Email Copies Prove Obama Lied about Libya

[Gerry Clinchy]

Heavily redacted and censored emails do not establish fact, Gerry. I doubt that most of us here have an understanding of how messages though the intelligence community are rececieved, evaluated, intertpreted, and passed along the chain of command. Making assumptions based on facebook or twitter interpretations may be presumptious. The record of intelligence evaluation by the State Dept., CIA, NSA has actually been pretty good. Yes, there have been failures, most notably 9/11/2001. To politicize these is a mistake. The people who work in the shadows, work hard to protect us, and continue to do so, and have so far...JD

JDogger, I do not disagree with you that we, average people, have no clue about the chain of command for this kind of information. Does it not scare you a little, though, that four civilians were being overrun with heavy weaponry, and nobody is able to give the order to help them? (As far as I know the 2 SEALS were "former SEALS").

Help was, it is reported, about an hour away ... one of those aircraft carriers that Obama talked about Monday night was in the vicinity as well. Yet, due to chain of command the civilians were left to die? Why isn't there an "automatic" back-up plan for such a situation? Are the military and State Dept. really that stupid or incompetent to not have a plan to protect the civilian personnel?

Of course, I'm still wondering why, if Stevens felt there was a security risk, why he was there with so little protection. Why wasn't he ordered to stay out of Dodge? Or was there some urgent reason for him to be there?

Speculation is that these emails were leaked by someone in the administration who does not want to be thrown under the bus if Obama loses the election. With the way the election tide is flowing right now, that may be a real fear for some in the administration who may be involved. I find it hard to believe that Wiley Willie is going to let Hillary take the big fall for this mess.

Makes me also wonder if Romney's people got a sniff of this before the Monday debate. Would that explain why he didn't make Benghazi a big issue on Monday? Did they just lay back knowing that the spit would hit the fan in a day or two, and that it wasn't necessary for Romney to spike the football?

[smillerdvm]

This is considered doing a good job? U.S. security officer twice asked his State Department superiors for more security agents for the American mission in Benghazi months before an attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, but he got no response.The officer, Eric Nordstrom, who was based in Tripoli until about two months before the September attack, said a State Department official, Charlene Lamb, wanted to keep the number of U.S. security personnel in Benghazi "artificially low," according to a memo summarizing his comments to a congressional committee that was obtained by Reuters.

Your outrage is palpable here Cyndi, and you seem to know all of the facts

I can only imagine how outraged you were by the ignored intelligence By Pres Bush prior to the 9/11/2001 terrorist attacks that killed 1000's of innocent people right here on our native soil

[gmhr1]

If you don't know the facts by now you must be a democrat. Its your right to believe whatever you want. D Schultz said today Romney never mentioned Israel in the last debate. The fact is he mentioned it 14 times but I'm sure there are some of you who will believe her. You hear what you want.
The big difference in Bush and obama, Bush didn't lie and cover up he told the truth right from the start. Thats all obama had to do just tell the truth. He will be on Leno tonight lets see if his story has changed.
Libya was planned it had nothing at all to do with a protest or a video. They asked for security time and time again, it was denied. The WH watched this attack in real time and didn't send help. These are the facts from the hearing. Someone dropped the ball somebody needs to go and if Obama is involved in this cover up he needs to hit the road as well. Now be a true Obama supporter and go give your garbage man a big hug!

[JDogger]

Gerry, I'm no expert on International Law and treaties, but the rules governing Embassy's and Consulate's areI believe governed by different International agreements. You have the ability to look it it up, if you care to. My understanding is that both Embassy's and Consulates are in the host country as they are invited. Security is the responsibility of the host country.
Consider...If the Israeli Embassy in Washington were being attacked by AQ? Would we welcome Israeli security forces to come in and assume control on our soveriegn ground? Much the same constrains us as to our ability to land marines in defense of our missions overseas.
Even though the ability to interveve in Bengazi might have existed, the constraints might have prohibited us from landing troops on soil where no war was declared.

I don't believe Bengazi was a simplistic event. It most likely had elements of both a protest and an attack with an outcome that was undesirable. Diplomatic Corps, like troops, know that they put themselves at risk on a daily basis.
From the middle-east to Africa I saw demonstrations, some violent as I grew up in the diplomatic community.
I find the efforts to politcize the events in Bengazi naive...JD

[gmhr1]

CIA operatives twice asked for permission to help Ambassador Chris Stevens and his staff, and twice were told to 'stand down' — while a later request for military backup was denied

http://www.foxnews.com/

[Buzz]

Gerry, I'm no expert on International Law and treaties, but the rules governing Embassy's and Consulate's areI believe governed by different International agreements. You have the ability to look it it up, if you care to. My understanding is that both Embassy's and Consulates are in the host country as they are invited. Security is the responsibility of the host country.
Consider...If the Israeli Embassy in Washington were being attacked by AQ? Would we welcome Israeli security forces to come in and assume control on our soveriegn ground? Much the same constrains us as to our ability to land marines in defense of our missions overseas.
Even though the ability to interveve in Bengazi might have existed, the constraints might have prohibited us from landing troops on soil where no war was declared.

I don't believe Bengazi was a simplistic event. It most likely had elements of both a protest and an attack with an outcome that was undesirable. Diplomatic Corps, like troops, know that they put themselves at risk on a daily basis.
From the middle-east to Africa I saw demonstrations, some violent as I grew up in the diplomatic community.
I find the efforts to politcize the events in Bengazi naive...JD

I would use another term besides naive...

And at the time this attack took place, there were demonstrations over that POS internet movie breaking out all across the Muslim world. Seems those "naive" folks trying to politicize the Benghazi attack are conveniently forgetting that when they attack the administration and intelligence folks for connecting the two. Like I said, naive isn't the right word.

[Gerry Clinchy]

I would use another term besides naive...

And at the time this attack took place, there were demonstrations over that POS internet movie breaking out all across the Muslim world. Seems those "naive" folks trying to politicize the Benghazi attack are conveniently forgetting that when they attack the administration and intelligence folks for connecting the two. Like I said, naive isn't the right word.

Ultimately, I believe that the other embassy attacks fed off the Cairo embassy attack ... back then they were saying that it was all about the video, but it is also realistic to believe that it was simply jumping on the bandwagon of assaulting western embassies and asserting the A-Q influence.

In view of the story that has unfolded around the Benghazi event, I think that it demonstrates a level of incompetence that we should not tolerate in handling such a situation. Not to mention the dishonesty in dealing with the families of the victims. At this point I think it is kind of naive to think that the video was really an important factor ... if it was, it might have been so because of the original statement made by the US embassy in Cairo that blamed this video nobody had even heard of before. Gave everyone an excuse?

SEAL Woods' father's first words were that this was not about politics for him ... it was about who let his son die. It sounds like Mr. Woods is not going to let go of this either.

Maybe Julie is right ... maybe Joe is just a drinker; or maybe I was right & he is in early stages of Alzheimers. Then they sent Joe to campaign in Wisconsin. Maybe they figured Wisconsin was either totally lost, or would come through for the D ticket anyhow in spite of what the polls were indicating.