by Jack Lee
The United States is in serious trouble in every corner of the globe because we have a naïve, blundering president who has never cared about having a cogent foreign policy. He’s essentially a pacifist when it comes to confronting errant nations, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn’t play out well when you’re an extremely naïve pacifist. In five years of sitting in the White House he’s failed to learn much. Why he hasn’t keeps pointing back to his self-assured, egocentric personality. Obama’s charisma may hold great sway over his democrat voters in America, but on the world stage it’s failed to charm our enemies into submission.
Obama’s appointment of Hillary Clinton was a disastrous choice for Secretary of State, and a choice made for all the wrong reasons. She had absolutely no qualifications for the job, no serious understanding of foreign policy, and nothing resembling a strategic vision.
As a result Obama seems to have no cogent foreign policy and his responses to any given foreign crisis has been, well, unpredictable, as he’s making it up on the fly.
Both Obama and Clinton were caught by total surprise in Benghazi and our people died senselessly. This event was allowed to happen despite a plethora of advanced warning signs. After one year of intense investigation by Congress many questions remain unanswered. We still don’t know why we failed to provide adequate protection or who ordered US Ambassador Susan Rice to take to the airwaves and spin a false narrative. Rice claimed a video caused a mob to turn violent and overrun the Libyan embassy, but we know that was a crock said for political advantage at the moment and on the eve of his re-election.
The handling of Iran’s nuclear weapons development set in motion a series of irreversible diplomatic failures that lifted sanctions without the necessary concessions to insure Iran will not pursue nuclear weapons development or protect Israel from attack.
Our relations with our one true Middle East ally are now at an all-time low. For some odd reason, we’ve taken to trusting Palestinian leadership more than President Netanyahu.
Obama misread the signals in Egypt in the popular uprising. He was far too quick to accept and ally with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which ironically has now been tossed out of power and declared an illegal terrorist organization. Even worse for US security, radical Islam is making significant progress in Syria, Mauritania, Western Sahara, Algeria, Tunisia and even in Turkey and not a peep about it from the White House.
After 5 years in office Obama still doesn’t understand that radicalized Islam wants to do to America what they are now doing to these regions. These are bad people that can’t be trusted (Muslim Brotherhood). Obama simply doesn’t get it. Bad people DO exist and they will occupy the voids around the world as we pull back and they are not impressed by Obama’s willingness to hold discussions.
The tepid US response to Russia’s capture of the Crimea sent signals to President Putin that more can be gained. The US response was to target individuals within Russia’s government with sanctions has had no effect and it’s only strengthened Putin’s hand among Russian voters.
And lastly, three weeks ago 223 school girls in the northeastern part of Nigeria were kidnapped after their school was attacked and onsite adults were slaughtered by the Islamic Boku Haram terrorist group. The Nigerian government was incapable of handling the investigation and turned to the United States . Obama has sent unarmed investigators in that Hell hole. This is a dangerous place and it’s run by a corrupt despot….and now we have unarmed Americans in there? This has a good chance of not going well.
A pacifist who relies on drone strikes, has a kill list that includes American citizens, took out the worst terrorist our country has ever encountered, prosecutes whistleblowers, and keeps American soldiers who reveal embarrass information in indefinite detention?
Wow. If that’s what conservatives think a pacifist is, I definitely don’t want to see what you think a pragmatist is.
It’s fair to say that Obama doesn’t have a coherent foreign policy, but perhaps as a result, conservatives also don’t have a coherent critique.
The rest is similarly removed from reality. We know exactly who gave Susan Rice the talking points. It was the CIA. I know you feel the need to ignore that fact because it’s hard to spin as a presidential scandal on par with Watergate, but your wishes do not change reality.
Chris, a political pacifist can be one who avoids wars and prefers diplomacy to solving major crisis, but also has another side. I know that is difficult for you to grasp, because you’re very literally. As for having a coherent critique, I leave that up to the commenters to decide, your opinion has been noted. Next, Susan Rice got her orders from somebody in the White House. The CIA did not put her on the spin circuit, there’s only a few people with that kind of power. They may have supplied a narrative the president wanted them to supply, but they can’t order Rice to lie on TV. Exactly what their role was is not as important to who was directing the spin and why?
Susan Rice was someone’s (or some groups) choice to deliver those talking points on the Sunday Talk Shows…the CIA doesn’t decide those things.
Yeah, that’s what I said too…an obvious conclusion reached by logical people. Chris didn’t see this part for some reason.
Why on earth does it matter who decided that Susan Rice would be the one to deliver the talking points? That doesn’t change the fact that the talking points came directly from the CIA. You are grasping at straws and not making any sense.
Chris you’re missing the point. The point being transparency. The point being about who said what and when? The point being why was a deception committed, was it for political gain or was it an honest misunderstanding of the facts? We need to know and the White House has been blocking us at every turn. They are hiding the facts and we need to know why. Much needs to be made public before I can feel comfortable letting this one go.
The issue is serious.
wiki answers:
The list of liars under this administration is long…some of them were liars lying to Congress. More here, here, here, and here.
The reason that this is important should be obvious.
The American people must be able to rely on our leaders and because of this we must hold them to a very high standard. Our leaders take an oath to uphold the Constitution and faithfully execute the laws of the land. When problems surface and questions arise it is up to Congress and the Justice Department to investigate on behalf of the people.
When Democrats had questions about the actions of George Bush or members of his administration they did not hesitate to drag people before Congress for grilling. The media covered it rabidly rather than making excuses. Chris too was a cheerleader for justice, was he not?
Jack: “Chris you’re missing the point. The point being transparency. The point being about who said what and when? The point being why was a deception committed, was it for political gain or was it an honest misunderstanding of the facts?”
Jack, you’re still not making any sense. The theory that the White House committed an intentional deception doesn’t make any sense. The talking points were not created by the White House. They were created by the CIA. If you believe there was some kind of cover-up then that’s where you need to be looking. Pretending that the White House invented the video story just doesn’t stand up to a cursory glance at the facts at this point, and yet conservatives just keep saying it in order to convince ignorant people that it’s true. The only scandal here is the blatant attempt to politicize a tragedy that began the night of the attack and hasn’t stopped in the year and a half since. No amount of facts or evidence can convince the Benghazi truthers that the White House wasn’t responsible for these talking points.
Chris you’re not making any sense because you are assuming something not in evidence. We have no proof that the CIA established Rice’s talking points or agenda.
Jack: “Chris you’re not making any sense because you are assuming something not in evidence. We have no proof that the CIA established Rice’s talking points or agenda.”
It’s amazing how many people who claim to care so much about Benghazi haven’t even bothered to gather the basic facts about the issue.
Yes, we do have proof that the CIA established Rice’s talking points. We have had this proof for a year now. The CIA talking points were released last May. I have posted the CIA talking points, which were echoed by Susan Rice on the Sunday shows, dozens of time on this website. They confirm that the CIA initially reported that the attack was the result of a spontaneous protest triggered by the demonstrations in Cairo, demonstrations which as we all know, really were motivated by the video.
Were there other reports at the same time that disputed the CIA’s talking points? Yes. Is there any evidence that the White House stuck with the CIA’s talking points instead of these other reports because of an orchestrated cover-up, rather than a genuine belief that the CIA was right? No.
There’s really no excuse for you not knowing this already, Jack.
Chris…you are only reading what you want to believe, step outside the partisan information silo for once.
USA Today:
The CIA’s former deputy director told the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday that politics played no role in his decision to believe CIA analysts in Washington rather than his station chief in Benghazi, Libya, about whether a fictitious protest preceded an attack that killed four Americans.
Michael Morell, now retired from the CIA, said the Benghazi station chief contacted him three times the week of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack to lay out reasons he believed it was a planned terror attack and not a protest gone out of control.
The station chief sent a detailed e-mail Sept. 15, the day before national security adviser Susan Rice said on Sunday talk shows that the attack evolved from a spontaneous protest. The White House has since admitted the protest never happened and it was a terrorist attack.
Morell deleted references to extremist threats linked to al-Qaeda in versions of the talking points and said he did so because he believed the information provided by intelligence community analysts and the Defense Department over the CIA’s own station chief in Libya.
“I shared the e-mail with the analysts, they stuck by their judgment,” Morell testified. “I believed what the analysts said. I also believed it was a terrorist attack.”
Questioners on the House panel asked how he could believe it was both a protest gone awry and a planned terror attack. He said they were not “mutually exclusive.”
Morell did not name the analysts or detail what specific information the analysts used to base the faulty conclusion over the accurate report of the CIA’s station chief in Libya. He said the first version of the talking points were produced Sept. 12, a day after the attack, by the agency’s top terrorism analyst. The analyst had seen about a dozen press and intelligence reports that a protest preceded the attack, he said.
On Sept. 13, the CIA’s station chief sent an e-mail saying the analyst was wrong, but Morell said he dismissed the station chief’s objections because it too was based in part on press reports. It was also based on reporting by a rescue team that arrived at the diplomatic post about an hour after the attack.
Morell said the analyst thought any protest would have broken up that long after the attack began. “It’s not an unreasonable thing to think,” Morell said.
Republicans accuse the Obama administration of trying to mislead the American people in the weeks before the 2012 presidential election so as not to ruin a campaign theme that Obama had al-Qaeda on the run.
Morell insisted that he was not involved in any deliberate obfuscation nor did he know of anyone who was at the White House.
“I never allowed politics to influence what I said or did. Never,” he said.
Much of the questioning and Morell’s testimony focused on Morell’s role in the production of flawed talking points given to Rice before she appeared on television and blamed the attack on an anti-Islam video.
“The White House needed the talking points to support their narrative that al-Qaeda was on the run,” said Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan, the committee’s Republican chairman. “They needed these talking points to say the attack was in response to a video.”
The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, said the committee reviewed thousands of documents related to the attack, viewed videos and interviewed tens of witnesses, and proved nothing nefarious about how the talking points were produced.
“Today we’ve found no inappropriate motivations, and we have also found no inappropriate actions on the talking points,” Ruppersberger said. “We have four dead Americans. We need to focus at this point on tracking down the people who did this. And I hope we’re close to that.”
Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, which has also investigated the administration’s response to the Benghazi attack, said Morell’s testimony confirms that the top two U.S. officials in Libya — the CIA station chief and State Department’s deputy chief of mission Gregory Hicks — “weren’t even asked about what was going on” before the analysts’ initial assessment.
“It’s stunning they came to conclusions without actually talking to the two most senior people in Libya,” Chaffetz said. “The bottom line is the talking points were wrong. They were not accurate and they weren’t complete.”
The attacks that killed U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans happened on the 11th anniversary of the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington. They lasted over several hours but involved three phases of violence, according to reports by the State Department and several congressional committees that investigated what happened.
The attack began on a quiet night outside the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, then after a rescue team moved U.S. personnel to a CIA facility a short distance away, and a few hours later, when that facility was struck by deadly mortar fire.
Some questioned Morell’s actions and noted that then-director of the CIA Gen. David Petraeus considered the talking points that resulted “useless.”
“It looks like you’re more interested in protecting the State Department than the State department is, like you’re more interested in protecting the FBI than the FBI,” said Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas. “And Petraeus is upset that there’s not enough information there.”
Morell responded: “I saw this as a way for the CIA to pump its chest to say we warned and therefore lay all the blame on the State Department.”
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/04/02/cia-deputy-benghazi-talking-points/7206921/
Previously unreleased internal Obama administration emails show that a coordinated effort was made in the days following the Benghazi terror attacks to portray the incident as “rooted in [an] Internet video, and not [in] a broader failure or policy.” Emails sent by senior White House adviser Ben Rhodes to other top administration officials reveal an effort to insulate President Barack Obama from the attacks that killed four Americans. Rhodes sent this email to top White House officials such as David Plouffe and Jay Carney just a day before National Security Adviser Susan Rice made her infamous Sunday news show appearances to discuss the attack. The “goal,” according to these emails, was “to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.” Rice came under fierce criticism following her appearances on television after she adhered to these talking points and blamed the attack on a little-watched Internet video. The newly released internal White House e-mails show that Rice’s orders came from top Obama administration communications officials.
Click here to read email: http://media.hotair.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/rhoades-email.jpg
Also contained in the 41 pages of documents obtained by Judicial Watch is a Sep. 12, 2012 email from Payton Knopf, the former deputy spokesman at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. In this communication, Knopf informs Rice that senior officials had already dubbed the Benghazi attack as “complex” and planned in advance. Despite this information, Rice still insisted that attacks were “spontaneous.”
See the evidence here.
a) The United States was not doing everything in its power to protect its people and facilities abroad. Not in Benghazi, and not elsewhere.
(b) The 9/11 attacks were not rooted in an “internet video.” The clip he’s referencing made something of a splash in the Middle East, but the State Department’s second in command on the ground in Libya called it a “non event” vis-a-vis the Benghazi raid. The US government, including Sec. Clinton and CIA Director Petraeus, knew the attack was a coordinated terrorist action almost immediately.
(c) The administration has not been “resolute” in bringing the perpetrators to justice. More than a year-and-a-half has passed since the lethal event. Zero people have been held responsible, neither in Washington nor Northern Africa.
Want to read more?
The memo also makes clear the White House was determined to deflect any criticism involving a “failure of [administration] policy.” What sort of failure? Take your pick. How about fueling a war in Libya with no apparent strategy to handle the resulting power vacuum? Or rejecting repeated requests for an enhanced security presence in a city from which much of the West had withdrawn, due to growing jihadi dominance? Or renewing a lease on our compound with a waiver for substandard security after it had faced several attempted attacks? Perhaps it was the lack of preparation for the contingency of a terrorist attack on the anniversary of 9/11, which resulted in hours of paralysis while American lives hung in the balance. Rhodes and company wanted to insulate the president from those glaring policy failures, so they doctored up some deceptive talking points. As for the Susan Rice email, her staff obviously understood the true nature of the attack, which she would later tell the American people was “spontaneous.” It wasn’t. It was a deliberate, orchestrated, al Qaeda-linked act of terrorism. It’s always seemed inconceivable that Rice wouldn’t have been privy to those facts prior to her public statements. The newly-disclosed emails appear to confirm those suspicions. There can now be no remaining doubt: The administration’s public response to the Benghazi attack was tainted by political considerations and deprived the American people of the truth.
Jack, this type of intellectual dishonesty is beneath you. You’re accusing me of being overly partisan, but both sources in your comment are right-wing bloggers whereas mine was USA Today, which is non-partisan.
The Hot Air piece is flat-out lying, referring to “a little-watched Internet video,” which is ridiculous; the video had motivated riots in over a dozen Middle Eastern countries at that point. Trying to downplay the reach of that video, or to act as if the administration just found it on YouTube and went “Eureka! Now we have a perfect fallguy for Benghazi!” while cackling madly is absurd.
The Ben Rhodes e-mails prove nothing, because again, he was just telling Rice what the CIA had already said.
You are STILL ignoring the CIA talking points, and the only reason I can see for doing so is because you have no way to fit them neatly into your narrative. Again, I already know that certain people within the CIA, including Patreaus, disagreed with the official conclusions. And again, you’ve provided nothing to prove that the reason their word wasn’t taken over the CIA’s official reports was because the administration knew what really happened and decided to lie about it.
There is STILL plenty of evidence that the terrorists were motivated by the video and there is STILL plenty of evidence that the attack happened without a whole lot of planning. See the Senate Report for details. The only thing Rice definitely got wrong was that there was a protest before the attack, and that’s because the CIA initially got it wrong too. Once the CIA officially corrected the record, the administration did too. Much of the critiques lately seem to be that the administration didn’t immediately announce that there was no protest based on e-mails sent by individuals within the CIA, which just reveals a comically bad understanding of how the government actually works to distribute information.
And this is supposed to be the worst scandal since Watergate? Even as an intelligence failure, it’s not all that huge of a deal. Certainly it’s nothing compared to the intelligence failure that led us into the Iraq War, which has led to hundreds more deaths than Benghazi.
And don’t tell me “nobody died at Watergate,” because 1) There was proof of the president engaging in criminal activity in that case, and there isn’t even a smidgen of evidence of such in this case, and 2) those four men’s deaths have nothing to do with the “talking points” controversy.
The real problem was the lack of security at the annex, but even that is typical among recent presidents (Reagan and Bush both had more embassy attacks and deaths than Obama, and no one cried impeachment then).
This whole thing remains ridiculous.
Oh Chris, c’mon will ya? Lighten up for pete’s sake! The evidence is what it is and it refutes your chosen version for what I believe to be the truth and I’m comfortable with that. Obviously you’re are not because it doesn’t fit with what you want to believe. However, only one of us is right and I leave it to history to prove what it is. Enough…can we move on?
Jack let’s not forget that prior to the election Obama was pushing the notion that al Qaeda was “on the run” as if he had achieved a major step in defeating the enemy and we could all have confidence in his abilities to lead.
Chris the President’s own words, repeated by others, refute your theory that the video story was told to the American people on the evidence. Every person that spoke about this event in the days following in terms of terror and in terms of the video and hen asked to clarify the President, jay /carney and others said it was “still being investigated” and it was “too soon” to say for certain. If that was the case, and we also know it was not properly investigated, then neither the video story nor the terror group story should not have been part of the talking points uttered by Rice. She shouldn’t have been out there at all saying anything if the President was going to later say it’s too soon to tell. If anyone spoke the President should have and only when he was certain about his facts!
Your arguments don’t hold up in terms of what the administration knew and when they knew it…and in terms of what they said to the American people and how they behaved before, during, and after the event.
Jack, you’re seriously telling me to “lighten up” and “move on?” I don’t expect this kind of blatant hypocrisy from you. I have addressed all the evidence presented by you and Tina, and you both refuse to address the CIA talking points.
Tina, yes the White House sent out mixed messages. That doesn’t point to a cover-up, that points to incompetence. If there was an actual cover-up, don’t you think Carney would have been told to stay on message? Why would the White House try and cover up something they knew they couldn’t?
Your evidence actually refutes your argument.
Dewey, conspiracy theories are like the Hydra. Cut down one false argument, and two more rise up in its place. Conspiracy theorists always have an endless supply of distortions so that they can just hop from one to another whenever necessary. It doesn’t matter if any one piece is proven false, because the conspiracy theorists will just move on to another piece, gleefully oblivious to whether or not that one’s already been proven false as well.
Benghazi is the new birtherism, it’s just been legitimized and mainstreamed. But the tactics are exactly the same. The total lack of evidence or motive for a cover-up, the blatant dismissal of any evidence that contradicts the narrative, the willful ignorance, the endless questions that have already been answered…it’s all the same.
Dewey we all are willing to stipulate that BOTH Parties will use various events for political ads. We do not need your reports to know these things will happen.
(And you say you aren’t a lefty partisan…you phony!)
Chris you are wrong but we will let you continue to deny, deny, deny.
others might be interested in a point made by Dick Morris yesterday:
Chris will attempt to say Dick Morris is a discredited source but there is one thing he cannot deny…Dick Morris knows Hillary Clinton and her methods extremely well…he knows what the democrats do when its time for damage control…and he recognizes the fingerprints in this case!
(Some emphasis by NewsMax…follow the link for clarification. All other’s are mine)
Tina: “Chris will attempt to say Dick Morris is a discredited source”
Well, yes, but only because he is. If you are still listening to Dick Morris, you are an idiot.
He is lying in that very article! Morris writes:
“Rice appeared on five Sunday talk shows two days later and on each show, she falsely claimed that an internet video caused a “spontaneous” demonstration that eventually erupted into the deadly violence in Benghazi.
But that never made sense, because the CIA memo never mentioned anything about a video.”
WRONG! The CIA talking points clearly state that the Benghazi attack was connected to the events in Cairo. What triggered the events in Cairo? The video. That has never been a subject for debate.
Dick Morris knows this. He also knows that anyone still stupid enough to trust his opinion on anything won’t care.
“… a little-watched Internet video.”
Are you nuts? Trying to rewrite recent history … again? And I could pull six other similarly bogus phrases out of that post.
And this:
“Zero people have been held responsible, neither in Washington nor Northern Africa.”
This is just a lie. A charming fellow named Khattala has been indicted, and we’ll get our hands on him eventually.
We cannot respect you or your arguments when you do this kind of thing.
Re: “Yes, we do have proof that the CIA established Rice’s talking points. We have had this proof for a year now.”
Uh, no you do not, you demented liar. In testimony before Congress.