How did Obama mess up in Benghazi?

[ravdin]

But is the CIC right to be subject to unfair criticism?

I was taking issue with the claim that it is disloyal to criticize the president. It's not and we owe no loyalty to any politician.

 

[Richard Masters]

So today's testimony reveals that the CIA told the White House that the death of Americans in Benghazi was caused by a spontaneous demonstration gone out of control. They then went and operated on that information for several days before they were informed it was actually an Al Qaeda attack planned before the demonstrations happened.

So exactly how did Obama and his cabinet screw up here? Are they not supposed to go by what intelligence the CIA gives them?

The conspiracy theory is that President Obama mismanaged resources and was responsible for the deaths of the people at the embassy, and tried to hide it because of the upcoming election.

 

[PhantomWolf]

I was taking issue with the claim that it is disloyal to criticize the president.

Who claimed that?

 

[Cain]

Unfortunately, there's a lot of confusion and propaganda on what happened. Let me try to clear it up. Obama was so focused on getting presents for minorities that he didn't care four great Americans (white ones) were being murdered by terrorists. Afterward the so-called president apologized on behalf of the United States and his administration has been working around the clock to cover it up. That is, when everybody's not out golfing or going on Hawaiian vacations.

 

[Richard Masters]

Unfortunately, there's a lot of confusion and propaganda on what happened. Let me try to clear it up. Obama was so focused on getting presents for minorities that he didn't care four great Americans (white ones) were being murdered by terrorists. Afterward the so-called president apologized on behalf of the United States and his administration has been working around the clock to cover it up. That is, when everybody's not out golfing or going on Hawaiian vacations.

This is helpful.

 

[Unabogie]

Unfortunately, there's a lot of confusion and propaganda on what happened. Let me try to clear it up. Obama was so focused on getting presents for minorities that he didn't care four great Americans (white ones) were being murdered by terrorists. Afterward the so-called president apologized on behalf of the United States and his administration has been working around the clock to cover it up. That is, when everybody's not out golfing or going on Hawaiian vacations.

Nail hit on head goes boom. You've got it, my conservative brother! Although you left out the live video feed part. That part rocks my world.

 

[Ziggurat]

So today's testimony reveals that the CIA told the White House that the death of Americans in Benghazi was caused by a spontaneous demonstration gone out of control.

No it didn't. Not only did Petraeus indicate that the CIA's version of the talking points indicate the attack was likely terrorists (and not a spontaneous demonstration), but other sources have also reported that the president knew before Rice made her controversial (read: false) claims.

 

[jj]

I was taking issue with the claim that it is disloyal to criticize the president. It's not and we owe no loyalty to any politician.

Why, I was told I should leave the country when I criticized 'W'. Turns out I was dead-on right, too. Ooopsie.

The same people who said that to me are now defending their right to manufacture a completely fraudulent attack on Obama for no purpose other than to usurp power from the office of the President. There is no evidence for the wild accusations being bandied about at all.

This is unAmerican behavior.

 

[UnrepentantSinner]

Explain why the embassy was left to fend for itself for seven hours, when help from a base in Italy was two hours away. Or why warnings about the embassy's security leading up to the attack were ignored. Not to mention that the attack is a clear sign of the catastrophic failure of this administration's foreign policy.

It doesn't require omniscient powers to conclude that when a US embassy is assaulted with heavy firepower on the anniversary of September 11, perhaps something is going on other than spontaneous outrage over an obscure YouTube video. Petraeus apparently said as much behind closed doors today, indicating he believed from the beginning it was a planned and coordinated attack.

The fact that you refer to a consulate and CIA safehouse as "embassy" 3 times in this post tells me you're repeating boilerplate rather than contributing anything meaningful to this conversation.

 

[A'isha]

The right seems locked into this strange false dichotomy where either the Benghazi attack was solely the result of a spontaneous demonstration in response to The Innocence of Muslims, or it was solely a preplanned assault carried out by an established terrorist organization, with those two explanations being entirely mutually exclusive.

When in reality, the various reports and explanations (ranging from Rice's own CIA-derived statements to this article) have never been clear or definitive about it, showing that the truth is not a neat either/or between the explanations, but a muddy mixture of them both.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Who claimed that?

jj did back in post #15.

Again, I disagree that it's disloyal to criticize the Commander in Chief. I think dissent is essential.

However, that criticize should be coherent and supported by evidence.

That's why I keep asking what exactly the criticism is. It's been like hitting a moving target trying to figure out what it is much less what the evidence to support it is.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

The right seems locked into this strange false dichotomy where either the Benghazi attack was solely the result of a spontaneous demonstration in response to The Innocence of Muslims, or it was solely a preplanned assault carried out by an established terrorist organization, with those two explanations being entirely mutually exclusive.

When in reality, the various reports and explanations (ranging from Rice's own CIA-derived statements to this article) have never been clear or definitive about it, showing that the truth is not a neat either/or between the explanations, but a muddy mixture of them both.

Exactly.

I think Romney's criticism during the debate failed because he wasn't really too sure what he was accusing Obama of. He settled in on an easily defeated claim (that Obama didn't refer to it as a "terrorist attack"). But even so, "terrorist attack" doesn't mean "planned months in advance by a known terrorist organization". Even "premeditated" doesn't mean it had to have been planned for any certain time period in advance.

It could have be an existing terrorist group (maybe even hitherto unknown to us) might have recognized a great diversion, run home to get weapons and make a quick plan of attack, then come back to do their dirty work.

There's just a lot different possible things it might have been, and publicly saying with certainty before we were certain would be irresponsible.

Another point that may or may not be pertinent: law enforcement doesn't always publicize everything they know about a criminal act by intention. Sometimes we don't want the bad guys (or other bad guys) to know how much (or how little) we know.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Why, I was told I should leave the country when I criticized 'W'. Turns out I was dead-on right, too. Ooopsie.

Two wrongs don't make a right. It was wrong then to claim it's un-American to criticize the president, and it's wrong now.

I don't claim it's un-American to criticize Obama for his administration's handling of the Benghazi attack. I think it's wrong to make incoherent criticisms or criticism not supported by evidence. But as I've noted the criticism has jumped around. Some people claim it's about how the administration described the attack to the public, some people claim it's that the attack happened at all or that Obama didn't do something to save lives. This, to me, is evidence that the criticism is not based on the evidence, but is a dogmatic thing. People seem to have decided that Obama did something wrong and are casting about looking for a story.

I have no problem with investigating allegations of a cover-up.

What exactly is the motivation for a cover-up of this type? We knew there was an attack, and we knew the ambassador and 3 others were killed. We know it was bad guys who did it. What information was covered up? How long in advance the attack was planned? What type of weapons were used?

Perhaps one legitimate question is whether or not the demonstrations were even spontaneous but were a planned diversion. Again, the terrorists could have seized an opportunity, or they could have staged the entire thing.. . .or somewhere in between. If you're asked whether the attack was planned months in advance or spontaneous, it is, as ANTPogo said, a false dichotomy.

In the context of that question, Rice's answer that as far as we could tell at the time the attack wasn't pre-planned has a less than sweeping meaning. It only means they didn't have evidence pointing to something planned months in advance.

Here's what I think is being pointed to as the damning use of the word "spontaneous" by Rice:



She gave extensive disclaimers acknowledging that we don't know for sure. She said at that moment, best she could tell the demonstrations began spontaneously and that extremist elements took advantage of it to conduct the attack. At that moment, she said, there wasn't evidence that the attack had been planned months in advance.


I'm having trouble getting worked up over this. At worst, we should heed her disclaimer, and she should admit that the intel she was given at that time was not entirely correct. But again, it's not a binary question: planned* or spontaneous. I believe she and others in the administration might have been wanting to avoid placing blame on people only demonstrating against the film. I don't know.

But let's say they did know for certain that it was something planned months in advance at that time. What reason would they have for making intentionally misleading statements to the press? What harm did these misleading statements do?

It's not like, for example, a Secretary of Defense claiming we knew for certain there were huge stockpiles of WMD around Baghdad to bolster the start of a war that led to tremendous loss of life and ran up the national debt.

At the most, it was a mischaracterization of the intelligence that was probably intended to have a calming effect (or at least to avoid throwing fuel on the fires of unrest).

Or, as I mentioned earlier, there could be legitimate law enforcement motives for not publicizing everything we knew (so that other potential terrorists don't know what we know or don't know). If that were the case, however, I would have expected the Obama administration to have said so by now. Or it could be the sort of thing disclosed in a closed door meeting (like the one McCain forgot to attend).

*I consider the term "pre-planned" to be repetitively redundant. There's no such thing as "post-planning", is there?

 

[ravdin]

Why, I was told I should leave the country when I criticized 'W'. Turns out I was dead-on right, too. Ooopsie.

The same people who said that to me are now defending their right to manufacture a completely fraudulent attack on Obama for no purpose other than to usurp power from the office of the President. There is no evidence for the wild accusations being bandied about at all.

This is unAmerican behavior.

Whoever told you that about criticizing W was dead wrong and I don't know why you would want to vindicate that sort of thinking today with the next office holder.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Whoever told you that about criticizing W was dead wrong and I don't know why you would want to vindicate that sort of thinking today with the next office holder.

I remember listening to a radio show with Noam Chomsky as the guest during the run up to Bush's invasion of Iraq. There was a sputtering caller who essentially said that no one should criticize the Commander in Chief. Chomsky just calmly dismissed the caller's position saying something like, "That's not the country I live in."

And it's still not.

 

[Cain]

The right seems locked into this strange false dichotomy where either the Benghazi attack was solely the result of a spontaneous demonstration in response to The Innocence of Muslims, or it was solely a preplanned assault carried out by an established terrorist organization, with those two explanations being entirely mutually exclusive.

When in reality, the various reports and explanations (ranging from Rice's own CIA-derived statements to this article) have never been clear or definitive about it, showing that the truth is not a neat either/or between the explanations, but a muddy mixture of them both.

But this experience shows a bumbling, incompetent administration that we can have little faith will ever capture, much less have the balls to kill, terrorists such as Bin Laden.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

But this experience shows a bumbling, incompetent administration that we can have little faith will ever capture, much less have the balls to kill, terrorists such as Bin Laden.

 

[DGM]

I have no problem with investigating allegations of a cover-up.

I agree with most everything you have said here. I think this is the only true issue. Focusing on Rice is a stupid distraction. I also believe she was thrown under the bus to a certain extent in order to push this issue out of the campaign. Petraeus's statements seem to support this.

Personally, I'm going to ignore all the media hype and wait for all the information to come in. After all, isn't that what an investigation is for?

At the most, it was a mischaracterization of the intelligence that was probably intended to have a calming effect (or at least to avoid throwing fuel on the fires of unrest).

I was going to touch on this but, I decided to wait for it to be investigated.

 

[Peephole]

No it didn't. Not only did Petraeus indicate that the CIA's version of the talking points indicate the attack was likely terrorists (and not a spontaneous demonstration), but other sources have also reported that the president knew before Rice made her controversial (read: false) claims.

"He (Petraeus) ... stated that he thought all along he made it clear that there was significant terrorist involvement, and that is not my recollection of what he told us on September 14," King said.

"The clear impression we were given (in September) was that the overwhelming amount of evidence was that it arose out of a spontaneous demonstration, and was not a terrorist attack," he said.

U.S. officials initially said the violence erupted spontaneously amid a large protest about a privately made video produced in the United States that mocked the Prophet Mohammed. The intelligence community later revised its assessment, saying it believes the attack was a planned terrorist assault.

...

Rice has been under fire for suggesting the attack on the consulate was a spontaneous event spurred by a protest against the anti-Muslim film.
The three unclassified talking points that were used by Rice on September 16 were read aloud to reporters on the Hill Friday.
They are:

• The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.
• This assessment may change as additional information is collected and analyzed and as currently available information continues to be evaluated.
• The investigation is ongoing, and the U.S. government is working with Libyan authorities to bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of U.S. citizens.

So Susan Rice said the same things that Petraeus said back in September, namely that they thought it was a spontaneous demonstration based on preliminary evidence, but that that information was subject to change and might indicate the involvement of extremists.

So what exactly is the problem here?

 

[Ziggurat]

So Susan Rice said the same things that Petraeus said back in September, namely that they thought it was a spontaneous demonstration based on preliminary evidence, but that that information was subject to change and might indicate the involvement of extremists.

So what exactly is the problem here?

Petraeus knew that it was likely terrorism and not a demonstration gone wild. If he misled Congress about that, that's a problem, but we know he knew. And we also now know that this was included in the CIA's assessment that went out to other agencies. Somewhere between that assessment leaving the CIA and reaching Rice, that information got redacted. We do not yet know by whom. If that information got redacted before Obama saw it, well, that's a problem, isn't it? Shouldn't the CnC be getting the best information, even if there's a reason to hide it from the public?

But we also have reports that Obama DID receive this information. But the White House and Rice spent a lot of time publicly claiming that the attack was a demonstration gone wild. Why then did they do this? Maybe there's a good answer to that, but one has not yet been forthcoming. And that is also a problem. If the administration was truly ignorant, then our intelligence services are deeply dysfunctional and Obama has a lot of clearing house to do. If they were not, then they should be able to explain why they were not upfront at the time, if there was a legitimate reason to withhold information.

I cannot tell if the administration knew and lied, or whether they were really in the dark. But the lack of answers is a bad sign. It is a problem. You can bury your head in the sand about that all you want to, but for a president that promised unprecedented transparency, this just isn't good enough. I do not know whose fault this mess is. But I know that Obama is in charge of cleaning it up, and he isn't doing a good job.

But this is really the tip of the iceberg of a much bigger problem. We toppled the mad Duck with no real plan of what would happen post-"revolution". Extremists are now infiltrating Libya, and we have no real means to halt their progress. And the efforts we DO have in place have obviously been badly mismanaged, leaving our people on the ground exceedingly vulnerable given how dangerous the environment is. Again, I don't know who exactly screwed up, but somebody screwed up, big time. And the administration does not seem to be interested in finding and fixing that problem, they seem to be interested in covering their asses.