I’m not that much in the loop on political news, as I get so tired of the yelling and the one-sided opinions.
However, I’m hoping this is more a discussion of fact.
Did the Obama administration know there was an attack planned on the embassy?
Is the consensus that the actual attack part, not the protest part, was planned? 3. Does the administration appear to have been lying from the beginning about the attack being spontaneous?
What is this controversy about whether Obama called it a “terrorist” attack right away? Why am I supposed to care?
“Lying from the beginning” - no. The administration took a cautious tone early on, using the words “acts of terror” but not specifically labeling the attack an “act of terror” or specifically blaming it on a [non-existent] protest. The “protest” linkage came later, in the ceremony upon the arrival of the coffins in the US, in Susan Rice’s media blitz and elsewhere.
Can’t help you on this one. It’s crystal clear that there is either cover-up or gross incompetence in the post-event narrative (most likely: cover-up of gross incompetence). But I don’t have any idea why Romney or others are caught up in the declaration of the event as “terrorist.”
In terms of electoral politics, Romney had perhaps three or four strong lines of attack that he could have used on the incident. None especially fair, in my view, but all available. He biffed across the board, though. The “act of terror” gambit was brilliant by Obama and his team, first in his original speech and then in the debate prep.
Disagree. It is not crystal clear that there was (or is) any sort of a cover up. The administration did not fly off the handle in the first 24 hours and declare war on somebody. This seems to have pissed off the Republicans. They were looking for a scandal, even if they (or FoxNews) had to manufacture one.
Because that’s all he had. This whole “coverup” meme came about after Romney screwed up by trying to politicise the the attack before the bodies were cold. They tried this “coverup spin”, and found a willing ally in their information arm, Fox News.
That’s pretty much it. A manufactured outrage by the propaganda arm of the Republican Party, because it is an election year.
What I understand is that the attack was in conjunction with / used as cover / exploited existing protests caused by the video.
That the situation is complicated by the consulate also being a CIA post - so information that is released is deliberatly vague and they don’t want to go into details.
That there was no specific credible threats prior to the attacks.
The controversy, over calling it a “terrorist attack” seems to be the distinction between calling it “an act of terror” and calling it an organised and planned attack by a recognised terrorist organisation.
Don’t get me wrong: bad things happen even to good Presidents, and the Benghazi tragedy is, in my view, one of those bad things that every President must/will face.
But there are at least two cover-ups going on somewhere in the chain of command.
Cover-up one: Tha absence of assistance. The attack raged for seven hours. Washington had eyes on the scene (via drone) for a material part of it, and was in radio contact with US personnel for almost all of it. Some reports (and basic common sense) say that the personnel under seige requested support. Yet no help was sent. Who made that decision and why?
Cover-up two: The make-believe story. There was no protest. That was known in real time (via drone video and radio contact), and it was known after the fact when the survivors reported in. Protest = complete fiction. It’s also nonsensical - in the history of modern protests, how many have involved RPGs? Yet “protest” somehow made it into an intelligence briefing and through multiple levels of review, even when the reviewing personnel knew or should have known better, and from there into the administration’s second/third set of talking points. How did that happen?
Right now, both cover-ups are, in my view, related to gross incompetence in rendering assistance and in filtering intelligence. Both cover-ups likely are sitting somewhere well below Obama, probably either at CIA (for #1) or the State Department Intelligence Service (for #2). And every President has a good intentions/bad result event on their watch, whether in Beruit or Mogadishu or the port of Aden or the shores of the Gulf of Sidra.
Now, it happens that this particular event has both a direct connection to Obama’s foreign policy (sow the wind in Tripoli, reap the whirlwind in Benghazi) and to high levels of the chain of command. But not wanting to play politics with the event - and we shouldn’t - doesn’t make the incompetence or cover-up, somewhere in the government, any easier to stomach.
If it is about Benghazi specifically, it is a simple question of fact. There were witnesses, there is (classified) video, there even have been public interviews. There was no protest, just like the Tigers didn’t win the World Series.
As for whether a protest-turns-attack is realistic: sure, it is possible to imagine such a scenario. It is just not one that has any precedent. Protest mobs, however agitated, don’t get hijacked to launch sophisticated military attacks.
this is the first i have heard of this complaint. all others refer to Stevens’ memos requesting 2-3 more bodies for security for something like a year leading up to this attack. there is a mixture of prevailing reports, both in hard-form (memos) and anecdotal (from people who knew Stevens on both side of the fence, american and libyans).
on the one hand, he did say he needed another few guys. on the other hand, he wanted Libyans to have unrestricted access to him, as he wanted to be “a man of the people.” at any rate, it becomes convoluted. for one, he wanted more marines–2 or 3 more. this amount would not have protected anyone from RPG explosions. secondly, he wasn’t the only person denied a few extra personnel.
if what you are saying is true–that a battle waged for some amount of time, that the US was aware of it for any substantial portion and at that point denied re-enforcements–that’s not a cover up. that’s dereliction of duty on a gross scale. so if you can substantiate it with something like cites, memos, some kind of hard proof, that’d help. bolding: **the only article citing “cia sources on the ground claim obama denied back-up during the attack” are from FOXNews and are treated as the bullshit it is. needs to be from a credible source of actual news, not a corporation who sued for the right to lie and report it as news. **
*actually i just took some time to suss that out myself. every. single. article. is on a right-wing propaganda site. not one single credible, real news agency picked this little juicy story up. even fox news did their bullshitty move where they posed it with a ? at the end.
all i could find is him abstaining from answering “pending investigation” as to “get the facts right about what went wrong.”
so i’m fairly certain there’s no substantiated proof they had drones in the air and eyes on the ground while the attack was going on and denied any back-up. thisreeks of bullshit…
again, you’re saying stuff as hard-factual, but you’re not parsing this correctly.
there were protest–all across the middle east. ALL OVER. embassies were attacked in multiple nations. some were burned, many were looted–the mobs were angry and violent. In some cases, they broke into/destroyed/looted embassies of nations not even involved in the film.
in Libya, according to eye witnesses, the militant group planned on using this chaos as obfuscation and devised a strike, decided to seal off streets with their trucks (to prevent anyone from coming in near the consulate), getting their ***150 ***terrorist troops in position, and then, and i quote, "
^sounds a little like they were citing the video in their attack.
there’s more:
according this article, from the start the administration said they believed it was planned attack, “targeting americans,” and that “they might have used the video/protest as diversion.” thisone corroborates that time-line. from everything i can source, obama both called it how it really was and did so from the start. the only wrench in all that is S
the point that really needs to be made is that there were violent protests in many, many place, all targeting the US embassies. and 3 more marines wouldn’t have stopped an attack by 150 armed militants left over from the civil war, looking for fights.
sorry, i got side-tracked and missed the edit window “the only wrench in all that is what the press secretary/media reports emphasize; if the militants staged their own “fake” protest to obfuscate their attack (as witnesses claim,) then i can see the confusion in the language. it was both a terrorist attack, preplanned and a protest.”
being a sensitive and complicated issue, i can imagine withholding some of the details until it was more substantiated.
I’m interested to know if anyone has the straight dope on this particular point. Several of my right-wing friends on Facebook have worked themselves into a lather over a “timeline” of the attack that shows Obama refusing to send reinforcements. They’re also talking about General Carter Ham being relieved of command for trying to send help to the consulate. What are these claims based on?
You’ll have to provide cites for this claim. Seven hours? Really? For a what was essentially a house with an easily breached wall around it? What reports? “Basic common sense” translates to unsubstantiated bullshit. If assistance was requested, it would have been from local government forces. Any assistance from any American source would have been too late to save them. It’s over 400 miles from Tripoli to Benghazi as the crow flies. By the crappy roads in Libya, it would likely take more than a day to get there. Closest boots on the ground troops would likely have had to come from Italy or Germany. An air strike would have killed everybody in the area, including Americans and friendlies. The only “cover-up” involved here is in the minds of those eager to criticize a situation they don’t understand.
From what I can tell these claims are based on unnamed sources, leaks, and conjecture. I have not seen a single named source that substantiates any of that. I’d love to see one if they exist.
I will jump in here with an additional requests for cites. I had not heard that a drone was on site in Benghazi for a “material part” of the 7 hours.
I will also need a cite for the personnel under siege requesting support. Credible cites please, not just “basic common sense”
Finally, just what support could have been sent in a timely fashion that could have prevented a small group of militants with RPG’s from overrunning a small house/compound?
It’s nothing but the right trying to gain political traction on an event that was tragic and basically unpreventable without a platoon of Marines being on hand. The ambassador chose to visit this facility without security escort. It happens ALL THE TIME. Unfortunately, this time it resulted in his death. Embassies in Africa are largely vulnerable, and I speak from personal experience. While there are well-meaning directives in place that require embassies and consulates to have certain security measures in place, such as setback from roads, thick concrete walls and blast-resistant windows, it’s an unfunded mandate and compliance is rare in the third world. This ambassador was savvy and experienced and knew the risk of traveling “up-country” in a place where terrorist cells are known to exist. I’m sure he made many such trips in the past without serious incident. He may also have been discouraged by Washington not to do so, but many ambassadors reject that sort of advice as too limiting for their missions.
