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

[VITE1]

Originally Posted by Joecooool

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.

Benghazi Hall of Shame - Reason.com

Oh Really? He kept blaming the F**king movie.

Heres somethng simple
BHO CLAIMS he gave an order to "Do whatever we can" to help those people.

Yet He refuses to show a copy of the order ( required by law for people to actually Do stuff) Who he gave the order to and what they did or did not do.

So Why can't or won't he give these answers?

[Blademaker]

Originally Posted by Joecooool

I'll for the live of me,

*life

[Broken Wind]

A senate bill couldn't make it thru the senate and that is somehow a republican issue. Seriously. WTF is wrong with you?

[Loco Vette]

Originally Posted by Broken Wind

A senate bill couldn't make it thru the Democrat controlled senate and that is somehow a republican issue. Seriously. WTF is wrong with you?

Fixt

[SnikPlosskin]

Thread fail. Again.

[Doug28450]

Originally Posted by Joecooool

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

Thank you for admitting that everything that has been proposed is nothing more than "feel good" legislation that will do nothing to solve the problem.

[Doug28450]

Exclusive: Benghazi Talking Points Underwent 12 Revisions, Scrubbed of Terror Reference - ABC News

Exclusive: Benghazi Talking Points Underwent 12 Revisions, Scrubbed of Terror Reference

By Jonathan Karl

May 10, 2013 6:33am

When it became clear last fall that the CIA’s now discredited Benghazi talking points were flawed, the White House said repeatedly the documents were put together almost entirely by the intelligence community, but White House documents reviewed by Congress suggest a different story.

ABC News has obtained 12 different versions of the talking points that show they were extensively edited as they evolved from the drafts first written entirely by the CIA to the final version distributed to Congress and to U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice before she appeared on five talk shows the Sunday after that attack.

White House emails reviewed by ABC News suggest the edits were made with extensive input from the State Department. The edits included requests from the State Department that references to the Al Qaeda-affiliated group Ansar al-Sharia be deleted as well references to CIA warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months preceding the attack.

That would appear to directly contradict what White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said about the talking points in November.

“Those talking points originated from the intelligence community. They reflect the IC’s best assessments of what they thought had happened,” Carney told reporters at the White House press briefing on November 28, 2012. “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”

Summaries of White House and State Department emails — some of which were first published by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard — show that the State Department had extensive input into the editing of the talking points.

State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland raised specific objections to this paragraph drafted by the CIA in its earlier versions of the talking points:
“The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa’ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya. These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.”

In an email to officials at the White House and the intelligence agencies, State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland took issue with including that information because it “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either? Concerned …”

The paragraph was entirely deleted.

Like the final version used by Ambassador Rice on the Sunday shows, the CIA’s first drafts said the attack appeared to have been “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo” but the CIA version went on to say, “That being said, we do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in the attack.” The draft went on to specifically name the al Qaeda-affiliated group named Ansar al-Sharia.

Once again, Nuland objected to naming the terrorist groups because “we don’t want to prejudice the investigation.”

In response, an NSC staffer coordinating the review of the talking points wrote back to Nuland, “The FBI did not have major concerns with the points and offered only a couple minor suggestions.”

After the talking points were edited slightly to address Nuland’s concerns, she responded that changes did not go far enough.
“These changes don’t resolve all of my issues or those of my buildings leadership,” Nuland wrote.

In an email dated 9/14/12 at 9:34 p.m. — three days after the attack and two days before Ambassador Rice appeared on the Sunday shows – Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes wrote an email saying the State Department’s concerns needed to be addressed.

“We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”

Related: Diplomat Says Requests For Benghazi Rescue Were Rejected
After that meeting, which took place Saturday morning at the White House, the CIA drafted the final version of the talking points – deleting all references to al Qaeda and to the security warnings in Benghazi prior to the attack.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said none of this contradicts what he said about the talking points because ultimately all versions were actually written and signed-off by the CIA.

“The CIA drafted these talking points and redrafted these talking points,” Carney said. “The fact that there are inputs is always the case in a process like this, but the only edits made by anyone here at the White House were stylistic and nonsubstantive. They corrected the description of the building or the facility in Benghazi from consulate to diplomatic facility and the like. And ultimately, this all has been discussed and reviewed and provided in enormous levels of detail by the administration to Congressional investigators, and the attempt to politicize the talking points, again, is part of an effort to, you know, chase after what isn’t the substance here.”

UPDATE: A source familiar with the White House emails on the Benghazi talking point revisions say that State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland was raising two concerns about the CIA’s first version of talking points, which were going to be sent to Congress: 1) The talking points went further than what she was allowed to say about the attack during her state department briefings; and, 2) she believed the CIA was attempting to exonerate itself at the State Department’s expense by suggesting CIA warnings about the security situation were ignored.

In one email, Nuland asked, why are we suggest Congress “start making assertions to the media [about the al Qaeda connection] that we ourselves are not making because we don’t want to prejudice the investigation?”

One other point: The significant edits – deleting references to al Qaeda and the CIA’s warnings – came after a White House meeting on the Saturday before Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on five Sunday shows. Nuland, a 30-year foreign service veteran who has served under Democratic and Republican Secretaries of State, was not at that meeting and played no direct role in preparing Rice for her interviews.

[Craig]

Originally Posted by Doug28450

Exclusive: Benghazi Talking Points Underwent 12 Revisions, Scrubbed of Terror Reference - ABC News

Exclusive: Benghazi Talking Points Underwent 12 Revisions, Scrubbed of Terror Reference

I was going to post this. It's been apparent, for a while, that this was a cover-up to protect Obama's re-election campaign. I'm sure is senior staff knew the real story and told him to lay low. Due to his lack of leadership skills, he complied.

He never liked Hillary, and while not intentional, this is going to fall on her, he's probably screwed her out of the Presidency, which is a huge favor to all of us. Unless, in a couple of years, the media helps everyone forget this all happened, which is likely.

[Doug28450]

A Monstrous Cover-Up | National Review Online

MAY 10, 2013 12:00 AM
A Monstrous Cover-Up
The truth about Benghazi emerges.
By Deroy Murdock

‘There is no video that justifies an attack on an embassy,” the President of the United States told the United Nations last September 25, one of six “video” references in his speech. A fortnight after the deadly attack on America’s mission in Benghazi, Obama was still insisting that Innocence of Muslims, an obscure, anti-Islamic YouTube video, had fueled the mayhem. Presumably, a spontaneous protest spun out of control and unleashed lethal violence.

But, as he addressed the General Assembly, Obama surely knew that it was an al-Qaeda–propelled assault, not a YouTube video, that had killed U.S. ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.

As Wednesday’s sworn testimony by three State Department whistleblowers demonstrated, this was just one of many lies deployed by Obama and others high atop the U.S. government. These lies nurtured the myth that “al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat,” as Obama claimed at a Las Vegas campaign rally the evening after the Benghazi onslaught. With the truth kept conveniently obscured up to November 6 and beyond, Obama won reelection as the man who supposedly killed both Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. In fact, only the former is dead.

The truth behind this monstrous cover-up finally is emerging, too late to defeat Obama at the polls, but perhaps in time to speed his early return to Chicago.

In gripping testimony before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, these top diplomats broke their silence and shattered Team Obama’s carefully crafted post-Benghazi narrative.

From the very start of this episode, U.S. officials called it an attack, rather than a video-driven protest.

“Greg, we are under attack,” Ambassador Stevens said in his last words to Deputy Chief of Mission Greg Hicks, just before Stevens’s cell phone clicked off on the night of September 11.

The Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes reports that two hours into the onslaught, at 6:08 p.m. Eastern Time, a State Department Operations Center alert, in Hayes’s words, “indicated that Ansar al Sharia, an al Qaeda–linked terrorist group operating in Libya, had claimed credit for the attack.”

In a newly revealed September 12 e-mail to State Department staffers, Acting Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs Elizabeth Jones recalls consulting Libya’s ambassador in Washington. Jones wrote: “I told him that the group that conducted the attacks, Ansar Al Sharia, is affiliated with Islamic terrorists.”

“The YouTube video was a non-event in Libya,” Hicks testified under oath Wednesday. “The only report that our mission made through every channel was that there had been an attack on our consulate. . . . No protest.”

The father of the late Tyrone Woods says that, as his son’s remains were officially welcomed home on September 14, then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton approached him. She promised that Nakoula Basseley Nakoula — the Los Angeles–based, Egyptian-born Coptic Christian behind the anti-Islamic video — would be “prosecuted and arrested.” Never mind that producing anti-Islamic videos is not illegal, for now. (Nakoula remains in jail, nonetheless, for probation violations tied to unrelated crimes.)

In the May 13 Weekly Standard, Stephen Hayes carefully documents how Team Obama sanitized the CIA’s initial talking points to erase al-Qaeda’s fingerprints on this attack and, instead, make it look like a demonstration gone crazy. A September 14 version of this document stated, “We do know that Islamic extremists with ties to al Qa’ida participated in the attack. . . . Ansar al Sharia’s Facebook page aims to spread Sharia in Libya and emphasizes the need for jihad to counter what it views as false interpretations of Islam.”

By the time the State Department and the White House had whitewashed these talking points, a third version, on September 15, explained: “There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.” Were these extremist Muslims? Extremist vegetarians? Extremist Rotarians? The scrubbed document does not say.

If the records he cites are accurate, Hayes writes, “It is clear that senior administration officials engaged in a wholesale rewriting of intelligence assessments about Benghazi in order to mislead the public.”

The next day, United Nations ambassador Susan Rice appeared on five Sunday-morning talk shows. Relying on the doctored talking points, she told Fox News’s Chris Wallace: “What sparked the violence was a very hateful video on the Internet.” Rice added, “It was a reaction to a video that had nothing to do with the United States.”

“I was stunned,” Hicks testified, concerning Rice’s TV appearances. “My jaw dropped, and I was embarrassed.” He added that Rice never spoke with him before doing her interviews, even though — after Ambassador Stevens’s assassination — Hicks had become America’s top diplomat in Libya.

The State Department’s Administrative Review Board was supposed to discover the truth about Benghazi. However, it now is being investigated by State’s inspector general to determine whether it adopted a don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach. The ARB never interviewed Hillary Clinton about her role in this disaster. Whistleblower Mark Thompson, a top State Department counterterrorism official, testified Wednesday that he had volunteered to speak with the ARB but was ignored.

Team Obama has hindered Representative Jason Chaffetz (R., Utah) as he has tried to solve the Benghazi puzzle. “The first week of October, I did go to Libya,” Chaffetz told Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity Wednesday night. “I did meet with Mr. Hicks. And we heard testimony that Mr. Hicks was coached ahead of time not to allow me to speak to three individuals there, including Mr. Hicks. The State Department had sent along a babysitter, a minder, to listen and take notes of everything I did.” Chaffetz continued: “The idea that a member of Congress trying to seek out the truth, and they are being told not to allow that member of Congress to have an individual conversation — I mean, that’s pretty stunning.”

Hicks testified that State Department officials ordered that “we were not to be personally interviewed by Congressman Chaffetz.” He added that Clinton’s chief of staff, Cheryl Miller, called after he met with Chaffetz. “She was very upset with me,” Hicks said. “She delivered a blistering critique of my management style.”

Hicks also ran afoul of State’s aforementioned Elizabeth Jones. “I asked her why the ambassador [Rice] said there was a demonstration when the embassy reported there was an attack,” Hicks explained. “The sense I got is that I needed to stop my line of questioning.”

Hicks also testified that “I’ve been effectively demoted from deputy chief of mission to desk officer” — perhaps because he has failed to toe the Obama line.

In addition to the three whistleblowers who came forward this week, 30 more Benghazi witnesses remain hidden and reportedly afraid to speak up. As American citizens, they should not have fear in their vocabulary.

So, why this abundance of lies and obstruction?

An al-Qaeda–affiliated terror group targeted an American diplomatic facility and killed four American public servants, including Washington’s first ambassador to be murdered on duty since 1979. These facts completely undermined the myth that al-Qaeda had been in retreat since SEAL Team Six liquidated Osama bin Laden in May 2011. So, Team Obama buried these inconvenient truths beneath a sand dune of lies.

Since Obama’s Justice Department cannot be trusted to investigate itself, House Speaker John Boehner should assign a select committee to probe Benghazi, subpoena and immunize the 30 remaining survivors of the attack, and invite the sworn public statements of those who can detail what may be the biggest federal cover-up since Watergate.

The American people — not least the families of Messrs. Stevens, Smith, Doherty, and Woods — deserve to know who perpetrated this fraud, no matter how far the mighty may fall.

[Doug28450]

Originally Posted by Craig

I was going to post this.

I'm sorry that I beat you to it, I'm just glad it was posted.

Originally Posted by Craig

It's been apparent, for a while, that this was a cover-up to protect Obama's re-election campaign. I'm sure is senior staff knew the real story and told him to lay low. Due to his lack of leadership skills, he complied.

I believe that it was generally accepted that the President was staging a cover-up. But, with the short time between the event and the election it was practically impossible to uncover the cover-up in order to derail re-election. In the end, that is all he really wanted.

I've can't stop thinking that being the White House Press Secretary for Obama has got to be the most distasteful job in the world. I can't imagine getting up everything and wondering "what lies am I going to have to tell today".

Originally Posted by Craig

He never liked Hillary, and while not intentional, this is going to fall on her, he's probably screwed her out of the Presidency, which is a huge favor to all of us. Unless, in a couple of years, the media helps everyone forget this all happened, which is likely.

Hillary has claimed that she does not want to run for President again, ever. However her last name is Clinton and she is from Chicago, so anything is possible. I still believe that Obama selected her for Secretary of State to take her out of play for the 2012 re-election. Even if the media is successful in burying her involvement it will be three years down the road and the Dems will find a new darling. Hillary is used up regardless.

[Craig]

I find it repulsive that while Fox news was pursuing this, all the rest of the media was calling them instruments of the GOP. Now that it's clear that all of THEM have been instruments of the DNC, there's no acknowlegement that they have gone along with a blatant cover up, that happened, for the sole purpose, to re-elect this incompitent imbecile that they helped elect in the first place. Even PMSNBC is now saying there's been a cover up. How ****ed up of a democrat do you have to be to have THEM calling you out?

[Craig]

Originally Posted by Doug28450

Hillary has claimed that she does not want to run for President again, ever. However her last name is Clinton and she is from Chicago, so anything is possible. I still believe that Obama selected her for Secretary of State to take her out of play for the 2012 re-election. Even if the media is successful in burying her involvement it will be three years down the road and the Dems will find a new darling. Hillary is used up regardless.

I had some amount of respect and empathy for her when she took the post. But the reality is, she's been a miserable failure. But if she runs, she'll win.

[Olustee bus]

"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."

You gotta be kiddin me! It is damn relevant. It was right before the damn election that Obama lied to the American public. He lied for political reasons and to me, that is certainly an impeachable offense. Hell, the democrats impeached Nixon because he lied about a petty ass break in that was for political purposes.

Maybe you should get off that island for awhile, you seem to have lost touch with reality!

Nah, jus kiddin about that. I really enjoy your "ire" inspiring posts.

[VITE1]

Originally Posted by Craig

I find it repulsive that while Fox news was pursuing this, all the rest of the media was calling them instruments of the GOP. Now that it's clear that all of THEM have been instruments of the DNC, there's no acknowlegement that they have gone along with a blatant cover up, that happened, for the sole purpose, to re-elect this incompitent imbecile that they helped elect in the first place. Even PMSNBC is now saying there's been a cover up. How ****ed up of a democrat do you have to be to have THEM calling you out?

Same thing Happened with the Tea Party movement. The MSM ignored it completely until massive rallies showed up. And when their viewers started wondering why the Tea Party was not getting coverage and they left they still could not understand the problem.

[99 pewtercoupe]

Originally Posted by Craig

I had some amount of respect and empathy for her when she took the post. But the reality is, she's been a miserable failure. But if she runs, she'll win.

Can any of the lib leaning folks here cite what her actual acomplishments were during her term ?

I happen to share Craig's opinion that unless the Republican's can produce a viable candidate, she will run and win in 2016 given the changing demographics and all BO and the Dems in Congress are doing.

[GentleBen]

I just had a most frightening thought. The 2016 Democratic ticket is Hillary Clinton for President and Nancy Pelosi (the Wicked Witch of the West) for Vice-President.

Damn, I've got to go get the Scotch!

[DJ_Critterus]

Originally Posted by Joecooool

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.

To quote Ms. Cankles herself, "What difference does it make?"

What you fail to see here is that this should have never happened, assistance WAS told to stand down, and the corrupt administration got caught with its pants down trying to lie under oath and to the American people so they could attempt to cover their failure up and do damage control to protect their cushy jobs.

We all know you will never admit that and blame this event the Conservatives, Republicans, TEA Partiers, and probably add Christians to the list soon enough.

[RedLS1GTO]

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.

What's funny is that you actually seem to think the ridiculously stupid shit you say is rational.

[69camfrk]

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.

Just what the fcuk do you call rational gun legislation? Not one damn thing they have proposed would have stopped jack shit. Typical knee jerk, feel good (to the media and stupid people). If we all carried guns, we would all be much safer. When was the last time some psycopath went into a police station to shoot it up. They go after "gun free" zones against the known defenseless. Phil, I have no doubt that you are a smart guy, but you just don't seem to get it. Are you even a gun owner, or do you listen to the corrupt media and expect all of us to believe their drivel. Really dude....C'mon.

[Joecooool]

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told CBS News that Republican lawmakers who are blasting President Barack Obama's administration for failing to take military action during last September's surprise attacks in Benghazi have a "cartoonish" view of the military.

"I listened to the testimony of [Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta] and [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey]," Gates explained to CBS host Bob Schieffer in an interview that aired on Sunday. "And, frankly, had I been in the job at the time, I think my decisions would have been just as theirs were."

"We don't have a ready force standing by in the Middle East -- despite all the turmoil that's going on -- with planes on strip alert, troops ready to deploy at a moment's notice. And so, getting somebody there in a timely way would have been very difficult, if not impossible."

He continued: "And, frankly, I've heard, 'Why didn't you just fly a fighter jet over and try and scare them with the noise or something?' Well, given the number of surface to air missiles that have disappeared from [former Libya dictator Muammar] Gaddafi's arsenals, I would not have approved sending an aircraft, a single aircraft, over Benghazi under those circumstances."

Gates pointed out that others had suggested that the military could have sent in Special Forces or some other small group.

"Based on everything I've read, people really didn't know what was going on in Benghazi contemporaneously, and to send some small number of Special Forces or other troops in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually going on on the ground, I think, would have been very dangerous," the former defense secretary observed. "And personally, I would not have approved that."

"It's sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces. The one thing that our forces are noted for is planning and preparation before we send people in harm's way. And there just wasn't time to do that."

Gates: Benghazi-Obsessed Republicans Have 'Cartoonish' View of Military Capability | Video Cafe