Benghazi-gate

[MalibuGuru]

[nw30]

Should be good, I just got blown off my 3.7 at Arroyo today, and the strong wind is kicking up a wind swell, which we need, it got pretty flat after that last swell.

[MalibuGuru]

[swchandler]

In a couple more weeks, and I have the doctor's blessing to go windsurfing. After being beached for nearly 6 months, I'm sure I'll be real weak and rusty. Probably no big days until I can steel up a bit.

[mac]

Techno--as you may know, there is often a lot of confusion at the beginning of some disaster. At least one of the early reports did note that there were demonstrations against that video in Egypt and other Arab areas. That lunatic, right wing video. There was also a substantial CIA operation in Libya, with multiple agents in a safe house in Benghazi some distance away from the embassy. Obama had a duty to protect the security of that operation, although it is likely that the CIA operation had something to do with hostility.

Several of the early hysterical right wing accounts were factually completely wrong. Some said that there were two attacks, separated by hours, leaving enough time to scramble troops from Italy. Wrong, and the incident site commanders with the available force, the CIA agents a few miles away, decided it was too late. Other accounts had Stevens in various places. Wrong, he was in the safe room at the Embassy, where the guards took him when the assailants came over the walls/through the gates, and he died of smoke inhalation.

So the so called "spin" that the GOP continues to push is that Obama lied when he said Al Queda was on the run. Well, reports mentioned above, in the British press, were for elimination of something over 90% of the Al Queda targets eliminated. Seems like that qualifies as on the run. Other sources did not identify any of the substantial militias in Libya as Al Queda. Doesn't remotely seem like a lie to me.

I have always doubted the effectiveness of a "kill the terrorists" approach, whether fostered by Bush or Obama. The mechanisms of killing the terrorists create new terrorists. But what alternatives have the Republicans offered? None, only baseless attacks, hoping for a smoking gun.

[pueno]

.
'Delusional Minority' Driving GOP on Benghazi, David Plouffe Says

By MaryAlice Parks | ABC News

here was “no conspiracy” behind the White House’s decision not to release an internal email related to Benghazi until this week, but a “very loud, delusional minority” is driving the Republican Party to politicize the issue, former Obama White House senior adviser David Plouffe said today.

“I think lawyers have spoken to this and it’s out now,” Plouffe, an ABC News contributor, said today on the “This Week” roundtable. “What Benghazi was was a tragedy. What we need to do is figure out how to prevent it from happening again and to try and hold those accountable as we did [Osama] bin Laden. It took a while, but after 11 years we did.”

Republicans have called the newly released email a “smoking gun,” with House Speaker John Boehner on Friday calling for a select committee to investigate the attack.

The email message deals with preparations for then-U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice’s first round of Sunday morning interviews after the Benghazi attack. It lists as a “goal” for the interviews “to show that these protests were rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”

ABC News contributor and syndicated radio host Laura Ingraham criticized the administration for considering politics after the tragedy.

“What we know now from the email is that from the beginning, the administration saw Benghazi as a political problem,” Ingraham said on “This Week.”

“First of all, we have to not forget we have four dead Americans, the U.S. ambassadors’ body was dragged through the streets,” she continued. “It was beyond heartbreaking and beyond infuriating. We still have no one in custody, we have an arrest warrant out, and no one in custody, and in the immediate aftermath, the response was to go political.”

Plouffe countered that Republicans are guilty of attempting to use the attack for political gain.

“The USS Cole bombing, 17 of our sailors died weeks before the 2000 election. What did then Governor [George w.] Bush say? It’s time for a nation to speak as one voice,” Plouffe said. “This has been politicized like we’ve never seen before and I think what’s happening, Richard Nixon talked about a silent majority back in 1968, there’s a very loud, delusional minority that’s driving our politics, that’s in control of the Republican Party.”

“There is no conspiracy here at all,” he added.

Source: abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2014/05/delusional-minority-driving-gop-on-benghazi-david-plouffe-says/

.

[mac]

Oh my god--did Obama officials prepare for a Sunday news show by pushing their interpretation which reflected best on them? That must be a first.


Did Laura Ingraham get anything right on Benghazi so far?

[MalibuGuru]

[pueno]

[nw30]