The Shameful Politicization of the Benghazi Consulate Attack

happy jack wrote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/opinion/sunday/dowd-when-myths-collide-in-the-capital.html?_r=1&

When Myths Collide in the Capital

By MAUREEN DOWD

Maureen Dowd's "Obfuscation" Of The Facts On Hicks And Benghazi

Quote :

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is mischaracterizing the aftermath of the September attack on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, in an effort to promote her claim that Hillary Clinton's aides engaged in "obfuscation."

In her May 12 column, Dowd writes that Gregory Hicks, who was deputy chief of mission in Libya during the attacks and testified before Congress May 8, "believes he was demoted because he spoke up" about the Obama administration's characterization of the attacks in a meeting with Beth Jones, an undersecretary of state.

In fact, Hicks' change of position came after he voluntarily decided not to return to Libya; he subsequently testified that the "overriding factor" in that decision was that his family didn't want him to go back. According to the State Department, that decision took him out of the regular cycle in which Foreign Service officers are assigned, resulting in him being placed in a temporary position as a foreign affairs officer in the Office of Global Intergovernmental Affairs. According to State, Hicks retains the same rank and pay, and has submitted a preference list and is under consideration for his next assignment.

Dowd further claimed:

Quote :

Hillary's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, also called Hicks to angrily ask why a State Department lawyer had not been allowed to monitor every meeting in Libya with Congressman Jason Chaffetz, who visited in October. (The lawyer did not have the proper security clearance for one meeting.) Chaffetz, a Republican from Utah, has been a rabid Hillary critic on Fox News since the attack. Hicks said he had never before been scolded for talking to a lawmaker.

But Hicks himself never described Mills as angry. In his testimony, Hicks acknowledged that Mills had offered no "direct criticism" of his actions, but cited the "tone and nuance" of Mills' voice during their conversation as indicating she was "unhappy" (Hicks later repeated a congressional Republican's description of Hicks as "upset.")

In painting this as part of a pattern of obfuscation, Dowd also ignored the administration's explanation for why Mills would have wanted a State Department lawyer present for Hicks' meeting with Chaffetz - a State Department official told Dowd's paperthat department policy requires one to be present during interviews for Congressional investigations.

Dowd's commentary follows that of Fox News hosts who have baselessly described Hicks as being "excoriated," "reprimanded," or "punished" by Mills - a characterization promoted by the false frame that Congressional Republicans pushed in their questioning of Hicks.

Dowd previously engaged in repeated contradictions of her own paper's reporting on the Benghazi attacks to push Republican attacks on U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice.

happy jack wrote:

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/benghazi-cia-talking-point-edits-white-house.html?mobify=0
http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/Benghazi%20Talking%20Points%20Timeline.pdf

It’s striking to see the twelve different iterations that the talking points went through before they were released to Congress and to United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice, who used them in Sunday show appearances that became a central focus of Republicans’ criticism of the Administration’s public response to the attacks. Over the course of about twenty-four hours, the remarks evolved from something specific and fairly detailed into a bland, vague mush.

I mean, why bother protecting CIA assets in the field? We should have totally tipped our hand at the first time of trouble to appease a handful of idiots suffering from full blown Derangement Syndrome, who only care about dead embassy personnel now that a Democrat is in office.

It's striking to see the GOP's initial reaction when they were briefed on the talking points back in March.

Quote :

ABC News reports that John Boehner’s staff was already briefed by the White House on the now-controversial Benghazi emails and talking points back in March, but judging by their lack of public statements about them, saw nothing amiss:

Quote :

News of the Obama Administration’s role in the extensive editing of CIA talking points on Benghazi rocked the political world last week and prompted a demand from Speaker of the House John Boehner for the release of all related White House emails, but it should not have been a revelation to the Speaker.

The White House first briefed the House leadership on the talking point revisions on March 19. The briefing was given to the House Intelligence Committee, but the White House also invited Speaker Boehner and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi to attend or to send a senior staff member. Boehner did not attend, but he did send staff, according to the Speaker’s office. Those attending the closed briefing were permitted to view the emails, but not to copy them.

The Speaker made no public reference to the emails — or the news of the State Department’s role in removing references to terror warnings in Benghazi — until the story became public last week.

. . .

There are a dozen House Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee and seven Republican Senators on the Senate Intelligence Committee. The White House claims they were all invited to briefings on the talking point revisions delivered by Robert Litt of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The White House didn’t say which Republicans attended and which didn’t. But obviously reporters might ask those dozen Republicans if they attended — or sent staff — and if so, why they didn’t sound the alarm about the revisions previously.

It also needs to be established a bit more clearly what, specifically, the Republicans were briefed on. If they were shown all of the dozen talking point revisions reported on by ABC News last week, as well as the controversial emails about them — which seems like it may be the case — and didn’t see them as problematic at the time, then the plot thickens.

It's wasn't a conspiracy until they found that it polled well with the Fox News audience, I suppose.

happy jack wrote:

Well.
It appears that Ms. Dowd (along with the New Yorker) has become a card-carrying member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.
Fancy that.

Or she's simply wrong, buying into the Republican nonsense on Benghazi. Not everyone is immune to Bullshit Mountain, unfortunately. She's never been a fan of Hillary, so there's really no surprise she's jumping on the "blame Hillary" bandwagon.

happy jack wrote:

Well.
It appears that Ms. Dowd (along with the New Yorker) has become a card-carrying member of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy.
Fancy that.

Or maybe there's no such thing as the leftist 'lame stream meeedia' or the 'drive by media.'

Holy crap.

Top Ten Republican Myths on Libya

I'll summarize, since I think they're all worth reading.

1. The Benghazi US mission was very clearly an operation of the Central Intelligence Agency.
2. The "scandal" is harming national security.
3. Libyan security officials repeatedly told wire services on September 12 that there was an anti-"Innoncence of Muslims" demonstration, and that the attack issued from those quarters.
4. Benghazi, a city of over a million, is not dominated by “al-Qaeda.
5. Members of the Benghazi municipal council told then US ambassador Chris Stevens that security in the city was improving in summer, 2012.
6. There is a strong civil society and tribal opposition to fundamentalist militias in Benghazi, of which Amb. Chris Stevens was well aware.
7. Al-Qaeda is not for the most part even a “thing” in Libya.
8. Ansar al-Sharia (Helpers of Islamic Law) is just an informal grouping of a few hundred hard line fundamentalists in Benghazi, and may be a code word to refer to several small organizations. There are no known operational links between Ansar al-Sharia and al-Qaeda. It is a local thing in Benghazi.
9. Leaders of Ansar al-Sharia have denied that they directed their organization to attack the US consulate and have condemned the attack.
10. Lindsey Graham and others point to instances of political violence this past summer in Benghazi as obvious harbingers of the September 11 consulate attack. But it was a tiny fringe group, the Omar Abdel Rahman Brigades, that claimed responsibility for setting off a small pipe bomb in front of the gate of the US consulate last June.

Check the original article for more on each point, as well as citations. It's well worth the read, and exposes even more of the GOP's dishonesty and ignorance.

And there's still the obvious:

Quote :

By the way, does Ryan always consider attacks on US embassies a sign that an administration’s foreign policy is blowing up in our faces? For instance, if if the US embassy in Athens, Greece, was attacked in 2007,, would that have been an indictment of George W. Bush’s foreign policy? What about if the US embassy in Serbia was burned down early in 2008? If the US embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, were attacked in September 2008? If the US consulate in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, was attacked in 2004? What if thousands of anti-American Iraqis were regularly demonstrating and even shelling the Green Zone in Baghdad where the US embassy is, in 2008? Did all that mean that Bush’s foreign policy, the most recent foreign policy outing of the Republican Party, blew up in our faces, according to Ryan?

The GOP still exists in a fantasyland:

Quote :

“Frankly, had I been in the job at the time, I think my decisions would have been just as theirs were,” said Gates, now the chancellor of the College of William and Mary.

“We don’t have a ready force standing by in the Middle East, and so getting somebody there in a timely way would have been very difficult, if not impossible.” he explained.

Suggestions that we could have flown a fighter jet over the attackers to “scare them with the noise or something,” Gates said, ignored the “number of surface to air missiles that have disappeared from [former Libyan leader] Qaddafi’s arsenals.”

“I would not have approved sending an aircraft, a single aircraft, over Benghazi under those circumstances,” he said.

Another suggestion posed by some critics of the administration, to, as Gates said, “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, would have been very dangerous.”

“It’s sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces,” he said. “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.”

I wrote:

Top Ten Republican Myths on Libya

. . .

Check the original article for more on each point, as well as citations. It's well worth the read...

Not terribly surprised to see that you didn't.

Quote :

4. Benghazi, a city of over a million, is not dominated by “al-Qaeda,” contrary to what Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina has repeatedly said or implied. The city had successful municipal elections in May, just before I got there. The number one vote-getter was a woman professor of statistics at the university. While political Islam is a force in Benghazi, only some relatively small groups are militant, and it has to compete with nationalist, tribal and regional ideological currents. In Libya’s parliamentary elections of July, 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood did very poorly and nationalists came to power. Women won 20% of the seats! The elected Speaker of Parliament, Muhammad Magarief, called for a secular constitution for Libya and a separation of religion and state.

5. Contrary to repeated assertions that it was obvious that terrorist groups were rampaging around in the city, members of the Benghazi municipal council told then US ambassador Chris Stevens that security in the city was improving in summer, 2012.

In fact, one Senator John McCain said during a visit to Libya last February, ““We are very happy to be back here in Libya and to note the enormous progress and changes made in the past few months… We know that many challenges lie ahead… but we are encouraged by what we have seen.” Doesn’t sound to me like McCain was running around like Chicken Little warning that the sky was about to fall on US diplomats there. Want to know who else came along on that trip? Lindsey Graham, who likewise didn’t issue any dire warnings in its aftermath.

6. Contrary to the “Libya-is-riddled-with-al-Qaeda” meme of the GOP politicians, there is a strong civil society and tribal opposition to fundamentalist militias in Benghazi, of which Amb. Chris Stevens was well aware. Tripoli-based journalist Abd-al-Sattar Hatitah explained in the pages of the pan-Arab London daily al-Sharq al-Awsat [Sept. 30, 2012, trans. USG Open Source Center]:

Quote :

It appears that the simple rule Benghazi’s people thought of applying was based on other experiences in which the radical Islamists or militants in general managed to grow, prosper, and expand by seeking protection from the tribes, as happened in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen. But the civil movements which became very active [in Benghazi] after the fall of Al-Qadhafi’s regime were the ones that formed alliances this time with the tribes, the notables, wise men councils, and civil society figures against the militants. This is akin to the “Sahwat” in Iraq. The alliance managed to expel the brigades from the town and encouraged the nascent Libyan authorities to tighten their restrictions on all armed manifestations…

He adds that [a meeting by secular notables with the tribes] was also attended by representatives from the army chiefs-of-staff and the Interior Ministry as well as a number of members from the National Congress (parliament). “All civil society organizations also took part with us. Everybody consented to issuing the statement against the presence of the [fundamentalist] brigades and we distributed 3,000 copies.

This was around September 3. After the attack on the US consulate, tens of thousands of people in Benghazi demonstrated against the violence and in favor of the US and Stevens. Then they attempted to sweep the fundamentalist militias from the city.

7. Al-Qaeda is not for the most part even a “thing” in Libya. The only formal al-Qaeda affiliate in the region is al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), which is not a Libyan but an Algerian organization. Just calling all Salafi groups “al-Qaeda” is propaganda. They have to swear fealty to Ayman al-Zawahiri (or in the past, Usama Bin Laden) to be al-Qaeda. The main al-Qaeda connection in Benghazi is to Abu Yahya al-Libi, who was killed in northern Pakistan by a US drone strike in June. Some of his close relatives in Benghazi may have been angry about this (depending on how well they liked him), but they are not known to form a formal al-Qaeda cell. There are also young men from Dirna in the Benghazi area, some of whom fought against the US in Iraq. Their numbers are not large and, again, they don’t have al-Zawahiri’s phone number on auto-dial. Sen. McCain was a big supporter of the US intervention in Libya and seems to have been all right with Abdul Hakim Belhadj being his ally, even though in the zeroes Belhadj would have been labeled ‘al-Qaeda.’

. . .

10. Lindsey Graham and others point to instances of political violence this past summer in Benghazi as obvious harbingers of the September 11 consulate attack. But it was a tiny fringe group, the Omar Abdel Rahman Brigades, that claimed responsibility for setting off a small pipe bomb in front of the gate of the US consulate last June. This is what the US statement said last June:

Quote :

There was an attack late last night on the United States office in Benghazi,” a US embassy official said, adding that only the gate was damaged and no one was hurt. The diplomat said a homemade bomb had been used in the attack on the office, set up after the 2011 uprising against Muammar Qadhafi and kept open to support the democratic transition

You’d have to be a real scaredy cat to pack up and leave because of a thing like that, which is what Sen. Graham keeps saying should have been the response. Likewise the same small cell was responsible for attacks on the office of the Red Cross and on a convoy of the British consulate, which injured a consular employ. Security isn’t all that great in Benghazi, though actually I suspect the criminal murder rate is much lower than in any major American city. I walked around freely in Benghazi in early June, and couldn’t have disguised my being a Westerner if I had wanted to, and nobody looked at me sideways. A pipe bomb and a shooting, neither of them fatal, did not stand out as dire in a city full of armed militias, most of them grateful to the US and Britain for their help in the revolution. You can understand why the Red Cross packed it in after a couple of attacks, but the US government is not the Red Cross.

Quote :

The staff of the embassy in Benghazi should have been considered to be "in harm's way" even before the events of September 11.

They're no more dangerous now than they were under Bush, and given reports on situation was improving and its protection from the CIA "calvary", I see little distinguishing this embassy from others (especially in terms of inherent danger of its location and attack responses) anymore than McCain and Graham did when they visited during that summer. If it was so obviously dangerous, why did the conservative media machine and Republicans like McCain and Graham wait until after the attacks to start bashing Obama? I see no reason to view this any different from previous embassy attacks - unfortunate casualties of war in our ongoing War on Terror. I believe our time would be better well spent not outing undercover CIA ops and their informants in the area, but going after the individuals responsible for the attack, rather than an endless, baseless, and exhaustive discussion of talking points.

That is to say, I see no reason other than there's a Democrat in the White House.

happy jack wrote:

Artie60438 wrote:

happy jack wrote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/opinion/sunday/dowd-when-myths-collide-in-the-capital.html?_r=1&

Yet in this hottest of hot spots, the State Department’s minimum security requirements were not met, requests for more security were rejected

Thanks to the wingnuts who cut their funding.

[b]When a department's funding is cut, it is wisest to make monetary adjustments to non-essential operations, not to embassy security. You know - lay off a few secretaries, nix the expense accounts, buy cheaper staplers, etc..
Otherwise, it is just a case of poor management.

Yes,if only they had cut back on rubber bands,paper clips,and bought "cheaper staplers"
Dana Milbank breaks it down

Quote :

For fiscal 2013, the GOP-controlled House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State Department’s Worldwide Security Protection program — well below the $2.15 billion requested by the Obama administration. House Republicans cut the administration’s request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012. (Negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate restored about $88 million of the administration’s request.) Last year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that Republicans’ proposed cuts to her department would be “detrimental to America’s national security” — a charge Republicans rejected.

[GOP vice presidential nominee Paul] Ryan, [Rep. Darrell] Issa and other House Republicans voted for an amendment in 2009 to cut $1.2 billion from State operations, including funds for 300 more diplomatic security positions. Under Ryan’s budget, non-defense discretionary spending, which includes State Department funding, would be slashed nearly 20 percent in 2014, which would translate to more than $400 million in additional cuts to embassy security.

After all the work Fox and the rest of the wingnuts put in ...
Public Not Viewing Benghazi As A Scandal, Poll Shows

Public Policy Polling is out with the first new poll of public attitudes regarding the political firestorm surrounding the terrorist attack on U.S. diplomats in Benghazi last September and, so far, it doesn’t look like Republicans are winning this battle:

Quote :

PPP’s newest national poll finds that Republicans aren’t getting much traction with their focus on Benghazi over the last week. Voters trust Hillary Clinton over Congressional Republicans on the issue of Benghazi by a 49/39 margin and Clinton’s +8 net favorability rating at 52/44 is identical to what it was on our last national poll in late March. Meanwhile Congressional Republicans remain very unpopular with a 36/57 favorability rating.

Voters think Congress should be more focused on other major issues right now rather than Benghazi. By a 56/38 margin they say passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill is more important than continuing to focus on Benghazi, and by a 52/43 spread they think passing a bill requiring background checks for all gun sales should be a higher priority.

While voters overall may think Congress’ focus should be elsewhere there’s no doubt about how mad Republicans are about Benghazi. 41% say they consider this to be the biggest political scandal in American history to only 43% who disagree with that sentiment. Only 10% of Democrats and 20% of independents share that feeling. Republicans think by a 74/19 margin than Benghazi is a worse political scandal than Watergate, by a 74/12 margin that it’s worse than Teapot Dome, and by a 70/20 margin that it’s worse than Iran Contra.

Ouch!

Hey Darrell, stick this in your ear.

White House Benghazi documents point to CIA

By GLENN THRUSH | 5/15/13 5:22 PM EDT Updated: 5/16/13

White House officials late Wednesday released emails and documents totaling 100 pages showing the evolution of the administration’s talking points about the Benghazi attack — a packet of drafts suggesting the CIA, and not the State Department, first ordered the scrubbing of references to terrorism.

Senior administration officials claimed the binder, which includes emails and memos from Sept. 14-15, show that CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell had decided to scrub public talking points of references to Al Qaeda, an Al Qaeda-linked terrorist group operating in Eastern Libya and prior terrorist attacks in the area.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/white-house-benghazi-emails-91437.html#ixzz2TSoQHaBd

Co-chairmen of independent Benghazi review blow the whistle on Darrell Issa
CNN's Jake Tapper delivers case of shoe meets other foot for Darrell Issa:

Quote :

In a letter to Rep. Darrell Issa exclusively obtained by CNN, the co-chairmen behind an independent review of September's deadly attack in Benghazi, Libya, expressed irritation over the House Oversight Committee chairman's portrayal of their work and requested he call a public hearing at which they can testify.

"The public deserves to hear your questions and our answers," wrote former Ambassador Thomas Pickering and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, co-chairmen of the Accountability Review Board that was convened to investigate the September 11th attack.

Last weekend, Issa said he would consider letting Pickering and Mullen testify, but only behind closed doors. Apparently, letting the co-chairman of the independent Benghazi review board testify in an open hearing would be too partisan:

T

Quote :

he fact is, we don't want to have some sort of a stage show. We had fact witnesses. They testified. We have the Ambassador and Admiral Mullen who conducted and oversaw the [independent review]. We're inviting them on Monday. We'll go through, not in front of the public, but in a nonpartisan way.

That's obviously a load of bull. The real reason Issa doesn't want a public hearing because hearing from the independent Benghazi review board won't serve his narrow partisan interests. And Pickering and Mullen are calling Issa out for his double standard:

But the two assert in their letter that a public hearing is a "more appropriate forum" and accuse Issa of changing his "position on the terms of our appearance."

The full letter is here.

Issa should really start thinking about changing his nameplate to Inspector Clouseau.

Republicans Altered Benghazi Emails, CBS News Report Claims

Quote :

One day after The White House released 100 pages of Benghazi emails, a report has surfaced alleging that Republicans released a set with altered text.

CBS News reported Thursday that leaked versions sent out by the GOP last Friday had visible differences than Wednesday's official batch. Two correspondences that were singled out in the report came from National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes and State Department Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland.

The GOP version of Rhodes' comment, according to CBS News: "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."

The White House email: "We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation."

The GOP version of Nuland's comment, according to CBS News: The penultimate point is a paragraph talking about all the previous warnings provided by the Agency (CIA) about al-Qaeda's presence and activities of al-Qaeda."

The White House email: "The penultimate point could be abused by members to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings."

The news parallels a Tuesday CNN report which initially introduced the contradiction between what was revealed in a White House Benghazi email version, versus what was reported in media outlets. On Monday, Mother Jones noted that the Republicans' interim report included the correct version of the emails, signaling that more malice and less incompetence may have been at play with the alleged alterations.

In that April interim report on Benghazi (which Buck noted), the House Republicans cited these emails (in footnotes 56 and 57) to note an important point: "State Department emails reveal senior officials had 'serious concerns' about the talking points, because Members of Congress might attack the State Department for 'not paying attention to Agency warnings' about the growing threat in Benghazi."

Despite the White House's Wednesday move to release emails, Republicans continued to call for more information on Thursday.

"While these hundred are good and they shed light on what happened, we have nearly 25,000 that they haven't released," Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told Fox News on Thursday.

I'm sure that Gramps McCain,the Southern Belle,and Inspector Issa will all be clamoring for a "special investigation",while screaming 'Someone needs to go to jail" and Fox news will cover this wall to wall

So, we can only assume that all the Republicans shouting "Off with their dishonest heads!" will quickly change targets. Right?

Anyway, here's what what we know as a result:

Quote :

In the very first of the declassified emails in the set, the CIA is revealed to have willingly struck references to Al Qaeda’s involvement in the attack, a deletion that conservatives have previously slammed as political in nature. A CIA official, responding to an inquiry about whether or not the Agency was sure that Al Qaeda took part in the attack, noted that the initial draft “could be interpreted that way,” suggesting that the document be revised to say that terrorist group took part in the protests instead. The CIA was also under “express instructions” to avoid naming perpetrators so to not to undermine the FBI’s investigation, according to an email from Sept. 14.

But Issa still hasn't done enough damage:

Quote :

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) still isn’t convinced no cover-up occurred. After telling CNN host Wolf Blitzer, “We’re not accusing anyone of anything sinister,” just one minute later, he implied that the CIA was forced to provide false information.

I've dealt with this kind of disconnect on AGW. "The scientists are manipulating the data!" closely followed by "I never said it was a conspiracy."

Quote :

“How did they go from the correct information to the incorrect information, and isn’t 100 pages or more a pushback on the CIA effectively telling the CIA, ‘You’ve got to change your story?’” Issa asked.

Yeah, why wouldn't the CIA want to blow their operations? Salvage what's left of what the GOP hasn't exposed yet? Fuck this guy. He won't be happy until he's got photo IDs of all undercover agents, informants, and details on every current op read live on TV. Or maybe he knows it can't happen, and that's the whole point of this charade.

And despite all the demands for transparency, Issa ins't very interested:

Quote :

The dispute between Issa and the co-chairmen came to a head after neither Pickering nor Mullen attended a May 8 House Oversight Committee hearing on the attacks, sparking a heated back and forth about who was invited and when. The rhetoric intensified Sunday during a highly contentious joint appearance with Issa and Pickering on NBC's "Meet the Press" in which Issa maintained the two "refused to come before our committee." Pickering insisted that he was not invited despite expressing a willingness to testify.

"Chairman Issa sent word back that he might want to take me up some time in the future" Pickering said.

Issa also suggested on the program that Pickering and Mullen meet with the committee behind closed doors so as not to create "some sort of stage show." But the two assert in their letter that a public hearing is a "more appropriate forum" and accuse Issa of changing his "position on the terms of our appearance."

"Having taken liberal license to call into question the Board's work, it is surprising that you now maintain that members of the committee need a closed-door proceeding before being able to ask "informed questions" at a public hearing," they write in the letter.

Pickering and Mullen assert that since they are not witnesses, but rather officials asked to serve on a review board, they should be permitted to testify in public.

"While we understand and respect that your committee has the authority and responsibility to review the Benghazi attacks, we ask that you similarly understand and respect that the Accountability Review Board bore its own authority and responsibility to review Benghazi," they write.

Ignorant fuck or simply trying to protect his manufactured scandal?

I digress... Here's another interesting link - An insider view of creating talking points. SPOILER ALERT! There's still no conspiracy:

Quote :

Regarding the talking points, it’s not surprising that the entire government would want the chance to look at and edit that language. This was a dynamic situation and new information was constantly flowing in, and different agencies had important concerns that had to be addressed – the State Department had security concerns, the FBI was worried about its investigation, and the CIA had a major, yet still undisclosed, role.

What most people don’t understand is that purpose of the National Security Council is to coordinate the many national security agencies of the government – in other words to get the State Department, DOD, intelligence community, etc.… into one room to hash out disagreements and make decisions.

That role is actually written into the law that created the NSC.

. . .

The fact that Benghazi would be discussed at an NSC meeting at the White House isn’t scandalous or even surprising – really its just standard operating procedure.

. . .

So again, as has been reported, the issue was tabled for discussion at a Saturday morning interagency meeting. At that meeting, a senior CIA official – an individual whom I will not name but will note is a career official and is one of the most professional people I’ve ever worked with – agreed with State’s concern and said that he would take the talking points back to his building to edit them. Later that day, the CIA official sent a revised version of the talking points, which the White House edited to change “consulate” to “diplomatic post”.

I think it’s fair to say that we could’ve been clearer that we were referring to this final CIA version of the talking points when we said we made one edit, but the fact that the government edited these points isn’t surprising or at all nefarious – it’s routine.

Different agencies wanted to edit this language for a variety of reasons. Information was flowing in and being analyzed in real time. Some things we learned came from human intelligence sources or intercepted communications, and the intelligence community needed to make sure that what we said publicly didn’t tip off the bad guys or disclose sources and methods. There was also an ongoing investigation and concern about public statements complicating that effort to bring whoever did this to justice.

Seriously, fuck the GOP. "We need to fuck things up for Obama, national security be damned. FOR AMERICA!"

Quote :

The charge that there was an administration effort to “sell” a normalization narrative in Libya is nonsensical. There just isn’t a political angle here. No voter went to the polls thinking, I don’t like Obama, but boy we have a much better relationship with Tripoli now than we did a few years ago so he’s getting my vote. It’s just silly.

As the week of September 11, 2012 went on, what consumed the administration was concern about the safety and security of US personnel serving overseas. The protests were expanding geographically and growing in size. Military units were being positioned across the globe to deal with potential evacuations. It was a very, very scary time, especially as we approached Friday prayers on September 14th.

Looking back, maybe there was a time when tragedies like Benghazi brought our country together, but here we’ve seen the opposite. Susan Rice went on TV and offered the consensus US government view of what we thought happened at that time. For that, she was viciously attacked in deeply personal ways. Members of the Senate called her “incompetent” and suggested she was a liar. That’s outrageous.

Imagine if Susan had gone on TV and offered some personal view of what happened or contradicted the intelligence community? She would’ve been charged with manipulating intelligence. The attacks on her have been gratuitous and unfair, and it’s time we start saying as much.

Benghazi is a scandal... it's the GOP's 9/11 Twoof Movement. A fantasy dreamt up in the throes of a full blown Derangement Syndrome episode. They can either proudly wear their shiny, tinfoil hats, expose themselves as the retarded, ideological idiots they appear to be, and continue to compromise our national security in their endless and exhaustive witchhunt, or they can STFU, take 'em off, and proudly join us here in reality. While I think the former would be far more entertaining, I think our country would actually benefit from the later.

Hilary Clinton Eats Scandals for Breakfast

Just checked Drudge. Guess what? Not one Benghazi story It's on to the IRSl!
So sit back,,relax and and enjoy watching them overplay it.

Heretic wrote:

Benghazi is a scandal... it's the GOP's 9/11 Twoof Movement. A fantasy dreamt up in the throes of a full blown Derangement Syndrome episode. They can either proudly wear their shiny, tinfoil hats, expose themselves as the retarded, ideological idiots they appear to be, and continue to compromise our national security in their endless and exhaustive witchhunt, or they can STFU, take 'em off, and proudly join us here in reality. While I think the former would be far more entertaining, I think our country would actually benefit from the later.

Speaking of retarded, ideological idiots, we have “magical talking cantaloupe” Rep. Louis Gohmert of Texas.(where else?)
These fucking mouth breathing imbeciles are parodies of themselves. How can anyone take them seriously?



Looks like getting bitch slapped by a black guy didn't sit too well for Louis.

Artie60438 wrote:

Just checked Drudge. Guess what? Not one Benghazi story It's on to the IRSl!
So sit back,,relax and and enjoy watching them overplay it.

You must be unfamiliar with the concept of the smorgasbord.
You take a little bit of something, such as Barry claiming that the Benghazi attack was nothing more than a movie review gone bad, then you move on to the next tasty item - in this case, Barry using the IRS as his very own Committee to Re-Elect the President.



http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/18/us/politics/irs-scandal-congressional-hearings.html?hp&_r=3&

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department’s inspector general told senior Treasury officials in June 2012 he was auditing the Internal Revenue Service’s screening of politically active organizations seeking tax exemptions, disclosing for the first time on Friday that Obama administration officials were aware of the matter during the presidential campaign year.


At the first Congressional hearing into the I.R.S. scandal, J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration, told members of the House Ways and Means Committee that he informed the Treasury’s general counsel of his audit on June 4, and Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin “shortly thereafter.”

It remained unclear how much the disclosure would affect the broader debate over the I.R.S.'s problems. Complaints from Tea Party groups that the I.R.S. was singling them out became public in 2012, through media accounts.

Mr. George told Treasury officials about the allegation as part of a routine briefing about ongoing audits he would be conducting in the coming year, and he did not tell the officials of his conclusions that the targeting had been improper, he said.

Still, the inspector general’s testimony will most likely fuel efforts by Congressional Republicans to show that Obama administration officials knew of efforts to single out conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status for additional scrutiny, but did not reveal that knowledge during President Obama’s re-election campaign.

Bullshit, Barry did not make that claim.You lie. The CIA made the claim that the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

Quote :

"in this case, Barry using the IRS as his very own Committee to Re-Elect the President"

Have any evidence to back up this lie?....two lies in one post, excellent.
Yeah, I didn't think so. That tin foil hat looks good, jack.


BTW, you left this out, genius:

Quote :

When Republicans asked Mr. Miller whether the targeting of conservative groups was divulged to Obama administration officials outside the I.R.S., Mr. Miller said “that would be a violation of law.”

edge540 wrote:

Bullshit, Barry did not make that claim.You lie. The CIA made the claim that the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

Quote :

"in this case, Barry using the IRS as his very own Committee to Re-Elect the President"

Have any evidence to back up this lie?....two lies in one post, excellent.
Yeah, I didn't think so. That tin foil hat looks good, jack.


BTW, you left this out, genius:

Quote :

When Republicans asked Mr. Miller whether the targeting of conservative groups was divulged to Obama administration officials outside the I.R.S., Mr. Miller said “that would be a violation of law.”

And you left this out:

“I would be shocked” if that occurred, he said.

Shocked!!!! Shocked, I tell you!!!!

edge540 wrote:

Bullshit, Barry did not make that claim.You lie. The CIA made the claim that the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

Quote :

"in this case, Barry using the IRS as his very own Committee to Re-Elect the President"

Have any evidence to back up this lie?....two lies in one post, excellent.
Yeah, I didn't think so. That tin foil hat looks good, jack.


BTW, you left this out, genius:

Quote :

When Republicans asked Mr. Miller whether the targeting of conservative groups was divulged to Obama administration officials outside the I.R.S., Mr. Miller said “that would be a violation of law.”

Allow me to pile on

Quote :

Liberal groups received same IRS letter that ignited Tea Party outrage
The maelstrom over the revelation that the IRS targeted anti-tax Tea Party groups applying for tax exempt status for scrutiny is showing no signs of slowing down, with Republicans seeing their chance to milk a scandal for political purposes. But while the politics is heating up, some important context is emerging, like the fact that
liberal groups were targeted as well, and in fact the only group to have its application denied was a liberal group.

Quote :

One of those groups, Emerge America, saw its tax-exempt status denied, forcing it to disclose its donors and pay some taxes. None of the Republican groups have said their applications were rejected.

Progress Texas, another of the organizations, faced the same lines of questioning as the Tea Party groups from the same IRS office that issued letters to the Republican-friendly applicants. A third group, Clean Elections Texas, which supports public funding of campaigns, also received IRS inquiries.

The IRS released a statement late Tuesday admitting that it had pooled together the applications of groups that were politically active, and incorrectly used the names of some of the groups—a "minority" of them—as the basis for targeting them. Which, David Cay Johnston at the Columbia Journalism Review
reminds it's readers is the IRS's job.

Quote :

Missing from much coverage is the relevant recent history—the role of the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision and how it prompted a deluge of requests from new organizations seeking tax-exempt status under tax code Section 501(c)(4) as “social welfare” organizations—despite the fact that many of these are blatantly political operations.
Congress requires the IRS to review every application for tax-exempt status to weed out organizations that are partisan, political, or that generate private gain. Congress has imposed this requirement on the IRS, and its predecessor agencies, since 1913.

Those are just two of the salient points Johnston makes to give the critical context behind this scandal. He also points out that the IRS is tasked with the vague and mushy directive to distinguish between groups are "primarily engaged" in politics versus those that are primarily engaged in "social welfare," and getting to that distinction is a challenge for an agency deluged by applications post-Citizens United and which has had its budget slashed by 17 percent per capita in the last decade. The agency processed 2,774 501(c)(4) applications in 2012.

The other point he makes, which we're not hearing frequently or loudly enough in the response to the kerfuffle, is a real scandal: "the social welfare tax exemption is being used by existing 501(c)(4) organizations, including some very large ones, to promote partisan political interests—the very activity Congress has explicitly prohibited for a century." In other words, Karl Rove and Crossroads.

This is a serious issue, one deserving of investigation. But Republicans could be biting off more than they can chew if it causes a bright light to be shone on how politically partisan organizations, like Rove's, are exploiting the law.