rickyp wrote:fate
Okay, well, if it's not on Reuters on a particular day, it's a non-issue.
Apparently, for Reuters. which was the point Ray originally made. That it was a huge issue of Fox, and not so much anywhere else.
Even after all the foo fa rah, thats still the case.
You're being disingenuous at best and fatuous to boot.
Jonathan Karl--does he work for Fox?
Sharyl Attkisson--does she work for Fox?
I've cited both of them and can do many more.
How about the AP?WASHINGTON (AP) - Then CIA-Director David Petraeus objected to the final talking points that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used five days after the deadly assault on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, because he wanted to see more detail publicly released, including a warning issued from the CIA about plans for a break-in at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, a newly released email shows.
Under pressure in the investigation that continues eight months after the attacks, the White House on Wednesday released 99 pages of emails and a single page of hand-written notes made by Petraeus' deputy, Mike Morell, after a meeting at the White House the day before Rice's appearance. On that page, Morell scratched out from the CIA's early drafts of talking points mentions of al-Qaida, the experience of fighters in Libya, Islamic extremists and a warning to the Cairo embassy on the eve of the attacks of calls for a demonstration and break-in by jihadists.
"No mention of the cable to Cairo, either?" Petraeus wrote after receiving Morell's edited version, developed after an intense back-and-forth among Obama administration officials. "Frankly, I'd just as soon not use this, then."
A senior U.S. intelligence official told reporters Wednesday that Morell made the changes to the talking points because of his own concerns that they could prejudge an FBI investigation into who was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2012, attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
The official said Morell also didn't think it was fair to disclose the CIA's advance warning without giving the State Department a chance to explain how it responded.
The official spoke on a condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the emails on the record. Petraeus declined to be interviewed.
Critics have highlighted an email by then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland that expressed concern that any mention of prior warnings or the involvement of al-Qaida would give congressional Republicans ammunition to attack the administration in the weeks before the presidential election. Fighting terror was one of President Barack Obama's re-election strong points.
As I've said to you, feel free to express your opinion, but try to be informed.
And, the fact is the President LIED.
Daily Beast writer,
Kirsten Powers, an Obama supporter:
KIRSTEN POWERS: What I don't understand about what the president is doing is, to a certain extent, you could argue that he wasn't really involved in a lot of this stuff. But he is so centrally involving himself with these repeated lies. And, I’m just going to call them lies because they’re lies. They’re on tape. Nobody thought that he called it a terrorist attack. Last night I went and I looked up at The New York Times how they reported it the day after. They never reference that we've had a terrorist attack against the United States. On September 20th, however, they run a story that says, "Libya envoy's killing was a terrorist attack." And they say, "Until now White House officials have not used that language in describing the assault." That is September 20th. That is The New York Times. Now, at what point are people going to get tired of the president coming out over and over saying things like, "Don’t believe your lying eyes"?
So, it's obvious to most anyone with an IQ that something is not quite right with the Benghazi situation.
The reason you keep repeating questions is that either your news sources don't provide the answers or that you choose to ignore them. More likely, if your news source is mostly FOX, they are actively ignoring the facts presented by the Accountability review Board.
Right, so you can easily answer them . . . but don't.
Btw, I'm quoting sources other than Fox--so, again, stop misrepresenting the truth.
Interestingly, the White House released 100 emails last night on the Benghazi talking points. In none of those emails is there a justification for the case Susan Rice made on that infamous Sunday morning.
But, according to you, channeling the President, "There's no there there."
Based on what?
Blind faith?
Not even Democrats can explain the talking points:Democrats similarly did little to defend the mistaken talking points.
"This is one instance where you know it was what it was," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who heads the Senate Intelligence Committee.
"There was no question this was a terrorist attack," said Rep. Adam Smith, D-Wash
Fate
There are three basic issues:
1. Why were the warnings and prior attacks in the area all ignored?
Accountability Review Board
"Systemic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department ... resulted in a special mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place,"
Who are those people? What punishment were they given?
None.
Why not?
Because if you punish people who do the wrong thing and IF they were ordered to do the wrong thing, they tell on the people who ordered them to do the wrong thing.
If you don't punish them, everyone is happy--except the families of the victims.
MOST IMPORTANTLY: WHY? Why was a place that the FBI could not go after the attack so softly defended before the attack? Why was a hotbed of terror virtually ignored? Why, on 9/11 of all days, were there zero contingency plans?
The utter incompetence of not being able to respond on 9/11 in an area heavy with AQ-related activity is almost inconceivable.
What did the Secretary of State know? How can she not have had information on this?
Oh, that's right--Pickering didn't think it was necessary to ask.
fate
2. Was the response during the attack appropriate? Who made the decisions? Who decided not to begin a (military or paramilitary) response to Benghazi? No one knew how long the attack would last, so why not send some sort of force that way in the event that it was long-lasting?
Secretary Gates
To send some small number of special forces or other troops in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually going on on the ground, I think, would have been very dangerous,” said Secretary Gates in an interview aired on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”
“Personally, I would not have approved that because we just don't it's sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces,” he continued. “The one thing that our forces are noted for is planning and preparation before we send people in harm's way. And there just wasn't time to do that.”
I'm sorry. I like Secretary Gates, but this is not an answer. First off, again, at the beginning, NO ONE knows how long an attack is going to last. How do you not immediately start scrambling resources and seeing what you can do? And again, how can anyone not have had a plan in place on 9/11?
I know something about planning for contingencies. This was a known contingency. Anyone who failed to plan should be fired. Period.
Fate
2a. What was the President doing that night? What was the Secretary of State doing that night? What was more pressing than the lives of Americans who worked directly for them?
To paraphrase Gates "does this represent your cartoonish impression of how the President and Secretary of State operate>?
Not an answer.
Again, we have photos of the President during the Bin Laden raid. They leaked info about the Bin Laden raid.
What was he doing that night?
You don't know. Why not?
Because they've never said what he was doing.
Occam's razor: what he was doing would not seem Presidential in light of four Americans being murdered, so they're not going to talk about it.
fate
3. In the aftermath, why was there such confusion as to the nature of the attack within the Administration? The talking points were a mess--they misled the American public and were termed useless by the CIA Director. Who determined the youtube video theme should be presented?
Its pretty clear that there was some interdepartmental squabbling over this. And the CIA really didn't want the fact that Benghazi was largely a CIA outpost
Let's see. From last night we know that the CIA and the FBI both said it was terror from the outset. No one in the CIA or FBI mentioned the video or a spontaneous protest related to it.
There was no "squabbling." It was the White House and State playing a game of "cya."
It fits the Fox conspiracy theories that this was a cover in order to ensure Obama got elected.... but the reality is more about departmental finger pointing
Can you imagine if Rice had come out and said that the attacks were the result of extremists hitting back at CIA operations against them in Libya? Which was the truth?
Who has said it was retaliation?
From Wikipedia
covert JSOC operations in Libya planned and executed by Deputy National Security Advisor John O. Brennan, with tacit support from Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Michael G. Vickers, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper, and Commander of U.S. Special Operations Command Admiral William H. McRaven, which led to a retaliation from militias such as Ansar al-Sharia.[19]:25, 29, 56-58 Sometime in mid-summer 2012, Brennan directed JSOC to conduct combat operations in Libya targeting high-level Al Qaeda operatives within Libya militia organizations. They report that with Brennan running a private war, he did not go through the normal chain of command, operations were not deconflicted (a term referring to the avoidance of conflict between operations among agencies), and Ambassador Stevens was not read in on the JSOC operations.[19]:58-60 The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the book,[118] and United States Special Operations Command made a statement that they don't confirm or deny operations.[119]
That is not 9/11.
Worse for you: if true, it is all the more reason to have tightened security at Benghazi or abandoned it altogether--as the Brits did.
State denied an April 2012 request from Gene Cretz, then ambassador to Libya, for more security. Why?
Why wasn't it beefed up in light of what you're saying?
Even your answers don't answer the underlying problem: Benghazi was underdefended and we don't know why.
15 May 2013, 7:24 am 
