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Like I said before ...... it's the video tape, the emails and the Timeline that always get the O-Team in trouble.
September 11, 2012 was a Tuesday -
There was a 'protest' in Cairo, the US State Dept and CIA was warned it was coming and so they left only essential personnel as the Embassy. This 'protest' was all about the release of the Blind Sheik and was posted on the internet in Arabic on Sept 8 (about the same time an obscure Religion program began to talk about the Video trailer that nobody had even heard of). The protest was about noon, they scaled the walls of the Embassy - tore down the American Flag and raised the Black AQ flag.
The Attack on Benghazi in Libya began at about 9 pm, Libya time with heavy arms and no warning.
The "riots" that broke out across the Islamic countries (according to your own post) were Friday, which was September 14 & 15 ..... it all happened after the Rhodes emails, or at best - close to the same time.
The newest emails to be released show that the State Dept was perfectly aware AND emailing during the Terrorist Attack on Benghazi that they knew it was an AQ affiliated group AND they knew it was a Terror attack ..... and yet ....... both Obama & Clinton went on National TV the next morning to whine about a Video trailer.
Boehner has announced the House will vote to form a Select Committee for the Investigation - it will pass and anyone who votes against it will be on record as wanting to protect the cover-up. We have no idea what they are covering up, it could just be Panic and Incompetence - but it's clear there was a cover-up. We learned last night from the former member of Obama's staff that Obama was never in the Situation Room during any of the Attack - Dempsey & Panetta already testified that nobody from the Defense Department talked to anyone at either the State Department OR the White House after 5 pm - when the attack was just beginning.
Think about that - did they just not care? What in the world were all these people doing while those 32 people were fighting for their lives for over 8 hours? They gave pictures, a late night Presidential announcement and a complete Tick-Tock of the day/night that Osama bin-Laden was killed ..... and absolutely nothing but cover-up over 4 Americans, including the Ambassador getting Murdered in Benghazi. We need to also remember that not a single person has been arrested over this - one of the leaders was giving interviews to the news organizations, but the apparently our Federal Agencies know nothing about pretty much everything. Enough is more than Enough - they need to just come clean. As usual, it's always the LIES and the Cover-Up that get them in trouble.
The Time line is not a problem. There were protests preceding the attack in Benghazi and protests afterward. My one link did not cover all the protests. Here is the New York Times article from the 13th
Deadly outrage in the Arab world over an American-made video insulting Islam’s founder spread to at least half a dozen places across the Middle East on Thursday and threatened to draw in Afghanistan, two days after assailants in Libya killed four American diplomatic personnel, including the ambassador, and caused a foreign policy political clash in the United States.
... In Egypt, where the anti-American anger began on Tuesday over the previously obscure video, protesters scuffled with police officers firing tear gas, and news agencies reported that dozens of people were hurt. Demonstrations were also reported outside United States diplomatic facilities in Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia — where the police fired tear gas to disperse the crowds — and an anti-American protest was held in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza.
Also keep in mind that some of the places were the protests were occurring are 8 hours or more ahead of Washington DC.
These protests were a big story by the time Rhodes got around preparing an email about Susan Rice's upcoming appearances on the Sunday talk shows. In fact it was the first question Chris Wallace on Fox had for Susan Rice in his interview, prior to any question on Benghazi.
WALLACE: Joining us now our ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice. Ambassador, welcome back to "Fox News Sunday." AMB. SUSAN RICE, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: Thank you. WALLACE: This week, there have been anti-American protests in two dozen countries across the Islamic world. The White House says it has nothing to do with the president's policies.
It has already been testified to and mentioned in at least one congressional report on Benghazi that the CIA analysts in the U.S. were getting conflicting information on the nature of the attack in Benghazi. In the end they made the wrong conclusion from that conflicting information. It doesn't really matter that there were other people inside and outside the CIA that thought the assessment was wrong. What matters is the official assessment that was passed to people in the White House, State Department, Susan Rice, members of congress, etc.
Frankly when I first read the initial, unedited, assessment it seemed to me that they were trying to cover all the bases so that they couldn't be accused of missing anything. I can also imagine that they were heavily influenced by other events occurring elsewhere in the world.
The Armed Services report documented the involvement of people from the White House. It disagrees with your assertions.
I'd like to know how we went from the state department
immediately attributing the attack to a specific terrorist group on 9/11/12
to a CIA talking point memo attributing it to a spontaneous protest over an internet movie on 9/14/12, apparently penned by Mike Morrell.
Mike Morell recently testified he learned by 9/14/12 (the same day) that there was no protest and blaming the attack on a protest was likely false, yet they didn't take that talking point out:
Yet Morell did feel the need to scrub out Petreaus' request to include the fact the CIA had warned the State Department about possible Al-Qaeda attacks before the Benghazzi attack on 9/11/12.
I understand Mike Morell is now employed by Ben Rhodes' brother, David Rhodes, at CBS.
Man, this thing really stinks.
You've got to be a true partisan not to see serious issues in how all of this went down.
The Time line is not a problem. There were protests preceding the attack in Benghazi and protests afterward. My one link did not cover all the protests. Here is the New York Times article from the 13th
Deadly outrage in the Arab world over an American-made video insulting Islam’s founder spread to at least half a dozen places across the Middle East on Thursday and threatened to draw in Afghanistan, two days after assailants in Libya killed four American diplomatic personnel, including the ambassador, and caused a foreign policy political clash in the United States.
... In Egypt, where the anti-American anger began on Tuesday over the previously obscure video, protesters scuffled with police officers firing tear gas, and news agencies reported that dozens of people were hurt. Demonstrations were also reported outside United States diplomatic facilities in Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia — where the police fired tear gas to disperse the crowds — and an anti-American protest was held in the Palestinian enclave of Gaza.
Also keep in mind that some of the places were the protests were occurring are 8 hours or more ahead of Washington DC.
These protests were a big story by the time Rhodes got around preparing an email about Susan Rice's upcoming appearances on the Sunday talk shows. In fact it was the first question Chris Wallace on Fox had for Susan Rice in his interview, prior to any question on Benghazi.
WALLACE: Joining us now our ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice. Ambassador, welcome back to "Fox News Sunday." AMB. SUSAN RICE, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: Thank you. WALLACE: This week, there have been anti-American protests in two dozen countries across the Islamic world. The White House says it has nothing to do with the president's policies.
It has already been testified to and mentioned in at least one congressional report on Benghazi that the CIA analysts in the U.S. were getting conflicting information on the nature of the attack in Benghazi. In the end they made the wrong conclusion from that conflicting information. It doesn't really matter that there were other people inside and outside the CIA that thought the assessment was wrong. What matters is the official assessment that was passed to people in the White House, State Department, Susan Rice, members of congress, etc.
Frankly when I first read the initial, unedited, assessment it seemed to me that they were trying to cover all the bases so that they couldn't be accused of missing anything. I can also imagine that they were heavily influenced by other events occurring elsewhere in the world.
The Armed Services report documented the involvement of people from the White House. It disagrees with your assertions.
There was not 8 hours of attacks.
Actually, the time line is a problem. The state department immediately blamed it on a terrorist group, not a spontaneous protest. The CIA talking point email wasn't distributed until the morning of 9/14/12 - and it is now questionable, based on Morell's own testimony, why the movie was blamed at all:
"The 33-year veteran of the CIA, who served Democratic and Republican presidents, provided the first concrete timeline of when the CIA began to understand that the original reports were wrong.
He testified that the agency first learned Sept. 14 that there appeared to be no protest on the ground from a report from its officers in Libya, and that a day later the CIA’s station chief sent an email reinforcing that the attack was not preceded by a protest.
Mr. Morell said he shared that information with White House officials, including Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough, during a meeting on Sept. 15, 2012, but added that he did not edit the protest information from draft talking points because CIA analysts had not definitively ruled out the protest."
Yes, the whole point (impeachment talk aside) is that the administration misled the american people with a false narrative that the attack was due to outrage over an internet movie. The initial assessment by the state department was that it was a terrorist attack - and they knew who did it:
It's also troubling the administration did not produce the Ben Rhodes 9/14 email last year.
There were lots of different scenarios being offered by lots of different people, both inside the CIA and outside. Most of them were wrong. The key is that the CIA made the wrong conclusion in their initial assessment. Its the CIA assessment that Susan Rice and the administration were basing their comments.
One of the interesting things in the internal email discussion over the CIA talking points was the need to get the CIA talking points out because there was a lot of misinformation being spread around. Unfortunately the CIA talking points only contributed to the misinformation.
immediately attributing the attack to a specific terrorist group on 9/11/12
to a CIA talking point memo attributing it to a spontaneous protest over an internet movie on 9/14/12, apparently penned by Mike Morrell.
Mike Morell recently testified he learned by 9/15/12 that there was no protest and blaming the attack on a protest was likely false, yet they didn't take that talking point out:
Yet Morell did feel the need to scrub out Petreaus' request to include the fact the CIA had warned the State Department about possible Al-Qaeda attacks before the Benghazzi attack on 9/11/12.
I understand Mike Morell is now employed by Ben Rhodes' brother, David Rhodes, at CBS.
Man, this thing really stinks.
You've got to be a true partisan not to see serious issues in how all of this went down.
Morell didn't pen the CIA talking points. Morell has testified that he passed the CIA station chief's opinion on the nature of the attack to the authors of the talking points to see if they wanted to change anything and they said they did not (ie they dismissed or downplayed the Station chief's opinion).
Actually, the time line is a problem. The state department immediately blamed it on a terrorist group, not a spontaneous protest. The CIA talking point email wasn't distributed until the morning of 9/14/12 - and it is now questionable, based on Morell's own testimony, why the movie was blamed at all:
"The 33-year veteran of the CIA, who served Democratic and Republican presidents, provided the first concrete timeline of when the CIA began to understand that the original reports were wrong.
He testified that the agency first learned Sept. 14 that there appeared to be no protest on the ground from a report from its officers in Libya, and that a day later the CIA’s station chief sent an email reinforcing that the attack was not preceded by a protest.
Mr. Morell said he shared that information with White House officials, including Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough, during a meeting on Sept. 15, 2012, but added that he did not edit the protest information from draft talking points because CIA analysts had not definitively ruled out the protest."
Yes, the people who are suppose to know and who the Administration should be able to rely on got it wrong. They didn't change their opinion in the official assessment. As I have written previously, lots of people were offering lots of different opinions. Most of them were wrong. In the end it matters what is in the official assessment, which was spontaneous attack, connected to Cairo (therefore the video), mixed crowd evolving into an attack by extremists.
I There are much more important issues, there are more important aspects of the attack in Benghazi, but they don't contribute to the narrative that the Republicans are attempting to create about Obama.
Pray tell, what is more important than the lives of American citizens who were intentionally abandoned and left to die a horrible death? What is more important than getting to the truth when it's evident that we have an administration that governs by deception and lies? Are we to just shrug our shoulders and move on, holding no one accountable? Is that the government you want?
Quote:
Originally Posted by florida.bob
Oh come on, everybody knows this latest hoopla is all about trying to save Lindsey Graham's Senate seat.
Hoopla? See above and stand by for the next chapter:
Now begins the work anew, in light of recent revelations
Those of you who, either out of misplaced loyalty or pay-per-blog, try to defend the administration and the President in spite of recently revealed facts that cannot be disputed are nothing more than misguided and myopic.
Yes, the people who are suppose to know and who the Administration should be able to rely on got it wrong. They didn't change their opinion in the official assessment. As I have written previously, lots of people were offering lots of different opinions. Most of them were wrong. In the end it matters what is in the official assessment, which was spontaneous attack, connected to Cairo (therefore the video), mixed crowd evolving into an attack by extremists.
"In the end it matters what is in the official assessment, which was spontaneous attack, connected to Cairo (therefore the video), mixed crowd evolving into an attack by extremists."
NOT. That has already been debunked. Your attempts to make this really tragic event into a "phony scandal" are unpatriotic.
This will not go away as easily as you and other staunch democrats/liberals wish it would.
Morell didn't pen the CIA talking points. Morell has testified that he passed the CIA station chief's opinion on the nature of the attack to the authors of the talking points to see if they wanted to change anything and they said they did not (ie they dismissed or downplayed the Station chief's opinion).
1. Who did pen the talking points? Ben Rhodes obviously, but who else?
2. If you can now downgrade the CIA station chief's belief as of 9/15/12 that the attack did not arise out of a spontaneous protest over a movie as merely his "opinion," how could the authors of the talking points rely on the CIA's mere "opinion" previously as the "official assessment"? Why did the authors ignore the "opinion" as of 9/15/12? You still have a real problem here - they were told by 9/15 at the latest there was a serious problem with their movie narrative by the people they claim they were relying on and yet they went with it. It was Sunday 9/16 when Rice first went on the Sunday shows, after the authors were advised the narrative was incorrect (i.e. a lie), and yet the administration went with it. Even if you give the administration the benefit of the doubt here, you have a serious time line problem with going out with this false narrative on 9/16 and later.
3. And who at the CIA was of the "opinion" that the attacks were caused by the movie prior to 9/15/12? I'm still unclear how this narrative developed after the initial immediate belief was it was a terrorist attack and they knew the specific group that was responsible.
Since the phrase "to betray the public trust" is so ambiguous as to border on meaningless, that's hardly saying anything useful.
It counters what the poster I responded to claimed. "
"Originally Posted by pghquest its not an impeachable offense to lie to the public.."
A President CAN be impeached for just about ANYTHING the House wants.
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I'd like to know how we went from the state department
