Moderators: Alyrium Denryle, Edi, K. A. Pital
He's also fired from his own building!CaptJodan wrote:That was even more anti-climatic than I was expecting. What a hollow, empty shell of a man he has become. It is truly a desperate attempt to continue to be relevant when he isn't relevant at all. He is a sad, pathetic little man.
Worse to who? I haven't seen a single thing on the news about it in days.Lord MJ wrote:So the Benghazi situation is looking worse and worse for Obama. Even though I don't think that a lot of this should be aired in public until the real story is determined by the proper investigations. Stuff like this should be vetted by proper parties, not serve as political fodder.
But 13 days before a Presidential Election? Why is the administration deliberately shooting itself in the foot with this?
It's almost as if Obama wants to sabotage his campaign.
Washington (CNN) -- Two hours after first being notified of an attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, a government e-mail to the White House, the State Department and the FBI said an Islamist group had claimed credit, according to a copy obtained by CNN.
An initial e-mail was sent while the attack was still underway, and another that arrived two hours later -- sent from a State Department address to various government agencies including the executive office of the president -- identified Ansar al-Sharia as claiming responsibility for the attack on its Facebook page and on Twitter.
The group denied responsibility the next day.
However, the e-mails raise further questions about the seeming confusion on the part of the Obama administration to determine the nature of the September 11 attack that left U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead.
Two White House officials, speaking on condition of not being identified on Wednesday, said the government e-mails about the attack were not an intelligence assessment. They also noted that there was conflicting information about Ansar al-Sharia denying responsibility.
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Photos: Attack on U.S. Consulate in Libya
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"They were a part of the many different reports we were receiving that day," one of the White House officials said of the e-mails. "There are always multiple and conflicting reports in the initial hours of an attack. That's why you have an investigation."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton advised reporters to wait until a review panel she appointed to investigate what happened completed its work.
"The Independent Accountability Review Board is already hard at work looking at everything, not cherry picking one story here or one document there but looking at everything, which I highly recommend as the appropriate approach to something as complex an attack like this," Clinton said Wednesday.
"You know, posting something on Facebook is not in and of itself evidence. I think it just underscores how fluid the reporting was at the time and continued for some time to be," Clinton said.
She repeated her earlier pledge to "take whatever measures are necessary to fix anything that needs to be fixed, and we will bring those to justice who committed these murders."
Meanwhile, White House spokesman Jay Carney noted the e-mail about the claim of responsiblity "was an open-source, unclassified e-mail referring to an assertion made on a social media site that everyone in this room had access to and knew about instantaneously."
Carney added that "the whole point of an intelligence community and what they do is to assess strands of information and make judgments about what happened and who was responsible."
The day after the attack took place, President Barack Obama referred to it as an "act of terror."
What the administration has said
But in the following days, Carney maintained there was no evidence suggesting the attack was "planned or imminent."
In attack aftermath, disagreement over how it began
The administration also suggested that an anti-Muslim video produced in the United States likely fueled a spontaneous demonstration in Benghazi as it had in Cairo, where the U.S. Embassy also was attacked.
Clinton, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland and Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, all cited the video as a motivating factor in the attack.
On September 13 -- two days after the attack -- a senior U.S. official told CNN that the violence in Libya was not the work of "an innocent mob."
"The video or 9/11 made a handy excuse and could be fortuitous from their perspective, but this was a clearly planned military-type attack," the official said.
However, it wasn't until September 19 that Matthew Olsen, the nation's counterterrorism chief, told senators that it was a terrorist attack. The next day, Carney also said it was "self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack."
The e-mails obtained by CNN provide additional insight into the Benghazi attack.
The first one, sent at 4:05 p.m. ET, or 10:05 p.m. in Libya, described a diplomatic mission under attack.
"Approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well," the e-mail said. Stevens and four other mission staff were in the compound safe haven, it added.
Less than an hour later, at 4:54 p.m. ET, another e-mail reported "firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi has stopped and the compound has been cleared." It said a search was underway for consulate personnel.
The final e-mail, at 6:07 p.m., noted the claim of responsibility for the attack. The subject line said: "Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack."
"Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli," the e-mail said.
The Facebook claim of involvement was subsequently denied by the group at a news conference in the following days, but not very convincingly.
"We are saluting our people for this zeal in protecting their religion, to grant victory to the prophet," a spokesman for Ansar al-Sharia said at the time. "The response has to be firm."
It is common for one or more claims of responsibility to follow high-profile attacks on U.S. targets, and intelligence officials analyze them for validity before declaring any legitimate. For example, groups make false claims to seek publicity and raise their profile.
Analysts examine a group's history, whether it made previous claims that were legitimate, whether it has the capacity to carry out such an attack, and whether known members of the group participated in the attack in assessing the validity of claims of responsibility.
"They were a part of the many different reports we were receiving that day," one of the White House officials said of the e-mails. "There are always multiple and conflicting reports in the initial hours of an attack. That's why you have an investigation."
Over the past 72 hours emails have come out informing that the White house knew, in the broad terms, that there were no protests outside of the Benghazi consulate prior to the attacks, and they knew of the claims (by one of the militias with ties to al Qaeda) of responsibility for the attack.Block wrote:Worse to who? I haven't seen a single thing on the news about it in days.
Because that's why, in the weeks following, that the UN Ambassador made claims that is now known to be wrong.Block wrote:"They were a part of the many different reports we were receiving that day," one of the White House officials said of the e-mails. "There are always multiple and conflicting reports in the initial hours of an attack. That's why you have an investigation."
Hey smug douche, multiple sources like oh BBC in english and Arabic, Aljazeera in both languages, France24, CBS, NBC, and ABC? Cause I read all of those websites every day as well as watching the news. It hasn't been made a big deal of. The quote I put was from the article that MJ posted. It is VERY clear that nothing was clear in the 72 hours after the attack, there were conflicting claims from local sources. There was a statement from the WH the day after that said they were still gathering info and that those responsible would be punished. There were only further statements after the Romney campaign came out with a bunch of disingenuous attacks, and those statements were incorrect. That has been rectified and to say it's somehow a breach of trust is flat out stupid.TimothyC wrote:Over the past 72 hours emails have come out informing that the White house knew, in the broad terms, that there were no protests outside of the Benghazi consulate prior to the attacks, and they knew of the claims (by one of the militias with ties to al Qaeda) of responsibility for the attack.Block wrote:Worse to who? I haven't seen a single thing on the news about it in days.
And yet, the President who has been making 'trust' a talking point is now faced with the above while also having a press secretary & the UN Ambassador who kept blaming the video in the weeks following the attack.
I'd also recommend what I always recommend - try to get your news from a wide variety of sources to avoid confirmation bias.
Another imbecile on the pile. Obama mocked the idea that Russia is the US's /greatest geopolitical threat/.ryacko wrote:http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-N ... ring-it-on
Obama said that Russia as our enemy is dated during the debates. Guess he was wrong.
I'm going to come back to the original comment - Who then is the greatest geopolitical foe?SirNitram wrote:Another imbecile on the pile. Obama mocked the idea that Russia is the US's /greatest geopolitical threat/.ryacko wrote:http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-N ... ring-it-on
Obama said that Russia as our enemy is dated during the debates. Guess he was wrong.
I'm gonna say the US is the US's greatests geopolitical foe. If you think I'm being facicious, check out some of the groups we've got here at home.TimothyC wrote:I'm going to come back to the original comment - Who then is the greatest geopolitical foe?SirNitram wrote:Another imbecile on the pile. Obama mocked the idea that Russia is the US's /greatest geopolitical threat/.ryacko wrote:http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-N ... ring-it-on
Obama said that Russia as our enemy is dated during the debates. Guess he was wrong.
The thing is that the administration was describing this as a spontaneous attack as the result of the video, in the midst of a protest, when there was no protest. But the administration said that it was anyway for almost 2 weeks.Block wrote:Hey smug douche, multiple sources like oh BBC in english and Arabic, Aljazeera in both languages, France24, CBS, NBC, and ABC? Cause I read all of those websites every day as well as watching the news. It hasn't been made a big deal of. The quote I put was from the article that MJ posted. It is VERY clear that nothing was clear in the 72 hours after the attack, there were conflicting claims from local sources. There was a statement from the WH the day after that said they were still gathering info and that those responsible would be punished. There were only further statements after the Romney campaign came out with a bunch of disingenuous attacks, and those statements were incorrect. That has been rectified and to say it's somehow a breach of trust is flat out stupid.TimothyC wrote:Over the past 72 hours emails have come out informing that the White house knew, in the broad terms, that there were no protests outside of the Benghazi consulate prior to the attacks, and they knew of the claims (by one of the militias with ties to al Qaeda) of responsibility for the attack.Block wrote:Worse to who? I haven't seen a single thing on the news about it in days.
And yet, the President who has been making 'trust' a talking point is now faced with the above while also having a press secretary & the UN Ambassador who kept blaming the video in the weeks following the attack.
I'd also recommend what I always recommend - try to get your news from a wide variety of sources to avoid confirmation bias.
That's incorrect. Susan Rice said it was about 3 days after on Meet the Press I believe, and again she was probably only sent to do that because of Romney and his immediate politicizing of the attack, which hurts him more than it has hurt Obama from the polls I've seen, the following day the WH said that may not be correct and info was still being gathered, and then at the two week mark an official statement was released calling it a terror attack. I haven't seen any sort of data indicating that this has actually hurt Obama in any way, since anyone who was going to vote for him realizes that intelligence gathering takes time, those who weren't going to vote for him hate him anyways, and those who're undecided tend not to watch the news anyways.Lord MJ wrote:
The thing is that the administration was describing this as a spontaneous attack as the result of the video, in the midst of a protest, when there was no protest. But the administration said that it was anyway for almost 2 weeks.
They had several conflicting messages, which it clearly states in the article you posted.Lord MJ wrote:Jay Carney was repeating the "Spontaneous Protest" line well after Susan Rice made her statements. But the question is why were they making those statements to begin with, when they had information at the time that is was not the case. They had messages from the diplomats in Benghazi during the attack.
From hereMr Obama received a boost from former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who endorsed Mr Obama on Thursday.
Mr Powell, who also backed Mr Obama in 2008, cited recent improvements in the economy and Mr Obama's guidance of the US military as reasons for his renewed support.
"I also saw the president get us out of one war, start to get us out of a second war and did not get us into any new wars." Mr Powell said. "I think that the actions he's taken with respect to protecting us from terrorism have been very, very solid."
I don't know, I've been hearing some interesting things about turnout numbers from some friends. It's all early polling of course but there are some serious issues on the Republican side in the southern states. Ohio is not the only place where Obama would win the election by a 60% margin if we only used early voting numbers. Time will tell come election day which is still where the vast majority of people particularly those in very traditionally republican groups vote.Dalton wrote:Romney's path to 270 is somewhat narrower than Obama's. The probability of Ohio casting the deciding EVs is pretty high, close to 50%, and Obama has been consistently polling 5 points higher in that state. Combined with his very likely wins in Pennsylvania, Iowa, Nevada, Michigan and Wisconsin, this puts him at 277 EVs. Romney will have to gain traction in Ohio to even have a chance, as the only other swing states he has a chance of winning are Colorado, Florida, New Hampshire, North Carolina and Virginia, and as it is only two of those states (FL, NC) are leaning Republican right now. In this scenario, Ohio will decide the election.
This will probably not be a rout.
I should be more clear, the Obama voters are not turning out in droves, they are turning out for early votings at or around 2008 levels. BUT Republican voters early turnout is way down from 2008 as in instead of 70-100 people about 40%/60% showing up per early voting day it's been a pretty steady 60 people per day with 45-50 Obama voters to 5-10 Romney voters. Where before it might be 30-60 Obama to 30-50 McCain voters.Dalton wrote:Interesting. Perhaps as a result of voter suppression fears?
