Obama was too busy campaigning to catch up with his intelligence briefings [Reader Post]

It was reported that Barack Obama has been missing 50% of his intelligence briefings.

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney calls a new Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report finding that President Obama has missed over half of his daily intelligence briefings “hilarious.”

“It’s revealing that Mr. Carney did not dispute the Government Accountability Institute’s actual numbers,” said Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer in an interview with Breitbart News. “That’s probably because our findings are drawn directly from the White House’s own calendar.”

The study found the following:

The Government Accountability Institute, a new conservative investigative research organization, examined President Obama’s schedule from the day he took office until mid-June 2012, to see how often he attended his Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) — the meeting at which he is briefed on the most critical intelligence threats to the country. During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent.

And over the last week it appears as though Obama has attended none at all:

According to the White House calendar, there is no public record of President Barack Obama attending his daily intelligence briefing–known as the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB)–in the week leading up to the attacks on the U.S. embassy in Cairo and the murder of U.S. Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens and three American members of his staff:

9/6/2012- http://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule/president/2012-09-06

9/7/2012- http://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule/president/2012-09-07

9/8/2012- http://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule/president/2012-09-08

9/9/2012- http://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule/president/2012-09-09

9/10/2012- http://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule/president/2012-09-10

9/11/2012- http://www.whitehouse.gov/schedule/president/2012-09-11

The last time prior to the slayings that the White House calendar publicly confirms Mr. Obama attending his daily intelligence briefing was September 5th. (The White House did not provide an official public calendar for September 8-10.) Mr. Obama and Vice President Joe Biden met with Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta at 5:00 p.m. yesterday.

Pretty interesting stuff, considering Obama had been warned of the lack of proper Embassy security:

The way U.S. embassies and consulates protect their staffs in volatile locations has raised several red flags in Congress, among watchdogs and even an outside commission in recent years.

The concerns came into sharp focus with the death in Libya of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens in an attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, as well as an attack Tuesday on the U.S. embassy in Cairo.

While the State Department has responded to some of the criticisms leveled by congressional oversight bodies and its own internal watchdog, its Diplomatic Security (DS) office recently acknowledged it lacked the funding for some recommended improvements, such as security training, and was instead looking for workarounds.

“We cannot sufficiently meet the additional training recommendations outlined in the Secretary’s QDDR (quadrennial review). Therefore, DS is aggressively pursuing on-line alternatives, e.g., distance learning of FACT lessons minus the hard skills (i.e., weapons familiarization and driver’s training) to increase training capabilities,” the department candidly acknowledged in a February performance evaluation report.

And just maybe Obama would have learned about this:

A pro-al Qaeda group responsible for a previous armed assault on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi is the chief suspect in Tuesday’s attack that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, sources tracking militant Islamist groups in eastern Libya say.

They also note that the attack immediately followed a call from al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri for revenge for the death in June of a senior Libyan member of the terror group Abu Yahya al-Libi.

The group suspected to be behind the assault — the Imprisoned Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades — first surfaced in May, when it claimed responsibility for an attack on the International Red Cross office in Benghazi. The following month the group claimed responsibility for detonating an explosive device outside the U.S. Consulate, and later released a video of that attack.

Noman Benotman, once a leading member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and now based at the Quilliam Foundation in London told CNN, “An attack like this would likely have required preparation. This would not seem to be merely a protest which escalated.”

“According to our sources, the attack was the work of roughly 20 militants, prepared for a military assault; it is rare that an RPG7 is present at a peaceful protest,” Benotman said.

If you’re just too busy campaigning, partying and playing golf something got to give.

Right?

DrJohn

DrJohn has been a health care professional for more than 30 years. In addition to clinical practice he has done extensive research and has published widely with over 70 original articles and abstracts in the peer-reviewed literature. DrJohn is well known in his field and has lectured on every continent except for Antarctica. He has been married to the same wonderful lady for over 30 years and has three kids- two sons, both of whom are attorneys and one daughter on her way into the field of education.

DrJohn was brought up with the concept that one can do well if one is prepared to work hard but nothing in life is guaranteed.

Except for liberals being foolish.