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anomalocaris 27-Nov-12, 20:50	White House blasts Republicans White House blasts Republican ‘obsession’ with Rice and Benghazi . .By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News White House Correspondent .Posts .By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 8 hrs ago....Email0Share0 Arizona Sen. John McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee—flanked by fellow committee …The White House sharply escalated its attacks Tuesday on Republicans trying to stop Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice from succeeding Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state. Press secretary Jay Carney described GOP lawmakers as being gripped by a politically fueled "obsession" with a series of television appearances Rice made shortly after the deadly Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in which she wrongly suggested the attack had stemmed from a demonstration over an anti-Muslim video rather than a terrorist assault. Carney's comments came after Rice met privately on Capitol Hill with Republican senators who have said they intend to block her nomination if President Barack Obama chooses her to replace Clinton as the nation's top diplomat. Rice also acknowledged for the first time, in a written statement issued by her office, that her initial public comments on the Benghazi assault were wrong because there had been no protest outside the compound. Carney said the U.S. still does not know who carried out the assault, which claimed the lives of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. But he said GOP focus on Rice's early statements was a politically motivated distraction from efforts to identify those responsible for the killings. "The questions that remain to be answered have to do with what happened in Benghazi, who was responsible for the deaths of four Americans, including our ambassador, and what steps we need to take to ensure that something like that doesn't happen again." Carney said. In appearance after appearance, Rice said that American intelligence had pinned the blame on the assault on extremists who took advantage of a demonstration outside the facility. Tuesday, Rice acknowledged the information initially provided by the intelligence community was wrong. "Neither I nor anyone else in the administration intended to mislead the American people at any stage in this process, and the administration updated Congress and the American people as our assessments evolved," Rice said. Rice, accompanied by Acting CIA Director Michael Morell, met with Republican Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, who have accused Rice (and the Obama administration in general) of misleading the public by tying the assault to the video. Republicans have suggested the administration hoped to blunt the potential political impact of the attack—the first to claim the life of an American ambassador in 30 years—shortly before the presidential election. "Bottom line: I'm more disturbed now than I was before," Graham told reporters after the meeting. "We are significantly troubled by many of the answers that we got and some that we didn't get," McCain said. Carney shot back, saying there were "no unanswered questions" about Rice's early televised statements. "The focus on—some might say obsession on—comments made on Sunday shows seems to me and to many to be misplaced," Carney said. "I know that Sunday shows have vaunted status in Washington, but they have almost nothing to do—in fact zero to do—with what happened in Benghazi." And neither, to hear Carney tell it, did Rice. "Ambassador Rice has no responsibility for collecting, analyzing and providing intelligence, nor does she have responsibility as the United States ambassador to the United Nations for diplomatic security around the globe," he said. So why, then, did the White House anoint Rice the administration point person to answer questions about a possible intelligence failure and consular security? Why not Secretary of State Clinton? Director of National Intelligence James Clapper? Defense Secretary Leon Panetta? National Security Adviser Tom Donilon? "She is a principal on the president's foreign policy team," Carney said. He added, "To this day it is the assessment of this administration and of our intelligence community … that they acted at least in part in response to what they saw happening in Cairo and took advantage of that situation." In other words, according to one well-placed source, the perpetrators of the attack may have concluded that anger at the video gave them the maximum opportunity to get sympathy or support across the Muslim world, and might even inspire copycat attacks. Rice's much-dissected Sept. 16 comments broadly follow those lines. Obama has fiercely defended Rice, while carefully declining to say whether he has chosen her to succeed Clinton. Another leading contender is the Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, John Kerry. McCain and Graham have pledged to try to filibuster her confirmation, but they are well short of the votes needed to do so. ...
anomalocaris 27-Nov-12, 20:51	So... She isnt responsible, they dont know who is responsible, no one is responsible. How dare the republicans ask questions.
softaire 27-Nov-12, 21:01	It is not important to ask why the Embassy and staff had their protection pulled just the month before the attacks, even after they had pleaded for security to be beefed up. It is not important to ask why something wasn't done to assist the staff during the attack, even though the government did watch it happening live via drones. It is not important to ask why the administration is still not telling the truth about what caused the attack, who did the attack, who lied to who and when or why BO made that embarrassment of a speech to the U.N. lying to the world that it was all caused by a video. It is only important to ask why the Republicans would ask such stupid questions.
changeling 28-Nov-12, 05:33	It is looking very much like the US intelligence community cannot do their job properly, or at least are giving misinformation. No different than when they said Hussein had WMD (never found any huh!). That one caused a very bloody war. Why is the intent now to crucify the woman who gave out what she had been told?
dmaestro 28-Nov-12, 05:55	The reason is an open secret. The GOP openly admits they want revenge for blocking confirmation of the right wing neocon John Bolton years ago, forcing bush to bypass congress. It has nothing to do with questions. Polka show that while people agree the Benghazi incident was not handled well they reject the right wing conspiracy theories. Rice is just a convenient target having nothing to do with intelligence.
softaire 28-Nov-12, 06:37	change It is much more serious than simply crucifying a woman for saying what she had been told to say. First of all, she has a post that is much higher than being a "Yes" man. That "Yes" man position belongs to the Press Secretary. Rice is supposed to actually know something and be able to make good judgement calls. But, she lowered herself to being a "Yes" man. Secondly, the government works for us and they are supposed to tell the truth, and the whole truth to the people. They are not supposed to tell us that Al Caeda is "dead" and "decimated" when, in fact, they are attacking our embassies and killing our ambassadors. Thirdly, there is a serious questions of WHY was security pulled when they knew there was trouble brewing? And, WHY was help told to "Stand Down" rather than assist our embassy staff? And, WHY did BO present that cockamamie story about a video. BO presented himself to the world at the U.N. as a liar with that story. Now the entire U.S. government looks to be completely inept and corruptly covering-up for the White House.
changeling 28-Nov-12, 07:07	softy You are once again insisting on rumour and conjecture being fact! But then again you quite happily went along with rumour and conjecture once before during the Bush era viz-a-viz WMD, as a Bush fan. Where is the difference?
softaire 28-Nov-12, 09:52	change Seriously... please explain where I am insisting rumor & conjecture are fact. I am completely missing your point here. What rumors and conjectures am I saying are fact? Are you saying that Rice didn't go out and tell the world multiple times what she was told to say? Are you saying that the government didn't tell the world that Al Caeda was almost dead and decimated? Are you saying that BO didn't go to the U.N. and say it was a video that caused the attack? Sorry... honestly don't understand your point.
dmaestro 28-Nov-12, 10:40	What she said was based on the briefing points she was given. Just because the central command was decimated did not mean affiliates were not active. The video was causing violence in multiple countries. Condemnation of the video was critical to our diplomacy. What we have is Obama haters hearing what they want to hear. I consider the source.
thumper 28-Nov-12, 11:38	Yes, we know that 'condemning' an obscure video that none had seen, thereby creating/giving it an audience (after the fact) is part and parcel of the web of deceptions this 'administration' is weaving. We already know this. Creating a brier patch of tangled intrigues seems to be SOP for the lib. You guys do this about most everything, every subject. You seem to think that, "They won't be able to untangle this before it's 'too late' ". As Alfonzo Rachel likes to say, "RAWNG".
dmaestro 28-Nov-12, 12:16	There were riots going on before Obama said anything about the video. Try harder to be accurate. The people behind the video including pastor jones were sentenced to death in absentia. Freedom of speech is suffering as a result of the video. Not that you care on iota.
thumper 28-Nov-12, 13:00	"Freedom of speech is suffering as a result of the video." Who is making it suffer?... Hmmm? Is that one of the reasons the video was set up as a prop? Controlling the 1st? We know the left love to try to 'shut-up' any who disagree but that isn't the 'why' though is it? That's just a means.
dmaestro 28-Nov-12, 13:23	You should pay more attention. Western values of free speech are under attack internationally. Most people do not have our history. When they see these vile videos in Muslim countries they assume the government can do something about them. Inaction by the USA is seen as agreement. Radical recruiters love to use them and restrictive regimes use them as a pretext. The UN proposed to define films of this type as an exception to free speech. The USA faces a complex diplomatic effort to calm outrage while protecting free speech in general. It was essential to condemn this video in the strongest terms immediately once violence over the video began. But instead of appreciating this nuanced diplomatic issue, you on the right want to undermine sound diplomacy by pretending Obama made up the video issue. Disgusting.
anomalocaris 28-Nov-12, 19:05	DM The video issue was made up. You find it disgusting that we criticize the president but perfectly fine that dead Americans will receive no justice. That is the definition of disgusting.
changeling 28-Nov-12, 19:10	stinky What video?
dmaestro 28-Nov-12, 20:47	It is hardly worth wasting time with you. You are wrong as usual. The video issue was not made up. After it was uploaded on youtube with arabic captions, it was popularized by a Salafist named Khaled Abdel Allah, who showed a clip of the “Innocence of Muslims” video on an Islamic satellite TV channel, and it is believed it was his show that first brought attention to the video in Egypt and incited the attack on the American Embassy in Cairo. www.huffingtonpost.com. This attack occurred before the attack on the Benghazi Embassy. Witnesses who observed the attack on Bengahzi and the statement of responsibility attributed to the Al Qaida affiliated Salafist Militia show the attackers did say the attack was a response to the video (although we can surmise the news of the events in Egypt probably gave them a pretext for an attack already planned). The shadow elements behind the attack were part of the Milita but remain unclearly identified, www.cnn.com Vigorous condemnation of the video to prevent other embassy attacks were a perfectly appropriate response. It is evident that Rice did use the talking points she was given, and she was clear that what she said was not final but preliminary. She was not responsible for intelligence. This conspiracy theory is simply a partisan attack and those who believe there was a conspiracy are as you would expect primarily Republicans and Fox News viewers, since that is the propaganda Fox is pushing hard. That is why the right wing claims there was a coverup are not believed by most Americans, but rant on with the mindless vitriol to your heart's content, stinky: =====(CNN) - Americans are giving the White House low marks for how it's handled the terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, according to a new national survey. But according to a CNN/ORC International poll released Tuesday, a majority of the public doesn't believe the Obama administration intentionally tried to mislead Americans on the September attack that left the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans dead. On Libya, 54% of the country is dissatisfied with the administration's response to the Benghazi attack, with only four in ten saying they're satisfied with the way the White House handled the matter. "But that dissatisfaction is not because Americans see a cover-up," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Only 40% believe that the inaccurate statements that administration officials initially made about the Benghazi attack were an attempt to deliberately mislead the public. Fifty-four percent think those inaccurate statements reflected what the White House believed to be true at the time." Nearly half of those questioned (48%) say that the U.S. could have prevented the attack on its consulate in Benghazi, with 42% saying the U.S. could not have prevented the attack. ======================================
anomalocaris 28-Nov-12, 21:05	DM Polls are good in some instances. So they lied, everyone knows they lied but now the defense is that it was not intentional? Only people who want to blindly support Obama would take a lie and then twist it to make it sound unintentional. DM regardless of what you think of me Im not an idiot. Im not even a right wing nut job as you like to say. I notice you attack things (people) personally instead of discussing. I guess its a defense mechanism?? I understand mistakes can be made, intel can get mixed up. If I am a witness to a bank robbery and I say a guy had had on a red shirt instead of green then perhaps you can call it a mistake. If the bank is robbed by a lone white guy and I say there were 30 black guys using skunks then you might say Im lying. This is the equivalent of what the white house did. It was a completely, and purposely a lie. I have no idea why but it was.
anomalocaris 28-Nov-12, 21:13	Also DM I am rarely wrong. The main reason being, Im not emotionally attached to the situation. The white house lied this is a fact. You cited a poll that says a lot of people think the lie was unintentional. I say....well whatever.
dmaestro 28-Nov-12, 21:15	Change... This issue is simply personal and political, don't be fooled by these right wingers and their propaganda. McCain lost to Obama and despises him. McCain hates Rice because she attacked him during the 2008 campaign. They GOP also would prefer John Kerry for Secretary of State in part because Republicans could try and win that race. And they are looking for revenge against Obama for winning. In this vendetta, they are simply looking for people doing their job to be attacked for minor errors. The campaign of hate and misinformation, and pure political opportunism from the right is palpable, so I always consider the source. These are the same people who revealed classified information about CIA operations in Libya a mile from the consulate to score political points; they are despicable, vicious and vile people looking for targets of hate, not seekers after preventing the next attack: ===================================== News Analysis Big Issues Are Lost in Focus on Libya Talking Points Published: November 28, 2012 WASHINGTON — Three days after the lethal attack on the American Mission in Benghazi, Libya, Representative C. A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, asked intelligence agencies to write up some unclassified talking points on the episode. Reporters were besieging him and other legislators for comment, and he did not want to misstate facts or disclose classified information. More than 10 weeks later, the four pallid sentences that intelligence analysts cautiously delivered are the unlikely center of a quintessential Washington drama, in which a genuine tragedy has been fed into the meat grinder of election-year politics. In the process, the most important questions about Benghazi, where Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed on Sept. 11, have largely gotten lost: Were requests for greater security for diplomats in Libya ignored? Even if Al Qaeda’s core in Pakistan has been decimated, what threat is posed by its affiliates and imitators in other countries where they have taken refuge? How can crucial diplomacy be conducted amid the dangerous chaos that has followed the toppling of dictators across the Arab world? Instead, it is the parsing of the talking points — who wrote them, altered them, recited them on television or tried to explain them — that could decide the fate of a leading candidate for secretary of state, Susan E. Rice, currently the United Nations ambassador. On Wednesday, for the second time in two weeks, Ms. Rice received a hearty endorsement from President Obama in the face of a continuing battering on Capitol Hill. “Susan Rice is extraordinary,” he said in response to a reporter’s question as he met at the White House with his cabinet for the first time since the election. “Couldn’t be prouder of the job that she’s done.” Now the talking points could also affect the chances of a top candidate for C.I.A. director, Michael Morell, the agency’s acting director, who on Tuesday accompanied Ms. Rice to a briefing for some of her most vocal Senate critics and misspoke about changes in the original draft of the talking points. Intelligence officials said Wednesday that Mr. Morell’s flub, which prompted a sharply worded statement from three Republican senators, was an insignificant mix-up: He said the F.B.I. had taken out a specific reference to Al Qaeda, when in fact that change was made by the C.I.A. The F.B.I. had added another phrase to the same sentence. “This was an honest mistake, and it was corrected as soon as it was realized,” one official said. “There is nothing more to this.” But such earnest attempts to lower the political temperature have so far failed. As so often in Washington, the clashes over Benghazi have a semi-hidden personal element that adds to the emotion. Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who led the initial lambasting of Ms. Rice, had been subjected to withering criticism by her in 2008 when he was running for president. And senators considering Ms. Rice’s future are quite aware that her main rival for the job of secretary of state is their colleague Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts. For now, the focus of Congress and the news media is mostly on language. For weeks after the Benghazi attack, Republicans accused Mr. Obama and his aides of avoiding labeling it “terrorism” for fear of tarnishing his national security record in the weeks before the Nov. 6 election. Since his re-election, that issue has faded, and the debate has shifted to the talking points. The facts about the talking points, like those about the Benghazi attack itself, have dribbled out slowly and awkwardly from intelligence officials who generally do not relish airing their internal deliberations. But there is now a fairly clear account. The C.I.A. and other intelligence agencies rarely prepare unclassified talking points; more often, policy makers submit proposed public comments, and intelligence analysts check them for classified information or errors of fact. But in the storm of news media coverage after the killings in Benghazi, C.I.A. officials responded quickly to Mr. Ruppersberger’s request on Sept. 14. C.I.A. analysts drafted four sentences describing “demonstrations” in Benghazi that were “spontaneously inspired” by protests in Cairo against a crude video lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. (Later assessments concluded there were no demonstrations.) The initial version of the talking points identified the suspected attackers — a local militant group called Ansar al-Shariah, with possible links to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, an offshoot of the terrorist network in North Africa. Ms. Rice has been skewered by Republican senators for her comments on Sunday television news programs on Sept. 16, which they have suggested were part of an administration cover-up of the terrorist nature of the attack and links to Al Qaeda. The criticism has barely been affected by the revelation that she accurately recited the talking points the intelligence agencies prepared. On Wednesday, as she and Mr. Morell continued their meetings on Capitol Hill, an evident preamble to her possible nomination as secretary of state, Republican senators were not mollified. “I continue to be troubled by the fact that the United Nations ambassador decided to play what was essentially a political role at the height of a contentious presidential election campaign,” Senator Susan Collins of Maine told a throng of reporters waiting for her after her hourlong meeting with Ms. Rice and Mr. Morell. Ms. Collins said she “would need to have additional information” before she could support Ms. Rice for secretary of state. Ms. Rice and Mr. Morell also met at length with Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, who said that he too was deeply troubled by what he has learned. “The whole issue of Benghazi has been, to me, a tawdry affair,” he said. Though he did not mention Ms. Rice by name, he seemed to question whether she would be an appropriate choice for a position as vital as secretary of state. Mr. Morell — thrust into the acting directorship of the C.I.A. on Nov. 9 when David H. Petraeus stepped down in a sex scandal — might himself soon be asking for the senators’ support. He is among a handful of top candidates to lead the agency, and it is uncertain whether the flap over his misstatement about the Benghazi talking points will be held against him. Thomas Fingar, a former intelligence official and veteran of highly politicized disputes over Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and Iran’s nuclear program, said that such Congressional scrutiny could be disconcerting for an analyst unaccustomed to the political fray. “Michael is a very, very capable guy,” said Mr. Fingar, now at Stanford University. “But until you’ve sat at the table to undergo the grilling in this kind of atmosphere, it’s hard to imagine what it’s like. I might forget my own birthday".
anomalocaris 28-Nov-12, 21:19	Change Believe what you want, I dont care. Its not that immaculate for me. If DM has to go back to 2008 to set this plot up he should not call anyone crazy. Geez
anomalocaris 28-Nov-12, 21:20	By the way DM Hows the family? You gonna have a good Christmas?
dmaestro 28-Nov-12, 21:29	"Only 40% believe that the inaccurate statements that administration officials initially made about the Benghazi attack were an attempt to deliberately mislead the public. Fifty-four percent think those inaccurate statements reflected what the White House believed to be true at the time." Stinky, you are so addicted to right wing propaganda you read the above and call belief that the talking points were an inaccurate statement not intended to mislead the public rather than a partisan effort to deceive support for your belief that there was a lie? Sorry, that is NOT a lie. A lie would be deliberate when there is no logical reason to withhold information for anything but for example partisan reasons and there is a deliberately false presentation. An error is when you believe the information you present is accurate with an caveat that more may be learned. You are part of the 40% group. You fail to admit or grasp the consequences of the video and the danger it posed to US interests if not challenged. Did you call Bush a liar when he claimed there was WMD? I didn't think so.... Case closed.
anomalocaris 28-Nov-12, 21:34	Dm Have a good Christmas
dmaestro 28-Nov-12, 21:49	Stinky... I will have a great Christmas, obviously sans conventional religion. Fortunately I am far way from right wing siblings and they have no clue, the last thing I need is distant conservative fundamentalist siblings worried about my salvation.   Hope you have a good Holiday season, and all is well and better next year. I think it will all work out in the end, and somewhere in the middle, regardless of what we say here at the political margins.

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