The Republicans continually astonish me. At least, the ones who believe their own bullshit do. A group of armed men attacked our consulate and another compound of ours in Benghazi, Libya and killed our ambassador and three other men. We knew this the next day. It was reported that way the next day. That’s what the administration said happened the next day. The president referred to it as an “act of terror” while talking about it in the Rose Garden the next day. The day after that, he referred to it as an “act of terror” on the campaign trail in Colorado. The only thing that was ever in dispute was what motivated the armed men? Were they incensed by a stupid YouTube video? Were they using a protest about the video as cover to launch an attack that was motivated more by the anniversary of 9/11? Were they anti-American for this reason or that reason?
That’s literally the only thing that was ever in doubt. What we knew was that armed men launched a coordinated attack on two of our compounds in Libya and killed our ambassador and three other people. The president called it terrorism. The Republicans seem to think that it can’t be terrorism if the assailants are mad about an insulting YouTube.
So, maybe we need to have an argument about what constitutes terrorism. Maybe the right-wingers should be chastising the president for calling the attacks “terrorism” when he had no right to jump to that conclusion based on the facts as he understood them at the time. After all, it’s not terrorism if it’s a spontaneous attack, right? It’s not terrorism if the perpetrators are motivated by a feeling that their religion has been insulted.
Who even knows what the fuck these Republicans are talking about. I think it boils down to nothing more than the administration had some bad initial information (some of which was provided by the Libyan government) and they relayed that information to the public and were slow to acknowledge their mistake. My understanding is that there is no record that anyone at the consulate asked for additional security. The Republicans have slashed the budget for diplomatic security. And this idea that the president didn’t call the attacks “acts of terrorism” (when he did, more than once) because his administration thought the video played a role is just muddle-headed nonsense.
I am not even sure that either the Republicans or the Democrats version of reality is correct. An act of terrorism is carried out to intimidate people and get them to pressure their government to change policy. I think our Ambassador was killed simply because his murderers wanted him dead. I don’t think they had a political goal. I don’t think things would be any different if a mob of YouTube protesters had overrun the consulate. They would have been committing murder without much expectation that it would change anything. The rage of a mob is not terrorism.
But, however you want to define terrorism, the Republicans have been keen to politicize the unfortunate death of our ambassador and three other Americans, and it has been a disgrace.
I see. This from the Party whose history to this day is a littany of turning a blind eye to acts of terrorism so that they can focus on the capitalism of the Defense machine to address perceived State threats instead.
Just when I think they can’t possibly be more intellectually bankrupt they turn a page to find more stupid. I’m surprised they aren’t blaming the Libyan deaths on single moms. Wait for it, it’s coming.
Good post. But didn’t Stevens die from smoke inhalation? What is the evidence even that anyone wanted him dead? And wasn’t he taken to the hospital in an effort to save his life? Or has all that changed too?
Regardless, it’s disgraceful indeed.
According to the newest reports IIRC, the group who claimed responsibility attributed it to the video and there were shouts against the video while the event was actually happening. So either it was in response to the video, or the video was used as a cover/propaganda to hide the terrorists amidst a group of people who really WERE pissed off at the video.
Either way it certainly seems the Dem and Obama versions are closer to fact. It is the Republicans that are too far from reality.
If it is not a terrorist attack then who attack it? What is their motives in doing that? Obviously, their motives is to kill the ambassador and not for any reason.
What is really annoying is that there are probably legitimate criticisms of Obama on Libyan 911 mess, but the right wing is too fucking stupid and wedded to their narratives that it gets lost.
Oh well, if they want to continue to push Romney into those thresher blades, and make the next debate entirely about this, I say go for it. It’s worked so well for him the last three times…
I’m very interested in seeing what the State Department report has to say about the episode.
Darryl Issa? Mitt Romney? Naw, not really all that interested in their opinions.
Face it, the Republicans are in panic mode. They may be puffed up and confident about a Romney win, but deep down inside they know he’s a shitty candidate.
So they grasp desperately onto any issue. Romney embarrassed himself and his party at the debate over the terrorism issue and now they’re pulling anything out of their asses to make it Obama’s fault. It’s their usual modus operandi: make a big stink, wave their arms, point fingers, blow smoke and when they’re proven to be wrong, they just saunter away.
Romney and the Republicans will continue to throw crap up against the wall to see what sticks. It doesn’t have to be relevant or real, it just has to push buttons. We have to just keep pointing out the facts and disproving everything they say. Amd they’re going to double down during these last few weeks, too.
Scarborough and Halpern are pitching what will apparently the party line for the next news cycle… Namely that they don’t want to talk about binders for the next three weeks. That there are more important things facing the nation.
Apparently they can’t find a way to defend the bold face lie about asking for binders and the lie betrays his total tone deaf position on women.
But Republicans seem to be doubling down on the Lybia issue. they just dont know when to shut up ad stop digging. This can’t be a winning strategy with anyone except the nuts who will never vote for Obama anyway.
Yes and it’s such a strange way to try and regain ground as the “Party of Defense” and the go to daddy party in world affairs.
And Romney’s comment about the Navy being smaller than during WWI is also stupid.
A) Factually the size of the Navy has fluctuated but stayed about the same size for decades. And given how long it takes to build ships the size of the Navy has more to do with what W did during his term.
B) There were no aircraft carriers in WWI. The lethality of the weapons systems and the power projection capabilities of carrier groups are many times greater than the wallowing battleships of the turn of the 19th century. Ten battleships wouldn’t last ten minutes against a Nimitz or Ford class carrier group.
C) What would be the mission for more ships? Is there some strategic need we are not meeting? We have ten battle groups. Is there some corner of the world we don’t have sufficiently covered? Or does Newport News shipbuilding just need new contracts?
What a maroon? http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-10-09/romney-claim-of-smallest-navy-misses-technology-s-edge
The terrorists used the video as a pretext for a calculated attack during a time when many protests. of varying degrees of spontaneity, were taking place in the Muslim world. Terrorists typically take advantage of the popular mood, especially when passions are aroused, in the attempt to attract broader support. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand this, but you won’t if your mind is dominated by Republican talking points.
It’s just bluster, they got nothing. When do they ever not double down on stupid?
Of course the Republicans are cherry-picking the unfolding events after the Benghazi raid. These comments by Susan Rice 5 days after the attack weren’t helpful, neither the contrary remarks by Libyan President Mohammed Magarief a day earler. Listening to her story, she didn’t have the facts and should not have been talking about what happened in Benghazi. All seems very amateurish and not well coordinated as I have written before. See my latest addition to the Benghazi security contract granted an obscure company in Wales, England called Blue Mountain.
There is no security in Libya, no national army and no border control. Libya is still in a revultionary state with multiple militias not under control of the central government. There were no “50 arrests” and remarks “we know who they are” are just part of the smoke and mirrors of politicians who live under fear of being assassinated. The fact that the US consulate mission could not be secured after the attack and confidential papers were spread around illustrates that.
Addendum: adding to the security turmoil in Libya, the prime-minister had to step down when he failed to get a new cabinet approved by parliament. Will the country itself fall apart?
About that addendum: the peaceful, democratic transfer of power from one parliamentary PM to another is perfectly in keeping with the ordinary, appropriate operation of a democracy. (Ever read a list of Italian Prime Ministers? It’s long).
With democratic procedures come democratic norms and democratic legitimacy. The growth of party politics and parliamentary maneuvering is exactly what people who are worried about the power of the militias and the weakness of the government should hope to see.
Earlier I watched the opening of Morning Joe until I couldn’t take anymore of the concern-troll-whinging about BINDERS BINDERS BINDERS Full Of Women from Joe Scarborough & Mark Halperin. They even dragged latent conservative Willy into the fray with them. Just pummeling Mika because she thinks it symbolizes something important. Nevermind that she’s just noticing a movement of millions of women on Facebook and can actually, as a woman, relate to the issue. She only wrote a book about her own experience with the glass ceiling and whatnot.
These self-appointed Experts of Lady-think were just moaning and groaning as they steamrolled the one actual woman at the table purely out of concern for her guy Obama’s chances of winning, of course. They just want him to focus on the “real issues” if he is to have any chance of not being defeated. No more Big Bird! No more Binders!
And besides, Mitt Romney really DOES care about lady stuff! Women want good jobs, not binders!
They are also deeply disappointed in the profession of journalism for letting Candy Crowley get away with verifying the fact that the President did indeed refer to what happened in Benghazi as an act of terrorism at his Rose Garden appearance the following day. Their attitude is: Who cares if it’s true! Moderators have no business verifying well documented facts in debates! It’s not the moderators job to resolve disputes or, you know, moderate.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
Ouch, hurts the eyes. Just stole the image for my FB-page and posed the following query:
Is it honest rape? Or forcible, or legitimate, or emergency. I guess we need to consult with republican candidates to have this clarified.
More so, Halperin literally just stared at Mika and refused to discuss it. He said that he wanted to talk about other things for the next 20 days. He wouldn’t even discuss or defend Romney’s lie about the binders because “ultimately it isn’t important to the nation”.
Well it is REALLY important to the women Romney needs to win the election and he just made a major gaff of credibility with them. So the STORY is newsworthy and important to the nation regardless of whether Halperin wants to talk about it.
It was stunning. He just stared at her in hopes of waiting her out until she moved on. I guess if you odn’t have anything to say you have nothing to say.
This issue is a big pile of nothing. They can shout all they want. It’s not helping them. I would be delighted to see them push this for three weeks, because there is no way they are winning with it. Only people in a closed right-wing media loop have any notion of why this fake controversy matters in the slightest.
You know the story that has been completely lost is that the people demonstrated in massive numbers to show their support for the US, our ambassador, and in opposition to the people who perpetrated this crime. They drove the militia out of Tripoli and Benghazi.
This is huge! I certainly never imagined that the US would have the popular support of the Libyan people given our history of conflict.
Romney’s diatribe reminded me of the 2008 Republican primary where Rudy Giuliani constantly attacked anyone who didn’t constantly use the phrase “Islamic terrorism.”
Sure Obama said something about an “act of terror” but he didn’t say it was an “act of terrorism“. Yes, that is apparently one of the nonsense arguments the rightwing is making this morning.
You know what’s really strange? I’ll bet Mitt walked out of there Tuesday night thinking he actually won the debate. He did his Perry Mason impersonation and Perry Mason never loses – and Mitt never loses either. Just ask anyone he knows. And of course everyone close to him is afraid to tell him otherwise so he may even still believe it. If he gets all of his information from the echo chamber, I’m sure he just thinks the President and Candy Crowley conspired to make him look bad but he beat them at their own game! And what’s all this crazy talk about binders? He probably has no clue what all the fuss is about.
It’s usually difficult to decipher the “arguments” of people whose brains can’t really function. Repubs see this as something that allows their cogs to hate Obama even more, and while it seems quite a stupid mode of attack, it may have played well in some Rovian “focus group”. And who knows, perhaps the American Boob does think how fast the prez screams “muslim terrorism!!” matters. Most people think we can drill our way to oil independence against all data, for example.
First of all, there’s no question that the Bishop screwed up royally by claiming that Obama didn’t call the Libya affair an “act of terror” for “two weeks”. As we know, Obama used those precise words in his very first description of the attack.
But the “conservative” cretins apparently think that it is a sign of humilating “weakness” that the Obama admin (aka UN Amb Rice) first saw the attack as spontaneous as opposed to a thought-out plan by an extremist group. As though this somehow matters for whether a deadly attack is an “act of terror”.
Or as though it somehow matters that our CIA intelligence teams took 10 days to determine that some actual extremist group was (apparently) behind the attack. Yet some how, some way, to conservative morans, this is critical. How or why their polluted and destroyed brains conceive this, that is beyond rational thought.
But neocons and Rmoneyites think this can be made to matter to the 5% of American Boobs who will decide this prez race, and they have their wingnut welfare shills and Sununuian turds out talking it up on the corporate teevee “news” 24/7. So Obama better respond (again), because the Repub Noise Machine determines our putrid “national discourse”.
Well, tonight is the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner at 9PM ET / 6PM PT on C-Span. You’ll probably see highlights on news shows tomorrow. In 2008 you may remember Obama’s speech there where, responding to the Birthers, he joked about himself being foreign – from the planet Krypton, among other funny jabs.
This will be a good opportunity for Obama to do a Donald Trump-like skewering of Romney and/or the right-wing media, should he choose to mock them. Also a good opportunity for Romney to do the same, as they will both be the keynote speakers, but Romney is humor-impaired so no worries there.
This obviously will be a key topic at the next debate, which is devoted to foreign policy. So I really hope Obama sternly lectures Romney because there are some key points most people missed:
“Gov Romney, when you are President you have to be extremely careful what you say in public because lives are often at stake. When the incident in Libya occured much of middle east was like a powder keg – with a great potential for copy cat attacks, as our sources of information were warning us at the time. It was important for us to express two key thoughts: first, that would not tolerate any acts of terror and second, that we condemned the video that had inflamed emotions in much of the middle east.
“Even though we knew at the time that the specific attack was probably not caused by the video we knew that there was the potential for possibly dozens of other deadly attacks because of the widespread anger over that video. So, after review with all appropriate people in the State department, I made those statements.
“Unfortunately, the jobs of our people in the middle east were made much harder by the statements you made in those first two days. Before you even knew the facts you made erroneous statements about my administrations actions – statements which many factions in the middle east interpreted as supporting that video. And, thinking that you had a campaign issue, you continued to make statements undermining our overall message.
Governor Romney, when the U.S. was attacked on 9/11/2001 both parties united behind the President and against the terrorists who attacked us. There were of course questions to be asked about whether we did everything to prevent that attack, but those questions were deferred in the immediate aftermath of the attack. Two years later a bipartisan commmision looked at lessons learned from 9/11 in a non-emotional manner. We have a great history of this in our country. When Iran kidnapped 440 hostages in November, 1979, the presidential campaign was active in both parties. But the candidates of both parties voluntarily chose to forego criticism of the president in the aftermath of the attack on our embassy.
“But when an attack occurred on 9/11/2012, resulting in deaths of 4 people, Gov Romney, you jumped on that as a possible campaign issue and began issuing political statements even before the basic facts were known. In doing so, you endangered the lives of people in the middle east by fanning the flames that were already there, thus increasing the likelihood of additional attacks. But perhaps that was your intent – maybe you thought additional attacks would help your campaign.
“Gov Romney – as a political leader in America, this is something you just do not do.”
Put another way:
“Governor, diplomacy and international affairs have to be viewed with a very long and steady perspective. The affairs of the Middle East are not like a company you can gut and flip and then walk away from. These countries and their people and concerns were here long before we got here and will be here long after we are gone. Failing to manage that correctly has led this and other nations into senseless wastes of blood and treasure. We can’t afford that again any time soon and frankly Governor, your actions so far indicate you are WAY out of your element.”
That’s an excellent idea, to compare foreign policy with vulture capital.
You and Green Caboose are hitting ’em out of the ballpark here.
What is it with you? Are you just completely incapable of conceiving that the Obama administration might actually have done something for which the GOP might rightly complain, this close to the election?
Not at all incapable. It is just that in this situation, the GOP has nothing to rightly complain about.