Politics & Current Events
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Let's talk Benghazi
I haven't followed this story as closely as I would have liked. I was just reading some artcles, trying to formulate an opinion, and I'm having a hard time deciding what I ultimately think. It sounds like the intelligence was either spotty or wrong, and there are complicated factors surrounding security budgeting and decision-making.
Give me your best cliff notes and what you think happened, what should have happened, and any political implications.
Warning
No formatter is installed for the format bbhtml
Re: Let's talk Benghazi
What I do know is the white house purposely "blamed" the attack on the internet video and said it was a spontaneous thing. Obama, Rice, Clinton, and others are on the record multiple times, talk shows, interviews, etc. claiming this. I think up until two weeks after. Then they confirmed it was a preplanned terrorist attack.
So where I'm at is why did they do this? Did they really request security and were turned down, so the white house wanted to cover up their mistake? Or did they truly not know what was going on after the fact? And since it was on September 11th, why did it take them so long to come to the obvious conclusion? I want to know why they went out of their way to talk about this video for so long. The whole response and how it unfolded over the weeks was just bizarre to me.
But the initial comments about the protests being spurred by the video seem legit because the CIA station chief sent word to Washington that violence came out of a protest against the video. With so many other similar videos, and even withiutm why would Washington disagree?
As of Sept 16, intelligence was still circulating a talking points that said it was a response to the video. The intelligence officials say that the reason for the talking points were so politicians would have something to say - which sounds like it wasn't firm intelligence, just the best they had.
Now on the 18 the pres started saying the video wasn't the cause but rather an excuse or cover. So something starts to shift at this point.
But even today, ABC News is reporting that intelligence officials still don't have evidence that it was preplanned.
So, to me this isn't sounding like a cover up, it's sounds like lack of information as well as presence of misinformation. What am I missing?
I disagree with you. First, I second the things CoffeeBeen said. Second, the president actually came out and had very strong words against the people who did this, and then has continued to say that they will be found and justice will be done. When you say all he did was apologize for it, you don't really believe that do you?
He most certainly made it known that it was "not acceptable," as you put it. What is it you want? War? I'm confused. Do you think the intelligence community is sitting on it's hands about this? The perpetrators are being hunted down with everything we've got. How can you think otherwise?
I found the response nonchalant and it was not based on truth. We differ in opinion.
I think the administration was disingenuous blaming it on the video and sending Susan Rice out to do all the shows when they hadn't gotten all the information. I also did not like Obama and Clinton's strong statements against the video; it made it seem like they were saying "oh, we know why you were upset, we abhor this video." They were more p.o.ed about the video than about the deaths, it seemed through the early public statements.
This incident undermined the perception that Obama wanted the American people to have----that Al Qaeda was only a remnant and that he had kept Americans safe.
Based on the fact that this was a 9/11 anniversary, the first failure was that we didn't increase security. The attack then takes place. At that point, the administration realizes the failure and has to do/say something to the American people. The video was an easy way out and, let's face it, as there are such extremists out there, we bought it...for close to two weeks. Sure, questions began to surface but we continued to buy the story and the people in play continued to sell it. However, keep in mind that (within 24 hours of the event killing 4 Americans including an ambassador) the CIA station chief in Libya reports to Washington that this was not an angry mob but militants. The state department continued to receive such reports. Yet, we continue to blame a video for two weeks. As for why, let's face it...for BO to fail in providing security to such an unstable location on the anniversary of 9/11 would've been a huge oversight. That said, do you think they were going to admit that? A month before an election? Just after a debate in which the POTUS failed to show up at? Blaming a video was easier. Also a cover up but whatever. What I find to be a kicker is the fact that we then continue to buy the lies as Rice tells them, on the talk show circuit and so on.
And, then...the truth begins to surface, people in important places begin to talk and the American people start to see the light that, along with their initial reactions, this couldn't have been tied to some youtube video. The administration is then caught with their pants down and eventually concedes to the fact that...yes, we now do believe this was a terrorist attack.
I never heard the initial reports from Hillary Clinton (a day or so after) who supposedly said that this was a terrorist action against the US. Regardless, even HC ended up changing her tune for some reason. And then, something else I find horrific, is that she's nearly set up to take the fall; that's obvious during the VP debate with Biden cackling that the state dept didn't tell us they needed more security.
All in all, a huge mess. A cover up at it's finest and a powerful entry into how weak the current administrations foreign policy truly is.
I think it's ridiculous to assume we should have heightened security every year on 9/11.
9/11 means nothing other than it's a day of the year. It's not a Muslim high holy day. It's not an anniversary of some attack by the US on a Muslim city or country. It's just a day the extremist groups chose to carry out their attack.
I think Obama's comments were correct. It was an act of terror. Would it have been better if they'd (the US gov't) not said anything for 2-3 weeks while they were still gathering intelligence? IMO they focused on the video because that's the information they were given by the state department. Would people have been happier if the US ambassador had been killed and there was 0 response from the POTUS? Of course not. The people who didn't like Obama would just say "Why didn't he say anything? He obviously doesn't care about the ambassadors." Obama was damned if he did, damned if he didn't.
HRC took responsibility but during the second debate Obama made it quite clear that it was not her fault and he would take full responsibility for the fallout.
huh? I guess I missed all the speeches where Obama said we are 100% safe and that terror is dead and the US has no more enemies. I seem to remember Bush prematurely spouting, "mission accomplished!", but can't recall when Obama said that Al-Qaeda would commit no more crimes.
Every president will try to assure the American people that they are doing all they can to keep them safe. Every president will want the American people to go on with their daily lives and not worry about terror plots 24/7. But only a stupid person would think that there wasn't ALWAYS a chance of terror.
If you blame Obama for the embassy attack, you must blame Bush for 9/11. You can't have it both ways. Well, you can, but then you are a bold faced hypocrite.
I can't even fathom how many wars we would be in if Romney were president. Or how derided we would be around the world. It is a scary thought. Romney is a joke. He doesn't project strength, but more of a plastic, flip-flopping weakness. And did you hear Ryan say that American troops should be in the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan, instead of Afghan troops? Do you agree with that? That is crazy talk. I want my friends home, dammit!
Interesting. That is exactly how I feel about Romney. I don't trust a word out of that silver spoon eating mouth. Not a single word.
I should really stop posting on this dang board! The ignorance and disregard for facts is starting to make my head spin.
But have there been more attacks on 9/11 than on other days of the year? (My Google-fu is inconclusive. Stupid Google thinking it's a Magic 8 ball.)
If not, that's kind of my point. If we heighten security only on 9/11, what's stopping AQ from saying "Alllrighty then. Our next attack will be on May 7th. Just to f'uck with the heathen Americans."
Can someone link the offensive apology? All I can find is a release from the US embassy in Cairo that generally condemns intentionally offending people of other religions to incite violence. And I've got to say I'm not the least bit offended by it. For one, it was referring more specifically to Cairo and we didn't even know he ambassador was dead at that point. Secondly, I agree that we shouldn't try to hurt religious feelings just for fun or to spur violence. Thirdly, Obama didn't even say it. Not to mention, if an Islamic country made a video about Jesus being a pedophile, I imagine a huge portion of Americans would feel that response was an understatement. So what am I missing? Did Obama apologize at some different point or with different words?
And why was it disingenuous to blame it on the video when that's what intelligence was reporting and there were concurrent protests at other embassies about the exact same video? They should have known that there was confounding information they hadn't yet received? That seems silly to me. Like Fez pointed out, if they hadn't reported what they knew at the time then people would have been equally or even more pissed.
Now regarding the claim that people wanted a stronger reaction, didn't Obama say we would hunt down the perpetrators in every single address he made? What else was he supposed to do, start war? What else would have been appropriate that I'm not think of?
I just don't understand what people wanteded Obama to do or say. I've said in previous posts that I'm not a fan of many of Obama's foreign policy decisions, but I'm having a hard time being mad at him for this one. I simply don't understand why people are pissed about the above things.
Now I can see the case for being upset about diminishing security or crappy intelligence. But that's not really Obama's job, and yet he still took the blame at the debate. Which is classy and responsible.
He said no acts of terror will go unpunished, or unnoticed. don't have the time to look it up. anyway, some people interpret this as yes he did refer to it as terrorism, but others think well this is just a vague statement in his speech. he still didn't say the attack was that exactly. and it was still while they were using the youtube video as the main issue, so that is what many noted and it took precedence over his one statement about acts of terror. so everyone interprets it differently.
"act of terror" =/= "act of terrorism".
Did you post in the right thread, cats?
Your post makes no sense.
Christopher Stevens and the other three men who died. Didn't they ask for help and were refused?
This. How could you miss that. They asked for more security several times and were denied. that's where the problem started.
I didn't see it mentioned in this thread at all until cats brought it up.
That's why I was confused and that's why I asked cats to expand on her post.
That's why I missed it.
Coolio.
here is an article I just found that is pretty good at explaining it and even details several attempts for more security
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/international/us_watched_as_terror_raged_AypAEEA9OK23rPf7Z5BHWO
But even this topic doesn't seem that terrible for Obama. I read that a midlevel at the State Department decides security details (not Clinton, let alone Obama) and didn't the GOP cut the security budget to lower than what the administration asked for?
I think that this calls for an investigation because it should have been prevented. But none of it sounds like it should be damning for the election, yet people are acting like it is. So I'm just confused.
This is an excellent point.
Because she's a class act.
Obama took the blame, though. Because he's also a class act.