rush limpdick says he thinks obama orchestrated the attack.
that alone should tell anyone that that rush's allies orchestrated the attack
Moderators: Elvis, DrVolin, Jeff
by justdrew » Thu May 09, 2013 9:20 pm
by Hunter » Fri May 10, 2013 12:15 am
by FourthBase » Fri May 10, 2013 7:53 am
by coffin_dodger » Fri May 10, 2013 8:11 am
by justdrew » Fri May 10, 2013 8:14 am
FourthBase wrote:I'll mostly repeat what I suggested to two people in a private message:
What if there was, in fact, serious foul play, and it was committed solely by right-wingers in order to depose Obama et. al.? Would it not be tragically laughable, if consideration of that most foul right-wing-executed plot was then vehemently discouraged by the honorable left because "only right-wingers would consider foul play re: Benghazi", or some mind-numbing jungle of right-wing-generated misdirection and unfortunate liberal self-handcuffing that the ruthless right-wingers would love for us to voluntarily inflict on ourselves out of an ordinarily-spot-on instinct to distrust right-wing bullshit? That is what I meant by epistemic closure and cognitive dissonance, phenomena which, if not carefully guarded against, by all of us, about everything, can lead to things like any such right-wing Benghazi perps getting exactly what they want: Away with it, without any serious attention paid by the left.
by seemslikeadream » Fri May 10, 2013 8:39 am
.
Jason Chaffetz Admits House GOP Cut Funding For Embassy Security: 'You Have To Prioritize Things'
The Huffington Post | By Sarah Bufkin
Posted: 10/10/2012 1:32 pm Updated: 10/11/2012 1:55 pm
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) voted to cut back on funds for embassy security. (AP Photo/J. Scott)
Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) acknowledged on Wednesday that House Republicans had consciously voted to reduce the funds allocated to the State Department for embassy security since winning the majority in 2010.
On Wednesday morning, CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien asked the Utah Republican if he had "voted to cut the funding for embassy security."
"Absolutely," Chaffetz said. "Look we have to make priorities and choices in this country. We have…15,000 contractors in Iraq. We have more than 6,000 contractors, a private army there, for President Obama, in Baghdad. And we’re talking about can we get two dozen or so people into Libya to help protect our forces. When you’re in tough economic times, you have to make difficult choices. You have to prioritize things.”
For the past two years, House Republicans have continued to deprioritize the security forces protecting State Department personnel around the world. In fiscal year 2011, lawmakers shaved $128 million off of the administration's request for embassy security funding. House Republicans drained off even more funds in fiscal year 2012 -- cutting back on the department's request by $331 million
The Real Reason Why Republicans Pretend to Care About Benghazi
May 5, 2013 By Allen Clifton 100 Comments
12Share on Tumblr
Just before this past November’s elections, on September 11, 2012, there was an attack on the American embassy in Benghazi, Libya resulting in 4 American deaths.
This was the moment conservatives had been waiting for, something to spin in order to create some kind of conspiracy hoping to make a last ditch effort to defeat President Obama. They needed this because they damn sure knew Romney couldn’t do it on his own.
What followed was pathetic. “Shocked and appalled” conservatives all across the country trying to make Benghazi into the next Watergate scandal.
They did everything they could to try and muddy the waters just enough to make people think Obama and his administration were generating some elaborate conspiracy to cover up incompetence.
I would elaborate on the “cover up” but the theories vary greatly from Republican to Republican. Even the most vocal critic of Obama’s handling of Benghazi, John McCain, admitted there was indeed no cover up. There’s even the new one where Obama is preventing, and threatening, individuals from testifying about Benghazi—only Republicans seem unable to provide any proof of this. Well, proof that isn’t from right-wing blogs that make up “proof.”
In fact, if you read through all these ridiculous theories (which trust me, you don’t want to do—it’s a mess of “What the hell are these people babbling about?”) their whole “conspiracy” breaks down to 3 key points:
Some wording was changed to omit references to a terrorist attack in the original briefing, which as it turned out Obama had nothing to do with.
Military forces could have been utilized to possibly save lives. Which the official DoD report details the timeline of the events, clearly showing they acted swiftly but ultimately didn’t have enough time to deploy troops to save the 4 Americans killed during the attack.
Hillary Clinton was incompetent in her duty as Secretary of State.
What you didn’t hear mentioned by the likes of Fox News, Glenn Beck, Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh and their fellow fear mongers was that Congressional Republicans had voted in both 2011 and 2012 to cut funding for embassy security.
In fact, the Obama administration had requested more funding for embassy security—but this was denied by House Republicans to a tune of cuts for embassy funding by $138 million in 2011 and $331 million in 2012.
But the only thing we need to pay attention to in this is #3, to make Hillary Clinton seem incompetent. When they realized their fear mongering, and pathetic attempts to politicize 4 American deaths, wasn’t going to defeat Obama—they realized this was their only hope to defeat Hillary if she decides to run in 2016.
They know that if Clinton runs in 2016, she will crush anyone they decide to run against her. So what else can they do? They need to create some kind of “boogeyman” to use against her—and that’s what they’ve been trying to do.
Hell, Rand Paul called the Benghazi attack the worst event since 9/11. That tells you all you need to know about how out of touch and delusional these people are with their attempts to attack Hillary Clinton.
I always find it ironic how so many conservatives claim to care about 4 American deaths in Benghazi, when they voted for George W. Bush twice. You remember him, right? The President responsible for over 5,000 American deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, who had intelligence prior to 9/11 yet did nothing, who invaded a country with the threat of WMD’s (yet found zero) and while Bush was President we saw 11 embassies attacked by terrorists.
What this “outrage” about Benghazi really stems from was the last ditch effort to try and defeat President Obama last November, and the beginnings of their groundwork to try and defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016.
But what it comes down to for me is this: If you voted for a man who’s responsible for over 5,000 American deaths, and was President when over 11 different American embassies were attacked—you should probably save this “outrage” over 4 deaths in Benghazi.
Especially when you didn’t seem to mind Americans dying while you were voting for George W. Bush. Because if you did, you damn sure wouldn’t have re-elected him.
by lupercal » Fri May 10, 2013 10:37 am
by seemslikeadream » Fri May 10, 2013 10:42 am
lupercal wrote:^ LIHOP on April 15? Maybe but this one seems much too tricky for LIHOP. And 4th base, yes, left-gatekeepers at all level are ironic but a reality. And the professional liberal-left pundits are as chary of "conspiracies" as the wingers, more chary now that Fox and friends have opened the floodgates to Obama conspiracy-mongering. In other words it's just another RW advantage they've built into their fake info-media colossus.
Republicans lead a witch hunt on Benghazi
By Eugene Robinson, Published: May 9
Those who are trying to make the Benghazi tragedy into a scandal for the Obama administration really ought to decide what story line they want to sell.
Actually, by “those” I mean Republicans, and by “the Obama administration” I mean Hillary Clinton. The only coherent purpose I can discern in all of this is to sully Clinton’s record as secretary of state in case she runs for president in 2016.
Benghazi attacks hearing: Three State Department officials appeared Wednesday before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in Washington. One of the officials, Eric Nordstrom, said the government’s probe into the deadly Sept. 11, 2012, attacks on U.S. compounds in Benghazi, Libya, failed to adequately take senior leaders to task.
You may also like...
That’s not a particularly noble way to use the deaths of four American public servants, but at least it’s understandable. Attempts to concoct some kind of sinister Whitewater-style conspiracy, however, don’t even begin to make sense.
The hearing convened Wednesday by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) produced a riveting narrative of the chaotic events in Libya last September. But what was the supposedly unforgivable crime?
Did Clinton’s State Department fail to provide adequate security for the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi? In retrospect, obviously so. But the three diplomats who testified at the hearing gave no evidence that this failure sprang from anything other than the need to use limited resources as efficiently as possible.
House Republicans who voted to cut funding for State Department security should understand that their philosophy — small government is always better — has consequences. Bureaucrats have to make judgment calls. Sometimes they will be wrong.
Is the scandal supposed to be that a four-man Special Forces team was not sent from Tripoli to help defend the Benghazi compound? This is a decision that clearly still haunts and enrages Gregory Hicks, the former deputy chief of mission in Libya, who sat helplessly in the capital while Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were being killed at the consulate 650 miles away.
But the decision not to dispatch troops was made by the military chain of command, not by Clinton or anyone who reported to her. Superior officers decided this team was needed to help evacuate the embassy in Tripoli, which was seen as a potential target for a Benghazi-style attack.
The Pentagon has concluded that the team, in any event, could not have arrived in Benghazi in time to make a difference. Hicks testified that he disagrees. It is difficult not to feel his pain. But it is also difficult, frankly, to believe that he knows more about deploying troops than do the professionals.
Well, then, maybe the transgression is that administration officials, for some unfathomable reason, willfully lied when they said the attack was in reaction to an anti-Islam video produced in the United States and disseminated on the Internet.
The problem is that there were, in fact, tumultuous anti-American demonstrations taking place in cities throughout the Muslim world because of the video. President Obama labeled the Benghazi assault an act of terror almost immediately — as Mitt Romney learned in the second presidential debate — but it was hard to imagine that the attack was completely unrelated to what was happening in Cairo, Tunis, Khartoum and Jakarta.
The Obama administration was eager to make clear, as George W. Bush tried to do many times, that the United States is not fighting a war against Islam. The administration was slow to recognize that the uproar over the video, at most, provided the opportune moment for a well-planned, highly organized terrorist attack involving heavy weapons. This was an error, but it makes no sense as a deliberate attempt to deceive. What would be the motive? To cover up the facts and maximize the administration’s embarrassment once the truth finally came out?
Maybe that’s it: a cover-up. Perhaps the administration conspired to hide Clinton’s failure to protect our diplomats overseas. But she commissioned an independent report by former ambassador Thomas Pickering that said — well, I’ll just quote Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee: “The Pickering Report appears to make clear what we already knew: that there was strategic warning from the intelligence community of a dangerous security environment in Benghazi and that our diplomats were failed by the bureaucracy at the State Department.”
Some cover-up.
Was Hicks “demoted” for blowing the whistle on Benghazi, as he testified? He asked to come home, understandably, and the department parked him in a desk job — with the same pay and rank — until something more to his liking comes open. Has he been muzzled? Hardly, as evidenced by his testimony Wednesday.
I can only hope that Issa’s witch hunt leads to better security for our brave diplomats. Even the cheapest political stunt can have a silver lining.
by FourthBase » Fri May 10, 2013 10:45 am
no trickery involved....just cut off funding and let it happen on purpose.....plain, simple, out in the open for everyone to see...no conspiracy involved
by seemslikeadream » Fri May 10, 2013 11:36 am
13 Benghazis That Occurred on Bush's Watch Without a Peep from Fox News
Posted: 05/09/2013 2:19 pm
The Republican inquisition over the attacks against Americans in Benghazi has never really gone away, but it appears as though in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing and the House Oversight Committee's Benghazi hearings this week there are renewed psycho-histrionics over Benghazi.
Lindsey Graham and Fox News Channel in particular are each crapping their cages over new allegations from an alleged whistleblower, while they continue to deal in previously debunked falsehoods about the sequence of events during and following the attacks. Fox News is predictably helming the biggest raft of hooey on the situation -- turning its attention to Hillary Clinton in an abundantly obvious early move to stymie her presidential run before it even begins.
So I thought I'd revisit some territory I covered back in October as a bit of a refresher -- especially since it appears as if no one, including and especially the traditional press, intends to ask any of these obnoxious, opportunistic liars about why they're so obsessed by this one attack yet they entirely ignored the dozen-plus consulate/embassy attacks that occurred when George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were allegedly "keeping us safe."
The Benghazi attacks (the consulate and the CIA compound) are absolutely not unprecedented even though they're being treated that way by Republicans who are deliberately ignoring anything that happened prior to Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009.
January 22, 2002. Calcutta, India. Gunmen associated with Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami attack the U.S. Consulate. Five people are killed.
June 14, 2002. Karachi, Pakistan. Suicide bomber connected with al Qaeda attacks the U.S. Consulate, killing 12 and injuring 51.
October 12, 2002. Denpasar, Indonesia. U.S. diplomatic offices bombed as part of a string of "Bali Bombings." No fatalities.
February 28, 2003. Islamabad, Pakistan. Several gunmen fire upon the U.S. Embassy. Two people are killed.
May 12, 2003. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Armed al Qaeda terrorists storm the diplomatic compound, killing 36 people including nine Americans. The assailants committed suicide by detonating a truck bomb.
July 30, 2004. Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A suicide bomber from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan attacks the U.S. Embassy, killing two people.
December 6, 2004. Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda terrorists storm the U.S. Consulate and occupy the perimeter wall. Nine people are killed.
March 2, 2006. Karachi, Pakistan again. Suicide bomber attacks the U.S. Consulate killing four people, including U.S. diplomat David Foy who was directly targeted by the attackers. (I wonder if Lindsey Graham or Fox News would even recognize the name "David Foy." This is the third Karachi terrorist attack in four years on what's considered American soil.)
September 12, 2006. Damascus, Syria. Four armed gunmen shouting "Allahu akbar" storm the U.S. Embassy using grenades, automatic weapons, a car bomb and a truck bomb. Four people are killed, 13 are wounded.
January 12, 2007. Athens, Greece. Members of a Greek terrorist group called the Revolutionary Struggle fire a rocket-propelled grenade at the U.S. Embassy. No fatalities.
March 18, 2008. Sana'a, Yemen. Members of the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic Jihad of Yemen fire a mortar at the U.S. Embassy. The shot misses the embassy, but hits nearby school killing two.
July 9, 2008. Istanbul, Turkey. Four armed terrorists attack the U.S. Consulate. Six people are killed.
September 17, 2008. Sana'a, Yemen. Terrorists dressed as military officials attack the U.S. Embassy with an arsenal of weapons including RPGs and detonate two car bombs. Sixteen people are killed, including an American student and her husband (they had been married for three weeks when the attack occurred). This is the second attack on this embassy in seven months.
A few observations about this timeline. My initial list was quoted from an article on the Daily Kos which actually contained several errors and only 11 attacks (the above timeline contains all 13 attacks). Also, my list above doesn't include the numerous and fatal attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad during the Iraq war -- a war that was vocally supported by Lindsey Graham, John McCain and Fox News Channel.
Speaking of Graham, I ran a search on each attack along with the name "Lindsey Graham" in the hopes of discovering that Graham had perhaps commented about the attacks or raised some questions about why the administration didn't prevent the attacks or respond accordingly to prevent additional embassy attacks. No results. Of course. Now, this could mean the search wasn't exhaustive enough. But one thing's for sure: neither Graham nor any of his cohorts launched a crusade against the Bush administration and the State Department in any of those cases -- no one did, including the congressional Democrats, by the way.
This leads us to the ultimate point here. Not only have numerous sources previously debunked the Benghazi information being peddled by the Republicans and Fox News (for example, contrary to what the Republicans are saying, yes, reinforcements did in fact arrive before the attack on the CIA compound), but none of these people raised a single word of protest when, for example, American embassies in Yemen and Pakistan were attacked numerous times. Why didn't the Bush administration do something to secure the compounds after the first attacks? Why didn't he provide additional security?
Where was your inquest after the Karachi attacks, Mr. Graham? Where were you after the Sana'a attacks, Mr. Hannity? What about all of the embassy attacks in Iraq that I didn't even list here, Mr. McCain? Do you realize how many people died in attacks on U.S. embassies and consulates when Bush was supposedly keeping us safe, Mr. Ailes? Just once I'd like to hear David Gregory or George Stephanopoulos or Wolf Blitzer ask a Republican member of Congress about the above timeline and why they said nothing at the time of each attack. Just once.
Nearly every accusation being issued about Benghazi could've been raised about the Bush-era attacks, and yet these self-proclaimed truth-seekers refused to, in their words, undermine the commander-in-chief while troops were in harm's way (a line they repeated over and over again during those years).
So we're only left to conclude the obvious. The investigations and accusations and conspiracy theories are entirely motivated by politics and a strategy to escalate this to an impeachment trial. In doing so, the Republicans have the opportunity not only to crush the president's second term, but also to sabotage the potential for a Hillary Clinton presidency.
Even if they never arrive at that goal, they have in their possession a cudgel formed of horseshit -- a means of flogging the current administration with the singularly effective Republican marketing/noise machine, including the conservative entertainment complex. Very seldom does this machine fail to revise history and distort the truth. Ultimately, they don't even need a full-blown impeachment proceeding when they have a population of way too many truthers and automatons who take all of these lies at face value -- not to mention dubiously sourced chunks of "truth" proffered by radio and cable news conspiracy theorists who, if nothing else, are masters at telling angry conservatives precisely what they want to hear: that the probably-Muslim president is weak on terrorism. And so they'll keep repeating "Benghazi-Gate, Benghazi-Gate, Benghazi-Gate!" without any regard for history or reality. Like always.
by FourthBase » Fri May 10, 2013 12:14 pm
Nearly every accusation being issued about Benghazi could've been raised about the Bush-era attacks, and yet these self-proclaimed truth-seekers refused to, in their words, undermine the commander-in-chief while troops were in harm's way (a line they repeated over and over again during those years).
So we're only left to conclude the obvious. The investigations and accusations and conspiracy theories are entirely motivated by politics and a strategy to escalate this to an impeachment trial. In doing so, the Republicans have the opportunity not only to crush the president's second term, but also to sabotage the potential for a Hillary Clinton presidency.
by justdrew » Fri May 10, 2013 5:02 pm
FourthBase wrote:Nearly every accusation being issued about Benghazi could've been raised about the Bush-era attacks, and yet these self-proclaimed truth-seekers refused to, in their words, undermine the commander-in-chief while troops were in harm's way (a line they repeated over and over again during those years).
So we're only left to conclude the obvious. The investigations and accusations and conspiracy theories are entirely motivated by politics and a strategy to escalate this to an impeachment trial. In doing so, the Republicans have the opportunity not only to crush the president's second term, but also to sabotage the potential for a Hillary Clinton presidency.
Right, all of that seems true. True enough.
What isn't obvious to conclude is: Nothing seriously wicked happened at Benghazi. I don't see the point in jumping to the conclusions that right-wing evil black-operators didn't actively generate the attack in some fashion. I don't understand why anyone here would jump to that conclusion. Well, I have a guess. Several conflicting layers of epistemic closure and cognitive dissonance. Thin layers, maybe only two, easily swept off by oneself once it occurs to do so.
by 8bitagent » Fri May 10, 2013 7:19 pm
by 8bitagent » Fri May 10, 2013 7:22 pm
FourthBase wrote:no trickery involved....just cut off funding and let it happen on purpose.....plain, simple, out in the open for everyone to see...no conspiracy involved
Listen to yourself. The extreme right-wing. The party of Rove and Cheney.
No trickery involved? No conspiracy involved? You don't really...do you?
You don't think a neo-con could have, say, outsourced Libyan mercs?
by justdrew » Fri May 10, 2013 7:24 pm
8bitagent wrote:FourthBase wrote:no trickery involved....just cut off funding and let it happen on purpose.....plain, simple, out in the open for everyone to see...no conspiracy involved
Listen to yourself. The extreme right-wing. The party of Rove and Cheney.
No trickery involved? No conspiracy involved? You don't really...do you?
You don't think a neo-con could have, say, outsourced Libyan mercs?
The neocons begged for the US to finance/arm/support/flood Sunni Islamic militants to topple Ghadafy, regardless of ties to al Qaeda in Iraq. Noone in the media seems to mention this...this, after they were buddy buddy with Ghadafy just a few months prior in 2009/2010
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 156 guests
Powered by phpBB® Forum Software © phpBB Group
Site design by Likely Arts based on "Deluxe" by Artodia.
