As of November 1, 2012, Barack Obama had told the country 32 times that Al Qaeda was “decimated.” He’s also declared the war on terror “over.”
These claims were pivotal to his re-election campaign. Unfortunately they were lies. Al Qaeda was not defeated, it was gaining strength, especially in Africa:
As President Obama ran to election victory last fall with claims that al Qaeda was “decimated” and “on the run,” his intelligence team was privately offering a different assessment that the terrorist movement was shifting resources and capabilities to emerging spinoff groups in Africa that posed fresh threats to American security.
Top U.S. officials, including the president, were told in the summer and fall of 2012 that the African offshoots were gaining money, lethal knowledge and a mounting determination to strike U.S. and Western interests while keeping in some contact with al Qaeda’s central leadership, said several people directly familiar with the intelligence.
The gulf between the classified briefings and Mr. Obama’s pronouncements on the campaign trail touched off a closed-door debate inside the intelligence community about whether the terrorist group’s demise was being overstated for political reasons, officials told The Washington Times.
Many Americans believed when they voted in November that the president was justifiably touting a major national security success of his first term. After all, U.S. special operations forces succeeded in May 2011 in capturing and killing the al Qaeda founder and original leader, Osama bin Laden, in Pakistan.
But key players in the intelligence community and in Congress were actually worried that Mr. Obama was leaving out a major new chapter in al Qaeda’s evolving story in order to bend the reality of how successful his administration had been during its first four years in the fight against terrorism.
A terrorist strike could unravel that theme, and upset the Obama re-election apple cart.
It should have, but for the lies.
It is now absolutely clear that a cover-up took place on the night of September 11, 2012. In the wake of the attacks on the US compound in Benghazi, the Obama regime scrambled to hide the facts. They knew full well that it was a planned attack. Everyone knew.
The CIA station chief testified that the attacks were not preceded by a protest.
Africa Command knew in real time what was happening and knew it wasn’t a protest but a planned attack and they knew who the perpetrators were.
“We felt it was Ansar al-Sharia,” a group affiliated with al Qaeda, Lovell said; and he said he came to that conclusion “very very soon” after the attack, “when we were still in the very early, early hours of this activity.”
The State Department knew it wasn’t the result of a protest.
“When [the Libyan Ambassador] said his government suspected that former Qaddafi regime elements carried out the attacks, I told him the group that conducted the attacks—Ansar Al Sharia—is affiliated with Islamic extremists,” Jones reports in the email.
“The idea that this criminal and cowardly act was a spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous,” Megarif told NPR. “We firmly believe that this was a pre-calculated, pre-planned attack that was carried out specifically to attack the U.S. Consulate.”
Astonishingly, then-Deputy Director Mike Morrell inexplicably dismisses all the eyewitness and real-time accounts and knowledge and instead changes the narrative to “protests” allegedly based on what the “analysts” said despite the fact none of them was on the ground.
According to Morrell, he decided to buy into press accounts over his own station chief.
Morell said CIA analysts on Sept. 13 – two days before he received the email – came to the conclusion that the attack spun out of an anti-American demonstration. After receiving the email, he said he didn’t find the station chief’s arguments definitive because some press reports said there was a protest while others said there was no demonstration.
This does not pass the smell test.
Morrell also admitted lying to Congress about editing the talking points:
“In retrospect, what I wish I would have done was to say to you, Chairman, I do not know who took al-Qaeda out of the talking points, but you should know that I, myself, made a number of changes to the points,” Morrell said. “That’s what I should have said; I didn’t.”
The CIA previously had warned the White House about potential attacks. Victoria Nuland was worried less about the truth than the political fallout and subsequently the language was removed from the talking points because they “could be abused by members of Congress to beat the State Department for not paying attention to [C.I.A.] warnings so why would we want to seed the Hill.”
Lying has been a common thread all through the Benghazi debacle.
As to who edited the talking points, fingers were been pointed in all directions. Dan Pfeiffer didn’t want to talk about it, insisting it was “irrelevant.” We learned the talking points were altered 12 times, including the removal of a reference to “terror.” Congressman Peter King said David Petraeus told him the reference to terror was ermoved to downplay the issue. It appears that Victoria Nuland had the biggest role in diluting the talking points and exculpate the Obama regime. She objected to this point in particular:
“The Agency has produced numerous pieces on the threat of extremists linked to al-Qa’ida in Benghazi and eastern Libya. These noted that, since April, there have been at least five other attacks against foreign interests in Benghazi by unidentified assailants, including the June attack against the British Ambassador’s convoy. We cannot rule out the individuals has previously surveilled the U.S. facilities, also contributing to the efficacy of the attacks.”
This might lead one to correctly surmise that there was considerable danger to the consulate and they ignored it.
We have also learned that Barack Obama was not in the situation room during the attack. Where he was we still don’t know because the thoroughly juvenile NSC spokesman, Tommy Vietor believes that to be, like, so two years ago, dude.
Former White House National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor went on Fox News on Thursday, and after host Bret Baier grilled him over the issue of the talking points used after the attack, he finally responded with “Dude, this was like two years ago.”
At the moment the most likely person to have steered the topic away from the truth and to the video meme is Ben Rhodes. Rhodes sent the email that stated the goal:
“to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”
as well as make sure we make the boss look good.
“To reinforce the President and Administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.”
But it’s virtually impossible that he made the decision on his own.
The Obama regime sets new standards for audacity and disregard for the law. When they don’t approve of a law, they simply ignore it. When accountability is sought, they simply shrug their shoulders and deflect and delay as though if you ignore the cancer long enough it’ll just go away.
The House has finally found enough gumption to throw a roadblock in the fascist Obama steamroller. They have properly called the smothering of these emails “criminal.” John Boehner will be appointing a Select Committee to investigate Benghazi and Darryl Issa has subpoenaed John Kerry to explain what State did.
This is my analysis of how it all went down.
Obama wakes up one morning and decides he’s going to take Gaddafi down because he needs a foreign policy notch in the belt for the 2012 election.
President Barack Obama sought on Saturday to cast himself as a strong leader on foreign policy, highlighting a pullout from Iraq and the death of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi as success stories.
In a message Obama is likely to push in his 2012 re-election campaign, he said his leadership had made it possible to turn the page on a decade of war and refocus on bolstering the economy and paying down the national debt.
He undertakes the illegal action and bombs Gaddafi to hell finally driving him into the arms of the rebels who sodomize him with a knife and then kill him. In the act of toppling Gaddafi 20,000 stingers go missing and most likely into the arms of AQIM and AAS among others. Along with the 20,000 stingers go RPG’s and heavy weapons (like mortars). Now Obama has a problem on his hands. He wants to send weapon to the Syrian rebels to help topple Assad but he also needs to try to retrieve the missing weapons. Assets (i.e. Doherty and Woods) are enlisted to help locate and destroy the missing MANPADS.
The CIA had an outpost in Benghazi. It had a number of purposes, not the least of which was….
Furthermore there was a CIA post in Benghazi, located 1.2 miles from the U.S. consulate, used as “a base for, among other things, collecting information on the proliferation of weaponry looted from Libyan government arsenals, including surface-to-air missiles” … and that its security features “were more advanced than those at [the] rented villa where Stevens died.”
Chris Stevens is dispatched to Benghazi to broker arms for the Syrian rebels:
The official position is that the U.S. has refused to allow heavy weapons into Syria.
But there’s growing evidence that U.S. agents — particularly murdered ambassador Chris Stevens — were at least aware of heavy weapons moving from Libya to jihadist Syrian rebels.In March 2011 Stevens became the official U.S. liaison to the al-Qaeda-linked Libyan opposition, working directly with Abdelhakim Belhadj of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group — a group that has now disbanded, with some fighters reportedly participating in the attack that took Stevens’ life.
In November 2011 The Telegraph reported that Belhadj, acting as head of the Tripoli Military Council, “met with Free Syrian Army [FSA] leaders in Istanbul and on the border with Turkey” in an effort by the new Libyan government to provide money and weapons to the growing insurgency in Syria.
Last month The Times of London reported that a Libyan ship “carrying the largest consignment of weapons for Syria … has docked in Turkey.” The shipment reportedly weighed 400 tons and included SA-7 surface-to-air anti-craft missiles and rocket-propelled grenades.
Those heavy weapons are most likely from Muammar Gaddafi’s stock of about 20,000 portable heat-seeking missiles—the bulk of them SA-7s—that the Libyan leader obtained from the former Eastern bloc. Reuters reports that Syrian rebels have been using those heavy weapons to shoot down Syrian helicopters and fighter jets.
The ship’s captain was “a Libyan from Benghazi and the head of an organization called the Libyan National Council for Relief and Support,” which was presumably established by the new government.
That means that Ambassador Stevens had only one person—Belhadj—between him and the Benghazi man who brought heavy weapons to Syria.
In August of 2012 Stevens cables the State Department that there are about “ten Islamist militias and AQ training camps within Benghazi.”
Benghazi is hot but Obama and Clinton keep Stevens there. Also bear in mind that Zawahiri had promised revenge for Bin Laden’s death the day before the attacks.
Ayman al-Zawahiri mourned the death of a leading commander from Libya and urged his followers to puncture the “arrogance” of the “evil empire, America”.
This taped missive first appeared on jihadist websites on Monday. On Tuesday, an armed assault claimed the lives of the US ambassador to Libya and three of his colleagues.
The Libyans claim to have warned the US about the impending attacks two days prior:
The Independent has reported diplomatic sources who said that the threat of an attack against US interests in the region was known to the US administration 48 hours before it took place. The alert was issued by the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security, but not made public. A State Department spokesman maintained: “We are not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the US Mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent.”
But President Megarif told the American station National Public Radio: “We firmly believe that this was a pre-calculated, pre-planned attack that was carried out specifically to attack the US Consulate. A few of those who joined in were foreigners who had entered Libya from different directions, some of them definitely from Mali and Algeria.”
A senior official of the biggest militia in Benghazi, the February 17th Brigade, told CNN that he had warned US diplomats of a rapidly deteriorating security situation in Benghazi three days before the attack. “The situation is frightening, it scares us,” he said he had stressed during the meeting. Mr Stevens had been back in Libya for only a short time before US security officials decided it would be safe to make the journey to Benghazi during the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The British consulate in the city was shut after an ambush of a convoy carrying Dominic Asquith, the UK ambassador, in which his bodyguard were injured. The UN and International Committee of the Red Cross offices had been bombed and there had been a spate of political assassinations.
On September 11, 2012 the attacks take place in Benghazi. No one knows where Obama is. Greg Hicks takes a phone call from Chris Stevens with Stevens saying
“Greg, we’re under attack.”
As noted above, almost immediately everyone knows it is an Al Qaeda-related Islamist militia attack. The truth would be a severe blow to the re-election aspirations of one Barack Obama since he regaled America with stories of Al Qaeda being “decimated” and “on the run.” With the election but weeks away a head fake is desperately needed. Sorry about those four dead “bumps in the road” but Obama’s personal wants are more important. There’s a lot here which could derail the Obama campaign train. It would have been fatal for Americans to learn that Chris Stevens was killed with the weapons Obama put into the hands of the Al Qaeda-linked militias. It would have been fatal to have Americans learn Obama was sending arms to Syrian rebels when the official policy was no lethal aid. Blaming the video was the solution.
Obama, Rhodes and probably a few others have a confab in which that the official response of the regime will be to blame the video for the attacks, occurring just coincidentally on 9/11. There’s simply no way that Ben Rhodes makes the decision to change the Benghazi theme from a well planned coordinated series of attacks conducted by Al Qaeda-linked militias in which four Americans are killed to a rag tag spontaneous protest over a video complete with RPG’s and mortars and the ability to use them accurately. Only two people have the juice to do that.
Valerie Jarrett and Barack Obama.
One or both made the decision to blame the video.
It’s rather breathtaking that the Deputy CIA Director could overrule the Director of the CIA as to information fed to the public, which makes me think David Petraeus was set up- a right wing icon put in a high profile position so he could be abused.
So let’s recap. Obama the narcissist topples Gaddafi to look like a hero. He wants also to knock off Assad and was employing Chris Stevens as an arms broker to furnish Syrian rebels with heavy weapons. A boatload of weapons falls into the hands of Al Qaeda linked militias and those weapons are used to kill four Americans in Benghazi, including a US Ambassador. If the news breaks that Obama is trafficking in weapons for Syria he’s got a major problem. If the Benghazi attack is seen for what it really was- a policy f**k-up Obama’s re-election goes down the toilet. If word gets out the Al Qaeda isn’t defeated as Obama proclaimed and the war on terror isn’t over as he bragged about he loses the election. So Obama’s minions laundered the talking points to take out any references to terror and any references to Al Qaeda. Obama and/or Jarrett concoct a bizarre scheme to frame a video maker and ultimately send him to jail as a scapegoat. Then, disgustingly, over the bodies of the dead Hillary promises the parents of the dead Americans that she’s gonna get that nasty video maker.
If you think this is a fake scandal, then you have to believe that Nixon got screwed. If you still believe that a protest took place in Benghazi (how could they know Stevens was there???) while nothing happened in the capital Tripoli you are an idiot.
They all knew immediately what this was- a terrorist attack- and they all knew who it was- AAS- and they told us it was a video. All to save Obama’s ass.
That’s a scandal. An honest to goodness, impeachable scandal.
Now watch the frenetic, shrieking nature democrats take on now. Jay Carney’s street-facing edifice crumbled yesterday as his Benghazi story disintegrated. Nancy Pelosi wants to talk about “something else.”
Buckle up.
Exit question: Could this be the first impeachment in history that the major networks wouldn’t even cover?
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.
How many ”demonstrations” start like this?
A convoy of well-armed terrorists rolled into the complex housing the American consulate in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.
The attackers sealed off streets leading to the consulate with trucks and then commenced the attack on the building using rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47s, mortars, and artillery mounted on trucks.
Taking the word of the terrorists themselves that they were there to ”protest” is as absurd as believing that a ”protest” just got out of control.
How stupid and syncophantic are our public and media?
The only reason Rhodes had to write to Rice was that Hillary wasn’t able to bring herself to lie on 5 TV shows in one day.
But someone had to spread the lie.
Susan Rice had deniability (although it was NOT plausible deniability.)
She could say SHE didn’t have any other facts.
Shows what an idiot she is.
Even the State Dept. admitted it was a terrorist attack but then Hillary decided to lie with gusto.
She had the gall to ”promise” family members of those fallen men that they would catch the guy who made the Internet film and make sure HE was punished!!
HE didn’t KILL anybody.
We still had freedom of expression back then.
Hillary and Obama (and Valerie) could never make a case he was ”responsible” for the 4 dead in Benghazi, so they put him away on a probation violation.
Case closed?
I hope not.
If you look at some of the historical accounts of George Armstrong Custer and his death, there are some historians who believe that President Grant agreed to allowing Custer to become part of the three pronged effort to return the Sioux tribes back to the reservation because he believed Custer would not return alive.
Custer had accused the Grant administration for years that Grant’s brother in law was cheating the Indians of their rations. Because of the lack of rations, the tribes left the reservation to hunt buffalo for food. Custer was under house arrest awaiting court martial when General Sherman received Grant’s approval to take Custer on the expedition. Custer had proved during the Civil War that he did go to the sound of the guns. He took bold action that saved the bacon of many incompetent commanders in the Civil War. Custer went to war with Reno, a drunk, Benteen, a man who hated Custer, and an organization of 50% raw recruits of which most were immigrants who spoke little English.
Some historians who study politics as well as war strategy believe that Custer was sent to die to prevent the national disclosure of the cheating scandal. I wonder if ambassador Stevens would have had something to say about the arms for terrorists in Syria if he had lived?
January 22, 2002. Calcutta, India. Gunmen associated with Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami attack the U.S. Consulate. Five people are killed.
June 14, 2002. Karachi, Pakistan. Suicide bomber connected with al-Qaida attacks the U.S. Consulate, killing 12 and injuring 51.
October 12, 2002. Denpasar, Indonesia. U.S. diplomatic offices bombed as part of a string of “Bali Bombings.” No fatalities.
February 28, 2003. Islamabad, Pakistan. Several gunmen fire upon the U.S. Embassy. Two people are killed.
May 12, 2003. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Armed al-Qaida terrorists storm the diplomatic compound killing 36 people including nine Americans. The assailants committed suicide by detonating a truck bomb.
July 30, 2004. Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A suicide bomber from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan attacks the U.S. Embassy, killing two people.
December 6, 2004. Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Al-Qaida terrorists storm the U.S. Consulate and occupy the perimeter wall. Nine people are killed.
March 2, 2006. Karachi, Pakistan again. Suicide bomber attacks the U.S. Consulate killing four people, including U.S. diplomat David Foy who was directly targeted by the attackers. This is the third Karachi terrorist attack in four years.
September 12, 2006. Damascus, Syria. Four armed gunmen shouting “Allahu akbar” storm the U.S. Embassy using grenades, automatic weapons, a car bomb and a truck bomb. Four people are killed, 13 are wounded.
January 12, 2007. Athens, Greece. Members of a Greek terrorist group called the Revolutionary Struggle fire a rocket-propelled grenade at the U.S. Embassy. No fatalities.
March 18, 2008. Sana’a, Yemen. Members of the al-Qaida-linked Islamic Jihad of Yemen fire a mortar at the U.S. Embassy. The shot misses the embassy, but hits nearby school killing two.
July 9, 2008. Istanbul, Turkey. Four armed terrorists attack the U.S. Consulate. Six people are killed.
September 17, 2008. Sana’a, Yemen. Terrorists dressed as military officials attack the U.S. Embassy with an arsenal of weapons including RPGs and detonate two car bombs. Sixteen people are killed, including an American student and her husband (they had been married for three weeks when the attack occurred). This is the second attack on this embassy in seven months.
Dr.J.,
Well done and well presented.
That about covers it.
Although there have been other lives lost from attacks on U.S. personnel by Muslim terrorists, those didn’t have the context of an Administration negotiating arms for delivery to terrorist rebels in another country, in this case Syria.
@Nanny G: #1,
NanG.,
That’s likely, though Clinton was probably not fully in the loop on the whole implementation and unraveling, and was ignored on major decisions that Jarrett would have taken on herself in the operation, so although she’s not above lying outright to save her own ass, she didn’t want to lie to protect Jarrett and O. dealing with something she’d been sidestepped on.
And IMHO, O. had very little to do with this. His role for the gang is to read teleprompters and raise cash — billions of it, which will come in handy in future, and disappear into private hands without ever being investigated.
How can we be certain if Jarrett was in on it?…was she scheduled to be anywhere else? Is Gen. Ham going to be available to testify?
@SGT. Rock: All due to protests about videos.
There are always investigations into incidents such as these. Which ones were stonewalled by the administration carrying out a cover up?
@Bill Burris, #6:
And of all 13 of of those terrorist attacks on U.S. embassies and diplomatic outposts from January 2002 through September 2008 listed in post #3, in which cases did republicans repeatedly condemn the President of the United and the State Department? Or even suggest fault?
They’re politically opportunistic hypocrites. The worst to have befouled the halls of government in decades.
@Greg: And why, Greg, would there be attacks on the President who was NOT being derelict in his duties, NOT putting campaigning before national security and NOT lying to the American people?
Perhaps you forget those on the left who branded our President, the Commander in Chief in time of war, a coward, liar, loser, war-profiteer and stupid?
Obama could have diffused any and all attacks by simply being honest. He could have admitted his mistakes. He might have lost the election, but he may have won by simply showing himself, finally, to be honest and transparent. But, he counted on the support of the MSM and the overall ignorance of his constituency to help him stonewall the investigations until people simply got tired of it. He almost succeeded. Quite possibly, he failed. But, then again, he has failed in every other aspect of his administration.
@James Raider:
That’s the name of the game, to make sure they’re all rich when the term is over.
@Bill Burris:
That just it Bill, for the 13 attacks between 2002 and 2008 we have NO IDEA if there was dereliction of duty, putting campaigning before national security and lying to the American people, because NO ONE ASKED…WE CAN”T BE LIED TOO IF NO ONE ASKS. We should have screamed just as loud and just as persistently then as we are now, when the FIRST attack happened in 2002, or do we not care as much about those brave men and women?
If we are so concerned about our diplomatic personnel and other American citizens why didn’t we ask when this happened 13 times? Did we just assume all was well until Benghazi or are we just the wost kind of hypocrites?
Obviously we are looking at systemic failures if this can happen again and again. Let’s quit the finger pointing and political haymaking bullshit which will never save one life, and DO SOMETHING to prevent our diplomats, Soldiers, Sailors, Marines and Airmen from being killed.
I knew some of the Marines of 1/8 that were killed in Beirut. We never did shit about that situation did we? THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. Who gives a fuck who wrote what memo blaming who? I don’t give a heapin’ shit about the politics of this situation because republican or democrat it DOESN’T CHANGE A THING!
@SGT. Rock: Perhaps there was nothing to talk about; did you ever think about that?
Even when some prominent Democrats supported the war in Iraq, they still managed to jump on that anti-Bush bandwagon and oppose it even though they were “for it before they were against it”. In this, they had to make things up in order to have things to complain about.
So, if all these past incidents (nice cutting and pasting job, by the way… seamless), there were no cases where the administration was forewarned, refused additional security, and then lied about the characteristic of the actual attack, there was little to attack.
Keep in mind that under Clinton, the ranks of CIA operatives on the ground had been greatly reduced (in the electronic age, we simply didn’t need them, it was thought) and the ability of the FBI and CIA to share information was made illegal. After 9/11/01, we had to rebuild our intelligence gathering capabilities. In the war on terror, there will be attacks and the enemy, with the ability to decide when and where to attack, will succeed.
We also didn’t have Bush going around bragging that we had whupped them and whupped them good (though the left has done its best to characterize the “Mission Accomplished” banner put up by the crew of the USS Abraham Lincoln).
When did the criticism of the Obama administration over Benghazi begin? On the morning of September 12 or only after Susan Rice had been sent forth to lie about the video? An investigation and hearings was going to automatically happen, so the stonewalling had not begun at that time; but claiming an attack with heavy weapons was a protest about an up till then obscure video insults the intelligence of anyone that has any.
It is always the case; the cover-up is far more damaging than the actual incident. If Obama and Hillary had been open and forthcoming with information from the beginning, there would be no investigations. There would be hearings to find out what happened and lessons learned, but unless some wrong-doing is discovered (such as denying additional security in the face of specific warnings about threats) there would be hearings and the issue would vanish; as in the case of all but two of the list you provided (or HuffPo did).
This has dragged out and gotten nastier and nastier because Obama has made it so. Just like Fast and Furious and the IRS scandals, they have stalled and stonewalled as details slowly dribble out. All this does is heighten suspicious, many of which are later proved to be well-founded. So, the lesson would be this: first, try not to screw over the American people. Failing that, when caught, cooperate with the fact-finding for the facts will certainly eventually be exposed. Now, you can invent all the tangential diversions you want (such as your list) but the details WILL be exposed, and once they do, the perps appear to be even more criminal.
By the way, how on earth did any diplomatic post get caught by surprise on the anniversary of 9/11? Do you not find that just a tiny bit inexcusable?
People have been making all manner of accusations about Barack Obama from the moment he appeared on the scene. The fundamental problem is that they hated the guy on sight. Anything he does that others perceive as an honest effort or a genuine accomplishment only make them hate him more. Any error, however slight, is seen as utterly unforgivable, and proof positive that all other negative assumptions must be true.
@Greg: You might say that about Obama’s detractors who are upset about his ”transforming” America into a gov’t dependency society where groups of people are so at one anothers’ throats that they knock out one another on the streets.
But Benghazi was a POLICY screw up from the start.
Obama tried to trick America into believing a video was why it happened….instead of the truth….to get himself RE-ELECTED.
Had he been honest it would have cost him votes.
Who knows?
Maybe even enough votes to LOSE.
He chose to LIE rather than risk losing.
This has nothing to do with his half whiteness.
It has nothing to do with his odd name.
People don’t like to be lied to when lives are on the line.
@Bill Burris, #11:
How many angry demonstrations focusing on U.S. embassies and diplomatic missions broke out during that same time frame? Wikipedia has provided a map. I count 38 separate locations—most of which Obama’s critics totally ignore, because the common thread running through all of them was the damn video that they want to pretend had absolutely nothing to do with anything.
In the initial confusion, with limited details available, an assumption that the video was a precipitating factor in Benghazi was entirely logical. It might be asked if Cairo would have gone any differently, had extremists looking to exploit the situation had the same sort of weapons that were left following the Libyan civil war readily available. That question might be asked about a number of protest locations.
In retrospect, it can always be asked how we were caught by surprise. We can ask ourselves that question about the original 9/11 event itself. How did we miss all of the arrows pointing to hijacked airliners being used as suicide weapons? Or the fact that the World Trade Center would be among the highest priority targets? They’d already hit it once before.
@Greg: Poor widdle Obama!! Him mistweeted by everybody!!
Obama’s problems began when he promised to work across the aisle, be more open and transparent and be honest, then proceeded to be the most divisive, secretive and law-disregarding President we have seen. When he called Republicans in with the sole purpose for them to hear him tell them that he won and elections have consequences and to just shut up and get in the back of the car, the die was cast. He has demagogued and made partisan every issue facing the nation and, when he fails to accomplish his (HIS) goals, he blames everyone but himself.
Poor, poor widdle Obama.
@Bill Burris, #15:
As was noted previously, for some people it’s all about Obama.
@Greg:
Then how do you explain that during Nic Robertson’s interview in Cairo with the Blind Sheik’s brother, not one word was mentioned about the video being the reason for the Cairo protests? Do you think it just slipped his mind? Or maybe the cause was really what he said; demand for the release of the Blind Sheik?
And Wikipedia? Really, Greggie? Are you that simple minded that you rely on articles where the authors are unwilling to take credit for what they write?
@Greg: Maybe it had to do with the I won you lost comment when McCain tried to develop a working relationship. Maybe it was the arrogance. Maybe it was the appointment of ignorant cabinet members. Maybe it had to with the lack of transparency that was promised. Maybe it had to do with quite a lot of things besides race like the continuous lies of which this is another.
@retire05, #17:
Are you suggesting that the map and the locations displayed on it are inaccurate? They aren’t. They’re both completely accurate.
This criticism is just a variation on the ad hominem fallacy, one of your old standbys. If information is accurate, attacking the source doesn’t make it any less so. Except maybe in the imaginations of the truly simple minded, who generally aren’t capable of or don’t bother with critical analysis.
They usually just accept as true whatever goes along with what they want to believe.
Apparently you do consider the Blind Sheik’s brother to be a trustworthy source of accurate information. I really can’t imagine why anyone would. If anyone is likely to have a concealed agenda and a motive to distort the truth, it would surely be a guy like that.
Randy maybe if Custer had decided not to leave his 2 gattling guns behind things might have turned out just a bit different
As for Ben Gazzara most Americans have moved on.
Selective OUTRAGE !!! after awhile just seems sadz
@john: Gatling guns are primarily used in a defensive position. Custer’s mission was not defensive! Over 61% of the people have not moved on. They want to know that their government is telling them the truth or at least lie convincingly. The Obama administration isn’t even trying to lie well. They rely on you trolls and the media to provide cover.
@Greg:
Haven’t seen any of that. When is it gonna start?
@retire05:
I’m not that familiar with author’s and credit on Wiki. I didn’t think Wiki lets anyone post their name for credit on Wiki, whether they want to or not. Can an author post their name on Wiki if they desire?
@Redteam, #23:
Each Wikipedia page has a View History tab at the top, where a full history of each article can be found. The original author is listed, along with a record of each revision that’s been made subsequently. The history entries run backwards, with the most recent at the top of the list. Authors and contributors most often use pseudonyms for reasons of privacy. There’s also a Discussion tab that relates to each article. Footnotes are expected to be added at the bottom of the article page itself citing the original sources for any factual information that’s provided.
I think it’s a good system that has resulted in a very useful online reference, though articles concerning any controversial topic have to be viewed with a critical eye. In my opinion, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It encourages readers to actually think about what they’re reading, rather than just accepting what’s presented at face value.
SGT. Rock
feeling your pain,
don”t you think that the PRESIDENT BUSH, was not including those deaths in his massive attack
on that part of the WORLD?
was is it enough for your torment to be subdue a bit?
did those WARRIORS have done enough for you ?
I think yes, I think that you should now be thinking of them recovering painfully,
I could heal your pain also,
BEST TO YOU, THANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTICIPATION IN WAR,
YOU ALL ARE THE BEST OF ALL,
@Greg:
This of course is incorrect.
Remember, WikiPedia is a consensus encyclopedia, which is the very thing that makes it entirely worthless. Entries are not written by experts in any given field, but rather authors are mostly teenage activists oftentimes writing at the behest of their intellectually vacant and dishonest teachers and professors. Anonymous pseudonyms, while perfectly acceptable for opinion pieces, do not allow the writer to be taken to task. The growing acceptance of consensus encyclopedias like WikiPedia is just another sign of America’s academic degradation, as if we needed another.
Wikipedia: where truth dies online
@Greg: Thanks for that explanation Greg. I especially agree with this statement:
People should always be aware that History is just that, ..his story.. most stories of historical events are written by the winners, or the persons that want some sort of recognition for some event so, I’d say, that they would normally write a story favorable to the point they want conveyed. Many events that were actually a loss to the writer can easily be told in such a way that you would be surprised to find out that the teller had actually lost. I doubt very many actual history stories are historically correct.
@Kraken:
Having said what I did just above. I think Wikipedia, in general, is a good thing, it just has to be taken with a grain of salt. I have read of some events on it, of which I have actual knowledge and the Wiki write up essentially was exactly correct as to the facts as I knew them. However, when you get into a Wiki political story, they tend to follow the Dimocrats line. But just to look up a person or event, in most cases it is mostly correct.
@Greg:
Remember Greg, we’ve been through this session before.
In order to be able to use the terminology from Carl Sagan’s Fine Art of Baloney Detection correctly, you need to be able to understand what they actually mean.
Here’s the definition of an Ad Hominem attack:
retire05 is correct in calling out your usage of a consensus encyclopedia. Reliance on such spurious sources of information, indicates intellectual sloppiness at best, complete and total incompetence at worst.
Besides, as have repeatedly revealed here at Flopping Aces, attacking sources of information is a practice with which you engage in regularly, so you really have no business making these kinds of statements.
@Redteam:
There’s no regulation prohibiting you from using WikiPedia of course. But understand, that as long as you’re relying on the teenage essayists of WikiPedia to provide your information, your arguments will be easily undermined.
@Kraken, #29:
You might also want to look up the definition of the word variation.
@Kraken, #30:
Wikipedia articles generally aren’t a product of teenage essayists. If you made use of it on occasion in connection with non-polarizing topics, you would most likely realize that.
In some respects it is a consensual creation, but the same thing is true of almost any large collection of reference material.
@Kraken:
I think you’re referring primarily to political issues here and I agree that Wiki is totally useless (unless you’re generally looking for the liberal spiel). In that respect, it’s very much likle Snopes and Factcheck.org. Both of which have political agendas. An example, say you want to look up factual data on Derek Jeter. The Wiki page will supply you with very good data on that, but suppose you want to look up a story about Adolf Hitler, do you think you’re only going to get the ‘real’ story on him, or is it going to have a strong bias. What about General Sherman, you think Wiki has the ‘real’ story on him? I don’t. So, it just depends on what it is you’re looking up. Political issues are a no no on Wiki.
@Greg:
While we weren’t debating the definitions of individual words, can you show me what variation of the definition of an ad homimem attack you were using, and where it comes from?
They certainly read that way. Regardless, you have no way of knowing that they aren’t when they’re written under pseudonyms. They could literally be anyone. A teenager, an inmate form a mental institution, serial killers, Justin Bieber, drug users, college professors; anyone.
@Redteam:
I’m actually referring to every topic and issue that exists. Sourcing WikiPedia is the practice of intellectual laziness. It may be convenient, but convenience rarely facilitates accuracy. WikiPedia is a great way to express errors and develop a heavily distorted world view. Even its founder discourages its use for citations.
If that isn’t enough to convince you, just know that you’re using a source of information that is funded by George Soros’ Open Society Institute. Go figure.
@Kraken:
I’m not sure I agree. For example, say I want to know the basics about Derek Jeter and so I look him up on Wiki and I find this:
New York Yankees – No. 2
Shortstop
Born: June 26, 1974 (age 39)
Pequannock Township, New Jersey
Bats: Right Throws: Right
MLB debut
May 29, 1995 for the New York Yankees
Career statistics
(through May 4, 2014)
Batting average .312
Hits 3,339
Runs 1,881
Stolen bases 348
Home runs 256
Runs batted in 1,267
And what I was really looking for was how many career hits he had. This shows 3,339. I’m relatively satisfied that if I looked for that info in 5 more places, including MLB player stats, I’m gonna get that same number. So if I don’t go to all 5 other places, you’re saying I’m being intellectually lazy? What other steps would you take if you were looking for that information so that you wouldn’t be accused of being intellectually lazy. And how much difference would it make? Do you think you would still end up with the same number?
@Kraken: Just for the heck of it, I went to MLB official stats and looked up career hits for Derek Jeter and it showed 3,339 as of May 4. A number remarkably similar to the number that Wiki produced. The major difference, it took about 3 key strokes to get that off Wiki and a whole lot more to get it from MLB. But that’s just ‘regular’ lazy, not ‘intellectually’ lazy.
@Kraken:
I’m certainly not a fan of Soros, but I’ll use Wiki info for baseball information on players until I find a reason why he would lie about batting averages. Now when that ball player gets into politics, then I can’t use Wiki any longer. It would be BS.
@Redteam:
Yes. Particularly when we’re dealing with WikiPedia, where entire articles are routinely hoaxed.
Footnotes are often cited as legitimizing WikiPedia’s suspect information. But people rarely go through the footnotes/citations and simply accept the WikiPedia entry at face value. What we find when we examine WikiPedia articles closer, even purportedly non-polarizing articles, is that citations that are often incorrect, lead to some hastily fashioned Geocities website, or simply go nowhere. There’s a really good chance, that the numbers you’ve listed, may be inaccurate. Particularly since sports is anything but a non-polarizing issue.
Let’s just hope WikiPedia information is never used against you in a court of law.
@Redteam:
No doubt there is some accurate information on WikiPedia. The problem is that there’s so much incorrect information side by side with the accurate, that it’s simply not worth referencing.
Remember, arguing in favor of fewer keystrokes is arguing in favor of intellectual laziness.
Again, no one is prohibiting you from using WikiPedia. You are certainly more than welcome to continue using it.
Just don’t be surprised when your argument that cites a WikiPedia article, which was written by a 14 year old on his mother’s laptop, ends up being easily refuted.
@Redteam:
Well, all American icons are currently under attack from the Collective, baseball is no different.
However, it’s not George Soros himself you’d have to worry about in this instance, rather, it’s the fans of the Red Sox that might want to tinker with the stats of a New York Yankees player. Especially fans that are still in high school, and are prone to misbehavior.
@Kraken, #33:
The underlying concept of the ad hominem fallacy is that the source of an argument or information is being attacked, rather than the argument or the information itself.
The difference between the ad hominem fallacy and the suggested variation is slight: Rather than attacking a person, the attack is directed against a reference. The argument or information being presented is still being discounted rather than disproved.
at the end of BENGHASI, you won”t find one of them JARRET OR OBAMA,
you will find the two of them together, THEY ARE TWIN, REMEMBER?
@Kraken: Where are you getting all your information about Wiki and how do you know it’s accurate? How many sources have you used that all agree on the facts about Wiki? How do you know those sources are correct and what sources have you used to verify those sources? LOL. Kind of a circle isn’t it? Every source that says Wiki is owned by Soros may be sites that have an ax to grind about Soros. Have you checked that out. We, here on FA are not using Wiki or any other source on the internet for Academic verification. If you were to ask me how many career hits Jeter has, and I flip up Wiki and it says 11,221 and I print that and if it is a bogus number, you can bet that someone will let that fact be known very quickly. On the other hand, if Wiki says 3,339 and I print that, and it’s accurate, you can bet no one is gonna be shouting at me that it’s wrong. I can use any source I consider to be reliable, Wiki or others, here on FA and figure I’m in good company because EVERYTHING here has to be taken with a grain of salt. I go more by the person that is making the statement than I do the source of their info. Liberals are largely unbelievable. Conservatives are usually accurate.
@Kraken, #40:
It would have been helpful if the Mail Online article had presented a few examples of the sort of factual errors they’re referring to, so their readers could form some opinion about how significant they might be. Failing that, they could at least have provided a link to the study that demonstrates this.
What’s funny is that an article making such assertions without providing either examples or references would never pass muster on Wikipedia.
@Kraken:
I have never had anything I used from Wiki refuted, maybe because I am not intellectually lazy and can figure out when they’re blowing smoke or not.
I have never heard the argument that reducing keystrokes is a measure of intellectual laziness. Did you get that from Wiki? Cite your source (other than Wiki)
@Greg:
If we accept your NewSpeak variation, then we must also accept the fact that you routinely engage in this very practice.
@Kraken, #47:
World Net Daily is not an encyclopedic compendium of information that cites credible sources for the information it provides so that readers can examine them for themselves. Nor are its statements subject to ongoing revision by knowledgeable contributors who are generally making an effort to improve the quality and accuracy of the information provided.
@Redteam:
Redteam,
Reread what I’ve already written. You will find several links therein.
Again, I understand that wish to preserve the convenience of WikiPedia. You may find no apparent problem with citing articles that may or may not have been written by anyone from 14 year old activists to senile assisted living residents; that’s your prerogative.
@Kraken, #49:
If you can’t discern competently researched and written material from the work of such people, it would probably be a good idea to stop gathering information online altogether. And quite possibly give up on most print sources as well.