Guapo wrote:Clearly. That's got to be the

first time

a sitting president

lied about an attack which lead to American deaths.

Guapo wrote:underplayed? do you mean by the media or administration?

I don't see why this is particularly impeachable, compared to other things done by presidents. then again, we did have a president impeached over the meaning of the word "is"

danivon wrote:Weird. It was certainly evident to me based on media reports that the fatal part of the attack was from a terror group using the protests as cover. I believe I mentioned it on a thread here.

Our media was getting most of its information from the US, as well, so I'm not sure how this 'cover up' happened.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on which Corker sits, sent a letter to the State Department Thursday asking a string of new questions about security at U.S. diplomatic posts.
President Obama's aides have denied any attempt to cover things up. "No one either intentionally or unintentionally misled anyone involved in this," campaign adviser Robert Gibbs said on "Fox News Sunday." "No one wants to get to the bottom of this more than we do."
Curiously, Obama referred to "acts of terror" in his first public remarks about the attack. But from there, administration officials went on to blame the anti-Islam film.
Rice was the most explicit in that explanation, insisting in those Sunday shows that the attack was not pre-planned and was tied to the film. Obama still has not publicly and specifically described the Benghazi attack as terrorism.
But top administration officials have gradually walked back Rice's version of events. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was the latest Thursday to declare: "It was a terrorist attack." Asked how long it took to make that determination, he said it "took a while to get some of the feedback from what exactly happened at that location."

Is it on the same scale as the lie (repreated by Cheney well after it had been debunked) that Iraq was involved in 9/11 and that was a reason to invade?

Why won't the Libya story go away? Why can't the memory of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and his staff be consigned to the same sad-and-sealed file of Americans killed abroad in dangerous line of duty? How has an episode that seemed at first to have been mishandled by the Romney camp become an emblem of a feckless and deluded foreign policy?

The story-switching and stonewalling haven't helped. But let's start a little earlier.

The hour is 5 p.m., Sept. 11, Washington time, and the scene is an Oval Office meeting among President Obama, the secretary of defense, the national security adviser and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi has been under assault for roughly 90 minutes. Some 30 U.S. citizens are at mortal risk. The whereabouts of Ambassador Stevens are unknown.

What is uppermost on the minds of the president and his advisers? The safety of Americans, no doubt. So what are they prepared to do about it? Here is The Wall Street Journal's account of the meeting:

"There was no serious consideration at that hour of intervention with military force, officials said. Doing so without Libya's permission could represent a violation of sovereignty and inflame the situation, they said. Instead, the State Department reached out to the Libyan government to get reinforcements to the scene."

So it did. Yet the attack was far from over. After leaving the principal U.S. compound, the Americans retreated to a second, supposedly secret facility, which soon came under deadly mortar fire. Time to call in the troops?

So it did. Yet the attack was far from over. After leaving the principal U.S. compound, the Americans retreated to a second, supposedly secret facility, which soon came under deadly mortar fire. Time to call in the troops?

rickyp wrote:df source

So it did. Yet the attack was far from over. After leaving the principal U.S. compound, the Americans retreated to a second, supposedly secret facility, which soon came under deadly mortar fire. Time to call in the troops?

It is a fantasy to suggest that there was a US military option available that could have had effect.
There is a reason the host country is responsible for the security of their guests' embasseys and consulates. Libya was not up to this task.

WASHINGTON Oct 2 (Reuters) - Within hours of last month's attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, President Barack Obama's administration received about a dozen intelligence reports suggesting militants connected to al Qaeda were involved, three government sources said.

Despite these reports, in public statements and private meetings, top U.S. officials spent nearly two weeks highlighting intelligence suggesting that the attacks were spontaneous protests against an anti-Muslim film, while playing down the involvement of organized militant groups.

It was not until last Friday that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's office issued an unusual public statement, which described how the picture that intelligence agencies presented to U.S. policymakers had "evolved" into an acknowledgement that the attacks were "deliberate and organized" and "carried out by extremists."

The existence of the early reports appears to raise fresh questions about the Obama administration's public messaging about the attack as it seeks to fend off Republican charges that the White House failed to prevent a terrorist strike that left a U.S. ambassador and three others dead.

freeman2 wrote:4 people died that Obama could have done nothing about. The story was out there almost immediately that a group used the cover of a protest to attack the embassy.

And you want to a make a big deal that the Administration emphasized the protest when the news that an Al Qaeda group had attacked the consultate was out into the media? Meanwhile, the Bush Administration without evidence that Iraq had WMD other than questionable ("cooked") intelligence and the false claim that Iraq was involved in the 9-11 attacks, engaged in an invasion of Iraq that cost thousands of American lives and ten thousands of severely wounded. I'm sure you were calling for Bush's impeachment then, DF?

I believe you recently said here that you were against the war in Iraq. Really? You were against the Bush Administration on anything?

(I was on the site at this time and my recollection was that you vigorously argued the case for WMD but it has been so long that I can't be sure I'm right on that)

Like almost all conservatives you were against Bush's policies only after he left office.

This story is going nowhere except in fantasies of right-wing extremitists that they finally have something on Obama.

danivon wrote:Hang on, they knew of a threat at the time it was going on but information was (obviously) confused, and they didn't just 'send in the Marines', like Marines are always the cure for everything, and there are loads of disposable Marines to send into hotspots at a moment's notice...

Security in eastern Libya deteriorated sharply in recent months. A string of attacks, some linked to fundamentalist groups, made clear that Westerners were no longer safe. The International Committee of the Red Cross suspended operations and evacuated staff in the east after an attack June 12 on its compound in the port city of Misrata. In Benghazi, convoys transporting the U.N. country chief and the British ambassador were attacked in April and June, respectively. The British government shut down its consulate soon afterward.

The U.S. outpost had a close call of its own June 6, when a small roadside bomb detonated outside the walls, causing no injuries or significant damage. But the Americans stayed put.

Geoff Porter, a risk and security analyst who specializes in North Africa, said the sudden and stark shift from “predictable violence to terrorism” in the east over the summer was unmistakable.

“The U.S. intelligence apparatus must have had a sense the environment was shifting,” he said.

And within 24 hours Obama described it as a terror attack.

That's what we saw, that's what it was quite quickly clearly about - a terror attack that used the cover of the protests against the film.

However, at the same time, the Republican nominee was also making trouble about a different incident - the protests at the Egyptian Embassy that turned violent, and where the local staff had put out a mollifying message concerning the subject of those protests.

Oh, by the way, I did not blame Bush for linking Iraq to 9/11 and using it as an argument. I mentioned a different person, Mr Cheney, the VP. And he was indeed insiting on this link for years after the invasion. If you really don't remember this, let me know and I'll hunt out some links for you to digest, DF.