Obama lied about Benghazi

[Bowfinger]

I'd like to hear more about this. I want to hear the response from SOCAFRICA.

Fern

According to a story on the NBC nightly news, the Pentagon response to these allegations is that some Special Forces were dispatched to Benghazi by helicopter. The rest, however, were ordered to remain in Tripoli to defend the embassy. The Pentagon also stated that the closest fighter jets were five hours away in Italy.

 

[Smoblikat]

I must have missed all of the Republican led hearings about what went wrong in Iraq, how we could spend a trillion dollars and cause the deaths of thousands of Americans for no good reason? But we have plenty of time and money to investigate an incident in LIBYA in which four Americans were killed by terrorists?
You guys are partisan assholes only interested in smearing your opponents, and unfortunately for you the vast majority of Americans aren't buying into it.

Says the man who just tried t smear his opponents................

Welcome to AT P&N guys.

 

[werepossum]

And Obama had just made a campaign speech claiming Al-Qaeda was on the run.

To be fair to Obama, Al Qaeda IS on the run. They have been since Bush invaded Afghanistan, and Obama has been arguably even better on fighting Islamic terrorists than was Bush outside of Afghanistan (and there wasn't another nation supporting them with a clear mandate for Obama to attack.) But there are literally hundreds of Islamic terrorist organizations and we're never going to bat 1000 against them.

 

[Bowfinger]

[ ... ]
Just as Obama's lie only had to hold up two weeks, so Romney's charges only had to hold up two weeks. ...

You've said "two weeks" in at least two different posts. Why? The November elections were roughly two months after this attack on September 11.

 

[Fern]

-snip-

Even if I accept your premise that Obama lied about Benghazi, which I don't,..
-snip-

More on motive:

State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland, worried that members of Congress would use the talking points to criticize the State Department for “not paying attention to Agency warnings.”

After Nuland's concerns were raised the CIA's first draft was revised. It took only about 45 minutes to email her concerns. So she, and possibly her superiors, didn't think about it for long.

In an attempt to address those concerns, CIA officials cut all references to Ansar al Sharia and made minor tweaks. But in a follow-up email at 9:24 p.m., Nuland wrote that the problem remained and that her superiors—she did not say which ones—were unhappy. The changes, she wrote, did not “resolve all my issues or those of my building leadership,” and State Department leadership was contacting National Security Council officials directly. Moments later, according to the House report, “White House officials responded by stating that the State Department’s concerns would have to be taken into account.” One official—Ben Rhodes, The Weekly Standard is told, a top adviser to President Obama on national security and foreign policy—further advised the group that the issues would be resolved in a meeting of top administration officials the following morning at the White House.

In the morning meeting the CIA draft was cut from 6 paragraphs to about 2, substantially watering it down the State Dept's and WH ordered.

You can see the sequence of drafts here: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/benghazi-talking-points_720543.html?page=2

Yet two weeks later (Sept 26) Obama was at the UN giving a speech blaming the attacks on a video.

Also, Clinton, Carney and Rice all continued blaming the video for inciting a spontaneous protest.

Now, we can't make you care but we sure can assist those in their quest to look stupid by claiming there was no lying here.

Fern

 

[werepossum]

According to a story on the NBC nightly news, the Pentagon response to these allegations is that some Special Forces were dispatched to Benghazi by helicopter. The rest, however, were ordered to remain in Tripoli to defend the embassy. The Pentagon also stated that the closest fighter jets were five hours away in Italy.

Just after the election Obama or his aids (I forget which) told a story in which SF were deployed by plane to the airport, but could not find transportation from there. And in any case Stevens and his staffer were probably killed in the opening minutes of the first attack. A concerted and effective response might have saved the others who were killed, but would have been exposed to attack themselves so there's no guarantee the casualties would have been lower. It still should have been done - you protect your own people, especially civilians, even if it means taking higher casualties - but probably no reaction would have saved the first two men killed.

It was a cluster fuck all around. There should have been Marine and CIA security with the ambassador. One can only hope that whatever reason they decided to remove the security was worth the price paid.

 

[michal1980]

Even if I accept your premise that Obama lied about Benghazi, which I don't, still leaves the fact that no one cares. Sure a few right wing nuts are outraged, but the general public is yawning about this.
This could be a major scandal, but the right has cried wolf so many times about petty crap that the public is no longer listening. He's a muslim, birther nonsense, fast and furious, etc..
The right lost the election but they just can't let the nonsense go. Now they are obviously trying to smear Hillary.
If Republicans really want to govern, how about focusing on something the people want? How about that laser like focus on jobs? How about a jobs program? How about some job training programs? How about a plan for natural gas fueled vehicles ?
How about something to deal with the skyrocketing cost of medical care?
No, the only focus is on negativity, no positive plans for America. And righties wonder why they are punished by the voters.

so is it a major scandal or not?

I love the fact you try to get to that conclusion, but then have to go out of your way to bash republicans.

Its like blaming the rape victim because of the clothes they were wearing.

 

[werepossum]

You've said "two weeks" in at least two different posts. Why? The November elections were roughly two months after this attack on September 11.

My bad. I should have said two months.

I regard this as merely a gamble that went south with tragic consequences, so I don't have the details memorized. I find people's reactions fascinating and the cover-up mildly so, but the actual attack and lack of security isn't on my list of scandals.

EDIT: Okay, I've corrected my posts.

 

[woolfe9998]

You're assuming that I consider this a scandal; I do not. I consider this politics as usual. Somebody made a bad decision. Maybe that's Obama; probably it's Hilary Clinton or someone lower in State. At the time, I'm sure they had a reason to take that risk, but it turned out to be a bad decision. You win some and you lose some, and sometimes when you take a risk, people die. As far as cost-benefit for the lie, there is no cost. The same people bashing Obama over Benghazi would be bashing him for something else, the press will accept almost anything he tells them (with the exception of Fox News and the few right wing outlets which are going to be criticizing him anyway), his supporters will support him in anything, and the majority of the undecided are probably either too stupid to even notice or smart enough to realize that (A) the President probably doesn't personally decide to remove the Marines from the mission and (B) if the President did personally decide to remove the Marines from the mission he probably had a reason he thought worth the risk at the time. (And if they eventually decide against him, election's over and he can't run again.)

As to the benefit, the Presidency and Congress were on the line. The risk isn't whether Obama did anything wrong, but whether Team Romney could convince a significant number of voters that Obama did something wrong. Just as Obama's lie only had to hold up two weeks, so Romney's charges only had to hold up two weeks.

Wolf, you're accusing me of petty partisan politics on this and on Fast and Furious. I don't think that charge is warranted. On Benghazi I recognize that Team Obama lied, I recognize that Team Bush or Team Romney would have done exactly the same, I am scandalized by neither the lie nor the underlying decision, and I've given the government the benefit of the doubt by assuming that removing Marine and CIA security was done for a reason the deciders considered worth the risk at the time, even while acknowledging that due to the nature of the reason I may never learn it. On Fast and Furious I vocally supported Obama and Holder right up until Obama declared the entire government was his private lawyer and therefore off-limits, effectively owning the operation, because it seemed to me this was exactly the kind of rogue operation the BATFE would undertake on its own, without authorization. Granted, we do have a difference of opinion on the severity; I'm willing to give Obama a pass on a one-time strike where four Americans were killed, but not an ongoing, months long operation intentionally arming drug cartels and killing two Americans and hundreds of Mexicans. We'll have to agree to disagree on whether that is an issue, but to those of us who believe it IS a big deal, Obama had to decide whether to cover it up or dig it out. He chose the former, so whether he was part of the operation from the first he decided to support the people who intentionally armed drug cartels as an argument for disarming the law-abiding American public.

Meanwhile you've been all Obama, all the time, on both issues, with never a bobble. And I'M the partisan here? I think not.

OK, I appreciate the clarifications and withdraw the last remark from my prior message.

FYI I think the lack of security was a serious failing. I didn't realize you were giving them the benefit of the doubt on that. I'm not. I do not like the excuse of inadequate funding either. Perhaps the funding wasn't adequate, but security is the last thing you sacrifice when making choices with limited funding, particularly when you have a specific request for security at a specific location. While Obama didn't micro-manage it, some person or people fucked up here. How high in the DoS it goes, I do not know. I just think if they lied here, it was a very stupid one. It did not and could not have covered for the incompetence, and it turned almost the entire conversation into a discussion about whether the administration had lied. Seems a lot better to be talking about how someone 4 levels removed from Obama screwed something up, but hey, what do I know.

With respect to F&F, I traveled the opposite path as you. At first I was willing to assume Holder lied. It was the Fortune Magazine article which principally convinced me otherwise. The article didn't address Holder but rather, the details of what did and did not happen on the ground. I concluded that there was absolutely nothing to cover up there. At best one rogue agent walked a few guns, but none of those few are linked to any killings. The other guns could not have been prevented from leaving the country, not legally anyway.

You should really read this if you want to understand why I think F&F was all hot air.

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/27/fast-and-furious-truth/

Incidentally, I've always been more guarded in my assessment of the Bush admin on WMD's in Iraq than most people on the left. I don't think it was a straight forward lie. I think they assumed they would find something there, but probably not everything their sources claimed, and probably not everything Powell outlined in his UN Speech. They certainly made a diligent search which they would not have bothered with had they believed nothing was there.

- wolf

 

[werepossum]

OK, I appreciate the clarifications and withdraw the last remark from my prior message.

FYI I think the lack of security was a serious failing. I didn't realize you were giving them the benefit of the doubt on that. I'm not. I do not like the excuse of inadequate funding either. Perhaps the funding wasn't adequate, but security is the last thing you sacrifice when making choices with limited funding, particularly when you have a specific request for security at a specific location. While Obama didn't micro-manage it, some person or people fucked up here. How high in the DoS it goes, I do not know. I just think if they lied here, it was a very stupid one. It did not and could not have covered for the incompetence, and it turned almost the entire conversation into a discussion about whether the administration had lied. Seems a lot better to be talking about how someone 4 levels removed from Obama screwed something up, but hey, what do I know.

With respect to F&F, I traveled the opposite path as you. At first I was willing to assume Holder lied. It was the Fortune Magazine article which principally convinced me otherwise. The article didn't address Holder but rather, the details of what did and did not happen on the ground. I concluded that there was absolutely nothing to cover up there. At best one rogue agent walked a few guns, but none of those few are linked to any killings. The other guns could not have been prevented from leaving the country, not legally anyway.

You should really read this if you want to understand why I think F&F was all hot air.

http://features.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2012/06/27/fast-and-furious-truth/

Incidentally, I've always been more guarded in my assessment of the Bush admin on WMD's in Iraq than most people on the left. I don't think it was a straight forward lie. I think they assumed they would find something there, but probably not everything their sources claimed, and probably not everything Powell outlined in his UN Speech. They certainly made a diligent search which they would not have bothered with had they believed nothing was there.

- wolf

Security wasn't denied, it was removed. That's so egregious that there must have been a reason sensible enough that no one in the State chain of command leaked it. Libya is an extremely dangerous place and Obama isn't going to just throw away an Ambassador. Whatever the reason they removed the security, I suspect it would not satisfy you or I (especially given the advantage of hindsight) but someone at State obviously considered it worth the risk to achieve some other effect, perhaps even just gaining someone's trust by dismissing our American security and using only Libyan security. Hilary Clinton signed the order and I can't see her doing that, taking that personal political risk, without a good reason. No politician is going to put himself or herself in personal political risk without some advantage to be had, whether domestic politics or to the country. I see no possible domestic political benefit, so it must have been something in foreign policy.

 

[Fern]

In congressional testimony State Dept officials said security was scaled back so Libya would look 'normalized'. I.e., to support the administration's contention that AQ, and terrorists, were no longer a problem.

Fern

 

[werepossum]

In congressional testimony State Dept officials said security was scaled back so Libya would look 'normalized'. I.e., to support the administration's contention that AQ, and terrorists, were no longer a problem.

Fern

I'd really hate it if that was the only reason, although government probably does dumber things for worse reasons. Problem is, if I'm right - if there was a reason big enough that sensible bureaucrats and politicians would agree to putting Americans in dire risk and themselves in political risk - we may never be able to be told. And if the only reason was to make Libya look 'normalized', then it's certainly worth the politicians' and bureaucrats' efforts to not let us know that is the only reason.

Since I can't know with any confidence either way, I'll continue assuming that there was a better reason, but one that is either classified, or one that State knows wouldn't fly with the American public but which they in their infinite tweediness considered essential.

 

[First]

In congressional testimony State Dept officials said security was scaled back so Libya would look 'normalized'. I.e., to support the administration's contention that AQ, and terrorists, were no longer a problem.

Fern

lol

 

[Fern]

The shift in narrative from the State Department comes amid revelations the Obama administration told U.S. diplomats during the months leading up to the attack to draw down security in Libya in an effort to show that life was returning to normal after the revolution that shook the North African nation last year.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news...ent-changes-account-benghazi-attack/?page=all

A few of googling and you can probably find a transcript of the testimony. (I believe it was a female, I've linked it here before.)

Fern

 

[First]

Yes, surrre you can.

(btw, hanging your hat on "returning to normal" as being akin to political motivation WRT showing AQ was no longer a problem, so strains credulity it's really not worth responding to....other than to laugh at in this post, lol).

 

[IGBT]

The U.S. military could have prevented one wave of the deadly attack on American personnel in Benghazi if fighter jets had been promptly deployed, a top diplomatic official who was in Benghazi during the Sept. 11 assault told congressional investigators.

The account, contained in a transcript obtained by CNN, was given by Gregory Hicks during an interview last month with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Hicks, a whistle-blower who is preparing to testify Wednesday before that committee, was deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya -- after Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed that night, he became the highest-ranking diplomat on the ground.

Hicks, in his interview, argued that after the first wave of attacks on the U.S. consulate, the U.S. military could have prevented additional violence with a quickly scrambled flight -- after the first wave, terrorists would go on to launch a pre-dawn mortar assault on the CIA annex.

 

[ivwshane]

The U.S. military could have prevented one wave of the deadly attack on American personnel in Benghazi if fighter jets had been promptly deployed, a top diplomatic official who was in Benghazi during the Sept. 11 assault told congressional investigators.

The account, contained in a transcript obtained by CNN, was given by Gregory Hicks during an interview last month with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Hicks, a whistle-blower who is preparing to testify Wednesday before that committee, was deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya -- after Ambassador Chris Stevens was killed that night, he became the highest-ranking diplomat on the ground.

Hicks, in his interview, argued that after the first wave of attacks on the U.S. consulate, the U.S. military could have prevented additional violence with a quickly scrambled flight -- after the first wave, terrorists would go on to launch a pre-dawn mortar assault on the CIA annex.

Yes because we all know terrorist get scared and will flee a scene when they hear the large roar of US jets! Especially when they are relatively close to US personnel! And we all know that with how sophisticated smart bombs are now, no one but the terrorists would have been harmed!


I can only imagine all the praise the right would have given Obama had that happened and if some US personnel died as a result, I'm sure the right would have been, "Obamas quick response was warranted and although our reaction caused the death of Americans it could have been worse. Obama should be praised!".

 

[OutHouse]

I must have missed all of the Republican led hearings about what went wrong in Iraq, how we could spend a trillion dollars and cause the deaths of thousands of Americans for no good reason? But we have plenty of time and money to investigate an incident in LIBYA in which four Americans were killed by terrorists?
You guys are partisan assholes only interested in smearing your opponents, and unfortunately for you the vast majority of Americans aren't buying into it.

WTF does this even mean? neiner neiner poo poo the repug didnt do this so we dims wont do that?

 

[OutHouse]

Well GB lied to us and now 2000 + Americans and over 130000 Iraqis dead and you dont seem to care. Why is that? Where is the outrage?

god damn another. "well geee two wrongs make it right" There was plenty of outrage you just need to come out from your moms basement its clear you were not paying attention.

 

[Bowfinger]

In congressional testimony State Dept officials said security was scaled back so Libya would look 'normalized'. I.e., to support the administration's contention that AQ, and terrorists, were no longer a problem.

Fern

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news...ent-changes-account-benghazi-attack/?page=all

A few of googling and you can probably find a transcript of the testimony. (I believe it was a female, I've linked it here before.)

Fern

Fern, you're being disingenuous. Your first assertion, bolded above, is purely partisan spin on the actual motivation, as presented in the quote in your second comment. The shift to local security had nothing to do with al Qaida or our war on terror. It had everything to do with trying to make the new Libyan government look good, to build the appearance that it was stable and life was returning to normal in Libya.

 

[shortylickens]

Were possum is too smart for this place.

 

[ivwshane]

WTF does this even mean? neiner neiner poo poo the repug didnt do this so we dims wont do that?

No, it means they have no interest in the truth and will continue to put politics before their country. You thinking it's equivalent and therefor the dems are doing what the republicans did is BS.

 

[OutHouse]

Shrug. This was already well known and well documented (congressional hearings and testimony).

I'm curious what info these 'whistle blowers' will have. If it's just more of the same I don't think many will care.

Fern

it figures, You did not let us down at all. why dont you give the dimocrat party cock sucking a rest and come up for air. its clear your brain is starved of O2.

 

[Matt1970]

I must have missed all of the Republican led hearings about what went wrong in Iraq, how we could spend a trillion dollars and cause the deaths of thousands of Americans for no good reason? But we have plenty of time and money to investigate an incident in LIBYA in which four Americans were killed by terrorists?
You guys are partisan assholes only interested in smearing your opponents, and unfortunately for you the vast majority of Americans aren't buying into it.

It’s ironic you calling other people partisan. Have you ever even had an independent thought?

 

[ivwshane]

it figures, You did not let us down at all. why dont you give the dimocrat party cock sucking a rest and come up for air. its clear you brain is starved of O2.

Lol. You don't know fern very well do you?