Here's Jim Treacher on Benghazi:
And of course, Obama did what any president would do: He blamed the murder of an American ambassador by terrorists on a dumb YouTube video, and told the world that freedom of speech is fine as long as you don’t offend a Muslim. (Coincidentally, the maker of that dumb YouTube video is now in jail. Even more coincidentally, his court date isn’t until after the election.)This evening on Fox News, Mara Liasson said that Mitt Romney missed an opportunity to press Obama's clear-as-mud explanations on the death of four Americans in Libya. But Charles Krauthammer said the real fault lies with the media which is uninterested in doing its job when there's a Democrat in the White House.
I can understand why Obama thought he could get away with this. He’s never been held accountable for his actions in his entire life, so why would anybody start hassling him now?
Extra - Ace of Spades: "Just because Ansar Al-Shariah claimed responsibility for the attack, and in fact were later connected to the attack, doesn't mean you should think they were connected to the attack."
More - Blackfive: "The consequences of Benghazi."
8 comments:
People died, Obama lied, the press complied
...Mitt's campaign was on the slide, his instaspeech was undignified, rightwing flacks tried and tried, but Drudge Report aside, the Republicans' kick went wide.
President Obama on "60 Minutes," September 12, already deep into the totally logical cover-up just 14 hours after the attack:
"You're right that this is not a situation that was exactly the same as what happened in Egypt, and my suspicion is that there are folks involved in this who were looking to target Americans from the start."
Hey, I know where Obama was on Sept. 12th: huddled with the Joint Chiefs and the DNI, briefing Congressional leaders, and preparing for a press conference to explain to the American people why four Americans were dead.
Or at a fundraiser in Vegas. Whatevs.
http://vikingpundit.blogspot.com/2005/09/sometimes-its-hurricane-just-got-back.html
Somebody:
"I’m seeing the same kind of useless recrimination all over the Internet. For every post on Daily Kos blaming Bush, there’s a mirror post on Free Republic castigating Clinton. GOP Bloggers is pointing fingers at Democratic governor Blanco and mayor Nagin; the Democratic Underground is criticizing, um, Bush. Oh and Condi Rice went to see “Spamalot.”
Scrappleface caught the spirit with this faux story: “Fears increased today among hundreds of thousands of refugees from the hurricane-ravaged gulf coast as they faced a Labor Day weekend with little hope of an eloquent speech from President George Bush.” Yes, President Bush gave a flat and uninspiring laundry-list speech. But everything doesn’t have to be done for maximum political impact. Sometimes the government should simply take actions to alleviate the suffering of people. By the same coin, sometimes it’s the hurricane to blame.
We can go through endless cycles of “what-if”s here. The levees were designed to protect against a category 3 hurricane? Shoulda been cat 4-5-6! But there’s plenty of time for that later. Right now the focus should be on the relief effort. And for God’s sake, can we please hold off on the polls? They’re about as useful as Kayne West’s rambling vitriol, helpful to exactly nobody.
In the 2004 Presidential campaign, there was a too-brief moment when both sides put down the swords and stood together as Americans. It was after the Osama bin Laden tape surfaced and both Bush and Kerry announced that the United States would stand firm in the face of terrorism. We need that moment back again."
http://vikingpundit.blogspot.com/2005/09/proximate-cause-writing-in-chicago.html
Same somebody:
"The blame game feeds into moral vanity and political gamesmanship that helps nobody."
Kudos for the deep cut. But are you really going to compare a President's response to a natural disaster to a planned terrorist attack on 9/11?
Also, is there any topic that doesn't reach back four years to Dubya?
The firefight in Benghazi lasted for seven hours during which time Ambassador Stevens must have been thinking: "The cavalry will come." But Obama convinced himself it was just a protest because he was highly invested in the idea that Al Qaeda was "on his heels" (a phrase that has since disappeared from his stump speech.)
When the evidence mounted that it was a coordinated attack, Susan Rice was dispatched to five Sunday shows to say, no, it was a movie review. Obama repeated as much at the United Nations and he and Clinton recorded that stupid "apology" video. But now we're told we don't have enough information and, gosh, let's wait until the investigation is done.
Above all, we can't blame Obama. These decision are made elsewhere and he can't know everything. If the media gave Obama one-tenth the criticism they gave Bush for Katrina, he'd be back in Chicago by now.
During that 6-7 hour firefight, Obama didn't lift a finger. He didn't dispatch the Marine security team in Spain, he didn't ring up the 173 Airborne Brigade in Italy to get a platoon of paratroopers down there. He didn't tell the Navy to pull some Marines off a ship in the Med and helo them into Benghazi pronto. He didn't ask the Air Force or Navy to get some fighter cover or even an armed drone on site. I bet a single Hellfire well placed Hellfire missile would have broken up the attack.
Nope. He went to a fundraiser.
Why would anyone vote for a guy who has just proven beyond a doubt that he is incapable and/or unwilling to do the job?
2005: The blame game feeds into moral vanity and political gamesmanship that helps nobody.
2012: I can understand why Obama thought he could get away with this. He’s never been held accountable for his actions in his entire life
2005: I’m seeing the same kind of useless recrimination all over the Internet... Oh and Condi Rice went to see “Spamalot.”
2012: Or at a fundraiser in Vegas. Whatevs.
2005: Or you can flop back into that reductio ad absurdum beanbag of “Bush lied, people died”
2012: People died, Obama lied, the press complied
2005: We can go through endless cycles of “what-if”s here... But there’s plenty of time for that later. Right now the focus should be on the relief effort.
2012: But now we're told we don't have enough information and, gosh, let's wait until the investigation is done.
We should save the recriminations until after the relief eff...oh, they're dead.
Yeah, thank God no one died in New Orleans because of a president's slowness to act. And there was far less advance notice for Katrina than for the Benghazi attack, so those delays were forgivable and political gamesmanship was bad, back then.
Your hope is blah, but on change you get an A++.
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