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The crucial questions about Benghazi

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Over at HotAir, they pose the crucial one: So, who changed the Benghazi talking points?

The White House needs not just to answer that question, but also to tell the American people which Obama Administration officials signed off on the changes – or were otherwise aware of them.  And whether President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton knew they had been doctored.

(And it would be nice if those who did the changing could explain, under oath and in front of cameras, why they did what they did.)

If Democrats say, well Benghazi was long ago and Republicans are just obsessing about Benghazi, then respond that the reason we keep bringing this up is because the Obama team refuses to answer the questions. And until we know the answers, we’ll keep pressing.

Should you think we’re being obsessive about this, then please tell us why the Obama team would rather. more than six months after Mitt Romney lost his bid for the White House, attack that Republican* than answer questions. And why, as even the left-leaning Yahoo! editors have observed, the president’s spokesman is becoming quite “defensive”:

Screen shot 2013-05-10 at 11.22.20 PM

*Maybe Mr. Carney sees himself not in the role of information provider but of campaigner.

Comments

  1. So they are blaming Mitt Romney for what exactly. That he did question what happened in Benghazi or that he did not question what happened? Which is it?

  2. bunker mentality: n.

    An attitude of extreme defensiveness and self-justification based on an often exaggerated sense of being under persistent attack from others.

    (The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

    The exaggerated sense of being under persistent attack from others comes from continually “answering” the questions by ignoring the facts, shifting the topic or name calling through calling out perceived enemies who were not part of the decision making.

    Sure, we want to know “who” changed the Benghazi talking points. But even that is a sideshow to “what” the “changed” talking points were covering up.

    An ambassador and three of his protectors were were murdered in an assault. That is an established fact.

    No assistance came to their rescue other that two men who disobeyed orders and became two of the four murdered. That is an established fact.

    The attack came in two waves over many hours. That is an established fact.

    The attack came on 9/11 which is a symbolic anniversary date for Islamic radicals and causes Homeland Security and American interests around the world to take extra precautions. That is an established fact.

    The Benghazi facility did was critically under protected according to Department of State guidelines and Ambassador Stevens and others had repeatedly requested beefed up security. That is an established fact.

    Now, taking those established facts in mind, “WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES IT MAKE” if the attack was caused by a YouTube video or people out for a stroll who decided to kill some Americans????????

    I would posit, that Hillary got it right. The whole “talking points” memo business was a side-show to cover up the gross incompetence involved in permitting the Benghazi facility to exist in such a weak state and for Ambassador Stevens to be there with so little protection or back-up protection on the 9/11 anniversary date.

    So, the basic questions are:

    Why would an important U.S. diplomatic facility is a country where elements of civil war are active against the fledgling government taking over for a recently overthrown dictator be so under protected? (Compare the facility to our facilities in Baghdad and Kabul. Think “green zone.” Think Marine guards.)

    We are told (not an established fact) that military support was told to “stand down.” Was it?

    Is it true that only the President can order the military support and that absent his permission to take measures to enter the airspace of Libya, the military is hamstrung? (Establish the fact, please.)

    Assuming we did not enter the airspace of Libya because we did not have permission from the Libyan government to up the protection, did the President decide not to ask for permission? (Establish the fact, please.)

    The core question is “what did the President know and what did he do about it?”

    Did Obama attempt to defend his Ambassador and the US installation in any meaningful way?

    If Obama decided to let the fledgling Libyan government handle the attack, what prevents him from saying so and explaining the nuances of his decision?

    Obama had Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, General Patraeus and his cadre of advisors at this disposal to help him develop a plan of action or to take the “wait and see” route.

    Obama had a mess in Benghazi fall squarely in his lap. What did he do and how does he explain his choices?

    Now, let us move to September 12, 2012. This is sickening.

    By BRIAN MONTOPOLI / CBS NEWS/ September 12, 2012, 4:14 PM

    (CBS News) In response to Mitt Romney’s criticism of the Obama administration for its handling of recent violence in Egypt and Libya, President Obama told CBS News on Wednesday that Romney “seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later.”

    “There’s a broader lesson to be learned here,” Mr. Obama told “60 Minutes” correspondent Steve Kroft at the White House. “And I — you know, Governor Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later. And as president, one of the things I’ve learned is you can’t do that. That, you know, it’s important for you to make sure that the statements that you make are backed up by the facts. And that you’ve thought through the ramifications before you make ’em.”

    Asked if Romney’s attacks were irresponsible, the president replied, “I’ll let the American people judge that.”

    Romney’s campaign released a statement on Tuesday night — Sept. 11 — asserting “that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.” The criticism was in response to a statement put out by the U.S. embassy in Egypt, not the Obama administration. In addition, the embassy statement was released in an apparent effort to head off any possible violence. At the time, there were no attacks to condemn.

    On Wednesday morning, Romney stood by the statement despite criticism that he was injecting politics into a national tragedy, telling reporters the president is acting “in apology for our values.”

    “I also believe the administration was wrong to stand by a statement sympathizing with those who had breached our embassy in Egypt, instead of condemning their actions,” Romney said. The claim came despite the fact that the administration had actually distanced itself from the embassy’s statement, something Romney acknowledged during the press conference.

    “It’s never too early for the United States government to condemn attacks on Americans and to defend our values,” Romney added.

    Steve Schmidt, senior campaign strategist to Sen. John McCain in McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, told CBS News Wednesday that Romney’s “comments were a big mistake, and the decision to double down on them was an even bigger mistake.”

    “There are legitimate criticisms to be made but you foreclose on your ability to make them when you try to score easy political points,” he said. “And the American people, when the country is attacked, whether they’re a Republican or Democrat or independent, want to see leaders who have measured responses, not leaders whose first instinct is to try to score political points.”

    In a statement to CBS News, former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright said, “Governor Romney’s ill-advised and politically-motivated statement last night concerning the tragedy in Benghazi is deeply regrettable.”

    “Our nation should stand as one in condemning the lawless attacks on American diplomatic personnel and in doing everything possible to see that such attacks are not repeated,” she added.

    Four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya J. Christopher Stevens, were killed after an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi tied to the production of an amateur anti-Islam film. (That attack appears to have been independent of the Cairo violence, but both appear to have been related to the production of the film.) Romney’s initial statement was released before the killings, but his comments standing by it came afterward.

    (I have added the emphasis in the second and last paragraphs.)

    Shouldn’t we all be struck by Obama’s words: “That, you know, it’s important for you to make sure that the statements that you make are backed up by the facts. And that you’ve thought through the ramifications before you make ’em.”

    Those words were aimed at Romney by the man who was assiduously peddling the YouTube video as the “cause” of the Benghazi attack, while taking no seeming interest in how the Ambassador and his defenders were situated to fight off such an attack without regard to what precipitated the attack. He was pointing fingers or blame right out of the box without taking any discernible role in examining why the tragic defeat and deaths in the American diplomatic compound occurred. Classic.

    Then, it was wings up and Obama flew to Nevada for fund raising and campaigning.

    The reason for the bunker mentality is because the “cover up” story of the YouTube non-event is the key to the door of how incompetent Obama made the White House, the State Department, the CIA, the DIA, the Pentagon and others look in their handling of the Benghazi crisis.

    Can Barack Hussein Obama adequately explain to the American people and the parents of four dead Americans how the United States government did what it was able to do to come to the aid of the four who died under attack in Benghazi?

    That is the question. (How on earth did YouTube, Romney, or other point of blame have anything to do with preventing the death of those four Americans?)

  4. Candy Crowley, CNN debate moderator who stepped in to protect Obama during the debate needs some scrutiny and considering her important role in facilitating information for the election is guilty of being an accessory to a criminal lie. It’s a stretch, I know, but she really needs to be held responsible.

  5. The crucial questions are why did Obama and Hellary allow it to happen in the first place. There must be a big reason that security was not provided leading up to 9/11 and that Obama ignored the attack and refused to send military aid.

  6. I think that Nick Gillespie at Reason T.V. puts this whole thing in perspective very nicely.

    1.We still don’t know what really happened.

    The Benghazi attack marked the first time in “more than three decades” that a U.S ambassador was killed in the field. Yet after these hearings and the State Department’s own “accountability review,” we still don’t know why the consulate was so poorly protected and why the military didn’t or couldn’t respond in a timely fashion. Pleading incompetence or “the fog of war” isn’t an answer.

    2.U.S. officials keep attacking free speech as the cause of the attack.

    Even after it became clear that the YouTube video “The Innocence of Muslims” had nothing to do with the Benghazi attack, Hillary Clinton invoked it as the cause of the attack at a memorial service for the slain Americans. And President Obama told the United Nations that everyone should condemn “those who slander the Prophet of Islam.”

    3.We still don’t have a foreign policy in the Middle East – or anywhere else.

    How does the murder of an ambassador to a country we helped liberate reflect on the way in which we got involved in Libya: President Obama dispatched forces without consulting Congress. As U.S. involvment in Syria and elsewhere heats up, the absolute lack of a coherent – much less constitutional – foreign policy will only lead to more tragedies both in the Middle East and throughout the world.

  7. Mark Steyn is “spot on” in laying out why the Benghazi cover-up is so critical to what really matters.

    I hope the momentum keeps building and finally forces The Won to do one of his piety rages and thereby expose himself for the empty suit many of us know him to be. Others are beginning to take notice. Even The New Yorker thinks there might be a strange odor associated with all of the Benghazi defensiveness.

  8. When Romney condemns the immediate politicization of Benghazi during a debate, is that politicization?

    This is how Orwellian these people are: politicization isn’t politicization, but “pointing out” politicization is.

    Well, Benghazi is being politicized all right – because conservatives like Rep. Chaffetz (R-UT) want to get to the truth, while clueless libtards (I’m looking at you, Rep. Elijah Cummings) just want to keep the “first black president” from being impeached for obstruction of justice.

    So a few RINOs in the GOP criticized Romney when he made his statement. So what? Even that GayLeftLib Borg Collective known as the DNC has members who have attacked SnObama once in a while. However, it hasn’t been “convenient” for them to do so – at least until after the 2012 elections.

    Scribes, Pharisees and hypocrites all.

    Regards,
    Peter H.

  10. To me, the real coverup is the fact that no rescue or relief effort was made because it would have arrived too late. Since the battle raged for 7 hours, who precisely ordered the stand down of troops that may have been positioned? While they may not have been able to save the ambassador (reported killed early in the conflict), the others probably would have been helped with a response of some kind. The “talking points” conflict distracts from this much bigger failure IMHO.

  11. tommy651,

    On September 11, 2012 at 6:17 ET (17 minutes past noon in Cairo) the U.S. embassy in Cairo issued this statement in Cairo:

    The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims – as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.

    On September 9, 2012, Egyptian television aired an Arabic-language scene from the “innocence of Muslims” film made by Same Bacile. (The infamous YouTube film.)

    The immediate (Sept. 9) effect in Cairo, was an attack on the Israeli embassy. Then, on September 11, the US embassy walls were scaled and the flag was pulled down and torn into pieces. This was painted on the outside wall of the US Embassy: “If your freedom of speech has no limits, may you accept our freedom of action.”

    It is from this seed, I would suspect, that the mighty oak tree of blame grew.

    Two important items to note:

    1.) The Cairo protesters were disorganized and mostly bare-handed demonstrators. The Benghazi attackers were well armed attackers with a relatively organized plan.

    2.) The Cairo embassy is a fortress and the demonstrators were unable to breech it. It had long ago been built and reinforced to fend off such demonstrations. The Benghazi facility was far below the standards for being secure from attack. The State Department had denied Ambassador level requests to beef up the facility and it had not only denied beefing up the guard around the Ambassador, it had actually reduced the size of the guard.

    In order to deflect the problems inherent in leaving the Benghazi facility and the ambassador vulnerable, the choice was made to blame the attack on a YouTube video that was made in California by a Coptic Egyptian refugee. The choice was to blame the bed rock of democracy for killing the ambassador who was left essentially on his own with minimal protection.

    The White House immediately knew the difference between the Cairo demonstrations and the attack on the Benghazi installation. They chose to direct the story to the Bacile movie and set blame on it. That is to say, they chose to deflect (shift) and ignore the facts and to name (blame) the “cause” of the crisis.

    Talking points and “spin” are both forms of propaganda which lie by omission. They may pay lip service to other possible forces at play, but the object is send everyone packing off in the same wrong direction in order to buy time or escape detection.

    Remember that Obama claimed not only to have killed bin Laden, but he had all but dismantled Al Qaeda and made them a non-factor, as well. Regime change in Libya was done in a clandestine manner without the UN and fairly limited NATO involvement. It was the beginning of the election horse race to November and Obama didn’t need his game upset by a SNAFU leading to a dead ambassador and the abandonment of support to rescue the people under attack.

    So, in the crisis at hand which was a SNAFU of their own making, the various departments fabricated a flimsy story that something entirely out of their control caused the mess.

  12. What does Obama gain by covering this up again?

    I gave a hard time buying into these breathless conspiracy stories because I dont see why it matters to Obama if it was an attack or a protest. He could have went after Ryan for cutting security budgets … so….I really dont see any reason why Obama would want this covered up.

  14. I gave a hard time buying into these breathless conspiracy stories because I dont see why it matters to Obama if it was an attack or a protest. He could have went after Ryan for cutting security budgets … so….I really dont see any reason why Obama would want this covered up.

    Comment by mike — May 11, 2013 @ 6:29 pm – May 11, 2013

    And yet he did.

    So there’s the answer to the question, mike; why DID your Barack Obama lie and claim that it was a protest when, according to you, he had no reason to do so?

  15. I really dont see any reason why Obama would want this covered up.

    Ambassador Arnold Raphel was killed along with General Zia in a plane crash in Pakistan in 1988. That was the last ambassador killed while serving. Six others have been killed since 1789. A quarter of a century after Raphel’s killing, Chris Stevens is the latest one to be not just killed, but murdered. That is big stuff.

    Obama got the news of the attack in the 5-6pm time on September 11. He disappeared for all intents and purposes after that. No situation room. No telephone communication. No talks with Clinton, Panetta, Petraeus, no record of any kind.

    Meanwhile, Gregory Hicks talks with Clinton and then the Libyan prime minister and when he calls back to Clinton at 9 pm Washington time, she is not available. At that point, Gregory Hicks was America’s chief diplomat in Libya as Prime Minister Abdurrahim el-Keib had reported the death of Ambassador Stevens to him.

    Meanwhile, Lt. Col. Gibson had twice been denied authority by his superiors (not Hicks) to fly a special team from Tripoli to Benghazi.

    Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty had already disobeyed orders and left the Benghazi “annex” and raced to the compound to fend off the 150 men (estimated) attacking the compound. These TWO men died hours later waiting for backup while holding back an enormous number of attackers. Hardly an even fight.

    I really dont see any reason why Obama would want this covered up.

    Look up misfeasance and malfeasance.

    Obama rose in the morning and flew to Nevada for a fund raiser and to campaign.

    Who was in charge? We know from Petraeus and Panetta that Obama was informed of the attack on the American Benghazi installation. We know that troops were told to stand down and not defend the Benghazi compound or reinforce security for Stevens or to run a rescue mission.

    What did Obama know? When did he know it? What orders did he give?

    OK, littlelettermike, what is your plausible explanation for why Obama should stay silent on this?

    He does not have to talk. He does not have to tell anyone anything. Therefore, it is up to the press, the public, the Congress to peel this onion layer by layer until the facts begin to pile up layer by layer to make the case that Obama did not lift a finger to protect or attempt to rescue the four murdered men.

    What does Obama want covered up? His dereliction of Constitutional duty.

    Stevens was sent to a cracker-box facility and when he eventually came under heavy military assault and no one (except his recently diminished detail and Woods and Doherty and Greg Hicks) lifted a finger to save him and the personnel.

    That is what is being covered up. And what did these geniuses use? A YouTube video as the great bolt of lightning from out of the blue which threw the Arab Spring and the smarter than Bush “diplomacy” in the Arab world into the muck and mire of reality.

    You, littlelettermike, not only don’t get it, your ideology and bigotry is so intense and in tact that you are intellectually incapable of getting it. You are the very model of the useful idiot. You have no use or concern for the truth if the truth can not be made to serve your purposes.

  17. It was covered up because 1. Obama is an arrogant prick who can never admit to making a mistake and 2. It was in the midst of a presidential campaign and he couldn’t risk a major foreign policy failure 3. Just a few days earlier, Obama had claimed that he had defeated terrorism and “Al Qaeda was on the run” and 4. Hillary wants to be president, and she was the one who refused to upgrade security at the Benghazi Annex, also 5. Obama knew full well it would come out that he had refused to send assistance to Benghazi after the attack was underway.

    So, they chose to blame it on a non-existent protest over a YouTube video, accuse those who doubted the official story of being un-American Conspiracy Theorists, and count on a lapdog media and the willing ignorance of Obama shills (like lower case mike) to carry them through the election.

    Or, if Obama isn’t a liar, you can adopt the alternate point of view that he is stupid and incompetent. Personally, I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive.

  19. Ok.

    As all of you admit, there is no real reason for Obama to cover this up….so….maybe he didn’t?

    Comment by mike — May 12, 2013 @ 9:57 am – May 12, 2013

    Excuse me, mike, but claiming we “all admit” to something, when not a single person here has done so is either deliberately obtuse, blatantly dishonest, or yet another example of how the left has completely lost it’s collective shit over the course of the last 72 hours.

    God bless and keep Jonathan Karl.

  20. Thanks for the twitchy link, V, but you’ll pardon me if I spare myself yet another lesson in just how repulsive Democrats have become.

    In the zombie apocalypse, the undead have little to fear from me. Progtards, however, are an entirely different matter.

  21. The Administration made a grave error. The coverup is as bad as the original malfeasance. And worse as more and more survivors and whistleblowers are heard from. I think the trickle may soon become a flood.

    The whole story sickens me to no end. Politics over the lives of Americans, spit.

  22. 1. Obama is an arrogant prick who can never admit to making a mistake
    – This is just your projection…
    2. It was in the midst of a presidential campaign and he couldn’t risk a major foreign policy failure
    – Why is this a failure? Obama could have just said its Congress needs to stop recklessly cutting funding.
    3. Just a few days earlier, Obama had claimed that he had defeated terrorism and “Al Qaeda was on the run”
    – Please provide a link to where he said he defeated terrorism.
    4. Hillary wants to be president, and she was the one who refused to upgrade security at the Benghazi Annex, also
    Again – They could just blame congress here.
    5. Obama knew full well it would come out that he had refused to send assistance to Benghazi after the attack was underway.
    I don’t think so. 1st – as we learned assistance couldn’t arrive in time to do anything. 2nd – He wanted to avoid another lwar. I think Americans could take this as justification.

    So again…I can’t find any benefit to Obama for covering this up other than convoluted story lines invented by partisans.
    It does sound like there was an F-up between the State Dept, White House, and CIA but unless there is more that I don’t know, I don’t see any reason to think it was just typical inter-agency stuff. I see no benefit to Obama to cover this up.

  23. littlelettermike,

    Bravo. The basic rule in logic is that all argument is based on an agreement to disagree.

    You have now stated that your mind is made up. Therefore, there is nothing more to be said.

    You have posited no facts, only a list of opinions upon which your ultimate opinion is based. That makes a total sieve out of your bucket of structure-free opinion babble. You probably could burnish your game by drinking more beer and sounding off at a table full of like-minded people who are also getting more and more tanked.

    I hope you will take your string of opinions @ #33 down the hall to someone who gives a flying crap about your overflowing bag of opinions and who also has no interest in applying anything resembling facts in a semblance of logical progression. You will not find people here all geared up to playing recess-time whack-a-mole with you.

  24. I’d like everyone to address what is said in these articles. Devil’s advocate only because I keep seeing these two NYT articles used by liberals to prove that the video did indeed cause the attack

    TExcerpts from this NYT Q & A

    ” According to reporting by David D. Kirkpatrick and Suliman Ali Zway of The New York Times, eyewitnesses have said there was no peaceful demonstration against the video outside the compound before the attack, though a crowd of Benghazi residents soon gathered, and some later looted the compound. But the attackers, recognized as members of a local militant group called Ansar al-Shariah, did tell bystanders that they were attacking the compound because they were angry about the video. They did not mention the Sept. 11 anniversary. Intelligence officials believe that planning for the attack probably began only a few hours before it took place.”

    And this one

    ” To Libyans who witnessed the assault and know the attackers, there is little doubt what occurred: a well-known group of local Islamist militants struck the United States Mission without any warning or protest, and they did it in retaliation for the video. That is what the fighters said at the time, speaking emotionally of their anger at the video without mentioning Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or the terrorist strikes of 11 years earlier. And it is an explanation that tracks with their history as members of a local militant group determined to protect Libya from Western influence.”

    …

    ” The fighters said at the time that they were moved to act because of the video, which had first gained attention across the region after a protest in Egypt that day. The assailants approvingly recalled a 2006 assault by local Islamists that had destroyed an Italian diplomatic mission in Benghazi over a perceived insult to the prophet. In June the group staged a similar attack against the Tunisian Consulate over a different film, according to the Congressional testimony of the American security chief at the time, Eric A. Nordstrom.

    At a news conference the day after the ambassador and three other Americans were killed, a spokesman for Ansar al-Shariah praised the attack as the proper response to such an insult to Islam….”

    etc. You get the point. So what do all of you make of these articles? I am genuinely interested

  26. I’d like everyone to address what is said in these articles. Devil’s advocate only because I keep seeing these two NYT articles used by liberals to prove that the video did indeed cause the attack

    Would this be the same NYT that last year praised the IRS for targeting the Tea Party?

    Umm, yeah. That should be self-evident.

    As for addressing anything the NYT writes, no thanks. I’ve had quite enough of arguing with people who’ve already proven that to them, truth is relative.

  27. Tom the Redhunter:

    Did you notice that the NYT “argument” is bolstered by their favorite hidden-from-view “sources” who, apparently are entirely credible???????

    “….eyewitnesses have said….did tell bystanders that they were attacking the compound because they were angry about the video …. did not mention the Sept. 11 anniversary …. To Libyans who witnessed the assault and know the attackers, there is little doubt what occurred …. That is what the fighters said at the time ….. The fighters said at the time that they were moved to act because of the video ….

    This is unsourced, uncorroborated and pure hearsay. When newspapers deal in this type of accusatory babble to intimate an incriminating connection they are practicing the art of innuendo, not journalism.

    Why, pray tell, does any journalist have a reason to protect the “sources” who supposedly “sourced” these comments? Furthermore, the supposedly vile YouTube video was discussed on Cairo TV on September 9. If it swept across the Arab world or down the highly vaunted Arab street, then two days and a major anniversary date (9-11) should be enough time for our intelligence sources to have picked up the chatter from their sources and taken appropriate action.

    You have brought to us the speculation that the New York Times is better sourced on what is happening on the “Arab street” than the Brits, the US, and the Israelis.

    I was once entertained by a guy who walked up to the cops as they led a buddy away with this statement: “He didn’t do it and I am a witness.” In other words, he saw his buddy not do it. Well, the New York Times says they have sources that have told them what went down. They don’t name them, they don’t make them available for examination, they do corroborate the tales told, they just say “what happened.” Cool! That certainly puts justice and truth entirely on the basis of “he said, she said.”

    I like the whole “bystander” concept. Some guy finds other guys up on his roof firing mortars at the compound and he casually asks them what is going on. They tell him they are enraged over a video. The guy wanders back down for tea and then tells the NYT a few days later about the incident. Or something.