We're seeing something absolutely fascinating going on, as the White House is blaming the State Department and Secretary Clinton for the Benghazi fiasco and coverup and the State Department is pushing back.
Just to recap the outright lies we've been told about this so far...
Originally, we were told this was a protest over a YouTube video that got out of hand. The administration pushed that for all it was worth, even though we now have conclusive evidence that the State department knew within 24 hours that this was a terrorist attack.
Even worse, we know now that the claim that there was no 'actionable intelligence' that came out of President Obama's own mouth was also a fairy tale.
There were intercepts of monitored communications during and after the attacks between members of the al-Qaeda affiliate Ansar al-Sharia and a local al-Qaeda leader of al-Qaeda In The Maghreb(AQIM) which made it quite clear that the assault was a premeditated terrorist attack.
There was also plenty of chatter about using the Cairo attack on our embassy as a cover:
It’s unclear why the talking points said the attacks were spontaneous and why they didn’t mention the possibility of al Qaeda involvement, given the content of the intercepts and the organizations the speakers were affiliated with. One U.S. intelligence officer said the widely distributed assessment was an example of “cherry picking,” or choosing one piece of intelligence and ignoring other pieces, to support a preferred thesis.
“Even if you push out that one piece of intelligence,” said this intelligence officer, “it is still in the context of a conversation between a group with an affinity to al Qaeda and a manager of an al-Qaeda affiliate. Why were we only hearing about how the attack was inspired and not about that?”
'Cherry picking intelligence'....isn't that what the president and his fellow democrats used to accuse the Bush Administration of doing?
To answer the intelligence officer's question, we weren't hearing about that because that gives rise to other questions about why Ambassador Steven's own request for enhanced security were ignored and why two special forces security teams were pulled out of the country even though there had been many incidents in Benghazi, the anniversary of 9/11 was coming up and these intercepted communications pointed out that something was up.
Even Ambassador Steven's request for a barbed wire fence for the Benghazi consulate was turned down.
The White house and the Ste department have continued to scramble like rats to spin this.
So now we come to where we are today, with the Obama White House looking to throw the blame on two separate entities; aside from falsely criticizing the intelligence services for incorrectly reporting that the attack was a protest over the YouTube video, they're blaming the State Department for concealing intel from them.
Apparently Joe-Joe the Clown exacerbated what was already an acrimonious situation between State and the White House during his debate performance last Thursday.
Among his other many prevarications Biden claimed outright that the White House was never informed about the intel and that they were never told about Ambassaodr Stevens' request for more security.
This directly contradicted the testimony before Rep.Darrel Issa's investigative committee by Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Programs Charlene Lamb and Patrick Kennedy, the undersecretary for management.
The Obama White House doubled down to back up Biden's statement. Ben Rhodes, President Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser for communications, told Foreign Policy magazine October 11th that neither Biden nor President Barack Obama were aware of what was going on...but only Biden and the president.
“Biden speaks only for himself and the president and neither of them knew about the requests at the time,” Rhodes said.
Then there was spokesmouth Jay Carney, the day after the debate:
“These kinds of issues are handled in the State Department by security officials.” White House spokesman Jay Carney said during Friday’s press briefing.
Security matters “are decided at the State Department,” he said, amid tough questioning from Fox News Channel’s Ed Henry.
Of course, that throws Secretary Clinton under the bus in a huge way. She runs the State Department. Either she was incompetent, doesn't know what's going on in her own department and served the president poorly, or President Obama is obviously lying. Given what I know about how government works, there's absolutely no way the president wasn't fully informed by his Secretary of State.
For its part, the State Department fought back by releasing a transcript of a briefing that two high-ranking department officials gave to a number of reporters that directly contradicts the White House version of things.
Now, considering the many lies Mrs. Clinton has told during her political life, it would ordinarily strike me as poetic justice that she would be victimized by an even bigger liar than herself. But in this case, with an ambassador and three other Americans foully murdered in an intelligence and security lapse that never should have happened, the American people deserve to finally know the truth.
Apparently ex-President Bill Clinton is not exactly happy over this situation either, according to some sources. Considering how he bailed the president out at the last Democratic convention, I can hardly blame him.
This is more than what President Obama glibly called 'a bump in the road' before he flew off to a fundraiser in Vegas. This is beyond a doubt the most shameful and disgusting scandal in modern American politics.
No one died because of Watergate.
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