In-A-Gadda-Levitre

lots of threads are made of drivel. Ok, you don't like it, you think the media ought to be talking about casualties in Afghanistan. Fine, start a new thread about that, but don't twist a discussion about a diplomatic tragedy in Libya into your own personal vendetta. Talk about the african embassies, the marine barracks, things that relate to the deaths of innocent americans and diplomats in those countries, not our brothers and sisters in uniform that are fighting for democracy in your so-called god-forsaken lands.

why would anyone quote this? Especially that the Iraq casualties were orders of magnitude higher during 2003-2008. This is just wrong, you should be ashamed of yourself.

hehe, ok about Portman. They're both rich, pro-life, Mormon republicans. On immigration, foreign policy, environment (esp cap-and-trade), gay rights, gov't spending to promote economic growth, financial reform, and others like oil subsidies, they're not even close. Huntsman is a true moderate, Romney not so much, but it was hard to tell sometimes. The point is he refused to do what Romney did, and it cost him dearly. One of the things that most pundits and observers agree on is that Obama was able to define Romney as a vulture capitalist early on. Not that he was rich, but how he became rich. Huntsman's dad made his money by innovating food packaging and Junior is a career diplomat. Seems like a strategy that lionizes his wealth wouldn't have had nearly the same effect with Huntsman.

The discussion was about Huntsman, that he wasn't pandering to the republican base nearly enough to win or even stay competitive in the primaries, and you commented about "crazy Romney". So, now you rotate somehow to Portman? What does he have to do with this? Since he was never a candidate, I don't see how speculating over what might have happened has any relevance. Maybe what we ought to have a dialog about is whether, if every GOP presidential candidate in the future has to espouse extreme right positions in the primary just to get the nomination, can they tack to the center in the general and win, ever?

crazy as in the amount of red meat that the candidate was willing to throw to the base during the primaries. Romney was right up there, depending on the issue. Later, he pivots towards the center, but didn't have enough in the message dep't to win over moderates.

I agree on both points. He was attractive candidate to many centrists and moderates, but not crazy enough to make it past the primaries. It's very likely that the Obama camp knew he was a formidable candidate and put him in China to hamper his fundraising and campaign prep.

no, I'm not saying that, but on the whole, the republican base exists in an information bubble, ignoring anything that conflicts with their beliefs. Sure, some on the left suffer in the same way, but there's more than enough anecdotal evidence that the former are consistently uniformed. To answer your question about PPP, I'd say, yeah, there's lots of PPP contributors that are uniformed, because they refuse to consider any possible alternative to their way of thinking, and don't bother getting other viewpoints. Personally, I watch both sides news programs and read both side's pundits, and if someone makes a compelling argument, they can convince me or change my viewpoint.

largely uniformed populace = Fox News watchers and/or those that get their information solely from right wing bloggers or talk radio hosts

he isn't the mouthpiece, that would be Stephanie Cutter. He's the Campaign Manager and he listed the biggest reasons why he won. I have trouble believing that, if the media was a significant part of winning, he'd wouldn't find a way to mention it, even in an indirect way. I'm guessing he doesn't believe it, nor do most of the campaign. Actually, he went out of his way to say that knocking on doors and GOTV investments (aided by high tech) won. That flies in the face of media shifting the electorate.

more gloating, beating a dead horse, and otherwise partisan hackmanship. Jim Messina on why Obama won. Funny how media coverage wasn't mentioned, but he must be covering up how the leftist media won the day. Instead, it was mostly about good ole' grass roots campaigning.

Michael Gerson, former Bush speechwriter opines

thanks JJ, I'd never seen all these #5 has been quoted a few times, but seems like #1 might've been a part of his decision as well

the "security removed" reports seem to come only from bloggers, do you have any legit sources that confirm they removed security? Not saying it didn't happen and I'll also be the first to admit that the pre-disaster planning was disgusting. They asked for more security, and didn't get it. Maybe it would've made a difference. The Libyan contracted security was a joke. The contingency planning seems to be non-existant, so there's a lot to be angry about. Asked and refused for what plane?

You're absolutely right, IF they had a C-130. The nearest airbase was Sigonella, Italy, 475 miles away and there were no C-130s there that night. So, a lot of if-onlys and things would have different.

in this case, extra marines means if their request for more security WAS honored, there would have couple squads of marines assigned to the consulate and the safe house. Not that there were any there. My bad choice of words. Got taken away? what do you mean? Stand down, I'll just put this out there one more time... Fox News put out a story that said the GRS assets were told to stand down, and that went viral. There was no confirmation or evidence, just someone told Jennifer Griffin and she reported it. The CIA came back and said NFW, it didn't happen at any level, the Fox story was dead wrong, and they knew it for a fact. You can choose to ignore that, but it was a very strong condemnation by the CIA.

I hear what you're saying, but if you have a situation where, you're in their hood, you've got finite firepower, and the timeline exposed how long it took for reinforcements to arrive, not anyone's fault, but more about dealing with Libyan authorities and stuff. Those militias can call in some serious hardware and manpower in minutes. Remember the CIA's primary mission in Benghazi was to find all those missing shoulder-fired rockets. 2 dozen marines or seals might just be outgunned for a few hours. Air cover, nobody's talking much, except I read somewhere that they couldn't get AC130s or close cover for some reason. So it's nothing against our freaking amazing fighting squads, just overwhelming manpower and firepower in a short time might be too much. If we're talking about a more perfect world, where there's not only adequate feet in the compound, but reinforcements and other backup get there in time, then that's a different situation.

ya exactly, but it wasn't as secure as they thought it was. Everything was stored on Google's servers and sent over their network. This whole thing exposed the holes in that trick.

Detailed article on how Broadwell got caught. Linked inside was an eye-opening piece from Reuters, Collateral damage from our surveillance state. This is some scary sh*t.

umm, why don't you share, specifically, what she lied about

ya, that's a valid point. IMO only, I think it was more about rigidly sticking to the original, unclassified talking points until they were sure what happened. No doubt that it created real problems for the administration. EDIT: Obama did say "And make no mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people" in the Rose Garden on Sep 12 It's not enough, and they should've had a better response.

We still don't know what happened with the request for additional security before the tragedy, but most of the experts have questioned whether a dozen or so more Marines would have made the difference. That question, who decided to decline the request, needs to be explained. That whole Fox News report "stand down" thing was strongly denied by the CIA. I think you'd agree (or maybe not) that it's easy to have hindsight 20-20 when the early intelligence was all over the map and as insiders quoted in my post, there was no cover up, but rather initial unclassified vs. unconfirmed, classified analysis.

I agree 100%, but if your bank said you could keep your job with (let's say) a 20% hit in salary, or maybe you'd no longer get medical benefits for life, maybe you'd have to think about that long and hard, if there were few options for a new job.

When I was a kid growing up in Buffalo, most of my friends had 1 career goal - get into the Chevy plant or Bethlehem Steel and be set for life. Of course, we know now that the unions drove up the cost of labor so high that those plants shrunk or in some cases, were shuttered. Of course there were other reasons for the demise of manufacturing, but that was and still is, the conventional thinking. Years later, around 2003, I came back to visit my mom, and I was reading an article in the News that the last running plant of Bethlehem in Lackawanna was shutting down. I think it was the specialty steel process, but someone can correct me if I'm wrong. The article said the plant was closing, and all the workers would be out of a job, BUT, there was a plant in Tonawanda that made similar products and the plant's owner offered to buy the Bethlehem operation and let everyone keep their jobs. There was one catch: His plant had a different contract with the unions than the Bethlehem one and he wasn't going to be held hostage by either labor group. If the Bethlehem workers accepted the same contract as the Tonawanda plant, they could keep their jobs and life would go on as before. The Bethlehem workers grumbled in public and said they'd worked too hard to get what they had now and they weren't going to compromise their current deal. Ok, said the white knight, no deal. The plant closed and every single job was lost. My thought at the time was, wow, haven't you guys learned anything since the 70s?

In my earlier post, I said I'd get some links. It's interesting that no single article covers this thing as much as CNN did last night, but there's more than enough quotes to confirm the bulk of it... there were initial classified reports that included the video.demonstration.gone.bad theory and that it was the work of a terrorist attack, maybe p/o Al Qaeda or maybe some other group. Nothing surprising about that. This probably doesn't require any confirmation, and anyone paying attention realizes there were conflicting reports at the beginning. One thing I hadn't heard before was that there were at least 20 reports that the attack began out of a protest about the video, those were disproved of course, but not until after General Patreus gave his 1st briefing. some militia groups claimed responsibility, and a new source said it was a group affiliated with Al Qaeda, that the CIA hadn't confirmed the source's claim yet, and they felt, at least initially, that they needed to protect the new source. ABC News quotes a senior intelligence official, who discusses why they didn't mention Al Qaeda at the beginning. CNN said it was a "new source", but "tenuous" seems be to the operative word. General Patreus seems to say that he, and maybe the CIA, thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning. He didn't exactly push that theory when he made his earlier statement right after the attack, but he could have been overruled, he had been sticking to the unclassified talking points, or maybe the intelligence just wasn't solid yet. Unknown I guess. The above link confirms that he was convinced it was a terrorist attack from the outset, and subsequent reports from his last briefing said the same thing. There's some disagreement whether he drove home made this point at the first briefing or not. the unclassified talking points were circulated amongst State, the WH, CIA, National Security, FBI, etc. This Bloomberg report confirms the above. the only WH change was from 'consulate' to 'annex'. They did not appear to remove terrorist references or that it had to say it was because of the video; that the unclassified report was written and approved by all those groups. Ben Rhodes says the White House didn't edit the unclassified talking points.