13 Benghazis That Occurred on Bush’s Watch Without a Peep from Fox News

[Joecooool]

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’s 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-Qaida 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-Qaida 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-Qaida 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-Qaida-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.

[Joecooool]

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.

13 Benghazis That Occurred on Bush’s Watch Without a Peep from Fox News | The Daily Banter

[Torqaholic]

You don't see the difference between people assigned to defend the ambassador and the ambassador? Let me explain it to you.

It's like a chess game, pawns are expendable, your king is not. Lose your king and it is game over.

[Loco Vette]

Not gonna waste the time looking up all of them, but out of the first five precisely none of the results involve embassy or diplomatic personnel making repeated calls warning of danger and screaming for more security, to be ignored by the very departments assigned to protect them. Similarly, I find no mention of a weekslong PR campaign by said departments afterward trying to get everyone to believe that there was nothing the departments could have done about it because the event was a spontaneous mob reaction to an anti-Islamist video.

[Stangkiller]

Originally Posted by Loco Vette

Not gonna waste the time looking up all of them, but out of the first five precisely none of the results involve embassy or diplomatic personnel making repeated calls warning of danger and screaming for more security, to be ignored by the very departments assigned to protect them. Similarly, I find no mention of a weekslong PR campaign by said departments afterward trying to get everyone to believe that there was nothing the departments could have done about it because the event was a spontaneous mob reaction to an anti-Islamist video.

Don't forget the cover ups and fabricated testimony.

[Olustee bus]

Originally Posted by Stangkiller

Don't forget the cover ups and fabricated testimony.

certainly impeachable acts.

[Sea Six]

At this point, Phil, what does it matter?

Those happened a long time ago.

[Chris Fowler]

Originally Posted by Loco Vette

Not gonna waste the time looking up all of them, but out of the first five precisely none of the results involve embassy or diplomatic personnel making repeated calls warning of danger and screaming for more security, to be ignored by the very departments assigned to protect them. Similarly, I find no mention of a weekslong PR campaign by said departments afterward trying to get everyone to believe that there was nothing the departments could have done about it because the event was a spontaneous mob reaction to an anti-Islamist video.

Bingo. The attack was one issue. The reaction and cover-up is what's being investigated.

[6spdC6]

Originally Posted by Sea Six

At this point, Phil, what does it matter?

Those happened a long time ago.

Originally Posted by Chris Fowler

Bingo. The attack was one issue. The reaction and cover-up is what's being investigated.

As usual another fail post by OP Joecool. Keep it up joe you have a hell of a record of shame there!

[Doug28450]

Wasn't it Senator Hillary Clinton who said "we want to know what the White House knew and when they knew it"?

[Sea Six]

Originally Posted by Sea Six

At this point, Phil, what does it matter?

Those happened a long time ago.

[GentleBen]

As a retired military officer I find it incredible that GEN Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that nothing could be done as we did not have complete intelligence. This is coming from the same General who completely reorganized and changed the task mission of his 1st Armored Division to defend Baghdad against insurgents "on the fly" with little or no intelligence.

Are we to believe that in ten hours GEN Dempsey and the $600 billion dollar per year Defense Department could not dispatch one ad hoc rescue team, as our embassy in Tripoli did only to be ordered to "stand down" and not go to Benghazi, or to order one fighter jet to scramble? Have the collective staffs of the Pentagon, Central Command, Special Operations Command, and Africa Command lost the capacity to improvise?

And if so, what does that say about the future. . .

[Joecooool]

Republicans face problem turning Benghazi attack into a scandal | Capitol Hill Blue

Politicians love few things better than a scandal to trip up their opponents, and Republicans hope last year’s fatal attack on U.S. diplomats in Libya will do exactly that to Hillary Rodham Clinton and other Democrats.

History suggests it might be a tough lift. The issue is complex, the next presidential election is more than three years away, and a number of reports and officials have disputed criticisms of Clinton’s role when she was secretary of state.

Still, Republicans and conservative talk hosts are hammering away at Clinton’s and the Obama administration’s handling of the 8-month-old tragedy. A daylong House Oversight Committee hearing Wednesday starred three State Department officials invited by Republicans. Security was poorly handled in Benghazi, Libya, they said, and administration officials later tried to obscure what happened.

But the three men offered little that has not been aired in previous congressional hearings. Afterward, Republicans all but acknowledged they’re still seeking a knockout punch.

“This hearing is now over, but this investigation is not,” said Darrell Issa of California, the hard-charging Republican chairman of the House committee. He urged “whistle-blowers” and “witnesses who have been afraid to come forward” to step up and “tell us your story, and we will make sure it gets public.”

Aside from crippling Clinton in 2016, Republicans hope public anger over the Benghazi attacks and their aftermath will besmirch congressional Democrats in next year’s midterm elections.

By late Wednesday, Democrats expressed confidence.

“The unsubstantiated Republican allegations about Benghazi disintegrated one by one,” said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the House committee’s top Democrat. “There’s no evidence of a conspiracy to withhold military assets for political reasons, no evidence of a cover-up.”

Clinton, seen by many as the early Democratic favorite for president in 2016, generally drew strong reviews for her four-year stint as secretary of state. Her darkest moment was the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi.

Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed. Top administration officials initially said the attackers were spontaneous protesters, angry about an anti-Islamic video. They later acknowledged the attackers were well-equipped terrorists acting under plans.

A major independent inquiry largely absolved Clinton of wrongdoing.

The findings incensed many GOP leaders and conservative news outlets, who portray Benghazi as a simmering scandal about to erupt.

“The people back home are standing with you to get to the truth of this, and they will not sit down until they get the answers,” Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., told relatives of the Benghazi victims.

Ethical lapses and even full-blown scandals have a mixed record of influencing U.S. elections. Watergate not only forced Richard Nixon from the White House in August 1974; it also triggered crushing losses for congressional Republicans in midterm elections three months later.

President Gerald Ford‘s pardon of Nixon may have ended any hope he had of defeating Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Other scandals, however, did far less political damage. The Iran-Contra affair of Ronald Reagan’s second term, and Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky did not prevent either man’s vice president from winning the popular vote in the next presidential election.

More recently, Virginia Democrats were crowing about news that Gov. Bob McDonnell — a potential presidential contender — accepted large, unreported gifts from a businessman. A short time later, a Washington Post poll showed high approval ratings for McDonnell and scant public interest in the budding “scandal” that titillated the state’s political elite.

Some Democratic campaign veterans say the Benghazi affair is too complex and too muddled to swing national elections next year and in 2016.

“The Republicans are pulling out the stops to manufacture a scandal, but it’s not likely to stick on Hillary Clinton or Democrats in general,” said veteran Clinton strategist Doug Hattaway.

Republican consultant Steve Lombardo said: “The impact on 2014 is likely to be minimal. However, there are a few 2016 Democrat White House aspirants who are feeling a little better about their chances today,” especially Vice President Joe Biden.

GOP activists seem determined to push on. The Republican National Committee floods social media sites almost hourly with headlines such as “So many questions about Benghazi.”

Soon after White House press secretary Jay Carney was forced again on Wednesday to defend the administration’s record in the Benghazi attacks, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner issued a point-by-point rejoinder.

A Boehner aide said the speaker will call on the State Department to release internal emails from last September, regarding political fallout from the Benghazi attacks, that were described in part at Wednesday’s hearing by Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C.

Gowdy said he will find the truth, “and I don’t give a damn whose career is impacted.”

Democratic Rep. Mark Pocan of Wisconsin showed little concern. “I don’t think there’s a smoking gun today,” he told the panel. “I don’t think there’s a lukewarm slingshot.”

“It may not be a smoking gun or a warm slingshot,” Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., said in the hearing’s final hour. “But we have four dead Americans,” and Georgians “are looking for the truth.”

[Loco Vette]

Great nondefense, that's what you got right there now!

[Joecooool]

Originally Posted by Loco Vette

Great nondefense, that's what you got right there now!

Keep wasting your time on this stupid shit.

The democrats are going to eat your lunch next year with the lack of action on rational gun legislation.

[VITE1]

Originally Posted by Joecooool

June 14, 2002. Karachi, Pakistan. Suicide bomber connected with al-Qaida attacks the U.S. Consulate, killing 12 and injuring 51.
50 arrested with 5 Indian Police officers killed.
2002 attack on American cultural centre in Kolkata - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
called a terroist attack.

October 12, 2002. Denpasar, Indonesia. U.S. diplomatic offices bombed as part of a string of “Bali Bombings.” No fatalities.

Conected withteh Bali nitclub bombings. Labeled a Terroist attack.


February 28, 2003. Islamabad, Pakistan. Several gunmen fire upon the U.S. Embassy. Two people are killed.

No Americans kill One person arrested Labeled a terroist attack.
CNN.com - Karachi consulate shooting kills 2 - Feb. 28, 2003

May 12, 2003. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Armed al-Qaida terrorists storm the diplomatic compound killing 36 people including nine Americans. The assailants committed suicide by detonating a truck bomb.

Immediatly labeled a terror attack onthe compond where Ex pats lived.

Riyadh compound bombings - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Since I do not want to keep researching my guess is all of them were ether same. Terrorist ATTACKED the facilities, It was CALLED a TERRORIST attack immediately afterwords. In most if not all case the Bad guys were found or died.



Sounds a hell of a lot different than this administration efforts. First they refuse to call it a terror attack and place the blame on a movie. They refuse to send assistance while the attack was going on. They refused to follow up with local and international agencies to find the bad guys and either lock them up or kill them.


And it appears they did try to hide information or people from investigators.

But other than that exactly the same.
.

[mrvette]

LOOK, The damn reason the TWO stand down orders came from NoBam was because it was supposed to be a swap of our Ambassador for some islamics in custody here.....

it was a setup deal that went BAD when the two Seals refused to stand down....


that damn simple, the islamics on the ground in the action didn't understand that their mission was blown, and the deal was off....so they went in and killed everyone they could.....

[Loco Vette]

Originally Posted by Joecooool

Keep wasting your time on this stupid shit.

The democrats are going to eat your lunch next year with the lack of action on rational gun legislation.

Best be sure about that. At least some actual thinkers would disagree with you.
The Menaing Inside the Political Numbers

Originally Posted by Michael Barone

Michael Barone: The Meaning Inside the Political Numbers
With black and Hispanic support clustered by district, Democrats in 2014 will have a hard time retaking the House..Article Comments (329) more in Opinion | Find New $LINKTEXTFIND$ ».smaller Larger facebooktwittergoogle pluslinked ininShare.3EmailPrintSave ↓ More .
.smaller Larger
By MICHAEL BARONE
Psephologists—the fancy word for election analysts—like to talk about change and transformation. One party or the other, they say, is on the verge of forging an enduring national majority. One party or the other is doomed.

What I have come to see in my number crunching is not change and transformation, but continuity. Three presidents in a row have been re-elected with 49%, 51% and 51% of the vote. Over the past two decades, Democrats won four of six presidential elections and won a popular-vote plurality in a fifth. But starting in 1994, Republicans won a majority in the House of Representatives in eight of the 10 congressional elections.

That is not the result of massive ticket-splitting, as in the years from 1968 to 1988, when many Southern whites and others voted Republican for president and for Democrats in the House. On the contrary, the number of congressional districts electing a House member for one party while voting for the presidential nominee of the other declined to 26 in 2012, from 59 in 2004, and from 103 in 1992.

In fact, over the past 20 years the popular vote for House of Representatives has been a good proxy for support of the president and his party. And over most of these two decades the popular vote for the House has been fairly stable. In six of the 10 congressional elections starting in 1994, including 2012, Republicans received between 48% and 51% of the House popular vote and Democrats received between 46% and 49%.

The parties have broken out beyond these narrow bands twice during this period, in each case when the other party held the White House. The Democratic breakouts came in 2006 and 2008 and were most likely responses to apparently catastrophic developments—an increasingly violent quagmire in Iraq in 2006, the financial crisis and sharp economic downturn in 2008.

Enlarge Image

CloseCorbis
.These developments, plus the shrewd sponsorship by then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel—as Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee chairman—of moderate candidates in conservative-leaning districts, enabled Democrats to win 53% of the House popular vote in 2006 and 54% in 2008.

The Republican breakouts were in 1994 and 2010. Neither was a reaction to catastrophe or to a sharp economic downturn. Republicans' 52% of the House popular vote in both years came in response to unpopular expansions of the size and scope of government—gun control and Hillary Clinton's attempt at health-care reform in 1994, ObamaCare and the stimulus package in 2010.

My conclusion: Republicans were hurt when voters doubted their competence, Democrats when voters opposed their ideology.

In 2012, voters returned to the narrow band of support prevailing between 1996 and 2004. Republicans won a 234-201 majority in the House of Representatives, losing just eight seats from their 2010 total. Yet Democrats won the House popular vote by a 1% margin, 49%-48%.

How to explain this anomaly? Many liberals ascribe it to the redistricting that followed the 2010 Census. There is something to this, but not everything. Republicans did control redistricting in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin and Florida—all states carried by Barack Obama—where they used the process mainly to bolster the re-election prospects of incumbents. They also controlled redistricting in North Carolina, where they replaced a Democratic plan with a Republican plan that enabled them to win nine of 13 seats despite narrowly losing the popular vote for the House.

But Democrats offset these gains by controlling the redistricting process in Illinois and Maryland and, by gaming supposedly nonpartisan redistricting commissions in California and Arizona. Overall, redistricting helped the Republicans, but only marginally.

What helped the Republicans more than redistricting was the tendency of Democratic voters to be clustered in black, Hispanic and "gentry liberal" neighborhoods in major metropolitan areas. This clustering has produced huge majorities that have made many large and medium-size states safely Democratic at the presidential level. Barack Obama won 56% or more in 13 states and the District of Columbia with 179 electoral votes, leaving him only 91 votes short of a majority. Mitt Romney, in contrast, won 56% or more in states with only 125 electoral votes.

But clustering works against Democrats in the House. According to figures compiled by Polidata Inc. for National Journal and "The Almanac of American Politics" (of which I am a co-author), Mr. Obama won 80% or more of the vote in 27 congressional districts and between 70% and 79% in 34 more. Mr. Romney won 80% in only one district and between 70% and 79% in 18 more. That left enough Republican votes spread around in the other 355 districts to enable Mr. Romney to carry 226 congressional districts to Obama's 209.

All of the Democrats' House popular-vote margin came from the 36 black-dominated and 31 Hispanic-dominated districts. Democrats carried the popular vote in black-dominated districts 80%-17% in 2012. They made significant gains in Hispanic-dominated districts, which George W. Bush lost by 11% but Mitt Romney lost by 32%. Mr. Bush's "Family values don't stop at the Rio Grande" is a more attractive message than Mr. Romney's "self-deportation."

Still, the House popular vote in the large majority of districts—368 in 2012, 369 in 2004—not dominated by blacks or Hispanics was almost the same in those two years. Republican candidates carried such districts 53%-44% in 2004 and 52%-46% in 2012.

The Obama campaign's success in expanding minority turnout produced big gains at the presidential level. It did little for congressional Democrats—who won all black-dominated districts in 2004 and 2012, all but four Hispanic-dominated districts in 2004 and all but two in 2012. But Republicans increased their margin in other districts to 232-136 in 2012, from 228-141 in 2004.

All of this analysis points to a robust competition between the two parties over the past two decades, with no permanent winners or losers and no emerging natural majority for either party.

Neither party is doomed; both face challenges. Republicans have a clear problem with Hispanic voters, and many Republicans, including several with presidential aspirations, are addressing it by supporting immigration reform. House Republicans, only two of them from Hispanic-dominated districts, seem less interested.

Democrats have a clear problem with clustering. They cannot expect to improve on their performance with black voters in the two Obama elections, and they need to expand their appeal beyond their clusters of support to win congressional majorities. That may be difficult since their party tends to be defined, as it was not in the breakout years of 2006 and 2008, by a liberal incumbent president.

Republicans are trying to do something about their problems. Democrats, with their man in the White House, seem more complacent. But both parties have reason to feel insecure.

Michael Barone is senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and co-author of "The Almanac of American Politics."

[Loco Vette]

Originally Posted by Joecooool

Keep wasting your time on this stupid shit.

If I feel the urge to waste my time reading your stupid shit, I will

[Joecooool]

Originally Posted by VITE1

Since I do not want to keep researching my guess is all of them were ether same. Terrorist ATTACKED the facilities, It was CALLED a TERRORIST attack immediately afterwords. In most if not all case the Bad guys were found or died.



Sounds a hell of a lot different than this administration efforts. First they refuse to call it a terror attack and place the blame on a movie. They refuse to send assistance while the attack was going on. They refused to follow up with local and international agencies to find the bad guys and either lock them up or kill them.


And it appears they did try to hide information or people from investigators.

But other than that exactly the same.
.

I'll for the live of me, never understand why anyone would ever give a shit about how soon it was called a "terrorist attack". Who gives a flying fuk what it was called. Its irrelevant.

But to piss on your parade, Obama did call it an "act of terror" the day after it happened.