The Obama Libya Narrative Slowly Being Torn To Shreds

@Dc, the State Dept is busy looking for cover. The point of the hearings is two-fold. First to define the nature of the attacks (i.e. a planned attack or a spontaneous response), and the second is the bungling of the lack of security, and rejected requests.

As I said before on a couple of other threads, Hillary has no way to squirm out of the second. The security requests and disposition of MCESGs falls on her shoulders as Sec’y of State. However they are attempting to redeem Susan Rice and absolve the WH and State Dept on the “it’s the video” explanations by blaming that on the CIA.

On two other threads, I pointed out the CIA intercepted communications within hours after the consulate attack, that stated that Ansar al-Sharia had an attack plan in place, but only decided to go ahead with it after seeing the protests and uprising in Cairo.

Thus the “mixed message” of planned attack vs protest. The CIA reports to the POTUS and Hillary in briefings, but I would say the official message of the WH is going to be decided by the POTUS and State Dept. They chose to run with the “fault of the video”, and omit any mention of the planned attack as their talking points. At best, you can say it’s a half truth. Per the intel intercept, it was both a planned attack, and the decision to implement it was made after they saw the protests in Cairo… not Benghazi.

By Sept 27th, even FOX News reported that Petraeus expressed the opinion in a briefing that it was the result of the video.

Intelligence sources said that the Obama administration internally labeled the attack terrorism from the first day in order to unlock and mobilize certain resources to respond, and that officials were looking for one specific suspect. The sources said the intelligence community knew by Sept. 12 that the militant Ansar al-Shariah and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb were likely behind the strike.

Further, an official said, “No one … believed that the mortars, indirect and direct fire, and the RPGs were just the work of a mob — no one.”

Yet a congressional source told Fox News that CIA Director David Petraeus, during a briefing with members of the House Intelligence Committee three days after the attack, espoused the view that Benghazi was an out-of-control demonstration prompted by the YouTube video. According to the source, this was “shocking” to some members who were present and saw the same intelligence pointing toward a terrorist attack.

This is one of the reasons that the continuing meme is that Susan Rice, or anyone else, would have said the same thing because that is, allegedly, what the CIA told them. Notice that in the hearings, the State Dept now wants to say they originally thought it was terrorism, but it was a CIA memo that defined their public talking points.

But asked about the administration’s initial — and since retracted — explanation linking the violence to protests over an anti-Muslim video circulating on the Internet, one official said, ‘‘That was not our conclusion.’’ He called it a question for others to answer, without specifying. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly on the matter, and provided no evidence that might suggest a case of spontaneous violence or angry protests that went too far.

…snip…

The administration counters that it has provided its best intelligence on the attack, and that it refined its explanation as more information came to light. But five days after the attack, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, gave a series of interviews saying the administration believed the violence was unplanned and that extremists with heavier weapons hijacked the protest and turned it into an outright attack.

She has since denied trying to mislead Congress, and a concurrent CIA memo that was obtained by the Associated Press cited intelligence suggesting the demonstrations in Benghazi ‘‘were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo’’ and ‘‘evolved into a direct assault’’ on the diplomatic posts by ‘‘extremists.’’

When it comes to the WH message, blaming the video, they’re going to put that on the CIA.

But now the Atlantic Wire has picked up and run with the “CIA to blame” theme in their article, “Should the CIA Share Some of the Blame for Benghazi?” And they have expanded it far beyond any intel briefings, and into the security realm.

Whether they can make that mud stick is another question. But one thing is abundantly clear…. they are attempting to shift as much of this to the CIA as possible. And as Michael Walsh at the NRO says in his article, “Blowback”, “David Petraeus is just one press conference shy of bringing down the whole house of cards.” Whether Petraeus will do so is another question.