BENGHAZI: COVERUP OR INCOMPETANCE?

[Flem72]

Well?

 

And criticizing my spelling error doesn't count....

[nigel_k]

Since I am not a US voter, it's easier to just wait a couple of weeks until after the election when the facts will undoubtedly start coming out.

[hrothgar]

The world is a complicated place and this doesn't sit well with people who crave simplistic explanations...

[Flem72]

Since I am not a US voter, it's easier to just wait a couple of weeks until after the election when the facts will undoubtedly start coming out.

 

Yes, that's clearly the administrations's -- very convenient -- preference.

[Flem72]

The world is a complicated place and this doesn't sit well with people who crave simplistic explanations...

 

Oh, very complicated. You got anything else?

[PassedOut]

No sign of a coverup, but competence may be at issue there.

[hrothgar]

Oh, very complicated. You got anything else?

 

Why don't you start with the following:

 

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/10/high-tech-lynching-susan-rice

 

Please feel free to ask for help if any of the words are too long...

[Flem72]

Why don't you start with the following:

 

http://www.motherjon...hing-susan-rice

 

Please feel free to ask for help if any of the words are too long...

 

You're killing me. _ Mother Jones_? In the face of the evidence of the emails sent to hundreds of the administration's closest and bestest right after the event?? Right back at cha: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/republicans-press-white-house-explanation-benghazi-emails/story?id=17555363 and you'll notice that's ABC ("Always Barack Completely")

 

Here's a question that includes nothing longer than four-letter words: What do u no about de ploy ment of mortars?

[jdeegan]

:P On the outskirts of the small mountain resort town of Ruidoso, New Mexico is a residential street named Willie Horton Drive. On this two block street lived the former campaign manager for George Herbert Walker Bush. So seldom does any political campaign manager come up with an original ploy, that I believe that this monument is appropriate.

 

In this month's US presidential campaign the Republican party sees the way to winning as a replay of 1980. First, their candidate establishes himself as during the first debate as a plausible leader (also worked in 1960). Then he saddles the incumbent with a foreign policy debacle.

 

Boring, but it will probably work.

[hrothgar]

Here's a question that includes nothing longer than four-letter words: What do u no about de ploy ment of mortars?

 

Not much. (Though my brother in law was an artillery captain)

 

Then again, I can count past four which is a skill which seems to elude you since "about" has five letters and "mortars" has seven...

[hrothgar]

You're killing me. _ Mother Jones_? In the face of the evidence of the emails sent to hundreds of the administration's closest and bestest right after the event?? Right back at cha: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/republicans-press-white-house-explanation-benghazi-emails/story?id=17555363 and you'll notice that's ABC ("Always Barack Completely")

 

Few quick observations:

 

First: The fact that there were hundreds of emails making competing claims supports my case which is "The situation was fluid and confusing"

 

Second: As is pointed out in the Mother Jones piece, Susan Rice was very careful to qualify her statements:

 

Here's a quote from that Mother Jones piece

Rice was, in fact, properly cautious in her TV appearances. The transcripts here are crystal clear. On Face the Nation, for example, she carefully told Bob Schieffer that she couldn't yet offer any "definitive conclusions," but that "based on the best information we have to date" it appeared that there had been a spontaneous protest in Benghazi "as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where [...] there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video." She then immediately added: "But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution. And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent." When Schieffer pressed her on whether the attack had been preplanned, or whether al-Qaeda was involved, she said directly that we simply didn't know yet.

 

Finally, You might not like Mother Jones, however, the article in question does a very good job making factual statements and providing supporting evidence. FWIW, the article that you are referencing simply states that Republicans are throwing a hissy fit. (No one would dispute this). What the article doesn't do is fact check any of the statements that the Republicans are making. Indeed, the very purpose of the Mother Jones article is to point out that those claims are unfounded.

 

Oops... I've gotten up to three points and from the looks of things you have trouble counting past four. Better play it safe and stop now...

[Flem72]

Then again, I can count past four which is a skill which seems to elude you since "about" has five letters and "mortars" has seven...

 

Tsk tsk. I so wish you hadn't taken that bait.

[Flem72]

Let's continue to ignore the point that "best information we have to date" is pretty much the whole shebang (wasn't), and the admin's folks have been all over the place. And then some. Of course, Rice later claimed that she hadn't seen the updates before she went on the talk shows. Oh, wait, she got the emails instantaneously. Gosh, I get so confused when I try to count past four different explanations of the same series of events.

 

 

[hrothgar]

Tsk tsk. I so wish you hadn't taken that bait.

 

I failed to appreciate that elementary errors in arithmetic was a deliberate trap and part of your master plan...

[Vampyr]

I have a third option, which is that the issue is entirely irrelevant.

[Flem72]

I have a third option, which is that the issue is entirely irrelevant.

 

Just curious, how did you feel about the recent assassination attempt on Her Majesty's Ambassador to Libya? Was withdrawal of the embassy the proper response?

[Vampyr]

Just curious, how did you feel about the recent assassination attempt on Her Majesty's Ambassador to Libya? Was withdrawal of the embassy the proper response?

 

I do not have enough information to answer this question. Luckily it was up to people with a lot more experience in diplomatic matters than I have to make this decision.

 

In any case, back to the OP topic, what is the President expected to do except give the best information his intelligence have gathered at any given point in time? I thought that Republicans granted omniscience to only one person -- or have they deified Obama?

[ArtK78]

Coverup or incompetence? I prefer the way that the Mother Jones article put it: "properly cautious." Something the republican candidate for president clearly was not.

[mikeh]

I find it amusing, but also ominous, that so many people seem to get not only their 'facts' but also their views/opinions from those whose stock in trade is simplistic cartoon depictions of complex topics.

 

Does Flem have ANY idea of how events unfold in the real world? Particularly events as tumultuous as the attack in Libya? Those in Washington responsible for interpreting the events and explaining them to the public would have been receiving a myriad of different and often at least partially inconsistent reports on what had actually happened.

 

It is apparent to anyone who checks the records, as opposed to what Fox News and similar organs of propaganda spew, that the US Gov. understood very early that there was a possibility that organized extremists/terrorists had committed the attack, whether as an opportunistic seizing upon the video-inspired demos or because of the anniversary of 9/11 (or both) not being clear.

 

My experiences with attempting to reconstruct often chaotic and unexpected events is on a far different and usually less tragic scale....I do a lot of litigation that arises out of accidents of one kind or another....I have done plane crash fatalities, 'bad baby' claims, and both fatal and serious injury mva litigation. It is a truism that if you have, say, 5 witnesses to an accident, you will find, when you question them, that they are describing 5 different accidents.....often the differences are in detail, but on occasion they can be matters of substance on which a person naive to the effect of stress on memory (even of trained professionals....I have litigated police shooting cases) would be astounded at the contradictions.

 

I don't claim, of course, to have any direct knowledge of what went on in Washington, but it is apparent to anyone willing to 'think' and do any research into what was actually said over the first two or three days, that there is currently no strong indication of either coverup or incompetence in the response to the incident.

 

I do not know enough to offer any opinion on whether there was any level of incompetence before the attack.

[Phil]

 

My experiences with attempting to reconstruct often chaotic and unexpected events is on a far different and usually less tragic scale....I do a lot of litigation that arises out of accidents of one kind or another....I have done plane crash fatalities, 'bad baby' claims, and both fatal and serious injury mva litigation. It is a truism that if you have, say, 5 witnesses to an accident, you will find, when you question them, that they are describing 5 different accidents.....often the differences are in detail, but on occasion they can be matters of substance on which a person naive to the effect of stress on memory (even of trained professionals....I have litigated police shooting cases) would be astounded at the contradictions.

 

 

MikeH is to ellipses as I am to semi-colons; take that for what it is worth.

[Flem72]

I find it amusing, but also ominous, that so many people seem to get not only their 'facts' but also their views/opinions from those whose stock in trade is simplistic cartoon depictions of complex topics.

 

Does Flem have ANY idea of how events unfold in the real world? Particularly events as tumultuous as the attack in Libya? Those in Washington responsible for interpreting the events and explaining them to the public would have been receiving a myriad of different and often at least partially inconsistent reports on what had actually happened.

 

It is apparent to anyone who checks the records, as opposed to what Fox News and similar organs of propaganda spew, that the US Gov. understood very early that there was a possibility that organized extremists/terrorists had committed the attack, whether as an opportunistic seizing upon the video-inspired demos or because of the anniversary of 9/11 (or both) not being clear.

 

My experiences with attempting to reconstruct often chaotic and unexpected events is on a far different and usually less tragic scale....I do a lot of litigation that arises out of accidents of one kind or another....I have done plane crash fatalities, 'bad baby' claims, and both fatal and serious injury mva litigation. It is a truism that if you have, say, 5 witnesses to an accident, you will find, when you question them, that they are describing 5 different accidents.....often the differences are in detail, but on occasion they can be matters of substance on which a person naive to the effect of stress on memory (even of trained professionals....I have litigated police shooting cases) would be astounded at the contradictions.

 

I don't claim, of course, to have any direct knowledge of what went on in Washington, but it is apparent to anyone willing to 'think' and do any research into what was actually said over the first two or three days, that there is currently no strong indication of either coverup or incompetence in the response to the incident.

 

I do not know enough to offer any opinion on whether there was any level of incompetence before the attack.

 

Sir, my litigation experience has brought me to many of the same conclusions you have voiced re: eyewitness testimony. It has also taught me how lawyers -- including, perhaps especially so, those who work for politicians in framing discourse-- address the "facts" underlying a situation in controversy: Absent the proverbial 'smoking gun', Our story will be consistent with as much of the evidential record as possible, and inconvenient evidence will be contested and muddled to the greatest extent possible, in order to achieve a persuasively coherent public posture that maximally advances our goals. It's commonly called tap dancing; politicians have to be masters.

 

I do know how complicated real events can be, particularly when there is no information source within the event. I suspect that analyzing a plane crash by looking at a smoking pile of rubble was made slightly more efficient by the utilization of black boxes and real time radar. I do not think you have any warrant for implying that I got any of my information from "cartoon depictions"; I've spent as much time reviewing the reported record as I possibly can. The OP was deliberately left a virgin canvas, and was meant to solicit opinion re: both pre- and post-attack actions and non-actions of the administration. Interesting there are no real discussions of the reported record; interesting that posts accepting the "just gathering information" meme seem to reflect political orientations explicitly revealed in other threads.

 

My personal view at this time is that administration actors never believed the "horrible video" story. There is absolutely no evidence of any demonstration based upon the video or otherwise. The attack began at night, and some of the weapons used -- known in real time -- require planned deployment. This was not a pile of rubble in a field rrequring reconstructiion after the fact.

 

The administration knew from the first real-time camera/sound/cell phone/email/ radio reports from the event and those within it that this event would reveal just how vigorously political actors had screwed the pooch re: the entire situation leading up to the attack, most importantly re: the administration's narrative of Arab Spring democracy success in Libya and the death of al-Queda-linked terrorist activity there and elsewhere (this includes failure to deploy protection adequate to the known volitility of the environment). They had been walking a tight wire and they knew it (I suspect -- pure speculation --that the odds are pretty high that there were highly-placed people who were just hoping beyond hope that any blow-up would occur after Nov. 6, and who expressed that opinion to colleagues). In the days following, they noticed that the media were not much interested in detailed investigation or reportage, but had just loved the "horrible video" explanation, and decided to lawyer up, knowing they'd get the maximum pass available for any story they constructed. The inconsistency in the developing administration response is evident; the "just gathering information" meme is maximally efficient in allowing them to be vague and run the story into hearings post-election. (Is there really so much info that all those talented analysts with all that information-crunching power could not give us a reasonable picture within a couple of days? Of course, some important people would have to be inconvenienced....)

 

So IMHO "coverup" is an accurate term, but it is directed at obsfuscation of the pre-attack grossly negligent failure to protect our personnel and intentional failure accurately to depict the truth about Libya for the American public. OTOH, charges of failures to respond once the attack began seem badly misplaced, even those from highly-exercised former military "experts." In these situations my inclination is to support whatever decisions are made by military chain-of-command, at least to the extent they are uninfluenced by the politicians. It is possible the best decision was to let the guys in the Annex and the limited on-ground support, try to get out on their own.

 

But the rest of it: Just politics as usual. Messed up and will do anything to avoid taking responsibilty.

 

EDIT: Why was the administration's response so damned casual, campaigning as usual? As Bolton has said, any administration he has worked for would've been in red alert overdrive immediately. This aspect of the situation is what has most people worked up, I think, and there really is no good story there.

[luke warm]

what we do know:

 

• 
   
  
• there were 2 attacks, this year, on the consulate prior to 9/11
  
• stephens, as well as the security personnel on site, requested more security... it was declined
  
• because of the threats, great britain (as well as the red cross) pulled out of the area
  
• stephens continued to cable state that the situation was dangerous and continued to request more security... still denied... in fact, security was reduced
  
• the attack, when it occurred, was followed in real time by state (at least - there could have been others in the admin looking in)
  
• all emails, etc, were sent immediately to several recipients, including the wh situation room
  
• the military was mobilized, in the sense that troops were sent to tripoli (where they remained, making no effort to reach the consulate) and warships were moved to the coast... however, no help came for those being attacked
  
• obama has stated, and it appears to be true given the just released 60 minutes video, that a terrorist attack could have been the cause
  
• jay carney, for days following the murders, said the cause was a video
  
• hillary clinton said the cause was a video
  
• susan rice said on 5 talk shows, days after the attacks, that the cause was a video
  
• obama stated, 6 times in his speech to the u.n., that the cause was a video
  
• not once did any of those people mention a terrorist attack - not carney in his press briefings, not rice on the talk shows, not obama at the u.n.
  
• joe biden, in the vp debate, said (when asked about it) that "we didn't know"... and now we learn that he *did* know because he was included in the sit room briefings

if the prez knew it was a terrorist attack, why did nobody mention it when given numerous opportunities? why did biden say he not know? why did they continue to blame a video when they *knew* it had nothing to do with it?

 

so to answer your original question, i think it's both... incompetence in not at least attempting to send relief to our people and a coverup because to admit the truth would do harm to the narrative the admin had been floating for a year (obl is dead and aq is kaput)... it would also, rightly, call into question obama's entire ridiculous mid east "strategy"

[Vampyr]

My personal view at this time is that administration actors never believed the "horrible video" story. There is absolutely no evidence of any demonstration based upon the video or otherwise. The attack began at night, and some of the weapons used -- known in real time -- require planned deployment. This was not a pile of rubble in a field rrequring reconstructiion after the fact.

 

Does everything have to be black and white? Terrorists often claim they are retaliating for something, or in any case sometimes there is a catalyst that sets them off. So was the attack an action by quiet, law-abiding citizens responding to the video, or was it by terrorists partly, at least, responding to the video.

 

That having been said, protesting around the world about a video made by one guy somewhere is not the behaviour of rational people. Yet masses of some sort of people went out to demonstrations. I suspect terrorists/extremists of lighting a fire under these people. Was the film available on YouTube before the demonstrations? Is there an informed estimate of how many protesters actually watchedit?

[hrothgar]

That having been said, protesting around the world about a video made by one guy somewhere is not the behaviour of rational people. Yet masses of some sort of people went out to demonstrations. I suspect terrorists/extremists of lighting a fire under these people. Was the film available on YouTube before the demonstrations? Is there an informed estimate of how many protesters actually watchedit?

 

My understanding is that relatively few people actually saw the video on the Internet. (Internet connectivity is still relatively expensive in much of the world and there were some efforts to block access)

 

With this said and done, the (supposed) contents of the video were widely shared in broadcast media like television. Furthermore, as I understand matters, clips from the video were broadcast on TV in Egypt. (I don't claim to understand why this didn't lead to the TV station being burned down...)

[luke warm]

while egypt *may* have been caused in part by the video, libya most definitely was not... most of the muslim world did not even know of the video until the u.s. started apologizing for it