This Benghazi thing is so far over the top now. The right is treating it like some My Pet Goat moment or something. It’s hard to even respond to these dimwits because I don’t want to in any way diminish the importance of the people who died. But I wonder if they think the president cancels his calls with foreign leaders every time a group of soldiers or contractors in Afghanistan come under fire or are besieged? Americans are attacked every day. What was unusual about the attack in Benghazi was that it succeeded in killing a U.S. ambassador. There was nothing that could have been done for him. The president ordered Defense Secretary Panetta to do what he could, and he did.
I also love how they managed to criticize the president for not meeting with Netanyahu and now they are criticizing him for talking to him for an hour on the night of the Benghazi raids. Coming and going.
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Due to protests by members of Code Pink, the opening statement of John Brennan was interupted 5 times.
Chairwoman Feinstein has put the hearing in recess and the chamber will be cleared.
C-Span link
good.
Sen. Graham was horrible, his main concern was why there weren’t AC-130’s gunships in the air to spread devastation to anyone and all in, on or near our Benghazi consulate and/or CIA annex. Of no concern to his argument, there was no intelligence available on the whereabouts of Ambassador Stevens.
Not only Benghazi was of a concern, but the meeting was scheduled to discuss Cairo and Tunis which were under attack and the security perimeter was breached. After their meeting with the President, Gen. Dempsey and Secr. of Defense Panetta returned to the Pentagon and stayed there during the night until all Americans were on a plane out of Benghazi.
There were some detailed accounts of the timeline of three attacks on the US compounds. First attack was on the US Consulate, a mansion not made to withstand any attack with heavy arms. The Libyan security guards opened the gates for the intruders to enter. (I stated this fact a day after the attack from a witness account on France24 website) The consulate was set on fire. US security guards from the CIA annex rescued a number of persons, due to heavy smoke they were unable to locate Amb. Stevens. Two hours later a new attack was launched against the CIA annex a short distance away from the mansion. This attack was thwarted without loss of life. Additional US security personell was flown in from the US embassy in Tripoli. Another five hours later, a third and heaviest attack with RPGs was launched on the CIA annex. It targeted the roof of the building where two US security guards lost their lives.
White House staff, NSC staff and the chief of staff stayed in communication with the DoD operation to deploy additional forces towards Libya.
The President had another NSC meeting at 19.00 hours that night.
Graham is a vindictive, evil man who is rancunous about the criticism his President Bush got from the Democrats during those eight years. The time spent on Benghazi and the line of questioning by Republicans is not worthy of a Congressional hearing. It’s more a tribunal with a series of prosecutors making arguments without a shred of evidence, without the intention of finding the truth.
Ted Cruz was even dumber.
I’m having difficulty imagining a context where, “Ted Cruz was even dumber,” would be false.
AC-130’s! There are only good for wide devastation. Might as well ask why tactical nukes weren’t available.
The same people were yelping about AC-130s during the UN mission, too. That was what McCain and Graham were talking about during their “full force of the American military” phase.
Obama was sending drones to fire individual Hellfire missiles at artillery batteries to prevent the shelling of populated cities – and not nearly enough, according to the Free Libya Forces, who were actually complaining that we weren’t loosing enough missiles into their country. Meanwhile, the Republicans are complaining that he isn’t hosing down whole blocks with unguided 20mm gattling guns and 105 mm high explosive artillery rounds (the armaments on the Specter gunships).
Bottom line: when John McCain tells you to get off his lawn, make sure there isn’t a big, black, jetliner-looking thing circling the neighborhood.
Great Line!
To stop that jetliner, I’ll just invoke my 2nd Amendment right to an anti-aircraft gun.
Hey, now, we can’t expect the Secretary of Defense to run the day-to-day operations of the military.
Six hundred thousand dead in Iraq thanks to our invasion and the ensuing slaughter and civil war. Three thousand dead U.S. soldiers and 300 dead U.S. contractors/mercs.
All this death under false pretenses and NO congressional hearings.
Maybe the greatest military fiasco in our history and NO congressional hearings.
Our country’s reputation completely trashed and NO congressional hearings.
With the Repugs its all theater, hypocrisy and lies.
Confirmation hearing is going well for John Brennan due to his extensive knowledge of the CIA. I am truly amazed by poor knowledge of the Al-Qaeda issue and global threat. Suddenly every threat is seen as from Al-Qaeda. Senator Collins of Maine even stated that in 2002 the AQ problem was limited to Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is so stupid as there were already AQ elements and camps in Somalia, Yemen, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, Malaysia, Philippines and Indonesia. (Well at least she didn’t repeat the Bush-Cheney lie by adding Iraq) The global attacks were spread throughout these Muslim countries and included Marocco and Tunisia. Many attacks in Europe were from AQ affiliates, all of those attacks have ceased. Attacks by AQ in Indonesia and the Far East have been limited in recent years. The problem remains in Pakistan and the Arab countries of North Africa.
Due to the succes of drone attacks in the tribal areas of Pakistan [map], many jihadists from Arab countries have fled and returned home. In the training camps of AQ run by Osama Bim Laden some 30-40,000 jihadists passed through them, stayed to fight with the Taliban or returned to their home country. Some of these fighters have joined national terror groups like the Algerian GSPC or Libyan Ansar al-Sharia. Part of these groups have morphed into AQIM which is independently operating in the Maghreb with little or no control by the decimated AQ leadership of Zawahiri. Unfortunately, where there is upheaval or a failed state, the jihadists are attracted like Mali, Libya and Syria.
See my diary – A Decade of US Special Ops in the Sahel-Maghreb.
All of these wankers miss the fact that the Ambassador is who the Secretary of State delegates the responsibility for the security of the embassy and consulates.
Wonder if the CIA is stoking the Benghazi truthers to divert Republicans from the drone story? Naaw. Too CT.
Benghazi is Whitewater all over again.
The whole fucking premise is as stupid as it possibly can get. From what I can tell the criticism is on two main points (and it’s hard to tell because the point of the criticism is to criticize, not to actually fix anything, so the arguments flow as needed to fit circumstances);
We don’t have to guess how the GOP would have responded to an security failure incident with a GOP President, we know. A much bigger one happened on 9/11/01. When, 3 years after the fact, we finally had a comission to investigate it they screamed about “witch hunt” and went apeshit over every revelation of obvious incompetence by Bush officials.
The only positive I get from this is that some how the SCLM(tm) isn’t enthusiastically jumping on board they way they did with Whitewater – they are participating, but we haven’t had anything like the NY Times front page, years-long-lasting, serious of erroreous articles on a “scandal” that resulted in exactly one, extraneous, conviction.
Shit, if this had happened on Bush’s watch we know how he would have reacted. “Heckuva job, Ricey”
So I haven’t researched AQ for many, many years. When I did research it I found that the name AQ – the base – wasn’t one that bin Laden used prior to 9/11. It was a name assigned to his group by the CIA (forget the reason). However, he adopted it after 9/11 as, due to massive publicity, it gained a high “brand value” for bin Laden.
The second thing is that while there is this image popular in the US media of AQ as a sophisticated KGB-like organization with tentacles everywhere, the reality is that AQ is more a generic label adopted by local groups with similar views and common enemies. Think of the “militia” movement in the U.S.
This created some interesting situations. I think it was in 2004 that bin Laden claimed AQ responsibility for some bombings in Spain, and the media had already been trumpeting that the groups in Spain were “linked to AQ”, but in truth there was little more between the two groups than mutual admiration. The methods and skills were completely different.
When I read that so-and-so has “links to AQ” I am extremely skeptical. In the last decade accusing someone of “links to AQ” was akin to accusing someone of being soft on communism in the 1950s – facts don’t matter, once the accusation is made the game is over. In many cases the “links” documented were beyond ridiculous – one I remember was “attended a wedding where other AQ members were present”.
So, in light of all this I think Oui’s write-up above makes a lot of sense, especially this:
Many attacks in Europe were from AQ affiliates, all of those attacks have ceased. Attacks by AQ in Indonesia and the Far East have been limited in recent years. The problem remains in Pakistan and the Arab countries of North Africa.
AQ is no longer a “hot” brand, so it’s not surprising that fewer groups are claiming ties to AQ to boost their own brand. No mistake, there are a lot of people who are easy recruits for such groups, but the AQ branding is weakening.
The other factor is that under Obama — and indeed, since Rove was fired and Cheney sidelined at the end of 2006 — the Pentagon/CIA seeming have stopped trying to build up the image of AQ as this all-powerful monster.
Now can we end the AUMFs?
the reality is that AQ is more a generic label adopted by local groups with similar views and common enemies.
No, that is not the reality. Remember during the Iraq War, when Zawahiri wanted to use the al Qaeda name, he had to ask permission from bin Laden, and to swear an oath to him. Negotiations went on for months, with bin Laden requiring that Zawahiri change the tactics he was using (such as mosque-bombings) before bin Laden would agree. There is a lot of bad information out there being pushed by people who think their political agenda is served by pretending that al Qaeda ceases to be al Qaeda when they are outside of Pakistan.
The other factor… The more significant factor is that, under Obama, al Qaeda has taken a serious beating, and has been rendered a much less-effective force.
Yep,
But IMO, the drone programs is like the stuff that came out during Watergate–CIA Phoenix Program most closely. And that became a major cancer on the Nixon administration and weighted down the Ford administration. Not only is it like those programs, Cheney and Rumsfeld are the links between that era and this. And the Obama administration has now for too long drifted in that same direction.
So we can be outraged that the Republicans are still fixated on Benghazi because of the associations of Republican administrations with the drone program. But if they ever start taking oversight seriously, the Obama administration is in trouble. Obama, Kerry, Hagel (if confirmed), and especially Brennan (who is likely a shoo-in) need to walk this program back as quickly as possible.
Obama, Kerry, Hagel (if confirmed), and especially Brennan (who is likely a shoo-in) need to walk this program back as quickly as possible.
Sure they do. They also have to make sure they aren’t thrown into a briar patch.
Not “too CT.” Too illogical.
Both the Republicans and the American public are strongly supportive of the drone program. To the Republicans, the success of the program, and the willingness of the administration to run it, are huge political embarrassments. Divert them from it? You’d have to waterboard them to get them to talk about it in the first place.
Isn’t the hysteria over the Benghazi attack a hangover from the Romney campaign? Romney famously wasted no time in politicizing the event, and then Fox News put his talking points in heavy rotation. This failed to change the course of the election, but like death panels, birth certificates, and goodness knows what else, took root in the right wing imagination. Would we still be talking about this had Romney not made the investment that he did?
Especially the timing a week before the anniversary of Setember 11 promoted by Morris Sadek –
Who are the real players behind anti-Muslim films?
Every right winger I see on FB & in many comments section bring up Benghazi, it has reached full penetration into the RWNJ mind.