No evidence has surfaced to indicate the administration is guilty of anything other than looking flat-footed.
Benghazi: The Real Libya Story Is No Story
By Michael Hirsh, National Journal
Updated: October 24, 2012 | 5:20 p.m.
October 24, 2012 | 4:35 p.m.
It was, from the start, about as hard an intelligence problem as you can find. The date was Sept. 11, and the CIA was stretched thin, monitoring anti-American protests in no fewer than 54 countries that day, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Post-Qaddafi Libya itself was still chaotic, caught up in the fog of war, and indeed Ambassador Chris Stevens, at great personal risk, had journeyed to his old Arab Spring-era stomping ground in Benghazi to assess the situation himself. Still, Clapper recently told an annual conference of intelligence professionals that there was no warning to Stevens or anyone else that he was about to be targeted by an organized extremist attack.
So in the ensuing days, the fog lifted only very gradually. The intelligence community did not see a clear way to explain the deaths of Stevens and three other Americans. And as the probe advanced they began shifting their assessment dramatically. Four days after the attacks, on Sept. 15, intel briefers sent U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice off to tape the Sunday talk shows with talking points that suggested Stevens’s death was the result of “spontaneous” protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo against a short film made in California lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. And that’s what Rice said on CBS’s Face the Nation “based on the best information we have to date,” as she put it. Rice added, however, that “soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that—in that effort with heavy weapons.”
“It was clear from the outset that a group of people gathered that evening. A key question early on was whether extremists took over a crowd or if the guys who showed up were all militants,” said an intelligence official involved in the Benghazi assessment. “It took time—until that next week—to sort through varied and sometimes conflicting accounts to understand the group’s overall composition.”
By the following week, however, the DNI came to believe that there had been no protest at all. “That was genuine fog of war issue,” the intelligence official said. “Press reports at the time indicated there had been. It took about a week or so to iron that out.” On Sept. 28, Shawn Turner, spokesman for Clapper’s office, said in a statement that as U.S. intelligence learned more about the attack, “we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists.”
(More here.)
By Michael Hirsh, National Journal
Updated: October 24, 2012 | 5:20 p.m.
October 24, 2012 | 4:35 p.m.
It was, from the start, about as hard an intelligence problem as you can find. The date was Sept. 11, and the CIA was stretched thin, monitoring anti-American protests in no fewer than 54 countries that day, according to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. Post-Qaddafi Libya itself was still chaotic, caught up in the fog of war, and indeed Ambassador Chris Stevens, at great personal risk, had journeyed to his old Arab Spring-era stomping ground in Benghazi to assess the situation himself. Still, Clapper recently told an annual conference of intelligence professionals that there was no warning to Stevens or anyone else that he was about to be targeted by an organized extremist attack.
So in the ensuing days, the fog lifted only very gradually. The intelligence community did not see a clear way to explain the deaths of Stevens and three other Americans. And as the probe advanced they began shifting their assessment dramatically. Four days after the attacks, on Sept. 15, intel briefers sent U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice off to tape the Sunday talk shows with talking points that suggested Stevens’s death was the result of “spontaneous” protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo against a short film made in California lampooning the Prophet Muhammad. And that’s what Rice said on CBS’s Face the Nation “based on the best information we have to date,” as she put it. Rice added, however, that “soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that—in that effort with heavy weapons.”
“It was clear from the outset that a group of people gathered that evening. A key question early on was whether extremists took over a crowd or if the guys who showed up were all militants,” said an intelligence official involved in the Benghazi assessment. “It took time—until that next week—to sort through varied and sometimes conflicting accounts to understand the group’s overall composition.”
By the following week, however, the DNI came to believe that there had been no protest at all. “That was genuine fog of war issue,” the intelligence official said. “Press reports at the time indicated there had been. It took about a week or so to iron that out.” On Sept. 28, Shawn Turner, spokesman for Clapper’s office, said in a statement that as U.S. intelligence learned more about the attack, “we revised our initial assessment to reflect new information indicating that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack carried out by extremists.”
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Love it!! Obama gets credit when things go well, and blame elsewhere when they don't. A true mark of an adolescent if there ever was one!!
The same intelligence community that got bin Laden and had Obama and Biden spiking the football over and over and over and over and over and spiking the football one last time at the DNC in August, is the same intelligence community that was 'stretched too thin' to see the threat in Benghazi?
Exactly what was our reason to depose Ghadaffi? What direct national security interest was at stake?
The only reason for us deposing Ghadaffi was due to the street protests. Obama is a street protestor and he identifies with people who riot in the streets. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria. All street protests and Obama sides with the street protestor ignoring completely the fallout and what it would mean to the stability of the region and how it would impact our foreign policy.
Obama is just a child, nothing more nothing less. He takes credit for bin Laden and lays blame for Benghazi. Any parent worth a damn recognizes this exact behaviour in their own children and does not continue to foster that behaviour, but stops it in its tracks. Obama was never taught that important lesson in his life and so our foreign policy is conducted with the same adolescent philosophy in support of street protestors.
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