[quote]b89 wrote:
[quote]smh23 wrote:
[quote]b89 wrote:
[quote]smh23 wrote:
[quote]b89 wrote:
He ignored multiple requests for additional security[/quote]
This isn’t really true. The security requests never went beyond a mid-level official in the State Department (who I believe remains unidentified). They appear not to have even come close to Clinton’s desk. We have literally hundreds of embassies and consulates across the world; security requests are generally not even cabinet-level. So Obama oversees people who oversee people who oversee people who ignored or denied the Libya security requests. That’s not nothing, but it’s not nearly like what partisans tried to make it out to be in the fall (for obvious reasons).[/quote]
When taking into consideration that the United States had contractors in Libya actively tracking down weapon stockpiles to destroy them and that American agencies were active in Libya it’s safe to assume Obama knew how dangerous it’s out there and had a good idea of what’s going on even if he didn’t get alerted of every request for additional security. Not only that but I’m sure he knew what’s going on in Libya period. Is he entirely responsible? No, but that’s why things like plausible deniability exist.
[/quote]
If not a single request for security ever reached him, I’d say his direct responsibility is minimal.[/quote]
Do you think it’d be unrealistic for the President to have no knowledge of what’s going on in Libya during that 11 month span of time from when Gaddafi was killed to when the Benghazi attack happened? Since AQ affiliates were and are active in the country and weapons stockpiles were up for grabs it’s safe to assume he’d know maintaining a presence there’s inherently dangerous. Even after he’s warned of the attack he removed himself from the decision making process and put it in the hands of Leon Panetta just as he quit making decisions during the Maersk Alabama incident.
There’s a tremendous failure to act by everyone involved and it ended up costing lives.[/quote]
Do I think it’s unrealistic for the president not to have been aware of the security requests? Not at all. Firstly, that’s been the testimony of everyone involved. Things like that work their way up the chain–otherwise, there wouldn’t be enough hours in the day for an American president to get through a single foreign policy session, let alone the much larger foreign/domestic/political bolus that he has to swallow and digest by lights out.
Regarding the incident having been a tremendous failure: yes, but in a qualified sense. Many things certainly went wrong, from the CIA–which had a “secret arrangement” for emergency security with the consulate–taking 50 minutes to respond and not returning from the battle with Stevens (or his body) to the failure of the Libyan militia to the Pentagon’s sluggishness and on down the line. Of course the president, as the overseer of it all, doesn’t escape blame. But, then again, we’re talking about the unfortunate deaths of a couple of guys with very dangerous jobs. At the risk of sounding callous, this wasn’t the anomalous mess that everybody pretended it to be at the time–though the fact that it was a high-level diplomat made it remarkable in the denotative sense of the term. I can think of thousands of Americans who’ve been fucked harder and more directly by American presidents who aren’t named Barack Obama–and within the past decade. You show me a president without the blood of his own countrymen on his hands and I’ll show you my oceanfront villa in Denver.
And more to the point, the whole thing doesn’t come close to justifying the dumb statement above (not spoken by you) about Islamic terrorism not being “a priority” for Obama.
