The Latest Wing-Nut Bengazi OUTRAGE.......

[TSA]

That doesn't rule out the video's inciting the attackers though, does it?

Considering we haven't arrested a single attacker that is impossible to answer, so I'll just got with the opinion of what every single investigation came to.

what is your opinion on the matter?

I've stated it repeatedly. Still waiting for yours.

[ChumpDumper]

Considering we haven't arrested a single attacker that is impossible to answer, so I'll just got with the opinion of what every single investigation came to.

Which investigators?

Links?

I've stated it repeatedly. Still waiting for yours.

In my opinion state in general and Stevens in particular were taking a calculated risk regarding the security situation in post-Qaddafi Libya. The last thing they wanted to do was put up Hesco walls around every diplomatic station. it's the kind of risk the US has been taking in foreign relations ever since the Iraq surge. It is risk, and like this can happen. I would even guess that this kind of diplomacy is keeping a lid on the investigation, since the militias suspected to be involved are pretty prominent in the area and still need to be worked with to have anything happen locally. I concluded long ago that a military intervention would have been a disaster and the type of lower profile responses, flawed as they were, were the appropriate courses to pursue. Of course, in hindsight the threats needed to be taken more seriously and contingencies better planned -- but Monday morning quarterbacking is just that.

[boutons_deux]

The outrage is over the lies from the administration as Obama is going for re-election. At least for me it is.

Prove there were LIES. Issa couldn't. Boner's new witch hunter won't, either.

Had the WH/CIA told what you GUESS is the truth, Barry CRUSHING Bishop Gecko/Wall St would still have happened.

[FuzzyLumpkins]

All investigations said there was no protest in Benghazi that caused the attack.

I don't either, but that doesn't change my opinion on the matter though.

As someone that misspeaks and is wrong so often you really shouldn't characterize mistakes as lies. lest you be held to the same standard.

Here is the armed services committee chair GOP senator McKeon a couple of days ago on the investigation:

“BG Lovell did not serve in a capacity that gave him reliable insight into operational options available to commanders during the attack, nor did he offer specific courses of action not taken,” McKeon said.

McKeon added, “The Armed Services Committee has interviewed more than a dozen witnesses in the operational chain of command that night, yielding thousands of pages of transcripts, e-mails, and other do ents. We have no evidence that Department of State officials delayed the decision to deploy what few resources DoD had available to respond.”

And before you start up with more bull about what it is to you, keep in mind that this is what they are actually discussing in the hill. The first sentence of my post speaks to "what it is to you."

[boutons_deux]

Wishful thinking at Fox: assassinate Hillary (take the hint, rednecks. FREEDOM! )

Fox Panel Imagines Hillary Clinton Assassination Scenario While Distorting Her Comments On Benghazi

On the May 3 edition of the show, panelist Wayne Rogers criticized the Obama administration's response to the September 2012 attacks and in particular then-Secretary of State Clinton's comments at a Senate hearing, in which she asked "what difference at this point does it make" when questioned about the editing process of a set of talking points relating to the attacks.

Distorting the nature of her comments, Rogers asked his fellow Fox panelists, "Imagine that Hillary Clinton runs for President and gets assassinated in the process and somebody shows up -- a Congressman -- and says, 'well, what difference does it make anyway?' I mean -- The New York Times would have it on the front page."

Host Eric Bolling agreed, adding, "They would have a field day."

Co-panelist Juan Williams quickly explained to Rogers and Bolling that they were distorting comments Clinton made while testifying about the attack.

During her January 2013 testimony, Clinton responded to a question from Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) about the State Department's role in editing Obama administration talking points on the attack, and said, "[T]he fact is, we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest? Or was it because of guys out for a walk one night and decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make?" She added, "It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again."

Conservative media figures have repeatedly distorted this Clinton comment, imagining it to reflect indifference to the lives lost in the attack, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. In reality, it is a direct rebuttal to the ongoing conservative obsession with the set of talking points, which were subject to changes made based on intelligence assessments available at the time. Clinton was accurately noting during her testimony that given the ongoing efforts to capture those who were responsible for the attacks and to provide security for U.S. consulates and embassies, the bureaucratic details of who edited a government memo were trivial at best.

The odd juxtaposition of a theoretical assassination attempt with this ongoing discussion comes as Fox tries to breathe new life into the Benghazi hoax, by resurfacing long-debunked and answered questions.

http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/05...sinatio/199160

[TSA]

Which investigators?

Links?

In my opinion state in general and Stevens in particular were taking a calculated risk regarding the security situation in post-Qaddafi Libya. The last thing they wanted to do was put up Hesco walls around every diplomatic station. it's the kind of risk the US has been taking in foreign relations ever since the Iraq surge. It is risk, and like this can happen. I would even guess that this kind of diplomacy is keeping a lid on the investigation, since the militias suspected to be involved are pretty prominent in the area and still need to be worked with to have anything happen locally. I concluded long ago that a military intervention would have been a disaster and the type of lower profile responses, flawed as they were, were the appropriate courses to pursue. Of course, in hindsight the threats needed to be taken more seriously and contingencies better planned -- but Monday morning quarterbacking is just that.

Solid analysis and I agree with you, not much to do once the attack started. My only problem was the admin misleading the public by claiming it was a video that caused a protest that caused the attack. That seems to be lost on a few in this thread as I've never once claimed the attacks could have been prevented or the response should have been different.

[ChumpDumper]

Solid analysis and I agree with you, not much to do once the attack started. My only problem was the admin misleading the public by claiming it was a video that caused a protest that caused the attack. That seems to be lost on a few in this thread as I've never once claimed the attacks could have been prevented or the response should have been different.

Well, there was no protest at that location but word about that video had just hit the Arab satellite news services the day before. It's hard to discount its influence given the incidents in other countries. It might be more accurate to say the attack could have been inspired in part by protests against the video like the one in Cairo, but it seems the main suspected leader was just looking for an excuse to strike something western. The video and date provided those.

My problem with the Republicans here is they have all the information they need. Nothing new is going to be discovered. The most damnable thing the White House did was mention protests, but by saying that they really weren't hiding anything else. A militia group that had nothing to do with AQ was probably responsible for the attack, the US learned its lesson that Libyan militias are loathe to fight one another and we have to look out for ourselves there. In the end I don't know what they are trying to accomplish outside trying to catch Hillary in the fallout.

[boutons_deux]

Hillary Clinton: the real GOP target on Benghazi?

Hillary Clinton was secretary of State when terrorists killed the US ambassador and other Americans in Benghazi, Libya. Republicans aim to make that a major issue if she runs for president.

Republican-led congressional investigations of the issue known simply as “Benghazi” are becoming a major political irritation for the Obama White House. It gets in the way of the “Year of Action” – government by executive order – President Obama is touting as his way of dealing with what he sees as an obstructive Congress.

But for the Democratic front-runner in the 2016 presidential campaign – Hillary Rodham Clinton – it’s quickly growing into a potentially devastating target of opportunity for the GOP as it searches for a way to head off a Clinton political dynasty.
“Republicans aren't going to let Benghazi go, unless and until they find that it doesn't serve as a liability for Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the attack,” writes New Republic senior editor Brian Beutler on the magazine’s website. “And while we know that the conspiracy theory that sparked and sustains Benghazimania has been debunked, we don't know whether the right's obsession with it will become a real hindrance for Clinton if she runs for the presidency, or if it will backfire against Republicans.”

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politic...Benghazi-video

Repugs nominate an unelectable asshole for 2016, with a platform of screw the poor, repeal ACA, enrich/protect the corps and wealthy, Bill Clinton rapist, and Hillary responsible for Benghazi.

[CosmicCowboy]

Personally I have no outrage over Benghazi. Bad has happened to embassies before.

The thing that bothered me then and the thing that still bothers me now was the assumption by the White House that the public (and by extension, me) would be stupid enough to believe the story they were spinning that it was all because of some stupid movie and not a planned 9/11 anniversary attack. Two months before the election and the White House line was they had the terrorists "on the run". This attack clearly didn't jibe with that talking point so they stuck with that stupid movie talking point for weeks after any rational person could review the evidence and realize it was just an outright political fabrication. All this latest discovery does is verify what rational people already knew to be true.

[boutons_deux]

We’re pushing the video because we don’t want to blame it on the failure of our policies,’ ” said conservative commentatorCharles Krauthammer on Fox News earlier this week.

“The facts are coming out that in fact this administration has knowingly withheld do ents pursuant to congressional subpoenas in violation of any reasonable transparency or historic precedent at least since Richard Milhouse Nixon,” said Representative Issa. Executive privilege only applies to Repug WH, not Dem WH?

And Ben Rhodes wrote his e-mail after the CIA began drafting talking points. He took his cue from them, not the other way around, writes Slate’s Dave Wiegel.
“It’s just lazy journalism or lazy politicking to blame Rhodes for a talking point that was fed from the CIA. The White House’s shifty-sounding excuse, that the ‘demonstration’ story line came not from its spin factory but from the CIA, remains surprisingly accurate,” writes Mr. Wiegel.

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Deco...-America-video

criminal? how criminal? Issa is an alarm salesman, car thief, weapons offender, and witch hunter, not a lawyer.

[CosmicCowboy]

Hey wingnut....Obama HIMSELF was still pushing that spin line two weeks after 9/11.

[boutons_deux]

Hey wingnut....Obama HIMSELF was still pushing that spin line two weeks after 9/11.

so impeach The Negro

[CosmicCowboy]

The fact that you still buy the spin shows just how bum- ing-stupid you really are.

[ChumpDumper]

Personally I have no outrage over Benghazi. Bad has happened to embassies before.

The thing that bothered me then and the thing that still bothers me now was the assumption by the White House that the public (and by extension, me) would be stupid enough to believe the story they were spinning that it was all because of some stupid movie and not a planned 9/11 anniversary attack. Two months before the election and the White House line was they had the terrorists "on the run". This attack clearly didn't jibe with that talking point so they stuck with that stupid movie talking point for weeks after any rational person could review the evidence and realize it was just an outright political fabrication. All this latest discovery does is verify what rational people already knew to be true.

This video actually was quite a big deal that week in the Arab world. I mean, how planned did that attack have to be? It certainly wasn't a classic AQ years-in-the-making operations. The wide exposure of the video could have easily been the last ingredient of a perfect storm. I guess if we ever catch the guys who did it we can find out the level of inluence.

i think it is bull that it took this long to get this particular email out there. The only thing that strengthens the Republicans' hand is that it has been withheld for so long. No they can play the "What else are they hiding?" card. As it is, the CIA just looks completely inept on all levels in Libya.

[Nbadan]

This video actually was quite a big deal that week in the Arab world. I mean, how planned did that attack have to be? It certainly wasn't a classic AQ years-in-the-making operations. The wide exposure of the video could have easily been the last ingredient of a perfect storm. I guess if we ever catch the guys who did it we can find out the level of inluence

Well,,,,,the attack actually happened because the spooks were running a clandestine gun operation out of the Embassy grounds...they were shipping Kadafi's guns to the rebels in Syria...that's why there are so many Libyan weapons in Syria, not because of Al Queda...

[Nbadan]

....but the Obama Administration couldn't come out and say that for National Security reasons, so they came up with the Video cover story...not these dumb- s in Congress risk exposing what was really going on....Spooks wont go for that....

[boutons_deux]

The fact that you still buy the spin shows just how bum- ing-stupid you really are.

You buy the LIES and slander of the Repugs.

[boutons_deux]

The Great Benghazi Scandal Gets Sillier

You say potato and I say potahto,
You say tomato and I say tomahto,
Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto:
Let’s call the whole thing off.

–George and Ira Gershwin
Here’s how unreal the Great Benghazi Scandal had already grown as of last year. Washington Postfact checker Glenn Kessler devoted an entire May 2013 column to the scholastic question of whether President Obama’s calling the Sept. 11, 2012 attack on a U.S. Consulate in Libya an “act of terror” was the same as calling it an “act of terrorism,” as he’d recently claimed.

Kessler pondered the deep semantic differences between the two phrases before awarding Obama a full four “Pinocchios,” signifying a “whopper.” Seriously. That’s the big cover-up House Republicans pretend they’re outraged about.
Obama’s exact words, from the White House Rose Garden on the day after the attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and his security team:

No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.

So who was Obama trying to deceive?

People who hadn’t seen the smoking ruins on TV? And about what? Kessler doesn’t say. Only that the two phrases don’t signify precisely the same thing — a distinction without a difference in any realistic political context.

It will be recalled that GOP nominee Mitt Romney executed one of the clumsiest pratfalls in presidential debate history for mistakenly challenging Obama on this exact point. Had the president, or had he not, described the Benghazi disaster as an “act of terror?”

Obama cooly urged his rival to consult the transcript. In fact, he’d used the phrase several times.

Had the Washington political press not had so much invested in a “cliffhanger” election narrative, Romney’s blunder would have been compared to President Gerald Ford’s denying Soviet influence in Poland during a 1976 debate with Jimmy Carter.

But then this is the great mystery confronting non-initiates in the great GOP Benghazi cult. What on earth are these people going on about? That if Obama had said “act of terrorism” instead of “act of terror,” Americans would have punished his failure to eliminate jihadists from the face of the earth by turning to Mitt “47 percent” Romney?

That everything would be different if UN Ambassador Susan Rice had cast aside White House “talking points” about inflammatory videos on the Sunday political chat shows and candidly confessed that “[w]hether they were al Qaeda affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremists or al Qaeda itself…is one of the things we’ll have to determine?”

Because those were Rice’s exact words, block copied from the transcript of CBS’s Sept. 16, 2012 Face the Nation broadcast in response to a direct question from Bob Schieffer about al Qaeda involvement.

Everybody now pretends she named no terrorist groups, for the sake of keeping the make-believe scandal alive.

It follows that contrary to everything you hear from partisan mischief makers and their helpers among the Washington press, the Obama White House has never sought to deny the obvious: that the kinds of religious zealots who bring rocket-propelled grenade launchers to street demonstrations didn’t simply find them lying around in the bazaar.

The original CIA talking points released 11 months ago said pretty much what Ambassador Rice said: that outrage at a crude, American-made video mocking Islam sparked violent protests across much of the Middle East, and that militants took advantage of the resulting chaos for their own bloody purposes. The exact iden y of those responsible isn’t yet known.

See, out there in the real world, it doesn’t always have to be either/or. Most often it’s both/and: armed terrorist groups and a provocative video. A Senate Intelligence Committee report released last January sharply criticized the State Department, but also concluded “that the attack was not a highly coordinated plot, but was opportunistic.”

David D. Kirkpatrick’s masterful reporting in The New York Times established that the anti-western Libyan militia Ansar Al-Sharia had long had the consulate under surveillance, although

“anger at the video motivated the initial attack. Dozens of people joined in, some of them provoked by the video and others responding to fast-spreading false rumors that guards inside the American compound had shot Libyan protesters….A Libyan journalist working for The New York Times was blocked from entering by the sentries outside, and he learned of the film from the fighters who stopped him.”However, a 2012 White House email has recently emerged, re-stating CIA talking points in somewhat different language. So big deal.
They’ll be singing all summer: Potato, potahto, tomato, tomahto.

Well, you know the rest.

http://www.nationalmemo.com/great-be...ets-sillier/2/

CC loves him some Fox/Repug fabricated scandal

btw, Repugs say WH released the climate change "scare mongering" to detract from the Repugs fabricated Benghazi scandal.

[boutons_deux]

Oops: GOP's #Benghazi committee chairman says he's leading a 'trial'


Asked by MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough about the possibility that his panel’s work would continue into the 2016 election campaign, Gowdy replied that “if an administration is slow-walking do ent production, I can’t end a trial simply because the defense won’t cooperate.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/05/08/1297830/-Oops-GOP-s-Benghazi-committee-chairman-says-he-s-leading-a-trial?detail=email

[boutons_deux]

The NYT Editorial Board Get It Right

The Republican Party whilst doing nothing for the nation have decided a fun way to do less than nothing and with complete disregard to any costs incurred.

On the kangaroo court

Republicans vying for a seat on the Benghazi kangaroo court, also known as the Select House Committee to Inflate a Tragedy Into a Scandal.

All because the frothing at the mouth brigade smell blood where there is none.Of course the GOPs persecution complex is also fed.

The day before, they voted to hold in contempt Lois Lerner, the former Internal Revenue Service official whom they would love to blame for the administration’s crackdown on conservative groups, if only they could prove there was a crackdown, which they can’t, because there wasn’t.

As for Democrats joining in the Benghazi Circus

Democrats who are now debating whether to participate in the committee shouldn’t hesitate to skip it. Their presence would only lend legitimacy to a farce.

As for Republican disregard of others rights

Little nuisances like cons utional rights or basic facts can’t be allowed to stand in the way when House Republicans need to whip up their party’s fury.

Republicans have demonstrated yet again that when they cannot start preemptive wars, torture, give the wealth of the nation to the rich, persecute anyone not like them, they fall into their standard set of procedures:

1] If we cannot impeach a President we will just up government.

2] Hold pointless proceedings to stir up the crazy.

3] If all else fails throw a wrench into the works and then go on Fox Noise to complain that the wrench has broken the works.

It is astounding that they look at science as a conspiracy.

It is funny [in a sick kind of way] how they regard equality for all as infringing upon their rights.

It is going to be an ugly couple of years.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/0...t?detail=email

Repugs!

and y'all vote them in, OVER AND OVER AND OVER

[boutons_deux]

the very reliable, and always entertainng RM CRUSHES the Repug Benghazi witch hunting, esp the ignorant TX Repug Pete Sessions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_AkWmPvqrY#t=13

GOO FELLAS

maybe goo ball is what TX Repugs have between their ears?

[boutons_deux]

Paul Ryan still bitter over Candy Crowley torpedoing Mitt's own Benghazi! talking point

Rep. Paul Ryan is still complaining about CNN’s Candy Crowley’s 2012 debate moderation. Specifically, about the fact that she corrected Mitt Romney for saying President Obama took 14 days to call the 9/11 attack on the Benghazi compound “an act of terror,” when Obama said those words in the Rose Garden the very day after the killings of four Americans.

Talking to Hugh Hewitt Wednesday night, Ryan rehashed the Crowley moment, agreeing with Hewitt that it was “perhaps the most significant intervention by a member of the media in a presidential campaign ever.”

While Ryan wouldn’t speculate about whether Crowley would do anything different if she knew what we know now (more on what we know now, later) he alleged that Crowley “violated the rules of the debate.”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/0...t?detail=email

[CosmicCowboy]

What is Boo so scared of? Why is he terrified of this special committee? Boo's outrage is hilarious.

[boutons_deux]

What is Boo so scared of? Why is he terrified of this special committee? Boo's outrage is hilarious.

You Lie, The Great Boutons is scared of nothing

Even know that after 100s of hours, 1000s of pages, years and tons of incompetent, ignorant Issa's bull , NOTHING incriminating the Exec has been found. Yet another Benghazi witch hunt is a direct exposure and insult to Issa.

And you must know that the Confederate SC clown they put at the head of the commission means it's a total joke, for redneck/white/old/racist Repug base's entertainment to harass The Negro.

All smash-mouth, destructive, bad faith, distracting, harassing, witch hunting, election-year, obstructive Politics, All The Time, of which the Repugs have lots of because they spend no tme governing.

Willful misgovernance and incompetence are Repug specialities.

Well, actually, the Repugs do have plenty of time, just not in Congress, because flaccid Boner has scheduled a historic minimum days for Congress to be in session.

And you guys keep voting your Repug/tea bagging assholes into office, OVER AND OVER AND OVER.

[CosmicCowboy]

Yep. Sounds skeeered to me.