And heeeere's... PEGGY!
* * * * * *
What happened in Benghazi last Sept. 11 and 12 was
terrible in every way. The genesis of the scandal? It looks to me like this: The
Obama White House sees every event as a political event. Really, every event,
even an attack on a consulate and the killing of an ambassador.
(*NOD*)
Because of that, it could not tolerate the idea that the
armed assault on the Benghazi consulate was a premeditated act of Islamist
terrorism; that would carry a whole world of unhappy political implications...
and demand certain actions. And the American presidential election was only
eight weeks away. They wanted this problem to go away, or at least to bleed the
meaning from it.
* YEP...
Because the White House could not tolerate the idea of
Benghazi as a planned and deliberate terrorist assault, it had to be made into
something else. So they said it was a spontaneous street demonstration over an
anti-Muhammad YouTube video made by a nutty California con man. After all, that
had happened earlier in the day, in Cairo. It sounded plausible.
(*SILENCE*)
And maybe they believed it at first. Maybe they wanted to
believe it.
* ONCE AGAIN... THERE WAS NO... NONE... ZILCH... INFO OR
FACT-BASED ANALYSIS TO BACK UP THE FANTASY OF A DEMONSTRATION GONE BAD. THERE
WAS NO DEMONSTRATION. ON THE OTHER HAND, THE FACT OF THE MONTHS LONG
DETERIORATING SECURITY SITUATION IN BENGHAZI WAS WELL KNOWN. (THEY KNEW IT...
AND THEN IGNORED IT... EVEN WORSE... THEY ACTUALLY WITHDREW SECURITY!)
But [it made perfect political sense to send] the message was
out: Provocative video plus primitive street Arabs equals sparky explosion. Not
our fault. Blame the producer!
(Who was promptly jailed...)
* THESE... PEOPLE... ARE... SCUM!
If what happened in Benghazi was not a planned and
prolonged terrorist assault... if it was merely a street demonstration gone bad...
the administration "could not" take military action to protect
Americans there. (You take military action in response to a planned and
coordinated attack by armed combatants. You don't if it's an essentially
meaningless street demonstration that came and went.)
(*PURSED LIPS*)
Why couldn't the administration tolerate the idea that
Benghazi was a planned terrorist event? Because they didn't want this attack
dominating the headline with an election coming.
* DUH!
It would open the administration to criticism of its
intervention in Libya.
* NO $HIT, SHERLOCK!
President Obama had supported overthrowing Moammar
Gadhafi and put U.S. force behind the Libyan rebels. Now Libyans were killing
our diplomats. Was our policy wrong? More importantly, the administration's
efforts against al Qaeda would suddenly come under scrutiny and questioning.
The president, after the killing of Osama bin Laden, had taken to suggesting al
Qaeda was over. Al Qaeda was done.
But if an al Qaeda offshoot in Libya was killing our
diplomats... the age of terrorism was not over.
(*BLOOD BOILING*)
The Obama White House didn't want any story that might
harm, get in the way of, or lessen the extent of the president's coming
victory.
The White House probably anticipated that Mitt Romney
would soon attempt to make points with Benghazi. And indeed he did pounce, too
quickly, the very next morning, giving a statement that was at once aggressive
and forgettable, as was his wont.
* TRUE... (*SHRUG*)
The president's Republican challenger was looking for
gain and didn't find it. But here's the thing. More is expected from the
president than mere politics. That's why we tend to re-elect them. A sitting
president is supposed to be bigger, weightier, more serious than his rival.
* AMERICA'S SITTING PRESIDENT IS A PIECE OF $HIT. ONLY A
PIECE OF $HIT WOULD ALLOW WHAT HAPPENED TO HAPPEN. ONLY A PIECE OF $HIT WOULD
HAVE OK'ed THE COVER-UP. ONLY A PIECE OF $HIT WOULD HAVE PERSONALLY DISENGAGED FROM
THE ONGOING CRISIS AND THUS ALLOWED RESCUE/REINFORCEMENT PROPOSALS TO BE NIXED
BY SOME AS STILL (AFTER EIGHT MONTHS!) UNNAMED INDIVIDUAL OR COMMITTEE.
This week's testimony from Messrs. Hicks, Thompson and
Nordstrom was clarifying, to say the least.
Mr. Hicks, deputy chief of mission at the time of the
attack, said the YouTube video was never an event in Libya, and no one in
Benghazi or Tripoli saw what was happening as a spontaneous street protest.
Beth Jones, the acting assistant secretary of state for
Near Eastern affairs, sent an email on Sept. 12 saying: "The group that
conducted the attacks, Ansar al-Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic
terrorists."
Mr. Hicks himself said he spoke to Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton at 2 a.m. Benghazi time the day after the attack and told her
it was a planned attack, not a street protest.
* AND...??? (READ ON!)
Still, the administration stuck to its story and sent out
Susan Rice - the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., someone with no direct connection
to the event — to go on the Sunday talk shows and insist it was all about a
video.
* I DON'T KNOW WHO IS A BIGGER PIECE OF $HIT - BARRACK OBAMA
OR HILLARY CLINTON.
* BY THE WAY... SPEAKING OF SCUMBAGS... NOTICE... LEON
PANETTA SEEMS TO BE STAYING WELL CLEAR OF THE PUBLIC SPOTLIGHT... AND HE'S BEEN
STAYING OUT OF IT SINCE FLEEING THE ADMINISTRATION!
They sent someone who could function as a mouther of
talking points... someone who was told what to say and could be relied upon to
say it.
* SOMEONE WHO COULD BE COUNTED UPON NOT TO DO HER OWN
HONEST DUE DILIGENCE PRIOR TO JUMPING INTO THE VOID!
All of this is bad enough. Far worse is the implied
question that hung over the House hearing and that cries out for further
investigation. That is the idea that if the administration was to play down the
nature of the attack it would have to play down the response - that is, if you
want something to be a non-story... you have to have a non-response.
So you don't launch a military rescue operation...
You don't scramble jets...
[A]nd you have a rationalization - they're too far away...
they'll never make it in time.
This was probably true, but why not take the chance when
American lives are at stake?
* NO, PEGGY, IT WASN'T TRUE. (NOONAN CAN BE SUCH AN IDIOT!)
BUT YOU GET PARTIAL CREDIT FOR YOUR "WHY NOT TAKE A CHANCE"
EXPRESSION OF THE OBVIOUS.
Mr. Hicks told the compelling story of his talk with the
leader of a special operations team that wanted to fly to Benghazi from Tripoli
to help. The team leader was told to stand down, and he was enraged. Mark
Thompson wanted an emergency support team sent to the consulate and was
confounded when his superiors in Washington would not agree.
* FOR AFTER ALL... THE WHOLE POINT OF HAVING AN EMERGENCY
SUPPORT TEAM IS SO THAT YOU CAN ACTIVATE THE TEAM IN AN EMERGENCY...
Was all this incompetence? Or was it politics disguised
as the fog of war?
* IT WAS BOTH!
Who called these shots and made these decisions? Who
decided to do nothing?
* FOLKS... IT TELLS YOU ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW THAT AFTER
EIGHT MONTHS... (*PAUSE*)... WE STILL DON'T HAVE STRAIGHT ANSWERS TO THESE
QUESTIONS!
From the day of the attack until this week, the White
House spin was too clever by half.
* WELL... "HE WHOSE NAME DARE NOT BE MENTIONED"
BOUGHT IT. (AND FOR ALL I KNOW HE STILL DOES!) AND HE'S THE NORM!
In the weeks and months after the attack White House
spokesmen said they were "investigating" the story; an internal "review" was under
way.
When the story blew open again - last week - they said it
was too far in the past: "Benghazi happened a long time ago." (Jay
Carney, the White House press secretary, really said that.)
Think of that. They can't give answers when the story's
fresh because it just happened - they're looking into it.
Eight months later they don't have anything to say
because it all happened so long ago.
(*RUEFUL SNORT*)
Think of how low your opinion of the American people has
to be to think you can get away, forever, with that.
* WELL... I CAN'T BLAME 'EM FOR THEIR LOW OPINION OF THE
AMERICAN PEOPLE NOWADAYS. I SHARE THAT LOW OPINION.
Will this story ever be completely told? Maybe not.
(*PURSED LIPS*)
But it's not going to go away, either. It's a prime
example of the stupidity of all-politics-all-the-time. You make some bad moves
for political reasons. And then you suffer politically because you made bad
moves.
* SUFFER POLITICALLY...??? UNLESS GOD IS TRULY MERCIFUL,
BARRACK HUSSEIN OBAMA IS GOING TO BE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE
NEXT 44 MONTHS.
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