Libyan Embassy Attack

Ouch!
Condoleezza Rice Bursts Fox News’ Benghazi-Gate Balloon

Quote :

Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited On The Record last night to comment on “the State Department’s response” to the attacks in Libya. Although she did not absolve the Obama administration of any failures, she left no doubt that she sees no current evidence of wrongdoing and that the proper way to answer the questions left in the aftermath is through a real investigation. She also diplomatically shot down the overheated speculation that has run rampant on Fox lately.

Quote :

I know that Chairman Mike Rogers wants the Intelligence Committees to look at questions of what the …intelligence community knew, how they communicated that to policy makers and that’s the appropriate venue for that discussion.

…When things are unfolding very, very quickly, it’s not always easy to know what is going on on the ground.

…There’s a big picture to be examined here but we don’t have all of the pieces and I think it’s easy to try and jump to conclusions about what might have happened here. It’s probably better to let the relevant bodies do their work.

…When there is a fog of war like this, there are a lot of competing stories coming in, there’s a lot of competing information coming in and it takes a little while to know precisely what has happened.

…There are protocols in place. I have no reason to believe that they weren’t followed. But it is not very easy in circumstances like this to know precisely what’s going on as it’s unfolding.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/331806/incredible-shrinking-president-mark-steyn

October 26, 2012 7:30 P.M.

The Incredible Shrinking President

Two videos distill the meaning of a campaign, and a presidency.

By Mark Steyn

‘We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video,” said Hillary Clinton. No, not the person who made the video saying that voting for Barack Obama is like losing your virginity to a really cool guy. I’ll get to that in a moment. But Secretary Clinton was talking about the fellow who made the supposedly Islamophobic video that supposedly set off the sacking of the Benghazi consulate. And, indeed, she did “have that person arrested.” By happy coincidence, his bail hearing has been set for three days after the election, by which time he will have served his purpose. These two videos — the Islamophobic one and the Obamosexual one — bookend the remarkable but wholly deserved collapse of the president’s reelection campaign.
You’ll recall that a near-month-long attempt to blame an obscure YouTube video for the murder of four Americans and the destruction of U.S. sovereign territory climaxed in the vice-presidential debate with Joe Biden’s bald assertion that the administration had been going on the best intelligence it had at the time. By then, it had been confirmed that there never had been any protest against the video, and that the Obama line that Benghazi had been a spontaneous movie review that just got a little out of hand was utterly false. The only remaining question was whether the administration had knowingly lied or was merely innocently stupid. The innocent-stupidity line became harder to maintain this week after Fox News obtained State Department e-mails revealing that shortly after 4 p.m. Eastern, less than a half hour after the assault in Benghazi began, the White House situation room knew the exact nature of it.
We also learned that, in those first moments of the attack, a request for military back-up was made by U.S. staff on the ground but was denied by Washington. It had planes and special forces less than 500 miles away in southern Italy — or about the same distance as Washington to Boston. They could have been there in less than two hours. Yet the commander-in-chief declined to give the order. So Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods fought all night against overwhelming odds, and died on a rooftop in a benighted jihadist hellhole while Obama retired early to rest up before his big Vegas campaign stop. “Within minutes of the first bullet being fired the White House knew these heroes would be slaughtered if immediate air support was denied,” said Ty Woods’s father, Charles. “In less than an hour, the perimeters could have been secured and American lives could have been saved. After seven hours fighting numerically superior forces, my son’s life was sacrificed because of the White House’s decision.”
Why would Obama and Biden do such a thing? Because to launch a military operation against an al-Qaeda affiliate on the anniversary of 9/11 would have exposed the hollowness of their boast through convention week and the days thereafter — that Osama was dead and al-Qaeda was finished. And so Ty Woods, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith, and Chris Stevens were left to die, and a decision taken to blame an entirely irrelevant video and, as Secretary Clinton threatened, “have that person arrested.” And, in the weeks that followed, the government of the United States lied to its own citizens as thoroughly and energetically as any totalitarian state, complete with the midnight knock on the door from not-so-secret policemen sent to haul the designated fall-guy into custody.
This goes far beyond the instinctive secretiveness to which even democratic governments are prone. The Obama administration created a wholly fictional story line, and devoted its full resources to maintaining it. I understand why Mitt Romney chose not to pursue this line of argument in the final debate. The voters who will determine this election are those who voted for Obama four years ago and this time round either switch to the other fellow or sit on their hands. In electoral terms, it’s probably prudent of Mitt not to rub their faces in their 2008 votes. Nevertheless, when the president and other prominent officials stand by as four Americans die and then abuse their sacrifice as contemptuously as this administration did, decency requires that they be voted out of office as an act of urgent political hygiene.
At the photo-op staged for the returning caskets, Obama et al. seem to have been too focused on their campaign needs to observe even the minimal courtesies. Charles Woods says that at the ceremony Joe Biden strolled over to him and by way of condolence said in a “loud and boisterous” voice, “Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?” One assumes charitably that the vice president is acknowledging in his own inept and blundering way the remarkable courage of a man called upon to die for his country on some worthless sod halfway across the planet. But the near-parodic locker-room coarseness is grotesque both in its inaptness and in its lack of basic human feeling for a bereaved family forced to grieve in public and as crowd-scene extras to the political bigshot. Just about the only formal responsibility a vice president has is to attend funerals without embarrassing his country. And this preening buffoon of pseudo-blue-collar faux-machismo couldn’t even manage that.
But a funny thing happened over the next six weeks: Obama’s own cue balls shriveled. Biden had offered up a deft campaign slogan encompassing both domestic and foreign policy: “Osama’s dead and General Motors is alive.” But, as the al-Qaeda connections to Benghazi dribbled out leak by leak, the “Osama’s dead” became a problematic boast and, left to stand alone, the General Motors line was even less credible. Avoiding the economy and foreign affairs, Obama fell back on Big Bird, and binders, and bayonets, just to name the “B”s in his bonnet. At the second presidential debate, he name-checked Planned Parenthood, the General Motors of the American abortion industry, half a dozen times, desperate to preserve his so-called gender gap. Yet oddly enough, the more furiously Obama and Biden have waved their binders and talked up Sandra Fluke, the more his supposed lead among women has withered away. So now he needs to enthuse the young, who turned out in such numbers for him last time. Hence, the official campaign video (plagiarized from Vladimir Putin of all people) explaining that voting for Obama is like having sex. The saddest thing about that claim is that, for liberals, it may well be true.
Both videos — the one faking Obamagasm and the one faking a Benghazi pretext — exemplify the wretched shrinkage that befalls those unable to conceive of anything except in the most self-servingly political terms. Both, in different ways, exemplify why Obama and Biden are unfit for office. One video testifies to a horrible murderous lie at the heart of a head of state’s most solemn responsibility, the other to the glib shallow narcissism of a pop-culture presidency, right down to the numbing relentless peer pressure: C’mon, all the cool kids are doing it; why be the last hold-out?
If voting for Obama is like the first time you have sex, it’s very difficult to lose your virginity twice. A flailing, pitiful campaign has now adopted Queen Victoria’s supposed wedding advice to her daughter: “Lie back and think of England.” Lie back and think of America. And then get up and get dressed. Who wants to sleep with a $16 trillion broke loser twice?

Ah yes... our old pal, Mark Steyn..

Quote :

This goes far beyond the instinctive secretiveness to which even democratic governments are prone. The Obama administration created a wholly fictional story line, and devoted its full resources to maintaining it. I understand why Mitt Romney chose not to pursue this line of argument in the final debate. The voters who will determine this election are those who voted for Obama four years ago and this time round either switch to the other fellow or sit on their hands. In electoral terms, it’s probably prudent of Mitt not to rub their faces in their 2008 votes. Nevertheless, when the president and other prominent officials stand by as four Americans die and then abuse their sacrifice as contemptuously as this administration did, decency requires that they be voted out of office as an act of urgent political hygiene.

So Romney didn't bring it up during the last debate, because he "didn't want to rub their faces in their 2008 votes?" All I can say is "Wow!"

This piece is absolute garbage. You don't actually believe the tripe in this Op-ed, do you, jack? I hope not, because if you do, this is a step on the road to madness. This whole fixation with the Benghazi incident reminds me of the conspiracy theories of Alex Jones.

There's no proof of any of the allegations made in this piece regarding Benghazi. In fact, the CIA released documents that totally support the administration's statements on the matter. So I guess the CIA conspired with the Obama Administration in an elaborate cover-up to deceive the American people?

Give a frickin' break!

happy jack wrote:

[b]Which parts do you have a hard time believing?

Did you even read his response?

Scorpion wrote:

There's no proof of any of the allegations made in this piece regarding Benghazi.

Clear enough for you or are you going to keep trolling?

happy jack wrote:

Of course I read his response. However, edge set some new ground rules a while back on the Gun Control thread, and you, Scorpion, and Heretic, by your silence, have apparently subscribed to those new rules.

You see, the new rules (as implicitly validated by all of you) state that a poster may post anything he chooses. Should someone ask that poster for verification, then that poster may say, “Go look it up yourself and prove me wrong. It’s not up to me to back up my claims – it’s up to you to refute them.

I don't think so, jack. Let's see what I actually said, shall we?

Scorpion wrote:

No, I haven't been following the exchange. I've been pretty focused on the election.

And IMHO, if someone cites a source in an argument, the source has to at least be credible. To me, an Op-ed piece, for example, is not acceptable as evidence by itself.

Looks to me like I explicitly stated my position. And it's no different from my position in the past, which is if a poster is going to post an opinion piece, then he should be prepared to defend it.

happy jack wrote:

Scorpion wrote:

happy jack wrote:

Of course I read his response. However, edge set some new ground rules a while back on the Gun Control thread, and you, Scorpion, and Heretic, by your silence, have apparently subscribed to those new rules.

You see, the new rules (as implicitly validated by all of you) state that a poster may post anything he chooses. Should someone ask that poster for verification, then that poster may say, “Go look it up yourself and prove me wrong. It’s not up to me to back up my claims – it’s up to you to refute them.

I don't think so, jack. Let's see what I actually said, shall we?

Scorpion wrote:

No, I haven't been following the exchange. I've been pretty focused on the election.

And IMHO, if someone cites a source in an argument, the source has to at least be credible. To me, an Op-ed piece, for example, is not acceptable as evidence by itself.

Looks to me like I explicitly stated my position. And it's no different from my position in the past, which is if a poster is going to post an opinion piece, then he should be prepared to defend it.

Missed that.
Apologies.

No problem. So are you saying that you posted the Steyn piece just to be "provocative?" Or do you actually believe it?

US Officials Refute Right Wing Conspiracy Theories About Benghazi Attack

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The LA Times has a detailed look at the crazed conspiracy theories pouring out of the right wing and Fox News about the Benghazi attack — and the truth, which bears no resemblance to the wingnuts’ increasingly bizarre fever dreams: U.S. Officials Counter Criticism in Benghazi Attack.

Quote :

Last week, Fox News alleged that CIA managers told security officials at an agency facility known as the Annex — which was a mile from the State Department compound in Benghazi — not to go to the aid of their American counterparts when the diplomatic buildings first came under attack. Fox said the team was delayed an hour before going to help, in contravention of orders. Ambassador Stevens and computer technician Sean Smith were killed when attackers set fire to the compound.

The Fox report also alleged that, hours later, when the Annex itself was under attack, officials in the CIA chain of command refused to pass along requests for military assistance. And it said that one of the CIA security officers had laser sights pointed at some of the attackers that could have allowed them to be targeted by a precision bomb. Two CIA security officers, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, were killed when mortar rounds struck their position on the roof of the Annex.

In fact, CIA security officers responded to the attack on the State Department compound within 25 minutes, U.S. officials said, though it took them 50 minutes to arrive. CIA officers did not have laser targeting equipment, they said.

And Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta “ordered all appropriate forces to respond to the unfolding events in Benghazi, but the attack was over before those forces could be employed,” said Little, the Pentagon spokesman.

“There were no orders to anybody to stand down in providing support,” a senior intelligence official said.

Armed drones were not nearby. Even if they had been, it’s not clear that they would have done any good, officials say.

“People think ‘armed drones’ are some sort of magical robot wizards that can materialize out of thin air and identify a terrorist through facial recognition software from 20,000 feet,” a senior congressional official said. “It doesn’t work like that.”

Yeah. Well I knew that the stuff from Steyn's article was nothing more than right-wing bullshit.
I was just wondering if Jack actually believed this crap, so I was waiting for him to return before I commented further.

Scorpion wrote:

This whole fixation with the Benghazi incident reminds me of the conspiracy theories of Alex Jones.

Same here. I wrote a while back how Twoofers were finding a new home in the Republican party; this kind of shit is why. It's absolutely disgusting, laughable in how completely devoid from reality their perceptions are, and highlights exactly how batshit crazy Republicans/conservatives have become. Anyone who believes this kind of bullshit should be embarrassed...

Heretic wrote:

Scorpion wrote:

This whole fixation with the Benghazi incident reminds me of the conspiracy theories of Alex Jones.

Same here. I wrote a while back how Twoofers were finding a new home in the Republican party; this kind of shit is why. It's absolutely disgusting, laughable in how completely devoid from reality their perceptions are, and highlights exactly how batshit crazy Republicans/conservatives have become. Anyone who believes this kind of bullshit should be embarrassed...

I've been watching a Fox a few too many times the last few days and it's unbelievable the bullshit that they constantly crank out. By friday they were already making noise about Sandy being "Obama's Katrina" and wondering why all the power hadn't been restored. They seem to work hand and hand with Drudge who at this very moment has links to the following headlines some of which truly seem insane:

Quote :

Obama seeks votes as complaints mount over storm response...
Devastated residents lash out at Bloomberg during unannounced visit...
'I feel like a victim of Hurricane Katrina'...
Chaos reigns at free gas fiasco...
1.9 million still dark...
Fear of the Dark...
FEMA Out Of Water, No Delivery Until Monday...
Massive housing problem...
Residents arm up: Bats, machetes, shotguns...
'It's Like The Wild West'...
'Anarchy in Queens'...

They act as if a devastating catastrophe of major proportions like Sandy,that affected millions of people,should be all cleaned up in a matter of a few days.

If you're gullible and stupid enough to believe that Obama is an American hating, Kenyan born Muslim socialist, than you have no problem believing that the Ambassador and three American security personnel were talking to him on the phone begging the president for help and that he refused them.
You believe that a C130 gunship and thousands of Marines were only 20 minutes away and the president let them die watching it all on TV while sipping brandy and smoking a cigar.

Fox, Drudge, right wing radio etc. have been feeding this bullshit to the brainstems since day one and they believe every word of it.

Here's a good article debunking all the nonsense:
Libya Attack Shows Pentagon’s Limits in Region
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/world/africa/benghazi-attack-raises-doubts-about-us-abilities-in-region.html?pagewanted=all

Via Juan Cole:

Quote :

The politicization by the Republican Party of the tragic attack on the US consulate in Benghazi has been a security disaster for the United States. A document dump by Congressman Darrell Issa outed the identities of Libyans working with the US.

Now, it has come out that the annex of the Benghazi consulate was a Central Intelligence Agency HQ. Likely the consulate itself was thought safe because of the large numbers of CIA operatives at the annex, some of them with a background in military special forces. They were seen by the consulate staff as “the cavalry.”

Likewise, the reluctance to fortify the consulate may have come from fears that too much security would interfere with intelligence-gathering. State Department officials at the Beirut embassy in Lebanon have complained to me that they are virtually trapped inside the fortified complex, and can’t easily get out and mix with people, which interferes with their ability to build Lebanese contacts or do good political reporting. The CIA staff in Benghazi likely was trying to avoid a similar isolation.

So the Republicans playing politics with the complex situation on the ground in Libya, a country that overthrew its government a little over a year ago, has revealed the names of friendly Libyans working with the US embassy, and has outed the covert CIA operations in Benghazi.

It is now clear why the Obama administration has been hampered in replying to the charges of Republican gadflies. They risked outing the CIA operations there. Obama quite admirably decided not to release information on an ongoing covert operation, even though he might, by doing so, have gained some political advantage. Certainly Karl Rove and George W. Bush would not have hesitated to out their own covert operation for political gain.

Despicable and indefensible.

All you need to know about the phony Benghazi scandal...
Republicans skip Benghazi hearing; complain about lack of information on Benghazi

Quote :

This week, a number of Republican senators have strongly criticized the administration for failing to properly explain the circumstances surrounding the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi. Some of those senators failed to show up for a briefing on the attack Wednesday.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has been the leading congressional critic of the administration's handling of the Benghazi attack and what he sees as the administration's lack of candor with Congress on the matter. On Wednesday, he pledged to block the potential nomination of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton due to Rice's statements on the attack. That drew a sharp rebuke from President Barack Obama at Wednesday's press conference.

But although McCain had time to speak on the Senate floor and on television about the lack of information provided to Congress about the attack, he didn't attend the classified briefing for senators Wednesday given to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, of which he is a member.

Committee ranking Republican Susan Collins (R-ME) called out McCain for skipping the briefing and said his call for a special committee to investigate the Benghazi attack was not necessary because the Homeland Security committee could handle it.

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI), "who was there at briefing, and Senator McCain, who was not, are members of our committee, and I know they would play very important roles," Collins told Politico.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), another Homeland Security committee member who was on television complaining about the lack of Benghazi information, also did not show up for the Wednesday hearing. Paul did a CNN interview from the Capitol building Wednesday in which said he had questions about the anti-Islam video, the lack of Marines in Libya, and diplomatic security. At one point he says, "I don't know enough of the details."

The closed and classified briefing included representatives from the State Department, the Defense Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the FBI, an administration official said. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee held a classified hearing on Benghazi on Tuesday and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will hold one Thursday, but McCain and Paul are not members of either of those committees.

"If you want answers, a good first step is to show up and ask a question," an administration official told The Cable. "That's what a senator does."

UPDATE: According to his spokesman Brian Rogers, "Senator McCain was absent from the hearing due to a scheduling error."

UPDATE #2: Paul spokeswoman Moira Bagley tells The Cable: "Sen. Paul didn't need to attend yet another Administration press conference disguised as a classified briefing to know there should have been Marines defending our personnel in Libya, to hear the Administration make the same excuses in private they will make in public. Sen. Paul is focused on demanding answers, demanding those who made these fatal mistake be fired, and fixing the mess this Administration has made. All of that needs to be done in public, for Americans to see and hear."

This just in....John McCain decided to skip dinner tonight but will be calling a press conference to complain about not being served dinner.

happy jack wrote:

What bullshit did you think I was talking about?

What Fox,Breitbart,Drudge,or Malkin has been feeding you. Another one of your squalking points goes up in smoke...
Benghazi Testimony By Petraeus Shreds GOP Attack On Rice

Quote :

On Friday the Republican politicians who had so angrily demanded the testimony of David Petraeus about Benghazi got what they wanted—and what they deserved—when the former CIA director set forth the facts proving that their conspiracy theories and witch-hunts are dead wrong.

Appearing behind closed doors on Capitol Hill, Gen. Petraeus, recently resigned from the spy agency over his illicit affair with biographer Paula Broadwell, answered questions from legislators concerning the tragic Sept. 11 assault that left Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other diplomatic personnel dead.

When the session concluded, Petraeus was spirited away. And Senator John McCain (R-AZ), whose criticism of the Obama administration over Benghazi has verged on hysterical, emerged from the hearing room with very little to say to the reporters waiting outside.

“General Petraeus’ briefing was comprehensive. I think it was important; it added to our ability to make judgments about what was clearly a failure of intelligence, and described his actions and that of his agency and their interactions with other agencies,” said McCain, adding, “I appreciate his service and his candor” before abruptly fleeing as reporters tried to question him.

McCain’s curt statement was in sharp contrast to his voluble remarks on Thursday, when he denounced UN Ambassador Susan Rice for what he and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) described as her misleading description of the attack on Sunday television shows a few days after it occurred. (It later emerged, embarrassingly, that his posturing before the cameras on Benghazi had prevented him from attending a scheduled hearing on that subject. He didn’t want to to discuss that either.)

Essentially, McCain and Graham, joined by Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), accused Rice on Thursday of lying and covering up the fact that the Benghazi consulate had been attacked by terrorists affiliated with al Qaeda. They vowed to prevent her confirmation as Secretary of State, should the president nominate her to replace Hillary Rodham Clinton.

But with McCain departing so abruptly after the Petraeus hearing, it was left to others, including House Intelligence Committee chair Peter King (R-NY), Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) to reveal what their Arizona colleague didn’t care to discuss. In his testimony, Petraeus blew apart the half-baked theories offered by McCain and Graham—and left them looking foolish.

On earlier occasions, King had echoed the same complaints made by McCain and Graham, but after Friday’s hearing he reluctantly admitted the truth: Petraeus had confirmed that the CIA had approved the talking points used by Rice, tentatively blaming the incident on a notorious anti-Muslim video sparking demonstrations in Cairo and elsewhere at the time. Although Petraeus said he had believed that terrorists were responsible, that suggestion was removed from the talking points in order to protect the ongoing FBI investigation into Benghazi, which Rice also mentioned.

As King explained in response to reporters’ questions, Petraeus not only confirmed that any allusion to al Qaeda had been removed from the talking points given to Rice, but that his agency had consented to that decision:

Quote :

Q: Did he say why it was taken out of the talking points that [the attack] was al Qaeda affiliated?

KING: He didn’t know.

Q: He didn’t know? What do you mean he didn’t know?

KING: They were not involved—it was done, the process was completed and they said, “OK, go with those talking points.” Again, it’s interagency—I got the impression that 7, 8, 9 different agencies.

Q: Did he give you the impression that he was upset it was taken out?

KING: No.

Q: You said the CIA said “OK” to the revised report –

KING: No, well, they said in that, after it goes through the process, they OK’d it to go. Yeah, they said “Okay for it to go.”

In short, Rice was using declassified talking points, developed and approved by the intelligence community, when she discussed the Benghazi attack. So McCain’s nasty personal denunciation of her , along with most of his claims about how the White House handled Benghazi, has been blown out of the water like so much naval scrap. The Arizona senator, his colleagues, and their loud enablers on Fox News and elsewhere in the wingnut media will never apologize to Rice. But that is what they owe her.

Game/Set/Match!

happy jack wrote:

Artie60438 wrote:

The Arizona senator, his colleagues, and their loud enablers on Fox News and elsewhere in the wingnut media will never apologize to Rice. But that is what they owe her.

[b]Rice is owed an apology from some of those senators, but she is mainly owed an apology from the administration that duped her into lying on its behalf, and that placed her in that position in the first place.
The lies came from the administration; Rice was merely the one who was unlucky enough to be designated as the opportune conduit for those lies.

More of your BS right-wing talking points. What Rice was told was most likely done in the interest of National Security.

Watching loons like McCain & Graham throw a fit over this nonsense is especially hilarious considering the Republicans never uttered a peep about what the events were leading up to 9/11/01. No hearings,no nothing!

To make matters worse,Lindsey Graham Using Benghazi Tragedy in Campaign Ads

Artie60438 wrote:

What Rice was told was most likely done in the interest of National Security.

We know it was.

Petraeus Says U.S. Tried to Avoid Tipping Off Terrorists After Libya Attack

Quote :

David H. Petraeus, the former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, told lawmakers on Friday that classified intelligence reports revealed that the deadly assault on the American diplomatic mission in Libya was a terrorist attack, but that the administration refrained from saying it suspected that the perpetrators of the attack were Al Qaeda affiliates and sympathizers to avoid tipping off the groups.

Rice said what the CIA told her to; there's no fucking "lies" anywhere in this. Why do conservatives have a blind spot when it comes to the CIA's involvement in this? Have they not outed enough classified operatives and operations? Do they not know or simply don't care?

Just a bunch of whiny little fucks throwing a tantrum 'cause their guy wasn't elected... I should be surprised by all this, but conservatives have a habit of sacrificing national security in an attempt to score a few political points.

Heretic wrote:

Why do conservatives have a blind spot when it comes to the CIA's involvement in this? Have they not outed enough classified operatives and operations? Do they not know or simply don't care?

Just a bunch of whiny little fucks throwing a tantrum 'cause their guy wasn't elected... I should be surprised by all this, but conservatives have a habit of sacrificing national security in an attempt to score a few political points.

Last term their plan was "We want Obama to Fail". This time around they're trying to cobble together their phony fake outrage so they can start throwing around threats of impeachment. That's why they/re using the term "Watergate style hearings". Beating that drums keeps their useful idiots happy

happy jack wrote:

Ummmm …. do you perhaps think that, if al-Qaeda was indeed behind the attacks, they would have …. you know …. sort of known that they were behind the attacks and wouldn’t need to be “tipped off” to that fact?

Hmm... I can't tell if you're merely playing at being retarded or not, but I'll answer the question anyway.

Obviously the concern was tipping off the perpetrators into how much the CIA actually knew about the operation, alerting them to where/who the information may be coming from, leading to burning contacts, abandoning hideouts, destroying intel, etc. and forcing the entire operation underground.

Not reminding al-Qaeda that they did it...

Seriously, that wasn't a real question, right?

happy jack wrote:

Heretic wrote:

.... the administration refrained from saying it suspected that the perpetrators of the attack were Al Qaeda affiliates and sympathizers to avoid tipping off the groups.

[b]Ummmm …. do you perhaps think that, if al-Qaeda was indeed behind the attacks, they would have …. you know …. sort of known that they were behind the attacks and wouldn’t need to be “tipped off” to that fact?

Growing up,most of us played different board and card games all through our childhoods. They teach children as they grow up how to grasp the concept of strategy and how to apply it in different situations. I'm thinking your introduction began and ended with

Artie60438 wrote:

happy jack wrote:

Heretic wrote:

.... the administration refrained from saying it suspected that the perpetrators of the attack were Al Qaeda affiliates and sympathizers to avoid tipping off the groups.

[b]Ummmm …. do you perhaps think that, if al-Qaeda was indeed behind the attacks, they would have …. you know …. sort of known that they were behind the attacks and wouldn’t need to be “tipped off” to that fact?

Growing up,most of us played different board and card games all through our childhoods. They teach children as they grow up how to grasp the concept of strategy and how to apply it in different situations. I'm thinking your introduction began and ended with

You know, if it took as long for the Titanic to sink as it does for most concepts to sink into you, many more may have survived.