Benghazi

[B-Man]

The AWOL Commander-in-Chief :What was Obama doing while terrorists attacked Americans in Benghazi?

 

By Andrew C. McCarthy

 

 

You couldn’t help but feel for Robert Lovell. The retired brigadier general is haunted by the failure of AFRICOM, the U.S. military’s Africa Command, to respond when Americans were under siege in Benghazi on September 11, 2012. His congressional testimony this week was somber — no faux “What difference, at this point, does it make?” indignation, no “Dude, this was two years ago” juvenilia for him.

 

Ambassador Christopher Stevens and the State Department’s Sean Smith were killed in the early stage of the jihadist attack. By then, the actions that would surely have saved their lives — e.g., an adult recognition that Benghazi was no place for an American diplomatic facility, or at least the responsible provision of adequate security — had already been callously forsaken. It seems unlikely AFRICOM could have gotten there in time for them on that fateful night, though that does not come close to excusing the failure to try.

 

Former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty are a different story. They fought valiantly for many hours after our military learned, very early on, that the battle was raging. Unlike AFRICOM, the SEALs did not stand pat. They ran to the sound of the guns. After saving over 30 of their countrymen, they paid with their lives. The armed forces, General Lovell recalled, knew that terrorists were attacking them. Yet no one came to their aid.

 

Lovell bears the burden of their abandonment with a heavy heart. His moving testimony made that clear. Still, his version of events is deeply unsatisfying. Why did AFRICOM fail to respond? “Basically,” he stammered, “there was a lot of looking to the State Department.” Unfortunately, we’re told Secretary Hillary Clinton and her minions were unclear “in terms of what they would like to have.” Come again? “They didn’t come forward with stronger requests for action.”

 

This Foggy Bottom focus had me groping for my pocket Constitution. Sure enough, Article II was as I remembered it. Much as Hillary Clinton may desire to be the commander-in-chief of the United States armed forces, that job does not belong to the secretary of state.

 

It was the solemn duty of the president to come forward with not requests but commands for action. Why was AFRICOM hanging on the State Department’s preferences? Why were our troops hamstrung by what Lovell described as “deference to the Libyan people?” On the night of September 11, 2012, AFRICOM was not beholden to Mrs. Clinton or Tripoli. They answered to Barack Obama.

 

Of course, no one can answer to a commander-in-chief who abdicates his command, a commander-in-chief who is AWOL. A commander-in-chief does not get to vote “present.”

 

Over 19 months have elapsed since terrorists savagely attacked the United States in Benghazi. Yet we are still waiting, ever waiting, for an account of where the president was, what he was doing, and what if any directives he gave during the hours and hours during which Americans were being tormented and killed.

 

If the president’s name were Bush or Reagan, we would long ago have had a minute-by-minute accounting of his every move. And if the incident involved some faraway American warrior’s slaying of a jihadist emir, we would long ago have had a Situation Room photo depicting Obama as maestro . . . with an accompanying soundtrack of classified leaks portraying his courage while others were under fire.

 

Benghazi, however, is a catastrophe wrought by Obama’s pro-Islamist policies, one that puts the lie to his oft-repeated claim to have “decimated” al-Qaeda. So with Benghazi we get the stonewall, a barricade his praetorian media have been only too happy to fortify.

 

We know that less than a day after Ty Woods and Glen Doherty were martyred protecting Americans out of a sense of duty, the commander-in-chief in whom that duty is actually reposed was at a Las Vegas fundraiser, insouciantly repeating his campaign line: “A day after 9/11, we are reminded that a new tower rises above the New York skyline, but al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat and bin Laden is dead.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Much more at the link:

( Especially the last 4 paragraphs )

 

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[Tiberius]

 

 

 

Much more at the link:

( Especially the last 4 paragraphs )

B-Man and his North Korea style propaganda. The general quoted above and totally taken out of context also said there was nothing the military could have done to save the embassy staff anyway. This is what this "scandal" has come come, pure propaganda

 

Edited May 3, 2014 by gatorman

[Chef Jim]

B-Man and his North Korea style propaganda. The general quoted above and totally taken out of context also said there was nothing the military could have done to save the embassy staff anyway. This is what this "scandal" has come come, pure propaganda

 

Did they know that during the attack? Hindsight is always 20/20

 

Ahhh !@#$ it! There's nothing we can do so why bother trying anything.

[keepthefaith]

Did they know that during the attack? Hindsight is always 20/20

 

Ahhh !@#$ it! There's nothing we can do so why bother trying anything.

 

If that's the conclusion they came to at the time, Obama and co. could have simply said so afterward. The truth shall set you free. Instead the spiral of lies continues. It's amazing how politicians can almost never admit when they !@#$ed up.

[B-Man]

Benghazi Made Simple :The White House’s political and ideological instincts overpowered everything else.

 

By Jonah Goldberg

 

 

On Wednesday, Jay Carney explained — as if he was talking to a room full of children — that the Benghazi e-mail the White House refused to release until the White House was forced to release its Benghazi e-mails wasn’t in fact about Benghazi, even though the e-mail talks about Benghazi. This is Monty Pythonesque

That’s not a Benghazi e-mail, it’s just an e-mail about Benghazi, in a folder marked “Benghazi” e-mails, idiot.

 

As I said on Fox yesterday, Jay Carney is a very strange creature for Washington. He’s an extremely confident liar — we’ve got a lot of those! — but he’s not very convincing. Usually, confidence = convincing. As George Costanza (and in his own way Bill Clinton) liked to say, it’s not a lie if you believe it when you tell it. But with Carney, he lies in a way that makes it seem not so much like he believes it but that you’re an idiot for not believing it.

 

There is an enormous amount of theorizing about what the “real story” behind Benghazi really is. To me it’s always been obvious. The White House was caught off guard — for reasons stemming both from ideology and incompetence — on September 11, 2012. As they have after virtually every other (jihadist) terrorist attack on Americans, they acted as if it had absolutely nothing to do with them. As with the Times Square bomber, the Fort Hood shooter, and other Islamist assaults, there’s always some other reason for the bloodshed, some attempt to claim, at least for a while, that this was an “isolated incident” with no broader implications for the War on Terror or Obama’s foreign policy. Admittedly, even this White House understood that spinning the Benghazi attack as an isolated incident wasn’t going to work (such intense spinning could risk irreparable scrotal torsion). So they went with the story about the video.

 

{snip}

 

Given that the Benghazi attack came during the thick of the presidential election, it’s no surprise that the White House’s political and ideological instincts overpowered everything else. It’s no surprise, either, that the press’s instincts pointed in the same direction. It’s really non-surprises for as far as the eye can see.

 

Obviously there are still some unknowns worth knowing, and they might be surprising — like the exact details of how and why the response was so non-responsive. Just because the White House and State Department were unprepared shouldn’t mean that the professional military was too. The exact nexus between the political screw-up and the military’s failure to “run to the sound of gunfire” hasn’t been established. Ditto, the question of “What the hell was Barack Obama even doing that night?”

 

more at the link:

 

 

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Edited May 3, 2014 by B-Man

[DC Tom]

Did they know that during the attack? Hindsight is always 20/20

 

Probably not. More to the point, it sounds like command and control was pretty screwed up between State, DoD, and the CIA, and nothing was going to un!@#$ that !@#$-up in a reasonable amount of time, not even the White House.

 

The real scandal is the administrations immature and mendacious attempts to save face by selling it as a perfectly natural reaction to anti-Muslim propaganda (which in itself is an offensive stereotype), so as not to discredit their immature attempts to "spike the ball" over the killing of bin Laden and the "end of al Qaeda."

[Tiberius]

 

 

Did they know that during the attack? Hindsight is always 20/20

 

Ahhh !@#$ it! There's nothing we can do so why bother trying anything.

So there is a real scandal here after all!! Can we blame Bush then for not trying to shoot down the jet airlines after they hit the twin towers?? Duh!

[Chef Jim]

So there is a real scandal here after all!! Can we blame Bush then for not trying to shoot down the jet airlines after they hit the twin towers?? Duh!

 

Man the mosquitoes are out early this year.

[IDBillzFan]

So there is a real scandal here after all!! Can we blame Bush then for not trying to shoot down the jet airlines after they hit the twin towers?? Duh!

 

Hey...another Bush reference. No one saw that coming!

 

Such a good little stastist you are.

[Thirdborn]

Probably not. More to the point, it sounds like command and control was pretty screwed up between State, DoD, and the CIA, and nothing was going to un!@#$ that !@#$-up in a reasonable amount of time, not even the White House.

 

The real scandal is the administrations immature and mendacious attempts to save face by selling it as a perfectly natural reaction to anti-Muslim propaganda (which in itself is an offensive stereotype), so as not to discredit their immature attempts to "spike the ball" over the killing of bin Laden and the "end of al Qaeda."

 

 

read your post before viewing the poster. I was so weary of the discourse, I wiki'd it. gotta give credit where credit is due ... at least re: ppp. I like your assesment. It seems succinct

[B-Man]

Stick to the narrative. . . . . .

 

Benghazi and the Media’s ‘Republicans Seized’ Syndrome

By Stanley Kurtz

 

Republicans apparently have a penchant for seizing on things. No need to worry about the Obama administration making mistakes or covering up scandals. The more serious danger facing our republic is the GOP’s continual attempts to “seize on” trivialities in an effort to embarrass the Obama administration, stuff like health-care exchanges with a couple of glitches or e-mails that only a partisan conspiracy theorist would take as evidence of a cover-up.

 

This report from McClatchy runs on for almost its entire length trying to convince readers that the Benghazi story is little more than a Republican political ploy. Only toward the very end does it mention the previously withheld White House e-mail that so many Republicans have “seized” upon. McClatchy provides no clear explanation of why that e-mail might raise legitimate concerns.

 

Today’s New York Times buries its story on Speaker Boehner’s decision to create a select committee on Benghazi on page 11, a masterpiece of the “Republicans seized” genre. I don’t recall the Times previously discussing the phrase “mainstream news media.” Here it cleverly uses claims that mainstream outlets are ignoring the Benghazi story to dismiss the whole issue as a conservative political gambit.

 

The Times piece isn’t so much about Benghazi as it is about conservatives: “In a move that conservatives had long pressured him to make . . . fueled by attention from some conservative news outlets that say others are undercovering the issue. . . . Benghazi has been a rallying cry on the right . . . Many Republicans believe that. . . . Republicans have shown a keen interest in [i.e. have seized on]. . . . Conservative passion around the story . . .”

 

The Washington Post story on Speaker Boehner’s authorization of a select committee (on page 2) takes essentially the same tack, if a bit less egregiously. The author’s understanding of the politics behind the story are further explained here, complete with a “Republicans seized.”

No doubt the appointment of a select committee on Benghazi has an important political aspect. Yet the ratio of mainstream news coverage on this perfectly serious and legitimate issue is massively skewed toward the politics.

 

 

Keep reading this post . . .

[Tiberius]

 

 

Hey...another Bush reference. No one saw that coming!

 

Such a good little stastist you are.

 

That's the wonderful thing about the Bush administration, anytime Obama makes a small blunder we can all reference something far greater the Conservative administration did. Like lying after an attack? How many years went by before the Bush administration stopped trying to deceitfully tie the sacred 9-11 attacks to Saddam? Obama's sins pale in comparison.

[Oxrock]

 

 

That's the wonderful thing about the Bush administration, anytime Obama makes a small blunder we can all reference something far greater the Conservative administration did. Like lying after an attack? How many years went by before the Bush administration stopped trying to deceitfully tie the sacred 9-11 attacks to Saddam? Obama's sins pale in comparison.

Iraq was not tied by Bush to 9/11 by the way. Just "terrorism" in general (i.e. Sadam hosted terrorist training camps... Which he did). Grow up. Leave the mother jones left wing talking points and read the timeline for yourself.

[Tiberius]

Iraq was not tied by Bush to 9/11 by the way. Just "terrorism" in general (i.e. Sadam hosted terrorist training camps... Which he did). Grow up. Leave the mother jones left wing talking points and read the timeline for yourself.

You are uninformed

[DC Tom]

You are uninformed

 

No, he's not. It's a sadly common misconception among headline babies such as yourself that because Bush said Iraq was part of the war on terror, he also said that Saddam was behind 9/11.

 

It's also why your opinion on the matter isn't to be taken seriously - the actual policy was much more nuanced than you can understand, so everything you say about it is flawed because of your fundamental ignorance of the matter.

[Tiberius]

 

 

No, he's not. It's a sadly common misconception among headline babies such as yourself that because Bush said Iraq was part of the war on terror, he also said that Saddam was behind 9/11.

 

It's also why your opinion on the matter isn't to be taken seriously - the actual policy was much more nuanced than you can understand, so everything you say about it is flawed because of your fundamental ignorance of the matter.

Thank you for proving my point for me. Yes the misinformed headline babies did believe Bush linked Saddam to 9-11 because that's what they wanted the headline babies to believe. In fact, the Bush administration sent Cheney out to reinforce the implied connection Bush made with an almost outright declaration that Saddam was involved. Cheney repeatedly said that Saddams agent met the AlQuida in the Balkans. You suck!

[Chef Jim]

Thank you for proving my point for me. Yes the misinformed headline babies did believe Bush linked Saddam to 9-11 because that's what they wanted the headline babies to believe. In fact, the Bush administration sent Cheney out to reinforce the implied connection Bush made with an almost outright declaration that Saddam was involved. Cheney repeatedly said that Saddams agent met the AlQuida in the Balkans. You suck!

 

This is great and all but what the hell does it have to do with Benghazi, the topic of this thread? Oh that's right nothing. Your constant spouting of "oh yeah?!?! Well Bush was worse!!" is pretty !@#$ing pathetic.

[Koko78]

This is great and all but what the hell does it have to do with Benghazi, the topic of this thread? Oh that's right nothing. Your constant spouting of "oh yeah?!?! Well Bush was worse!!" is pretty !@#$ing pathetic.

 

It's not like he can point to Obama's accomplishments as President. All the left has at this point is "but BOOOSH" and "you're a racist".

[B-Man]

Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid asked to join Select Committee on Benghazi

 

We'll see what their response is.............

 

 

 

 

What Obama Did on September 11, 2012

American Thinker, by Jack Cashill

Original Article

[Tiberius]

What Obama Did on September 11, 2012

American Thinker, by Jack Cashill

Original Article

Was he reading "My Pet Goat?"