With trepidation, Benghazi

[Debaser]

@Donald_Rump

Debaser, can you summarize the current state of our knowledge on the extent of planning that went into the attack?

I’ll repost what I posted in the old thread back in Oct about a month after the attack:

@Debaser

Boston Globe Today

During a congressional hearing last week, State Department officials said there was no video protest in Benghazi.

While Obama did call the attack an act of terror almost right away, for days afterward his administration also provided an account of events in Benghazi that proved false.

Lindsey Graham on the 15th of this month

Graham, a Seneca Republican who is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that there never was a riot at the embassy, the attack lasted six hours or more, and the administration knew all of that within 24 hours.

“But the administration officials and Obama himself kept talking about an attack inspired by a video,” Graham said.

Romney, during the debate said it.

And there was no demonstration involved. It was a terrorist attack and it took a long time for that to be told to the American people.

Obama didn’t challenge this. It’s not in dispute, except I guess to those of you who don’t know.

So back then it was clear to a lot of people a month after the event that there was no demonstration. Romney knew it at the debate and said so. I’m not sure why people now a year later still don’t know this. I blame polarization of the media. If you only get your news from left wing sources you probably never heard the truth.

Because as far as I’ve seen, we *still *don’t know anything about it being planned (much less, on 9/16/12), except insofar as an attack by “heavily armed extremists” may ipso facto reflect a degree of planning–in which case the attack being “planned” was implicit in Susan Rice’s calling it an attack by heavily armed extremists as opposed to an attack by spontaneous protesters.

Yes, Rice was spinning away. She mentioned the “heavily armed extremists”, which does indicate planning. But as the talking points email points out her message was definitely focused on the video and the demonstrations. Her story was basically that there was a demonstration which led to a riot which led to heavily armed people showing up and attacking. This wasn’t true. The attack was planned and wasn’t born from a demonstration.

Whether this was just the usual administration spin or crossed the threshold into lying is up to interpretation. For me, it crosses that line. They had a narrative that they needed to spin for the election and they let it get in the way of the truth.