Just after the Benghazi attack on our consulate and the murder of four Americans, including our ambassador to Libya, I explained in a post titled Lack of Intelligence Community why I blamed our nation’s intelligence apparatus and not the White House for this colossal failure.
Now comes this confirmation:
Extremists from groups linked to al Qaida struck the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, in a “deliberate and organized terrorist attack,” the top U.S. intelligence agency said Friday, as it took responsibility for the Obama administration’s initial claims that the deadly assault grew from a spontaneous protest against an anti-Islam video.
So I was right, right?
Actually, no. I’ve changed my mind and am putting this directly on the Obama administration.
The unusual statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence appeared to have two goals: updating the public on the latest findings of the investigation into the assault, and shielding the White House from a political backlash over its original accounts.
The NIE country’s intelligence apparatus is not an apolitical animal—and its politics are not on the political right. Remember the NIE’s 2007 report on Iran’s nuclear ambitions?
“We judge with high confidence that in Fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.”
This was logically and transparently false, and should have embarrassed everyone working in intelligence. But the report served its purpose. To the degree that President Bush was considering joint action of some kind with Israel, the report left him with no political cover to pursue it. And it left Israel stranded on an attenuated limb, where it remains today.
What’s fascinating is that the left still trots out the infamous August 6, 2001 presidential daily briefing memo to Bush that supposedly proves he ignored warnings of Al Qaeda’s plot to fly planes into buildings, even though there was nothing in it more specific than a confirmation of the group’s plans to terrorize the U.S.
That much was known in 1998, when Bin Laden declared war on America and the west—six months before President Clinton decided not to take him out. (Too bad Clinton didn’t have Obama’s stomach for anonymous drone attacks.)
Did the intelligence community take the hit for failing to ferret out the 9/11 attacks? Well, no. They were too busy pointing fingers at the “wall” that Clinton appointee Jamie Gorelick had constructed between the CIA and FBI.
As recently as a few weeks ago, former NYT reporter Kurt Eichenwald published an op-ed in the Times asserting:
The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.
This is a particularly rich accusation in light of the New York Times’s categorical refusal to publicize any part of the Gary Hart-Warren Rudman report on national security published January 2001. Though the report concluded that the U.S. was in imminent danger of a terrorist attack, a Times reporter walked out of a press conference given by the two former senators and the paper turned down an op-ed signed by both.
That dismissal on the part of the so-called paper of record set the tone for the rest of the media’s ho-hum reaction to the prescient warnings, and of course the country’s political will, or lack thereof, followed.
In any event, the date of Eichenwald’s op-ed blaming Bush was September 10, meaning that the news hook for publication was the 9/11 anniversary the following day.
Apparently the only people in this country who didn’t anticipate that anniversary were in the White House and State Department, because September 11 was the day of the Benghazi and Cairo attacks.
Oh, wait, I forgot. It was a failure of intelligence.
As Glenn Reynolds likes to say, the country’s in the very best of hands.
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“We judge with high confidence that in Fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.”
Sure. While simultaneously, Hussein was trucking chemical weapons to Syria where…..
….you retards have lost track of them.
Hmmmm…elites.
…elites.
Yeaaahhh…..
Brett Baier’s review (9’24”) is particularly useful and a breath of analysis and the DNI, a particularly clueless administration apparatchik, vis:
–his most recent denial and
—his cluelessness when the Brits arrested a number of Ts two years ago, even though Janet-effing-Napalitano and Brennen were aware of the arrests !
Even as a 2LT instead of a retired Lieutenant General whose career was in Intelligence Crapper, errr Clapper should have had even a hint of a clue that the 11 September attack was deliberate.
No, he is the Director of No Intelligence–an increasingly useful idiot.
In the hands of the Best and the Brightest. Oh, yes, we are.
SMART POWER.
Americans died, Obama lied. Shout it far and wide.
The actions of the intelligence community are irrelevant. That embassy should have had at least as much security as our embassies in Britain or Canada, and certainly much more. You don’t need an intelligence briefing to know that.
Thank you for going there like usual.
The continuity really brings this story home.
I now recognize that the entire federal government is working toward the single goal of getting Obama reelected. Others probably reached this conclusion earlier. Our government is grossly outrageous.
OMB is trying to lend cover to Obama by removing the legal requirement of issuing lay-off notices for impending sequestration cuts. Those legally required notices would come out just before the election, a coinky-dink, I’m sure.
Henry (and CalMark below), think of how Atwater or Carville would have responded to the hanky-panky with the layoff notices. The incumbent would be better off had the notices been issued.
It’s another opportunity for, and another test of, the Romney campaign.
If D.C. Republicans weren’t such corrupt, spineless slugs, they wouldn’t let stuff like this pass. They’d be on local and national news shows, wherever they could get airtime, condemning this kind of thing.
Frankly, it’s true: we have a one-party system because the Republicans “go along to get along.”
God help us, because I think Obama is going to win the election.
1. God help us, because I think Obama is going to win the election.
All the quantitative metrics I track indicate that Obama will win, but people I respect question their accuracy in this particular election.
Concern is justified; despair is not.
2. If D.C. Republicans weren’t such corrupt, spineless slugs, they wouldn’t let stuff like this pass.
For someone unfamiliar with the piece, reading Angelo Codevilla’s America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution is one of the best ways to use the amount of time needed to savor a favorite beverage—and you can do both at once.
I am not normally given to despair, but I just read that:
1. Obama’s administration has handed out millions of free cell phones in Ohio throughout 2012;
2. The administration is telling contractors not to send out legally-required layoff notices; the government will essentially the legal problems.
We are up against a corrupt, utterly unscrupulous regime. Republicans offer their usual wimpy, meaningless responses, which they are no doubt giggling about with their “respected friends” on “the other side of the aisle.”
As for the Codevilla piece, I’m very familiar with it. That’s the other source of my despair; we have enemies within our own camp.
All is not lost. But it’s close.
P.S. Don’t count the debates to turn the tables. Romney looked good in the primaries because the MSM hacks allowed him to filibuster, get away with lies about his most dangerous opponent, Gingrich, who also got asked a lot of no-win “have you stopped beating your wife yet” ambush questions. That advantage will be Obama’s.
Poor ol’ Mitt. He’ll be playing Mr. Reasonable Nice Guy while the media blasts him off the stage.
Passing out cell phones to people on the dole pretty much only serves to shore up an already existing base – urban minorities. Free cell phones make you like Obama, but they don’t haul you down to the polls on election day. (SEIU buses do that, lol).
Think about 2010 and the GOP landslide that went largely unforeseen by these magic polls too many folks are allowing to spook them this go-round. What was that landslide about? ABO. Where’d it come from? True grassroots, not political persuasion. What has changed since 2010 to not only negate it, but turn things in Obama’s favor? NOTHING. In fact, it’s only gotten worse.
The only asset Obama has is the media and Americans are growing hip to its corruption and incestuousness.
Polls (ugh!) consistently reveal one damning (to Obama) fact: an overwhelming majority of Americans, upwards of 60-70%, feel the country is on the wrong track. They will now vote to keep the same people in office?
This race will be won in the suburbs and in the rural areas on the basis of very high turnout, and on a single national theme: Anybody But Obama. Who’s Obama’s opponent? I dunno, some Mormon businessman, but he’s GOT to be better than this clown. ABO.
I firmly believe we are witnessing this fall the preamble to the downfall of two American institutions: liberalism/progressivism as a political force and the legacy media, which is committing suicide as we speak to protect liberalism/progressivism, a suicide made easier because the legacy media knows it is dying of cancer any damn way, so let’s make our death count for something.
Keep the faith! Full steam ahead! Do not let the opposition win the psy-ops war! Pay attention to how we worry *other* conservatives might become despaired and not vote, but we never hear anyone actually say it – it’s always some unnamed putative conservative who is giving up. It’s a phantam fear, a sign that the media psy-ops are working.
Most of all, take solace in the fact that forums just like this one show that conservatives are 90% of the same mind this election, that is, if you feel like there is an excellent opportunity to defeat Obama, and you intend to vote him out, rest assured so too feels every other conservative out there, plus a boatload of more moderate GOP-ers, and a majority of independents as well. The low morale, defeated, won’t bother to vote Republican is a myth imposed by a dying media desperate to preserve liberalism by saving Obama.
THERE’S NO CRYING IN POLITICS!
• “FALLING ON THE SWORD”
[Or, How “LEON PANETTA Attempted to Re-Write History]
[Or, “They Now JUMP Under the Bus Themselves”]
[Or, “Public Servant Suicides Will Now be Televised on the White House Lawn”]
Long ago, in a corrupted land
A place once deemed mankind’s peak!)
A practice arose, still seen today,
Among the minions of the evil and weak.
To preserve the “honor” of the “elect”,
One d@mned soul would “take the heat”
And claim: “I alone did the dirty deed”–
Thus avoiding the MASTER’S DEFEAT.
But still we can only watch in awe,
Since, for each and every “fuss”
TO KEEP OBAMA AS TYRANT AND KING,
“THEY NOW JUMP UNDER THE BUS”
How ugly the sights we might yet see,
Until Romney & Ryan arrive,
The whole d@mned White House,
Sheltering BO, with their MASS SUICIDE
Sec Def Leon Panetta, DNI, Sec. State, EVERY CZAR, the entire Dem Rat Senate, and a host of
MINIONS, CO-CONSPIRATORS, FELLOW TRAITORS, AND MORE WILL ALL DRINK FATAL
KOOL-AID AND DIE (or “fall on figurative swords”) FOR “THE WON”—their
“death throes” are SCRIPTED BY BO’s TELEPROMPTER and SHOWN LIVE AND IN COLOR BY THE MEDIA WHORES.
The first ugly historical account can be seen at http://www.phrases.org.uk/mean…
FOR TODAY’S SELF-SACRIFICES, read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/201…
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-G…
The unusual statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence appeared to have two goals: updating the public on the latest findings of the investigation into the assault, and shielding the White House from a political backlash over its original accounts.
————————————————-
Yah…no.
Several too many things are going to add up to prevent that:
1. UN Ambassador Rice was SENT out to cover the Sunday talking heads waterfront with a POSITIVE false assertion. NOT “we don’t know”, but “we are sure it was…” and “there is no evidence that…”;
2. Why Rice? She has no broader duties outside the UN;
3. Obama…as late as his UN speech this week…was still telling the lie that the video was the root of all eeeeevile;
4. State was stiff-arming the press with “on-going investigation” BS;
5. NONE of this bilge addresses why the consulate was utterly without effective protection in a VERY dangerous area in a very dangerous time;
6. NONE of this address why our intel…according to what we understand at the moment…was caught flat-footed AFTER a broadcast call by AQ to avenge the death of one of its thugs;
7. The Mushroom Media may complicily cover this up, the the NEW MEDIA damn sure will NOT.
The only way these folks are going to take a negative view of Iran is if somehow Iran elected George Bush president.
The intelligence community and the WH (including Bush) should take responsibility for the false report that Saddam had a large stash of usable WMDs and the subsequent cover up. This is no where near the level of the WMD fiasco.
You don’t know what you’re talking about. Take your leftie canards somewhere else.
Does that include the White House in Egypt and Germany and Russia and about 30 other countries? Essentially the entire world believed Hussein had WMD. It wasn’t America alone.
Nor was it Boooooooooooooooooooooosh alone.
Ball-less Bill Clinton KNEW it. As did ever freaking Deemocrat in the legislative branch.
And not for nothing, either. We KNOW Saddam actively projected he had WMD for his own purposes.
And HE DID! Maybe not what we ALLLLLL thought he had, but he damn sure DID have them.
AND…Saddam’s own highest commanders believed the Boss had them in reserve and did not know different until we did.
Democrats, WMD’s & The Iraq War
In their own words.
Not usable ones, Rags. The world did not believe that Hussein had usable WMDs. What many countries did believe was that Saddam had not fully complied with its obligations to the United Nations.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction
Sorry, jim, you are full of CRAP here.
“Cover-up”…!?!? Bush could rather easily had WMD PUT in Iraq. He did not.
“Usable”…?!?! Not an expert, and don’t pretend expertise, BUT a mustard gas round…ONE…would ruin the commute of the entire city of New York. Not to mention the day of all the troopers in one of our bases.
“Had”…?!?! Well, he did NOT have them laying around. BUT I do not discount the accounts of transhipments to Syria.
Democrats, WMD’s & The Iraq War
jim1 listen to their own words, then how’bout drinking a nice filling cup of Shut The Heck Up??
Saddam is the only world leader since 1918 to employ WMD’s on the battlefield.
He intimated that he had them.
He didn’t allow U.N. inspectors in.
There were reports that Saddam was shipping them to Russia via Syria, which the Bush administration suppressed because Holier-than-thou George W. was playing kissy-face with the Russians.
You are exactly right! I also recall Debka reporting prior to the U.S. attack on Iraq that Saddam was trucking (sand sending by ambulance) WMDs to Syria and Debka even specified where they were going. At the time Bush had no reasonable choice but to attack Iraq. Saddam was a sociopathic, murderous liar who had previously used chemical weapons against the Kurds and had, moreover, laid waste to Kuwait.
How soon we forget, especially when we want to!
And let it be remembered the corruptocrats at the UN were on the cusp of pulling off the sanctions…after playing fast and lose with them to line their pockets…
AND Saddam DID have yellow-cake, AND a cadre of people waiting to reconstitute his WMD programs.
Please…!!!
AND, Rags, ya wanta know what else? IF wikidoofuspedia states it, Dude, it is FACT. Baa-Daa-Bing. Like dat.
Now, back here where the Torture of Critical Thought is encouraged, I’d suggest anyone interested in the subject of Iraqi WMDs take a read of Richard Butler’s fine book(2000),
“The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction and the Growing Crisis of Global Security”.(Butler was the Chief of UNSCOM before the utterly feckless Hans Blix.)Another worthwhile read is Dr.Khidhir Hamza’s memoir,”Saddam’s Bombmaker”(2000).
Interesting. Why would you credit Richard Butler who was just as much a political mercenary as any other ?
We all fall for believing what we want.
BTW I have significant knowledge on Butler. He was highly involved in all things Left & even formerly married to my very left wing local member .
He is simply a worm who managed to get himself to the Un & later a state governorship (ceremonial ) for $370,000 in 2003 for ‘services rendered ‘ to the Australian left.
Today he is on staff at NYU in some think tank /policy position.
I say s c u m .
Hamza left Saddam in 1992 or 1993–10 years before we declared war. That’s like trusting someone who left Nazi Germany in 1931 to tell us what weapons Hitler had when WW II.
It was stupid to have declared war on the basis of such filmsy evidence.
jim, CONGRESS recited 23 predicates for going to war…
CONSISTENT with the Clinton doctrine, btw, passed in a joint resolution all but unanimously.
You. Are. Wrong.
PLUS your hindsight is STUPID.
jim, you remind me of Noam Chomsky, whom I once heard give a talk: citing facts that conflict with a leftie’s view of reality, the leftie proceeds to mass-produce straw men and shovel vast mountains of unrelated “facts” heavily laced with contempt.
You’re a concern troll, and I’m done talking to you.
CalMark, I’m not a concern troll, so don’t try to marginalize me with labels. I disagree with you.
Rags and CalMark, it was a stupid decision to go to war—much more stupid than what happened at the embassy. If you can’t admit that, especially in hindsight, then I don’t know what to say–other than most of the US and the world disagrees with you.
Luke, compare the population size and other assets of Germany and Iraq. Germany was one of the most experienced industrial countries in the world. Iraq was not. The situations are different.
Jim,’Yo…Focus little dude: Nazi Germany didn’t exist until 1933. Now, take the sock outta your ears and put it in your mouth. Did wikipedia tell you about Hitler coming to power in 1931?? ‘Nuff said, I’m afraid.
So, the man who supervised Saddam’s WMD program was right in ’93, but NOT in 2000? ROTF-ingFLMF-ingAO.
Yes. Because things changed in the interim period.
Right. Because…ohhhh, because Saddam Hussein, megalomaniac, mass butcher and totalitarian extraordinaire, said to his sweet inner fuzzball: “Time to unilaterally disarm those pesky WMD’s I’ve long treasured.” Must be in wikipedia, too. And Tehran, no doubt. I’ll bet it’s what Ahkmaspitooey and the Mad Mullah are thinking right this very moment.
As the Muslim Brotherhood is my secular witness, James Clapper usually gets on the same page as the White House within a couple of attempts or so.
Seppuku need not be so painful. Although some of the nobility has been lost, it retains the full flavor of deliberate, preplanned ritual in this administration.
Still, rest assured, the filmmaker who caused all this deliberate, premeditated preplanning to erupt spontaneously is behind bars in the land of the free and the home of the brave.
Our simple task now to guarantee peace in our time is to make sure that among our tens of millions of bored, tech-savvy, snarky American teenagers, not a single one of the mischievous young buggers decides to make a little youtube video poking fun at you know who.
Billy Mumy wishing adults into the cornfield ain’t nothing compared to the powers of today’s little Johnny using his favorite online cartoon-making site to set the Middle East on fire before he brushes his teeth and gets tucked in.
I much prefer the 1950s and 1960s future of Disney and The Jetsons.
Now that that future is here, speaking of Billy Mumy, I feel lost in space … and it feels like this administration is Dr. Smith. I feel we’ll never get home.
“It’s a good thing you attacked our embassies and consulates. It’s a real good thing. That ambassador had it coming. It’s a good thing that you done in killing him.”
As a society we’re becoming the adults terrorized by the thought of upsetting Anthony. Did Rod Serling have a glimpse into our future?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuAzvb38PyI
Clapper is a political hack in uniform.
I worked for an agency he headed. Nothing but a roll-over-and-play-dead for the Democrat President leftist.
Little known fact: Generals and Admirals who make their fortune (as did Clapper) during Dem administrations are either totally leftist, or masquerade as such to get ahead. In other words, sell their souls.
Cal -have you ever been in the military?
Straw-man argument. Or accusation.
I know wherefore I speak. Therefore, I’m entitled to my opinion, regardless.
It is a simple question based on your blanket condemnation for Generals & Admirals
You are trying to discredit this site with your nihalism .
Ah, yes. The old leftist fallacy:
If we don’t like your facts, we:
a) Reject what you say;
b) Fabricate conditions to disqualify you from saying anything at all.
Somewhere, Saul Alinsky is smiling. If the heat isn’t too much.
But still you have not answered the question.
bTw I have no ida who Alinsky is.
@jim1
A little light bedtime story reading with a big, big, bang of a surprise ending.
Nitey night.
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/will121602.asp
I’ve been a long time reader of this blog, but I finally decided to register to offer some insight into this.
I was a Naval Intelligence Officer for 20 years. Our unofficial motto was, “if we couldn’t take the blame, they wouldn’t keep us around.”
If there’s some golden child, be it the President or an Admiral, who needs to be protected from his or her own poor decisions the easiest thing to do is to blame an intelligence failure. We can’t publicly fight back without going back on our words that we’d never, and without risking lengthy prison terms for, reveal classified information.
This isn’t whistleblowing we’re talking about here, and it isn’t really fear of punishment that is the driving factor. As satisfying as it would be sometimes to set the record straight and prove, once and for all, that so-and-so is lying and that intelligence provided a clear and unambiguous warning, that would selfishly put lives in danger. For just one example, an adversary would know there are very few ways we’d know a particular bit of information and shut them down.
Fortunately in the case of the Benghazi attack there’s no need for me to take any risks. Just from what’s available on the internet I can prove that UN Amb. Rice was lying when she went on TV and said, “Based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is as of the present is, in fact, what it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video.”
We already know that the assault on our Cairo embassy was not “sparked” by any video. The groups organizing the protest issued a press release prior to the riot, stating the planned protest was over the Blind Shiekh and other jihadis currently jailed in the US.
Raymond Ibrahim had the English translation of the announcement taken from the Egyptian press up on September 10th. Note the date:
http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2012/09/10/jihadis-threaten-to-burn-u-s-embassy-in-cairo/
CNN’s Nic Roberts issued Muhammad al Zawahiri, brother of al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri and organizer of the riots, in Cairo at the site of the protest before it turned violent about the purpose of the protest. It was not over a video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tPszLCEyu-I
(The title of that video is wrong; “CNN’s Nic Robertson Interviews Brother of Blind Sheik” incorrectly identifies Muhammad al Zawahiri as the brother of the Blind Sheikh. He was merely protesting the Blind Sheikh’s incarceration, but as I mentioned previously he’s not his brother.)
And following the Cairo riots Zawahiri was claiming credit for the assault on the embassy. Not, as we’ve seen, without reason.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/zawahiris-brother-cairo-embassy-assault_652217.html
Apparently the DoS has fired a lot of professionals, given all the Obama administration gaffes. It’s protocol people who could have advised the Obama admin to display the flag of the Philippines correctly and not as they did; a distress signal. Or linguists who could have correctly translated “reset” into Russian. Instead of “overcharge.”
I refuse to believe that Stat’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research has fired everyone who looked at foreign press reporting. The Cairo violence was planned ahead of time, and there was plenty of indication in the Egyptian press. As well as confirmation in our own. I’ve covered a little from Sep 10-12. For Rice to go on TV and say this was over a video was a flat lie.
But the administration is campaigning on the idea that we are all safer that we killed bin Laden, that Obama is respected in the ME, and that nobody in the region could possibly be upset over his policies concerning detention or drone strikes.
That’s what they have to lie about.
Arminius, with all due respect:
I was in a position to know a fair number of senior Naval Intelligence officers. The vast majority of them would sell their grandmother to a madam for a promotion or a medal.
You may be an exception, but from what I saw, the “Intelligence Community” is self-serving, careerist, and corrupt.
Case in point: starting on 9/12 and continuing for weeks, one of my co-workers, an Navy Intel Lieutenant, went around bellowing (no exaggeration, he was that loud) that “Anyone who says this”–i.e., the 9/11 attacks–“is an intelligence failure is a fool and should be silenced.” He was subsequently Junior Officer of the Quarter for three quarters running.
“With all due respect”
You go on to describe why you hold no due respect.
Once I got pulled up for using that term & shown why it is weaselwords & bullsh8t. I totally agree with my detractor & have never used it since.
You’re entitled to your opinion.
With all due respect.
hehe.
Right n cue.
But, Cal, how much respect is DUE him? Just a rhetorical whatcha’call question.(-:
I’ve been in a position to know more senior intelligence officers then you.
Which has what, exactly to do with the blatant, verifiable lies this administration and its surrogates have been telling about what we knew about the embassy attacks?
As I’ve said, I just covered one sentence that Rice uttered concerning the Cairo riots on one of five Sunday shows on September 16th. And that we had reason to believe the exact opposite by September 10th, the day prior to the attack. Certainly by the 12th the idea that the riots at the Cairo embassy were spontaneous or had anything to do with a YouTube video had been completely shredded to ribbons.
What does your low opinion of intelligence officers have to do with that, or the facts I’ve presented?
I think Barbara S below sums it up succinctly.
My point: where there is blatant dishonesty in large things, there is likely dishonesty elsewhere. Speaking from experience.
Yes, I’m sure there is plenty of blatant dishonesty to go around. But I’m having a hard time applying that to the subject at hand. I’m pointing out that I while I may not have been the most stellar intelligence analyst who ever walked the Earth, working purely from open sources and not spending much time on the matter I had all the information I needed days before Rice went on those Sunday shows to know that her story was complete BS.
For instance, she tried to claim that the attack wasn’t planned but grew out of a spontaneous protest over the video.
There were other sources that demonstrated there was no protest. At all. But I’ll bring up one. Dr. Thomas Burke of Massachusetts General Hospital. He was in Benghazi, actually on the phone with an embassy staffer traveling with Amb. Stevens, when the attack started. The staffer apparently yelled a few expletives in shock, then got off the phone.
Full disclosure; this isn’t the first report that made me aware he was in Benghazi. But he was communicating from Libya beginning the day after the attack.
http://www.massgeneral.org/about/newsarticle.aspx?id=3729
I read a slightly later article in which he gave his version of events. I don’t remember what news outlet it was, but it was prior to Rice’s Sunday show abomination.
His account is, to me, significant. First of all, the fact that he was on the phone with a staffer, arranging a meeting with the Ambassador the next day, marks as deranged (if the reporting is accurate) that the Dept. of State believed the Ambassador’s safety was enhanced by the fact he had just recently returned to the country, and that his movements within Libya were believed to be confidential. I’ve read that in several reports, but I’ll give one link.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/revealed-inside-story-of-us-envoys-assassination-8135797.html
Hello, Hillary Clinton! If the Benghazi Medical Center knows it’s hosting the US ambassador for a scheduled meeting, and a US doctor has been in country for a couple of days in anticipation of that meeting, the ambassador’s movements aren’t confidential. That’s security breach number one; never mind the scarcity of trigger pullers.
Second, the doctor at no point mentions any protest. Which makes sense, because had there been any protest whichever staffer he was talking to would not have been conducting business-as-usual and confirming meetings. Even an overseas US naval or military installation ramps up security and has procedures in place when there’s a protest, just in case. A US consulate, in an unstable post-revolutionary North African country no less, with nothing more than a couple of local guards and a dead bolt doesn’t?
The doctor also never mentions any video. In this Boston NPR radio interview (admittedly given on Sep 18, two days after Rice’s appearances) he says the US could most help by assisting with security against the roving militias. No mention give to curtailing the 1st Amendment; no mention of any outrage over “The Innocence of the Muslims.”
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2012/09/18/boston-doctor-libya
The only point I’m interested in making is that, given the information I was aware of, when Rice went on TV and caveated her statements as based upon the best information currently available, and then weaved a tale that flew in the face of the information currently available I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt she was lying. Because it simply wasn’t the best information available.
And I knew that they had indications of this threat prior to the anniversary of 9/11. There is no way anyone is going to convince me this was an intelligence failure. Because after going through various iterations of their narrative they’ve largely come around to the conclusions I drew two or three days after the attack took place.
The key weasel words thrown about by this administration are “actionable” and “credible.”
No amount of intelligence is actionable or credible to those who really don’t want to take action or to believe what you’re telling them. Hillary Clinton’s response the day after the Benghazi attack was illuminating.
“How can this happen in a country we help liberate, in a city (Benghazi) we helped save from destruction?”
Look; it’s amateur hour everyday in the Obama administration. Hillary Clinton, who is way overrated but still far more competent than Barack Obama, simply wouldn’t believe there was a threat. Hence it wasn’t credible.
And, yes, I know. There are plenty of senior intel “professionals” who stand ready to concoct a “fog of war” story to cover her, and Obama’s, exposed butts.
Even though everything was starkly, Baccarat crystal clear. I guarantee you they had the intelligence. They just ignored it.
Anyhow y’all have been successfully sidetracked into blaming Bush .
Have you not realized Calmark is a plant ?
That’s right. A “plant” who ardently supported Gingrich and has choice words for
I’m in a sour mood today. I stand behind everything I say.
You’re just sore ’cause a zinged you a coupla times in the past. Get over it.
P.S. As for the Bush thing, Bush was right about WMD, then covered up being right to suck up to Russia. Typical “W” behavior: unforced surrender in the name of “civility.”
Blame Bush AND Russia.
That should cover the American conservative sphere .
“Sphere?” A cold-war term, comrade.
It must hurt your little leftist heart terribly that anyone should speak ill of Russia.
As for Bush, he did a few good things, and a great many statist bad things. He was far nicer to Democrats (he would “respectfully disagree” with their poisonous ranting) than his own conservative base (“un-American” for opposing Medicare D and amnesty).
“Sphere is a red term ‘ ? Ok .
I seem to recall it in use in Ancient greece. Those Reds!
Yep, Genius, lack of Big Thundering Balls is why the Left and Paulbots loathed that great & steadfast warrior.
Former UN Ambassador John Bolton’s book “Surrender Is Not An Option” might help to explain the fallacious 2007 NIE.
Ambassador Bolton writes repeatedly about certain employees at State who are afflicted with ‘clientitis’, employees too tightly involved with the culture(s) of the region of the world they specialize in that they simply forget the best interests of the nation they are supposed to represent. Ambassador Bolton repeatedly mentions several individuals in regard to that affliction at State. One of those names he mentioned showed up as one of the authors of the NIE. Apparently after Ambassador Bolton resigned his post, then Secretary of State Condi Rice also found this individuals work no longer adequate and the individual was reassigned or transferred to the intelligence community where he helped turn out that abomination of an NIE.
Not only was it an anniversry of 9/11. It was the eleventh anniversay of that day. Does eleven have anything to do with Islam?
Our intelligence has dropped the ball on many, many occassions in the last few decades. They have become lazy bureaucrats. Clinton demolished the whole system with Torrecelli by not hiring any disruptable people to be spys. What a joke. The FBI routinely hires informants on the wrong side of the law. They also have agents who don’t give a d*mn if someone is guilty of innocent. They think nothing of incarcerating innocent men for 30 years for a crime they didn’t commit and the FBI knew they didn’t commmit it. They were protecting their informant. Pah, these people are useless and a drain on our assets. They’re too big to do anything but run circles around each other and they are drowning in a sea of paper like all US agencies.
Speaking of the State Dept. and Obam-bam. How about that strong, steadfast display of support for Israel by The Boy King being campaigning and Sec’y Hillary & Ambassador Susan Rice lunching whilst Bibi delivered his very important speech to the UN last week? There isn’t 10-cents of muscle in the whole Obama Regime–At a Huge & Dangerous Time.**
**No, I don’t think of David Petraeus, CIA Director, as a member of those tepid fools.**
Truism of governance: if a thing can be politicized, it will be politicized. There is no way the intelligence community is immune from this.
[…] » Why Throw Them Under the Bus When They Can Fall on Their Swords? – Le·gal In·sur·rec·ti… […]
In an earlier comment I said I guaranteed that State and other agencies had the intel, but they just ignored it. The Washington Post has an article in today’s edition that subtly confirms my suspicions.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/in-libya-security-was-lax-prior-to-deadly-attack/2012/09/29/a56ffca0-0992-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_print.html
Even if you think the US intel “community” (there really isn’t one intel community) to be a bunch of screw ups who couldn’t find their rump with both hands, consider this statement from the article:
“Days before the ambassador arrived from the embassy in Tripoli, a Libyan security official had warned an American diplomat that foreigners should keep a low profile in Benghazi because of growing threats. Other Westerners had fled the city, and the British had closed their consulate.”
If the Brits closed their consulate they had a reason. They would have shared that reason with us.
Further confirmation they had the intel:
“…U.S. officials appear to have underestimated the threat facing both the ambassador and other Americans…U.S. officials appear to have overlooked the stark signs that militancy was on the rise…Geoff Porter, a risk and security analyst who specializes in North Africa, said the sudden and stark shift from “predictable violence to terrorism” in the east over the summer was unmistakable.
“The U.S. intelligence apparatus must have had a sense the environment was shifting,” he said.”
The bumbling Obama administration has finally, after weeks of blatantly lying to the public, has figured out that the low quality transparent falsehoods they’ve been dealing in just won’t cut it.
So we see the next stage of the cover-up taking shape. They’ll still blame it on intel in part, for not making the level of the threat clear enough (as if you can ever make things clear enough to people who just don’t want to hear it). But they won’t be able any longer to blame it on an intel failure entirely because too many western countries pulled their people out of Benghazi. And all those western countries have intel agencies of their own, which to one degree or another share what they have with us. It will, the Obama administration (tell me again just how Obama is the most sophisticated consumer of intel EVAH so he doesn’t need briefings) has finally figured out will come out.
So they will shift part of the blame to the lowest level of “US officials” who should have acted on the intel that they believe can plausibly sustain the hit. One of those officials will be Ambassador Stevens. Because the dead, like the intel community, can’t defend themselves.
There’s a lot of other stuff in there that confirms many more of my suspicions. Which, again, can be summed up as amateur hour at the top levels of government. We’ve got a bunch of people, from Obama on down, whose perception of the world never evolved past its formation during freshman year BS sessions in the dorm.
I recommend you read it. You won’t learn anything about Benghazi or the night the Americans were killed. Just how the butt covering will proceed.
I should add this:
“Instead of signing a costly security contract similar to those the government has for facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, the State Department this summer awarded a contract to Blue Mountain, a small British security firm, to provide local guards at the Benghazi compound. The year-long contract, which took effect in March, was worth $387,413, a minuscule sum for war-zone contracting. Blue Mountain and the State Department declined to comment for this article.”
They had to get a British firm to provide security because no US firm would touch it. What with all the restrictions Hillary Clinton put on the contract.
They’ll place the blame lower, but Hillary ultimately signed off on all of this. She’s one of those golden children who must be protected from her share of well-deserved responsibility for this disaster.
Ultimately she’ll probably come to believe whatever cover story the Obama admin stitches together. Like I’m sure she truly came to believe over time her lie about being under fire at the Tuzla airport.
Eli Lake’s reporting on this has been very good. He has this out at The Daily Beast this morning.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/01/the-intel-behind-obama-s-libya-line.html
Essentially, the CIA put out a talking-points memo that said the attacks were a spontaneous reaction to Sam Bacile’s video, and then Obama and other officials parroted that memo.
Obviously it was the other way around; the Obama admin tasked intel to come up with a talking-points memo that didn’t conflict with their campaign slogans.
But if they’re going to hide behind that excuse, then it’s time to call Obama on his lie that he’s such a sophisticated consumer of intel he doesn’t need to attend briefings. Just read the summary on his iPad. Because I’ve briefed sophisticated consumers of intel. An aviator, submariner, or a marine will pick apart a briefing and ask probing questions and can usually stump the briefer. Obama isn’t sophisticated; his lie essentially tells the world he reads an intel product and can’t think of an intelligent question.
So the media needs to ask why President Sophisticated just swallowed this story and mindlessly went with it when it was obvious within hours that there was other information available to the press that undermined it.
Just kidding; they won’t ask.