Benghazi – Can We All Agree Now

Obama has been lying the whole time.  He knew.  They ALL knew.

The attacks in Benghazi were terrorist attacks and Obama refused to admit that fact.  He specifically mentioned Benghazi 7 times in the Rose Garden speech and not once did he refer to them as terrorist attacks.  Only when speaking about the general 9-11 attacks in the large view did he use the words terrorist attacks.

The White House marched Patraeus out and had him repeat their lie:

Former CIA Director David Petraeus told lawmakers at a closed-door briefing Friday the agency believed the assault on the U.S. Consulate in Libya was a terrorist attack from the beginning.

Now, let’s admit that:

  1. Obama mishandled the whole crisis.
  2. Covered up the fact that they knew.
  3. Leveraged Patraeus’ affair in order to get him to repeat the video story.
  4. The perceived weakness of the White House may be behind the attacks in Israel.

Oh yeah, and that this had EVERYTHING to do with the elections.

19 responses to “Benghazi – Can We All Agree Now

  1. No, Obama has not lied. Point to one lie he said.

    There is nothing in the so-called “scandal” but a UN Ambassador making a misstatement because the CIA and the White House were not yet releasing all the data, wanting to do a thorough investigation.

    The Republicans are going to fail on this because there is nothing there – no scandal, no crime, no lie from Obama (if you can find one, post one). He took awhile as he should to allow a full investigation before they told the public all they knew. That’s better than saying too much too soon. They handled it right. Those who want to try to turn this into a scandal have NO EVIDENCE. None. It’s a partisan effort to parse who said what when, no crime, nothing. It’s disgusting, and the President and the Democrats should skewer the Republicans for not putting “country first” and debasing a tragedy to try to score partisan points.

    I find it disgusting. I challenge you again: show one Obama lie. Show a crime. Show a scandal. Show SOMETHING! Your four points are all assertions with NO EVIDENCE.

    • No, Obama has not lied. Point to one lie he said.

      Official after official trotted out and said that the attack was as a result of the video. Clinton, Rice and Carney were but a few. In my mind the most damning is Patraeous himself. He initially said it was the video. Now he’s saying he knew the whole time.

      Someone changed the report and he is too much of an officer to defy orders.

      He took awhile as he should to allow a full investigation before they told the public all they knew.

      If that were the case they would not have been so strong on their story regarding the video.

      I find it disgusting. I challenge you again: show one Obama lie. Show a crime. Show a scandal. Show SOMETHING! Your four points are all assertions with NO EVIDENCE.

      This is management 101. I know, serious, I KNOW how hard it is to stand in front of people and admit things that you wish were not so. But it is the mark of the incompetent, or the ambitious, to work so very hard to make things appear as they really aren’t.

      • Again, I think you’re wrong. Prove that official after official “trotted out and said…” Give some links. Give me some evidence. I don’t recall any of that, I do recall Obama refusing to go into detail until the investigation was complete. The video was talked about in regard to other protests that took place.

        No one “changed the report.” Again provide evidence the report was changed. Petraeus and the CIA believed al qaeda involved, but during the investigation their evidence was not made public. That’s normal in such national security cases. By mid-October the White House said their investigation concluded it was terrorism and al qaeda. There are still questions concerning the possibility that the CIA had prisoners at the embassy — these are things that we don’t want to make public, and therefore making public any information is touchy. The election is irrelevant, this is national security.

        Again, you have innuendo and theories, but the evidence doesn’t support your claim. That’s why it will never gain traction outside the GOP base as a scandal — there’s no evidence. It’s a non-story.

  2. I agree with everything Scott wrote above. If the Republicans wanted to go after the administration on something, it should have been the lack of sufficient security at the consulate. I suspect they’re not doing that because they know democrats can rattle off at least 10 times in the last decade or so that our embassies have been attacked (with casualties, just not american casualties) overseas.

    • If the Republicans wanted to go after the administration on something, it should have been the lack of sufficient security at the consulate. I suspect they’re not doing that because they know democrats can rattle off at least 10 times in the last decade or so that our embassies have been attacked (with casualties, just not american casualties) overseas.

      I think that Obama, his administration, worked very hard in the early days to link this to the video.

      I do NOT agree with Candy that Obama labelled this a terrorist attack in the Rose Garden.

      I DO think that Obama needed the War on Terror to be going his way.

  3. Petraeus said he believed it was a terrorist attack all along . I wonder who changed the CIA draft ? If only poor Nixon had these cover up artists working for him . You got to give our rulers credit . They can’t run a country, but what a snow job . And to keep all of this from hitting until after the election was brilliant . We got nobody on our side this good .

    • What you don’t get, Alan, is that what the CIA believes and what is made public is never the same right away. President Obama announced a thorough investigation. The CIA had to make sure. Until that time their official line kept all options open and President Obama refused to say for sure what it was. They wanted both to be sure, and potentially to not let the enemy know what we knew in case of retaliation. Once the investigation was complete to the President’s satisfaction and no national security threats existed in making what was known public, the information was released.

      That is why Condi Rice (who endorsed Romney) and Colin Powell both defended the Administration. It is funny given all the intelligence fiascos and false statements from the Bush Administration that Republicans have the gall to try to turn this into a scandal. The fact is the Obama administration is the cleanest administration in recent history and the Republicans wish it would have a scandal. This ain’t it.

      • Until that time their official line kept all options open and President Obama refused to say for sure what it was.

        This isn’t true.

        The administration said this was all due to the video.

        This isn’t an administration saying they are without a clue and are looking into it. This is someone saying they knew, and that it was the video that did it.

        And don’t even get me going on the timing of the Petraeous affair………

        • No, the administration did not say it was all due to the video. Show some evidence. I don’t recall anything but some of the Rice comments saying the video seems to have been involved (which makes sense since they hadn’t declassified any al qaeda info yet), but she also said the investigation was proceeding. I don’t know where you’re getting your info, Pino. Can you post links to specific claims?

    • Oh, and the information was released BEFORE the election, not after. That’s another thing wrong with the GOP effort to make this into something it’s not.

    • Petraeus explained that the CIA suspected it was Al Qaeda. The CIA putting out some highly confidential assessment that will normally never see the light of day is a whole lot different than the Administration making a public statement. They chose to proceed with caution. That is not a scandal.

      This is a non-story that should never appear in the same paragraph/page/book/library as watergate.

  4. Scott ,

    Was there or was there not a video feed from the drone above the Consulate ? Did not the White House and the State Department have early access to that feed ? People who should have responded had real time information to send in help . Why didn’t they ? If 2 days after the attack Congressional personnel were given a correct briefing, how could Susan Rice and President Obama be mislead for a week and 2 weeks respectively ? None of the events as they are reported so far make any sense .

    • Again, provide evidence. There is nothing there. The fact nobody can provide evidence and just raises “what if” or “was there” questions shows a lack of a case for any kind of scandal.

  5. Scott ,

    There was no evidence in Watergate until John Dean cracked and everything began collapsing . There would have been no evidence if Monica had only washed her dress . I am guessing that somebody in the Administration will fall on his sword, admit to the changes, and then spin a confusing web of conflicting intelligence coming in . It can’t be too high up, but high enough to protect the President .

    Can you say clapper ?

    Your lack of curiosity on this is equaled only by your lack thereof at the 100 % voting totals in Philly . But hey your side won so none of this will go anywhere . Deals are being made to bury the truth , if history is any guide .

    • Except, Alan, there is nothing there. No one denies that the CIA early on thought al qaeda was responsible, and that the official White House policy was not to give all information until the investigation was complete. That was known weeks ago.

      The worst possible case would be if the White House did it for political reasons rather than national security and a desire to be certain. Even if that were true, it would violate no law and this long after the fact only be a minor embarrassment. That’s the worst possible outcome for the Administration – and even that wouldn’t be a true scandal. That’s why so many people are mocking the right for pretending this is a big deal. It’s not – and that ‘worst possible outcomes’ is exceedingly unlikely and denied by the principles involved. So really, there is nothing here except some Republicans who are bitter about the election and Obama’s success. A good article:
      http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/11/20/the-gop-s-absurd-attack-on-susan-rice-over-benghazi.html

  6. Scott ,

    I read your daily beast article, now read this from the Washington Post Columnist J. Rubin .

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/more-misdirection-on-libya/2012/11/20/d411a008-335f-11e2-9cfa-e41bac906cc9_blog.html

  7. Jennifer Rubin has nothing – there is nothing substantive in her post. She doesn’t even make an accusation except a false one – to claim that the White House was stating that spontaneous demonstrations caused the attack. But the President was clear that he was not going to speculate until the investigation was done. I mean, if there was something there Rubin would have something real! The emptiness of her column, the lack of detail or specific accusations and charges that the GOP is trying to manufacture a scandal out of nothing – and it’s not working. At best the GOP can say “why wasn’t classified CIA information released earlier?” But that’s normal – it usually isn’t released until after the investigation, with the President making the call when.

  8. Scott ,

    You fail to see your own ideological blindness . I always ask you Obama supporters to give me an objective yardstick to measure your guy by . Any yardstick at all . How about I be really kind and only measure your guy by his own words . He promised transparency . If you believe that the election had to go by before an investigation on this was completed then I feel sorry for you . If you believe that putting out wrong information for weeks after it was clear to everyone that the information was faulty is transparency , then I feel sorry for you .

    • No President puts out all information the CIA gathers about serious security breaches until they analyze all the data and determine what is in the national interest to keep secret. No President can or should give complete transparency on issues of national security, lives and the national interest are at stake. President Bush certainly kept a lot secret. If you feel that the election is relevant to this, I feel sorry for you. The professionals in the CIA and intelligence communities don’t care about elections, they care about analyzing and getting things right, and about national security. That the GOP wants to turn this into an election scandal is petty, especially since there is no scandal there. It’s using a national tragedy to try to score partisan points, and given how this is being done after the election makes it look more like sour grapes than anything real. I do note that some in the GOP are starting to walk back their rhetoric, especially that used against Susan Rice. I suspect cooler heads are prevailing.

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