benghazi cover upFollow

I'd say that word doesn't mean what you think it means, but I'm past the point of believing you're capable of it at all.

Obama requested five billion for embassy security. Congress grudgingly gave them, 4.5 billion. They really needed double that, but, you know, austerity and deficits and freedom. And stuff.

Thus, I blame Congress.

But you do get that it's kinda hard to criticize someone for "not doing enough" to secure an embassy when you're the one that cut their budget? Stones, glass houses, etc. I'm more than ok with trying to figure out every small detail about what happened & why, I just think it's hard to score political points with Libya's embassy attacks before all the facts are out.

Two other embassies were attacked immediately prior to the attack in Libya, in response to the youtube video, so I can understand why the intelligence might have been leaning towards that explanation at the time. If you don't, I suppose you're reality-retarded.

It depends on the reality in question.

Um... One other embassy. Cairo and Benghazi. But the second one wasn't because of the video. So no pattern at all except the one invented in the minds of those who desperately wanted this to be a random act of violence in response to a video instead of a failure of foreign policy (and possible resurgence of Al Queda).

And even if we bought that on day one. What about day 5? Or day 10? Or day 14? Obama gave a speech to the UN two weeks after the attacks and spent a significant portion speaking about the video and the violence that resulted, but didn't identify the Benghazi attack as planned, much less as terrorism, and didn't mention Al Queda except in the context of how defeated they are. There's a small window in which we can forgive the administration for not knowing the full facts, and even getting some things wrong. But there's a point at which that's just no longer an excuse. The Obama administration continued to directly mislead (and perhaps even outright lie) about the motivation behind the attacks well after they should have known better. And they can blame lack of communication all day long, but it's their responsibility to find out what really happened as quickly as possible. So either they did know and chose to lie about it, or they utterly failed at their jobs by not even bothering to find out.

Either possibility represents a gross violation of the expectations the American people have of their leaders.

You could just say "I don't know either" and be done with it.

Or better yet you could google it and actually learn something...



and then later on...

Probably just as well, I can't imagine facts actually helping in his crusade anyway.

Which is what I just said.



That's not what I think. So phew!



Yes. Hence, when I said "The Obama administration didn't want it to look like we considered Libya an unsafe country, or that we didn't trust their security forces to protect our embassy personnel", it should have been clear that I was speaking about how this appeared to the Libyans, and not to the folks back at home.

Great job telling us all what I wasn't talking about though. So we're agreed that it had nothing to do with funding? Good!


Care to respond to the portion about how the Obama administration continued to portray this as just a random event stemming from a protest over a video? Cause that's the big story here. It's usually the coverup that kills you, and that goes double in this case. There's lots of blame to go around in terms of the security choices made leading up to the attack, but none of that explains or excuses the administrations attempts to make it seem like this wasn't really a planned terrorist attack on us at all. I'll point out again that there is no way in hell the US ambassador to the UN goes on the Sunday talk show circuit to speak about Benghazi without having been sent to those shows by the White House to say exactly what the White House wanted her to say. So one has to wonder who exactly sent her and decided what message she was to say.


It's hard to imagine that Obama wasn't involved with that in any way. How exactly does our "best intelligence" get to Ambassador Rice for her to make those statements, if it didn't come through the White House? I mean, "best intelligence" makes one assume she was briefed by the head of the CIA, State and Defense Departments, and the National Security Adviser, right? Cause that's how one normally gets to make a statement like that, right? Who the hell did she talk to?

Huh? No. To make the Libyan government and people think that we trust and respect them. You know, kinda what Obama's whole foreign policy has been based on for the last 3+ years (if we're nice to them, they'll be nice to us)?



Why would one keep a lower profile rather than an armed military presence? What's funny is that you said that but didn't seem to give a second thought as to why we might do that. Complete the thought Joph. You are aware enough to make the statement you did, but not aware enough to consider *why* we might do that? Seriously?



Which would be a great response except for the absolute fact that the "best intelligence" at the time did not suggest at all that this was a spontaneous attack arising from a protest over an offensive video. It's all well and good to say that intelligence isn't perfect, but that does not explain why Rice said what she said. If the intelligence was unclear, she should have said that the intelligence was unclear. The fact is that at no time did we have any intelligence at all that supported what she said. Unless "best intelligence" really just means "wild speculation".



Wrong. My opinion here is spot on. You just don't want to address it.

I thought it was kill anyone we don't particularly like with unmanned drones.

I don't think having 5, 10, or 15 agents in a building would have any noticeable effect on how the people in lybia thought of the US. I'd imagine pretty much all of them know as much about the security arrangements inside the embassy as most Americans. IE: none.

Here's a questions, how many security people does Canada have in the our embassy in the states? What message are we sending with that presence?

Never been inside, but there's usually two guys with hockey sticks standing out front.