I wouldn’t attribute the administrations’ spin to anything particularly nefarious. If it was calculated at all, and not just a sign of communication confusion and incompetence, then my guess is that they just didn’t want to make terrorism a campaign issue.
The Obama administration has been pretty good on terror. They did get bin Laden, and the drone strikes have exacted a pretty heavy toll on various terror organization leaderships from what I can understand. So going into an election season the administration was probably pretty happy that terrorism/defense was an issue they could either ignore, or even turn into an advantage.
Along comes a terror attack in the late days of the campaign, and the thinking may have been, “Oh, crap! Now we’re going to be on the defensive about this right through the election. Can we plausibly spin this as a riot gone militant, at least until the election is over?”
That’s probably as deep as it went. They were just trying to run out the clock on the election before opening the whole can of worms regarding what they knew about imminent threats in Benghazi, whether there had been requests for more security that were ignored, yada yada. Think of it as the Obama administration’s version of Romney’s tax returns: Even if there’s nothing to see there, and no wrong was done, do you really want to spend the last month of the election having every detail nit-picked and being on the defensive the whole time?
There may have been an "oh, shit!’ moment as well if someone realized that a request for more security had already been made and turned down. In addition, that consulate was attacked twice recently, and in hindsight those sure look like probing attacks and a good reason to beef up security. Or at least, they could be spun that way by Republicans during an election season. So the administration probably just tried to punt the debate forward a month or two, if the ‘cover-up’ was intentional at all.
Alas, I believe that’s what most of it is about. Obama is not only black, he’s biracial, which is a million times worse. When I observe my friends who are rabidly anti-Obama, it sickens me that I see racism at the bottom of it all.
I agree that I think this is exactly why the administration was trying to spin the Libya consulate attack as being just a spontaneous riot sparked by a youtube video like that of Egypt.
If the administration admitted that the consulate attack was a planned terrorist attack, that would have given Republicans more material to run with.
However, that’s not a good enough excuse. Having the administration not only imply that the Benghazi attack was because of a video, but actually say it was a direct result of the youtube video and deceiving the American people is wrong.
The motivation shifts with the latest question asked (much like the current GOP candidate). In the GOP’s explanations, the adminitration alternates between being incompetent, then appeasing the arab world and attacking free speech in the US, then hiding the facts to avoid embarassing Obama with an attack “on his watch”, then scheming to trap Romney with ambiguous language (was it an “act of terror” or “acts of terror”?).
This is the problem with the GOP messaging this election; it’s inconsistent and obviously tailored to the latest development (again, much like the candidate himself). To the Dem’s credit, they have been able to filter nearly every Republican position through a consistent prism of their presidential candidate: He’s the guy on the Monopoly box, friend of the obscenely wealthy, disconnected from the lives of the average voter, and willing to say anything in order to be president.
Exactly right CJJ*. There’s a drift of pasta and similar stuff about four feet high at the base of the wall at this point. When all you do is throw things at the wall to see if it sticks, you just end up with an unpleasant foul smelling mess
This seems to be the most recent talking point put out by Fox News. The image they paint is one of Obama kicked back and relaxed while watching the fire fight unfold from cameras on a drone. How could he just sit there and do nothing to help.
The Wall Street Journal published a timeline of the events on Sept. 21. The first shots were filed around 9:30. By 11:00 Stevens lay dying. Around 1:00 AM U.S. security reinforcements from Tripoli arrive and shortly thereafter fighting renews and continued until about 4:00 AM. So from the first shots to the time Stevens was basically dead was about an hour and a half. I’m not sure what Obama could have done in that time. It took security forces about three and a half hours to get from Tripoli. That sound like a pretty fast response to me.
So given the timeline and the distances involved, please tell us what exactly Obama could have done.