This is actually all part of the Democrats’ strategy. This controversy will simmer somewhat, and the Republicans will refine and hone their weapons to use against her, and when Iowa rolls around, she will look at them and say, “What? You thought I was going to run?” And there they will be with trailerloads of razor sharp weapons that will be useless because they would only work on Hillary.
The Democrats (meaning the party) have essentially no say in who runs. It’s up to the individual candidates. Maybe she’s faking people out, but I think it’s more likely she’s taking a break and will decide over the next year or so if she wants to run again.
Polls go in IMHO; in Elections (or GD) we expect you to state a reason.
Because.
Sorry if I’m being dense. I’m not sure how that responds to what I said. Your link says that Amb. Stevens set his own travel plans. It does not say that he set his own security detail. Am I missing some sort of link?
You haven’t heard me comment on that because, as I’ve said repeatedly, I’m reserving judgment on the whether the White House lied. I don’t think we know enough yet to tell. (I do, however, think we know enough to decide whether the Obama admin didn’t provide adequate security, since the Obama admin has conceded that they did not.)
As for the idea that “the email that blew the GOP up was a lie that the GOP itself told,” that’s – at the very least – premature, and definitely inaccurate. The original “lie” was apparently based on unnamed source(s) statements, which were reported in, among other places, ABC News. Unless you’re contending that the reporter’s source(s) is a GOP member – which you cannot know – or that ABC News is a GOP member – which would be absurd – then it’s inaccurate to suggest that this entire story is based on a GOP lie.
Apparently, in order to rebut reporting on the string of emails, someone (probably the White House) released part of one email string. They did not release the entire email string. Jake Tapper – the reporter to whom the partial email string was leaked – seems to think the verdict is still out on whether it actually undercuts the story, and has asked the White House to release all of the emails. Even David Axelrod thinks the White House should release all of the emails. And naturally, the two reporters – one from the Weekly Standard, and one from ABC – have stood by their initial stories, and argued that the partial email doesn’t contradict or undercut their reporting. (cite and cite)
Fortunately, the White House today released about 100 pages of Benghazi emails. I have no idea if that’s a full release of all emails, or another partial release. I hope it’s full, and we’ll be able to get somewhere with it.
No, you didn’t. But feel free to continue to wave your arms to distract from your prior posts. I’m done with this silliness.
This scandal is over.
Obama released all the emails today.
ABC stirred the whole thing up by taking a staffer from Daryl Issa’s Office who misquoted one of the key emails.
Your nit-picking over the difference in context between the use of the word ‘attacks’ and ‘demonstrations’ as those words were used with the adjective ‘spontaneous’ only shows how weak this ‘scandal’ really was.
Your claim that something I linked to is “implying” that the State Dept. was responsible for the change from ‘attacks’ to ‘demonstrations’ is something we see a lot of from these trumped up scandal enthusiasts. That is the use of the word ‘implying’.
I do not know who wrote the early revised version that contained the word ‘demonstrations’ but it was not Victoria Nuland nor was it anyone in the White House or higher up at the State Department.
The CIA saw it as both a spontaneous attack that started with a protest or with a demonstration or a crowd of people gathered before an attack. That was their first analysis.
That change in wording from attack to demonstrations was not Victoria Nuland’s request. It was made before it got to her.
The Republican witch hunt got all energized by the false AP Jonathon Karl report last Friday by linking Nuland to Hillary Clinton.
As it turns out what Nuland was concerned about - the naming of Ansar al Islam was also a concern of the CIA…
There is a statement in there aside from Nuland’s that they should not mention specific groups or names since it could compromise the ongoing investigation.
And there is a remark from the intelligence community that they had no actionable intel on the 15th of September that they could identify any group or individual as responsible for the attack.
And Obama called it an ‘act of terror’ on September 12… so this whole thing has been bogus from the very start.
Why would Obama conspire to hide the possibility of terrorists being behind it by ‘blaming it on a movie’ and then call it an act of terror in the Rose Garden?
You’ve been done for days, you just didn’t know it.
Bullshit. Oakminster didn’t state a reason for his opinion. Why the one-defense of what is your garden variety thread-shit by Oak? He’s starting to get into one(ish)-trick-pony territory with the drive-bys to slam Hillary.
I wanted to know what you thought would be a lie, since you are of the opinion that there is great potential for a lie to be there.
But here’s what comes close:
I see no citing of a specific lie in Xema’s commentary. There is talk about ‘falsehood’ but nothing we could call a ‘lie’ by anyone under attack.
**
IF one doesn’t know whether anyone lied… one should not accuse people of lying.
So, Age Quod Agis, what is the potential lie that you have in mind, so I can knock it down for you?
Do you think Petraeus testified after he resigned last November by not telling the truth to Congress to protect the Obama Administration.
You believe distinguishing between what did happen (an attack) and what did not (a demonstration) is nit-picking?
So when the Atlantic Wire says “That outline was then reviewed by the State Department, and went through a number of iterations before being distributed …” you believe it’s somehow incorrect to say they are implying that the State Department made changes?
But the CIA’s initial draft makes no reference to a demonstration in Benghazi - only to an attack.
Clearly if there was no demonstration, then instead of a “attack by terrorists” it was, in reality, a “terrorist attack”! And people are asking a lot of questions about that!
Re/A No the point is that in the final version the attack was called an assault. The attack was not minimized… in fact an assault leaves a stronger impression that the attack used heavy weapons and was deliberate.
You see it would have been redundant and incorrect to use attacks and assault together… The assault was not necessarily inspired by the movie.
Re/B What matters is not even scandal monger Daryl Issa has suggested that Victoria Nuland struck the word ‘attack’ and inserted ‘demonstrations’. Now that the emails are out, Issa could certainly get that bit of news out there.
It looks like to me there were two originals started at near the same time.
The timing of the emails show that Nuland received the version that had ‘demonstrations’ already in it.
Your dream for a scandal has gone up in released emails.
The first version was probably changed by the drafters when they realized that it did not make sense to tell Congress that the ‘attacks’ evolved into a ‘direct assault’…
Petraeus testified that there was a spontaneous element to the attack which is what the Intel Community originally thought. And that the protest evolved into an attack..
So no lie or distortion there.
And Obama called it an act of terror on September 12.
Remember when Romney was stunned in the second debate to learn that?
The second bullet in the original draft and all subsequent drafts describe a “crowd” comprised of …
Remember this was a work in progress and ‘talking points’ for the House of Reps.
If you wish to savage the White House as committing what Cheney calls the biggest scandal of his lifetime are you ready to stake that claim on the difference between ‘crowd’ and ‘demonstration’?
Did they? Here are all the emails released by the White House. The attacks began on Sept 11 and went into the early morning on Sept 12 (Middle East time). But the emails start on Sept 14 (DC time). I guess it’s possible that there were no emails on the issue for 2-3 days, but I’m not sure that would make sense.
Again, I have the strange sensation that I’m being trolled. You managed to quote Xema’s post, and you even bolded and underlined certain parts. But you somehow avoided the parts that specifically addressed the alleged lies. Odd.
This is what kills me. I’ve been carefully trying to avoid saying that the Obama admin lied. In the post you (selectively) quoted, you even quoted me saying this:
And yet you take a post where I argue that excusing a lie simply because it comes from the Obama admin is not a good idea, and you somehow concoct an interpretation that I’ve accused the Obama admin of lying.
I’m sure you think the scandal is over. But if it’s all the same to you, I’m not going to take your word for it, since you seem to have misinterpreted several fairly straightforward posts. I’ll go ahead and reserve judgment until the facts are in.
My comment was a direct response to your statement about “nit-picking over the difference in context between the use of the word ‘attacks’ and ‘demonstrations’ …”. How is a new statement about an attack vs. an assault relevant to this?
The CIA evidently does not agree - they did exactly this in the first item of the first draft of the talking points (which you have quoted in one of your posts).
There’s no evidence of anything that happened in Benghazi being inspired by the movie, nor of anyone present there believing or claiming it did. Thus the desire to determine why and how the movie became central to the explanations used by Obama, Hillary and Rice.
This sort of inquiry is normal when folks with access to the truth spin a false (and plausibly self-serving) tale - and it’s how the word “lie” comes to be part of the discussion.
You did not respond “in context” of all that was written by me or the CIA/originator of the talking points. The CIA started the talking points with words like spontaneous and ‘a crowd’ and that fact destroys your entire argument. Your GOP investigators saw the emails and went on to deceive the public about what was in them.
Anyway, this is what I wrote and your major response is a complaint about me, not a refutation of my facts.