A newly-released government email indicates that within hours of the Sept. 11, 2012 attacks on Americans in Benghazi, Libya; the State Department had already concluded with certainty that the Islamic militia terrorist group Ansar al Sharia was to blame.
The private, internal communication directly contradicts the message that President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice and White House press secretary Jay Carney repeated publicly over the course of the next several weeks. They often maintained that an anti-Islamic YouTube video inspired a spontaneous demonstration that escalated into violence.
You don’t say.
It’s nice to see Sharyl Atkisson finally free to do real reporting now that she’s out from under the strictures of the Democrat-enablers at CBS.
[Mid-morning update]
Boehner is (finally!) going to establish a special Select Committee. Rumor is that Trey Gowdy will lead it, which should have these criminals very worried.
The worst part is that their excuse was so transparent at the time as to be laughable, and our other branches of government did nothing to balance this abuse of office and dereliction of duty. Private citizens, like Judicial Watch, have had to step up and be the real ‘checks and balances’, rub our governments’ noses in the blatant explicit truth, and yet I still doubt they will stir and do their duty.
Regardless of what the emails say, Obama sympathists cannot spin the fact that the administration stonewalled releasing the documents for 18 months. Would they do that if the emails agreed with what they were saying?
I suppose they could say:
Uh, yeah, here you go. I forgot to give ’em to ya cause, like, they were under a stack of Conde Nast travel magazines.
Obama sympathists cannot spin the fact that the administration stonewalled releasing the documents for 18 months
I’ll give it a try. From the article: “The State Department provided the email to Congress in Aug. of 2013 under special conditions that it not be publicly released at that time. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) sought and received permission to release it Thursday.”
The Republicans investigating this have had the email for most of a year.
But it took a FOIA to get them released to the public. Obama could have done it at any time because he is so transparent.
I miss the days when Obama said he was going to put Obamacare negotiations between his campaign donors and politicians on CSPAN.
Transparent and very poor attempt at distraction and dissimulation:
We’re talking about the email that was turned over to Judicial Watch who had to sue the Administration to get them. NOT any emails in the possession of Congress.
Never ceases to amaze me how low you will go to try and deflect blame from the administration you love.
The Republicans investigating this have had the email for most of a year.
Perhaps, but The State Department provided the email to Congress in Aug. of 2013 under special conditions that it not be publicly released at that time and then Congress received permission to release it Thursday
At best, you spun the 18 months down to 7 months, unless you add back in that the Administration sat on the email for 11 months. Which I’m sure you could argue the investigation into the lies made to Congress didn’t begin on Sept. 11, 2012. Regardless, it is still stonewalling by the administration to block an investigation into a criminal act.
Here’s what I see about this latest development… this isn’t a impeachable offense, not in my book. Not like the corruption of the IRS into a political organ. Still, this is far bigger than the Plame affair (She’s still alive) and someone decided to deliberately lie to Congress and the American people to obstruct justice. 18 months later, nobody has been captured or imprisoned for the murder of US Ambassador, and as far as this administration is concerned, “dude, that was two years ago”. Someone needs to spend time in jail, perhaps 2 years, maybe more.
Nakula spent almost a year in jail.
Still doesn’t matter. They’re stonewalling when they say they have nothing to hide.
They allegedly “stonewalled” about this last bunch of emails, and there’s nothing there. How can you be sure that the next batch will be any different?
Obama has been repeatedly caught in lies on a range of subjects including Benghazi, what makes you think this time they are telling the truth?
Because we have the paper trail for the “YouTube video” talking point, and it starts at the CIA. Because the GOP House committee that investigated the military response concluded that no rescue mission was possible. You don’t have to believe the administration, there’s plenty of corroborating evidence.
Which just begs the question. If the emails support the WH’s version of what happened, why weren’t they released to the public (you know, the poor saps these guys are supposed to work for) earlier?
Because whoever was going through the emails didn’t consider them Benghazi-specific? Because someone goofed? We don’t need to know why the release was delayed to know whether they support the White House’s “version of what happened”, we can just read the emails — and they are perfectly consistent with the White House position.
The private, internal communication directly contradicts the message that President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice and White House press secretary Jay Carney repeated publicly over the course of the next several weeks.
It also contradicts the CIA’s contemporaneous assessment.
Obama’s CIA?
Yes, Obama’s CIA. Is your hypothesis that the White House told the CIA to lie about the attack, but forgot to tell the State Department? That hasn’t been the GOP tack — why go after David Petraeus when the real enemy is Hillary Clinton?
“s your hypothesis that the White House told the CIA to lie about the attack, but forgot to tell the State Department? ”
Umm they (the Obama administration) totally told the State Department to blame it on a video despite knowing it was a terrorist attack.
These latest emails show the political manipulation of CIA employees. Why throw them under the bus like Obama did with the Ambassador by not only not giving him the security requested but also blaming him after the event for the attack.
The CIA isn’t what caused these lies to be peddled to the American public. The Obama administration is.
The CIA isn’t what caused these lies to be peddled to the American public.
The CIA wrote the talking points that the administration “peddled” to the public. This fact is terribly inconvenient to the conspiracy theorists, but there’s no getting around it.
“The CIA” doesn’t do anything. It’s a big government agency. Some person at “The CIA” wrote those talking points, even though many others at “The CIA” knew they were bullshit the day it happened. That person presumably wrote them exactly so spin mongers like you could come along and excuse all the lies.
Jim & co seem to be unfamiliar with the concept of “Telling The Boss What You Know He Wants To Hear.”
As opposed to telling The Boss what you actually know, which might at that moment been something like “We’re not really sure at this time.”
It isn’t a lie or cover-up or scandal for the White House to take CIA talking points at face value.
“It isn’t a lie or cover-up or scandal for the White House to take CIA talking points at face value.”
Jim, you are contradicting yourself as many times as Obama’s story has changed.
Your old position was that the day after the attack Obama blamed the attack on terrorists. However, the Obama administration was claiming weeks later that the attack was a spontaneous protest gone wrong. That means the Obama administration was lying to the public.
Now you claim, that Obama lied when he said it was terrorists when really it was because of a youtube video and that it wasn’t a lie to blame it on a youtube video as the Obama administration did a few days later.
Any way you slice it, Obama was lying. You don’t have to take my word for it. It was the explicit plan laid out in the released emails.
Blaming Obama’s CIA isn’t going to get Obama out of the mess he created. He should have just been honest from the start but Obama can’t let his mask slip lest people realize who he really is.
Your old position was that the day after the attack Obama blamed the attack on terrorists.
He did — you can go watch the video.
However, the Obama administration was claiming weeks later that the attack was a spontaneous protest gone wrong.
That was the initial CIA finding, which you can go read in the first draft of the infamous talking points. There’s no lie, and no contradiction — in both cases the administration was reporting what it believed to be true, given the information available at the time. There’s also no contradiction between believing that the attack was inspired by anti-video protests, and believing that it was carried out by Al Qaeda terrorists — one doesn’t exclude the other.
There’s also no contradiction between believing that the attack was inspired by anti-video protests, and believing that it was carried out by Al Qaeda terrorists — one doesn’t exclude the other.
Right, the contradiction is that no evidence ever surfaced for anyone to believe that the attack was inspired by anti-video protests. The question is why would anyone make a statement about what happened without evidence to support the claim. The lawful thing to tell Congress would be “we don’t know the impetus of the attack. The wrong to do is tell Congress something that isn’t true and spend waste government efforts for month chasing a myth that never occurred. This wrong was compounded by imprisoning a person totally unrelated to the attack. This wrong is perpetuated until this day with the result that nobody related to the attack has ever been brought to justice. Making false and misleading statements to Congress is a crime. It’s a crime because sometimes such statements lead to waste of taxpayers dollars and/or prevents justice from be served.
Right, the contradiction is that no evidence ever surfaced for anyone to believe that the attack was inspired by anti-video protests.
Except that there was furious uproar over the video in every country in the Middle East at exactly that time! Hell, not even just there: I recall being on business in Germany at the time and having Muslim taxi drivers ask me — quite passionately — why our gov’t allowed such a video to be made. I had to explain that our constitution allows such things.
Your personal anecdote not withstanding, there is still no evidence that the video had anything to do with the attacks in Benghazi.
I had to explain that our constitution allows such things.
You had to explain?
Did you ask if that was the reason for the RPG attacks on the International Red Cross Benghazi offices on May 22nd or the assassination attempt on the British Ambassador on June 10th of 2012?
Is the video the reason why the UK withdrew their embassy staff in May 2013? Or did muslims finally watch a “Life of Brian”?
The Jordanian ambassador in Libya was abducted last month, was that too caused by blasphemy and the US First Amendment?
It seems that the party who is so devoted to the idea that money is a corrupting influence in politics that they want the IRS to shut down all groups not affiliated with the Democrat party would take a little interest in their champion, hero, and demi-deity never set foot in the war room and went to bed early while our consulate was under attack by Islamic militants that Obama helped train and arm because he had to fly to Vegas in the am for a fundraiser.
That is like a Republican that campaigned on family values being at the strip club rather than in the war room while a consulate was under attack.