Profiling is not ok...Follow

Except that The money had nothing to do with security for our embassy or consulate in Libya. This is so relevant I had to say it twice.

Count as what? An excuse for the Obama administration to blame the deaths of our embassy personnel on a film rather than a planned attack by existing terrorist organizations? No. It doesn't count.

If it was so irrelevant, then why lie about it? Why change the language in the intelligence reports to match one while downplaying the other? Why then send Rice out on the Sunday shows to say directly that it was one and not the other? Clearly someone in the Obama administration thought it mattered a great deal.

The decision to try to claim this was an outgrowth of protests over a film was politically driven as well. Obviously, any response to that will also be politically driven. I'm not sure how that somehow nullifies the accusations present though. So the Obama administration can lie to the American people for political reasons, and we should dismiss any criticism of this on the grounds that the criticism is political? You've just justified our government getting away with anything it wants. You get that any criticism of actions taken by the government can be called political, right?

That's a monumentally stupid reason to dismiss something like this. Argue that it didn't happen. Or that the decisions that were made were not as bad as they seemed. Or that they honestly thought it was what they said. Anything like that is legitimate. Saying "it's politically driven" isn't a good counter argument at all. Show that it's *only* driven by politics, and you might have a point.

Wait? So it's a conspiracy to say that somewhere between the intelligence reports from the field to the official intelligence briefing, key information was removed which resulted in downplaying the planned nature of the attack? It's not. It's a fact. It's also a fact that several drafts were written and rejected until said changes were made. This is not some "what if" scenario here. The intelligence was "fixed" to match the agenda of the Obama administration. They wanted to sell the whole "We killed OBL and Al Queda is on the run" story to the American people for the election. The attack in Libya made that difficult to do. Surely you can see how if they could convince people that it wasn't a planned terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9/11, but just a protest that got out of hand, then they could protect their foreign policy narrative.

There was a clear and obvious political motivation for lying. What's so strange is how many people are insisting there's nothing to this even with all the facts that are present now. At this point, it's not really a question of whether someone lied, or even why they did. It's a question of who lied, and how far up the chain it goes. Was it just some mid level folks at State acting on their own? Was Clinton involved directly? Was someone on Obama's staff involved? Someone told someone else to downplay the "planned terrorist attack" side of this. Who?

Except that it wasn't that the information was wrong. The information was correct. Someone changed the information which ended out in the official briefing so that it said something different. That was not an accident. It's not like every intelligence report from the field said X, but it turned out to be Y instead. In this case, every intelligence report said Y, the briefing draft said Y, but then it was changed to say X instead. And X just happened to be more beneficial to a president engaged in a re-election campaign at the time than Y.

Is it really so hard to connect those dots?

1. The CIA drove the talking points process
The emails — dating from Friday, Sept. 14, just before noon to Saturday, Sept. 15, just before 8 p.m. — indicate that there was input from the CIA, FBI, State Department, White House, and other intelligence agencies, but it's clear that the talking points began and ended with the CIA.[...]

2. The incorrect pre-attack protest detail was the CIA, too
A major GOP point of criticism of the Obama team's response to the attack was the erroneous claim that the siege was preceded by a spontaneous protest, inspired by a similar protest outside the U.S. embassy in Cairo. That claim — which senior U.S. officials say reflects the best intelligence at the time — was part of the original CIA talking points, and CIA officials steered the talking points more explicitly toward highlighting a demonstration. [...] [T]he protest in Cairo, which all versions of the talking points say inspired the mythical Benghazi protest, were explicitly in reaction to the YouTube video.[...]

3. Most of the objections did come from the State Department
[...]That the State Department — which wasn't roped into the discussion until the fourth draft — would raise the most objections to the CIA's talking points isn't surprising, say Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung at The Washington Post. "The two agencies had the most at stake in the Benghazi aftermath," and their main dispute was "whether previous CIA warnings of attacks in the Benghazi area should be included in those initial public statements." [...]

4. The White House changed more than one word
After Morell made the final changes to the talking points, whittling them down from five to three and stripping out much of the interesting stuff, Rhodes offered "one edit, for accuracy": Change "consulate" to "diplomatic post." That fits with White House press secretary Jay Carney's contention the the White House changed only one word, "consulate." But on Friday evening, Tommy Vietor — then NSA spokesman — also asked that the CIA add the word "Cairo" to the talking point about the previous protests in Egypt.[...]

5. David Petraeus didn't care for the final talking points
In the mess of emails, there are a few informing Petraeus about the status of the talking points, but only one from Petraeus himself. At 12:51 p.m. on Saturday, a CIA staffer emailed the final draft to Petraeus for his approval. He didn't much approve.

There is no evidence that spending cuts had *anything* to do with security levels at our embassy or consulate in Libya. None at all.

Bush took a terrorist attack and spun it for political gain.

Timeline of Talking Points edits and changes based on the e-mail dump.

Based on the email dump of emails selected by the White House.

Do you understand that this is also still just about the actual briefing document?

You can point to conspiracy theory spouting opinion articles spinning half truths and speculation all day long.

If not seems like this is going to become a 'he said, she said' thing pretty fast.