Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
If they time the retaliation right, Obama could take credit during the election debates.
They just got Hilary to take the fall on Benghazi...
Clinton: 'I take responsibility' for security
By Elise Labott, CNN
Lima, Peru (CNN) - Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the buck stops with her when it comes to who is to blame for security ahead of a deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.
"I take responsibility" for what happened on September 11, Clinton said in an interview with CNN's Elise Labott soon after arriving in Lima, Peru, for a visit. The interview, one of a series given to U.S. television networks Monday night, was the first she has given about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
Clinton insisted President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden are not involved in security decisions.
"I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha," she added, noting that it is close to the election.
The attack killed Chris Stevens, the U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other Americans at the consulate.
The Obama administration has been heavily criticized after Vice President Joe Biden said during last week's vice presidential debate that the White House did not know of requests to enhance security at Benghazi, contradicting testimony by State Department employees that requests had been made and rejected. Following the debate, the White House said the vice president did not know of the requests because they were handled, as is the practice, by the State Department.
Fact Check: Benghazi security
Clinton also sought to downplay the criticism that administration officials continued to say the attack was a spontaneous product of a protest over an anti-Muslim film, a theory that has since been discarded.
Actress sues filmmaker
In the wake of an attack, there is always "confusion," Clinton said. But the information has since changed, Clinton said in the interview.
The secretary of state also described the desperate scene in the State Department during the hours of the attack on the night of September 10. It was an "intense, long ordeal" as staff tried to find out what had happened.
Clinton said her mission now is to make sure such an attack will never happen again -- but also that diplomacy, even in dangerous areas like Benghazi, is not stopped.
"We can't not engage," she said. "We cannot retreat."
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
The White House is imploding.
October 16th, 2012, 13:00
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
FNC is reporting this as "Hillary falling on her sword".
October 16th, 2012, 13:05
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
McCain, Graham and Aiiat (not sure of the spelling of her name) are going after the WH on this.
October 16th, 2012, 13:17
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
I'm reading a book, written about 1976ish. When I joined the service the Cold War was still going strong.
In any case, I am going to quote something out of the book because I think the first part of the paragraph captures the whole thing here, though it is about nuclear war and not terrorist attacks. Bear with me a moment:
Quote:
How would a nuclear war get started? The popular
myth of the insane general with a finger on the button is
pretty far from reality, but something like it did happen
during the Nixon administration. The President, harried
by the Watergate investigation, remarked to some
members of Congress, "I can go into my office and pick
up the telephone and in twenty-five minutes 70 million
people will be dead." This remark sparked a great deal of
concern and a special Congressional investigation into
the mechanism of command and control over this country's
nuclear weapons. Before the investigation could
convene, Defense Secretary Schlesinger quietly told his
staff that any unusual orders from the White House
should not be honored until he had personally examined
them. This was a prudent action under the circumstances,
since the Secretary was worried about a possible
military coup, but it was also quite illegal. The danger of
an insane President (the person occupying the most
stressful job in the world) cannot be dismissed. (Clayton, "Life After Doomsday" 15)
Now, I bring this up because Nixon was far from nuts. I met the man a couple of times and he was as sane as anyone. Would he have "killed 70 million people" out of spite? Most likely he would never have done this. Can others within the chain of command countermand orders? They can. The question though, is WOULD THEY?
More important, does the President have ultimate responsibility for the people and personnel he sends to foreign countries to represent the US? He certainly does and it doesn't MATTER if Hillary "accepts responsibility" for what happened. The fact is SHE IS responsible to ensure the safety of those people, NOT THE SECURITY PROFESSIONALS, but her... but ULTIMATELY she is working for Obama and ultimately HE is responsible so don't let this smoke-and-mirrors thing block your view.
Obama sent Stevens there at great risk. Stevens was FLYING BACK IN under threat of death and he knew it. Why did he do it? He was ordered back in. By whom and for what purpose?
Why isn't Congress all over this?
October 16th, 2012, 13:28
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
LOL!
Bill Hemmer (FNC): "So, the Secretary of State jumping UNDER the Benghazi Bus...."
October 16th, 2012, 13:46
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
White House ponders a strike over Libya attack
By KIMBERLY DOZIER and RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
Associated Press
Posted: 10/16/12 09:31 am
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House, under political pressure to respond forcefully to the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, is readying strike forces and drones but first has to find a target.
And if the administration does find a target, officials say it still has to weigh whether the short-term payoff of exacting retribution on al-Qaida is worth the risk that such strikes could elevate the group’s profile in the region, alienate governments the U.S. needs to fight the group in the future and do little to slow the growing terror threat in North Africa.
Details on the administration’s position and on its search for a possible target were provided by three current and one former administration official, as well as an analyst who was approached by the White House for help. All four spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the high-level debates publicly.
In another effort to bolster Libyan security, the Pentagon and State Department have been developing a plan to train and equip a special operations force in Libya, according to a senior defense official.
The efforts show the tension of the White House’s need to demonstrate it is responding forcefully to al-Qaida, balanced against its long-term plans to develop relationships and trust with local governments and build a permanent U.S. counterterrorist network in the region.
Vice President Joe Biden pledged in his debate last week with Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan to find those responsible for the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others.
“We will find and bring to justice the men who did this,” Biden said in response to a question about whether intelligence failures led to lax security around Stevens and the consulate. Referring back to the raid that killed Osama bin Laden last year, Biden said American counterterror policy should be, “if you do harm to America, we will track you to the gates of hell if need be.”
October 16th, 2012, 13:46
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
Rep. Peter King Dismisses Susan Rice’s Libya Excuses: ‘Yeah, I Don’t Accept That’
Video
by Alex Alvarez | 9:30 am, October 16th, 2012 » 1 commenthttp://static01.mediaite.com/med/wp-...012/10/CNN.jpgOn Tuesday, Starting Point host Soledad O’Brien invited Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Peter King on to discuss the Obama administration’s handling of security issues in Benghazi, Libya.
“I give Secretary Clinton credit for taking some responsibility,” he told O’Brien. “I wish Joe Biden and President Obama would also take responsibility. I think the administration has a lot to explain from the day this story broke, back on September 11th, September 12th, they told misleading stories, confusing stories, contradictory stories. The reality is what they said the very first day, almost every word they’ve said has been disproven.”
“The fact is,” he added, contrary to what the administration had been telling us, “this attack showed that Al Qaeda and its affiliates and offshoots are still a powerful force against the United States and, in some ways, even more dangerous than September 11th.”
O’Brien then shared remarks by Susan Rice, wherein she claimed that the information she had shared while making her Sunday morning talk show rounds after the attack in Benghazi had been flawed, but that it reflected was the most up-to-date briefing she had been given at the time, and she that she had not given intentionally false or misleading information.
“Yeah, I don’t accept that,” said King, adding that Rice had basically failed to perform her due diligence before sharing information with the public and that she had come forward with an agenda, which was to perpetuate the story that the attacks had been a spontaneous protest of the film Innocence of Muslims.
O’Brien then pointed out that the President had used the word “terror” almost immediately following the attack, prompting King to point out that he’d only used the term once and that his administration almost immediately denied a link to terror immediately after.
When the host noted that King seemed to not want to characterize the administration’s actions a “cover-up,” King corrected her, saying that he did, although he wasn’t going so far as to allege unlawful activity.
Have a look, via CNN:
October 16th, 2012, 13:49
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
Clinton mea culpa for deaths in Libyan consulate raid
http://images.smh.com.au/2012/10/16/...82-620x349.jpg Taking responsibility ... US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton said that security at all of America's diplomatic missions abroad is her job, not that of the White House. Photo: AP
WASHINGTON: The US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, said she accepted responsibility for what happened in last month's attack on a US diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the American ambassador.
Mrs Clinton told CNN that President Barack Obama and Vice-President Joe Biden were not involved in diplomatic security decisions and should not be blamed for the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
''I take responsibility . . . I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha,'' Mrs Clinton said on CNN's OutFront program.
The Libya attack has emerged as an issue in the US presidential race, with the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, and fellow Republicans saying the Obama administration failed to secure the facility before the attack and painted a false picture of it afterwards.
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Three Republican senators on the Armed Services Committee called Mrs Clinton's acceptance of responsibility a ''laudable gesture'' while criticising the White House for not doing the same.
''The security of Americans serving our nation everywhere in the world is ultimately the job of the Commander-in-Chief,'' senators John McCain, of Arizona, Lindsey Graham, of South Carolina, and Kelly Ayotte, of New Hampshire, said. ''The buck stops there.''
In her CNN interview, Mrs Clinton also tried to deflect criticism that administration officials stuck with a mistaken depiction of the attack as a spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Islamic video that was hijacked by extremists.
After such an incident there was always ''confusion'' and the information had since changed.
Even though U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she bears responsibility for the security failures in Benghazi, three GOP senators said late Monday that they still believe that President Barack Obama, not Clinton, should be held to account. On Monday in Lima, Peru, Clinton said that the buck stops with her when it comes to diplomatic security decisions abroad. She was backing up Vice President Joe Biden, who said at last week's debate that "we" weren't aware of requests for more security in Libya prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attack that killed Amb. Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The White House later clarified that when Biden says "we" he only speaks for him and the president.
"I take responsibility," Clinton said. "I'm in charge of the State Department's 60,000-plus people all over the world, 275 posts. The president and the vice president wouldn't be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals. They're the ones who weigh all of the threats and the risks and the needs and make a considered decision."
Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) have been criticizing the administration for its statements on the Benghazi attack, especially U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, who said on Sept. 16 that based on the best information available at that time, the attack appeared to be a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Islam YouTube video.
Clinton's attempt to claim responsibility was "laudable" but doesn't absolve Obama and the White House of their responsibilities, the senators said, both for the security failures surrounding the attack and for the statements made by White House officials afterward.
"We must remember that the events of September 11 were preceded by an escalating pattern of attacks this year in Benghazi, including a bomb that was thrown into our Consulate in April, another explosive device that was detonated outside of our Consulate in June, and an assassination attempt on the British Ambassador," they said.
"If the President was truly not aware of this rising threat level in Benghazi, then we have lost confidence in his national security team, whose responsibility it is to keep the President informed. But if the President was aware of these earlier attacks in Benghazi prior to the events of September 11, 2012, then he bears full responsibility for any security failures that occurred. The security of Americans serving our nation everywhere in the world is ultimately the job of the Commander-in-Chief. The buck stops there.
October 16th, 2012, 13:57
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
October 16, 2012 Will there be any consequences for Secretary Clinton accepting responsibility for Benghazi attack?
Bruce Johnson
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has accepted responsibility for Benghazi security deficiencies.
Now, who accepts the consequences of responsibility? And what of the disinformation campaign?
Accepting responsibility is only step one. The consequences of failure come second. Will the second part ever happen? No.
Will Hillary resign? No. Will Hillary suffer any consequence for accepting the "responsibility" for under manning our hottest embassy situation on the 9/11 anniversary? Will she accept responsibilities for the deaths that ensued after requests for additional security? No. Will she be held on misleading the nation as to the causes of the attack. No. This is nothing more than an uncomfortable admission which serves as a diversion.
Will Obama be held for his non attendance of intelligence briefings the week prior to 9/11? Or for flying to Las Vegas on 9/12 for a fund raiser? No. Hillary took the bullet. This is a vapid "end of story" empty acquiescence. A "Please media, go away", declaration and request. What is necessary now is the consequence of poor decision making and department control which cost lives out there in the "big game". What is necessary is the revelation of who knew what and when. Just like Fast and Furious, somehow "who knew" never comes out. This is political bargaining behind the scenes. We have this on you, and now you will march to our music. It seems to be a more valuable bobble to have in one's political war chest, than to bring to sunlight the facts and the circumstances. In this mode, politicians all appear to have a mutual understanding amongst themselves. Kinda like, "we are all in the same actor's guild, we all make mistakes". And maybe that is the BIG problem in the American political system. You, Hillary, won't get hurt, but now we own you for a while. The Public will never know. Their right to know seems to have been lost somewhere. Witness the Jesse Jr. charade. His big crime is attempting to buy the Senate seat. But he was suddenly struck by bipolar disorder symptoms within a week of his water carrier going state's evidence. He disappears. Deals seem to have been made. Suddenly he now is accused of decorating his house with campaign funds. From murder to a speeding ticket. But Jesse, tip toe from now on. We gottcha. Hillary's "acceptance" or responsibility is only step one. Step two is consequence to Hillary. I am guessing this will never occur. But someone will own her for a while. Walk softly Mrs. Clinton.
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
Africa News Round Up October, Tuesday 16, 2012
16 October 2012
The US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says she takes responsibility for the failure in security at the US consulate in Benghazi, where the US ambassador to Libya was killed last month, the BBC reports.
Mrs Clinton said ensuring the safety of US diplomatic staff overseas was her job, not that of the White House.
It comes ahead of the second campaign debate between President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney.
In all, four Americans died when the US consulate in Benghazi was attacked.
"What we had to do in the state department was keep focused not on why something happened - that was for the intelligence community to determine - but what was happening and what could happen," she told US TV channels.
"And that's what I was very much working on, day and night, to try to make sure that we intervened with governments. We did everything we could to keep our people safe, which is my primary responsibility."
Elsewhere in Libya at least 120 prisoners escaped from Libya's largest jail on Monday after the policeman in charge threw a set of keys into the prisoners' cells, News24 reports.
The mass escape is the latest in a string of incidents which highlight the ongoing instability in Libya a year after the end of the civil war that toppled dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
Supreme Security Council spokesperson Abdel-Monem al-Hurr told Reuters that 120 men detained in the Jdeida prison in Tripoli were now on the run and were believed to be hiding in the city.
"We don't know why the policeman threw the keys into the prison," he said on Monday. "We've been able to catch only seven of the prisoners so far."
Jdeida prison is the biggest jail in Libya and falls under the jurisdiction of the interior ministry.
In South Africa newly-elected African Union Commission chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said on Monday that AU would spare no effort to try and resolve conflict in Mali and the Sahel region, News24 reports.
"This crisis has the potential to spread across the region and even the continent," she said during the hand-over ceremony in Addis Ababa, according to a copy of her speech.
Dlamini-Zuma said the AU would continue to provide support to both Sudan and South Sudan, the Somali government, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Guinea Bissau.
She said peace and stability were a prerequisite for social, economic, and human development, and good governance.
She said the AU would discuss ways to improve co-operation and co-ordination with the United Nations.
Africa should be united to ensure it was a force for global change. Dlamini-Zuma said the magnitude of the task did not escape her.
Elsewhere in South Africa, efforts to end a rash of gold mine strikes that have strangled production at South African mines have reached an impasse, with no further talks planned, RNW reports.
In last-gasp talks, unions reported that a negotiated wage offer was met with scepticism by striking miners, leading the Chamber of Mines to declare "it is not in a position to make any further proposals."
The announcement could spell the end of an effort to deal with a spate of labour unrest through a centralised bargaining process.
"The individual companies will now explore other avenues to try to bring normality to the gold mining industry," a Chamber of Mines statement said.
Workers indicated Thursday they could not get behind a deal negotiated between the National Union of Minerworkers and the Chamber, saying it was not up to their demand of roughly 12,500 rand ($1,430) per month wages.
The latest offer would have seen monthly wages and bonuses go up to between 7,000 and 10,000 rand.
The unrest has been marked by workers' rejection of union leadership, especially the NUM, which is allied to the ruling African National Congress (ANC).
In Nigeria, loud explosions and gunfire have rocked Nigeria's northern city of Maiduguri, which has seen growing violence by the militant Islamist group Boko Haram, the BBC reports.
Details are unclear, but reports said at least 10 people had been killed, including several soldiers.
A primary school and a radio tower were reportedly set ablaze.
Earlier this month witnesses said soldiers shot dead up to 30 civilians after a bomb attack on an army patrol in Maiduguri.
In the latest incident, reports said soldiers sealed off nearly every street in the city centre as the attacks began on Monday afternoon and continued after dark.
Witnesses said that, earlier on Monday, a gunman had shot dead a traffic warden in the city close to a military checkpoint.
The army denied killing civilians although correspondents say it offered contradictory explanations about what had happened.
Attacks in central and northern Nigeria blamed on Boko Haram have killed some 1,400 people since 2010.
October 16th, 2012, 14:00
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
Rep. King: Al Qaeda a greater threat now than before 9/11
U.S. Rep. Peter T. King, New York Republican and Chairman of the House's Homeland Security Committee, said Tuesday that al Qaeda is a greater threat now than it was before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
"That is the consensus of most intelligence experts," he said on CNN's "Starting Point." "What they've done is they are now more under the radar screen, they're more spread out, and they're harder to define. It was great killing … [Osama] bin Laden, I give President Obama credit for that, for bin Laden being killed, but having said that, he was one element, because al Qaeda [had] shifted. And it [had] shifted its emphasis from being a centralized force to being a diversified, diverse force, which is harder to track down. They're under the radar screen in many cases.
"They're a greater threat than they were back on September 11, because of the fact that they are much more spread out, the fact that there is active recruiting going on, people under the radar screen, and if you talk to intelligence experts, most will agree with that," Mr. King continued. "That on September 11 and the immediate years afterwards we knew who they were, we know we had a generalized idea of how to get them, and we were getting them one by one. And the culmination was when President Obama got bin Laden in May of 2011 … but the fact is, it has now spread out into many different groups, and that is why it is considered by most intelligence experts to be more dangerous now than it was then, and that's the story the president is not telling."
Mr. King said that the Obama administration's evolving story over the recent events in Libya has unfolded because immediately labeling the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi an act of terrorism would undercut the administration's message that al Qaeda, a terrorist group, has been decimated.
While traveling in Peru, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she is taking "full responsibility" for the lack of security at the consulate before the attack on the anniversary of 9/11 that led to the death of four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
October 16th, 2012, 14:13
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
Posted at 09:30 AM ET, 10/16/2012 NSC failure? Clinton’s failure?
Now on the eve of the second presidential debate, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton comes forward with a rather meaningless acceptance of responsibility, telling CNN that she takes “responsibility” for what happened in Benghazi. Huh? She knew about the requests for more security and turned them down? She knew Libya had become a shooting gallery and kept it to herself? If she is really at fault she should first resign and then get herself to either a news conference or a congressional hearing to explain what she knew.
But of course this is another transparent move to deflect blame from the White House and race to catch up to events on the ground.
The Obama administration is scrambling to catch up to reality in Libya. Libya is not a “success” in leading from behind but rather on the verge of being disabled, if not overrun, by jihadists. The New York Times reports that only in the wake of the murders of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans are the Pentagon and State Department “rushing to help the Libyan government create a commando force to combat Islamic extremists like the ones who killed the American ambassador in Libya last month and to help counter the country’s fractious militias, according to internal government documents.”
The administration, of course, should have known that the security situation was perilous months ago, when, for example, the International Red Cross pulled out. It is no mystery to European governments, to outside analysts and even to some intelligence figures (not to mention to members of Congress) that Libya has been a non-functioning state with a dire al-Qaeda problem. But only now does President Obama do something about it.
Is Hillary Clinton saying this failure was her fault? Well, we do have intelligence agencies and, more to the point, the National Security Council. Where were all these folks?
In fact, the president seems to always be the last to know about everything. In a remarkable State Department background briefing on Oct. 9 was this exchange:
QUESTION: Hi, yes. You described several incidents you had with groups of men, armed men. What in all of these events that you’ve described led officials to believe for the first several days that this was prompted by protests against the video?
SENIOR STATE DEPARTMENT OFFICIAL TWO: That is a question that you would have to ask others. That was not our conclusion. I’m not saying that we had a conclusion, but we outlined what happened. The Ambassador walked guests out around 8:30 or so, there was no one on the street at approximately 9:40, then there was the noise and then we saw on the cameras the — a large number of armed men assaulting the compound
The State Department (except Susan Rice, it seems) had it right, but the president didn’t? Or the State Department permanent bureaucracy knew what was going on, but the secretary of state was clueless?
Even if we assume no one was trying to push this under the rug until the election and no one in the administration was nervous, the Libya attack would undermine the claim both to have put al-Qaeda on its heels and to have achieved a victory in Libya with only the slightest U.S. imprint. Doesn’t this all suggest that not only Clinton but also the NSC had utterly failed to keep the White House up to speed on what was going on?
Either national security adviser Tom Donilon has been asleep at the wheel for months (along with Clinton, I guess), failing to keep the president abreast of either the descent of Libya into chaos or the most up-to-date intelligence on the murder of four Americans, or Donilon did his job and the president failed in his. It’s one or the other.
If Clinton wants to throw herself under the bus, far be it from me to object. But it is silly to think she is solely or even principally responsible for the debacle. Sorry, but the buck stops at the White House.
Obama on Benghazi: Believe Me or Your Lying Eyes (Or At Least Wait Until After the Election)
http://blogs-images.forbes.com/paulr...0/200x3001.jpg In this handout photo provided by The White House, U.S. President Barack Obama signs a condolence book in memory of Ambassador Chris Stevens, as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (L) looks on, September 12, 2012 in Washington,(Image credit: Getty Images via @daylife)
In Duck Soup, Groucho Marx pleads his innocence to his wealthy matronly fiancé, who catches him smooching with a show girl: “Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”
Since September 12, the Obama administration has been asking us to believe him, his press secretary, and his proxies that our Libyan ambassador and three other consulate officials were killed by a spontaneous mob driven into frenzy by an anti-Muslim film produced by an unknown Christian film maker. He asks that we not believe his state department or top intelligence officials who testify that this narrative is false. Nor should we notice the coincidence of the attack taking place on 9/11 or that this was revenge for the fifteen top al Qaeda leaders killed by drones under Obama. Of course, Obama spiking the “I-killed-Osama” football at the Democrat convention had nothing to do with this either. Nor did the Libyan President warn of impending violence three days earlier.
We should at least wait until Obama’s own investigation is complete – that is, until after the election to decide what really happened!
The following partial CNN chronology reveals the collapse of the Obama narrative and his futile attempts to keep it alive.
Note that this chronology tells us what the various officials say on record and sometimes under oath, but the truth would have been known within hours or a day. We now know that there were surveillance cameras on site and a U.S. drone overhead to record the fact that there was no spontaneous protest and that this was a planned coordinated attack – the key fact that was initially denied. Surviving consulate personnel could have been debriefed immediately. Hence it is clear that the Obama administration knew almost from the beginning but chose to obfuscate the official record for political gain.
The cover up began immediately on September 12 with Hillary Clinton’s statement that “some have sought to justify this vicious behavior, along with the protest that took place at our embassy in Cairo yesterday, as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet….”
White House press secretary, Jay Carney, on September 13: “The protests we’re seeing around the region are in reaction to this movie. They are not directly in reaction to any policy of the United States or the government of the United States or the people of the United States.”
A senior U.S. official on September 13 is one of the first to contradict the Obama narrative: The Benghazi violence was “not an innocent mob… The video or 9/11 made a handy excuse and could be fortuitous from their perspective, but this was a clearly planned military-type attack.”
Carney on September 14 continued to deny the obvious: ”We were not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent.”
Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on CBS (Sunday September 16) dug the hole deeper:
“We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned….Our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous – not a premeditated – response to what had transpired in Cairo… .”
Carney on September 18:“Our belief based on the information we have is it was the video that caused the unrest in Cairo, and the video and the unrest in Cairo that helped — that precipitated some of the unrest in Benghazi and elsewhere. What other factors were involved is a matter of investigation.”
The Director of National Intelligence before Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (September 19) trashed the Obama narrative under oath: “They were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy. … At this point, what I would say is that a number of different elements appear to have been involved in the attack, including individuals connected to militant groups that are prevalent in eastern Libya, particularly the Benghazi area, as well we are looking at indications that individuals involved in the attack may have had connections to al Qaeda or al Qaeda affiliates, in particular al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.”
Carney on September 19 continued to plead ignorance: “… Right now I’m saying we don’t have evidence at this point that this was premeditated or preplanned to coincide on a — to happen on a specific date or coincide with that anniversary.”
Only on September 20 (nine days after the tragedy) did Carney finally concede: “It is, I think, self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack. Our embassy was attacked violently, and the result was four deaths of American officials.” (Why did the affair become self-evident within one day?)
With his narrative collapsing on all sides, Obama still refused to abandon the video story in a town hall meeting organized by Univision Network on September 20: “What we do know is that the natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video were used as an excuse by extremists to see if they can also directly harm U.S. interests.”
Hillary Clinton on September 21 drove another nail into the video coffin “What happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack…”
Obama on ABC’s “The View” on September 25, asked about Hillary Clinton’s act-of-terrorism statement: “We’re still doing an investigation. There’s no doubt that (with) the kind of weapons that were used, the ongoing assault, that it wasn’t just a mob action. We don’t have all the information yet, so we’re still gathering it….”
Background briefing by senior state department official (October 9): “The lethality and the number of armed people are unprecedented… And so it is unprecedented, in fact, it would be very, very hard to find precedent for an attack like (it) in recent diplomatic history.”
With the video story so widely demolished, Obama could only plead with voters to wait until all the facts are in.
There are three reasons why Obama sticks so stubbornly to his discredited narrative at the cost of credibility with voters on the eve of the election. He will likely pay heavily for this intransigence in the upcoming foreign policy debate:
First, a counter-narrative had to be ginned up quickly to counter what would shortly become Paul Ryan’s “Obama’s Mid East policy going down in flames” characterization. After all, the President himself, on May 2 of this year, assured the American people from Bagrham Air Base that “the tide has turned,” the Taliban’s “momentum has been broken,” al Qaeda leadership had been “devastated,” and that he had kept his campaign promise to kill Osama. The handoff of security to local Afghan forces is going well, he asserted, especially since we extricated ourselves from the “bad war” in Iraq, which had diverted resources from the “good war” in Afghanistan. Obama decided to mislead the public about Benghazi to perpetuate the myth of a successful Mid East policy until the election.
Second, Obama’s blame-the-video narrative obfuscates the extreme naïveté and egoism of a rookie President who believes that living in a Muslim country as a youth and delivering one Cairo speech, preaching mutual understanding and apologizing for past sins and affronts, can make things right with the Muslim world. With Obama in charge, Muslims throughout the world, perhaps even the Taliban, will treat us with love and respect once they understand his good intentions. The Benghazi tragedy was only a small part of the Mid East conflagration, but it was the most visible. It had to be blamed on someone else, other than a naïve and egotistical self-described multi-cultural American president who believes that his words can transform the Muslim world into our friend.
Already in campaign mode in May of 2007, candidate Obama declared in a radio interview that the day he is elected “the rest of the world will look at the United States differently.” Only he can “reach out to the Muslim world” because “I understand their point of view” even though I am a Christian… With me as President, “the world will have confidence that I am listening to them.” This understanding “will make us safer, something this (Bush) administration failed to understand.”
As Sarah Palin might be tempted to say: “How is that listening working out for you. Mr. President?”
Third, the zealot-film-maker narrative could be used to tarnish all those Bible-thumping, anti-abortion, and racist evangelicals, who vote overwhelmingly Republican. On the weighty David Letterman show, the President instructed the late-night audience what harm America’s religious nuts can cause. In one false move, a “shadowy figure” destroyed all the good will built up by Obama’s policy of apology, understanding, and sympathy for the downtrodden Muslim world. It’s not Obama’s fault. After all, he cannot control all the right-wing nuts in America.
Obama did not elaborate that the “shadowy” filmmaker’s amateurish trailer languished unseen on the internet since July until al Qaeda operatives and Mullahs dredged it up. Moreover, it does not help the Obama narrative that the so-called film maker is a Coptic Christian, an ancient Egyptian branch of Christianity that has nothing to do with those who “cling to guns and religion in their frustration.” Obama also would not like it known that the new ruling Muslim Brotherhood is expelling Coptic Christians from their ancient home in Egypt and threatening them with death for practicing their religion. Our “shadowy” film maker had good cause to be upset. His lifespan is now limited after the President’s condemnation. He has a number of Fatwa bounties on his head.
Al Qaeda and the Mullahs did not even need the excuse of the Coptic film maker. A brief survey of the internet brings up hundreds of Anti-Islam cartoons and videos. They are a dime a dozen and emanate from all kinds of civilized countries weekly, if not daily. If the Mullahs, the Taliban, or al Qaeda wish to stir up a crowd, they do not need our shadowy film maker.
The Obama administration’s offense is a shabby cover up that has been aided and abetted by the main stream press. (The flagship newspaper of the party, the venerable New York Times, has maintained a hush of silence around this cover up). If the matter is raised at all in the mainstream press, it is in the context of whether Obama denied extra security for Libyan diplomatic outposts. (If he did, Obama would say that it was the Republicans’ fault anyway for cutting vital funding).
I have a deep faith in the common sense of the American people. They know a bunch of malarkey (to coin a phrase) when they hear it. Obama will regret the day he decided to cover up the Benghazi tragedy by blaming it on someone else. He should have come clean, taken his licks, and hope that that would end the bleeding. Paul Gregory’s new book The Global Economy and its Economic Systems will be published shortly by Cengage.
October 16th, 2012, 17:59
vector7
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
by Ulsterman on October 16, 2012 with 2 Comments in News
In a recent interview with the very Obama-friendly Washington Post, Ambassador Susan Rice said something very interesting that would appear to confirm the belief that it was senior advisers within the Obama White House who told her to lie to the American public regarding the true nature of the Benghazi Massacre that killed four Americans – including a United States ambassador. According to a longtime military insider, the quote from Ambassador Rice leaves NO DOUBT – it was the Obama White House that told her exactly what to say.
In an interview with The Washington Post published on Tuesday, Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said, according to The Post’s characterization, that “she relied on daily updates from intelligence agencies in the days before her television appearances and on aset of talking pointsprepared for senior members of the administration by intelligence officials. LINK
__________________________
A figure with long standing ties to the United States defense industry, received this bit of information from a longtime Military Insider, and then passed it along to me. I am now, with their permission, sharing it with all of you…
Rice just told media she was relying on “intelligence agency talking points” before going public with her version of Benghazi.
We provide intel. We don’t tell an administration how to sell that intel to the public. We don’t do “talking points”. Any talking points received came directly from administration. They packaged it. They delivered their version of it. Rice just admitted to that. Confirmation of Obama White House lie. Will forward to committee with assessment. -NAME DELETED- pushing for hearing announcement no later than 23rd.
October 16th, 2012, 18:04
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
So, basically Valerie Jarret is the one that told Rice to suck it up and lie.... Because I'm betting now Obama ain't that friggin smart. Oh, he's a smart man, but I don't think he sees things on a strategic scale. I don't think he ever did which is one reason he never should have been President.
Jarret is commie enough to mate with the Muslims in my opinion.
October 16th, 2012, 18:21
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
Obama accused by GOP of shirking responsibility over Benghazi attack
Republicans say Obama must 'man up and accept responsibility' after Hillary Clinton accepted blame for Libya security failings
Hillary Clinton told CNN: 'I take responsibility. I'm in charge of the of the state department's 60,000-plus people all over the world.' Photograph: Reuters
Leading Republicans have accused Barack Obama of trying to duck responsibility for the attack in Benghazi after the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, accepted the blame for security failures over the killing of the American ambassador to Libya and three other officials by an armed militia.
In an apparent attempt to weaken a potential line of attack on Obama by Mitt Romney in Tuesday's crucial debate, Clinton broke away from a tour of Latin America to tell US television networks that responsibility for the circumstances that led to the death of the ambassador, Chris Stevens, stops with her not the White House.
"I take responsibility," Clinton told CNN. "I'm in charge of the state department's 60,000-plus people all over the world and 275 posts. The president and the vice-president wouldn't be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals. They're the ones who weigh all of the threats and the risks and the needs and make a considered decision."
Republicans reacted with scorn and accused the White House of attempting to shirk responsibility for failures exposed by a hearing in Congress last week, including the state department's refusal of requests to strengthen diplomatic security in Libya even following a series of attacks on American, British and other international targets in Benghazi.
Richard Williamson, a Romney foreign policy adviser, said he expected the Romney to use the debate to press the president to "man up and accept responsibility" for failures that led to Stevens' death.
Senator John McCain praised Clinton for "throwing herself under the bus" to shield Obama. But McCain joined two other Republican senators – Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte – in questioning White House claims that it knew nothing of the deteriorating security situation in Benghazi ahead of the killings on September 11 nor the requests for added protection.
They noted that the attack on the US consulate was "preceded by an escalating pattern of attacks this year in Benghazi".
"If the president was truly not aware of this rising threat level in Benghazi, then we have lost confidence in his national security team, whose responsibility it is to keep the president informed," the senators said. "But if the president was aware of these earlier attacks in Benghazi prior to the events of September 11, 2012, then he bears full responsibility for any security failures that occurred.
"The security of Americans serving our nation everywhere in the world is ultimately the job of the commander-in-chief. The buck stops there."
While Clinton moved to shield the president, she also accepted responsibility only up to a point. The secretary of state said specific decisions about protection in Benghazi were made by others.
"The decisions about security assets are made by security professionals," she told Fox News.
Clinton also sought to shift some of the responsibility for inaccurate statements initially made by administration officials about the circumstances of the assault on the Benghazi consulate.
Five days after the attack, the administration sent the US ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, on to television talk shows to say that the assault was part of a broader backlash across the Middle East against an anti-Muslim video. The administration later backtracked, describing the attack as a preplanned terrorist assault that went on for several hours.
Clinton said Rice was merely conveying faulty intelligence.
"As the intelligence community has now said, their assessment over the last month changed. But everyone in the administration was trying to give information to the best of their ability at the time with the caveat that more was likely to be learned and there would be most likely changes," she told Fox News. "The fog of war, the confusion you get in any kind of combat situation, remember this was an attack that went on for hours."
Rice also denied the administration was covering up the true nature of the attack.
"It was purely a function of what was provided to us," she told the Washington Post.
But McCain remained sceptical.
"They're either deceiving the American people or they are so incompetent they don't deserve to serve," he said.
Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Centre for Politics, said Clinton's series of interviews were clearly an effort to draw fire away from the White House.
"There's three weeks to the election and Obama's struggling. The last thing he needs is to have this placed on this plate so she's doing her party duty. She swinging into action as Bill [Clinton] swung into action for the party convention," he said.
But Sabato said that while Obama will be relieved to be able to defend himself in the debate by pointing to Clinton's statements, there is little evidence that Republican criticism is having an impact on the election.
"This issue is not cutting. It's not having an impact. People seem to be focused squarely on domestic and economic matters in this election, and I just haven't seen any impact," Sabato said. "The Republican base is interested but they've already made a decision."
The greater impact may ultimately be on Clinton if she decides to make a bid for the presidency in 2016.
"It would come back and it would be used by her opponents. I can't imagine it would by any means be the decisive issue. But if she does run, the critical question among the Obama supporters will be: was she loyal? So far the Clintons are the best thing Obama has got going," Sabato said.
October 16th, 2012, 19:39
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
I don't think ANY of us are "defending" Hillary. Everyone KNOWS the President is responsible, ultimately. She is an idiot for taking the blame - but it was a calculated risk because they did this just before the debate tonight to get attention off of Obama!
No one is defending her.
National Security Why Republicans Aren’t Attacking Hillary Clinton over Benghazi
President Barack Obama heads back into the Oval Office after making a statement about the death of U.S. ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, DC., on Sept. 12, 2012.
On Sunday’s talk shows, Republicans remained indignant about Joe Biden‘s statement in last week’s debate that “we did not know” about requests for more security to protect the U.S. consulate in Benghazi shortly before the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The White House has clarified that Biden was not talking about the entire Obama Administration, but the White House itself, which seems an entirely reasonable position. But senior Romney adviser Ed Gillespie was not buying that line when pressed by Fox’s tenacious Chris Wallace:
WALLACE: What about — what about the argument that you just heard from David Axelrod, when he said “we”, he meant the president and the vice president. And, even the White House, and, quite frankly, there is no reason that they would have heard that people were asking for more security in Libya. That is not something that would rise to the presidential level.
GILLESPIE: Well, first of all, you know, I guess we’ll accept that explanation. “We” generally means your administration, when you are talking as the president or vice president of the United States, including your State Department.
And clearly what we saw here this morning and what we have been seeing is an effort by President Obama and Vice President Biden to say, no, it was really Secretary Clinton. It was the State Department that you ought to be looking at and talking to and criticizing here or questioning here as opposed to us in the White House.
GILLESPIE: I’m not sure that that’s sustainable, frankly. I think that the buck does stop at the — in the Oval Office.
This debate is strange on a couple of levels. One is the simple logic of it. Why is it not “sustainable” for the White House to say it was unaware of a bureaucratic fight over security at a second-tier diplomatic site? It seems overwhelmingly plausible, and it’s hard to imagine most voters would disagree.
Even stranger, however, is the position Republicans have adopted of defending Hillary Clinton. The Secretary of State has been an archvillain of Republican campaigns for decades now. And when it comes to the debate over security in Benghazi, it would seem that the buck should stop with her. But suddenly it doesn’t suit the GOP to attack Clinton. Her approval ratings are sky-high. Romney already has a problem with female voters. And Hillary’s not on the ballot this November. The GOP wants to concentrate its political attacks on Obama, even at the cost of sounding nonsensical.
The Benghazi security debate is really a proxy for something larger anyway. Republicans don’t argue that Obama was somehow indifferent or incompetent when it came to protecting Chris Stevens. They say that the Libya attack illustrated the “unraveling” of Obama’s larger foreign policy. As Joe explains well, that thesis doesn’t make much sense either.
But all that may be beside the point. At his infamous “47%” fundraiser, Romney assured a concerned donor that if a foreign policy crisis emerged late in the campaign, “I will work to find a way to take advantage of the opportunity.” And so he has.
October 16th, 2012, 19:41
American Patriot
Re: Is Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco and Libya Facing Real Unrest or a Manufactured Crisis?
This was all from Time and all the notes in there (hyperlinks) are mostly from Time as well.
They are a bunch of Bullshit Liberals anyway. So who cares what they blather about?