DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Christians4LessGvt on October 24, 2012, 10:10:08 AM
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(http://www.mediabistro.com/mediajobsdaily/files/original/reuters-logo-171-061.jpg)
White House told of militant claim two hours after Libya attack
WASHINGTON | Tue Oct 23, 2012 9:11pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show.
The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.
The brief emails also show how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.
U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the Benghazi assault, which President Barack Obama and other U.S. officials ultimately acknowledged was a "terrorist" attack carried out by militants with suspected links to al Qaeda affiliates or sympathizers.
Administration spokesmen, including White House spokesman Jay Carney, citing an unclassified assessment prepared by the CIA, maintained for days that the attacks likely were a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim film.
While officials did mention the possible involvement of "extremists," they did not lay blame on any specific militant groups or possible links to al Qaeda or its affiliates until intelligence officials publicly alleged that on September 28.
There were indications that extremists with possible al Qaeda connections were involved, but also evidence that the attacks could have erupted spontaneously, they said, adding that government experts wanted to be cautious about pointing fingers prematurely.
U.S. intelligence officials have emphasized since shortly after the attack that early intelligence reporting about the attack was mixed.
Spokesmen for the White House and State Department had no immediate response to requests for comments on the emails.
MISSIVES FROM LIBYA
The records obtained by Reuters consist of three emails dispatched by the State Department's Operations Center to multiple government offices, including addresses at the White House, Pentagon, intelligence community and FBI, on the afternoon of September 11.
The first email, timed at 4:05 p.m. Washington time - or 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began - carried the subject line "U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack" and the notation "SBU", meaning "Sensitive But Unclassified."
The text said the State Department's regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was "under attack. Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well."
The message continued: "Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four ... personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support."
A second email, headed "Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi" and timed 4:54 p.m. Washington time, said that the Embassy in Tripoli had reported that "the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared." It said a "response team" was at the site attempting to locate missing personnel.
A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: "Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack."
The message reported: "Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli."
While some information identifying recipients of this message was redacted from copies of the messages obtained by Reuters, a government source said that one of the addresses to which the message was sent was the White House Situation Room, the president's secure command post.
Other addressees included intelligence and military units as well as one used by the FBI command center, the source said.
It was not known what other messages were received by agencies in Washington from Libya that day about who might have been behind the attacks.
Intelligence experts caution that initial reports from the scene of any attack or disaster are often inaccurate.
By the morning of September 12, the day after the Benghazi attack, Reuters reported that there were indications that members of both Ansar al-Sharia, a militia based in the Benghazi area, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of al Qaeda's faltering central command, may have been involved in organizing the attacks.
One U.S. intelligence official said that during the first classified briefing about Benghazi given to members of Congress, officials "carefully laid out the full range of sparsely available information, relying on the best analysis available at the time."
The official added, however, that the initial analysis of the attack that was presented to legislators was mixed.
"Briefers said extremists were involved in attacks that appeared spontaneous, there may have been a variety of motivating factors, and possible links to groups such as (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar al-Sharia) were being looked at closely," the official said.
(Additional reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Mary Milliken and Jim Loney)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/24/us-usa-benghazi-emails-idUSBRE89N02C20121024 (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/24/us-usa-benghazi-emails-idUSBRE89N02C20121024)
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Shall we start taking bets?.........Outside of Foxnews, any other predominant MSM news outlet going to lead with this?, or have it as its lead story at the top of their page? Rest assured, if this were a Republican President, not only would they all be leading with it, as soon as the news broke, they would have been interrupting their normal broadcast stations with a "special report"
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Well, let's start checking these NEWS agencies out. 1st up....ABC News. Lead story referencing the recently released e-mails indicating that the WH KNEW that not even 2 hrs into the attack, there was direct evidence hat demonstrated this WAS a planned terrroist attack? Nope. At the time of this posting, their top stories were about the Jessica Ridgeway murder, A REPUBLICAN Senate candiates "contreversial" comments, Syria rejecting a truce, and Donald Trumps' misfire on his Obama Oct surprise (nevermid the non reference to Gloria Alred's misfire on her Romney Oct Surprise)
Oh, there was a story about the WH response to the non mentioned story about the above noted e-mails. Ok, let's run over to the CBSnews website
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Ahh, some improvement at CBS. They are "leading" with the story, but its largely Clinton and the WH claiming we can't be "cherry picking" details. Nevermind that these "details" were being provided to the WH within the 1st 2 hours of the attack. Nevermind that Press Secretary Carney, as well as Obama and his minions wer making it painfully clear for the 1st week, that there was NO real evidence of a planned terrorist attack, and that the U.S. condemns this vulgar video that had to have been the cause of the largely spontaneous attack
Damn AlQeada, don't they know Obama has an election to steal?
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Over at the NBC website, their lead story is that superPAC's are not all that bad, Government sueing BofA, Candidates in full campaign mode, with another reference of the Republican Candidate for Senate's "controversial comments".
Oh, there's a small link to the fact that the WH was told of a terrorist attack 2 hours into it. If you see the link, you can click on it for a little more detail. Oh, Hurricane Sandy may be taking a turn up the East Coast
Shall we check out CNN?
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ahhh, at CNN, BofA is being Sued, Lance Armstrong's critics feel vindicated, yet another reference to GOP candidate's controversial comments, Romney's son apologising to Obama, Trump's "big annoucement" again, and lookee, nothing referencing Alred's "big announcement"
Oh, down at the bottom, several links from the top (the one about the GOP candidates comments regarding rape), there's a link about "new e-mails emerge from Libya attack". By all means, if you see it, you can link on it for a tad more detail
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A quick glance of the NY times has the Fed suring BofA again, Romney's "many moods", a study on the "attacks on Obama", nevermind the repeated references to Romney wanting to murder, throw Granny on the street, liquidate the auto industry, take us back to the days of slavery...no, this is a story on "pushing the envelope" in attacks on Obama
If you look REALLY hard, you might find a link on the WH having been told 2 hrs into the attack that murdered the 1st ambassador in over 30years, that it was an organized terrorist attack. I haven't found it yet
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Why should they lead with it? How many times since 9/11, or even before, have incidents happened that terrorist groups have taken credit for that their claims have turned out to be false? How any times, in the midst of an ongoing investigation, do you see police agencies come right out and say 'oh, we know so and so did it, even though all the facts aren't in yet'.
Can you spell p-a-r-a-n-o-i-a?
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Clinton: Facebook post about Benghazi attack not hard "evidence"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday a Facebook post in which an Islamic militant group claimed credit for a recent attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya did not constitute hard evidence of who was responsible.
"Posting something on Facebook is not in and of itself evidence. I think it just underscores how fluid the reporting was at the time and continued for some time to be," Clinton said during an appearance with the Brazilian foreign minister at the State Department.
http://news.yahoo.com/emails-white-house-told-militant-claim-two-hours-150935569.html (http://news.yahoo.com/emails-white-house-told-militant-claim-two-hours-150935569.html)
Duh. Think about it.
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Yea, THINK ABOUT IT.....The Ambassador himself requesting additional security, the intel demonstrating a worsening situation with terrorist groups, including those connected with AlQeada, real time communication from Benhazi making it painfully clear that there was a large scale attack, yet NO PROTESTS prior to the attack. Now proof that the WH and others KNEW 2 hours into the attack that it was a planned terrorist attack
But apparently that's "cherry picking", so let's say it was a video that probably 98% of the Arab world never saw. And here I thought H would be jumping up and down criticising Obama for precisely what he was condemning Bush for, citing "intel at the time" for the decision that was made. Difference here is that the intel doesn't jive with the actions the WH took....as in no action, just an apparent "fog of war" cover-up. So, if I'm to apply H's parameters for lying us into ..... whatever, obviously Obama lied, Ambassador Stevens died
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Something else you left out, from the same Reuters story (a source among those not being Fox News which reported the story yesterday):
...Reuters reported on Tuesday that an official email showed officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit.
The email, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mentioned that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks...
...Clinton, responding to a reporter's question about the emails, noted that a State Department investigation was under way.
"The independent accountability review board is already hard at work looking at everything, not cherry picking (note: like another administration I could name)one story here or one document there, but looking at everything - which I highly recommend as the appropriate approach for something as complex as an attack like this," she said...
...White House spokesman Jay Carney, asked about the emails, noted that Ansar al-Sharia had later denied responsibility for the attack.
"This was an open-source, unclassified email about a posting on a Facebook site. I would also note I think that within a few hours, that organization itself claimed that it had not been responsible. Neither should be taken as fact -- that's why there's an investigation under way," he told reporters traveling with President Barack Obama aboard Air Force One to Iowa...
You guys have really got to learn to do better research.
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Actually the research is quite overwhelming, with the e-mail just the "cherry picking" on top. Ongoing requests for added security denied, real time referencing of a massive attack under way, on 911, of all dates. EVIDENCE that this was spearehaeded by a terrorist oranization, connected to AlQeada, (WHICH HAS BEEN CONFIRMED).
But all that's "cherry picking details" ::)
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Waa
Waa
Waa
I believe we were discussing the emails and reports after the attack, yes?
Look at the title and abandon your tactic of trying to sidetrack the discussion, or I will gladly end the discussion.
Capische?
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Seems as if one of two things was happening the days after the attack.
The Whitehouse was very confused .
The Whitehouse was trying to cover up mistakes.
Anyone have a third possibility to suggest?
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ya see SIRS this is how it is
we can't trust a Facebook post
but we can on Sept 11 pretend an attack was about some stupid video
Facebook is not a good source, but an imaginary protest in Libya is
even when Libyan officials state quite clearly it was no protest
Hell it was Sept 11....anybody with a brain knows what it was
but if ya have a political agenda to cover your hiney you claim otherwise
and send your UN Ambassador on Sunday morning TV to lie her ass off!
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Seems as if one of two things was happening the days after the attack.
The Whitehouse was very confused .
The Whitehouse was trying to cover up mistakes.
Anyone have a third possibility to suggest?
The White House and State Department were investigating the matter trying to get at the truth, without jumping the gun like Quick Draw Mitt.
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Seems as if one of two things was happening the days after the attack.
The Whitehouse was very confused .
The Whitehouse was trying to cover up mistakes.
Anyone have a third possibility to suggest?
The White House and State Department were investigating the matter trying to get at the truth, without jumping the gun like Quick Draw Mitt.
That seems generous to the Whitehouse,they were investigating for two weeks ?
What was Mitt wrong about?
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Waa
Waa
Waa
I believe we were discussing the emails and reports after the attack, yes?
Look at the title and abandon your tactic of trying to sidetrack the discussion, or I will gladly end the discussion.
Capische?
Did you really grasp what you just wrote? Immediately responded in snarks and references to crying, then in a blink of an eye threaten to stop responding if I somehow don't properly address your response in the appropriate tone, that you alone are judging the post by. Are your positions/proclaimations that fragile, they can't stand even moderate scrutiny?
Look, I'm glad you're taking some time to respond and debate. Xo could seriously take some lessons from you as it relates to debating anti-conservative or anti-republican stances. He should really pay attention to your positions as it relates to gun statistics, and the facts regarding gun useage. I also appreciate that we haven't had the best communication history, and that you appear to be "taking a chance"
That said, the issue is pretty cut and dry here, despite your efforts to spin for the WH. The emails VALIDATE everything before and after. DID the research, DID think about it, and each time we come back with a timeline that can't be tweaked, no matter how hard you, Clinton, Biden, Rice, Carney, or Obama try to, in any other way, but truthfully. No cherry picking at all, with the real point being how the MSM is pretty much whitewashing an issue you were throttling Bush for...that of going with the "best intel they had at the time". That's quite the double standard you've adopted
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More blather. Should have known it would be a total waste of time.
Ta ta for now.
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Wow, serious debate = "blather" ::) Apparently its ok for you to debate the way I'm being criticized for. Again, nice double standard. Yea, let's skip the point of the issue being made, and........well just lemme know when that plans on changing
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Yea, let's skip the point of the issue being made, and...
The point being made, and the point I addressed, in case you missed it, was why this trumped up story about militant claims two hours after the attack was not posted as the lead story by any other news service, not even Reuters, who apparently dug up the story. The only ones who did so were Faux News, your favorite partisan news source.
Think about it, Sirs. You can be the naive, innocent lamb blindly following along, or you can actually do your own research and make your own judgements and decisions without running them by the party first.
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The point being made, and the point I addressed, in case you missed it, was why this trumped up story about militant claims two hours after the attack was not posted as the lead story by any other news service, not even Reuters,
Once again you miss the point....the big picture point!
The point isnt that the e-mails should have been the lead story.
The point is why did the White House send out their people to mislead before they knew all the facts?
You claim/imply SIRS...Fox News and MITT...run with an unsubstaniated story...jump to conclusions
But thats exactly what the White House did.
You defend the White House for what you claim Sirs and Fox News did.
UN Ambassador Susan Rice stated clearly it was a "spontaneous reaction" to a YouTube video.
But the emails and other info clearly now show that Ambassador Rice was speaking before the facts were in.
In fact the White House at best knew that it was possibly unclear what happened,
yet they march Rice out on the Sunday national news shows to say it was the video.
It's the worst of the worst...because they knew better because they had the most post-tragedy intel!
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If the President and staff were not yet sure what happened , what made them start blaming that video?
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The point being made, and the point I addressed, in case you missed it, was why this trumped up story about militant claims two hours after the attack was not posted as the lead story by any other news service, not even Reuters,
Once again you miss the point....the big picture point!
The point isnt that the e-mails should have been the lead story.
The point is why did the White House send out their people to mislead before they knew all the facts?
But thats exactly what the White House did.
You defend the White House for what you claim Sirs and Fox News did........It's the worst of the worst...because they knew better because they had the most post-tragedy intel!
BINGO!! Give that man a cigar 8)
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If the President and staff were not yet sure what happened , what made them start blaming that video?
That's a great question....especially when you watch how emphatically they were trying to lay this down on the video. How many times was it referenced by Obama at the UN...HOW MANY DAYS AFTER 911? A video, that I dare say, a fraction of a fraction of Middle East Muslims ever saw it, to begin with?
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(http://media.townhall.com/Townhall/Car/b/gmc10454020121025091500.jpg)
Something that a GOP Administration would be raked over the coals for, by the MSM, and likely by folks like H, given the parameters in place for Bush
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Dereliction (http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/bobbeauprez/2012/10/25/benghazi_a_dereliction_of_duty)
1. Willful neglect, as of duty or principle.
2. a. The act of abandoning; abandonment.
b. A state of abandonment or neglect.
Within two hours of the attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya on September 11, 2012, that resulted in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, an email was sent to the White House and State Department.
That first email was sent at 4:05 PM-ET (10:05 PM in Benghazi) and specifically mentioned that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia, an al-Qaeda affiliated group, had claimed responsibility for the attacks. Fox News confirms that the addresses on the email included "a variety of national security platforms, whose addresses have been redacted, including the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon, the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence."
Two more emails were sent within the next two hours.
Internal government email sent Sept. 11 about ongoing attack on U.S. Consulate in Benghazi as published by Fox News
Yet, no action was taken to mobilize special operations forces or the significant military resources available in the region. The next morning, the President referred to the attack and other events against U.S. installations by radical Islamists as "bumps in the road."
In the six weeks since the assassinations in Benghazi, more questions than answers have emerged.
Why did the President and his administration deny any link to Islamist terror groups for weeks, promoting instead a false "spontaneous event" explanation?
Why did the Obama administration reject numerous requests for additional security by Ambassador Stevens and others for months before the attacks?
Why was the Embassy request for an extension of the 16 member Special Operations Security Team to remain in Libya to protect the Ambassador denied just a month before the attack?
And many, many more.
But to that list we must now add: Was there a dereliction of duty? Was there a willful neglect of duty, an abandonment of Ambassador Stevens and his staff? If so, why?
Here's a detailed timeline published by Reuters of the email exchanges on that fateful night of September 11:
The first email, timed at 4:05 p.m. Washington time - or 10:05 p.m. Benghazi time, 20-30 minutes after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission allegedly began - carried the subject line "U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack" and the notation "SBU", meaning "Sensitive But Unclassified."
The text said the State Department's regional security office had reported that the diplomatic mission in Benghazi was "under attack. Embassy in Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well."
The message continued: "Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four ... personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support."
A second email, headed "Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi" and timed 4:54 p.m. Washington time, said that the Embassy in Tripoli had reported that "the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi had stopped and the compound had been cleared." It said a "response team" was at the site attempting to locate missing personnel.
A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: "Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack."
The message reported: "Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli."
While some information identifying recipients of this message was redacted from copies of the messages obtained by Reuters, a government source said that one of the addresses to which the message was sent was the White House Situation Room, the president's secure command post.
Other addressees included intelligence and military units as well as one used by the FBI command center, the source said.
It was not known what other messages were received by agencies in Washington from Libya that day about who might have been behind the attacks.
Intelligence experts caution that initial reports from the scene of any attack or disaster are often inaccurate.
By the morning of September 12, the day after the Benghazi attack, Reuters reported that there were indications that members of both Ansar al-Sharia, a militia based in the Benghazi area, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of al Qaeda's faltering central command, may have been involved in organizing the attacks.
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...A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: "Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack."
The message reported: "Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli."
While some information identifying recipients of this message was redacted from copies of the messages obtained by Reuters, a government source said that one of the addresses to which the message was sent was the White House Situation Room, the president's secure command post.
Other addressees included intelligence and military units as well as one used by the FBI command center, the source said.
It was not known what other messages were received by agencies in Washington from Libya that day about who might have been behind the attacks.
Intelligence experts caution that initial reports from the scene of any attack or disaster are often inaccurate.
By the morning of September 12, the day after the Benghazi attack, Reuters reported that there were indications that members of both Ansar al-Sharia, a militia based in the Benghazi area, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of al Qaeda's faltering central command, may have been involved in organizing the attacks.[/i]
What? Thats it? ROFL...
The article (to which Sirs so thoughtfully did not provode a URL) continues...
...One U.S. intelligence official said that during the first classified briefing about Benghazi given to members of Congress, officials "carefully laid out the full range of sparsely available information, relying on the best analysis available at the time."
The official added, however, that the initial analysis of the attack that was presented to legislators was mixed.
"Briefers said extremists were involved in attacks that appeared spontaneous, there may have been a variety of motivating factors, and possible links to groups such as (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar al-Sharia) were being looked at closely," the official said.
http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-told-militant-claim-two-hours-libya-010758099.html (http://news.yahoo.com/white-house-told-militant-claim-two-hours-libya-010758099.html)
He also fails to mention, as I did earlier, that the same group that claimed responsibility for the attack also later claimed they were not responsible.
But carry on, let us charge on ahead on only part of the story and bury our heads in the sand. It's true, it's true, because the party says it is, bawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwk!
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The Whitehouse did not act properly before the attack, reduceing the security resorces at the embassy and annexs was a dumb move on the part of the State Department, was there any White house directive on the subject?
During the attack , which apparently went on for hours, did anyone even tell the president? This is not clear, but the information was availible that is clear.
After the attack the White HOuse hit the airwaves with a poorly thought out cover story , not what they should have done if they wern't sure , what they shoulod have done and did not was to "The White House and State Department were investigating the matter trying to get at the truth, without jumping the gun..." , Yes if they had been lo0oking into it before bradcasting an explanation that would have been more acceptable.
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...A third email, also marked SBU and sent at 6:07 p.m. Washington time, carried the subject line: "Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack."
The message reported: "Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli."
While some information identifying recipients of this message was redacted from copies of the messages obtained by Reuters, a government source said that one of the addresses to which the message was sent was the White House Situation Room, the president's secure command post.
Other addressees included intelligence and military units as well as one used by the FBI command center, the source said.
It was not known what other messages were received by agencies in Washington from Libya that day about who might have been behind the attacks.
Intelligence experts caution that initial reports from the scene of any attack or disaster are often inaccurate.
By the morning of September 12, the day after the Benghazi attack, Reuters reported that there were indications that members of both Ansar al-Sharia, a militia based in the Benghazi area, and al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of al Qaeda's faltering central command, may have been involved in organizing the attacks.[/i]
What? Thats it? ROFL...
The article (to which Sirs so thoughtfully did not provode a URL) continues...
...One U.S. intelligence official said that during the first classified briefing about Benghazi given to members of Congress, officials "carefully laid out the full range of sparsely available information, relying on the best analysis available at the time."
The official added, however, that the initial analysis of the attack that was presented to legislators was mixed.
"Briefers said extremists were involved in attacks that appeared spontaneous, there may have been a variety of motivating factors, and possible links to groups such as (al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Ansar al-Sharia) were being looked at closely," the official said.
He also fails to mention, as I did earlier, that the same group that claimed responsibility for the attack also later claimed they were not responsible.
But carry on, let us charge on ahead on only part of the story and bury our heads in the sand. It's true, it's true, because the party says it is, bawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwk!
Still missing "it"
Why did the President and his administration deny any link to Islamist terror groups for weeks, promoting instead a false "spontaneous event" explanation?
Why did the Obama administration reject numerous requests for additional security by Ambassador Stevens and others for months before the attacks?
Why was the Embassy request for an extension of the 16 member Special Operations Security Team to remain in Libya to protect the Ambassador denied just a month before the attack?
But carry on ....spin...spin....it's not true its not true, because the White House says it's not, bawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwk
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The Whitehouse did not act properly before the attack, reduceing the security resorces at the embassy and annexs was a dumb move on the part of the State Department, was there any White house directive on the subject?
During the attack , which apparently went on for hours, did anyone even tell the president? This is not clear, but the information was availible that is clear.
Remember the Bin Laden raid and the "Situation room"....remember the picture taken of a studious President, Secretary of State, and a plethora of other folk, all watching intently. Apparently everyone had better things to do, while our Ambassador and 3 other U.S. folks were being butchered. A certain Las Vegas fund raiser comes to mind for one of them
After the attack the White HOuse hit the airwaves with a poorly thought out cover story , not what they should have done if they wern't sure , what they shoulod have done and did not was to "The White House and State Department were investigating the matter trying to get at the truth, without jumping the gun..." , Yes if they had been lo0oking into it before bradcasting an explanation that would have been more acceptable.
Precisely the point Cu4 & I have been making
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The article (to which Sirs so thoughtfully did not provode a URL) continues...
Missed the Link (http://debategate.com/new3dhs/3dhs/white-house-told-of-militant-claim-two-hours-after-libya-attack!/msg144822/#msg144822), right at the top of the article (http://finance.townhall.com/columnists/bobbeauprez/2012/10/25/benghazi_a_dereliction_of_duty)
That's ok, I forgive you ;)
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Still missing "it"
No, but you are.
The only thing I am addressing is what is contained in the title of this thread and your concern that not every news agency in the world feels it worthy of being the lead story. I am ignoring the rest (but but but they did this or didn't do that before the attack), but you seem too thick to figure that out and continue to try and divert my attention to it. Sorry, not gonna happen. Get over yourself, Sirs, I do not march to your drum.
BTW, when I looked at the link, it appeared to be for a dictionary entry to define dereliction. I see now it was a partisan news source that also neglected to present the rest of the article from Reuters. Maybe you should expand your sources.
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Still missing "it"
No, but you are.
Naaa, that'd still be you missing "it" Not just the questions that STILL go unanswered, as posed previously, but the timeline of events that can't be pushed aside to provide spin cover for the Administration. An Admnistration using the "we went with the best intel we had at the time" tactic, that you were trashing Bush II for, but apparently Obama gets a pass here
The only drum marching here are the facts, the timeline, the requests for added security denied, the requests for help during the attack denied, on 911 of all dates, the intel provided no more than 2 hours afterwards that this was a terrorist act by AlQeada connected folks, and then an Administration that went OUT OF ITS WAY, minus the supportive back-up that the terrorist attack had, that this was all due to some video
Those are all facts that can't be spun, regadless of whatever strength anti-sea sick pills you may be taking. And these facts would have brought down a Republican adminstration, as the MSM would have gone apoplectic, demanding that heads roll....starting with the President. But this is their guy, so.....shhhhh.....let's talk about Binders & Big Bird
But cudos on trying to kill the messenger.
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SIRS....I think the shit may be about to really hit the fan on BenghaziGate
CIA operators were denied request for help during Benghazi attack
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/26/cia-operators-were-denied-request-for-help-during-benghazi-attack-sources-say/ (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/26/cia-operators-were-denied-request-for-help-during-benghazi-attack-sources-say/)
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Breaking News
Father of Ty Woods, Slain SEAL:
White House Told "Pack of Lies";
"They are the Murderers of My Son"
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/10/26/Father-of-American-Hero-Slain-in-Benghazi-Slams-Obama-Admin-Pack-of-Lies-Murderers (http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/10/26/Father-of-American-Hero-Slain-in-Benghazi-Slams-Obama-Admin-Pack-of-Lies-Murderers)
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Yea, I saw those. That's why I referenced it to H, about timeline, that apparently during the attack, we were asking for help, and it was denied....by the CIA. So, State Dept & WH KNEW what was going on 2 hrs into it. CIA heard it beginning, and its operatives immediately asked for back-up, and was told to stand down...numerous times
Rest assured, if Bush had been president, we would have had a gun ship and strike force enroute, within the 1st hour. Actually, if it were Bush, we wouldn't have a dead Ambassador, as security would have been beefed up 1st time it was requested, with another layer specifically added for the 911 annivesary
So, Hillary is taking the blame at State. Who's going to take it at the CIA, and where are the resignation papers?
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ya know what my worst nightmare situation over this is?
Obama gets re-elected
Then a few months from now Obama is impeached over BenghaziGate cover-up
And we have to live with foot-in-mouth doofus for 4 years!
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That is pretty scary, though if the Senate isn't controlled by the GOP, it'll just be spun as another "fishing expedition" in the House, by those evil tea party republicans.....because he's black of course
But even that won't go anywhere, since the MSM outside of Fox is bent on keeping this low profile, if not completely off the radar. It's Big Bird, Binders, Dunce Hats. THAT's what the MSM needs to focus on
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Naaa, that'd still be you missing "it" Not just the questions that STILL go unanswered, as posed previously, but the timeline of events that can't be pushed aside to provide spin cover for the Administration. An Admnistration using the "we went with the best intel we had at the time" tactic, that you were trashing Bush II for, but apparently Obama gets a pass here
The only drum marching here are the facts, the timeline, the requests for added security denied, the requests for help during the attack denied, on 911 of all dates...
All of which I have told you I have not addressed, nor do I have any intention of addressing in this thread. God, you are incredibly thick.
..the intel provided no more than 2 hours afterwards that this was a terrorist act by AlQeada connected folks...
Which I showed you earlier A) follows a pattern of terrorist groups claiming responsibility for acts they had nothing to do with, and B) a claim that was shortly afterward denied by the same group.
...and then an Administration that went OUT OF ITS WAY, minus the supportive back-up that the terrorist attack had, that this was all due to some video
Which brings us right back to your incredible thickness regarding what I told you earlier. Actually, it's hard to tell if you are so incredibly thick, or just so effing full of yourself that you feel everyone must respond to whatever questions you pose whether they really feel like it or not. I don't. I've said what I intended to say in this thread, period. I'm done.
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The President gave no orders at all about this. he is not to blame for the lack of intelligence.
No one is getting impeached.
This is not a serious issue.
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The President gave no orders at all about this. he is not to blame for the lack of intelligence.
Strange how no one is arguing either. You do enjoy picking apart issues never made, don't you. In fact, the point that he gave no orders is a strong indication in his lack of intelligence
This is not a serious issue.
That's because it isn't a Republican President and his administration that has screwed up so bad, which led directly to the murder of the 1st U.S. Ambassador in 30years. Big Bird & 50years of tax records are far more important :o
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SIRS....I think the shit may be about to really hit the fan on BenghaziGate
CIA operators were denied request for help during Benghazi attack
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/26/cia-operators-were-denied-request-for-help-during-benghazi-attack-sources-say/ (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/26/cia-operators-were-denied-request-for-help-during-benghazi-attack-sources-say/)
Oh boy.........if this were a GOP President, I doubt even the VP would survive the media storm. Per CIA Tweet (http://mobile.twitter.com/jaketapper/status/261936225106132993?) "CIA spox: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate. ”
Hmmmmmm....Patraeus throwing Obama under the bus??
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REAL JOURNALISM ALIVE, AND WELL IN COLORADO TONIGHT.
OBAMA NAILED ON BENGHAZI BY LOCAL REPORTER.
TAKE NOTES MAINSTREAM WANNABES!
CO Interview: Obama Pressed On Lack Of Answers On Benghazi Attack (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gI0R-_8xV4#)
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Couldn't answer it, could he. I'm surprised his folks allowed this line of questioning, to get as far as it did
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"No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate.
Patraeus throwing Obama under the bus??
(https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/44473_294857273954396_260975132_n.jpg)
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The President gave no orders at all about this. he is not to blame for the lack of intelligence.
No one is getting impeached.This is not a serious issue.
Weekend Edition: IT WAS TREASON! Arrest Obama
By Craig Andresen on October 27, 2012
Last Thursday, I wrote an article titled, "Obama & Libya - A Case Study in Treason" and in that article I stated, "When a president fails to lift a finger to protect Americans, at home or abroad, in the face of overwhelming intelligence and evidence, by ignoring obvious warning signs and the advice of those entrusted to offer such protection.
"It is treason."
I meant every word and yes, I am well aware of the weight of the word, "treason."
I do not nor have I ever used it lightly. I see that word bandied about on social media and while I understand full well the passion of those who use it, I rarely, if ever, believe that the issues to which it is applied, truly rise to that level.
This situation, in Libya, I am convinced?Does.
To explain, let's first look at the legal definition and it's context within our Constitution.
Definition of Treason in the Constitution:
"Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court."
Legal Definition of Treason:
The betrayal of one?s own country by waging war against it or by consciously or purposely acting to aid its enemies.
Under Article III, Section 3, of the Constitution:
Any person who levies war against the United States or adheres to its enemies by giving them Aid and Comfort has committed treason within the meaning of the Constitution. The term aid and comfort refers to any act that manifests a betrayal of allegiance to the United States, such as furnishing enemies with arms, troops, transportation, shelter, or classified information. If a subversive act has any tendency to weaken the power of the United States to attack or resist its enemies, aid and comfort has been given.
Day by day, nearly hour by hour, we learn more about what transpired in Benghazi on 9-11-12.
Yesterday, we learned a truly horrific truth.
As the first shots rang out at our Consulate, the calls for help, coming from the "safe" annex were sent to Washington.
Not once.
Not twice.
Three times, Tyrone Woods and a CIA operative, at the annex, called for help and asked permission to go TO the Consulate to offer assistance?To fight.
Washington denied them.
Not once.
Not twice.
Three times, Washington denied them help or permission to join the fight.
After the third denial, Ex Navy Seal, Tyrone Woods, went against the direct order to stand down and, he stood up.
Tyrone Woods went to the Consulate defying a direct order and he got as many of our personnel out of there as he could, including the body of State Department officer Sean Smith.
Tyrone Woods could not find Ambassador Stevens.
Tyrone Woods took those he rescued and the body of Mr. Smith back to the annex where he was joined shortly after by Glen Doherty, another Ex Navy Seal who had just arrived from Tripoli.
A few hours later, that annex came under fire from terrorists now believed to be Ansar al-Sharia, a well known affiliate of al Qaeda.
We also learned yesterday that Woods and Doherty were on the roof of the annex and from their vantage point, could see the position of the mortars being fired at them. They "painted" that position with a laser used to guide weapons from military aircraft. Military aircraft that were not coming to help.
Those aircraft, from Italy, which could have included Blackhawk helicopters and a C-130 gun ship, had also been ordered, from Washington, to stand down.
For those unfamiliar with a C-130 gunship, it is one of the most feared weapons in our military. The C-130 is specifically designed for close air support roles include supporting ground troops, escorting convoys, and flying urban operations. Air interdiction missions are conducted against planned targets and targets of opportunity. Force protection missions include defending bases and other facilities.
AC-130H Spectre Gunship engages probable SA-3 missiles (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGH-zBHbPKc#)
As far as the enemy is concerned?When a C-130 gunship comes into the picture?Hell comes with it.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta spoke on Thursday and, as a reason for NOT sending help, stated: "The basic principle is that you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on, without having some real-time information about what's taking place. And as a result of not having that kind of information[we] felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation."
The problem is this.
We DID have real-time information. Those in the State Department were literally watching the terrorist attack happen live via video link AND we had what we now know were 2 unmanned drones over the attack site in Benghazi. If that's not enough, at the annex, less than a mile away, we had a Navy Seal, Tyrone Woods AND a CIA operative.
By the time the second wave of the attack began, at the annex, we had the CIA operative and 2 Navy Seals, Woods and Doherty and THEY were "painting" the position of the mortar launches with a laser used to guide the very weapons that a Blackhawk or C-130 could have brought to bear.
If that's not enough, our military is the most highly trained military on earth. Those who fly those ships of war train each and every day for exactly the sort of eventually that was transpiring that night in Benghazi. Their very job is to go into harm's way.
Combined all of this lays waist to Panetta?s explanation and reduces it to nothing but a bald faced, unadulterated lie.
Back to treason.
For an act of treason to occur, a state of war must exist.
We are indeed at war. In Afghanistan, we are currently engaged in war against al Qaeda. Ansar al-Sharia IS a well-known al Qaeda affiliate and Ansar al-Sharia was attacking our consulate and annex, both considered American soil.
For an act of treason to be committed, one must manifests a betrayal of allegiance to the United States, such as furnishing enemies with arms, troops, transportation, shelter, or classified information.
There are some 20,000 shoulder fired rockets, RPG's and other heavy weapons MISSING that were provided to Libyan rebels in the attempt to oust Gaddafi from power. We didn?t know WHO those rebels were at the time we armed them and, in fact, within hours of Gaddafi?s death, the flags of al Qaeda were flying in Benghazi.
Furthermore, in cables from security personnel in the months leading up TO the fatal attack, it was clearly stated that those al Qaeda flags were still flying over several government buildings in Benghazi.
Also, regarding an act of treason, If a subversive act has any tendency to weaken the power of the United States to attack or resist its enemies, aid and comfort has been given.
The order for Navy Seal Tyrone Wood to stand down, the orders to our military in Italy to stand down and the repeated?not once, Not twice but Three denials of help from Washington does, by any definition, equate to a "weakening of the power to resist its enemies".
During the 2nd debate, when a question regarding Libya was posed, Obama responded:
"Secretary Clinton has done an extraordinary job but, she works for Me. I'm the president. I'm always responsible."
The State Department was watching the attack live, in real-time.
Emails were sent to some 400 people in Washington DURING the attack, in real-time.
Among the recipients of those emails was the White House Situation room.
At the time those emails arrived at the White House Situation Room, Obama was meeting with his Security Team.
Obama says that HE is the president and HE is responsible.
I am sensing a very, very, very short chain of command here.
The calls for help from the CIA operative and Tyrone Woods were NOT ignored and did NOT go unanswered. The requests to enter the fight from bases in Italy were NOT ignored and did NOT go unanswered.
All were DENIED. That shows a purposeful action.
All of those calls for help and requests for deployment were DENIED purposefully.
The result was that our enemy, those conducting the operation against our Consulate, our annex, our assets and our personnel in Benghazi, was aided?AIDED?by a purposeful lack of response?DIRECTED FROM THE HIGHEST LEVELS IN WASHINGTON.
Our Consulate in Benghazi was destroyed while Washington officials watched, received emails and denied calls for help in real-time.
4 Americans were killed while Washington officials watched, received emails and denied calls for help in real-time.
Whatever confidential papers or records contained in that Consulate were either destroyed or went missing while Washington officials watched, received emails and denied calls for help in real-time.
"such as furnishing enemies with arms, troops, transportation, shelter, or CLASSIFIED INFORMATION"
Who?
Who gave the willful and purposeful order to deny help when Navy Seal Tyrone Woods called?
Who?
Who gave the willful and purposeful order for Tyrone Woods and the CIA Operative to Stand Down?
Who?
Who gave the willful and purposeful order for our highly trained, apt and heavily armed military in Italy to stand down?
Who?
"Secretary Clinton has done an extraordinary job but, she works for ME. I?m the president. I?m always responsible."
For the very life of me, I cannot conjure a single conclusion other than treason, brought about by political cowardice, for denying help not once, not twice but, three times in the midst of a terrorist attack and not one reason but treason, brought about by political cowardice, for the willful and purposeful order to those in a position to offer needed help in the midst of a terrorist attack, to stand down.
2 quotes come to mind. The first, from Marcus Tullius Cicero, describes the sort of man who would issue orders not to send help and for Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty to stand down in the face of the attack.
"A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague."
And the second, from John15:13, is the precise description of the last hours and minutes of the lives of Woods and Doherty.
?Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.?
Ultimately, only one person could have issued the orders not to help and for the military not to deploy.
Only one. Barack Obama.
Will ANY Member of Congress show the moral clarity and courage of Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty? Will ANY Member of Congress stand AGAINST political cowardice and call this what it was?
An Act of Treason.
http://www.thenationalpatriot.com/2012/10/27/weekend-edition-it-was-treason-arrest-obama/ (http://www.thenationalpatriot.com/2012/10/27/weekend-edition-it-was-treason-arrest-obama/)
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here...lemme pull out my XOSOP playbook in responding....*clears throat*.....The national patriot is just some right wing rag, that anyone with a brain would steer clear of. You just want to arrest him because he's black. In fact, you'd arrest him with a rope and hang him in the middle of DC, without even a trial. Those 4 were all killed because of Bush anyways. You're just a hateful racist that no one should pay any attention to
How was that? Was it void of any and all substantive points and facts to refute the factual timeline layed out above? Did I make sure not to engage in any meaningful debate?
And here's a point of purpose........this is a post not designed specifically to ridicule Xo's standard response to folks like Cu4 or myself, it's an effort to hopefully open his eyes & mind, to what this forum is about.....debate. Yea, I could try to be nice and just "ask he be nicer, and try harder". I'm thru trying that tactic, given the obsession he has in ridiculing and demeaning my commentary and points being made. So, I find myself dropping down to his level, in a perverse way of trying to get him to "see the light", and perhaps make an effort. He doesn't have to agree with anything I or Cu4 says....in fact, I'd find that very creepy, if that were to happen. He simply needs to use that head of his to engage in debate/discussion, vs being so intellectually lazy when his positions & accusations are laid to waste.
Now, we just sit back and observe which Xo he chooses to enter the saloon as
And by all means, if someone(s) have some constructive criticism regarding myself, minus the 3rd grade insults, I'll be more than happy to consider any suggestions/recommendations
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I thnk that President Obama is innefective and makes bad choices , but I think that Treason also requires intent to cause harm, and I don't see that.
Militaryly ignorant and shy when challenged, bad decisions, yes ,traitor no.
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I'll concur with Plane, which also leads me to my 1st and formost criticism of Obama, even before he took the oath of office.....a history of piss poor judgement, complimenting a Chicago style mode of character assassination with a hard core liberal ideology. To be honest, IMHO, if he weren't black, Clinton would have cleaned his clock in the primaries. Kind of an Affirmative Action for the presidency was in play
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Mainstream media watchdogs are toothless covering Obama and Libya scandal (http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/10/27/mainstream-media-watchdogs-are-toothless-covering-obama-and-libya-scandal/)
When Mitt Romney chose not to directly engage President Obama on Libya in last Monday’s third presidential debate, the mainstream media wrote it off as over-caution on the Republican challenger’s part.
That might be true. Certainly a lot of Republicans think so.
But what is the mainstream media’s excuse for cautiously engaging the president on Libya? Aren’t we supposed to be watchdogs? The ongoing story is story focused on whether the Obama administration provided, or refused to provide, adequate protection for the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya when it faced the threat of attack on Sept. 11. The attack left the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans dead. Subsequent conflicting accounts coming from the administration on how the White House responded, or didn’t respond, are tailor-made for a full-blown media feeding frenzy.
Yet, the so-called media watchdogs so far have been mostly toothless.
Case in point: On Friday, FoxNews.com reported that it “learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command... -- who also told the CIA operators twice to "stand down" rather than help the ambassador's team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.”
That’s a very chilling story. And if correct, it could be very damaging to the President Obama’s re-election chances. But looking at the websites Friday of other major news outlets, the story is mostly ignored.
It was not picked up or reported by The New York Times. The Washington Post didn’t cover it either. Same for USA Today. Neither did NBC, CBS, CNN or ABC.
CNN had a link on its Website front page to a story that says “doubts surface” on whether claims of responsibility for the Benghazi attacks was the work of terrorists. The story mostly supports administration accounts and refutes Republican critics such as Sen. John McCain, (R-Ariz.)
NBC’s only Friday story on Libya said in its headline. “Libya Disappears from Romney Stump Speeches.”
CBS’s latest story on Libya had House Speaker John Boehner asking Obama for “answers” about the attacks.
On Thursday, the major media were loaded with stories and videos in which Defense Secretary Leon Panetta defended the administration saying that the US military did not respond to the attack because in did not have adequate “real-time information” to put American forces at risk. Not much follow-up on that.
Also on Thursday, NBC’s Brian Williams interviewed Obama on “Rock Center” asking him what can only be described as a “softball” question on Libya: "Have you been happy with the intelligence, especially in our post 9/11 world? The assessment of your intelligence community, as we stand here, is that it still was a spontaneous terrorist attack and were you happy with what you were able to learn as this unfolded?"
A tougher question might have been, “Why have the administration's explanations of what really happened, and how you responded, been all over the map?”
So what’s going on here? Are the media just protecting Obama at a critical time in this election campaign, or are they just not following the latest CIA story because they would have to give credit to Fox News?
Whatever the reason, it is not good watchdog journalism.
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The ongoing story is story focused on whether the Obama administration provided, or refused to provide, adequate protection for the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya when it faced the threat of attack on Sept. 11.
Wonders if this might have anything to do with the security situation:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/jason-chaffetz-embassy_n_1954912.html (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/jason-chaffetz-embassy_n_1954912.html)
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/jason-chaffetz-embassy_n_1954912.html (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/10/jason-chaffetz-embassy_n_1954912.html)
http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/10/dems-accuse-gop-of-cutting-security-funding-in-libya-despite-majority-dem-support-for-vote/ (http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/10/dems-accuse-gop-of-cutting-security-funding-in-libya-despite-majority-dem-support-for-vote/)
http://www.drudge.com/news/161889/gop-cut-embassy-security-funding (http://www.drudge.com/news/161889/gop-cut-embassy-security-funding)
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/250237-gop-embassy-security-cuts-draw-democrats-scrutiny (http://thehill.com/homenews/house/250237-gop-embassy-security-cuts-draw-democrats-scrutiny)
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Nice try....but being that FACTUALLY, the State Dept was sitting on billions for just this kind of scenario, and instead either allocated resources to buy a bunch of Chevy Volts for its European dignataries or......for the life of me, can't grasp why they wouldn't have approved the added security, outside of the apparent desire to not increase the U.S. military presence in such a hostile region, has at least some plausibility, albeit politically unfeasable. But at least we'd likely not have a butchered Ambassador
That has FAR more to do with the security situation, than to try to blame Republicans & Congress. But nice try, and glad to see you returning to a discussion you seemed to have washed your hands of. Your contributions are indeed appreciated
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The ongoing story is story focused on whether the Obama administration provided, or refused to provide, adequate protection for the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya when it faced the threat of attack on Sept. 11.
Wonders if this might have anything to do with the security situation:
http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/10/dems-accuse-gop-of-cutting-security-funding-in-libya-despite-majority-dem-support-for-vote/ (http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/10/dems-accuse-gop-of-cutting-security-funding-in-libya-despite-majority-dem-support-for-vote/)
House Democrats opened Wednesday’s House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform hearing by attacking Republicans for cuts to embassy security funding— cuts that only happened thanks to overwhelming support from House Democrats, including House Oversight Committee Ranking Democratic member Rep. Elijah Cummings. In fact, more House Democrats – 149 of them — voted for the cuts than did House Republicans, of which 147 voted for them.
Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/10/dems-accuse-gop-of-cutting-security-funding-in-libya-despite-majority-dem-support-for-vote/#ixzz2AXaPAbi1 (http://dailycaller.com/2012/10/10/dems-accuse-gop-of-cutting-security-funding-in-libya-despite-majority-dem-support-for-vote/#ixzz2AXaPAbi1)
Yes , cuts in everything that is not a social program have had some effect, but there are still prioritys to be set with the recorces that still are availible. Are there no places less dangerous than Libia where these cuts might have been made?
There is a war on , and the enemy is widespread, cuts like these might be a part of wise allocation ofresorces , but this time it looks more like a failure of wisdom.
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...glad to see you returning to a discussion you seemed to have washed your hands of...
Oh dear me, no, this is a quite different discussion. Same thread perhaps, but a different discussion entirely.
I was just curious, looking back with the Search function, why this cut in the State Department security budget had not been mentioned earlier, especially by those who are squawking so loudly about the security situation, or about fairness and a level playing field. I guess it only counts if it's fair or level in your favor.
Oh, almost forgot to ask, does anyone else think this might be the reason the topic of security at Benghazi never came up in the last debate? I mean, after Ryan brought it up in the VP debate, and Joltin' Joe Biden threw that little tidbit at him about the GOP cutting the security budget?
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Why do you say that te GOP cut the state department secutity budget?
Didn't you post the article that pointed out how bipartizen that was?
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Actually, Plane, I'm laughing my ass off.
I mean, ths adminstration possibly - not saying they did, just saying possibly - makes an error in judgement that ends up costing 4 American lives, while the previous administration's errors in judgement ended up tying us up in a costly unnecessary war, to the tune of upwards of $750 billion and over 4,400 troops killed, but Bushco is defended at every turn while Obama is villified. This has got to be about the most biased little clique of people I have ever seen, especially when some whine about fairness and level playing fields. Their research is abyssmal, their posts strictly partisan and in many cases over the top. Any niggling little detail is overblown and no muck left unthrown, as long as the majority can keep spouting their mantra, the far right extremist fringe party line. There is no attempt at meaningful debate, just the majority descending in sheer numbers to beat down XO or anyone else who dares dispute them. It is no longer Debategate, it's the Grand Old Right Wingers Beat Down The Voice Of Dissent Gate.
Do you still wonder why so many have left, and so few are left?
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Indeed , "Debategate" implies that some debating should occur.
Not a game of "king of the mountain".
Nothing should prevent liberal viewpoints from being aired here, we need them even if they seem irritating at times .
The realisation both sides need is that however irritating an opposing viewpoint is , ones own viewpoint must necessarily be exactly just as irritating going in the other direction.
And humility of course makes one realise that not only is oneself capable of being wrong, it is always possible that no one being heard on either side is right, that is to say that even when it is impossible for both sides to be right , it is still possible for both sides to be wrong.
It is good to see you here in fine fettle , if you decide to stay a while , we conservative sorts can get a workout not depending exclusively on XO as a sparring partner.
If things go really well we might even be civil part of the time , I do hope so . Civility is hard to maintain without reciprocity and no one ever feels as if himself is the first to fail it.
On the other hand , do you really feel that President Bush is insufficiently vilified?
Really?
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On the other hand , do you really feel that President Bush is insufficiently vilified?
Really?
If there were a crime of conspiracy to commit stupidity, I'd love to see his entire group of thugs in the dock. With all the dead American and innocent civilian Iraqi bodies they left scattered all over Iraq, we could also probably come up with several thousand charges incidental to murder.
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I can't see that.
I don't even see how getting Saddam out of the picture is a bad idea.
You have to imagine the alternative decision, if Saddam Husein were left in office he would be busy tweaking our noses and stabbing our backs .
Trying to overthrow the Taliban without closing Iraq would have been an open flank, it is hard to imagine Saddam not taking advantage of our predicament there .
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Trying to overthrow the Taliban without closing Iraq would have been an open flank...
Um, where is the common border between Iraq and Afghanistan?
There isn't one. In between them lies the entire country of Iran. You reckon the mullahs there would have helped Saddam?
Saddam might have been a trouble maker, but that was no reason for us to invade. No, the reason passed out by Bushco was that Saddam had WMD's and direct ties to Al Qaeda, neither of which he actually had. I knew it, others knew it, his intelligence sources knew it, but those sources were ignored in favor of the ones the administration wanted to hear, that we had to go in and topple Saddam. Their information was at best faulty, and at worst contrived to give them an excuse they could feed to the American people to garner support for the invasion.
I absolutely despise Bush and his cadre for what they did to the American people and for the 4,000 plus American lives they threw away, not to mention the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of innocent Iraqi civilians.
But that's not the reason I'm here. I'm here to try to point out to some people that there is more than one side to the story, but they are not going to see that relying on rabid partisan posts that are there only to smear 'the other guy'. I'm not endorsing anyone, or trying to smear anyone, I'm just trying to get folks to look at things fairly and objectively. It may or may not influence their decision, but at least they can make that decision as informed as possible, and not rely on what the party feeds them.
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...glad to see you returning to a discussion you seemed to have washed your hands of...
Oh dear me, no, this is a quite different discussion. Same thread perhaps, but a different discussion entirely.
Not really, but please continue
I was just curious, looking back with the Search function, why this cut in the State Department security budget had not been mentioned earlier, especially by those who are squawking so loudly about the security situation, or about fairness and a level playing field. I guess it only counts if it's fair or level in your favor.
Probably because it had no bearing on the budget that it was sitting on to provide for precisely this kind of request.
Oh, almost forgot to ask, does anyone else think this might be the reason the topic of security at Benghazi never came up in the last debate? I mean, after Ryan brought it up in the VP debate, and Joltin' Joe Biden threw that little tidbit at him about the GOP cutting the security budget?
IF that were the case, Obama would have been touting that, in his opening statement
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Promiximity is not all there is to an open flank.
Saddam would have seen oppurtunity in our extremely long resupply trail.
Did Zebignew Bresniki see an open flank for Russian military efforts in Afganistan?
Yes he did.
I don't see why Saddam ccould not have gotten some cooperation form the mullas also , didn't they supply wepons to the insurgency in Iraq?
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Precisely. Not to mention the fact how so many have taken so much out of context, both in verbage (see mushroom clouds) and actions (see mission accomplished moment) to try and paint Bush as supposedly having lied us into war in Iraq. I recall one of the inspectors afterwards referencing that following the events of 911, and what the intel had told us about Saddam's stockpiles and connections to Terrorist organizations, that it would have been grossly incompetent had he NOT gone into Iraq. Of course, so easy to be a Monday morning QB, after the fact.
So Bush gets raked over the coals for actions he should have taken as CnC, and supported by vast majority of Congress in doing so, but Obama gets a pass because....well, ONLY 4 people died I guess. This was gross incompetence at minimum, with a potential for criminal cover-up at its max. Efforts to try and get him off by trying to make this as some budgetary decision in congress is about as weak as Obama's debate was in round 1, especially with the billions that the State Dept was sitting on. Perhaps their decision to buy a bunch of Chevy Volts wasn't the best judgement
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Precisely. Not to mention the fact how so many have taken so much out of context, both in verbage (see mushroom clouds) and actions (see mission accomplished moment) to try and paint Bush as supposedly having lied us into war in Iraq. I recall one of the inspectors afterwards referencing that following the events of 911, and what the intel had told us about Saddam's stockpiles and connections to Terrorist organizations, that it would have been grossly incompetent had he NOT gone into Iraq.
Of course you would believe that.
Of course, so easy to be a Monday morning QB, after the fact.
I believe if you look back, I was warning folks well before we actually invaded Iraq that the WMD/ties to Al Qaeda claims were bullshit and Bushco was just using them as excuses to con the American public and lead us into an unneccesary war. That ain't Monday morning quarterbackng, my friend.
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It was obvious to me that invading Afghanistan was a dangerous proposition, and invading Iraq was gross stupidity, and the war than followed in both countries was poorly fought and managed for at least two years.
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Promiximity is not all there is to an open flank.
Saddam would have seen oppurtunity in our extremely long resupply trail.
Did Zebignew Bresniki see an open flank for Russian military efforts in Afganistan?
Yes he did.
I don't see why Saddam ccould not have gotten some cooperation form the mullas also , didn't they supply wepons to the insurgency in Iraq?
First, Russia, or the old USSR to be precise, did share a border with Afghanistan.
And second, before we invaded Iraq, remember they had just come off a long and bitter war with Iran. The mullahs in Iran, i seriously doubt, would have lifted a finger to help Saddam's government.
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Promiximity is not all there is to an open flank.
Saddam would have seen oppurtunity in our extremely long resupply trail.
Did Zebignew Bresniki see an open flank for Russian military efforts in Afganistan?
Yes he did.
I don't see why Saddam ccould not have gotten some cooperation form the mullas also , didn't they supply wepons to the insurgency in Iraq?
First, Russia, or the old USSR to be precise, did share a border with Afghanistan.
And second, before we invaded Iraq, remember they had just come off a long and bitter war with Iran. The mullahs in Iran, i seriously doubt, would have lifted a finger to help Saddam's government.
Precicely so, and the USA does not share a border with Afganistan.
But did Jimmy Carter , ZBIG and congressman brown see an exposed flank there?
How could we expect Saddam to behave better than Jimmy Carter?
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Precicely so, and the USA does not share a border with Afganistan.
But did Jimmy Carter , ZBIG and congressman brown see an exposed flank there?
How could we expect Saddam to behave better than Jimmy Carter?
We didn't have a border with Viet Nam either. Zbig, Carter, and later the Reagan administration, saw our involvement in Afghanistan as an extension of the Cold War. The people of Afghanistan were rebelling against a Communist government that invited a Soviet invasion to try to keep them in power, and began killing off large chunks of the population. The US at the time saw it the same way they had seen Viet Nam, an intervention to stop communists.
Not sure what you mean about expecting Saddam to be better than Carter. Saddam was a monster, but he was Iraq's monster, and should have been left to them to ultimately deal with. Carter just wasn't all that bright.
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Precicely so, and the USA does not share a border with Afganistan.
But did Jimmy Carter , ZBIG and congressman brown see an exposed flank there?
How could we expect Saddam to behave better than Jimmy Carter?
We didn't have a border with Viet Nam either. Zbig, Carter, and later the Reagan administration, saw our involvement in Afghanistan as an extension of the Cold War. The people of Afghanistan were rebelling against a Communist government that invited a Soviet invasion to try to keep them in power, and began killing off large chunks of the population. The US at the time saw it the same way they had seen Viet Nam, an intervention to stop communists.
Not sure what you mean about expecting Saddam to be better than Carter. Saddam was a monster, but he was Iraq's monster, and should have been left to them to ultimately deal with. Carter just wasn't all that bright.
I mean that when Zebignew Brisniki saw an oppurtunity and an exposed vunerability , he talked Carter into exploiting it.
I do NOT expect better behavior from Saddam Hussein.
If given an oppurtunity to harm the US and get away with it , I would expect him to exploit it a lot.
It is like having your queen facing the opposite queen and unprotected, and it is her turn. You start to wonder how you let that get there. So if you see that coming you do what you can.
Do you really expect that Saddam would have become nice to us if we had taken the pressure off, or that he would have sat on his hands while we became vunerable?
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Precisely. Not to mention the fact how so many have taken so much out of context, both in verbage (see mushroom clouds) and actions (see mission accomplished moment) to try and paint Bush as supposedly having lied us into war in Iraq. I recall one of the inspectors afterwards referencing that following the events of 911, and what the intel had told us about Saddam's stockpiles and connections to Terrorist organizations, that it would have been grossly incompetent had he NOT gone into Iraq.
Of course you would believe that.
Yea, facts and common sense can be a bad habit to believe in. But that's a hardship I've accepted
Of course, so easy to be a Monday morning QB, after the fact.
I believe if you look back, I was warning folks well before we actually invaded Iraq that the WMD/ties to Al Qaeda claims were bullshit and Bushco was just using them as excuses to con the American public and lead us into an unneccesary war. That ain't Monday morning quarterbackng, my friend.
I believe also, that if you look back, folks with far more access to intel, from both sides of the political spectrum, than yourself, as well as across the globe, had come to a differing conclusion, one that was far more logical in thought, given the intel we had at the time, not to mention the terrorist ties that were determined not to be BS, & coupled with the events of 911. made going into Iraq pretty much a necessity
Look, you can disagree with War, opine that it was "unnecessary", or even accurately claim that "you knew better", as it relates to Iraq. The point becomes how irrational it is to try and claim Bush "lied us into war", when not 1 shred of proof can be provided that shows that Bush, and Bush alone KNEW Saddam had no WMD, but took us into war with the claim he did. All you have is that Bush was more likely to go into Iraq, then let's say a Senator Kerry, or former VP Gore, given identical circumstances & intel. That in no way, even remotely comes close to the notion that Bush lied us into war
I'll also add that if you asked most Americans (and this has been polled), they absolutely believed it wasn't a matter of if, it was simply a matter of when, we were going to get hit again after 911. I would have been one of them. But heaven forbid you give Bush any credit for taking this fight to them, on their grounds, where they've had to expert a predominance of their resources & leadership in trying to take back what we pull out from under them. No terrorists attacks on our soil, since 911. Nor would Obama have gotten Bin Laden either without the EIT's applied under Bush.
But rest assured, thanks to your buddy Obama, AlQeada, and their supporters are being able to regroup, retrain, and being presented full on countries for possible take-over
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Do you really expect that Saddam would have become nice to us if we had taken the pressure off, or that he would have sat on his hands while we became vunerable?
I think you misunderstand me. We aready knew Saddam had no WMD's, and due to the sanctions he had neither the capability nor raw materials to make them. There was no reason for us to invade, as he was not much more than a nuisance to us at the time. The sanctions were hurting him and the Iraqis; he and his sons and his regime were taking their frustrations out on the only victims they could lash out at, fellow Iraqis. We could have stayed in place, surrounding him and lending covert and not so covert support to the opposition, and let the Iraqi people depose him. However long it took, he wasn't going anywhere; Saudi Arbia, with US troops, were to the south, Kuwait with US troops and Iran were to the east, Turkey to the north, a NATO ally known for vigorously defending their border. Syria is to the east, with another despotic ruler trying to hang on to what he has. There wasn't really anywhere to run, and all Saddam was doing was spinning in place, gradually self destructing by turning his own people against him. Barring the presence of WMD's, which we already knew he didn't have and didn't have the raw materials to make, there was absolutely no reason for us to invade when we did. We could have let the Iraqi opposition get organized, aided them as we could from outside iraq, and once their rebellion was in full swing cme to their aid inside Iraq.
As to knowing full well Saddam did not have WMD's nor the capability to make them, Bushco already had that intelligence from the start. The sanctions were working, we already knew what Iraq had and didn't have, but here's the rub. Bush was getting intelligence from several sources, and the ones in the know were telling him there were no WMD's and no substantial capability for making any. Other sources, with more of a stake if we were to go to war with Iraq, including a supposed Iraqi defector, claimed otherwise. Bushco pushed aside the information from the sources they should have relied on, and went with those who told them what they wanted to hear, that we should invade Iraq. They BS'ed Colin Powell to sell it to the UN and the American Public, and over 4,000 dead American troops and billions of dollars later, we know the truth - there were no WMD's.
So whining that the administration went with 'the best information they had' is bullshit. The best information they had told them all along there were no WMD's and no substantial capability for manufacturing any.
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So you have forgotten how close he was to wriggleing out of those sanctions, there were holes in that embargo that were going to grow.
Saddam used the nine year cease fire to consolidate his power and murder his opponents, his chosen successor would have been one of his sons .
We did have good reason to expect Saddam to resume his WMD manufacture as soon as possible , but that is entirely beside the point I am making .
If we were going to maintain a war effort in Afganistan whil also maintaining an embargo on Saddam , he would have an easy oppurtunity to stab us in the back.
I suppose you can be strangleing someone , and stop, but , I don't think you can be strangleing someone , stop , and ask them to wait a little while so that you can go down the block to kill his even worse neighbor before you return to finish the kill on him.
There was never a real end to hostilitys when Bush 41 broke off the attack, Saddam managed to kill most of the Iriquis that might have made a good alternative government , he was shooting at US aircraft weakly weekly, and he was pushing propaganda about how the santions were starving Iriqui children.
I think your idea tht the sanctions were enough and that Saddam would have been reduced or reformed by them not credable and counter the evidence availible at the time and since.
If GWBush had not overthrown Saddam we would be discussing now how stupid he was not to tip him over while it was reltively easy, cause by now Saddam would have recovered all that he ever lost , would have murdered even more of his opponents , and would have stabbed our backs in Afgasnistan to increase our losses without loss to himself.
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The sanctions could have been strengthened, his air force, anti-aircraft and missile sites taken out, and the opposition strengthened, all without a full scale invasion, and we could have still finished the job in Afghanistan first. We had enough allies willing to help invade, how much easier it might have been to get them to assist with air support to enforce the sanctions and take out his air force and any anti-aircraft batteries without risking ground troops.
And I love this bit -
I suppose you can be strangleing someone , and stop, but , I don't think you can be strangleing someone , stop , and ask them to wait a little while so that you can go down the block to kill his even worse neighbor before you return to finish the kill on him.
Isn't that exactly what we did with Afghanistan, when we decided to concentrate on Iraq? We took the pressure off the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan while we concentrated on Iraq, drawing the fighting in Afghanistan out to over ten years now.
Some of us are still marvelling that Bush41 was stupid enough not to finish the job the first time around.
As for Sirs, i do not recall ever coming out and saying Bush, personally, lied us into the war in Iraq. I have left open the possibility that he was misled by his vice president and advisors (which I refer to as Bushco, which may have led to your confusion), which I believe is what actually happened.
And you can quit being an ass about my 'buddy Obama'. Once again you have jumped to the wrong conclusion, which says a lot about the common sense you claim to have. But then, you're Sirs, what else can we expect?
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As for Sirs, i do not recall ever coming out and saying Bush, personally, lied us into the war in Iraq.
Sure could have fooled most people. Your inferences were pretty transparent. But if you want to back down from that position, that'd be a very rational thing to do
I have left open the possibility that he was misled by his vice president and advisors (which I refer to as Bushco, which may have led to your confusion), which I believe is what actually happened.
Misled HOW? Now it's the VP and his Advisers who KNEW Saddam had no WMD, and convinced Bush that he did?? PROOF is required there, my friend. Your say so on the "possibility" is hardly a valid indictment
And you can quit being an ass about my 'buddy Obama'. Once again you have jumped to the wrong conclusion, which says a lot about the common sense you claim to have.
Considering how fast you came out of the chute, trying to defend Obama about Benghazi, trying to throw the blame everywhere else, such as the Congress, all the while not once criticizing his tactic of "going with the intel that he had at the time" that you crucified Bush over, not once criticizing his week on end of trying to make this about non-existant protests and some anti-muslim video.......well, kinda hard not to make such a logical common sense conclusion
But then, you're Sirs, what else can we expect?
Objectivity, logic, and a focus on the facts
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Sure could have fooled most people. Your inferences were pretty transparent. But if you want to back down from that position, that'd be a very rational thing to do
How does one back down from a position one never had?
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From the simple point of view that from Day 1 of the Bush bashing train, it was Bush (now referred to as Bushco, I guess) who supposedly disregarded or ignored or manipulated all "facts & intel" to the contrary to Saddam's WMD and terrorist connections, to take us into Iraq, regardless. Now its apparently not Bush specifically, but Cheney and Bush's "advisers" that knew Saddam had no WMD, but gullible Bush bought into their nefarious plan that he did, and into Iraq we went
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That didn't answer my question. How does one back down from a position they never had.
Quote from: hnumpah on Today at 08:04:07 AM
As for Sirs, i do not recall ever coming out and saying Bush, personally, lied us into the war in Iraq.
Quote from Sirs:
Sure could have fooled most people. Your inferences were pretty transparent. But if you want to back down from that position, that'd be a very rational thing to do
I think the logical thing to do would be to show where he did in fact say Bush personally lied us into war.
I think the problem is is that you are giving more weight to your interpretation of what he said than to what he actually said. So in essence what you are saying is he is backing down from what you assert he meant. And i don't know that he can back down from your assertion as he has nothing to back down from, if he never said what you assert he said.
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That didn't answer my question. How does one back down from a position they never had. .....I think the problem is is that you are giving more weight to your interpretation of what he said than to what he actually said. So in essence what you are saying is he is backing down from what you assert he meant. And i don't know that he can back down from your assertion as he has nothing to back down from, if he never said what you assert he said.
I stand by the clear references he's made at how nefarious "Bushco" supposedly has been, in taking us into Iraq. Here, let's try to clear the air
H, did Bushco lie us into war?
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So your are shifting his position from Bush personally lied to BushCo lied?
Because his response was to this statement of yours.
That in no way, even remotely comes close to the notion that Bush lied us into war
Posted by: sirs
on: Today at 03:01:53 AM
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I think the logical thing to do would be to show where he did in fact say Bush personally lied us into war.
BT....if one is bored enough...how does one do that?
I was certainly left with the impression that in the past,
possibly even years ago that this "hnumpah" character
who appears to suffer from "BDS" (Bush Derangement Syndrome)
has implied that Bush/Republicans lied us into war.
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ROFL
Um, I did a search under my username - something so simple to do, yet some folks in here just can't seem to grasp it - going back to 2006 (which seems to be about as far back in the archives as I can go) for the phrase 'Bush lied'. i came up with several for Bushco lied, but none where I ever specifically said that Bush hmself lied. I did find this oldie but goodie though:
3DHS / Re: Speaking of lying
« Message by hnumpah on December 09, 2006, 17:20:31 »
So, um, when did Bush commit perjury by lying under oath, a la Bubba?
It seems you never will get it. Clinton did not just lie - he lied under oath, which is perjury, which is a crime.
Can you point out any specific, chargeable crimes Bush has committed?
Stupidity doesn't count.
In response to your question, S, someone obviously pushed the incorrect 'intelligence', I'd say someone with an agenda and something to gain if we invaded Iraq. I'll leave it to you to draw your own conclusions with your much touted objectivity, logic and focus on the facts.
BTW, you might try some of that objectivity next tme you go whining about the news media not making some story their lead. Ask yourself, is it really worth a lead, or is it just some over the top tidbit overblown by someone with an agenda who omits other facts that might counter their position. That also blew your focus on the facts claim out of the water, since you didn't take time to research them, just went on your whiny little rant. As for logic, well, two out of three didn't pan out, I wouldn't rely on that much either.
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BT....if one is bored enough...how does one do that?
Not sure what you are saying here CU. Please clarify.
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ROFL Um, I did a search under my username - going back to 2006 for the phrase 'Bush lied'.
i came up with several for Bushco lied, but none where I ever specifically said that Bush himself lied.
Yeah ROFL indeed!
I guess you thought it may look better if
you busted youself before you were busted by SIRS.
You knew he'd find the truth!
Bush lied vs BushCo lied.....oh brother.
Huge difference there dude....lol...."Define is" here we go.
hnumpah implying President Bush used outright "falsehoods & fabrications"
"Do you feel he is the one that relied on cherrypicked intel,
half truths, and out and out (right) falsehoods and fabrications to send troops in?"
http://debategate.com/new3dhs/3dhs/iglesias-went-on-lots-of-trips/msg20713/#msg20713 (http://debategate.com/new3dhs/3dhs/iglesias-went-on-lots-of-trips/msg20713/#msg20713)
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Not really nitwit. I have no faith whatsoever in Sirs' search skills. Hell, he didn't even have the gumption to find the truth before he started whining about the story in this thread. Hmmm, for that matter, neither did you before you posted it.
And I said he relied on them, dumbass, not that he himself made them up.
Nice try though.
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Not really nitwit.
Ok HUMPY
I have no faith whatsoever in Sirs' search skills.
Nice cover....better to come clean and bust yourself rather
than allow SIRS to show what you really are..
And I said he relied on them, dumbass,
Ok HUMPY
not that he himself made them up.
Dude before SIRS was gonna nail you, you were forced to admit
"i came up with several for Bushco lied,
but none where I ever specifically said that Bush hmself lied"
As if "Bushco lied" would never be confused with Bush!
In fact I am sure if someone said hnumpahCo was a lying sack of shit,
no one could ever think that meant hnumpah was a liar.
SIRS makes you look pretty desperate!
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And you make yourself look like and absolute moron.
Neener neener neener.
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And you make yourself look like and absolute moron
"and absolute moron"
?
calm down and quit trying to be such a bully all the time
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Lol, if the worst you can find to say about me, with any grain of truth in it, is that I make spelling mistakes, I'm still waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay ahead of your sorry ass.
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Lol, if the worst you can find to say about me, with any grain of truth in it, is that I make spelling mistakes,
The important stuff has already been proven in this thread, thanks to SIRS.
The spelling highlight was more for a giggle.
I usually never mention spelling errors/grammatical errors.
Of course we all make them when we get in a hurry.
The one exception is when someone is calling you a moron or an idiot.
I've always found it funny...
when someone calls someone else a moron/idiot but can't even spell the attack correctly.
I know you're a bright guy hnumpah.....but you must admit it's funny.
I'm still waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay ahead of your sorry ass.
Like I said, chill out and don't be such a bully.
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Why?
Pretty much every time I come in here I see you guys giving XO hell. To be honest, I can't understand why he even bothers to stick around and put up with it. So, pray tell, why should I have any mercy on you guys? All you ever do is post partisan pieces that try to make mountains out of molehills and, from what I see, generally only tell part of the story, leaving out anything that doesn't reflect well on your candidate, or even outright half truths and lies from your candidate. I know, I know, Obama does the same thing, but I do enjoy dropping in once in a while to point out that there's plenty of dung to be flung on both sides. Mercy, since I don't see it when I do occasionally drop by to read a few posts, does not enter into my equation.
By the way, neither you nor Sirs has proven anything about what I've said in this thread. Go back and read through it for content, not what you wish it said. I do read, write, speak and understand English very well, and I am very careful about explaining my answers. Whether you accept my explanation or not is your choice, but rest assured what I told you about Bushco was the truth. I have referred to Bush several times as an individual, usually as Dubya, but when I refer to him and his cronies, it is Bushco. I admit, I have called him stupid and probably quite a few other names along that line, but I honestly don't recall ever saying he, personally, lied us into the war in Iraq.
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Why? Pretty much every time I come in here I see you guys giving XO hell.
So, factually demonstrating when someone is wrong is "giving them hell"?? Is that how it works?? Providing facts, that might come from some "partisan source" is just beyond the pale?? And all the frequent criticisms of "our guy" or "our party" are ignored, so you can focus on the parts we don't agree with you on, and that somehow makes this all about partisanship
I asked a simple question, that required a yes or a no......did Bushco lie us into war? Now, I just came back to this thread, so I'll go all along and find if that was indeed answered with a yes or a no, somewhere between when it was asked and now. Anything other demonstrates a pretty clear double standard as you sit in some form of judgement on how partisan someone like myself is supposed to be
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The sanctions could have been strengthened, his air force, anti-aircraft and missile sites taken out, and the opposition strengthened, all without a full scale invasion, and we could have still finished the job in Afghanistan first. We had enough allies willing to help invade, how much easier it might have been to get them to assist with air support to enforce the sanctions and take out his air force and any anti-aircraft batteries without risking ground troops.
That is a good description of what Clinton tried to do, thus it is proved to be a bad plan, it did not work.
And I love this bit -
I suppose you can be strangleing someone , and stop, but , I don't think you can be strangleing someone , stop , and ask them to wait a little while so that you can go down the block to kill his even worse neighbor before you return to finish the kill on him.
Isn't that exactly what we did with Afghanistan, when we decided to concentrate on Iraq? We took the pressure off the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan while we concentrated on Iraq, drawing the fighting in Afghanistan out to over ten years now.
So you get my point in reverse? I am very happy, because this point is completely reversable , you cannot tell the foe on the left to wait for his turn to be killed , and you also cannot tell the foe on the right to wait for his turn to be killed. If the enemy of my enemy is not really my friend , he is still really usefull for a far flank.
Some of us are still marvelling that Bush41 was stupid enough not to finish the job the first time around.
Perplexed I was, I understood his aim was to have a victory in Iriqui hands thus an Iraq that did not belong to us, but when that didn't happen , why not just chase Saddam off the table? There was a lot of waste in that .
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I asked a simple question, that required a yes or a no......did Bushco lie us into war? Now, I just came back to this thread, so I'll go all along and find if that was indeed answered with a yes or a no, somewhere between when it was asked and now. Anything other demonstrates a pretty clear double standard as you sit in some form of judgement on how partisan someone like myself is supposed to be
Apparently that question still has gone unanswered. Interesting
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Yawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwn.
Apparently, either you didn't read my answer, or you failed to understand it.
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yes or no. That's all that's required in an answer here. I failed to see either one. Care to provide it now?
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yes or no. That's all that's required in an answer here. I failed to see either one. Care to provide it now?
Certainly.
Yes or no.
Happy?
You DO NOT get to dictate to me which posts I should respond to, and you DO NOT get to dictate to me the manner of my response. I gave you my answer before. Whether you like it or not is of no consequence to me.
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Pulling out the false narrative of demanding some response strawman again, I see. Well, I do appreciate the non-answer. As I referenced, anything other than a yes OR no. demonstrates a pretty clear double standard as you sit in some form of judgement on how partisan someone like myself is supposed to be, all the while being completely befuddled in producing any proof that Bushco knew there were no WMD, but took us into Iraq anyways. THAT's what lying us into war would be all about. And that's where your rationality hits a brick wall, and BDS takes over
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Pulling out the false narrative of demanding some response strawman again, I see. Well, I do appreciate the non-answer. As I referenced, anything other than a yes OR no. demonstrates a pretty clear double standard as you sit in some form of judgement on how partisan someone like myself is supposed to be, all the while being completely befuddled in producing any proof that Bushco knew there were no WMD, but took us into Iraq anyways. THAT's what lying us into war would be all about. And that's where your rationality hits a brick wall, and BDS takes over
Couple points.
You are partisan. In fact one of your handles used to be Partisan Conservative if memory serves.
You do demand responses, then chide people when they don't respond.
And thirdly, I believe Bears claim was that he never claimed that Bush personally and purposely lied to the American People. BushCo would be a different entity.
Think about it this way. CU wants to sell his car. Being the honest sort that he is, he has his mechanic check it out to make sure there are no real problems and to help him set a price.
He sells the vehicle based on his mechanics appraisal and the vehicles clean bill of health.
Within a week, the buyer informs CU that the engine blew and accuses CU of lying to him about the condition of the car.
Did CU lie?
Was the buyer justified in calling CU a liar?
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Pulling out the false narrative of demanding some response strawman again, I see. Well, I do appreciate the non-answer. As I referenced, anything other than a yes OR no. demonstrates a pretty clear double standard as you sit in some form of judgement on how partisan someone like myself is supposed to be, all the while being completely befuddled in producing any proof that Bushco knew there were no WMD, but took us into Iraq anyways. THAT's what lying us into war would be all about. And that's where your rationality hits a brick wall, and BDS takes over
Couple points.
You are partisan
Absolutely.....and proud of it. I'm also OBJECTIVE, in nearly all my criticisms. You CAN be both, I hope you realize that
You do demand responses, then chide people when they don't respond.
Now that's you laying claim to what you think I mean, vs what I post. I repeat ASKING (read not demanding) for responses to showcase both a choice of the other either refusing to back up their claim/accusation, or that they simply were stumped/debunked and could not, so just moved on, hoping no one would notice.
BIG DIFFERENCE, than some conclusion that I'm "demanding answers"
Glad we got that out of the way
And thirdly, I believe Bears claim was that he never claimed that Bush personally and purposely lied to the American People. BushCo would be a different entity.
and I also believe I made that acknowledgement, thus my question then was inquiring about Bushco. Why you want to keep making this about Bush....well, Cu4 was able to take you to task on that one
I hope that cleared things up, not that there should have been anything to have to clear up, but apparently it was necessary.
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Re: Partisan. Glad you admitted it.
Re: Demanding then chiding.
Your answer affirms my observation.
I repeat ASKING (read not demanding) for responses to showcase both a choice of the other either refusing to back up their claim/accusation, or that they simply were stumped and could not, so just moved on, hoping no one would notice.
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Twisted & wrong as your observation(s) may be, you have every right to that version. Going to chide everyone else now for their *gasp* partisanship?
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and I also believe I made that acknowledgement, thus my question then was inquiring about Bushco. Why you want to keep making this about Bush....well, Cu4 was able to take you to task on that one
But your original accusation was that he claimed that Bush lied.
The point becomes how irrational it is to try and claim Bush "lied us into war", when not 1 shred of proof can be provided that shows that Bush, and Bush alone KNEW Saddam had no WMD, but took us into war with the claim he did.
http://debategate.com/new3dhs/3dhs/white-house-told-of-militant-claim-two-hours-after-libya-attack (http://debategate.com/new3dhs/3dhs/white-house-told-of-militant-claim-two-hours-after-libya-attack)!/msg144993/#msg144993
Which he denied:
As for Sirs, i do not recall ever coming out and saying Bush, personally, lied us into the war in Iraq. I have left open the possibility that he was misled by his vice president and advisors (which I refer to as Bushco, which may have led to your confusion), which I believe is what actually happened.
At which point you confirmed his suspicions concerning your conclusion.
Sure could have fooled most people. Your inferences were pretty transparent. But if you want to back down from that position, that'd be a very rational thing to do
http://debategate.com/new3dhs/3dhs/white-house-told-of-militant-claim-two-hours-after-libya-attack (http://debategate.com/new3dhs/3dhs/white-house-told-of-militant-claim-two-hours-after-libya-attack)!/msg145001/#msg145001
Not sure why you suddenly switched to making it about BushCo, which we agreed is a different entity. And which Bear admitted might lead to your confusion.
And i must have missed where CU took me to task.
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Twisted & wrong as your observation(s) may be, you have every right to that version. Going to chide everyone else now for their *gasp* partisanship?
No but i might hurl a barb at them when they start demanding answers.
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and I also believe I made that acknowledgement, thus my question then was inquiring about Bushco. Why you want to keep making this about Bush....well, Cu4 was able to take you to task on that one
But your original accusation was that he claimed that Bush lied.
And if you cared to read on, you'll note that I acknowledged his transition from Bush --> Bushco (http://debategate.com/new3dhs/3dhs/white-house-told-of-militant-claim-two-hours-after-libya-attack!/msg145001/#msg145001), and subsequent questions were in reference to that
You still be the only hung up on a point long since removed. Why is that?
Not sure why you suddenly switched to making it about BushCo,
Because, that's what H said he meant. That's why
And i must have missed where CU took me to task.
The subsequent references to you, and mostly H, on how how its now about Bushco vs just Bush apparently
Twisted & wrong as your observation(s) may be, you have every right to that version. Going to chide everyone else now for their *gasp* partisanship?
No but i might hurl a barb at them when they start demanding answers.
Which as everyone can note, you'd be wrong in my "demands", not to mention a seperate part to your 3 part response
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And if you cared to read on, you'll note that I acknowledged his transition from Bush --> Bushco, and subsequent questions were in reference to that.
Did he transition or did he explain a possible source of your confusion?
In any case i do not see where he backed down from a position he never had. Which brings us full circle.
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You are partisan.
It is not nearly as simple as that.
I can't speak for SIRS....but BT it really depends on how you define the word.
Look at Merriam-Webster.com
I think SIRS and I both hold the belief that "Party" means absolutely nothing,
and that either of us would as soon vote for a conservative no matter what the party.
If Clarence Thomas was a democrat would I love him any less? Ha Ha...that's silly.
If Col West was a democrat with the same beliefs he has...why would it matter?
Unless of course it effected committee chairmanships, ect....
But really having allegiance to a party seems rather silly.
So as far as "partisan" defined as "a firm adherent to a party".....No way Jose!
If you define "partisan" as "a firm adherent to a cause" then yes I think we all
are...SIRS and XO...and pretty much everyone else are adherents to a general
approach of less or more gvt.....no one is exactly split 100% down the middle
and in my mind it is no lofty goal to not take stands on issues and not have
an opinion...a decision....on anything. Why is an undecided any more lofty
than someone that has studied the issues and come to a conclusion?
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It is not nearly as simple as that.
In Sirs case it is, else why choose a handle like Partisan Conservative, as he has used in the past.
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I'm still not sure what the "attack" looked like, where exactly they were when they were killed, how big the atacking force was, how long it took, and so forth? It's a damn shame because I understand the Ambassador was very good at what he did, worked hard to know the lay of the land, etc.
BSB
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I'm still not sure what the "attack" looked like,
BSB....I got this e-mail yesterday...not sure how accurate it is:
Earn your Trident every day
About the two Navy SEAL's killed in Libya:
Quite an astounding tribute to the courage and bravery of the two former Navy SEAL's that went to the aid of Ambassador Stevens and Embassy staff. Courageous!
The news has been full of the attacks on our embassies throughout the Muslim world, and in particular, the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others in Benghazi , Libya . However, apart from the shameful amount of disinformation willingly distributed by the Main Stream Media and the current administration, there's a little known story of incredible bravery, heroics, and courage that should be the top story of every news agency across the fruited plain.
So what actually happened at the U.S. embassy in Libya? We are learning more about this every day. Ambassador Stevens and Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, along with administrative staff, were working out of temporary quarters due to the fact that in the spring of 2011 during the so-called Arab Spring, the United States cut ties with then president Moammar Gadhafi. Our embassy was looted and ransacked, causing it to be unusable. It is still in a state of disrepair. Security for embassies and their personnel is to be provided by the host nation. Since Libya has gone through a civil war of sorts in the past 18 months, the current government is very unstable, and therefore, unreliable
A well-organized attack by radical Muslims was planned specifically targeting the temporary U.S. embassy building. The Libyan security force that was in place to protect our people deserted their post, or joined the attacking force. Either way, our people were in a real fix. And it should be noted that Ambassador Stevens had mentioned on more than one occasion to Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, that he was quite concerned for his personal safety and the welfare of his people. It is thought that Ambassador Stevens was on a "hit list."
A short distance from the American compound, two Americans were sleeping. They were in Libya as independent contractors working an assignment totally unrelated to our embassy. They also happened to be former Navy SEALs. When they heard the noise coming from the attack on our embassy, as you would expect from highly trained warriors, they ran to the fight. Apparently, they had no weapons, but seeing the Libyan guards dropping their guns in their haste in fleeing the scene, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty snatched up several of these discarded weapons and prepared to defend the American compound.
Not knowing exactly what was taking place, the two SEALs set up a defensive perimeter.
Unfortunately Ambassador Stevens was already gravely injured, and Foreign Service officer, Sean Smith, was dead. However, due to their quick action and suppressive fire, twenty administrative personnel in the embassy were able to escape to safety. Eventually, these two courageous men were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers brought against them, an enemy force numbering between 100 to 200 attackers which came in two waves. But the stunning part of the story is that Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty killed 60 of the attacking force. Once the compound was overrun, the attackers were incensed to discover that just two men had inflicted so much death and destruction.
As it became apparent to these selfless heroes, they were definitely going to lose their lives unless some reinforcements showed up in a hurry. As we know now, that was not to be. I'm fairly certain they knew they were going to die in this gun fight, but not before they took a whole lot of bad guys with them!
Consider these tenets of the Navy SEAL Code: 1) Loyalty to Country, Team and Teammate, 2) Serve with Honor and Integrity On and Off the Battlefield, 3) Ready to Lead, Ready to Follow, Never Quit, 4) Take responsibility for your actions and the actions of your teammates, 5) Excel as Warriors through Discipline and Innovation, 6) Train for War, Fight to Win, Defeat our Nation?s Enemies, and 7) Earn your Trident every day ( http://www.navyseals.com/seal-code-warrior-creed (http://www.navyseals.com/seal-code-warrior-creed)).
Thank you, Tyrone and Glen. To the very last breath, you both lived up to the SEAL Code.
You served all of us well. You were courageous in the face of certain death.
And Tyrone, even though you never got to hold your newborn son, he will grow up knowing the character and quality of his father, a man among men who sacrificed himself defending others. God bless America !
Dr. Charles R. Roots Senior Pastor Former Staff Sergeant,
USMC Captain, U. S. Navy Chaplain Corps (Ret)
This should be passed on and on and on.
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Ah BSB, good to see you again.
For a timeline on the attack you might look here http://factcheck.org/2012/10/benghazi-timeline/ (http://factcheck.org/2012/10/benghazi-timeline/)
Details are still coming out as the investigation delves into who knew what when and exactly what went on. You know how slow moving bureaucracies and investigations can be, but some are in a rush to lay blame, especially this close to the election, so the usual crap is flowing back and forth.
Hope everything is well, old friend.
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Welcome back BsB.....wikipedia has a pretty detailed synopsis of events as well (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_the_U.S._diplomatic_mission_in_Benghazi). It even indicates reports of upwards of 125 - 150 gunmen attacked the Consulate of no more than 7 Americans, using automatic weapons, RPG's, and mortars. Even heard a report that one of those killed, defied orders to stand down, and "painted" the location of the mortars with a laser, assuming incorrectly that we had air reinforcements coming in....I mean, Obama said that the 1st time he heard of the events in Benghazi, he gave clear orders for our folks to be secured & protected, by any means necessary.
Seal Tyrone Woods was apparently killed, as he kept the laser on the target, that no air asset was ordered to take out
But yea, H is right, same old knee-jerk defense of the indefensible around here 8)
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And if you cared to read on, you'll note that I acknowledged his transition from Bush --> Bushco, and subsequent questions were in reference to that.
Did he transition or did he explain a possible source of your confusion?
In any case i do not see where he backed down from a position he never had. Which brings us full circle.
Did I not explain clearly enough (http://debategate.com/new3dhs/3dhs/white-house-told-of-militant-claim-two-hours-after-libya-attack!/msg145003/#msg145003) for you, the 1st time you asked? Yes, Full circle indeed
So, we have this topic, which grows worse and worse for the Obama administration on a daily basis, yet now you seemed to be fixated on Bush & Partisan, as it relates to Sirs. The former having been put to bed long ago, and the latter, largely irrelevent. Unless you're concluding some claim that one can not be both Partisan & Objective. Is that what it is? Or is it something more nefarious?
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I simply asked how one can back down from a position one never took.
Just to be clear you are agreeing that Bear never claimed that Bush personally lied about the WMD's, and after agreeing, it was you who moved on to the BushCo tangent, that being the source of your confusion?
I'll check back for your reply, no worries, i'll remind you if it slips your mind.
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And as I read subsequent responses, he has not backed down from from a position he apparently has adopted, that BushCO indeed lied us into war. It's right there in his answer to that question, in which he typed "YES or no"
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Just to be clear you are agreeing that Bear never claimed that Bush personally lied about the WMD's, and after agreeing, it was you who moved on to the BushCo tangent, that being the source of your confusion?
Minus your confusional proclamations, yea. Can we move on to the preoccupation you have with my being partisan now, and get that settled? That way we can get back to actual substantive issues.....no, not anything about Benghazi....naaa. Like what other derrogatory names is Xo going to come up with for Romney. Hard hitting issues, like that seem to be in vogue
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I simply asked how one can back down from a position one never took.
People can back down from a position they claim they never took.
Good grief BT.....
How many people would take your "define is" position?
Bush lied or BushCo lied....
Obama lied or ObamaCo lied about Libya
You think the public would really give a damn about some minced word clarification?
Get real....thats not reality.
What is the completely obvious implication of such a statement ObamaCo lied?
Your earlier analogy does not work.
You ever heard "The Buck stops here"?
As far a president if you say "BushCo lied" you are saying Bush lied.
A President can not escape leading us to war if it's a lie by him or his admin
But with that said....it's all for not because a lie has never been proven.
H is wrong either way!
lets see the exact evidence that someone was willingly lying to take us to war?
Just more hogwash by "H".
the asinine claim of a lie by Bush/BushCo didnt work out.
so now it's time to dodge.
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<error>
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I'll refer you , CU, to your selling of the used car.
If the car breaks down after you were assured it was in good shape, and you in turn assured the buyer that it was in good shape, did you lie? Did CUCo lie? Did anyone lie?
But the splitting of hairs is unnecessary, because Sirs claimed that Bear had said that Bush personally lied in the lead up to war. Now i have seen no evidence of this claim, but i have seen Bears denial. And i have seen Sirs deflect that by claiming saying BushCo lied is the same as Bush lying. And i don't believe that is true. Just as you relied on your mechanic for the true status of your vehicle, Bush relied on members of his administration to build the case for war. And i don't see how Bear backed away from his position that Bush personally didn't lie.
There is an important distinction between the statements and i don't believe that blowing it off as a "define is" situation does that distinction justice.
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Are you STILL fixating on Bush after it was cleared up LONG AGO?? ::) ...and when H referenced to sirs, that he really meant Bushco as in Cheney & Bush's advisors, the issue of "Sirs claimed that Bear had said that Bush personally lied in the lead up to war" was done and over with
And i have seen Sirs deflect that by claiming saying BushCo lied is the same as Bush lying
WHAT THE FRELL?? WHEN DID I EVER CLAIM THEY WERE THE SAME THING?? Gads, I have made it painfully clear the aknowledgement that H was now using Bushco vs Bush. That doesn't mean I said that they're the same. Remember, ironically in this thread, your proclamation that perhaps I was reading into what H said as something he meant. YOU'RE DOING THAT..... AGAIN. I, sirs, did NOT claim or even infer they were "the same", regardless of what you thought I meant to say. :o
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Oh so when CU claimed that Bush BushCo were the same thing and you referred to his posts as having set me straight was i wrong to assume that you and he were in agreement on that very issue.
So now are you saying that Bush lied and BushCo lying are not the same thing?
Oh and did you retract your statement concerning Bear claiming that Bush personally lied?
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I'll refer you , CU, to your selling of the used car.
Again the analogy does not work.
If the car breaks down after you were assured it was in good shape, and you in turn assured the buyer that it was in good shape, did you lie? Did CUCo lie? Did anyone lie?
H claimed someone lied.
But he can't back up the claim....
You ask SIRS to back up his claim,
where is your passion to ask H to back up his admitted claim?
is H lying about this?
I don't know? Lying is often difficult to prove.
I'd like to know where & who has ever proven that Bush/BushCo lied?
Did the bipartisan 9/11 Commission?
Did any US Court of Law and a ruling upheld?
Did the US Congress?
You hammer SIRS about "Now i have seen no evidence of this claim"
But have you BT seen substaniated evidence that Bush/BushCo lied?
If so please provide the US Court, US Congressional, or 911 Commission finding of this?
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So let's list the sequence.
Sirs claims Bear claimed Bush personally lied us into war.
Bear says he didn't. He did admit that he thought BushCo lied and that might be what was confusing Sirs.
Sirs claims Bear is backing away from his position that Bush personally lied, by claiming that saying BushCo lied is the same as saying Bush personally lied.
I asked how one can back away from a position one never had. Sirs thinks I'm picking on him. You go off on some tangent about boredom and "define is"
Strange days indeed.
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I know, I just ruined Bsb's day. Sorry big fella, just clearing up a few loose ends
Oh so when CU claimed that Bush BushCo were the same thing and you referred to his posts as having set me straight was i wrong to assume that you and he were in agreement on that very issue.
So now are you saying that Bush lied and BushCo lying are not the same thing?
So "now" nothing....I never said anything to the contrary, prior. More of exactly what you were claiming I was doing...apparently you're thinking something along the lines of what you thought I meant. Still confused I see...or worse, you know better, but still pushing this irrelevant issue anyways. Interesting
Oh and did you retract your statement concerning Bear claiming that Bush personally lied?
Not that anything needs "retracting", as it's been modified appropriately based on his own answer......Bushco apparently lied us into war....minus of course any actual facts to back it up
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Isn't it customary when falsely accusing someone of something you can not prove, to retract that accusation once more enlightenment has been provided?
Bear went back as far as '06 and didn't see where he claimed that Bush personally and purposely lied us into war. You went back as far as __________ and came up with_________?
I don't know if you bothered to search or anyone else bothered to search but i am still confused as how one can back away from a position they never had.
But that's ok.
It's really not that important.
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I think I am developing parceaphobia.
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Okay BT and Sirs...
After looking back again at my posts mentioning 'Bush lied' since 2006, I still can't find one where I said Bush, himself, personally, lied us into a war with Iraq. I also can't find one where I said specifcally that Bushco did, either...
Though this may be of interest, from August 08. It pretty much covers part of what I think went on, the other part being that someone in the administration was pushing the false information as legitimate intel:
http://debategate.com/new3dhs/3dhs/out-damn-blot/msg71669/#msg71669 (http://debategate.com/new3dhs/3dhs/out-damn-blot/msg71669/#msg71669)
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Damn Bear . That was a hell of a thread.
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Damn Bear . That was a hell of a thread.
I used to have more time, and interest, to chase down details. Nowadays, not so much. But I am patient. Then, six years after we invaded Iraq, details were still coming out. That's why I am not in such a rush over what happened in Libya. The investgators will investigate, the bureaucrats will bluster, but the truth will come out.
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I'll have to see what Ray McGovern is up to these days now that a dem is in office. Wonder if he is protesting the use of drones.
But that thread covered everything from krispy kritters to Uncle Tom to Marxism and the means of production.
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Well at least McGovern is consistent:
http://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2012/10/15/the-real-blame-for-deaths-in-libya/ (http://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2012/10/15/the-real-blame-for-deaths-in-libya/)
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Damn Bear . That was a hell of a thread.
While you 2 continue to focus on Bush & Bushco, as it relates to the specific verbage lied us into war, when you check out some of those old threads, especially in their entirety, IN CONTEXT, the overwhelming theme of so many of H's posts specifically referenced how dishonest Bush & Bushco were supposedly being, supposedly cherry picking only the intel they wanted to use. Bush this supposed dunce, able to rally all these countries, into accepting their version of what Saddam supposedly was, though in some way, Bushco knew it was largely bogus
Too bad the facts don't support much of of it. So, let's get the biggie out of the way 1st....if we're understanding H's public position now, and by all means correct me if I'm "putting words in your mouth", neither Bush nor Bushco (which is apparently Cheney and Bush's advisers) lied us into war. Neither Bush nor Bushco knew Saddam had no WMD, but took us into Iraq with the bogus claim that he did. Correct??
So, what's left is 3-fold
1st, the intel. FACT is the intelligence community of most every nation, had concluded that Saddam did indeed have a WMD stockpile. I believe that even included the UN. Now, many of these nations didn't think it necessary to go into Iraq, but that's a different issue......that'll be addressed in a moment. Point being that MOST folks believed that Saddam still had his WMD stockpiles. Yes, there were SOME sources that claimed uncertainty, some doubt, but THAT would have been cherry picking, as that was significant minority, while the predominance of the intel had claimed the contrary
2nd, the intent. THIS is an area that can be considered controversial, since it can be argued that Bush was far more willing to take military action, than let's say a Senator Kerry or a VP Gore. That's a judgement call, and neither nefarious or dishonest. Following 911, and I support the decision fully, BASED ON THE INTEL, it would have been grossly irresponsible NOT to have gone into Iraq because......
3rd, the connections. This is the area most controversial, since its also based on intel, that could be seen as cherry picked. Iraq indeed had both direct and indirect connections to Islamic terrorist organizations, including Al-Qeada connected folks. this of course is at the heart of many who despise Bush, and claim there were no connections. Our fine friend Ami provided this convenient post (http://debategate.com/new3dhs/3dhs/sotu/msg50379/#msg50379) highlighting the connections in a report. No one is argueing an "operational connection" between the Iraq and Al-Qeada, merely that the connections were there. And following 911, in which Al-Qeada terrorists killed 3000 Americans with box cutters, the thought of what they might do if they could manage to buy/aquire some of Saddam's WMD's, that most rationally minded folks thought he had, was unthinkable
So, one can argue a bad call, even bad judgement, (though not really credible given the intel at the time) but dishonest?? Facts don't support that, no matter how much you might hate Bush......oh sorry, Bushco
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The problem was never Iraq or its tin horn leader. In fact there are hospitals within a 1/2 hour drive from where I am that house deadlier viruses than Iraq ever had. The problem was, and still very much is, Pakistan. Pakistan is more dangerous than North Korea. Pakistan is more dangerous than Iran. And at the time we invaded Iraq Dick Cheney was a greater threat to the United States than Saddam Hussein was.
BTW, I started reading the old thread that Bear put up >>>UNTIL<<< Snowblower interjected racism, Vietnam, and all his other obsessions. What an asshole he was.
BSB
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I tend to agree just how dangerous Pakistan is, and continues to be. More so than NK? That's debatable, though I'd also agree potentially more dangerous than Iran (at the moment). However we'll leave the nonsense about Cheney being more dangerous to the U.S. than Saddam, to the Elvis factor
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If you are so worried about who/what/where the false information came from, you go back and dig through the archives, here and at antiwar.com, and you might, if you take your blinders off, find out. I have wasted enough time digging around and doing your research for you. I've already posted the information I had several times over through the years.
I could really care less anymore, other than to defend myself against your erroneous claims of what you think I said. And to tell the truth, I can see it is a waste of time pointing out even those facts to you. You are so wrapped up in having to be right, you refuse to acknowledge the truth and continue to look for some niggling little point to grasp onto. It's a game I am tired of playing.
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I think Sirs is obsessive compulsive. He has to respond, he has to disagree, he has to post. He has no control over his own mind. Sad.
BSB
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I think Sirs is obsessive compulsive. He has to respond, he has to disagree, he has to post. He has no control over his own mind. Sad.
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I concur with your diagnosis.
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You are so wrapped up in having to be right, you refuse to acknowledge the truth and continue to look for some niggling little point to grasp onto. It's a game I am tired of playing.
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I have the same opinion, sirs does not wish to debate. Only adulation and submission. A typical Big Swinging Dick Syndrome symptom.
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If you are so worried about who/what/where the false information came from, you go back and dig through the archives, here and at antiwar.com, and you might, if you take your blinders off, find out. I have wasted enough time digging around and doing your research for you. I've already posted the information I had several times over through the years.
I could really care less anymore, other than to defend myself against your erroneous claims of what you think I said. And to tell the truth, I can see it is a waste of time pointing out even those facts to you. You are so wrapped up in having to be right, you refuse to acknowledge the truth and continue to look for some niggling little point to grasp onto. It's a game I am tired of playing.
So, I provide a perfect opportunity to "set me straight", with the above noted "for the record..let's make sure we've got this completely cleared up, so I'm not putting words in your mouth" and instead of a "yes" or a "no", here again, you're going off as some victim, when I'm using your own references to Bushco & dishonest, and your insistance that you never specifically said "lied us into war"
You'd make a great politician "answering" without ever actually answering a question, then spin it as if people like myself are putting "words in your mouth". Perhaps if you spent a little more time answering a direct question, vs crying how unfair I'm supposedly being by asking it in the 1st place or concluding a position based on the totality & context of your comments, we might actually be getting somewhere, in this debate.
As far as Xo & BsB "contributions" to the discussion....well, looks like B's been getting lessons from Xo
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Watch him swing dat thing!
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So now it's not what I said that I didn't actually say about Bush...
Or what I said but didn't actually say about Bushco...
But we're back again to I have to specifically answer your question according to your strict parameters?
Black...infinite shades of gray...white. Ring a bell? Is that too difficult a concept for you to grasp?
Let's try it this way...
Scenario 1: Bush and his entire administration knew, from available intelligence, that there were no WMD's. But a source comes along and tells another country's intelligence service that there are, and that country passes this on to the US. Without vetting that source or interviewing him themselves, and based solely on the reports passed along by this other country, Bush and his administration grab this as their excuse to invade and run with it.
Scenario 2: Available American and UN intelligence sources most strongly point to there being no WMD's and indicate Saddam is bluffing. But one group, who might have something to gain if we went to war, insists there are WMD's. This, along with the story passed along by the other country from the same source mentioned in Scenario 1 (who, by the way, later admitted his lies and that he had made up the entire story) is used to push the story that, indeed, Saddam does have WMD's.
Now, in between there are any number of alternates. Did Bush know there were no WMD's, but go along with the WMD lies knowingly? Was he not sure, and just took the advice of someone in his administration who knew there were no WMD's, but pushed the false information for some reason? Was everyone not sure, and duped by the false source? Or was it some combination of the above?
Feel free to draw your own conclusions. I've drawn mine, based on what I've seen so far, but they are fluid, because I don't quite feel the entire story has come out yet. That is why I don't come out and say this and this and this is exactly what happened.
Perhaps now you will begin to understand.
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Since the CIA's inception it has largely been a failed institution. That is its documented history. They have had some successes, the overthrow of the Taliban after 9/11 being one shining example. But their failure concerning WMD in Iraq went on for over a decade. They missed it in the other direction back in the early 90s. Cheney used that failure to pump up the need to invade in 2003. So in fact a CIA failure on estimates of the amount of WMD in Iraq was used to sell the CIA's estimate of WMD in Iraq.
What really happened? Bush and Co. were not to be denied. They were going to invade Iraq come hell or high water. If they had to use an intelligence failure to shore up an intelligence estimate, so be it. Any way they could fool themselves into believing an invasion was necessary, they used it. More then anything else though it was a confluence of human failings from a series of different sources. They all came together in the build up to the invasion, the actual invasion itself, and it's terrifying years long aftermath.
BSB
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Couldn't help but notice in H's 2 ends of black scenarios, with all that gray in the middle, is the continued alternate version that someone(s) are being dishonest (and knew there were no WMD's) <--> someone(s) being opportunistic (and intel said no WMD's). And everything in the middle is all that gray
BIG problem, the predominance of intel SAID there were WMD's, which kinda debunks both ends of the black scenarios.
You see, this is where your house of cards keeps coming down....you've so invested that someone, be it the intel community, Cheney, or .... had concluded there were no WMD. THAT'S FACTUALLY INCORRECT. Yes, if we cherry pick a report here and a report there, one might try and convince themselves that indeed there were no WMD, but the predominant conclusion, across the globe, not just our little 'ol CIA, concluded (wrongly) that Saddam still had his stockpiles.
so let's appropriately add a 3rd black scenario
Scenario 3: Global intel concluded Saddam had WMD. Intel available also connected Saddam with AlQeada, both directly & indirectly. Following the events of 911, in which AlQeada terrorists murdered 3000 Americans on American soil, with the support of his advisors, and a majority of both Congress and the American populace, a judgement call was made to go into Iraq to take down that regime before any of those WMD's found their way into more AlQeada terrorists or their supporters
Now, with that added point, you can produce a triangle outlined in black, and start sifting thru all the gray to come to your own conclusions. I've drawn mine based on facts & common sense, and very little cherry picking
I also appreciate Bsb's fantasy world. Provides a nice bit of entertainment, in between the more mature conversations
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Bsb knows about Earth; sirs limits himself to the bizarro world of Planet sirs.
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Everyone agreed? I think you are mistaken.
During the second presidential debate in 2004, Bush claimed that everyone thought Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction before the invasion.
By Eric Alterman and George Zornick | June 12, 2008
“We all thought there was weapons there,” President George W. Bush explained to a presidential debate moderator in 2004 when asked if the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq undercut the rationale for occupying the country.
The claim that the entire world agreed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq has been asserted countless times by the Bush administration and its supporters since we all learned it was the stuff of fiction. “Everybody agreed,” former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow told Wolf Blitzer in May 2007. “We all thought that the intelligence case was strong,” Condoleezza Rice said in April 2007, adding that even, “the U.N weapons inspectors [thought] Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction…. So there’s no blame here of anyone.” Etc., etc.
The media almost always embrace this excuse, as well. Yet former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan’s revelatory new memoir, together with the quietly released report on intelligence manipulation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, leave no doubt that the Bush administration took the nation into war on false pretenses of mushroom clouds and weapons trailers.
Karl Rove, for example, told Bill O’Reilly on May 29 when talking about McClellan’s book that, “everybody in the West, every major intelligence agency in the world, thought that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.” We hate to be the proverbial skunk at this garden party, but let’s roll back the clock for a moment to see what “everyone” actually said and thought at the time.
Let us begin with America’s own intelligence agencies. Did they agree there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Well, no. The aforementioned Select Committee on Intelligence report, which was signed by all of the committee’s Democrats, along with two Republicans, said that while the administration’s statements on Iraq’s nuclear capabilities were supported by some intelligence, the administration’s statements, “did not convey the substantial disagreements that existed in the intelligence community.”
On the issue of weapons of mass destruction in general, the report found that administration officials exhibited a “higher level of certainty than the intelligence judgments themselves.” The report also found that, “Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community’s uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.”
We know also that the Bush administration encouraged the CIA to go as far as possible in supporting its case. The Washington Post reported in June 2003 that Cheney and his Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, personally visited CIA analysts working on the National Intelligence Estimate of 2002 in order to inspire a re-examination of the case, something that no one could remember happening in any previous administration.
Top administration officials, including President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney, were also aware of some notable people in the intelligence community who disagreed about WMD claims. Tyler Drumheller, the former chief of the CIA’s Europe division, revealed on “60 Minutes” that in the fall of 2002 President Bush, Vice President Cheney, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and others were told by CIA Director George Tenet that Iraq’s foreign minister—who agreed to act as a spy for the United States—had reported that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction program. Two former senior CIA officials later confirmed this account to Salon’s Sidney Blumenthal.
Secretary of State Colin Powell also disagreed at one time—although well before his much-publicized speech to the United Nations in February 2003. Speaking two years earlier in Cairo, Powell had this to say: “He (Saddam Hussein) has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.”
Anthony Zinni, the Marine general who commanded the air assault in the first Gulf War, also had doubts. “Up until Desert Fox, I believed that [Saddam] had WMD,” he told authors Derek Chollet and James Goldgeier. “Then Clinton said we would bomb the WMD sides. I asked the intelligence community for the targets, but they couldn’t give me any. Nothing they gave me was definitively a WMD target. They were all dual-use. That’s when my doubts began.”
Intelligence agencies and top administration officials aside, who else didn’t agree that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? What about politicians? Here are two of the most senior members of the U.S. Senate:
?Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), in September 2002: “nformation from the intelligence community over the past six months does not point to Iraq as an imminent threat to the United States or a major proliferator of weapons of mass destruction.”
?Robert Byrd (D-WV), on the day of the invasion: “The case this administration tries to make to justify its fixation with war is tainted by charges of falsified documents and circumstantial evidence.”
Were these reports really unavailable to everyone? We don’t think so:
?On September 19, 2002, Washington Post reporter Joby Warrick described a report “by independent experts who questioned whether thousands of high-strength aluminum tubes recently sought by Iraq were intended for a secret nuclear weapons program,” as the administration was contending.
?On January 30, 2003, Walter Pincus and Dana Priest reported that the evidence the administration was amassing about Baghdad hiding weapons equipment and documents “is still circumstantial.”
?Despite the Bush administration’s claims about WMDs, another Pincus story, this one three days before the invasion, began: “U.S. intelligence agencies have been unable to give Congress or the Pentagon specific information about the amounts of banned weapons or where they are hidden, according to administration officials and members of Congress,” raising questions “about whether administration officials have exaggerated intelligence.”
?Harper’s publisher John MacArthur was calling bull on Judy Miller’s New York Times reporting on WMDs as early as 2003, writing that “When officials leak a ‘fact’ to Ms. Miller, they then can cite her subsequent stenography in the Times as corroboration of their own propaganda, as though the Times had conducted its own independent investigation.”
?Bob Simon of “60 Minutes”interviewed David Albright, a physicist who was a weapons inspector in Iraq during the 1990s, who said in the interview that the administration was, “selectively picking information to bolster a case that the Iraqi nuclear threat was more imminent than it is.”
Remember, this is just a column, not a book, and we can provide only a tiny sampling of the conscientious reporting that was consistently provided by what was then the Knight-Ridder Washington bureau (McClatchey), along with critical coverage from much of the alternative press, including The Nation, and even in the rabidly pro-war New Republic.
What’s more, these questions were hardly limited to our own media. Remember that Karl Rove insisted “everybody in the West” agreed. But what of these reports?
?The Guardian reported on October 12, 2002 that, “Vladimir Putin yesterday rejected Anglo-American claims that Saddam Hussein already possesses weapons of mass destruction … With a tense Mr. Blair alongside him at his dacha near Moscow, the Russian president took the unusual step of citing this week’s sceptical CIA report on the Iraqi military threat to assert: ‘Fears are one thing, hard facts are another.’”
?The BBC reported on February 11, 2003, that, “France, Germany, and Russia have released an unprecedented joint declaration on the Iraq crisis, demanding more weapons inspectors and more technical assistance for them . . . ‘Nothing today justifies a war,’ Mr Chirac told a joint news conference with Mr Putin. ‘This region really does not need another war.’ He said France did not have ‘undisputed proof’ that Iraq still held weapons of mass destruction.”
Finally, what about the international agencies tasked with actually carrying out inspections in Iraq? These were, after all, the people in the best position to know. What were they saying?
?The International Atomic Energy Agency declared in 1998 that Iraq’s nuclear program had been completely dismantled. The UN Special Commission on Iraq estimated then that at least 95 percent of Iraq’s chemical weapons program had been similarly accounted for and destroyed. Iraq’s potential to develop biological weapons is a much bigger question mark, since such a program is much easier to hide. However, UNSCOM noted in 1998 that virtually all of Iraq’s offensive missiles and other delivery systems had been accounted for and rendered inoperable.
?Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the IAEA, told the U.N. Security Council in late January 2003 that, “We have to date found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapon program since the elimination of the program in the 1990’s.” He also “put the kibosh” on the administration’s charge that Iraq was seeking aluminum tubes for nuclear weapon development. Eleven days before the invasion, he repeated his assertion that there was absolutely no evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program.
?Chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said in 2003 of his inspections leading up to the invasion, “The commission has not at any time during the inspections in Iraq found evidence of the continuation or resumption of programs of weapons of mass destruction or significant quantities of proscribed items, whether from pre-1991 or later.”
?Scott Ritter, who was chief weapons inspector in Iraq in 1991 and 1998, added this, about the world’s intelligence agencies: “[W]e knew that while we couldn’t account for everything that the Iraqis said they had destroyed, we could only account for 90 to 95 percent, we knew that: (a) we had no evidence of a retained capability and, (b) no evidence that Iraq was reconstituting. And furthermore, the C.I.A. knew this. The British intelligence knew this; Israeli intelligence knew this; German intelligence. The whole world knew this.”
So, in short, the claim that “everyone agreed” that the evidence of Iraqi WMD was incontrovertible is simply false. It’s another example of the kind of lazy, gullible reporting in the face of a campaign of deliberate deception that got us into this horrific mess in the first place.
Eric Alterman is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and a Distinguished Professor of English at Brooklyn College, and a professor of journalism at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. His blog, “Altercation,” appears at http://www.mediamatters.org/altercation. (http://www.mediamatters.org/altercation.) His seventh book, Why We’re Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America, was recently published by Viking.
George Zornick is a New York-based writer.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/media/news/2008/06/12/4534/think-again-iraqi-weapons-of-mass-destruction/ (http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/media/news/2008/06/12/4534/think-again-iraqi-weapons-of-mass-destruction/)
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Everyone agreed?
I best stop you right there......no, I did not claim that everyone agreed. The term, if you got confused with is that a predominance did, as in most. I'm sure you'll find a few that didn't agree that Saddam still had is WMD, but MOST did.
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The FACT is that he had no such weapons in any condition that they could harm any Americans, and certainly none in the USA. I said that at the time, and I repeats it again.
Juniorbush wanted a war, as did Cheney and Rumsfeld,and they invented a justification for one based in the shakiest of intelligence. They took advantage of American's rather hopeless sketchy knowledge of geography and culture as well as the sense of outrage over 9-11. Ten minutes after Juniorbush's announcement, there were Kramer, RR, Cristians and sirs all lined up for battle like four Notre Dame Fighting Irish Leprechauns, their fists raised and pugnacious warlike expressions on their visages.
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date=1351806577]
The FACT is that he had no such weapons in any condition that they could harm any Americans, and certainly none in the USA. I said that at the time, and I repeats it again.[/color]
That's a fact only AFTER we disposed of Saddam & his regime, nor was anyone referencing that Saddam was going to attack U.S. soil, so don't even try to pull that BS
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I best stop you right there......no, I did not claim that everyone agreed...
You did on at least one occassion...
...So, what's perfectly reasonable and much easier to lie about, just isn't possible, but trying to perpetuate "bad intel", that was apparently agreed on by everyone else, the French, the Germans, the Russians, the UN, to all diabolically get together and agree with Bush, to pull the wool over the rest of us...
As for the rest....
Putin and Russia rejected the claims of WMD, and France did not have 'undisputed proof' according to Chirac.
The IAEA found no evidence of WMD's.
The UN's chief weapons inspector Hans Blix stated of their search before the invasion that "The commission has not at any time during the inspections in Iraq found evidence of the continuation or resumption of programs of weapons of mass destruction or significant quantities of proscribed items, whether from pre-1991 or later.”
Scott Ritter, who was chief weapons inspector in Iraq in 1991 and 1998, added this, about the world’s intelligence agencies: “[W]e knew that while we couldn’t account for everything that the Iraqis said they had destroyed, we could only account for 90 to 95 percent, we knew that: (a) we had no evidence of a retained capability and, (b) no evidence that Iraq was reconstituting. And furthermore, the C.I.A. knew this. The British intelligence knew this; Israeli intelligence knew this; German intelligence. The whole world knew this.”
So you see, not even nearly everyone agreed.
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As I clarified, everyone meant a predominance, in which I've repeated numerous times, and yes, most folks believed it, since most every intel agency had concluded that. Not referring to a particular person, I'd be referring to most intelligence agencies across the globe. And last I checked, Saddam was still getting arms from Russia, while France also believed Saddam had WMD, just didn't feel justified in doing anything about it, outside of ongoing sanctions
So, yea, nearly everyone who didn't have a beef against Bush or a financial incentive with Saddam did
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Tell you what...
You believe what you want.
I'll believe what I want.
As far as I am concerned, the topic is closed.
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Sounds fair enough....as it relates to the facts and illogic in claiming Bushco as some dishonest nefairous entity. See, the point to most of this for me, is to highlight how illogical, borderline irrational it is, to claim some nefarious, dishonest ploy by "Bushco" in taking us into Iraq, with all the facts and common sense to the contrary. Now there's PLENTY to criticize as to the judgement of going into Iraq, whether he didn't allow enough time for non-military means to work, or how he handled the initial post-Saddam logistics of Iraq, when the mission was accomplished in taking him out. There's a plentiful amount of meat to dig in there. It's just .....sad to see such efforts employed to try and make something out of something that's not really there
Now, we can shift back to Benghazi gate, and the apparent double standard you've employed there :o
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That's a fact only AFTER we disposed of Saddam & his regime, nor was anyone referencing that Saddam was going to attack U.S. soil, so don't even try to pull that BS
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Saddam had no way of using any WMD's against any Americans, before or after his downfall. And Condi Rice was talking about a "smoking gun becoming a mushroom cloud"or some such rot.
There was no reason to invade Iraq in defense of the US. Bush LIED US INTO A WAR, and that is that.
The BS is all yours. You have no right to tell me what I can or cannot write.
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There was no reason to invade Iraq in defense of the US. Bush LIED US INTO A WAR, and that is that.
H was smart enough to back away from such an ignorant invalid accusation, even defending the notion he ever said such. But not xo, no-sir-ree. And he makes that pile of BS even bigger with the again asinine effort to make this about some notion of preventing Saddam attacking the U.S.
Priceless
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H was smart enough to back away from such an ignorant invalid accusation...
What was there to back away from? Your false claim that I had made such an accusation?
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Asked and answered already......As far as your effort to hang on the specific phrasing of how you didn't claim" lied us into war", but then present ongoing criticisms of how dishonest & dastardly Bush was, and Bushco was, that all that grey apparently hides....kinda defeats the effort in trying to make this about a single phrase, doncha think? but hey, if it makes you feel better, Sirs was wrong in saying that H specifically said Bush lied us into war. What he has said is pretty much analogous, but specifically, he never apparently said such
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H was smart enough to back away from such an ignorant invalid accusation...
What was there to back away from? Your false claim that I had made such an accusation?
lol
Isn't this where i came in the first time
Something about how does one back away from a position one never had.
But apparently that has been asked and answered to at least one parties satisfaction.
And i don't want Planes parse-a-phobia to worsen.