To believe they didn’t, you’d have to believe that in a matter of this importance the White House decided to take no notice of what Libya’s deputy ambassador to London, the President of Libya, and its own State Department (among others) were saying. That doesn’t pass the laugh test.
It can still be a reasonable concern even if the FBI disagrees. Maybe her reasonable concern was wrong. In any case, that still sounds like politics as usual. Which is an indictment of our system, certainly. So some people were concerned about politics. Do you really think you’d find anything different if you investigated any other White House’s responses after something like an embassy attack? When all of this stuff is widely known, and has been widely known for over a year, what was covered up?
Oh I think it’s likely that the White House suspected a lot of things. But the word “know” implies certainty – and it’s good that they didn’t act as if they were certain about anything in the immediate aftermath, considering the wildly different information that was coming from various sources. A proper investigation takes time, and it’s a good thing they didn’t claim certainty and didn’t rule out possible explanations.
Au contraire, mon frère: you’re moving the goalposts. We are talking about whether the Obama administration issued knowing untruths (ie lied) to improve its chances in the election. Now you’re arguing that if anyone involved in crafting the talking points took politics into consideration at any stage, including by not going out of their way to draw attention to embarrassing facts, that constitutes a scandal.
In your book was it a scandal that for political reasons President Bush saw fit not to mention the Bin Laden memo in his address to the nation on 9/11?
Would you agree that the state of the White House’s knowledge of the facts is relevant here?
That if the WH had evidence that the attack was a consequence of the aftermath of a demonstration related to the internet video, this email is innocent. But if the WH had reason to believe it was a pre-planned attack not related to any video, then this email amounts to “we need you to go out and lie to the world, to provide political cover to a president seeking re-election”.
Right - these points don’t show the WH was convinced this was a pre-planned attack. They only show it’s extremely likely that this was the case - as indeed it was - and that the WH should at least have been convinced that statements coming from their own State Department and the President of Libya deserved careful investigation.
If you read the document (starting on page 5 of the pdf) it’s clear that Rice was being prepped for a discussion of the unrest in the Middle East overall. That unrest was uncontroversially prompted by this ridiculous video. The Ben Rhodes line is clearly referring to the broader context. Should there have been an explicit carve-out for Benghazi? We can debate that. But by acting like the Rhodes line is specifically about Benghazi you’re grossly misrepresenting what he said.
What information and/or evidence could theoretically change your mind?
This week, an email was released in response to a FOIA for documents related to Benghazi. The email was about briefing the National Security Advisor for her nigh-unprecedented five-TV-shows-in-one-day appearance several days after the attacks. The official response was to say that the email wasn’t really about Benghazi.
When asked by a journalist this week to account for his actions in this much-publicized case in which a US ambassador was murdered, a high-level Obama official’s response was quote “Dude, it was two years ago.”
I’m entirely willing to believe that this is much more about incompetence and confusion than about ill intent. But the admin from the start has withheld information, failed to be forthcoming, and taken this unseriously. They’re very much acting like the teenager who will only open his bedroom door three inches wide. The fact that he’s doing it doesn’t prove he has weed in there, and you’d prefer to give him the benefit of the doubt, but at some point you get so tired of the damned secretiveness about everything that at some point you don’t mind seeing Darrell Issa kick the door in to find out what the hell is going on.
Right. I’m sure the WH et al have long been thinking: “They have yet to prove that the false things we said were known by us to be false at the time we said them.”
There was also considerable evidence of this:
- Use of heavy-duty weapons
- Reports that Ansar al-Sharia had claimed credit
- Statements by Libya’s deputy ambassador to London
- Statements by Libya President Mohamed Magariaf
For values of “cautious” that include “self-serving”. How is it “cautious” to put forward an explanation (reaction to internet video) for which no actual evidence had - or has ever - emerged?
That is not a necessary requirement for a cover-up. Failing to disclose information known to be true would also be a cover-up.
Daring to back to the OP…
I had a pretty open mind on the whole Benghazi mess. Stuff happens. Sometimes evil stuff happens. It can be hard to know what is true as such a situation develops.
But… it now appears that this is a slam dunk cover-up, IMHO. Emails crafting talking points well after the wheat should have been sorted from the chaff indicate a political motivation.
So asking me now what evidence would convince me there is no cover-up is a bit like asking me what evidence would disprove the law of gravity. That I cannot imagine the existence of such evidence does not propel my faith in the accuracy of the law of gravity into the realm of conspiracy theory.
So in preparation for appearances 5 days after an attack on the Benghazi consulate that left 4 people dead, the anticipated context is “unrest in the Middle East overall” ?
There was evidence for that too, IMHO that someone had planned to take on the embassy does not refute that the video was not a factor for the terrorists to take action, I see it as an item that helped the terrorists to be more effective than if they would had attacked with people not being upset and creating more confusion around the consulate.
http://thinkprogress.org/security/2012/10/20/1049311/fox-admits-libya-caused-by-video/
If you think the existence of a cover up is as self-evident as the law of gravity, the prospects for there ever being a national consensus on this issue are pretty slim.
A political motivation to what? IIRC there were reports that the CIA and others did not wanted to telegraph to the perpetrators everything what we knew about them.
The script beginning on page 5 of the PDF presumably reflects what the WH expected the Sunday talk show discussions to look like. Benghazi is not the only or even the central topic. So, to answer your question: yes, believe it or not.
What relevant information that was known to be true was withheld? That it was preplanned was believed by some but not known to be true. Likewise for the perpetrators being Ansar al Sharia. Moreover, Susan Rice certainly did not categorically deny that it may have been preplanned or AaS. So the big cover up was to say, “It wasn’t necessarily preplanned but might have been?” as opposed to saying “It was definitely preplanned?” That’s what this months long controversy and veritable obsession on the right boils down to?
You don’t seem to understand what the word “know” means. Nothing you posted suggest we knew that any one group in particular was responsible. Officials knew that Al-Ansar had claimed responsibility; that isn’t the same as knowing they were responsible. A state dept. official may have been convinced in his own mind that it was pre-planned, but we did not (and still do not, AFAIK) know that that was the case.
Knowing involves having incontrovertible evidence that denies any other possibility; you haven’t shown that to exist at all with regards to what happened in Benghazi.
And even if it had been, how is that in any way an impeachable offense? Gosh, wow, a politician lied. So the hell what? If every lie is a “high crime,” then our government will be a collection of empty buildings.
That’s the depth to which this issue has sunk into stupidity: even if every single claim made about it is true…so fucking what? There isn’t any “there” there. This is the prince of non-issues.
See page 17 of the documents that were released. The promos for the Sunday talk shows are given. They are all primarily on the topic of the protests–plural–roiling the Middle East.
Email surfaces from David Axelrod to Obama:
"Mr. President,
As we’ve discussed, we all know that what happened in Benghazi was a preplanned terrorist attack by al-Qaeda affiliates. If we let the public believe that, the campaign narrative re the war on terror is toast. You need to go out there and make sure people think this was spontaneous and related to the video. It’s BS but you’ll just have to hold your nose and do it.
Dave"
THAT would be a smoking gun and would change my mind. The sheer preposterousness of such an email–(how is the president in his public pronouncements supposed to permanently mold public opinion contrary to facts that will surely eventually come out? This is why I never believed that Bush knew in advance that Iraq had no meaningful WMD cache)–makes me confident that no such email was ever written nor will surface. But that’s just a reflection of how ridiculous I think this fabricated controversy really is.