatory film sparked the attack, yet he goes on to assert that the administration still has no evidence that the attack was not spontaneous. (So it was apparently a spur-of-the-moment terrorist attack which also just happened to occur on the anniversary of 9/11.)
This is what I mean about the administration backpedaling as evidence comes out but continuing to cling to the claim that the attack was spontaneous.
Further evidence of an organized attack lies in the fact that John Stevens had only recently arrived at the consulate from his usual travels and the embassy where he normally stayed, and that sophisticated weaponry, relatively difficult to obtain on the spur of the moment such as RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and automatic weapons were used in the attack.
Other claims are being made based upon unnamed sources - which seem to count for nothing if coming from Fox, but are often regarded as standard journalistic practice for CNN, the NYT, etc. - that a former Guantanamo prisoner named Sufyan Ben Qumu was involved and possibly even led the attack, and that Ben Qumu has known affiliations with al Qaeda. And again, we have the fact that the attack occurred on the anniversary of 9/11.
I suppose that above all what makes me suspicious of administration motives is the fact that seems to be just sitting back and not really trying to get to the bottom of what happened. Most of the investigation seems to be being done by Libya and/or news organizations while the administration just sits back trying to maintain plausible deniability as to the nature of the attack, who was responsible, and the U.S.’ role in failing to discover, prevent or defend against it.
So to wrap up, the administration’s position in the wake of the attack on the consulate just doesn’t pass the smell test. It reminds me of how Dopers often talk about science vs. the religious: i.e., the more facts that come out, the more it becomes necessary for devotees of the various religions to dance on the head of a pin trying to maintain their claims. It seems that each new piece of factual information that comes out chips away that much more at the story the administration is trying to maintain, forcing it into ever more convoluted attempts to make its story fit the facts.
Or so it appears to me anyway.
Why would they plan to attack some consulate in Benghazi and not the embassy in Tripoli?
How did they plan to murder Stevens when Stevens himself did not know he was going to be there?
And do you seriously imagine that automatic weapons and RPG’s are difficult to find in Libya? They just had a rather intense little civil war, and the armories were looted. You could probably buy a fully automatic military weapon easier in Tripoli than in New York!
A situation of riotous protest was a bloody opportunity, the kind that doesn’t knock that often. It gave cover with the crowds, making it harder to specify targets. It offered a plausible propaganda position: a popular uprising. It was a consulate, not as thoroughly protected as an embassy, a relatively soft target. It’s not like it takes split second timing to storm and destroy a lightly defended building when you have the shit.
Hell, did they even know Stevens was there? Who’s to say they didn’t just look at it and say “Sure, its just a chickenshit little consular office, but its a freebie, we fire some guns, steal some shit, blow up the shit we don’t steal, look like real terrorist badasses, and everybody goes home because there isn’t anybody to stop us!”
But isn’t it true that you actually have no idea what kind of investigation the administration is conducting? It’s not like they’re going to broadcast hourly updates. This kind of “reasoning” is always dangerous. “It seems this” or “I have a hunch that”. It’s not proof of anything, is it?
Oh yeah, I knew there was a pathetic attempt to gin up some nonsensical smear of Obama that I had forgotten about. So add this to the list - conspiracy on embassy attacks, doesn’t know the size of the debt, said he likes redistribution, said Washington has to be changed from the outside…
Instead of desperately trying to find a lie that people will buy, maybe you should think more broadly. Try to find a convincing truth to develop a meaningful agenda around. I think we’ve come to the point that having a party platform based on Fox News chyrons with question marks at the end isn’t going to work anymore. I know, call me a cockeyed optimist!
Twice in the past few minutes, I’ve seen throwaway commentary from conservatives (when talking about another issue) mentioning a “cover-up in Libya.”
Obviously, this is a meme Obama’s opponents online are pushing, but will it get any traction? I can’t imagine at the moment that Romney himself will go there, considering his press conference right after the incident, but there are plenty of surrogates and SuperPACs who can - but will they, in any official way?