Posted on 05/06/2014 5:49:30 AM PDT by Kaslin
"Dude, this was, like, two years ago." Thus spake former National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor on Thursday after Fox News Channel anchorman Bret Baier asked him whether he had been involved in changing talking points to prepare then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice for Sunday talk shows in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi, Libya, attacks that left four Americans dead. Vietor explained that he should not be expected to remember something as "mundane" as "the process of editing talking points."
It would be easier to believe Vietor if the Obama White House had not withheld 41 State Department documents on the White House response to the attack when it handed over more than 25,000 pages of documents to Congress. It took a subpoena by the gadfly watchdog group Judicial Watch to win release of those documents. One particularly damning memo, written Sept. 16, 2012, by White House adviser Ben Rhodes, suggested that Rice "underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy." At the time, intelligence officials knew that a video hadn't sparked the attack.
White House spokesman Jay Carney claimed last week that the administration wasn't stonewalling; it didn't have to hand over the Rhodes memo, he told reporters, because it was about "protests around the Muslim world," not Benghazi.
Poor House Speaker John Boehner. Judicial Watch's new trophy left him with little choice but to announce a new select committee on Benghazi, ostensibly to answer this question: "What else about Benghazi is the Obama administration still hiding from the American people?"
I don't think the new committee will unearth much more than what the public already should infer: The administration unsuccessfully tried to shift the blame from al-Qaida-inspired terrorists to an American-made video. In a different time, with a different party, that gambit could have had consequences. After Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar hinted that Basque terrorists were behind the 2004 Madrid train bombing, which left more than 190 dead, his party tanked in the next election.
No wonder Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., called the hearing a waste of time on "Fox News Sunday" and suggested that Democrats boycott the select committee.
Personally, I am not keen on more hearings. By Politico's count, more than 13 congressional hearings have been held on Benghazi. By my count, they've yielded too many hours of long-winded, self-serving rhetorical questions and very few answers.
Most famously, the Benghazi hearings produced Hillary Clinton's infamous answer that concluded with a rhetorical question: "With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest, or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they'd go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?"
That May 2013 exchange said it all: Neither Barack Obama nor his secretary of state particularly cared to find out what happened to Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. They just want the whole story to go away. It was two years ago, dude.
....The 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans might never have happened if the U.S. government hadn’t facilitated a flow of $500 million worth of weapons into the hands of al-Qaeda-linked rebels during Libya’s 2011 revolution, according to interim findings released this week by the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi.
“The deeper you get, the dirtier it gets,” said retired Navy Adm. Chuck Kubic, who appeared with commission members late Tuesday for a press conference at the National Press Club
“NEVER FORGET BENGHAZI” bumper stickers need be available to anyone who wants to buy them. Where do I sign up for mine?
Former Spokesman for the NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL my ass. The ONLY reason he is out there now is he's a "former" and can lie his ass off without being held criminally libel as a government employee making PUBLIC statements of fact (or non fact as in his case may be).
The only “former” that dude could possibly be is kindergartener.
“NEVER FORGET BENGHAZI” bumper stickers need be available to anyone who wants to buy them. Where do I sign up for mine?
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Agree!
Ping me if you find a good source.
So, this twit can’t remember “dude” cause it was like 2 years ago or something. Tell that to Scooter Libby. We KNOW who the guy was (richard armitage) and Scooter still got hung out to dry for simply not remembering something. What a load.
Just zero protecting his buddies in the brotherhood. Move on, nothing to see here!
BTW, I wanted to defend Aznar - immediately after the bombings, it did look as if ETA was involved. A car had been stopped just a day or so before because the Guardia Civil had noticed that the rear end was practically dragging on the ground and they wanted to know what was in the trunk. It turned out to be pressure cooker bombs, the same kind used in the train bombings a few days later, and the drivers were ETA members. In addition, there was a dynamite theft (later shown to be some of the explosives used in the train bombing) in Asturias that was found to be coordinated through a criminal who dealt with ETA.
I still think ETA was involved, working hand in hand with the Islamic terrorists - don’t forget, they all did their explosives training together with the PLO, other ME terrorist groups and the IRA - but because ETA is leftwing and very popular with certain sectors in Spain, every effort was immediately made to divert attention from them. It was obviously the Islamists who did it and whose inspiration it was, but they certainly had help, particularly logistical help, from ETA.
The investigation was confused and Spain’s many agencies stepped all over each other with differing accounts. I believe it was the discovery of an abandoned car (belonging to one of the bombers) with a copy of the Koran and some bomb-building material in it that finally led them to the AQ cell. I think, IIRC, that it was found simply because a number of parking tickets had been left on it and the traffic cops planned to tow it to impound it.
As for the elections (held just a few days later), the theme of the left was that Aznar was responsible for the bombing because of his support for the Iraq war and the war on terror and the Muslims would never have done it had he not annoyed them. So ETA was never even mentioned. The left had violent anti-Aznar, anti-Iraq demonstrations, attacking the headquarters of Aznar’s party and then harassing voters throughout Spain and preventing them from getting to the polls in the more conservative areas. None of this was ever punished or even mentioned again by Zapatero.
And Aznar, like Bush, was way too gentlemanly in his response to the attacks.
I would like five minutes with Barry’s two legged colostomy bag. Make it three. It only takes 7lbs of pressure to snap a human neck.
God will forgive them maybe. I would like to arrange the meeting.
This “dude” thing makes anyone who hears it want to slap that punk silly. The more exposure “dude” gets, the more people will want to know what it’s about and maybe the uninformed will get informed, and then be angry.
Liberals never underestimate the power of catchy phrases and “cool” slogans. I hope conservatives will use their strategy and that the “dude” meme goes viral.
If I were in charge of the hearings the first thing I would do is to publically interview the 30 odd people who were injured in Benghazi.
That’s right there was more than just four dead.
The reason for interviewing them? After their initial evacuation to Germany for medical treatment they were then flown back to the CONUS and placed in various hospitals under different names. That’s right folks they became different people somewhere over the Atlantic. Why?
IMHO, none of these eye witnesses to what was happening on the ground in Benghazi the night of September 11, 2012 have never been interviewed! If I am correct why not?
Question really is, WHY was this “dude” in the Situation Room, and the Current Occupant now squatting in the White Hut was most definitely NOT?
Most probable answer - Current Occupant was upstairs packing for a fund-raising trip to Las Vegas the following day, and of course that took priority over anything that was happening half-way around the world in some dusty little town that until that evening, maybe three-fourths of the population of that territory once known as “the United States of America” had never heard of.
And the “dude” had wandered into the room thinking it was some kind of game arcade on X-Box.
He was likely not even qualified to be the Press Van Driver as he was in 2008, let alone a spokesman for the NSC that would allow him access to those places. It is just more of the Obama White House mystique in my opinion and wholly indicative of the incompetence that abounds therein.
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