After insisting last week that the U.S. embassy attack in Benghazi was prompted entirely by an anti-Islam video, the White House is now scrambling to walk back that position, which looks more absurd by the day (h/t Allahpundit):
Press secretary Jay Carney suggested the assault could have been the work of an armed group looking to “take advantage” of demonstrations he blamed on an anti-Islam video available online.
Carney repeatedly described that footage as the “precipitating” cause of the protests and the violence targeting American diplomatic posts in Egypt, Libya, Sudan, Tunisia and elsewhere.
Libya is “still a very volatile place [where] there are vast numbers of weapons, and certainly a number of violent groups in the country,” he told reporters at his daily briefing.
“There is an abundance of weapons, including heavy weapons, and there are certainly groups that carry those weapons and look to take advantage of those circumstances—as there are around the region and the world,” Carney said. He did not say whether such groups might be linked to international extremist networks like al-Qaida.
You didn’t have to be briefed by Leon Panetta last week to see that Benghazi carried hallmarks of a planned attack. And while the video may have been used as a distraction, it stretches credulity to think it was a coincidence that the assault took place on the anniversary of September 11.
As more information comes out about the attack, the Obama administration will be put in an increasingly uncomfortable position. For one, it will have to explain the lack of security at the U.S. embassy, and around the ambassador. Second, it will have to explain why it spent days playing into the hands of terrorists by repeatedly condemning the video and trying to get it pulled from YouTube. Third, it will have to explain why it mistook an apparent terrorist attack for a spontaneous protest.
Just one question: who is going to put the Administration in an uncomfortable position? n n n n
I wish you were correct about the admin being put in an uncomfortable position! Unfortunately, as we see day in and day out, the press willingly accepts the incomprehensible gibberish that passes for an explanation by these fools rather than being laughed off the national stage, as they should be. It truly is pathetic…
If only one or two journalists would step forward and expose the bias from the inside . . . n n
Be careful what you wish for. They'll blame it on planning by the GOP and Israel.
You know, I always lug around my "heavy" machine gun and rocket launcher because you never know when someone might insult the prophet and I want to be well prepared if I should happen to stumble onto a demonstration and want to kill the infidels…. n nRight…. n nAlana, you can't let Carney get away with this one either — maybe this stuff is available in Libya but it is NOT something that one nonchalantly walks around with, and you can't let them wiggle off the hook on this one… n nFirst, a "heavy" machine gun is not the weight of the gun but the destructive ability of the bullets it fires, and that means .50 caliber or even bigger. By contrast, a "light" machine gun is something like the M-60 which fires what is essentially similar to the .308 Winchester rifle bullet — it fires a lot of them very fast, they are quite lethal if they hit you, but they are considered "light" because they won't go through things like masonry and steel. n nA "heavy" machine gun will — a .50 caliber machine gun is the heaviest weapon on most US Coast Guard vessels and, for example, the WW-II P-51 Mustang was armed with six of them. n nThis is not a light gun. It alone weighs 84 lbs, and with its required tripod, it weighs 128 lbs. It fires 550 rounds per minute, almost 10 per SECOND, and each metal box of 105 rounds weighs 35 lbs. To fire this for just 10-12 minutes, you are going to need a TON of ammunition and that means logistics and vehicles and planning. n n(It also requires practice firing it so you don't wind up shooting your own people…) n nSecond, notwithstanding what Hollywood would have us believe, this is not a gun that you can fire from the hip as Rambo did. It has to be properly secured or it will go flying and that means training and practice and the rest. Particularly if you are going to be doing this after dark, which I believe they did. So too with RPGs — these are essentially glorified bottle rockets and if you want to have it go anywhere near where you want it to go, you have to know what you are doing. n nThat means training, that means practice, and that means that this was planned in advance. Again, if you don't know what you are doing, you more likely will kill yourself and your own people… n nWe also need to know how they knew where this residence — a super-secret "safe house" even WAS. Michelle Bachmann's concerns about State Dept security and leaking info to the Muslim Brotherhood becomes very relevant, does it not?