Nancy Pelosi-> "Benghazi, Benghazi , Benghazi, Why Aren’t We Talking About Something Else?"

originally posted by: sheepslayer247

I am sure she is waiting to be president do prosecute the guilty ones.

I couldn't care less what Hillary is doing or saying on the topic...or any other topic for that matter. She's not my cup-o-tea, let's leave it at that.

It's a fact that people died in Benghazi and the people in charge royally screwed-up, but are we honestly going to believe for a second that anyone is going to be held accountable?

This is just another event that will be used as campaign fodder until after the election.....and never heard about again. If someone is held to account, it will be a low-level flunkie that probably was just doing as he was told.

So I find the entire discussion rather pointless. But that's just my opinion.

yeah, no one will be held accountable if the issue is DROPPED!

it won't be. the heat is on...

originally posted by: tsingtao

geee, you forgot to say, "what difference does it make?!"

right?

day late a dollar short guys.
plenty of marines in Jamaica and england, right? but benghazi? yeah, use some local yokels for security.

you are full of it gryphon, you are walking back all your positions and late to the party.

How typical. You snipe vaguely and ambiguously from the sidelines, offer nothing but quips and snide innuendo.

Specifically do you have any back-up for "you are full of it gryphon, you are walking back all your positions and late to the party."?

If not,why not just admit that you're taking up discussion space to add nothing of substance.

There are reasonable questions that get steamrolled in the rush to crucify:

1. Where are we in finding the bastards that actually did this to our people? What are we doing? Do we have enough assets devoted to this effort? If not, why not?

2. What changes have been made to the protocols at State to do everything we can to make sure that this doesn't happen again?

3. Have we done everything we can to address security concerns at our other diplomatic sites around the world and if not, why not?

As Wrabbit has pointed out above and before, there were abysmal failures on the security preparations for the facility. These are 1) inexcusable and 2) must be learned from and prevented in the future.

BUT ...

The wailing and gnashing of teeth over the damned video? Susan Rice's talking points three days after it happened? The damned Rhodes memo which tells us exactly what we knew a year-and-a-half ago? The silly name calling directed at Pelosi, Clinton and the President? That's mere political rancor that's being ginned up by the Republican party via Issa's committee and the RW Media. Obviously, it's quite effective.

Not even in one of these threads do I see even 1% of this rage directed at the people who actually did the crime.

Not even a tenth of the time spent investigating this by Congress has seemingly been spent on making productive recommendations or providing greater security.

When I say this is politically motivated, that is the basis of my comment.

When I say this aids and abets our enemies, well, if we're going to tear ourselves apart like this ... what's to prevent them from continuing to attempt these relatively small-scale assaults on us?

The dividends it pays relative to the risks involved for them are astounding, the resources we've flushed down the rabbit hole (sorry Wrabbit) just on Issa's Committee alone are enormous. And what have we learned?

The Obama Administration prepped Susan Rice to appear on the Sunday morning news shows. They gave her talking points.

That's valuable intel right there boy. Worth every penny. Hoo-wee!

/eyerolls like slot machine

a reply to: Gryphon66

I'm mad that this happened. i'm mad that they fed susan rice talking points(lies), i'm mad that they coached her. i'm mad that we're being lied to about what caused this horrible thing to happen, i'm mad that they're lying to us about almost every aspect of the event. and i'm SERIOUSLY mad that Pelosi would be so tactless, and without class, as to brush the entire thing off as a "distraction"...

i'm not a republican, and i don't watch cable news...i'm a citizen, and i have every right to be mad that my "representative government" is choosing to disrespect me, by lying to me. Pelosi has demonstrated on NUMEROUS occasions, that she is incompetent, completely out of touch with reality, and a complete idiot.

you already know where i come from, and what i'm about....

a reply to: xuenchen


Ms. Pelosi would be well advised to simply Get a Clue.
The American People want the Truth, and Answers. The only polititians using distraction and subterfuge are left-wing liberals and Democrats that desperately want to "change the subject", as more and more truth comes out, and the reality that the American People were purposefully mislead and lied to by the White House and the devious political machine in the Obama Administration. The Benghazi story will not be going away anytime soon.

a reply to: Daedalus

... and I don't blame you for an instant Daedalus for your anger.

Yes, I do know where you come from and you know where I come from; we managed to establish that which is why we can talk to each other like adults.

I don't like Pelosi. I don't like Clinton. I don't even like President Obama.

Pelosi seems kinda dull-witted to me. Clinton is a corporatist shark. Obama ... well ... off topic here.

BUT

I have read the text of the President's speech the day after the attacks. He referred to Benghazi as an act of terror. He did. He didn't draw it out, circle it in red, or blow trumpets about it, but he said it. The Administration also either misunderstood or willfully misunderstood the effect of the f-ing video (and no one can say it didn't have a ridiculous effect across the Middle East at the time) and maybe they did lie about the cause or maybe the CIA or some other set of spooks asked that cover be given a bit longer for on-going operations ... or maybe a little of column a a little of column b.

EDIT: Prepping for TV is a fact of political life in the US, D. We're never going to be free of that again. No one of any party is ever going to stop playing politics. What happened with Rice is no different than has happened anytime any Administration official has gone on the Sunday shows for the last 30 years or so. It's political fact. Not right, but fact.

There WAS a security failure at the compound. There is no doubt of that. Both Congressional Committees agree. Let's fix it and move on. If someone was criminally negligent, let's charge them, try them and move on. If there was no negligence but just bad judgement or bad luck ... let's learn a very EXPENSIVE F-ING LESSON and move on.

Let's take the money that Issa nee McCarthy is spending on his dog-and-pony show and put it toward the FBI investigation.

Let's do ANYTHING except continue to present an American face to the world that says we're tearing ourselves apart, that they don't even have to attack us anymore, we're damned well going to burn this b*ch down around OURSELVES.

Best, D.

I'm sure she'd love for us to talk about how she sets up government contracts to profit her husband's business interests and exempts her own holdings and the holdings of her own supporters from minimum wage laws.

originally posted by: NavyDoc
I'm sure she'd love for us to talk about how she sets up government contracts to profit her husband's business interests and exempts her own holdings and the holdings of her own supporters from minimum wage laws.

Doc, I know we have a gentleman's agreement not to interact with each other, but I had to say that this is 1) a great example of a totally REASONABLE criticism of a politician and 2) the kinds of questions that we should be asking as an informed public. Follow the money, who benefits, etc.

Starred.

a reply to: Gryphon66

You are absolutely correct, it's not about dead Americans, these people couldn't care less that Americans died, but whether or not they can paint this administration badly with it.

If these people could get away with it they would have probably attacked the embassy themselves, killed the Americans inside, decapitated the Ambassador and then been on here the next damn day asking "Why didn't you do more to stop us from doing this horrible act!"

It's a crap scandal, and it's actually an election loser. Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity might be brainwashing (or paying) these people to post on ATS every single day how horrible this is, but people who can think for themselves can see through it.

a reply to: Gryphon66

I tend to agree with you in so far as saying the cover-up after the event isn't the main issue and should never be made the main issue. In fact, it's the fact that people in authority refuse to separate the two things that makes it likely we'll never know the truth about what DOES matter.

Personally..I think we have 3 distinct phases of this, with 3 distinct sets of likely facts and circumstances.

#1. How that compound came to be leased in the place it was, under the terms it was. No modifications, being of of those lease terms. What dumb idiot agreed to that? It eliminated the possibility of serious reinforcement of the physical structure and perimeter. We won't get into the 10's of thousands paid for that little square of land in a battle zone. (sigh) The months leading up to it and how it all came to go so badly..is the first distinct thing and the MOST important, in my view.

#2. The day and night of the attack. WHAT happened and what the hell were those people after that they risked everything to get it?? I don't care at this phase, who in Washington knew what. I care about what this was really ABOUT. When we have that answer, I think we'll understand everything else about this too.

#3. Perhaps the LEAST important, given what we're looking at for circumstances...the Cover-up and lies through officials of the Administration and the President himself at the UN lectern, in his own words.

I say #3 is the least important, not to diminish the meaning. After all, it wasn't the burglary that took Nixon down. It was the cover-up. I say it for how IMPORTANT the other two factors are.

Whatever led to this sloppy set up of our men, by deliberate action or negligence, was done by levels of management far below Hillary Clinton and who ARE STILL THERE to do this again someday. That needs an end put to it. ..and what happened that night being critical for insuring whatever bad deal (if that was the case) lay at the center of this? It NOT happen again. EVER.

For all we know, Obama could have been sandbagged himself by over-eager intelligence officers running an off-the-books deal that went spectacularly wrong. I'm not married to blaming Barack Obama for this beyond the "buck stops here" theory which always carries.

We need the answers though. We need them as a people, as a nation and as Americans to be taken seriously in the world again. We didn't just blow off the murder and destruction of our Dipo compound and Ambassador...we failed to even live up to the fact major mistakes were made that caused it to happen.

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

Just an observation: it was not a 3rd rate burglary at the Watergate hotel that brought down a presidency, but the subsequent cover up. What would things be like if we had a Woodward and Bernstein today?

originally posted by: AngryCymraeg
Can I ask why we all weren't outraged when embassies and consulates were attacked during Bush's presidency? Oh wait, the Republicans didn't see that as a major talking point. Never mind!

As I recall, there WAS outrage each time a U.S. facility was attacked when Bush was President (10 or 12 attacks maybe ?).

And as I recall, there WERE no cover-ups and Lies either.

This Obama/Clinton Benghazi cover-up takes the blue ribbon prize.

In fact, I remember the MSM was hot on the Bush trail with all of them, and the MSM had many articles on Bush's attacks in an attempt to cover-up the Obama/Clinton cover-up after 9/11/2012.

And there's been 5 or 6 attacks under Obama. But the Benghazi attack is the only one that has Lies and Cover-ups involved I think.

The Lies & Cover-ups are the issue.

a reply to: HauntWok

If these people could get away with it they would have probably attacked the embassy themselves, killed the Americans inside, decapitated the Ambassador and then been on here the next damn day asking "Why didn't you do more to stop us from doing this horrible act!" 

If you are being serious, I might ask what the color of the sky is in your world.
Wow.

Okay, let's all take a deep breath and have an adult discussion, and see where we can get to at least among ourselves.

I have some questions, and if you don't want to interact productively then don't. Carry on your conversation around this one. Anyone's opinion on my intellect, patriotism, communism, is off-topic. Deal?

Okay, first question.

1) Some of you clearly see a cover-up on the part of the Obama Administration. Is the beginning and end of the cover-up the statements that were made regarding the attack being the result of riots/anger in Benghazi over the video "Innocence of Muslims" as opposed to being a coordinated military-style attack conducted by terrorists (which have turned out to be Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi and Ansar al-Sharia in Darnah)?

Thanks for your response.

a reply to: Gryphon66

I think the cover-up begins that night, and about the time Stevens body was confirmed missing out of the Consulate safe room area to..who knew where at that point? The document dump of paperwork and photos from Issa's committee have little to no problem covering all the good, bad and ugly right up to that day. Plenty of all three too. No covering it up and no trying to, that I've seen. The docs and pics are still, as of a couple weeks ago when I last linked them, sitting on a House of Reps public server. No coverup there.


They didn't and couldn't have even known if the Ambassador was dead at that point. I think that's when the Washington "Oh..My..God"... machine went into full steam ahead mode and began scrambling to fix, contain and cover any of several possible endings to what was still on going. (Imagine Al Qaeda having a living U.S. Ambassador to extract information from..on video..I'll bet some of them were, in Washington that night).

From there? We can assume one of two things for how badly things were distorted and miscommunicated. Either the initial things done in half way good intent just piled on to create a self feeding momentum that couldn't just be turned around after a certain point ...Or... There is a deep dark nasty at the middle of this for why the attack came and why it went precisely how it did, which was a bit odd that night in a few ways.

a reply to: xuenchen
I know the left love to make fun of Sarah Palin, but Nancy Pelosi makes Palin look like a Mensa candidate. Really, this old bag should just go away.

a reply to: Gryphon66

Okay, first question.

1) Some of you clearly see a cover-up on the part of the Obama Administration. Is the beginning and end of the cover-up the statements that were made regarding the attack being the result of riots/anger in Benghazi over the video "Innocence of Muslims" as opposed to being a coordinated military-style attack conducted by terrorists (which have turned out to be Ansar al-Sharia in Benghazi and Ansar al-Sharia in Darnah)?

Well Obama repeatedly said Al-Quida was "dead" and "decimated".

Then Al-Quida is implicated in the Benghazi attacks.

Then The Administration has a major election coming in a few weeks.

And the protests were on-going about the "video".

Obviously, the "video" was the selected scapegoat.

Obama/Clinton thought nobody would figure out the scam.

Even the U.S. Senate says it was Al-Quida.

(from a Jan 16, 2014 story)...

A Senate report on the Benghazi attack that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans bolsters Obama administration critics who suspected from the start that al-Qaeda was involved and that it was not a spontaneous protest that went out of control.

The report, released Wednesday by the committee's Democratic majority, said individuals affiliated with groups such as al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula were in on the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. compound.

Senate says no doubt al-Qaeda in on Benghazi

The video was one part of the cover-up.

The *real* cover-up subject is the arms deal gone sour IMO.

a reply to: Wrabbit2000

The whole thing reeks of spooky involvement. The anomalies with the rental on the villa, the security detail (and lack of), the positioning of the CIA ... the fact that the only forces that *were* available were CIA ... not to mention that almost a year-and-a-half later the FBI has basically jack-squat and the CIA says "Waaa, we don't know /shrug."

But the coverup on the part of the administration ... you're referring to it as well as if it's obvious. Is the coverup only the relatively short period of time the "official" line was that cause was rioters rather than terrorists?

What am I missing on the cover-up? Perhaps the Adminstration were overly cautious ... perhaps there were other (spooky) reasons. How does a declaration of the source or rationale of the attackers intent make such a difference in the outcome?

a reply to: Gryphon66

it was probably a pissing-match between different, groups, ie NSA/CIA/White House/Egyptian/Syrian/
as too who actually controlled, which groups of assets on the ground.
The result was the message.
Who did NOT look weak and feeble minded, during this operation?

Why are we still talking about this?