I don't think it is mostly explained by a pro or anti Obama bias. I think it is about underlying values. Does that make sense

Ray Jay wrote:I can't figure out why this is such a big deal in the conservative press and barely mentioned in the liberal press. I've been traveling for work and watching tv in the hotel. Fox can talk about this for hours and MSNBC and CNN could care less. Is there something about a liberal way of thinking that makes them not curioius about this, or is there a conservative bias that magnifies its importance? I don't think it is mostly explained by a pro or anti Obama bias. I think it is about underlying values. Does that make sense?

rickyp wrote:ray

I don't think it is mostly explained by a pro or anti Obama bias. I think it is about underlying values. Does that make sense

?

Only if there is actually substance to the issue. Fox has spent many hours on issues that have no real substance. War on Christmas? ClimateGate? Lyndsey Lohan? (For many hours of the nonsense that is Fox news, one could spend time on Comedy Central with John Stewart...)

If CNN and MSNBC and the networks are largely ignoring it because they can't find enough substance, then maybe it is NOT bias on their part.

And we won't really know that unless something more significant comes out of this than what appears to be incompetent communication within the State Department/CIA etc.

(Communication which, at least Rices comments on the talk shows, to have no material affect on anything except the blood pressure of some on the right.)

There was a was fought in Iraq that cost 4,000 lives and a trillion dollars ...and the root causes of the intelligence failings and communications failings have never been held up to the congressional scrutiny of Ben Ghazi... Do you remember a difference in the way Fox and MSNBC may have covered that issue?

Clinton’s State Department repeatedly rejected requests for enhancing security at Benghazi, even as Ansar al-Sharia’s power in the area grew over the summer of 2012. Why did State not beef up the Benghazi mission’s security? The Benghazi attack was focused on the U.S/ consulate, which belongs to the U.S. State Department. Why Stevens was in Benghazi that night, and what the consulate may have been used for, remains unknown. One of the Wednesday whistleblowers, veteran counterterrorism officer Mark I. Thompson, is expected to testify that Secretary of State Clinton sought to cut the State Department’s counterterrorism bureau out of the chain of reporting and decision-making during the attack. Thompson also claims that the State Department suppressed his account after the attack. Another unnamed State official corroborates Thompson’s account. But Daniel Benjamin, head of the counterterrorism unit at the time, says Clinton never tried to cut his group out during the attack. All of this brings to mind the question, exactly what was Clinton’s role on the night of the attack? Secretary of Defense Panetta testified that he and Clinton never communicated during the attack. All three of the nation’s top national security and diplomatic officials — President Obama, Defense Secretary Panetta and Secretary of State Clinton — were in Washington that night. Panetta and Clinton were evidently engaged in responding to the attack, independently. Yet according to Panetta, they never talked to each other during the attack. Why would they not communicate during an ongoing attack on a U.S. facility overseas, if indeed they did not? Both Defense and State would surely be involved in any effective response to an attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission overseas.

When asked Monday who told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sept. 11, 2012–while the terrorist attack was still ongoing in Benghazi and before former Navy SEALS Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty were killed there—that the attack was being justified as “a response to inflammatory material posted on Internet,” State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell would not answer…

A mortar shell killed two Americans during the tenth hour of the fight. A mortar tube can be detected from the air. The decision whether to then bomb should have resided with a pilot on-station — not back in Washington. As for the alleged lack of “good intelligence,” three U.S. operations centers were watching real-time video and talking by cell phone with those under attack. Surely that comprises “good intelligence.”…

It’s not unreasonable for President Obama, Clinton and others to have decided that the loss of four Americans to an attack by Islamist militants was preferable to expanding the fight and risking a larger, bloodier and more potentially embarrassing battle in Libyan rebel capital. It is not reasonable, though, to mislead the public about such a decision.

Asking that Americans die in the line of duty in service of a larger policy aim is nothing new. Saying that there was no choice when there were at least some options, crosses a line. Changing talking points to support a false account of events would cross yet another. Doing so eight weeks before an election would be really rotten.

But from where Attkisson is sitting, there are actually two Goliaths, one of which is almost entirely absent from the Post profile.

The second Goliath is CBS News, which has grown increasingly frustrated with Attkisson's Benghazi campaign. CBS News executives see Attkisson wading dangerously close to advocacy on the issue, network sources have told POLITICO. Attkisson can't get some of her stories on the air, and is thus left feeling marginalized and underutilized. That, in part, is why Attkisson is in talks to leave CBS ahead of contract, as POLITICO reported in April.

Nordstrom is one of three State Department officials appearing before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s hearing on the Benghazi attacks. Republicans in the House have hailed them as “whistleblowers” and expressed hope that their accounts will bring to light information the White House has sought to downplay.

As the hearing opened, Rep. Darrell Issa, (R-Calif.) who is chairing the hearing, said the witnesses “deserve to be heard” about the Benghazi attacks and what he called flaws in the methodology and conclusions of the government’s review.

"Nordstrom, who says he has been given access only to the unclassified report released by the accountability board, said he found its conclusions and recommendations sensible.
“It is not what is contained within the report that I take exception to but what is left unexamined,” he said. Nordstrom was posted in Libya from September 2011 to July 2012 and remains a State Department employee

rickyp wrote:Mullen and Pickering conducted a pretty thorough review. They had access to everything, whereas Nordstrom and Hicks don't ... And Nordstrom and Hicks seem to have personal scores to settle...

I'm pretty sure that Issa's gambit for attention will fall flat

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told the committee that Hicks had been previously told by a lawyer at State not to cooperate with the House investigation and not to speak with Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah).

“The people at State told you don’t talk to the guy who is doing the investigation? Don’t talk to the congressman?” Jordan asked Hicks.

Hicks responded by saying that he was in fact told not to participate.

“Has that ever happened where lawyers get on the phone prior to a congressional delegation investigating?” Jordan asked. “Have you ever had anyone tell you don’t talk with the people in Congress coming to find out what’s what?”

“Never,” Hicks responded.

Not because they're rolling the dice, but because you don't know what a hearing will produce until you have it

interfering with a Congressional investigation is no big deal?

rickyp wrote:Fate, I agree with you that there has been some covering up of failures in this matter. But since part of the matter will remain classified for years, and since the success of Congressional hearings at producing anything that is genuinely earth shattering - Issa is unlikely to get anywhere

Nordstrom suggested the board’s report attempted to protect higher-ranking officials, and specifically faulted it for not looking at the key role played by Under Secretary for Management Patrick Kennedy in failing to deliver the request for more security to Clinton.

He said a similar failure occurred in the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, which killed 19 Americans.

“[The ARB] has decided to fix responsibility on the assistant secretary level and below,” said Nordstrom. “And the message to my colleagues is that if you’re above a certain level, no matter what your decision is no one’s going to question it.

“I look back and I see the last time we had a major attack was East Africa. Who was in that same position, when the unheeded messengers … were raising those concerns? It just so happens it was the same person. The under secretary for management was in that same role before.

“There’s something apparently wrong with the process of how those security recommendations are raised to the secretary.”