One of the leaders that organized the attack reported that it was because of the video that they reacted to. The crowds were in Egypt and IMHO the ones in Libya saw that and they realized that they would had a better chance of making a successful attack (in Libya many expected also a protest but the ones making the attack were not planning that), I guess the disconnect here is to believe that people (and terrorists) in Libya have no TV or internet.
You cited a 20 year old who claimed to be a witness and claimed there was no protest. And you cited some Republican politicians.
Upthread slash2k cited Al Jazeera, the AP, and the NY Times.
I’m gonna go with slash2k. And “dead quiet when the surprise attack started” might just mean that it wasn’t a surprise to locals outside the gates. “That surly bunch from down the way is coming with heavy arms. Better get everybody out of the way!”
None of this – NONE OF THIS – suggests that Rice or the Administration lied in providing an early and avowedly preliminary assessment of the course of events.
For the record I was never in the “Bush lied, people died” camp. I think at worst he deluded himself but I’m pretty sure he expected to find WMDs. He just refused to believe the UN inspectors. Frankly, part of what makes me so captivated by this Benghazi issue, to the severe detriment of my work productivity this week, is that I’m so completely baffled that Republicans who bristle at charges that Bush knowingly sent thousands of Americans to their deaths on a knowingly false pretense seem perfectly happy to lob charges that “Obama watched them die” without skipping a beat.
Thank you. At last we’re getting somewhere. So you’re saying that the plain facts of the nature of the attack–big guns, RPGs, mortars, lots of attackers–are ipso facto proof of long-term planning. Sort of like if you show up to a restaurant with a reservation, clearly you planned to go there and you couldn’t possibly have “just shown up.” Fine.
Do you have anything to back up this claim, or is it supposed to be self-evident? Because I still don’t see why the guys couldn’t show up on pretty short notice. If the plain facts of the case which were known as of 9/16 make it obvious that it was planned, why did the Sunday hosts bother asking whether we know it was planned? They might as well have asked if the sky was blue, on your accounting of things.
So what? They may have planned the attack beforehand, and were waiting for the right time to spring it. Or they may have planned to do it on 9-11 all along. How does either of those cases make it unlikely that there was also a protest, BY DIFFERENT PEOPLE, when we KNOW that there were protests in Cairo, Pakistan, etc.?
Again, at the time, there were credible witnesses reporting a protest, conflicting with your 20-year-old civilian’s report.
At this point, I would bet my house that if Rice had said, “There is no question that this was a well planned and organized attack by heavily armed terrorists, including al Qaeda,” the right would be latching on to the reports of protests, and screaming that Obama was covering up the fact that he couldn’t defend Americans from ragtag protestors, by claiming that the attack was so well organized that no increase in security could have prevented American deaths.
There’s no actual evidence of any planning, though, is there? No secret documents captured at Ansar al Sharia’s headquarters, no official statements from the group stating that it was planned days in advance, no Facebook pages with “Watch out on 9/11/12” posted weeks ahead of the attack. Debaser’s chief evidence seems to be that they blocked off the streets and brought cans of gasoline. They attacked a lightly defended compound by swarming it with 125+ armed men; that doesn’t really require much advanced effort.
People on the scene said that they were responding to the video, and there’s no reason not to believe them. They would have been motivated by the same anti-American anger as all of the other protests that day in the middle east, except they happened to have guns, grenades, RPGs, and cans of gas. Remember that this is a militia, so a loosely connected group of volunteers who were providing security in the region. That’s why they were armed in the first place, but these aren’t the sorts of people who live and die by the chain of command. There may or may not have even been any kind of “order” from leadership to carry out the attack. We just don’t know.
I think we can all agree that there was no peaceful protest that day. No unarmed civilians marching in front of the consulate. That doesn’t mean that the attackers weren’t protesting the video spontaneously, and with guns.
eta: Well, TonySinclair notwithstanding, I thought we could all agree there was no peaceful protest. That’s the official government line at this point.
But I see his point that we didn’t know that until later.
This may be the best point I’ve heard made in any discussion of Benghazi. The fact is that the supposed motive for blaming it on protesters never really made sense politically. Sure, I get it - blame a protest so you don’t get nailed for failing to detect and foil an organized terrorist attack. But why is that a worse liability, in the end, than admitting that a motley gang of sexually frustrated unemployed dudes managed to kill a US ambassador for the first time in decades? Especially when you’re trying to fend off charges of incompetence and fecklessness from Mr. Fix It.
The truth is that the Benghazi brouhaha follows the same playbook as every other Obama controversy–the right starts out with the assumption of nefarious and sinister intent, and works backward from there, no matter how poorly the facts fit together in a coherent narrative.
And yet you cannot, it seems, admit that he lied. :rolleyes:
That’s the point I was trying to make. Thank you for putting it out there so clearly for all to see.
Hey, here’s an idea: read the New York Times article. Read what the “heavily armed extremists” themselves said.
One question. Does anyone have a straight story on why the Rhodes email was released under the FOIA request? I’ve heard conflicting accounts. Politico and the DMN have stated that the memo was not included in the original Congressional subpoena. Carney originally stated that it was because the memo was unrelated. RW media has some scuttlebutt about it being too redacted to be intelligible.
If “too redacted” means redacting the latter part of Rhodes’ email address, then the scuttlebutt is correct. 
Here is the email itself, from the king of all right wing media, Fox News. Where, I might add, they continue to this day to erroneously claim that the video played no role in the attacks:
And what of the new claims of a cover-up generated by Judicial Watch’s release of the Rhodes memo and other previously undisclosed emails? Trey Gowdy, the South Carolina House Republican named to head the new select committee on Benghazi, told Fox News on Friday that he has evidence that not only is the White House hiding information, “there is an intent to hide it.” But that probably won’t stand up to scrutiny either. An Obama administration official told Politico that the White House didn’t supply the emails previously because Congress never asked for them. A May 2013 subpoena from the Oversight Committee sought any communications between Rice and a specific group of State Department aides, but did not mention senior White House officials such as Rhodes.
Read more:http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/hillarys-nightmare-the-benghazi-industrial-complex-106332_Page2.html#ixzz31Acy7td1
More curious about this statement in response to the omg its the Nixon tapes again meme. The statement I’ve seen occasionally was that it was released alongside other emails last year but was redacted to remove the damning portions.
Issa’s letter to Kerry in May 2013 seems to suggest that his committee asked the White House for all emails and memos relating to the talking points, and the WH counsel basically told them to bugger off and talk to the State Department and CIA. Is that why the email wasn’t released?
Yeah just curious about the conflicting answers from the WH. If it was not privy to the subpoena, then Carney could have avoided an epic battle with the press corps. Although I can see his argument that two references in a four page memo doesn’t mean it was about Benghazi, why are these other sources using what looks to be a more viable argument?
This is getting so far down into the weeds it’s ridiculous, but after looking at the letter I can see what could truly be a legitimate misunderstanding.
The subpoena basically asks for all information relating to the preparation of the talking points. That is a very legitimate request, in my view, no matter how much material it covers. But if I were asked to respond to such a direction to produce information, I would think I would be obligated to produce all the documents, emails and whatever that related to the process of creating and editing the talking points - e.g., the versions of the talking points, the emails going back and forth on why they needed to be changed, etc.
I would not conclude that the subpoena would cover all documents and emails that were tangentially related to Benghazi or the talking points that had nothing to do with their creation. For example, Hillary Cliinton’s testimony to the Senate committee in May 2013 surely was informed by, or touched on, the talking points. Does that mean that all deliberative processes on drafting her testimony should have been provided under that subpoena? I certainly don’t think so.
The major problem is that Republicans, without any substantiation or logic, believe that the “smoking gun” email relates to the drafting of the talking points. Now that it is out for everyone to see, I think it is plainly obvious that it does not. They are simply advice to Rice on what messages she should talk about on Sunday talk shows. Like Clinton’s testimony, I think it’s perfectly clear to anyone who reads the email without a preconceived conclusion of wrongdoing, that email flows FROM the talking points, it clearly did not edit or influence the talking points in their creation.
I don’t even believe that’s the reason. I think they just want to keep Benghazi in the news until the elections in November just to rile up their base. You wouldn’t believe the crap I hear my right-wing coworkers spew about this. One told me yesterday that Obama and Hilary were at the white house watching the attacks as they happened, and after telling the marines that could help to stand down, Obama got bored and went upstairs to play 25 hands of spades with someone. This is this guy’s honest belief of the events that night. I assume a lot of right-wingers believe something similar and this and want the truth to come out so they support this investigation.
I guess the real answer for now is “who the hell knows,” but it seems to me there’s a good chance that Issa and his oversight committee already saw the Ben Rhodes “smoking gun” email in earlier investigations, lending further support to the notion that there is truly nothing new about the released documents.
The May 28 Issa letter states:
But the April 23 letter itself states the following:
“Similarly, after many requests, Administration officials finally provided members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) access to draft versions of the talking points used by Ambassador Susan Rice on five morning news shows on September 16, 2012, and email traffic leading up to the final version of those talking points.”
The letter goes on to state:
Based on the above, it sounds like:
a) The wording of the original request specified email traffic “leading up to” the final version of talking points. Insofar as the Ben Rhodes email came after the talking points were finalized, the administration may have deemed it to fall outside the scope of the request. Maybe it’s weasely to follow the letter of the request rather than its intent, but hardly nefarious if that’s even what happened.
b) It is also possible that the Ben Rhodes email was in fact provided to the House committee along with the rest, but only to be viewed in camera. Which would make it pretty disingenuous of Darrell Issa to act like this is new information.
I think your co-worker may be mixing up Benghazi with the bin Laden raid…?
Would have been out of the news years ago if they cooperated.
Would have been out of the news years ago if they cooperated.
This is desperation on the part of the GOP. Since the Obamacare apocalypse didn’t happen, they need to campaign on something. Lacking any plans of their own, they talk about Benghazi, which only resonates with their own base. If you’re upset about Benghazi, you weren’t going to vote Democratic in a million years anyway.