The brother of a top Obama administration official is also the president of CBS News, and the network may be days away from dropping one of its top investigative reporters for covering the administration?s scandals too aggressively.
Carney flat-out told reporters that Rice and the administration simply used the intelligence community’s talking points, expecting one “single” change dealing with the designation of the facility. He flat out said that State made it clear this was the only change. That the administration was only going by what it had available in other words. ABC has shown this to be a lie. Problem is, the State Department had clearly made/requested serious revisions. The whole time this controversy has been unfolding they knew as much, because THEY requested the reshaping of the narrative…the talking points. During the controversy, the election, the debates, they knew those talking points had been reshaped from the administration’s side. Even while trying to excuse Rice, Hillary, and Obama’s talk show narrative (a protest gone wild) by blaming it on the intelligence community’s ‘talking points,’ the administration (at least part of it, and almost certainly Hillary) knew THEY had reshaped those very talking points. They lied, shifted blame and continued the lie, and would still be continuing to lie had ABC not gotten hold of the e-mails and revised drafts.
And now ABC is reporting that Patraeus had said those revised drafts were useless, and it would be the White House’s call to use them. Well, they did.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
I don’t get this bullshit at all. Republicans are up in arms over the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi after some mistake on the part of the State Department…[/quote]
Mistake? They saw unflattering language and flat out asked for it’s removal. One e-mail, in which they worry about the political fall-out, has already been found and shared by ABC. A political decision. Then they lied to reporters, saying a single inconsequential item (a facility designation) had been changed. Carney emphasized this. They also sat back as people (even some in the non FOX media) began to question the narrative coming out of the administration. “We just used the talking points, excepting one facility designation change, that the IC gave us.” They knew that excuse was bullcrap. At least Hillary must have.
This isn’t the RNC or Fox news. It’s ABC blowing this thing wide open. This at the very least falls in Hillary’s lap (State Dept.). And by the time it’s all said and done? We’ll see.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
I think all that happened was that the CIA and the State Department each refused to allow anything to be made public that would reflect poorly on themselves, so what was released as a result had the appearance of a coverup.
[/quote]
I don’t see your point on the CIA side. The controversy rests exclusively on the omissions we know the State Dept. requested. And, appearance of a coverup? Isn’t what you just described, in fact, a coverup?
[quote]MaximusB wrote:
The brother of a top Obama administration official is also the president of CBS News, and the network may be days away from dropping one of its top investigative reporters for covering the administration?s scandals too aggressively.
Too…Aggressively? As we know now–thanks to ABC–Jay Carney either knowingly lied, or was an unwitting tool passing on a lie. The media, which would include CBS, was fed horse dung. Horse dung deliberately crafted through requested omissions. And they’re worried about being ‘too aggressive?’ If it wasn’t for ABC’s investigation they’d still be living on the dung they were fed, because the Administration sure as hell to move to divulge this bombshell. Have they no pride as journalists?
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
I think all that happened was that the CIA and the State Department each refused to allow anything to be made public that would reflect poorly on themselves, so what was released as a result had the appearance of a coverup.
[/quote]
I don’t see your point on the CIA side. The controversy rests exclusively on the omissions we know the State Dept. requested. And, appearance of a coverup? Isn’t what you just described, in fact, a coverup?
[/quote]
The “consulate” was not actually a consulate or anything officially attached to State. It was a CIA operational center and only 7 of the 30 people evacuated from it were attached to State. The rest were CIA. The State Department is calling it as much and therefore placing the security lapse on the CIA and not on themselves. The CIA has taken issue with this, saying that it was a State thing, which is hard to accept given that the “consulate” was not a consulate, was not registered or whatever with the Libyan govt at any time, and most of the people there were CIA employees.
The CIA and the State Department have essentially fought over the talking points that deal with this major issue. CIA blames State and vice versa, and neither side wants their blame acknowledged, hence the limited or false talking points from Carney. Carney only knows what he hears from the State Department. The omissions from State are simply regarding whether or not this was a State-run operation or not. All indications are that it was not.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Carney flat-out told reporters that Rice and the administration simply used the intelligence community’s talking points, expecting one “single” change dealing with the designation of the facility. He flat out said that State made it clear this was the only change. That the administration was only going by what it had available in other words. ABC has shown this to be a lie. Problem is, the State Department had clearly made/requested serious revisions. The whole time this controversy has been unfolding they knew as much, because THEY requested the reshaping of the narrative…the talking points. During the controversy, the election, the debates, they knew those talking points had been reshaped from the administration’s side. Even while trying to excuse Rice, Hillary, and Obama’s talk show narrative (a protest gone wild) by blaming it on the intelligence community’s ‘talking points,’ the administration (at least part of it, and almost certainly Hillary) knew THEY had reshaped those very talking points. They lied, shifted blame and continued the lie, and would still be continuing to lie had ABC not gotten hold of the e-mails and revised drafts.
And now ABC is reporting that Patraeus had said those revised drafts were useless, and it would be the White House’s call to use them. Well, they did.
[/quote]
It sounds to me like any changes or purposeful omissions from the Carney were simply made to save some face for the CIA. This isn’t a big deal at all. It’s being blown completely out of proportion because Clinton ran State at the time and she is the presumptive 2016 candidate for the Democrats.
ABC has been regularly vilified in these threads as unreliable. Now that they MIGHT have something that can be tilted in a negative light about the Obama administration all of a sudden their findings are credible. I don’t buy it. This is purely political maneuvering and ABC is being used to further it.
All the GOP is doing is trying to ramp up whatever little they can against Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State. She has no tangible connections to Obama’s domestic policies at all and nothing else in her tenure with State for the GOP to attack, so they’re running with what little that they can. All the people in the GOP touting this as some sort of conspiracy know what it really is: bureaucratic infighting that the White House has been dragged into. But they’ve inflated the issue into something bigger and more sinister as an early way to undermine Clinton’s 2016 run. THAT is the real conspiracy at hand here. She isn’t going to be doing anything else of note between now and campaign time so they have to go after her with whatever they can, manufactured or otherwise.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
It sounds to me like any changes or purposeful omissions from the Carney were simply made to save some face for the CIA.[/quote]
Wait, what? The administration (State Dept.) had CIA talking points–points THEY (the CIA) themselves actively put forward–completely reshaped (protest gone wild), knowingly misleading the public and press (Carney, Rice, Obama) concerning the deaths of Americans, in order to save some face for the…CIA? They just said “No, guys, we can’t let you make yourself look bad. We’ll mislead the public and press for you, even if you’re not asking us to.” How generous.
Except, we have e-mail from State (look at the ABC report again) where THEY are requesting the omissions because THEY would look bad. And now ABC has learned that Patreaus flat out said these revised talking points were useless, and it would be on the White House to use them.
[quote]DBCooper wrote:
I don’t get this bullshit at all. Republicans are up in arms over the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi after some mistake on the part of the State Department and an alleged subsequent coverup by the Obama administration. That PALES in comparison to the colossal mistake of sending American troops to Iraq to get WMDs that simply weren’t there. 4500 dead Americans over there due to the deceit, ignorance and war-mongering ways of the Bush administration and we’ve got to listen to the same party that was in lockstep with him over that debacle cry foul over the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi?
I agree that this Libya thing smells foul and all that, but let’s use some fucking perspective here when we criticize the actions of an administration that led to unnecessary American deaths.[/quote]
You don’t get this because you obviously have the reasoning capacity of a five year old, unfortunately you are not alone. Whether or not something was done about the supposed misdeeds of the Bush administration is absolutely irrelevant to misdeeds committed by the Obama administration.
The simple fact of the matter is at the time, when they knew he was a threat to them and their families, the Democrats in congress were quite supportive of getting rid of Saddam. But after Saddam was finished and they could feel safe again they started distancing themselves from the decision to finally deal with Saddam and started using it for political gain.
Now if you were to say you believe that Bush should have been sanctioned or punished in some way for the Iraq invasion that would be a legitimate gripe. I think you are wrong and obviously the congress couldn’t get behind that idea either, but that would be something you could reasonably argue.I think the reason why it never happened is because the Democrats knew there was enough blame to go around that it would not have ended well for them either.
It’s a classic case of talk is cheap. It is real easy to say he’s a criminal blah blah blah, committed war crimes blah blah blah, he should be prosecuted blah blah blah, in order to score political brownie points by talking shit. But to actually go ahead and pursue a prosecution would have been highly risky.
Now to get back to my earlier point about your maturity level. What you think Bush did has no relevance to what the Obama administration has done. Even if it all were true, the alleged crimes and misdeeds of Bush do not magically exonerate the crimes and misdeeds of the Obama administration. Thinking that it is okay for one person to do something wrong because another person has done something wrong is the thinking of a child. But that is not how things work in the adult world.
One last point. You call what happened in Benghazi the result of “some mistake” that’s wrong. Contracting out the security of an American embassy to an AlQaeda affiliate in a very dangerous country instead of using the Marine Corps as is customary makes no sense. This is very unusual decision making that cannot be explained away as simple mistakes. There is some real dirt here that we are not being told.
I’ll tell you what is a mistake. Thinking you can abandon employees of “the company” to get slaughtered by Jihadists and then simply lie your way out of it with no worry that the truth would not somehow find it’s way out. That’s the mistake.