No, government should not work on releasing the names of the ones in Libya helping the CIA. AFAIK,** the New York times never revealed that specific information**, and that was one of the big reasons why many have condemned what the Republicans did with that release of data.
I’ve labeled the event incompetence from the first. How can anyone think otherwise? Anyway, I’ve not backtracked. Here is an excerpt from my first post in the thread - #3:
As for the video, you say:
This is wrong. We were not told that the embassy was attacked by the video. We were told that there were two groups, one gathering for a peaceful protest and a second group or groups (“individual clusters”) of “extremists” who “hijacked” the peaceful assembly:
That’s Susan Rice, in one of her five TV appearances on September 16, and it is wrong in almost all particulars. There was no demonstration, and there were not “individual clusters of extremists”; there was a company-sized, coordinated, mixed-arms multi-prong surprise assault. Moreover, nothing was “hijacked”; the attack was the plan from the first.
No. The US diplomatic mission was under full-scale, coordinated military assault from jihadis. The grievance cited by the attackers after the fact has, at most, passing relevance to the appropriate US response in protecting American interests and lives. The “protest” lines were trotted out to dampen charges that the attack was premeditated (which it plainly was) and the response feeble (ditto).
Why is that an affirmation of something that was found later called “charges”?
Incidentally Susan Rice has pointed out that she based those early say so’s on what the intelligence community told her then, she has acknowledged that later information, I’m beginning to think that we have here just another problem with problems with the right acknowledging the march of time or timelines.
But that’s not what the linked pieces say. The individuals in documents cited are listed as talking to State, not the CIA. Further, it is in the first instance the responsibility of the agency or department that is delivering documents to Congress to be sure that the documents are appropriately designated (classifed, SBU, top secret, etc.), properly redacted and properly explained to the Committee.
If there is an indication that Issa or Chaffetz or whomever acted contrary to a document’s appropriate designation, I agree - string 'em up (metaphorically). But someone needs to actually cite something that says that happened.
That would not had been a problem, if the documents had not been released after it was supposed to have been seen just by the representatives.
Once again, you are missing the biggest irresponsibility, I do not think the secret organizations expected congresscritters to **dump **all the information given to them.
It is clear that there was a cock-up of the highest order and that the cock-up (or cock-ups) ended in tragedy.
It also is clear that in the eight weeks since the attack, State, DoD and CIA have each selectively distributed documents and memes that point, sometimes subtly, to one of the other two entities as responsible for the cock-up. And we agree, I think, that the place to start the inquiry is the CIA’s September 15 talking points that were prepared in advance of Ambassador Rice’s media blitz.
Documents that are “supposed to have been seen just by the representatives” are so indicated in their designation. I’ve flipped through the documents at the link - most are reports of local security activity. And every one that I saw was marked as SBU. Some - appropriately - had redactions.
Not clear why you bring this up, are we to deduce that then there is even more reasons why it was unjustified to make that dump with no thought on the designations? Still, releasing names is something that I do not see as “needed” in a case like this one. Otherwise then we should had seen names with those NYT reports.
Just because you can it does not mean that you should. And we are talking about organizations that were incompetent in some areas, that does not justify even more incompetency from the politicians, specially that after Plame one just does not need more reminders of who are the groups that like to spill identities for political gain.
There is one thing that I’m curious though, besides ignoring common sense on that dump of data, IIUC there is a usually a difference with “sensitive” and “non-sensitive, for public release”, were the documents marked as in the latest?
“We were not told that the embassy was attacked by the video.”
People don’t seem to be getting the very basic point that…IT WAS NOT THE EMBASSY.
When people are operating in or visiting a building for CIA operatives who are assisting in civil war like activities in a fragmented and dangerous third world country things can go wrong very quickly.
I don’t see what is shocking about this and why Fox News is making this into something it isn’t.
True enough. There are three different locations being discussed: (1) the embassy in Tripoli (not under attack), (2) the flagged US consulate in Benghazi (attacked, burned, two US fatalities), (3) the unmarked “CIA annex.”
Eh, we are talking about an armed assault on a flagged diplomatic mission and the murder of the ambassador. That’s . . . rare.
Now, there is lots of speculation about why Stevens happened to be in Benghazi, meeting Turkish diplomats, that evening - and a lot of it is directly related to “civil war like activities.” But that’s speculation, and it is not clear why it would lead to less security, rather than more.
Lots of baseless speculation that is. It is more likely that Stevens was more keen to be among the people of Libya than just staying under a security apparatus that would keep him away from the Libyans.
Up-thread, I queried where the AC-130s that were on-station in Libya in April were in theater on September 11. Today, the DoD allowed the NYT to report that there were no AC-130s on station - and, in fact, that there were literally no available assets anywhere in the Mediterranean in a position to respond to an incident in Libya or elsewhere in the Arab Spring countries on that day.
So, the DoD now has given three different stories for its non-response:
It’s an interesting game of inter-agency musical chairs.
As for the latest, how is it possible that the US failed to position assets in a manner that they could be deployed to the Arab Spring nations?
How was it that there were no assets in place on September 11, of all days?
And especially, even if poor planning left all assets elsewhere in the world on the morning of September 11, why was there no heightened alert after the US embassy in Cairo was breached, and the US flag removed, hours before anything happened in Benghazi? Shouldn’t that have at least led to the positioning of a team in-theater, in case the protest in Cairo was “hijacked”?