As I’ve explained several times in this thread, there’s nothing substantive in the Rhodes email. It was produced many hours AFTER the CIA-drafted talking points came out, so simple logic leads to the simple conclusion that the Rhodes email was influenced by the CIA talking points, not vice versa.
It couldn’t be the other way - the Rhodes email influencing the talking points - because Ben Rhodes doesn’t have a time machine in which to send emails to yesterday to create spin in the past which is actually the future.
So, what specifically are you referencing in 112 pages of stuff?
The CIA produced talking points that blamed the video to some degree or another. If Obama repeats what the CIA is telling him, how is that malfeasance on the part of Obama?
I’ve noticed that many conservatives seem to have major problems understanding the concepts of time passing and history. Democrats were racist 60 years ago so Democrats are racist today. Republicans were the party that ended slavery 200 years ago, so Republicans are champions of racial equality today. There was no Republican president between 2000 and 2008, just a null interregnum in DC. It’s like ideology blinds them to reality.
I was imagining a scene more West Wingy, something like :
Mr. President, your Intelligence briefing for the morning.
Thank you, Charley. Here’s what I want it to say.
And here’s your… wait, what did you just… ? Sir, that’s not how… you can’t… god, I miss Bartlett.
[QUOTE=Magiver]
The WH absolutely influences the dissemination of information.
[/QUOTE]
But not its generation, which was the point being discussed.
Unless I’m confused, and you’re saying what you would have wanted the White House to do is be more *secretive *about the intel the CIA’d been collating about the events ?
I’m not aware of too many food chains where unpopular opinions make it to the top. It’s true in the private sector and it assuredly exists in politics where popularity is the only qualification for employment.
You know that the talking points were prepared at the request of the House Intelligence Committee, right?
So the House Intel Committee asks for talking points, the CIA starts working on them, and suddenly somehow the White House intervenes to make the very first version of the talking points, written by the Director of the Office of Counterterrorism Analysis, comply with what the White House wants it to say, about eight hours before the available evidence shows a draft of the talkers went to the White House.
How did the CIA analysts know what to write on the first draft?
No one has heard of the possible fact that four polar bears had been found dead in the Bay of Benghazi or that there is a consensus among climatologists that repeated fire from AK47s and 20mm rounds had increased the area’s CO2 reading to such a level that the bears had drowned in their own tears. The story was widely reported by a one-trick pony with a limp.
