New Disclosures on Benghazi

[Sam.I.Am]

Can you show evidence that the people you are addressing actually did what you accuse them of?

Now, I don't know, but I think that accusation might call for a bit of evidence.

Here is a whole thread of them.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=243807&highlight=benghazi

ETA: Read the OP's link. It says in part:

But U.S. sources said Wednesday the four-hour assault in Benghazi had been planned, with the attackers using the protest as a diversion.

That article is dated the 13th. Yet Obama said it was the video that was the cause on the 18th, in front of a national audience no less.

Obama: "Gov. Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later, and as president, one of the things I've learned is you can't do that," Obama said during an interview with CBS. "It's important for you to make sure that the statements that you make are backed up by the facts and that you've thought through the ramifications before you make them."

He said that on the 12th (or at least that's the date on the article) it is in reference to what Romney said about his foreign policy.

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.co...middle-east-campaign-turns-to-foreign-policy/

 

[Sam.I.Am]

It was?

Can you quote me on that?

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=8612919#post8612919

Here you go:

Snip...

Whatever lies they told about this film (and only some of what they said were lies), the film itself is still inextricably linked to what happened.

 

[The Big Dog]

T

No, they got the information after a month and a half of thorough investigations.

?

So the information they got after a month and a half of investigations was why they decided on 9/12/12 local time NOT TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL?????

Wow.

Read it again: "The delay is caused by negotiations with Libyan authorities over permission to leave the airport, obtaining vehicles, and the need to frame a clear mission plan. The first idea is to go to a Benghazi hospital to recover Stevens, who they correctly suspect is already dead. But the hospital is surrounded by the Al Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Shariah militia that mounted the consulate attack.”

Your claim makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

 

[tyr_13]

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=8612919#post8612919

Here you go:

You might want to reread that post.

 

[Sam.I.Am]

You might want to reread that post.

The point still stands that the video was being called the cause of the violence while terrorism is being studiously ignored. Even after the people who were there or who knew the entire story said differently in no uncertain terms.

 

[tyr_13]

The point still stands that the video was being called the cause of the violence while terrorism is being studiously ignored. Even after the people who were there or who knew the entire story said differently in no uncertain terms.

It actually doesn't stand. But when you yourself are sideways, I guess it might appear to be standing.

 

[A'isha]

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?postid=8612919#post8612919

Here you go:

That would be referring to Egypt.

So the information they got after a month and a half of investigations was why they decided on 9/12/12 local time NOT TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL?????

No, the information they got after a month and a half of investigations was why they determined that the militias surrounding the hospital were definitively linked to the consulate attack.

At the time, the information they had was that the ambassador was dead, and that hostile forces were around the hospital, so they decided to head to the Annex.

Your claim makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Maybe you ought to try separating what was known at the time from what what was known a month and a half later.

If you can.

 

[Sam.I.Am]

It actually doesn't stand. But when you yourself are sideways, I guess it might appear to be standing.

When the president is saying that it was the video that was the impetuous for the attacks that killed Stevens (on the 18th) even after it was stated in the press well before that it was not then there is a problem whether or not you wish to admit it.

http://www.factcheck.org/2012/10/benghazi-timeline/

I am not sideways on this issue. I have intentionally not commented on it prior to this thread because I didn't have enough information to make any decisions one way or the other. (unlike many others who based their opinions based upon incomplete information). There is now enough information available to see what happened. The Obama administration obfuscated the picture and tried to make it appear that the attacks were because of an offensive video and not a planned attack by terrorists.

They claimed that they did not want to call it a terrorist attack until they knew for sure but they had no problem trying to tie the attacks to a video by someone on the other side of the political spectrum. Obama and Clinton both made reference to the video while speaking on the matter yet the closest they got to calling it a terrorist attack was "We don't know yet". That was a lie as the first reports that went out called it a terrorist attack, there were no protests at the embassy where Stevens was killed (at least as of 8:30 pm that night, 1 hour and 10 minutes before the attack).

 

[Sam.I.Am]

That would be referring to Egypt.

And yet you said it in a thread about the attacks in Benghazi. Furthermore you kept on talking about the video, that was just one of several posts in that thread where you talked about it. Your tone was quite clear as to where you were putting the blame.

Look, I'm not trying to be antagonistic about this but the fact's being laid out now go completely against the narrative first laid out by the Obama Administration and are so far off of the truth that either the president and his people are totally incompetent (which I don't believe is the case at all) or they lied to try and keep themselves from looking bad on the foreign policy front and terrorism in general just before an election.

As I said earlier, I can completely understand that they didn't have enough information one or two days afterwards and that the video seemed like a valid explanation for what happened because of the other protests going on. Not a week later. Not when there were no protests at that location. Not when there were other administration people saying that it was terrorists just two days after the attacks.

Obama could have reserved comments until he knew for sure. "The investigation is ongoing so I won't comment on that for now" would have worked just fine for me. Instead he decided to blame a right wing loon with no evidence to support it.

Obama: "It's important for you to make sure that the statements that you make are backed up by the facts and that you've thought through the ramifications before you make them."

 

[TragicMonkey]

Maybe you ought to try separating what was known at the time from what what was known a month and a half later.

Ah, but you see, that's the whole point of this. If Obama didn't know all the true facts in advance, then he's incompetent for his ignorance. If he did know all the true facts in advance, then he's incompetent for not acting to prevent it. There is absolutely no way that Benghazi is not completely Obama's fault, from start to finish. The only question is whether he planned it deliberately out of evil, or did he just let it happen out of evil.

My mom watches Fox News religiously, so she was able to explain this to me.

(But do not suggest that the same incompetence ignorance/incompetence impotence applies to Bush and 9/11. That was, of course, Clinton's fault.)

 

[The Big Dog]

No, the information they got after a month and a half of investigations was why they determined that the militias surrounding the hospital were definitively linked to the consulate attack.

At the time, the information they had was that the ambassador was dead, and that hostile forces were around the hospital, so they decided to head to the Annex.
.

In addition to having not a single shred of information to support that baseless claim, it is directly inconsistent with the report I cited, does not make sense (they didn't know the hostile militia surrounding the hospital where the injured attackers were taken was associated with the attack? That is laughable) and the fact that the Administration and the CIA among others had already received information naming Ansar al Sharia as the attackers, and that organization was named in the press on the 12th.

It took them 6 weeks to figure it out? That would make the CIA as incompetent as the apologists posting in this thread.

 

[A'isha]

And yet you said it in a thread about the attacks in Benghazi.

That thread very quickly became the catch-all thread for discussions about the events of that day, including what happened in Egypt and elsewhere. The thread specifically about the Egypt protests faded after just five pages, while the merged thread that mentioned Libya in the title went on for thirty-five (and it very quickly went from a discussion about the multiple embassy attacks to a discussion solely about the video with very little reference to the attacks themselves).

The "salafist imams" in the part of my post that you snipped out was a reference to marksman's post about "the imams in Egypt and Libya who exhorted their followers to attack the embassy after lying about the movie".

Furthermore you kept on talking about the video, that was just one of several posts in that thread where you talked about it.

So did a whole lot of posters on the other side of the political spectrum, such as Ziggurat and Giz and WildCat.

Look, I'm not trying to be antagonistic about this

You're not doing a good job, then.

You said it was "OK" for me specifically to claim that the attacks were the result the video "right off of the bat" and declared that any mention of terrorists was "off limits".

I get the feeling that the movie was not the cause of these attacks nearly as much as it was an opportunity for these attacks. The Washington Post reported that the US ambassador to Libya was killed when his car was hit by an RPG.

That's not Muslims angry and protesting about a movie, that's a planned terrorist attack.

CBS News/AP says a group called Ansar al-Sharia claimed responsibility for the Benghazi attack.

So maybe you can dial it back, okay?

 

[A'isha]

In addition to having not a single shred of information to support that baseless claim,

You're the one making claims about what they knew at the time. You can cite actual evidence from the time. Not unclassified timelines released a month and a half later.

(they didn't know the hostile militia surrounding the hospital where the injured attackers were taken was associated with the attack? That is laughable)

Do you even know what the situation was like in Benghazi then? The city was a roiling mess of various (and often conflicting) militias, with no one group in charge. The consulate's own local security was one of those many militia groups.

So, the "hostile militia around the hospital" could have been any one of a number of different groups. And the reinforcement team was not stopping to ask for their membership cards.

and the fact that the Administration and the CIA among others had already received information naming Ansar al Sharia as the attackers, and that organization was named in the press on the 12th.

And which that same group loudly denied, and whose initial claims of responsibility did not come from their official twitter and facebook feeds. Later it became clear that Ansar al-Sharia was responsible, but at the time it was not as clear-cut as you're pretending it was.

It took them 6 weeks to figure it out? That would make the CIA as incompetent as the apologists posting in this thread.

"Apologists", huh?

 

[The Big Dog]

Gee, your post is a little light on what we call facts.

I've got the unclassified CIA timeline. You have nothing. Lets go to the PRESS!

September 15, New York Times:

"Witnesses at the scene of the assault on the mission said they saw pickup trucks labeled with the group’s logo, which is well known in Benghazi. Fighters attacking the embassy acknowledged then that they belonged to Ansar al-Shariah, although they said there were other unarmed protesters joining them."

SEPTEMBER 12, France24:

The Islamists I talked to last night belong to a brigade affiliated with the radical Islamist group Ansar Al-Sharia, which translates to “Those Who Want Sharia” [other eyewitnesses and at least one Libyan official have blamed the group for the attack, according to the BBC]. In the past few months, it’s become increasingly powerful and well-known.

The Weekly Standard reported last week that the initial CIA talking points on the attack said "Islamic extremists with ties to al Qaeda participated in the attack." The reference to Al Qaeda was later taken out, and the initial reference to "attacks" was reportedly changed to "demonstrations."

Gee that is EXACTLY what the official time line said.

Later it became clear, huh?

Que sera sera.....

 

[A'isha]

Gee, your post is a little light on what we call facts.

What you call facts apparently has no relation to actual facts.

Later it became clear, huh?

Yes, September 15 would, indeed, be later than the night of September 11/12. And even then, it's not as clear-cut as you pretend it was. Let us, as you say, go to the press.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...ad82ae-1a2d-11e2-bd10-5ff056538b7c_story.html

The mob included members of the Ansar al-Sharia militia, about four members of al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, and members of the Egypt-based Muhammad Jamal network, along with other unarmed looters.

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/19/world/la-fg-libya-attack-20121020

But in Benghazi, witnesses said members of the group that raided the U.S. mission specifically mentioned the video, which denigrated the prophet Muhammad.

Tarek, an off-duty police sergeant who asked that his full name be withheld to shield him from reprisals, said he came to the scene about an hour after the attack began and found militants blocking the road leading to the compound.

"They drew their guns on me and they told me that the Americans were abusing our prophet," he said. "That's why they said they had come to fight."

He and others described the attackers as a mob rather than a team of commandos. It included some organized elements, they said, but its intelligence was less than precise. A caretaker at the villa adjacent to the U.S. mission said the attackers initially threatened to raid his compound until he and a guard barred the gate and shouted: "Private property! Women inside!"

Libyan guards who served as the security force at the U.S. compound said the mob was made up of disparate types, some who appeared to be experienced fighters and others who were not. There were long-bearded men whose faces were obscured by scarves in the style of practiced militants and called each other "sheik." But there also were younger men, some who looked like teenagers with wispy beards on their uncovered faces.

"There were civilians there, and many were carrying weapons," said Sheik Mohamed Oraibi, a hard-line Islamic preacher who arrived soon after the attack began. He said the attackers arrived in about 20 pickup trucks, many of which had machine guns mounted on them in the style favored by rebels during the Libyan revolution last year.

[...]

On Sept. 28, a spokesman for the director of national intelligence issued a statement calling what happened "a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists," some with Al Qaeda links or sympathies. The spokesman, Shawn Turner, said the intelligence community first believed the attack "began spontaneously following protests earlier that day at our embassy in Cairo" but that it had revised that initial assessment.

Republicans began portraying the attack as the work of Al Qaeda, and they accused the administration of deliberately seeking to downplay that possibility.

Now, however, said another official with access to the intelligence, "it may turn out that the initial assessment was not that far off."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/w...w-nuances-of-benghazi-investigation.html?_r=0

After a month of conflicting statements and partisan criticism, the circumstances surrounding the attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 have become clouded in ambiguities and questions: Did the attack grow out of anger against an American-made video mocking the Prophet Muhammad, or was it waged by an affiliate of Al Qaeda out to mark the 11th anniversary of its attack on United States soil?

To Libyans who witnessed the assault and know the attackers, there is little doubt what occurred: a well-known group of local Islamist militants struck the United States Mission without any warning or protest, and they did it in retaliation for the video. That is what the fighters said at the time, speaking emotionally of their anger at the video without mentioning Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or the terrorist strikes of 11 years earlier. And it is an explanation that tracks with their history as members of a local militant group determined to protect Libya from Western influence.

“It was the Ansar al-Shariah people,” said Mohamed Bishari, 20, a neighbor of the compound who watched the assault and described the brigade he saw leading the attack. “There was no protest or anything of that sort.”

[...]

To those on the ground, the circumstances of the attack are hardly a mystery. Most of the attackers made no effort to hide their faces or identities, and during the assault some acknowledged to a Libyan journalist working for The New York Times that they belonged to the group. And their attack drew a crowd, some of whom cheered them on, some of whom just gawked, and some of whom later looted the compound.

The fighters said at the time that they were moved to act because of the video, which had first gained attention across the region after a protest in Egypt that day. The assailants approvingly recalled a 2006 assault by local Islamists that had destroyed an Italian diplomatic mission in Benghazi over a perceived insult to the prophet. In June the group staged a similar attack against the Tunisian Consulate over a different film, according to the Congressional testimony of the American security chief at the time, Eric A. Nordstrom.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...7ff326-1a36-11e2-bd10-5ff056538b7c_story.html

U.S. intelligence officials said Friday that no evidence has surfaced to indicate that the Sept. 11 assault on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Libya was planned in advance, a conclusion that suggests the attack was spontaneous even if it involved militants with ties to al-Qaeda.

The description represents the latest shift in the U.S. government’s evolving account of an attack that claimed the life of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, as well as three other U.S. citizens, and has become entangled in the politics of the presidential campaign.

“There isn’t any intelligence that the attackers pre-planned their assault days or weeks in advance,” a U.S. intelligence official said. “The bulk of available information supports the early assessment that the attackers launched their assault opportunistically after they learned about the violence at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.”

 

[The Big Dog]

What you call facts apparently has no relation to actual facts.



Yes, September 15 would, indeed, be later than the night of September 11/12. And even then, it's not as clear-cut as you pretend it was. Let us, as you say, go to the press.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...ad82ae-1a2d-11e2-bd10-5ff056538b7c_story.html



http://articles.latimes.com/2012/oct/19/world/la-fg-libya-attack-20121020



http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/w...w-nuances-of-benghazi-investigation.html?_r=0



http://www.washingtonpost.com/world...7ff326-1a36-11e2-bd10-5ff056538b7c_story.html

Wow. You know that the claim that the attack arose out of a video protest was wrong, right? The only reason that there was any confusion was because the administration lied about it?

Acting Ambassador Hicks watched the Sunday shows and said he found this contradiction shocking. "The net impact of what has transpired is the spokesperson of the most powerful country in the world has basically said that the President of Libya is either a liar or doesn't know what he's talking about," he accused. Hicks added, "My jaw hit the floor as I watched this...I've never been as embarrassed in my life, in my career as on that day."

Rep. Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.) on Sunday said the talking points United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice used in the wake of the Benghazi, Libya attack were “absolutely” altered and incorrect.

“They certainly weren’t accurate,” Lynch said. “I don’t know what the process was there, but absolutely, they were false, they were wrong. There were no protests outside the Benghazi compound there, this was a deliberate and strategic attack on the consulate there.”

 

[A'isha]

Wow. You know that the claim that the attack arose out of a video protest was wrong, right? The only reason that there was any confusion was because the administration lied about it?

So, those Libyan locals and witnesses mentioned and quoted in the articles above and talking about how the consulate attackers were doing so because of the video are all employed by the Obama Administration?

No wonder government spending is out of control.

Acting Ambassador Hicks watched the Sunday shows and said he found this contradiction shocking. "The net impact of what has transpired is the spokesperson of the most powerful country in the world has basically said that the President of Libya is either a liar or doesn't know what he's talking about," he accused. Hicks added, "My jaw hit the floor as I watched this...I've never been as embarrassed in my life, in my career as on that day."

Do you actually think that cutting and pasting this quote for the umpteenth time is in any way an adequate response to what I wrote and cited?

 

[The Big Dog]

So, those Libyan locals and witnesses mentioned and quoted in the articles above and talking about how the consulate attackers were doing so because of the video are all employed by the Obama Administration?

No wonder government spending is out of control.



Do you actually think that cutting and pasting this quote for the umpteenth time is in any way an adequate response to what I wrote and cited?

You mean the ones saying it was Ansar al sharia? HEE HEE!

Of course it is.

I notice you ignored the Democrat calling the story obviously false.

You know that Rice released a statement that said it was incorrect right?

I got to hand it to you, though, you are quite impervious to facts.

 

[A'isha]

You mean the ones saying it was Ansar al sharia? HEE HEE!

No, I mean the ones saying it was Ansar al-Sharia, some other groups, and even a bunch of unaffiliated civilians, and saying they were motivated to attack by the video.

I notice you ignored the Democrat calling the story obviously false.

You know that Rice released a statement that said it was incorrect right?

I got to hand it to you, though, you are quite impervious to facts.

You are aware that "the attack arose out of a protest against the video" is not at all the same thing as "there was no protest before the attack but the attackers said that they were motivated to attack by the video", right?

 

[Travis]

Ah, but you see, that's the whole point of this. If Obama didn't know all the true facts in advance, then he's incompetent for his ignorance. If he did know all the true facts in advance, then he's incompetent for not acting to prevent it. There is absolutely no way that Benghazi is not completely Obama's fault, from start to finish. The only question is whether he planned it deliberately out of evil, or did he just let it happen out of evil.

My mom watches Fox News religiously, so she was able to explain this to me.

(But do not suggest that the same incompetence ignorance/incompetence impotence applies to Bush and 9/11. That was, of course, Clinton's fault.)

Yep. That's what this is all about. Somehow Obama is evil and Benghazi is the proof. Somehow.