Benghazi Testimony By Petraeus Shreds GOP Attack O

[Seascapes]

[Originalist]

Originally Posted by Seascapes

There was no lies and cover up with any of these.

[Cindy]

Originally Posted by Seascapes

Are you kidding me? Do you really believe they didn't already know? And I don't care how big a font you use or what background, that is typical government and media tactics.

[Jermyn Davidson]

Breitbart, FOX, CNN, and MSNBC all report Petraeus as indicating on SEPTEMBER 14, 2012 that what happened in Benghazi was likely a spontaneous event.

"The clear impression that we were given was that this overwhelming amount of evidence was that it arose out of a spontaneous demonstration and it was not a terrorist attack."

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/11/16...-libya-doesnt/

http://www.cnn.com/2012/11/16/politi...ngs/index.html

http://tv.msnbc.com/2012/11/16/david...eaked-details/


Interesting timeline presented by Breitbart. Note the reference to Petraeus for Sptember 14, 2012.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2...l-and-Benghazi


MSNBC quotes Sen McCain's summation of Petraeus' recent testimony as being, "complete."

Now the GOP want to grill Susan Rice when it has already been released to the public that the "talking points" she received did not specifically mention terrorist attack.

Interestingly enough, the FBI called the Benghazi attack a terrorist attack from the beginning-- but the CIA did not do so, initially.

These are the facts as released right now.

There is NOTHING to indicate wrong doing by the President or Susan Rice. In fact, Susan Rice did not lie at all! Still, there is much that would indicate that there was an intel screw up somewhere.

[deacon blues]

Liberal NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd even excoriates Rice JD:

Ambitious to be secretary of state, Susan Rice wanted to prove she had the gravitas for the job and help out the White House. So the ambassador to the United Nations agreed to a National Security Council request to go on all five Sunday shows to talk about the attack on the American consulate in Libya.

“She saw this as a great opportunity to go out and close the stature gap,” said one administration official. “She was focused on the performance, not the content. People said, ‘It’s sad because it was one of her best performances.’ But it’s not a movie, it’s the news. Everyone in politics thinks, you just get your good talking points and learn them and reiterate them on camera. But what if they’re not good talking points? What if what you’re saying isn’t true, even if you’re saying it well?"

Testifying on Capitol Hill on Friday, the beheaded Head Spook David Petraeus said the C.I.A. knew quickly that the Benghazi raid was a terrorist attack.

“It was such a no-brainer,” one intelligence official told me.

Intelligence officials suspected affiliates of Al Qaeda and named them in their original talking points for Rice, but that information was deemed classified and was softened to “extremists” as the talking points were cycled past Justice, State, the National Security Council and other intelligence analysts.

As The Times’s Eric Schmitt wrote, some analysts worried that identifying the groups “could reveal that American spy services were eavesdropping on the militants — a fact most insurgents are already aware of.”

Rice was given the toned-down talking points, but she has access to classified information. Though she told Bob Schieffer on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the extremist elements could have included Qaeda affiliates or Al Qaeda itself, she mostly used her appearances to emphasize the story line of the spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Muslim video. She disputed the contention of the president of Libya’s General National Congress, who called the attack “preplanned” when he talked to Schieffer just before Rice.

Some have wondered if Rice, who has a bull-in-a-china-shop reputation, is diplomatic enough for the top diplomatic job. But she would have been wise to be more bull-in-a-china-shop and vet her talking points, given that members of the intelligence and diplomatic communities and sources in news accounts considered it a terrorist attack days before Rice went on the shows. (The president and his spokesman also clung to the video story for too long.)

Rice should have been wary of a White House staff with a tendency to gild the lily, with her pal Valerie Jarrett and other staffers zealous about casting the president in a more flattering light, like national security officials filigreeing the story of the raid on Osama to say Bin Laden fought back. Did administration officials foolishly assume that if affiliates of Al Qaeda were to blame, it would dilute the credit the president got for decimating Al Qaeda? Were aides overeager to keep Mitt Romney, who had stumbled after the Benghazi attack by accusing the president of appeasing Islamic extremists, on the defensive?

Writing in a 2002 book about President Clinton’s failure to intervene in the genocide in Rwanda, Samantha Power, now a National Security Council official, suggested that Rice was swayed by domestic politics when, as a rising star at the N.S.C. who would soon become Clinton’s director for African affairs, she mused about the ’94 midterms, “If we use the word ‘genocide’ and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November election?”

An Africa expert, Rice should have realized that when a gang showed up with R.P.G.’s and mortars in a place known as a hotbed of Qaeda sympathizers and Islamic extremist training camps, it was not anger over a movie. She should have been savvy enough to wonder why the wily Hillary was avoiding the talk shows.

The president’s fierce defense of Rice had virile flare. But he might have been better off leaving it to aides, so he did not end up going mano a mano with his nemesis John McCain on an appointment he hasn’t even made (though now Obama might feel compelled to, just to prove that he can’t be pushed around), and so he could focus on fiscal cliff bipartisanship.

His argument that Rice “had nothing to do with Benghazi,” raises the question: Then why was she the point person?

The president’s protecting a diplomatic damsel in distress made Rice look more vulnerable, when her reason for doing those shows in the first place was to look more venerable.

[deacon blues]

Originally Posted by Cindy

Are you kidding me? Do you really believe they didn't already know? And I don't care how big a font you use or what background, that is typical government and media tactics.

Here's the actual quote from the NY Times, a quote Seascape's poster conveniently leaves incomplete:

Eric Schmitt wrote, some analysts worried that identifying the groups “could reveal that American spy services were eavesdropping on the militants — a fact most insurgents are already aware of.”

You are spot on Cindy!

[Seascapes]

These is NO conspiracy and the republicans just wanted to start a smear before the elections, that is the ONLY conspiracy... which began, January 2009 to keep President Obama from being re-elected... IT DIDN'T WORK... so get over it... and NOW they need to work for the American people instead of their "party"... The republicans will let our country go down the drain, for their PARTY... The American people has spoken from the ballot box and will speak again in 2014...

[Originalist]

Originally Posted by Seascapes

These is NO conspiracy and the republicans just wanted to start a smear before the elections, that is the ONLY conspiracy... which began, January 2009 to keep President Obama from being re-elected... IT DIDN'T WORK... so get over it... and NOW they need to work for the American people instead of their "party"... The republicans will let our country go down the drain, for their PARTY... The American people has spoken from the ballot box and will speak again in 2014...

The STATES will speak loudly very soon, hopefully making national elections less and less significant.

[deacon blues]

Originally Posted by Seascapes

These is NO conspiracy and the republicans just wanted to start a smear before the elections, that is the ONLY conspiracy... which began, January 2009 to keep President Obama from being re-elected... IT DIDN'T WORK... so get over it... and NOW they need to work for the American people instead of their "party"... The republicans will let our country go down the drain, for their PARTY... The American people has spoken from the ballot box and will speak again in 2014...

Our president is going to actually have to lead rather than campaign. Just because he won an election doesn't give him carte blanche to do whatever he wants. YOUR PARTY, i.e. Senator Diane Feinstein, a DEMOCRAT has been very vocal about wanting to know unanswered questions. So this isn't just a Republican effort. Presidents should be accountable to the people and the House of Reps and Senators represent the PEOPLE.

Our president could simply put this all to rest. He could go on record saying "I didn't know anything about terrorists at Benghazi until three weeks after Sept 11. And the reason we adamantly stated that the attack was a demonstration for three weeks was because ____________________. And the person who decided to remove terrorist language from the talking points was _______________ and here's why..."

That's what leaders do. They let the buck stop with them rather than blame the intelligence community, conservatives who are out to get them, George W Bush, Dick Cheney, racists, Fox News, et al.

Just answer the questions Mr. President.

[deacon blues]

Originally Posted by deacon blues

Our president is going to actually have to lead rather than campaign. Just because he won an election doesn't give him carte blanche to do whatever he wants. YOUR PARTY, i.e. Senator Diane Feinstein, a DEMOCRAT has been very vocal about wanting to know unanswered questions. So this isn't just a Republican effort. Presidents should be accountable to the people and the House of Reps and Senators represent the PEOPLE.

Our president could simply put this all to rest. He could go on record saying "I didn't know anything about terrorists at Benghazi until three weeks after Sept 11. And the reason we adamantly stated that the attack was a demonstration for three weeks was because ____________________. And the person who decided to remove terrorist language from the talking points was _______________ and here's why..."

That's what leaders do. They let the buck stop with them rather than blame the intelligence community, conservatives who are out to get them, George W Bush, Dick Cheney, racists, Fox News, et al.

Just answer the questions Mr. President.

BUMP