Posted on 10/19/2012 10:32:59 AM PDT by Red Steel
Barack Obama insisted in the presidential debate on Tuesday night that he had called the Benghazi attack an “act of terror” in his Rose Garden address the next day. Fact-checkers called shenanigans on that claim, but McClatchy notes that Obama did call it an “act of terror” the next day at campaign stops in Colorado and Nevada on September 13th. On the same day, the State Department refused to link the Benghazi attack to the YouTube video that media outlets like the New York Times and AFP had. Hillary Clinton called it a terrorist attack that evening.
However, the next day, things began to change, as McClatchy’s Hannah Allam and Jonathan S. Landay report in their in-depth look at how the narrative shifted toward the YouTube video instead of an al-Qaeda attack:
With images of besieged U.S. missions in the Middle East still leading the evening news, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney became the first official to back away from the earlier declaration that the Benghazi assault was a “complex attack” by extremists. Instead, Carney told reporters, authorities “have no information to suggest that it was a preplanned attack.” He added that there was no reason to think that the Benghazi attack wasn’t related to the video, given that the clip had sparked protests in many Muslim cities.
“The unrest that we’ve seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that Muslims, many Muslims, find offensive,” Carney said.
When pressed by reporters who pointed out evidence that the violence in Benghazi was preplanned, Carney said that “news reports” had speculated about the motive. He noted again that “the unrest around the region has been in response to this video.”
Carney then launched into remarks that read like talking points in defense of the U.S. decision to intervene in last year’s uprising against Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi: that post-Gadhafi Libya, he said, is “one of the more pro-American countries in the region,” that it’s led by a new government “that has just come out of a revolution,” and that the lack of security capabilities there “is not necessarily reflective of anything except for the remarkable transformation that’s been going on in the region.”
By that Sunday, Sept. 16, the evolution of the narrative was complete when Rice, the U.N. ambassador, showed up on all five major morning talk shows to make the most direct public connection yet between the Benghazi assault and the incendiary video.
While she couched her remarks in caveats – “based on the information we have at present,” for example – Rice clearly intended to make the link before a large American audience.
Why did the story change? State had watched the attack unfold in real time at Foggy Bottom through its security video system, a fact that got revealed at the House Oversight Committee hearings. That’s why State insisted that they had never considered this a “spontaneous demonstration” that “spun out of control,” as Rice insisted on five Sunday talk shows and as Carney tried to claim two days earlier. Similarly, the intel community has leaked on more than one occasion that while the data they had was conflicting, they didn’t conclude it was a demonstration that got out of hand — and several days later, that should have been even more clear.
Allam and Landy hit the nail on the head in their connection of this to Obama’s intervention to decapitate the Qaddafi regime. The rise of radical Islamist terrorist groups in eastern Libya, including al-Qaeda, comes as a direct result of that intervention. The central government in Tripoli has no control now over the Benghazi region. Furthermore, everyone knew before the intervention that AQ and other radicals operated in the eastern part of the country, and a regime decapitation would set those elements free.
The cover story was designed to mislead the American public so that they would not connect those dots. That intervention in Libya, coming with no effort at all to control the outcome on the ground, has made us much less safe, especially in that part of the world.
By the way, as a measure of how little control Tripoli now has over AQ’s new stomping grounds in the east, the New York Times reports that the prime “suspect” in the Benghazi terrorist attack doesn’t even plan to go into hiding. In fact, he’s doing media sessions:
Witnesses and the authorities have called Ahmed Abu Khattala one of the ringleaders of the Sept. 11 attack on the American diplomatic mission here. But just days after President Obama reasserted his vow to bring those responsible to justice, Mr. Abu Khattala spent two leisurely hours on Thursday evening at a crowded luxury hotel, sipping a strawberry frappe on a patio and scoffing at the threats coming from the American and Libyan governments.
Libya’s fledgling national army is a “national chicken,” Mr. Abu Khattala said, using an Arabic rhyme. Asked who should take responsibility for apprehending the mission’s attackers, he smirked at the idea that the weak Libyan government could possibly do it. And he accused the leaders of the United States of “playing with the emotions of the American people” and “using the consulate attack just to gather votes for their elections.”
Mr. Abu Khattala’s defiance — no authority has even questioned him about the attack, he said, and he has no plans to go into hiding — offered insight into the shadowy landscape of the self-formed militias that have come to constitute the only source of social order in Libya since the fall of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.
A few, like the militia group Ansar al-Shariah that is linked to Mr. Abu Khattala and that officials in Washington and Tripoli agree was behind the attack, have embraced an extremist ideology hostile to the West and nursed ambitions to extend it over Libya. But also troubling to the United States is the evident tolerance shown by other militias allied with the government, which have so far declined to take any action against suspects in the Benghazi attack.
There has been some talk that the guy who made the video may have made it for some Islamic players. If so, you’re theory involving the U. N. could be sound.
I read a lot of information, and I watch a lot of news shows, sometimes in the background. One news report yesterday supplied a bit of information in a report, that talked about rebels getting literally thousands of shoulder fired weapons. I believe they were talking about munitions to take down aircraft. I may be wrong about that.
What these rebels are getting, is going to be causing havoc for the next half century.
From what I have read the film maker is actually a Muslim, not an Israeli Jew, as he told AP on September 12th, 2012, or an Egyptian Coptic Christian, as was also reported, as well as an FBI informant. I have save the links. Obama jumped on that video as if it was manna from heaven.
I read a lot of information, and I watch a lot of news shows, sometimes in the background. One news report yesterday supplied a bit of information in a report, that talked about rebels getting literally thousands of shoulder fired weapons. I believe they were talking about munitions to take down aircraft. I may be wrong about that.
It came out in Issa's hearing that 10-20 thousand, IIRC surface to air missiles than can take down airliners are missing somewhere in Libya. One of the witnesses testified to that in Issa's hearing, and I think that hearing can still be viewed from C-SPAN.
What these rebels are getting, is going to be causing havoc for the next half century.
This is the ugliest and heart of what Obama's administration does not want the light of truth to get fixated upon. WE the US have armed AlQaeda to the teeth with the apparent expectation they will take down Assad in Syria. But Obama's drones keep taking out AlQaeda leadership in other Muslim nations. Obama cannot serve two masters and we are going to continue to pay a price.
Yes, I do remember that. It was what Stevens was working on I believe. Thanks for the reminder. I thought the guy had mentioned 20,000 units, but that sounded so high I backed off a little. 20,000! Imagine that. Just how many aircraft did Khaddafy have in his air force anyway? Doesn’t this sound truly screwed up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Nu6VZ9DeVc&feature=youtube_gdata_player
At 1:18 Obama refers to the movie by saying the US respects all faiths, that we reject any attempt to denigrate, , but it’s no excuse for this senseless violence.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/18/special-report-investigates-death-and-deceit-in-benghazi/
The “missing” weapons are Russian-made MANPADS that were obtained when the insurgency broke into Qadaffi’s arsenals.
I agree with your comments as well. Thanks for the response. I appreciate it.
Thanks for the info, I got the impression from Isaa's hearing we were the source.
Well, considering we helped bring down the Khaddafi regime, leaving a power vacuum in the country and having absolutely no plan to secure his vast arsenals a various weaponry, we *were* this source.
Remember, the Left tried to make a similar issue for GWB in Iraq: How many of Saddam's weapons fell into terrorist hands because Bush failed to secure them, etc.? Crickets from the MSM on this issue, however. Just as there will be when the first commercial airliner is brought down by one of these missing MANPADS. Crickets....
Yes I remember how much our liberals loved old Saddam. For the life of me I cannot understand why they hate the rest of the ME dictators.
They are delusional if they think they have the ability or the money to make peace in the ME. All I see ahead is the potential for decades of a non-stop blood bath.
Why would we, US, have supplied surface-to-air missiles to anyone? To oust Quaddafi (sic?) or any despot, why would surface-to-air missiles, much less 10-20 thousand be needed?
Wouldn't auto and semi-automatic weapons and the like be all that was necessary? Why surface-to-air missiles - isn't that supplying overkill? Massive overkill...
If only I had read the thread first, I wouldn't be asking the same kind of thing!
In fact, if I had read just ONE MORE POST, I wouldn't have asked the same kind of question!!!
Arghhhhh.....
Ditto, ditto, ditto to both of you.
Ditto, ditto, ditto to you, too.
Have you seen obama do anything yet that is not massive overkill against US?
Thank you.
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