No more of that, please- this isn’t the Pit.
Apologies.
Oh, yay! I love to play.
That story broke approximately 21 hours ago, or about 7 PM EST. I posted at 4:01 AM EST the following day. By my completely non-expert calculations, that’s about nine hours-- plenty of time to acknowledge a whopper of a revelation given the propensity of some to be right on top of every little thing said and done by Republicans/Romney. Rest assured, if the above mentioned information came out in regards to some Republican, I’d have seen it continually referenced from the moment the story broke.
(BTW> The story appeared on HuffingtonPost, so I find it hard to believe that you didn’t hear about it at all. Then again, since most major liberal news cites ignored it and still haven’t acknowledged it, I can sorta’ believe it. But moving on…)
Short on facts, huh? Interesting. If you know that it’s 9/11 and you’ve received credible information that American embassies are being targetted by terrorist organizations, then it’s grossly negligent to do nothing in preparation for it. Just because I want to laugh at the eventual double standard you’re going to throw at in the way we process potentially damning information, what kind of information are you waiting for?
The White House denies it according to Reuters:
WHITE HOUSE SAYS THERE WAS NO “ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE” IN ADVANCE ABOUT ATTACK ON U.S. CONSULATE IN LIBYA
Gov Romney in his haste to get out front without the facts managed to step on the Prez’s toes and put his foot in his mouth. It was political and self-serving. It was viscerally bad on 9/11 no less. Today I watched the “dignified transfer” ceremony with a heavy heart. It was a “rookie” misstep and should have been admitted. And now a few Republicans are piling on to defend it! Peggy Noonan, former Reagan staffer said about the Gov. at the press conference afterwards said “He looked like Nixon”. I am liable to remember this. Channeling Reagan, he was Not.
Do you expect them NOT to deny it (whether it’s true or not)?
Look, there was definitely no “ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE” in advance about 9/11 either. Didn’t stop Democrats from excoriating the Bush administration about it for what - 11 years now?
Of course they’re going to deny it. Do you think they’d come out and say, “Yeah, it’s true. So what?” or something to that effect?
Anyway, here is an article from the BBC.
Emphasis mine. I’d like to see the spin on this one.
Exactly! Whether it’s true or not, they’re lying.
If true, then the Regional Security Officer fucked up big-time. So what?
Nice try. You can’t hang that on the Dems. Bush and the boys will have to stew in it and his Mission Accomplished in perpetuity.
Nice try. You can’t hang that on the Dems. Bush and the boys will have to stew in it and his Mission Accomplished in perpetuity.
but in case you’re wondering
And if Carney closes his eyes, ears and hums loudly, it will help as well.
“Carney said the cause of attack on Benghazi Consulate is under investigation, but so far there is no concrete evidence other than that it was in protest against the video.”
Yup. Because the protestors in Arab countries routinely bring heavy weapons and RPGs to protests. And of course the 9/11 date has no significance whatsoever. It’s just a coincidence.
Its amazing how Republicans always want to connect the dots between violence in the Middle East of a fledgling democracy with the terrorist attack 911. But unlike souless Romney, when 911 occurred both sides of the aisle came together and gave the President respect when dealing with this tragedy. Not only that, the country had the good will of the world until Bush squandered it. Everyone was an American on 911.
As Huntsman said on CNN tonight, this is a generational change for the Middle East, so there’s bound to be tensions in the region. The Libyan citizens distance themselves from the thugs in the streets. It’s definitely not another 911
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0913/breaking5.html
Look in the mirror dude. It just doesn’t look good for Romney that he jumped out so far ahead of the facts. He had no way of knowing it was a tragedy when he first made his statements but he did know (or SHOULD have known) that the consulate comment he was criticizing came out BEFORE the aqttack on the consulate not as a RESULT of the attacks on the consulte.
It is telling that one of his most competent surrogates Rob Portman didn’t know this fact.
Obama knew where Osama bin laden was before the 2010 election, he chose to hold off and kill ObL in the beginning of 2011 when it would have the least political impact for him (he could have done it before the 2010 election and staved off the crushing defeat in the house (which may have even let them maintain the majority, remember how many districts won by very thin margins) and so many state houses. Or he could have sat on ObL until after the Republican primary and just run away with the election. Why didn’t he do that?
If he kills peopel with drones, he is going to make sure he kills the right people. His track record on foreign policy and national security has earned him the benefit of the doubt on all these fronts.
If he knew about terrrorist camps, he would have taken them out already. he’s not saving a bunch for a rainy day.
He is turning Vriginia from a toos up state into a lean Obama state. On the other hand, he is probably going to hurt the Democrats downticket because turnout will be a bit higher for disaffected Republican leaning voters. Very good news for Obama, slightly bad news for Tim Kaine.
He has polled as high as 9% but thats probably an outlier. He had been more realistically polling at about 4%. If Goode takes away even 2% of the vote from Romney, Virginia goes from a toos up state to a lean Obama state. Virginia Republicans have spent so much time and effort denouncing Goode as a spoiler that his support is dropping to 1 or 2%.
He has international credibility (at least among our allies), so if he drone attacks someone, the presumption is going to be that he killed people that needed killing.
And this is a critical point. He didn’t wait to see what Obama would say, he jumped on something a career foreign services bureaucrat said, pretended the comments were made after the attacks and attacked those words as if THAT was Obama’s reaction to the attacks.
Even then it doesn’t work very well. You can’t attack someone for something they haven’t said yet. Attributing the words of a consulate in Egypt as if they were uttered by Obama is fucking silly.
For all his flaws, he has some serious foreign policy chops. He knows how much of a fuck-up this was on Romney’s part.
(emphasis added)
As you yourself noted (see bolded portions of first quote), “knows” is a continuum of certainty, not a binary value. In this case, the obvious terrorist planning in the main assault (as opposed to the angry-mob diversion) greatly increases the confidence that the targets that look like terrorist camps and smell like terrorist camps are, in fact, terrorist camps.
He knew someone was dead.
Nobody knew for certain where bin Laden was in October 2010. Even at the time of the raid, it was not 100% sure. Obama could have tried the raid before the 2010 election, but it would have given the Seals less time to prepare for and rehearse the raid. The political considerations did not and should not have entered into the equation. Actually, if the raid had taken place in October 2010 and had failed, it would have made the midterm losses even worse.
You’re right but my point is that he isn’t going to bomb a bunch of people to try and score political points.
I don’t think we had much more certitude in 2011 than we did in 2010 but I could be wrong. And frankly the seals are trained to go on these sort of missions on VERY short notice. Its what they do. But Obama wanted to virtually eliminate the chances of any casualties so they created a mock up and practiced doing what they are already very very good at doing.