Discussion of Benghazi hearings

[Craig234]

These investigations are 0.1% legitimate concern on the part of Republicans and 99.9% political hysterics aimed at weakening Obama and/or Clinton. Of course they had no effect on the election and will have no effect on 2016 either, but that won't stop the drooling and howling.

If it's worth spending months digging into every nook and cranny of why Benghazi happened, then it's worth spending years digging into why 9/11 happened. Where were those investigations, with Bush and his cronies being called out on the carpet? Oh right -- nobody was allowed to do that because it would have been "unpatriotic".

Normally, the separate issue of Iraq and other history would be of limited relevance.

But in this case, the Republicans' politicization of this issue is so extreme as to make it perhaps the most important aspect of what's going on with the hearings.

And THAT makes their hypcrisy in doing so vrey relevant as well, which needs comparisons to their behavior in other situations.

So I'd rather this discussion not need to include anything about Bush or Iraq or whatever, but it seems it's unfortunately appropriate.

A news show did a comparison last night on this. They pointed out that under Bush there were over 50 attacks on our embassies killing 13 Americans; then they compared that Republicans have called nine full congressional hearings on Benghazi, and called zero hearings on all of the attacks under Bush.

Right-wing media has been again abusing comparisons to Watergate - Jon Stewart did a good bit on that, showing how they have tried to bring up many issues where they claim it's a Democratic scandal and 'worse than Watergate', this just being the latest. He played a video clip showing the hyperbole, where a right-wing pundit said 'if multiply Watergate times (some other 'scandal' I didn't hear), and then multiply THAT by ten, that's about what you have with Benghazi.

It's just absolute absurdity, dishonest demagoguery, and it's the biggest part of the story of the hearings unfortunately.

 

[Craig234]

Reminds me of the Kenneth Star investigation. "We don't know what we're looking for, but we'll know it when we see it"

Many citizens think that the way it works is, there's a scandal, then there's reaction.

They aren't aware that there is now a sort of permanent scandal manufacturing operation.

Republicans were very bitter over Watergate - not for any legitimate reason, as it was properly celebrated as our system working in removing massive corruption - but as a partisan loss that made 'their side' look bad and made them BURN for an unjustified revenge against Democrats.

When the next Democratic president was elected, Clinton, it seems their number one priority was trying to find things to attack him with (hence one of the books on their obsessive pursuit being titled "The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton") (I can recommend it as a pretty good book on the topic).

Eveything got a 'gate' except Whitewater, filegate, travelgate, their lawyer, and much more.

House Republicans abused (that three word phrase again) the independent prosecutor law to create one on a pretense and launch him on a fishing expedition. The hand-picked by Republicans prosecutor spent a lot of time and money and returned with his results - he could find nothing prosecutable on Clinton. The Republicans were outraged - this guy didn't get it - and fired him and then looked for a replacement who would be sure to understand his job was to find something - and selected the highly partisan Ken Starr.

For years and tens of millions of dollars, Starr was about to return empty handed as well, until he was handed a lead that actually paned out - Monica.

Not everyone is aware of what a witch hunt went on the whole presidency. One of the most partisan rich people in the country is Richard Mellon Scaife - he's spent a fortune on radical right-wing organizations - and he put up a $50 million fund to pay for any leads to any dirt on Bill Clinton. This manufactured a huge industry of people running all over Arkansas trying to talk to anyone who would say something bad about Clinton - resulting in all kinds of 'Clinton ran the cocaine market and killed tons of people' type stories.

This project was managed with the right-wing paper 'The American Spectator', which had pretty much no standards for the stories it would print, hoping they would ignite the 'right-wing noise machine' to reference them and reprint the story until it got into mainstream media.

Aother resource in the witch hunt was called the 'elves', a group of big law firm lawyers who secretly conspired to dedicate their efforts to help bring down Clinton any way they could, and the elves were instrumental in pushing the criminal issues regarding Clinton and sex.

We often don't remember now, but it was a very delicate legal issue to get to Clinton, it required linking Monica to a sexual harrassment case the elves were pushing, a judge making a poor ruling on what Clinton had to testify on, a Supreme Court ruling saying 'suing a sitting President in civil court, requiring him to be deposed, won't be any inconvenience for him' - when in fact it was highly disruptive as the White House had to deal with it - but it all came together for the opponents, they caught him hiding sex.

Then came the impeachment - a bunch of Republican Congressmen having extra-marital affairs saying Clinton had to resign for an extra-marital affair he hid for the good of the US.

Some of those Congressmen explicitly said the impeachment was payback for Watergate.

Anywyay, I'm digressing but think that history says a lot about the spirit of the Republicans' activities on these efforts to manufacture crises as a political weapon.

 

[MomentsofSanity]

Normally, the separate issue of Iraq and other history would be of limited relevance.

But in this case, the Republicans' politicization of this issue is so extreme as to make it perhaps the most important aspect of what's going on with the hearings.

And THAT makes their hypcrisy in doing so vrey relevant as well, which needs comparisons to their behavior in other situations.

So I'd rather this discussion not need to include anything about Bush or Iraq or whatever, but it seems it's unfortunately appropriate.

A news show did a comparison last night on this. They pointed out that under Bush there were over 50 attacks on our embassies killing 13 Americans; then they compared that Republicans have called nine full congressional hearings on Benghazi, and called zero hearings on all of the attacks under Bush.

Right-wing media has been again abusing comparisons to Watergate - Jon Stewart did a good bit on that, showing how they have tried to bring up many issues where they claim it's a Democratic scandal and 'worse than Watergate', this just being the latest. He played a video clip showing the hyperbole, where a right-wing pundit said 'if multiply Watergate times (some other 'scandal' I didn't hear), and then multiply THAT by ten, that's about what you have with Benghazi.

It's just absolute absurdity, dishonest demagoguery, and it's the biggest part of the story of the hearings unfortunately.

Believe it or not it was (Watergate + Iran Contra) X 10.

 

[Craig234]

Believe it or not it was (Watergate + Iran Contra) X 10.

That made me laugh out loud.

The immorality of that dishonesty, the chutzpah, is boggling.

 

[Perknose]

I'd argue to a limited degree its on topic and relevant to Benghazi.

The reason is if I am to give my opinion that Benghazi is nothing more than RW political attack on the administration, the RW response to similar issues is my supportive evidence. The previous administration, attacks that occurred and resposnes to it are the nearest time wise comparative evidence.

Saying we cant discuss Bush and attacks that occurred under his administration, means we cant have supportive evidence its simply a political attack.

I agree and had nothing to do with Eaglekeeper's post or thread title edit.

Point taken and agreed. The limitation on discourse in this thread has been rescinded.

Perknose
Forum Director

 

[Craig234]

If one looks at the majority of posts above the REQUEST, they are concentrating on Bush/Iraq.

If there is a comparison between the two desired; then please start a thread that details the comparison desired and take the discussion along that vein.


EK
Admin

I appreciate the effort to keep the thread on topic. But a couple things:

When I ask 'please keep my thread on topic', it's a request.

When "EK Admin" posts "please keep the thread on topic, it's not just a "REQUEST", which seems to be capitalized to emphasize "this is JUST a request", despite the "Admin" post.

Second, see my post addressing that while I'd love for the topic to have no mention of Bush/Iraq or other things normally as off-topic, the hearings being extremely politicized, and hypocrisy comparing the handling of this issues to others, makes comparison with other issues relevant in my opinion - and pretty necessary to discuss the issue.

Let's not change the topic to other events - but relevant comparisons seem appropriate.

 

[Craig234]

The latest news I heard on this isn't directly from the hearings, but related - apparently Congress was given a history of e-mail histories about the talking points, and while they didn't notice anything, this morning ABC reported that the e-mails show the State Department spokesperson saying to remove some content, because it would just be content Republicans, who were grasping for anything to attack with, could use to attack the department with.

This contradicts Obama administration claims that the administration did not alter the talking points from the CIA, and may be a legitimate point of criticism.

Now, the debate then shift to how serious a matter it is. I have a problem with the administration making a false statement about the editing.

Normally the debate would be pretty muddied between 'removed references to Al Queda for security reasons' and 'for political reasons' but the e-mail seems to answer that.

I'd point out that indeed the Republicans' outrageous behavior in these things does contribute to the excessive politicization - not giving them ammunition.

But there are right ways and wrong ways to fight that, and the edit of the attack information in this case and falsely denying it are on the 'wrong way' list in my opinion.

Proving my point on the other side, though, Republicans are reportedly being outrageous again, claiming this is grounds for impeachment of President Obama.

 

[Craig234]

Question, is the main problem people have with Obama on this issue that he stated the motive of the attacks was a response to a YouTube video rather than a planned attack?

Here's my summary as I understand it.

First, there have been a lot of manufactured, false, exaggerated, demagogued, and so on attacks by Republicans too many to list - incuding by Romney at the time.

So here's the rest of the issue.

1. Preparedness. There is a criticism that the State Department did poorly at planning adequate security.

While the commission that investigated made dozens of criticisms and suggestions that were all immediately agreed to by Clinton, it doesn't answer why the mistakes happened.

It seems these simply fall under 'mistakes'.

2. Help unavilable during the attacks. All the information we have is that no one screwed up responding, it wasn't possible to help. The problem is with #1, preparedness.

3. Republicans have hyped the administration's status the Sunday after the attacks still suggesting the leading theory as being a reaction to the video.

I think this is mostly a lot of hot air and unimportant. I can believe the Obama administration might have made a mistake in wanting to keep the emphasis away from a theory that might turn out to be accurate but in the meantime could be hyped in the middle of a presidential campaign. Not very admirable, but really having no importance, corrected soon after as information came out and well within the normal political behavior of politicians 'spinning' - when there are uncertainties, playing up the more favorable.

It is not the massive national scandal Republicans are trying to make up of it, simply because they are trying to manfufacture something to attack with for political reasons.

Bottom line, this 'mob versus planned attack' issue is just not that important to anything about the attacks as far as our politics - a minor political issue with too much 'spin'.

Criticism of the administration would be appropriate.

4. The adminitration's story about the talk show not holding up, if they said they did not edit the CIA talking points but the State Department did.

That's a lie and criticism and accountability are appropriate.

However, as I noted before, the Republicans for just one of many examples reportedly right now have a lie on their own web site falsely implying Hillary personally signed the order denying more security services for the embassy - politcal lies are bad all around, and are not just being committed by one side.

Those seem to be the main issues at this point: criticism for lack of preparedness, and possible deceipt about briefly trying to exaggerate the attacks being about the video.

As far as the more substantive issue of improving security measures, that seems to have been done.

 

[colonelciller]

i'm reading a lot of democrat vs republican and republican vs democrat mudslinging. this is all mindless nonsensical outrage and leads nowhere... never has, never will.

as someone who voted for obama during his 1st presidential bid... and donated to his campaign on 3 separate occassions during that original campaign, I would very much like to know if his administration knowingly and intentionally lied about the Benghazi tragedy during Obama's 2nd presidential campaign.

anyone who does not want so answer that question (in the name of truth and "open" govt) should be ashamed... regardless of party affiliation or lack thereof.

 

[John Liberty]

Here's my summary as I understand it.

First, there have been a lot of manufactured, false, exaggerated, demagogued, and so on attacks by Republicans too many to list - incuding by Romney at the time.

So here's the rest of the issue.

1. Preparedness. There is a criticism that the State Department did poorly at planning adequate security.

While the commission that investigated made dozens of criticisms and suggestions that were all immediately agreed to by Clinton, it doesn't answer why the mistakes happened.

When there are threats and attacks on other embassies in the weeks preceding the attack, denying extra security is not a mistake.

2. Help unavilable during the attacks. All the information we have is that no one screwed up responding, it wasn't possible to help. The problem is with #1, preparedness.

There is information that a FIST team was ready to board a transport to travel to Benghazi and they were ordered to stand down. Sound like they were available.

3. Republicans have hyped the administration's status the Sunday after the attacks still suggesting the leading theory as being a reaction to the video.

I think this is another example of the administration's issue with transparency. The attack was known almost immediately to be from a terrorist group affiliated with Al-Quida. This would be in direct opposition to the President's assertion during the campaign that Al-Quida is on the run.

Criticism of the administration is always appropriate.

4. The adminitration's story about the talk show not holding up, if they said they did not edit the CIA talking points but the State Department did.

That's a lie and criticism and accountability are appropriate.

However, as I noted before, the Republicans for just one of many examples reportedly right now have a lie on their own web site falsely implying Hillary personally signed the order denying more security services for the embassy - denying security is the decision of the SOS. No one else, not even a deputy. She's in charge. She should know about security problems at a US diplomatic property.


As far as the more substantive issue of improving security measures, that seems to have been done.

Source?

 

[Charles Kozierok]

John, could you please reformat that? I can't tell what's your writing and what's being quoted. Thanks.

 

[Agent11]

This was an incident that did not go well for American interests. It needs to be looked into and any discrepancies and failures need to be addressed.

Whether any of those lead to the white house or not is irrelevant to the need to understand this incident, prevent future incidents, and punish those who are responsible.

However if there was negligence or politically motivated decisions made that jeopardized the lives of Americans serving abroad that does need to come out and be addressed.

 

[Craig234]

I'll help him.

Here's my summary as I understand it.

First, there have been a lot of manufactured, false, exaggerated, demagogued, and so on attacks by Republicans too many to list - incuding by Romney at the time.

So here's the rest of the issue.

1. Preparedness. There is a criticism that the State Department did poorly at planning adequate security.

While the commission that investigated made dozens of criticisms and suggestions that were all immediately agreed to by Clinton, it doesn't answer why the mistakes happened.

When there are threats and attacks on other embassies in the weeks preceding the attack, denying extra security is not a mistake.

What is, it Obama decided it'd be fun to allow their murder?

2. Help unavilable during the attacks. All the information we have is that no one screwed up responding, it wasn't possible to help. The problem is with #1, preparedness.

There is information that a FIST team was ready to board a transport to travel to Benghazi and they were ordered to stand down. Sound like they were available.

Because they could not arrive in time.

I have watched the Secretary of Defense, among others, confirm this to Congress.

3. Republicans have hyped the administration's status the Sunday after the attacks still suggesting the leading theory as being a reaction to the video.

I think this is another example of the administration's issue with transparency. The attack was known almost immediately to be from a terrorist group affiliated with Al-Quida. This would be in direct opposition to the President's assertion during the campaign that Al-Quida is on the run.

Criticism of the administration is always appropriate.

No, it wasn't. There was confusion for days about it, from what I've seen.

And no, it's not in direct contradtion to that assertion.

Obama has killed or capture pretty much the entire Al Queda ledadership and killed over 4,000 people with whatever role they have in addition.

They're not 'gone', and Al Queda is a name any group can decide to say they support.

You could go shoot someone and say you support Al Queda.

One attack does not mean they're not 'on the run'. Their operational capacity is hugely reduced to launch terrorist attacks.

But Obama's political opponents will say misleading things to try to claim he's lying. Remember they want a 'new Watergate' and will try to make it any way possible.

It's not 'always appropriate to criticize the administration' - it's appropriate when there is some reasonable basis to do so.

For example, criticizing the Bush administration for blowing up the WTC buildings on 9/11 is not reasonable criticism.

4. The adminitration's story about the talk show not holding up, if they said they did not edit the CIA talking points but the State Department did.

That's a lie and criticism and accountability are appropriate.

However, as I noted before, the Republicans for just one of many examples reportedly right now have a lie on their own web site falsely implying Hillary personally signed the order denying more security services for the embassy - denying security is the decision of the SOS. No one else, not even a deputy. She's in charge. She should know about security problems at a US diplomatic property.


As far as the more substantive issue of improving security measures, that seems to have been done.

Source?

http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/202446.pdf

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/18/us/state-benghazi-report

 

[Charles Kozierok]

Anyone who doubts what the Benghazi hearings are really about need only read this post from one our resident right-wingers, especially the last paragraph.

Nice that they are at least dropping the pretense.

 

[randomrogue]

I don't understand what the Benghazi outrage is even about. It's honestly stupid and I would never vote for a candidate who supported these hearings and/or was making a big deal about it.

Wanna get my attention? Go after Wall Street and the people who fucked up Iraq.

 

[Craig234]

I don't understand what the Benghazi outrage is even about. It's honestly stupid and I would never vote for a candidate who supported these hearings and/or was making a big deal about it.

Wanna get my attention? Go after Wall Street and the people who fucked up Iraq.

I don't think there's any problem with responsible investigation into what went wrong in Benghazi. But we haven't seen much of that from the Republicans.

There are legitimate questions, mistakes, and likely political motivations to some of the 'communication management', but it doesn't reach that high of a 'scandal' IMO.

This is where the vast majority - incuding the Romney campaign decision to try to make is a big issue in the presidential campaign past the known facts - comes into play.

It's also what demands comparisons of the Republicans' handling of issues under Bush in comparison, the several embassy attacks that killed 13 Americans without a peep.

People forget that Bush fought against any commission to investigate the enormously larger 9/11 event, and IIRC rejected many or most recommendations from that commission. while for Benghazi there was very quickly an administration-ordered commission and immediate acceptance of all of its recommendations.

There's a lot of 'double standard' going on there.

I agree with you on the need for a lot more investigation of the finance industry - and that is an area blaming 'both parties' has a lot of merit.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

The outrage is because Obama called it an "act of terror" when it was really a "terrorist attack."
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/issa-act-of-terror-is-different-than-terrorist

 

[randomrogue]

Yeah but outrage for who? Who is really outraged by this? It seems to be fake outrage.

 

[Gonad the Barbarian]

It's not "fake," it's "pretend." And "pretend" is different than "fake."

 

[Craig234]

Yeah but outrage for who? Who is really outraged by this? It seems to be fake outrage.

I think he was pretty clearly being facetious.

Romney paid a price for that planned 'didn't say act of terror' attack in the debate.

Usually the propagandists are a bit more competent in the 'faux outrage' attacks they load the candidate with - Romney seemed clearly shocked he'd gotten poor scripting to attack with.

That sort of thing is usually well processed in advance so that it can't be so completely contradicted so quickly - and they didn't expect the moderator to 'fact check' on the spot.

If she hadn't, it was left as just a 'he said, he said' with Obama disagreeing and having to just tell Romney to 'continue' without any resolution to the issue.

Some Republicans attacked the moderator for the accuracy.

There's a case for the moderator not getting involved and letting the candidates lie, but on a clear fact issue like that, it seemed very helpful IMO for the moderator to help the audience.

 

[randomrogue]

Sorry didn't catch the sarcasm.

I enjoyed the debates but I felt they should have fact checked more. It seems to me that the moderator having a 5 second delay between the candidates would get enough time to have someone in their ear go "Hold for accuracy". "Candidate A was wrong". "Here is a one sentence correct statement to call the candidate on". You'd have one debate where this would be insane and after that candidates wouldn't be so dishonest or misleading.

Either way I think the Benghazi story is way overblown and a complete waste of tax payer dollars. They should spend this kind of energy making appointments to important positions, balancing the budget, fixing our trade deficit, and investigating real issues such as the wall street fiasco.

 

[waggy]

Yeah but outrage for who? Who is really outraged by this? It seems to be fake outrage.

fake or pretend? I know some are doing it for purely political bs. Personally i don't give a shit on that. i want the truth.

not everyone is a political player or cares.

 

[Craig234]

Sorry didn't catch the sarcasm.

I enjoyed the debates but I felt they should have fact checked more. It seems to me that the moderator having a 5 second delay between the candidates would get enough time to have someone in their ear go "Hold for accuracy". "Candidate A was wrong". "Here is a one sentence correct statement to call the candidate on". You'd have one debate where this would be insane and after that candidates wouldn't be so dishonest or misleading.

The after-debate media followup isn't very effective either. There's pretty much never the 'ah ha, the fact chekcers showed he was wrong, voters are outraged' situation.

Instead, the issue immediately goes into the media system where people here what they want, so people on the 'wrong' side either don't hear it or here the partisan spin.

Paul Ryan's convention speech was a pretty good example of that - the fact checkers' heads exploded, but it just didn't have that much impact that he lied a lot.

Either way I think the Benghazi story is way overblown and a complete waste of tax payer dollars. They should spend this kind of energy making appointments to important positions, balancing the budget, fixing our trade deficit, and investigating real issues such as the wall street fiasco.

I agree.

That's hardly new though - remember the years I mentioned of Bill Clinton 'investigation'.

 

[Craig234]

fake or pretend? I know some are doing it for purely political bs. Personally i don't give a shit on that. i want the truth.

not everyone is a political player or cares.

So, who's going to give you 'the truth' - and how important is it really that they mishandled security for that embassy, than say ongoing costs of trillions from banking scandals?

 

[colonelciller]

I don't understand what the Benghazi outrage is even about.

it is about being lied to by the administration for PR purposes.
if the administration outright lied about the facts (or pretended not to have said facts) simply to do better in the presidential campaign, then every thinking person should be outraged.

if on the other hand, there was no lie and no coverup then that would be good to know as well.

Which is it:
*lies, misdirection, cover-up to help win an election
*no lies, no misdirection, no cover-up whatsoever

people should want to know, whether they are Democrat, Republican, no party affiliation, never voted, whatever.