The White House has clarified Vice President Biden’s comment that he wasn’t aware of security requests, saying he was speaking for himself and President Obama, not the State Department. But they still haven’t explained Biden’s even more troubling claim that the intelligence community told the White House there were protesters outside the Benghazi embassy:
MS. RADDATZ: What were you first told about the attack? Why were people talking about protests? When people in the consulate first saw armed men attacking with guns, there were no protesters. Why did that go on for weeks?
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Because that’s exactly what we were told —
MS. RADDATZ: By who?
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: — by the intelligence community. The intelligence community told us that. As they learned more facts about exactly what happened, they changed their assessment.
When the Obama administration rolled out its initial “blame the video” storyline in the days after the attack, they strongly implied that there was a protest outside the Benghazi consulate, but usually avoided stating it explicitly. If you listen to Jay Carney, Hillary Clinton and Susan Rice, they tended to use vague words like “spontaneous reaction” and “unrest.” When they did use the word “protests,” it was usually in reference to the demonstrations across the Muslim world, not Benghazi specifically.
This is because the CIA intelligence at the time didn’t support the idea that there was a protest outside the consulate. By cherry-picking the initial intelligence report, the administration could provide some flimsy cover for its claim that the terrorist attack was a “spontaneous reaction” to the Cairo demonstrations over the video. But no amount of intelligence manipulation can create a protest where none existed.
Biden’s unequivocal claim that the intelligence community told the White House there were protesters is simply not credible, and, worse, it glues the administration to its failed initial narrative. White House spokesperson Jay Carney had spent weeks slowly backing away from the protest story, and Biden has now made that impossible.
There are also risks to scapegoating the intelligence community, as FP’s Peter Feaver writes:
Second, the IC can fight back. Frustration has been mounting for years within the IC over the way the administration has politicized intelligence. At some point, that frustration could bubble over into retaliatory leaks and damaging revelations.
So far, the Obama campaign has been careful not to finger a specific person as the scapegoat. Last night, Biden kept it vague. But the talking points Biden was hiding behind were CIA talking points and the head of the CIA is David Petraeus, undoubtedly the person in the administration the American people trust most on national security — and yet, paradoxically, perhaps the person the hardened partisans in the Obama White House trust the least. I have been surprised that Petraeus has not personally been drawn into the fight thus far, but I wonder if he heard Biden calling him out last night.
Benghazi was reportedly teeming with CIA operatives; a top State Department official has testified that she monitored the entire attack in real time; and there were survivors who were able to piece together a tick-tock of the attack for the media. The CIA should would have easily known if there was or a protest outside or not, so Biden’s comment is a blatant accusation of incompetence.
Sure. Nobody at States tells the White House anything–not about their security protocols for Libya before and not that State from the get go assessed an AQ-affiliated terror strike (and no Benghazi anti-video copycats). n nCIA and other intelligence officials were not incompetent–they were muzzled so our Prophet Pocket Protector in Chief could spin spin spin. n nThose CIA talking points, if they even exist, are not cherry-picked intelligence, they're cherry-pit-picked. James Clapper's DNI release alluding to apocryphal national intelligence estimates of a spontaneous Libyan attack was not backed by Congressional statements of the time as to the intelligence they were getting (Clapper being the guy who thought the Muslim Brotherhood are a secular organization): n nFrom Eli Lake's story on the intelligence near immediately known by the IQ: n n"The intelligence that helped inform those talking points—and what the U.S. public would ultimately be told—came in part from an intercept of a phone call between one of the alleged attackers and a middle manager from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the group’s north African affiliate, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intercept. In the call, the alleged attacker said the locals went forward with the attack only after watching the riots that same day at the U.S. embassy in Cairo. n nHowever, the intercept was one of several monitored communications during and after the attacks between members of a local militia called Ansar al-Sharia and AQIM, which, taken together, suggest the assault was in fact a premeditated terrorist attack, according to U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials not authorized to talk to the press. n nIn one of the calls, for example, members of Ansar al-Sharia bragged about their successful attack against the American consulate and the U.S. ambassador." n nThese guys spiked the actual facts to be disseminated by the IQ, then made up their own bs using the IQ as a cover. Now they lie about the lies. Nixon's tactics drenched in Nixonian flop-sweat. This country is being lead by punk freaks.
and, Ryan's point about the Marine Security detail assigned to USA embassy in France is 100% correct. nWill we ever drill down to find out how and why State assigns Marines to embassies? nDon't let the Dems plant the 'you cut our budget' distraction. State had $1.3bil, and someone made the decisions who gets Marines. n nMarseilles is dangerous, but so is Tripoli, where one would assume State would automatically assign Marines in the same way they do in Paris – available for security for the ambassador, and others. n n
As I understand it, Marines aren't actually there primarily to be security for the staff. Their primary job is to guard the Embassy core in order to buy time for the NSA and CIA guys to scram the crypto and thermite the classified files. If they can do that better by holding the outer wall, all good and well. n nState Department Diplomatic Security Staff or contractors paid by them have the job of both guarding staff and perimeter security. n nOverall command of security is vested in a role called Regional Security Officer, a State guy reporting to the Ambassador…__
We've been punked. By the White House.__And they were punked. By Al Qaeda._
We were punked by the White House. nThe White House was punked by Al Qaeda.
Marines are only there for the secret and top secret stuff. If they are done destroying then they can protect personnel.
Joe is a manic-depressive, now called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, jackass. He lied about Behghazi; he lied about voting against the two wars. The problem isn't this sociopathic, lying CLOWN. The problem is that there are so many American Citizens voting DEMOCRAT who are totally IGNORANT or just DON'T CARE.
This whole story stinks some and is uncomfortable for the administration. I find no fault with this article. I believe it informs. To me the outrage is that when I go to news.google this story does not appear, period. Not the article; the story. I term this omission news suppression, and IMO, suppression goes on daily. All too frequently now Democrats in the media today are behaving just as Democrats do out of the media. Professionalism is no longer an encumbrance for the 21st century media press. I think this could matter.
I just think that this administration is that bad that they bungled it that bad and they forgot to tell Biden the truth.
AG, has this dead on! "But no amount of intelligence manipulation can create a protest where none existed." nTrue, but the video fiction has largely worked in the public mind I would argue. That anti-muslim video dodge was advanced by Susan Rice along with the tv and print media press that popularized it. I see no evidence the media press has backed away from the video straw man explanation; it has not distanced itself, nor has it pursued a correction from the administration. What has it done? Go to Google news features now and look for this story. That's what it has done.
It's shaping up to be Billary v. Obama, Round 2. n nObama doesn't stand a chance. Not after the way he's f**ked up everything he's touched these last 4 years. n n
MainesMIchael: Hillary is onboard with a countervailing but complementary stonewall–Obama points to State, then Hillary says that Rice didn't get her intelligence from State but from other unnamed sources, so no harm no foul-and as far as State and embassy security is concerned, well, State has an investigation to get to the facts but "accuracy is more important than speed"–a coverup in which all the principles obfuscate by not quite pointing the fingers at each other individually with names attached, and deflecting blame to unspecified others. n nBut noone gets fired at this point and the truth gets carefully placed under a rock inside a block of cement, secured within a lockbox, tied to an anchor and heaved into the deep waters. It's like a cop catches three thieves and each says the other has the stolen goods. Their claims cancel each other out, there isn't enough evidence to convict any of them, as planned they go home and divide the loot,.
Hill is a political animal who wouldn't even divorce Bill after they broke up. I mean, if she can overlook Bill and stay married, she can do anything.
Alana, it appears that they were sending out "MayDays" on radio frequencies monitored in lots of places including the White House Situation Room — and reportedly even sent actual video of the attack coming at them. The military knew of this, in real time, but couldn't act without White House approval. n nWhat was happening was that an Ambassador (which we could admit to having) was under attack at a super-secret CIA facility that we *couldn't* admit to even having — let alone discuss any attack on. And this is where it gets confusing to someone who has already made the mistake of revealing the super-secret bunker under his home — how do you admit knowing anything about an attack on a place that you aren't supposed to talk about? n nAlana, remember what you wrote about the two former SEALS who also died — and the cryptic descriptions of both what they were doing there and all? At that point, I had no doubt that there would be at least two more stars put onto the wall at Langley — the CIA commemorates its anonymous dead with anonymous stars on the wall at its headquarters. And I wouldn't be writing the following had not Dana Milbank publicly identified this as a CIA compound. n nI believe that all of this was a AQ plot to destroy a CIA facility that itself sought to destroy AQ. n nAQ didn't know where it was, but they knew that the Ambassador did, and assumed (correctly) that he and his staff would seek shelter there if attacked. So get your friends in the US State Dept (Michelle Bachmann was onto something last summer) to get the US Ambassador into the area (maybe a cute boy-toy, knowing that the US Security folk are so scared of being called homophobic that they wouldn't dare prohibit the trip on security/safety grounds). n nThen it also is reasonable to assume that once you fire a lot of really loud guns and put some bullet holes in the walls and light the whole place on fire, he isn't/can't stay there — and is going to have to run *somewhere* until he can be evacuated in the morning. And do you have any idea how much information — and young boys desperately eager to obtain it for you — a fistful of US Dollars can buy you in much of the world? n nSo you flush him out of the compound, knowing that he will run to the CIA base that you can't find, and you then know where it is and go attack it. n nThe only problem was that the ambassador got left behind in the "smoke and confusion" in the evacuation from the diplomatic compound. Or had he snuck off to go have sex with his boyfriend? If you don't know where he *is*, you can't rescue him — and there were reports that he had been sodomized, although that may instead be evidence of something else. n nIn a sick way, you almost have to feel sorry for AQ. They had a perfect operation and had the US Ambassador either had a security staff that wouldn't abandon him, or wouldn't let him disappear to somewhere they couldn't find him to have sex with what well could have been an AQ operative, the US Ambassador wouldn't have died and NONE of this would have made the news. n nAnd back to the initial point — a secret US facility that doesn't officially exist is calling for help. What do you do? n nI know what *I* would do — "MayDay" means "MayDay" and if nothing else, my immediate response — to buy time and if I couldn't do anything else immediately — would be to have a couple fighter jets "buzz" the compound under seige. At full throttle, well over the speed of sound and maybe 100 feet off the ground — lead pilot's discretion as to how low. n nWe would break every window within a mile, we would have injured civilians and the US would wind up paying a lot of damage/injury claims. Supersonic means you can't hear it coming, and at night as well — we would so freak out the AQ with this that all their plans would be quite disrupted. Loud voices would be screaming at the UN and in the leftist press, but I would do it anyway — and I think Mitt Romney would as well. n nObama chose to do nothing. People died.
I just realized that a lot of people likely don't even know what a sonic boom is, let alone having ever heard one. (I have because pilots are permitted to be supersonic over the ocean.) n nA plane flying supersonic is literally outrunning the sound it makes — it is continually punching through the waves of sound going forward. It is not quite the same thing as a bolt of lightning which superheats the air, but result is the same — a shock wave that in the case of a supersonic aircraft becomes a loud boom that trails it. n nYou hear a loud crack of thunder on a clear day — a loud one that shakes the house and rattles the china — and then, way off in the distance, the faint noise of the jet plane that caused it. At a thousand feet, a supersonic fighter will send a woodpile flying — at lower altitudes, I can't help but think of how truly terrifying a surprise like this would be.
nOne other thing — if I am right, doesn't this give the comments about "throwing the intelligence community under the bus" an added meaning? n nHere the CIA has a super-secret facility that they do have to tell the Ambassador about, and he does something stupid like go down there without any escape options because of the Obama belief that the Libyan people love us — and maybe 99% of them do, but there is no consideration about what to do if a few dozen AQ folks show up. n nThen he ruins for cover at Camp CIA — blowing its cover and leading AQ right to it, and getting some of the CIA's folk killed in the process, not to mention the likely destruction of much of their anti-terrorism work. And then the admin has the you-know-what to blame all of this on the failings of the intelligence community. n nI would be p*ssed — and I believe they are. These are a folk a whole lot more professional than the left would have us believe them to be — but….. n nAnd the true wild card here — all of this stuff — audio and video — is electronic and while it would be quite criminal, there is really nothing to prevent some of the primary source data (i.e. MayDay calls) from being posted on the internet, WikiLeaks style.
the Ambassador never made it out of the consulate and was taken from there directly to the hospital. The consulate facility was not a tippy-top secret location. Duh. It had locally assigned guards and everyone and their cousin Ahmed knew where it was in case they got bored and wanted to practice heaving homemade explosives over the walls.
Yes, but the published reports (ok) are that he was "lost in the smoke and confusion" – and that thus the intent would be not to leave him behind. n
Sadly they did. Because the consulate was insecure. It was vulnerable. The ambassador did not break cover or lead anybody to anyplace not at the consulate or outside of it, but was trapped by policies he valiantly tried to change but couldn't. He was not part of a plan of sexual manipulation or blackmail to lead AQ to anything. Proof? By all reports he was left behind and the safe house was hit anyways. n nThere are multiple reports that he was taken to the hospital by locals and the doctor who examined him has given multiple filmed interviews (there are videos reported to be the early search for him and discovery in the safe room)–we know because it has been reported (and reflects badly on those leaking this information) that the armed assets at the consulate charged with protecting him fled in their vehicle, pursued by the AQ. n n
Oh wait, you live in the middle of the ocean. Excuse me. Patrick, wow, how is SpongeBob? Something in the water at Bikini Bottom? so to speak
Thanks! I thought "Sonic Boom" was a NYC grunge band led by Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon!! Who knew!!! But there are some other words puzzling me–perhaps you know what they mean too!! Papaya. Metaphysical. Cellar door. Green. Onion soup. Industrial output. Financial imbalance. The Watusi. The Twist. Eldorado.
'In a sick way, you almost have to feel sorry for AQ' n n(Eyeroll)
It's like you're at shul and you turn around and the worshipper next to you is a goat. Whoa. Am I in the right congregation?
I was being sarcastic. I was trying to make a point of how very incompetent the Obama folk are. n nNo, I do not honestly feel sorry for AQ. Trust me…
but you invented sexual and other lishon ha ra (slanderous speech) stories (inconsistent but malicious gossip and speculation) about the ambassador–having sex, breaking cover, etc. <cringe>
Interesting story, but how does it jibe with reality? He died in the safe room of the consulate, no? n nOn the other hand, he was apparently sodomized. Willingly or by the bad guys? n nThere is far more here than is being divulged. n nThe only thing we know for sure is that the Obama and Hillary lied and desecrated the sacrifice of the Ambassador and the 3 others with their fairy tale of their deaths being because of some silly YouTube video. And they did it for political reasons, standing beside the casketted bodies. n nI also agree with besht2003 that we won;t know what happened till long after the election.
Question: ____If the White House's contention is that the American intelligence community is so completely incompetant that it took them a month to figure out that the Benghazi attack was an organized terrorist act as opposed to a spontaneous demonstration that got out of hand, and that despite the fact that in real time they had agents on the ground, transmissions from the compound as well a live video- than why do they claim that the intelligence community can in real time give a warning that Iran has assembled a nuclear weapon?
I disagree. Rape of an American ambassador is arguably a stronger political statement than simple asphyxiation during an assault. n nI can well see a cover up of the rape aspect of the story, if it occurred, for the same reasons the terrorist nature of the assault was covered up. n nIt makes the Admin look especially weak. It may be that it is not provable either way. I don;t know, and neither do you, but many things that occur are not disseminated in the media. n nDid you know that the Lubavitch Rabbi and his wife were sexually mutilated by the jihadists during the Indian terror attack a short while ago? The Rabbi was castrated while alive. n nDItto one of the Israeli athletes in Munich. n nThese are relevant issues. n nUnderstanding the mindset and inhumanity or alienness of mores relative to our own, of our enemies, is important.
That this was a terrorist attack stopped being covered-up, the nature of the act, in what? a week to nine days. So that analogy doesn't hold. What is still being covered up is the facts of that cover-up, but nobody denies this was an AQ act of terror. n nWe do know that the first reports of this rape were independent of any reality or cover-up of reality as they were direct fabrications–the identical type of fabrications that claim, for example, that on January 12, 1947, Ben Gurion told The Jerusalem Post "The Arabs must be expelled from Palestine". When the news citation is debunked as fiction, anti-Semites go on telling the story because Ben Gurion could have said something like this anyways and the Zionists are covering it up. n nFor a culture that is outwardly puritanical as regards homosexuality (and kills practitioners) there is a difference between mutilating a man's genitals and having anal intercourse with him or his corpse. One practice, while self-debasing and animalistic, directly inflicts pain and humiliation on the victims. The second sexually defiles the person committing the act. That AQ would take the time in the midst of a battle to anally defile a man they were never, as far as anybody knows, alone with in the first place, is a stretch. n nThese stories get repeated because they serve the need to reinforce pre-existing beliefs–in the case of the countless fabrications about Ben Gurion or Sharon or on and on, about the satanic nature of the Jew–here about about the alienness and inhumanity of the Islamic enemy and, given the comments posted, of gays. n nDoes anybody have a source for this story that isn't a daisy-chain reference to another blog citing another blog etc. n
No proof. It was known Stevens was gay, and an Arabist. He could well have been engaging in a typical British foreign service pastime. Indeed, if he had been sodomized, perhaps that is the more likely explanation, and if he hadn't, well, then, he wasn't. n nThere was also a report of his being tortured. Perhaps the same. n nLook, the uncertainty arises because the full recounting of what happened to him and the others has not been made public. n nOften, when the full story is not being told, there is a reason. A political reason. And concealing the fact that an American ambassador had been tortured and raped by muslims would be par for the course for the golfer-in-chief. n n
I think that stevens was gay is a fact. n nIt is only relevant if he was sodomized, as it would provide an alternate explanation. n nWhat's so hard to understand about that? n nWe will never know, I suppose, and at the end of the day, you are right, and it is likely an angle not worth pursuing. n n
I have a reaction, I admit, to logical inconsistencies used to advance strong (or inflammatory) claims. n nThere just is nothing as of now known, no sexual activity, to require an alternate explanation–turning the original known into a hypothetical "maybe" doesn't help us very much with the original robust claim. What does that give us? n nWe start with b/sexual activity [rape]) is a fact and moreover can partially or generally be inferred from the context of a/gayness). n nThat's where we start. n n OK, we decide, b/rape) may not be a fact, but, hey, if b/anal sex were a fact, then a) might explain it. n nWell, yeah, it woud also be an assertion of a tautology. n nBut in the meantime there has been no, not any, evidence of any medical corroboration that the man had sex, voluntary or involuntary, on or around 9/11. But, yes, if there was no rape and it turned out, although nobody's looked, that he had consensual sodomy, then yes, he had consensual sodomy. n nQ: What has purple polka dots, sticks to a wall and whistles? nA: Nu, a shrimp!! nQ: A shrimp? A shrimp doesn't have purple polka dots? nA: Somebody could have put them on the shrimp with a magic marker! nQ: But a shrimp doesn't stick to the wall?! nA. Somebody could have used Crazy Glue!! nQ: But a shrimp doesn't whistle!??!! nA: OK, so a shrimp doesn't whistle?
"The doctor who examined him found no bruises or bodily trauma……." That doctor must be blind because photos of the Ambasssador being held up by helpers (?) clearly show him to have a very bruised face ,in line with being beaten up. I don't know whether he was raped or tortured but clearly he was beaten senseless…Just look at the photos. So this doctor, whoever he is. must eitherbe lying or be blind.
Again, I don't know from the incomplete information we have whether he was raped or tortured. But to poo- poo the photo as one of smoke inhalation with a "small cut' is incredibly inaccurate. A puffed face, blood from the forehead, puffed lips…. all this suggests a beating. I am also convinced that any doctor having examined the body or done an autopsy will have been warned not to comment on this examination. If Ambassador Rice can be cowed into giving a false description of the incident, a lowly doctor will surely not risk his career in divulging the truth.BTW- the Ambassasor's body was not taken directly from the consulate to hte hospital. The body was missing for many hours.