February 15, 2013
"The White House admitted today that President Obama made no phone calls – none, zero – on the evening of September 11, 2012..."
"... during the seven or eight hours when Americans were being murdered in Benghazi. He didn’t talk to Leon Panetta, or any military personnel, or Hillary Clinton. What was he doing that night? We may never know; perhaps writing the speech that he gave at a campaign event the next day in Las Vegas."
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74 comments:
What difference, at this point, does it make?
The gleeful arrogance at wielding power and having to answer to no one that I hear from the Dems now is quite revealing, isn't it?
Gone are the great moral justifications and outrages!
We won! You can't stop us! The press is on our side! Fuck you! We'll do whatever we want!
Bracing, isn't it?
I can't imagine that he was writing the speech either.
I can't imagine that he was writing the speech either.
People don't call.. they text.
I bet he texted Leon.
It's easier to defend being ignorant of the situation than knowing and doing nothing.
He's a busy man. Leave him alone. /sarc
I'd be really surprised if he wrote that speech. If it was Obama himself, alone, I'd be extremely impressed. And extremely surprised.
A little choom and then off to bed! He wanted to be his best for the marks at the carnival the next day, 'er oops, the donors at the fundraiser.
Who cares? He won, the election is over (and he won) and so it's time to move on because Obama won. Sheesh, what a bunch of racists.
And, besides, Obama is black.
So, posting this makes you a racist, Althouse.
kcom said...
I'd be really surprised if he wrote that speech. If it was Obama himself, alone, I'd be extremely impressed. And extremely surprised.
I see what you did there...
Ann...
You've written that Pres. Obama covered up this mess out of a sense of shame.
You are projection your own personality (and sense of morality on him.)
The man is a sociopath...the superficial charm, the manipulativeness, the grandiose sense of self, the lying, the shallow emotions, juvenile delinquency, irresponsibility, parasitic lifestyle, authoritarianism, contemptuousness for opponents...and, yes, absence of feelings of guilt, shame, or remorse.
A tad scary, no?
There were other important events for him to follow that night.
Writing a speech? No. He has people for that. He was playing Tiger Woods PGA Tour on his XBox.
Yes. We almost had to know this on some level when they wouldn't give the tick-tock immediately afterward
That he was not pressed for an answer sooner is just depressing.
The fade-away jump shot is not easy to master, takes hours and hours of practice.
Sorun, then he suffered enough.
That game is awful.
So what book was Obama reading?
Barak Obama votes, "Present," once again. What a pussy.
I thought we knew this already?
Maybe he just thought he'd fuck it up even worse if he got involved. I'll give him credit for that.
Barak Obama votes, "Present," once again. What a pussy.
Nah, he just voted "meh."
This is such a dead horse that they can now tell the truth!
i've said it before, the meme that he gave clear orders to safeguard the people, combined with the revelation that Panetta and Dempsey did squat, just doesn't jive with the fact that he was embarassed in the morning.
If he did give orders at 1700 that night, in the morning, he should have had somebody's ass.
i think that the embarassment and cover up is about the equivocation at 1700, not after the fact.
I think there were no "safeguard' orders given, and that is the scandal.
There were lots of options if you weren't worried about Libyan polling data :)
regardless, he's not Bush, so the press will give him a pass.
“The minute I found out what was happening . . . I gave the directive,” he said, “to make sure we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to do. I guarantee you everybody in the CIA and military knew the number-one priority was making sure our people are safe.”
Uh-huh.
There is nothing pointing to the idea that he said to safeguard out people that night. I am certain he said it the next morning, about remaining people in embassies. His actions actually support that..
Obama is black.
He's handing out stuff to women, blacks and gays. So, he's above questioning or dissent.
The newspapers aren't even covering this story. They don't care.
This is the outcome of the great "bigot" game that academia, government and the corporate world have been playing on us for the past few decades.
All dissent is bigotry. Give up, bigots. You've been had.
I'm going to report all of you to The Multicultural Student Center at the University of Wisconsin.
Directives numbers two and three were about investigating what happened and bringing those people to justice
Those were not three directives issued at the time it was happening. They are after-the-fact.
Given the bad shit the CIA was doing in the annex and which Obama knew about it is likely tha Panetta told him to walk away and know absolutely nothing about what happened next. No fingerprints. No calls. No culpability. Bad bad stuff was being done in Benghazi and we do not need or get to know about it.
What was he doing that night?
Without sarcasm, it really doesn't matter. We've known all along what he didn't do and that's all that really matters.
I think Obama didn't act because he didn't want to make a spectacle of it. He had the successful Bin Laden raid, and couldn't afford an unsuccessful Libya raid. Everyone in his administration said an unsuccessful Bin Laden raid would have ruined him politically, so we know that's how they think.
He figured it was better to let it happen in a place with very little news coverage, and to diffuse any bad press with accusations about Romney, followed by the actions of the campaign to have the 47% tape released
Better a few dead far-away Americans than a military failure tot try to run on.
"What was he doing that night? We may never know"
You must be mistaken. Just four days ago, Inga scolded us: "We know what happened, didn't you read the hearings transcripts?"
Clearly many people didn't care, one way or the other, while certain others were deliberate in hiding that fact. They lied and they still won. Free stuff is more important than leadership.
Shouting Thomas highlights the second most disgusting aspect of this. The papers and networks are generally ignoring this story. It's bad enough that Obama failed to lead. It's worse that there were multiple (largely successful) attempts to draw public attention away from the Administration's passivity. One of these involved sending a man to jail for publishing a video. Another consisted of destroying the career of his U.N. ambassador. A third involved orchestrating the firing of the CIA Director and diminishing his ability to reveal Obama's lack of involvement. None of this seems to interest the nation's press.
Another consisted of destroying the career of his U.N. ambassador
--------------
Wow David. For the first time it occurs to me he did that to make her pay for talking him into Libya in the first place.
Perhaps he even floated her name as SoS knowing she'd get criticized for what he had her do.
As I say, this ain't goin' away and remember, it took 2 years for Watergate to reach a full head of steam.
Shouting Thomas said...
Obama is black.
He's handing out stuff to women, blacks and gays. So, he's above questioning or dissent.
no, all he's doing is giving plum jobs to white guys. All the others are getting is inflation and no jobs.
PS Drill, when did Flournoy go?
"The papers and networks are generally ignoring this story."
I saw Chuck Todd this morning (MSNBC). He showed the Obama/Google footage (from yesterday?) where Obama claims he has the most transparent administration ever, went on to say there are some issues that people have legitimaite questions, then claimed "but Benghazi is NOT a good example of those issues".
Todd then segued to another topic (the budget) by saying, "and now on a much, much more important issue..."
I'm embarrassed for these guys. I truely am.
This comes as no surprise.
Also of no surprise will be the ongoing defense of the Obama-trolls of their do-nothing, incompetent president, no matter how bad it gets (which history indicates will be worse than the first term).
This makes me sad.
@Original Mike/
Yeah, Inga was right, alright--just in a way she didn't/doesn't know. Given who Obama is? (pace St. George, above) We ALL (or those of us above the age of 12 and with an IQ marginally into double-digits) knew at the time EXACTLY what happened...it just took a little more time to confirm the fact..
Maybee said'
Better a few dead far-away Americans than a military failure tot try to run on.
What are a few dead Kulaks in the grand scheme of things?
For some reason this regi......administration reminds me of Stalinist Russia.
Wierd. Huh.
Now that he's President he can ignore anything he finds inconvenient. He doesn't even have to vote "Present". And then he can go on a campaign or vacation. It's awesome.
The Drill SGT said...
I think there were no "safeguard' orders given, and that is the scandal.
My assumption has been that there was an order to safeguard our people ( I think that was how he phrased it when discussing it during the debate ), but telling us that was a misdirection.
The people he gave the order to safeguard were people at our other embassies and consulates throughout the region. I believe the professor is correct, that the people who died in Benghazi were considered a lost cause, so no help was sent.
Somewhere there is a written record of any orders given. I'd love to see that.
Unlike with Watergate, the liberal and progressive Jewish media was on the Obama side of the White House Stonewall on Benghazi.
However, unlike with Watergate and people knowing nothing about FDR, JFK, and LBJ abuses of power and obstruction of law worse than what Nixon did...Obama benefits from the bloody blunders of his predecessor being well known to the American public.
Right wing people screaming 4 DEAD HEROES!!!! have to contend with the public thinking that is still a whole lot better than the 45,000 casualties and squandered 2 trillion on neocon adventures under Bush..
Same thing with the capitalist meltdown on Wall Street and the economic debacle that started (then joining the 3 million manufacturing jobs Bush&Co cheered going away under Market Freedom!)
If you start by following a Jimmy Carter, the media senses the public WANTED Reagan to succeed and gave him a large amount of goodwill.
Same with Obama following Dubya....
Unlike with Watergate, the liberal and progressive Jewish media was on the Obama side of the White House Stonewall on Benghazi.
However, unlike with Watergate and people knowing nothing about FDR, JFK, and LBJ abuses of power and obstruction of law worse than what Nixon did...Obama benefits from the bloody blunders of his predecessor being well known to the American public.
Right wing people screaming 4 DEAD HEROES!!!! have to contend with the public thinking that is still a whole lot better than the 45,000 casualties and squandered 2 trillion on neocon adventures under Bush..
Same thing with the capitalist meltdown on Wall Street and the economic debacle that started (then joining the 3 million manufacturing jobs Bush&Co cheered going away under Market Freedom!)
If you start by following a Jimmy Carter, the media senses the public WANTED Reagan to succeed and gave him a large amount of goodwill.
Same with Obama following Dubya....
We know a CRITIC message was sent and we know protocol has it going to the CinC. Forget about phone logs for a second, how about those logs? Answer all the questions NOW, and be done with it.
So as soon as we found out that the Benghazi consulate was being overrun, I was on the phone with my national security team, and I gave them three instructions. Number one, beef up our security and — and — and procedures not just in Libya but every embassy and consulate in the region. Number two, investigate exactly what happened, regardless of where the facts lead us, to make sure that folks are held accountable and it doesn't happen again. And number three, we are going to find out who did this, and we are going to hunt them down, because one of the things that I've said throughout my presidency is when folks mess with Americans, we go after them.
Debate 10/16/2012
In the flux of events, he seems to have been more passive and indecisive than a blunderer. This isn't the worst scandal in history, but it is demonstrably a bigger scandal than the Valerie Plame outing. Obama looks bad, but the press looks very, very bad.
How many phones--including cell phones--do you think the POTUS has access to--especially during a campaign-- where those calls can't be part of the official phone record?
Obama is a POS. No more, no less.
He and Hillary had their '3 AM call' and they just ingored it.
And in Houston a murial of him has been defaced twice. Hell, his 'Chairman Mao' murial should be torn down.
But he is not a coward.. he is just lazy and does not care. And that is worse.
What MaryBeth wrote is a misdirection by Obama. You wouldn't say, upon hearing the Consulate is in the act of being overrun "we must investigate what happened and bring these people to justice". That's what you say when it is over.
And you don't say "beef up our procedures" when you know our Ambassador's safe house is under assault and he is missing.
Is THIS version even true? I really don't know. Is it possible that what was actually said or done that evening is more damning than claiming the president did nothing?
IOW, embarrassing yes, but nothing to see here. Nixon's famous "plausible deniability" comes to mind.
Given the bad shit the CIA was doing in the annex and which Obama knew about it is likely tha Panetta told him to walk away and know absolutely nothing about what happened next. No fingerprints. No calls. No culpability. Bad bad stuff was being done in Benghazi and we do not need or get to know about it.
That's as close to truth as we will get to for a long, long time.
Next C4 will blame Pearl Harbor and The Gulf of Tonkin on the neo-cons and Jews.
"Is it possible that what was actually said or done that evening is more damning than claiming the president did nothing?"
Seems likely to me. I still can't believe he did nothing.
How likely is this scenario?
The White House, 5:04 PM
The President: Hey Leon, look what I found on YouTube! Funny shit.
Mr. Panetta: Mr. President, it's just a low-budget, poorly edited, bad satire of Muhammad. There's an attack on our consulate in Benghazi!
The President: Tu lo tienes, Leon. I need to chill. Big day tomorrow in Vegas.
Bengahzi is the biggest cover-up since the 1969 caper of the Swine of Chappaquiddick. Watergate doesn't even come close to these two.
In the flux of events, he seems to have been more passive and indecisive than a blunderer. This isn't the worst scandal in history, but it is demonstrably a bigger scandal than the Valerie Plame outing. Obama looks bad, but the press looks very, very bad.
I still don't see Plame as a real scandal, but a made up one, by Wilson and his buddies in the media. The question was, how did he get that expense paid junket to Africa, to investigate for the CIA, when he was a known political enemy of the Bush Administration. And, the obvious answer was that his name was put forward at the CIA by his CIA employee wife, Plame. Never will know whether she just wanted to get him out of the house, or did want to do political damage to the Bush Administration. Looking at what they did to Petraeus, the latter would not be out of character for that agency.
@edutcher
per wiki
On December 12, 2011, Flournoy announced that she would step down in February 2012 to return to private life and contribute to President Barack Obama's re-election bid.
She left in Feb 2012
Bengahzi is the biggest cover-up since the 1969 caper of the Swine of Chappaquiddick. Watergate doesn't even come close to these two.
But, the problem is the question of what can be done about it? Any attempt to impeach would probably pass the House, fail the Senate, then cost the Republicans the House in the next election. And, the Obama Administration would continue on as if nothing had ever happened.
Remember Clinton's 3am ad from the 2008 primary campaign? Turns out neither of them were available to take the call.
Darrell said...
We know a CRITIC message was sent and we know protocol has it going to the CinC. Forget about phone logs for a second, how about those logs? Answer all the questions NOW, and be done with it.
I've sent CRITICs. They are Info POTUS and action: DIRNSA (in my day). The point is, there are incoming logs at the WHCS that show them coming in. and a log showing what time some Army Major handled it to the POTUS or whomever.
There isn't any log that will show POTUS giving an order orally. I'm damn sure he didn't send a formatted msg on the SIPRNET to Panetta. President's pick up the phone.
I think there were no "safeguard' orders given, and that is the scandal.
Agree with The Drill SGT. We are still not being told the truth, but they are releasing information in such a slow, confusing, boil-the-frog way that people can't see it and don't care.
Plus of course there is the Pravda-like coverage the media gives Obama.
This isn't the "3:00 a.m." call. This call came in during business hours.
I bet that speech was a good one. Someday people will realize it was worth the price. He knows what's really important. He has the best minds working for him, and he knows what's best way before we can understand it. Someday we will.
Missing the point....
Once the consulate came under attack, Stevens "pushed the red button" so to speak, sending an instant flash cable to over 100 agencies, including the Situation Room at the White House.
From that point on, the "rescue" is nearly on auto-pilot, according to pre-determined, set protocols.
Obama didn't have to "intervene" to make sure the response was happening.
Obama had to have intervened to make sure it didn't.
Obama didn't have to "intervene" to make sure the response was happening.
Obama had to have intervened to make sure it didn't.
Exactly. And if so, barring a really, really good explanation for why no response was made and why the Obama administration had to mislead American citizens repeatedly on Benghazi, how is this not grounds for impeachment?
Either the upper levels of Republican leadership have made the calculation that given Obama's support and the media's abdication that impeachment would boomerang on them -- which could be true -- or they simply lack the courage to jeopardize their cozy berths in the nomenklatura.
Brown dog,
Yes, if that is how these things work, then that is why I wrote what I did. None of the different stories hang together as far as I can tell.
Look, I know many things, but I don't know what SOP is in this situation. So I and the rest of most Americans don't have a firm base against which to evaluate what's being fed to us. An inquiring press could help us along that road but they have been totally AWL on this.
And that was not a typo. They've been absent with leave, not AWOL.
CWJ said...
Brown dog,
Yes, if that is how these things work, then that is why I wrote what I did. None of the different stories hang together as far as I can tell.
Look, I know many things, but I don't know what SOP is in this situation.
I'm not certain it's so cut and dried with regard to contingency plans.
a. If a USMC MEU or BTF had been in the Med, maybe. They have the "rescue the Embassy Mission," and practice it. There wasn't a MEU around
b. What I do know from my G-3 ops center days, is that around the Med, units would get a retrans of the 'Consulate is under attack' msg through intel channels. All the Army Operators would be sounding 'boots and saddles' (you civilians know it as the bugle call at the race track :)
anyway, guys would be checking ammo loads and go bags. Pilots would be drifting into the ready rooms, and smart squadron commanders would be loading ready aircraft with likely loads, to get a jump, if orders to go were given.
The fact is, the point of the spear would be moving toward Benghazi. but nobody ever said launch, 'because it was too late'
Candy Crowely said that, in fact, he did call, that night.
To be clear, there were two separate "events".
The protocols for the consulate attack seemed to have been executed. A unit was dispatched from Tripoli, and drove to Benghazi, aircraft flown in to the airport for evacuation. Some 40+ individuals (survivors) were "rescued" and evacuated to Germany. To this day no one outside of the Obama administration even knows their names or whereabouts.
Then, you have the attack on the "safe house", CIA OPS.
They were painting targets with lasers instead of direct fire for a reason.
Murder, she wrote
That Ben Ghazi guy sure seems hard to figure out--but, not really.
(((sigh)))
"What difference, after Rubio drank water, does it make!"
BHO has evolved past being just present. Now he is absent
BHO has evolved past being just present. Now he is absent
Althouse, okay, he made no calls, but what about emails, texts or visitors to his residence that evening? There are other means of communication beside the phone.
And speaking of the phone, was that the WH Land Line or all phones, including cells and secure satellite phones? I didn't see that defined and instead of tugging the loose thread, the media is just letting it dangle.
Dangle like Obama did with Ambassador Stevens and the 3 other Americans murdered by Terrorists and obfuscated by Dems and the Media as a Video driven protest gone slightly 'turbo' and Romney's idiotic response to the Cairo Embassy Condemnation.
Some action should have been done, even if unsuccessful in the end. But it appears nothing was done and so far successfully hidden from the public.
Keep tugging on this thread, it will lead to the truth.
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