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Benghazi Hearing House Committee on Foreign Affairs
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. intelligence and State Department officials testified behind closed doors on Capitol Hill on Thursday about the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that has turned into a contentious issue between Republicans and the administration of President Barack Obama.
Republicans have accused the Obama administration of misinformation in the early days following the September 11, 2012, attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans.
Administration officials say their initial comments that it appeared the attack grew spontaneously out of protests over an anti-Muslim film rather than a premeditated strike were based on the best available information at that time.
Two top Republican senators on Wednesday threatened to block any nomination of Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to a Cabinet post, which must be confirmed by the Senate, for making those initial comments. Obama came to her defense and said if she was the right person for a spot in his Cabinet, he would nominate her.
On Thursday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, acting CIA Director Michael Morell, National Counterterrorism Center Director Matthew Olsen, FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and Under Secretary of State for Management Pat Kennedy were testifying behind closed doors at separate hearings of the House and Senate intelligence committees.
Below the fold: Harry Reid Writes a ‘Dear John Letter’
Harry Reid Shuts Down McCain On Libya: ‘End The Politicization Of National Security’
(Think Progress) – Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has rejected Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) request to establish a Select Committee to investigate the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11. In a strongly worded letter * delivered to the former GOP presidential hopeful on Friday, Reid rebuked Republicans for politicizing the killings and baselessly claiming that the Obama administration is engaged in a cover-up of the incident. “I refuse to allow the Senate to be used as a venue for baseless partisan attacks,” Reid wrote, noting that several committees in the House and Senate are already investigating the tragedy.
Earlier this week, McCain, along with Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), held around the clock press conferences and media appearances insisting that U.N. Ambassador misled the public when she described, five days after the attacks, the incident as a “spontaneous attack” inspired by an anti-Islam video. McCain and Graham promised to block Rice should she be nominated to replace Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State; Ayotte said she would consider the nomination.
In his letter, Reid reminded McCain that “elections are over; it is time to put an end to the partisan politicization of national security and begin working together to strengthen our efforts to dismantle and destroy the terrorist networks that threaten us.” He also rebuked the Arizona senator for skipping a closed-doors committee hearing on Benghazi in order to hold a press conference demanding more information about the attacks.
* The letter was copied to:
Senator Mitch McConnell, Senate Minority Leader
Senator Lindsey Graham, Senate Armed Service Committee
Senator Kelly Ayotte, Senate Armed Service Committee
This is what happens when Democrats give a pass to Republican administrations for really big lies (i.e. WMD) and total incompetence (9/11 — the massive intel/operating failure in 2011 and all the other GWB failures). Republicans are always poised to attack Democrats for any real or imagined failing no matter how small or petty. They only retreat when Democrats pummel them at both the ballot box and bully pulpit. The latter is rarer than the former.
Agnostic at dKos detailed the full flavor of the McCain/Graham/GOP partisan hypocrisy in To Sen McCain & Graham
And kurious added the history on the Reagan screwups
And posed a few questions:
How is it possible that the GOP can preside over so many large and massive foreign policy and defense and economic failures and still get 47% of the vote in a national election? (And that was with a couple of lying twerps on their ticket.)
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The guy that would be POTUS can’t even manage his freaking schedule and show up for his few official job duties. What a putz!
Has CNN decided to engage in reputable journalism? McCain skips Benghazi briefing, gets testy when questioned by CNN
Skipped the committee classified briefing in favor of shooting his mouth off in front of TV cameras.
Who were the other four GOP members that failed to attend the briefing and what are their excuses? The suspects are:
Tom Coburn, OK
Scott Brown, MA
Ron Johnson, WI
Rob Portman, OH
Ran Paul, KY
Jerry Moran, KS
Yeh, there’s a whiff of media willingness to start calling out the crap from the GOP — just a hint of a trace of a scent, and maybe this time just because it made for an entertaining video snip. But still, dare we hope?
No. It has not. “Reputable journalism” in big-time media is gone.
Fuggedaboudit.
The fix is still in, and unless Obama really screws up…you know, like going rogue on the PermaGov in some manner…it will stay in. CNN is part of the system that Ron Paul recently called “the government media complex,” and it will toe the government media complex line. Bet on it.
The Republican Party will remain in a position of power and do its job of blocking so events do not move too fast. Control of the House of Representatives is perfect. Control of the House and being only a few seats down in the Senate puits them in the position of effective spoiler for four more years, and Obama is safely controlled as a result. 2016? The next fix will be decided before then unless drastic events change everything.
Watch.
AG
P.S. The ongoing Republican resistance to Susan Rice becoming Secretary of State? It’s racial, I think. Not “racist” racial so much as politically racial. I mean…they didn’t have a problem with Condoleeza Rice, right? And any Secretary of State that Obama nominates is going to have to maintain his policies, so it’s not about her policies or beliefs nor is it about her bureaucratic competence. She’s proved that on her long slog up through the ranks. Plus she’s a woman as well. So here’s yet another person of color and/or female about ascend to a position of power and thus attract the kind of media attention that such a position mandates. Meanwhile the Republicans are so losing votes as minorities of all sorts and women completely diss them. Uh oh!!! That will affect the fix, big time!!! It might even lose them the House in two years. Uh oh!!!
So it’s time to resist.
And the governmental media complex will probably back them, to some degree. Just enough for a stalemate.
Watch.
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No facts; just Petraeus’ belief. (A belief that others at the CIA may or may not have shared.) Sort of like he believed that some guy in Texas planned to kidnap a Saudi ambassador.
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From an earlier diary …
The careful wording in the preliminary CIA assessment was taken by Amb. Susan Rice to a higher level of certainty. The paragraphs in the article obfuscates the facts on the ground. The CIA memo mixes Benghazi with the demonstrations in Cairo which is at the least very awkward as the circumstances were completely different. A terribly poor job.
Cairo
Protesters scaled the wall of the heavily-fortified US embassy in Cairo Tuesday, angry over a film that Egyptian media reported was produced in the US and mocks the prophet Muhammad.
revenge attack by terrorists who used Libyan Mohammed movie protest as cover’ (photo’s + video)
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Typo: since Ansar al-Islam denied carrying out the attacks …
I still found the witness account of Sofian Kadura in France24 article quite accurate – “The extremist Islamists were yelling that they wanted to kill everyone in the consulate” (Sept. 12, 2012). There followed a second wave of attack a few hours later in the night which killed the CIA security guards in a firefight.
Terrorist Designations of Ansar al-Sharia (AAS) as an Alias for Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP)