Binders full of women may just drown out 47%, at least until the next awesome remark.
Apparently the Romney supports’ only remaining interest in this thread is to copy/paste this malarkey every couple hours. Who’s up next?
It’s weird that conservatism has become this.
Hopefully this argument will spill from the Internet into more mainstream media. I would love the American people to see the silly arguments about “acts of terror” meaning something other than acts of terror.
Please, everyone who believes Obama did not call the attack an act of terror, contact as many newspeople as you know and make sure this becomes a major discussion in America.
Literally lol. Snerk.
OMG, how precious! You think that Obama is such a mastermind he was able to bait a “word is” snare and then back Romney into it by carefully crafting his speech the day after the event, then spending 10 or 12 days not declaring the attack a “deliberate and planned terrorist attack without any connection to the film that happened to be spawning riots in the region”, until finally the debate comes along, Romney has a good response on the Libyan assault, then Obama is able to drop his trap with the sneak line. Right. If Obama really is this crafty, then he really does deserve to be the next President.
Obama has been accused by Republicans of not calling it a terrorist attack. The topic came up at the debate, and he quoted his own statement from the day after the event where he did characterize the attack as a terrorist act - whether or not it was spontaneous or planned out for months was not known and was the point that Obama and the State Department were being careful to announce prior to complete investigation. It’s Romney’s gaffe to be too excited over supposedly catching Obama in a lie that he didn’t pay close enough attention to the wording. Romney could have sideswiped the whole trap by simply replying to Obama’s “I said it was a terrorist act”: “Wait, if you called it a terrorist act on Sept 12 in the Rose Garden, then why have you and your administration been so coy about calling it a terrorist attack since? You’ve had numerous opportunities and have sidestepped them all.” He could have then slipped in whatever jab about the administrations supposed mishandling he wanted to make. Instead, he got caught up on the wording. His smug attitude is what fried him.
Correct, there was no riot occuring in Benghazi on September 11. There was rioting occurring in Egypt and in Tripoli, and further riots in other places in the middle east, caused by the video. And the people who perpetrated the attack themselves stated to the Libyan press that they were motivated by the video. How spontaneous was the attack? It appears, after investigation, that there was an effort by some to stir up anti US sentiment and expel the consulate, but the trigger event that gave them the impetus to act was the video.
So, calling it a “riot gone bad” is perhaps misleading, but denying the role the video played in spurring the attack is also inaccurate. In other words - “It’s complicated”, which is what the State Department said.
Just so nobody forgets: The moderator’s ‘fact check’ was wrong. Romney said that Obama never called it an ‘act of terror’ in the Rose Garden speech. Obama said he did, and Crowley interceded to say the President was correct.
But if you look at the transcript, this is what Obama said about Benghazi:
That’s what he said specific to Benghazi. At no point did he call it an act of terror.
Then, three paragraphs later, he says this:
“Acts of Terror” here is used in the generic sense. Now, I will grant that you could include Benghazi in his list of ‘acts of terror’, and that would be a reasonable assumption to make, except that after this speech the Obama administration did everything it could to suggest that it wasn’t a terrorist attack. Five days after the attack, the administration sent Susan Rice out to do the Sunday talk show circuit to tell the media and the public that it was not a terrorist attack, but rather a spontaneous outburst. When asked specifically if it was a terrorist attack on The View, he refused to do so, saying “we’re still investigating”. This was a long, long time after the administration, the State Department, and the intelligence agencies all knew that in fact it was a terrorist attack.
So at best, the difference between Romney’s statement and Obama/Crowley’s explanation is a legitimate difference in interpretation. And I think Romney is more correct here simply because the behavior of the administration subsequent to that speech validates what he said.
Also, from what I understand calling something an ‘act of terror’ is a very explicit thing that actually has ramifications. I believe the FBI was sent over instead of involving military intelligence precisely because it wasn’t officially declared an ‘act of terror’. So what Obama may have been doing in the Rose Garden speech was parsing his words very carefully so that he didn’t have to explicitly call it an ‘act of terror’, thereby triggering a specific form of response.
I’m not sure “killers” is that much kinder of a word than “terrorist.” And, it’s quite possible to be both. In fact, you can simultaneously be part of an “angry mob upset over a video,” a “killer” and a “terrorist.” I’m just very thankful Obama is POTUS right now, so we don’t invade somewhere totally unrelated in response to this attack.
Obama has pledge to bring the “killers” and/or “terrorists” to justice. That’s good enough for me.
Personally, I don’t think Libya was a “terrorist attack”. I think it was a few yahoos who got riled up and got motivated in the moment.
If this was a terrorist attack, I would think it would involve an organization who coordinated the whole thing. Instigate the Egyptian riots as cover for the Libyan operation. But that doesn’t make any sense from the goals of a terrorist organization. Why make it look like some random rioting? That would take away from the terror aspect of the attack.
I suspect it was some yahoos in Libya. I was reminded how Americans responded after the Iranian hostage crisis and 9/11. Some American yahoos attacked citizens from those countries and vandalized their businesses and mosques. Were those Americans acting as terrorists? Or were they fearful xenophobes who were taking it out on a goddamn furriner? The Libyan incident seems more like a few dufuses with rocket launchers than a coordinated terror attack.
This seems like something you just made up because it seems truthy and supports your argument. The FBI investigates overseas terrorism all the time. It’s one of their principal overseas duties. Do you have any basis for your belief?
I was somewhat heartened to only see magellan01 et al. make this argument. Now that Sam has joined in, I’m just depressed.
The same damn paragraph that starts with “No acts of terror” ends with “this terrible act”. It would be bad speechifying indeed if Obama didn’t intend for the latter to be part of the former.
Swift Boat Veterans for Syntax.
The Republican Benghazi argument is essentially an argument that this was a preventable attack that we should have known about with good intelligence and Obama dropped the ball so 4 people died.
Some Republicans are holding congressional hearings on why there weren’t more security forces at the Banghazi consulate when they asked for more security. Well, there are two problems with Republicans asking that question. A) we have limited resources and Republican gave the state department $300 million less than they asked for so teir resources were less than they thought they needed so they had to prioritize. B) it was hit by a rocket propelled grenade, I’m not sure what a few more security folks were going to be able to do against this sort of an attack, and we can’t have a company of marines at every consulate and embassy full time.
So while the government is trying to figure out whether the bad guys involved in the attack were connected to other bad guys we know, while we try to figure out wtf is going on. Noone seems to be claiming credit for the attack, the people we think were responsible are denying they had anythign to do with it, the testimony of locals are not consistent and the facts seem to evolve so quickly that what seemed true yesterday might not seem true today.
Meanwhile, there is an election going on and the president is fucking unimpeachable on foreign policy and Republicans would REALLLY love this to be an achilles heal in his foreign policy cred. Romney doesn’t seem to have very much in that regard.
Bolding mine:
The anniversary of 9/11? On 9/12? Dafuq, Debaser?
Do you sincerely not know how dumb you sound, or are you genuinely proud of this argument?
[Obama says the words “acts of terror”]
So Obama and Crowley were correct in that Obama actually said the words “acts of terror” the day after the Benghazi attack in a speech addressing the benghazi attack, a point that Romney wanted to get VERY VERY specific about BUT you don’t think he continued to TREAT it like a terrorist attack so he must have meant someother acts besides the act that occurred the previous day? Seriously? Thats your argument?
Its not possible that they were reluctant to jump to conclusions when the information coming in was conflicting and confusing?
All of this “Acts of Terror” talk is just the GOP’s strategy of keeping us all talking about anything but how badly Romney got his ass handed to him in the debate, hoping that Obama will really fuck something up before anyone figures out what they’re up to.
It’s like the old saying, if you can’t dazzle them with brilliance - baffle them with bullshit.
As has been asked in another thread… why, exactly, is it a big deal if Obama said the magic words or not?
The right does not like things to be conflicting and confusing. They want things to be simple and clear cut.
Therefore, anyone who treats international incidents like they are complex MUST be wrong, because those on the right want simple solutions to simple problems.
Isn’t that simple?
So, Sam, the President deliberately avoided specifically referring to the attack as an act of terror and then the very next day in Colorado he refers to it as an act of terror? Or is there some other tortured reading that makes that not count either?
Also, have you contacted any media establishments? I sincerely want this to become part of the national discussion about the election.
And yet I continue to disagree with you! How frustrating.
I’ve laid out my argument, you’ve laid our yours. I don’t think we’re going to disagree and I’m at peace with that. I do find it amusing how annoyed many on the left get when conservatives stubbornly refuse to agree with them.
I just read it again. There were 13 paragraphs in Obama’s remarks. He mentions “act or terror” only once, immediately after talking about 9/11. I admit that a favorable interpretation can be made to have him referring to the attacks, but it’s certainly not clear. In fact it’s deliberately vague.
When you look at the overall pattern of the white house blaming the video and denying that it even was a terror attack for over a week the meaning is clear.
Here are all the references he made to the terror attack in Benghazi from the beginning of the speech on:
“outrageous and shocking attack”
“the killers who attacked our people”
“unequivocally reject these brutal acts”
“this attack will not break the bonds”
“fought back against the attackers”
That’s all in the first seven paragraphs. Every time he specifically avoids calling it a terror attack or the those involved terrorists. The word terror never appears up to this point. In the next paragraph, number 8, he mentions the anniversary of 9/11. Only then does he make the one mention of “acts or terror”. Then he goes back to calling those involved “attackers” as he closes out the remarks.
It’s obvious to any fair minded reading. He was bending over backwards to NOT call them terrorists or a terror attack.
I’d guess the one reference slipped in there because it would have been so notable had he never used the word at all. So they put it in referring to 9/11 in a deliberately vague way. They don’t want another “workplace shooting” gaffe that happened with the Fort Hood terror attack.
I realize this is hyper semantics at this point, but I type this out in the hopes that you would be open minded enough to understand that people disagree with you in good faith.
Not a lot of difference between them.