[Flem72]

Well?

And criticizing my spelling error doesn't count....

[nigel_k]

Since I am not a US voter, it's easier to just wait a couple of weeks until after the election when the facts will undoubtedly start coming out.

[hrothgar]

The world is a complicated place and this doesn't sit well with people who crave simplistic explanations...

[Flem72]

nigel_k, on 2012-October-24, 17:52, said:

Since I am not a US voter, it's easier to just wait a couple of weeks until after the election when the facts will undoubtedly start coming out.

Yes, that's clearly the administrations's -- very convenient -- preference.

[Flem72]

hrothgar, on 2012-October-24, 18:31, said:

The world is a complicated place and this doesn't sit well with people who crave simplistic explanations...

Oh, very complicated. You got anything else?

[PassedOut]

No sign of a coverup, but competence may be at issue there.

[hrothgar]

Flem72, on 2012-October-24, 18:38, said:

Oh, very complicated. You got anything else?

Why don't you start with the following:

http://www.motherjon...hing-susan-rice

Please feel free to ask for help if any of the words are too long...

[Flem72]

hrothgar, on 2012-October-24, 18:43, said:

Why don't you start with the following:

http://www.motherjon...hing-susan-rice

Please feel free to ask for help if any of the words are too long...

You're killing me. _ Mother Jones_? In the face of the evidence of the emails sent to hundreds of the administration's closest and bestest right after the event?? Right back at cha: http://abcnews.go.co...ory?id=17555363 and you'll notice that's ABC ("Always Barack Completely")

Here's a question that includes nothing longer than four-letter words: What do u no about de ploy ment of mortars?

[jdeegan]

On the outskirts of the small mountain resort town of Ruidoso, New Mexico is a residential street named Willie Horton Drive. On this two block street lived the former campaign manager for George Herbert Walker Bush. So seldom does any political campaign manager come up with an original ploy, that I believe that this monument is appropriate.

In this month's US presidential campaign the Republican party sees the way to winning as a replay of 1980. First, their candidate establishes himself as during the first debate as a plausible leader (also worked in 1960). Then he saddles the incumbent with a foreign policy debacle.

Boring, but it will probably work.

[hrothgar]

Flem72, on 2012-October-24, 19:20, said:

Here's a question that includes nothing longer than four-letter words: What do u no about de ploy ment of mortars?

Not much. (Though my brother in law was an artillery captain)

Then again, I can count past four which is a skill which seems to elude you since "about" has five letters and "mortars" has seven...

[hrothgar]

Flem72, on 2012-October-24, 19:20, said:

You're killing me. _ Mother Jones_? In the face of the evidence of the emails sent to hundreds of the administration's closest and bestest right after the event?? Right back at cha: http://abcnews.go.co...ory?id=17555363 and you'll notice that's ABC ("Always Barack Completely")

Few quick observations:

First: The fact that there were hundreds of emails making competing claims supports my case which is "The situation was fluid and confusing"

Second: As is pointed out in the Mother Jones piece, Susan Rice was very careful to qualify her statements:

Here's a quote from that Mother Jones piece

Quote

Rice was, in fact, properly cautious in her TV appearances. The transcripts here are crystal clear. On Face the Nation, for example, she carefully told Bob Schieffer that she couldn't yet offer any "definitive conclusions," but that "based on the best information we have to date" it appeared that there had been a spontaneous protest in Benghazi "as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo where [...] there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video." She then immediately added: "But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution. And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent." When Schieffer pressed her on whether the attack had been preplanned, or whether al-Qaeda was involved, she said directly that we simply didn't know yet.

Finally, You might not like Mother Jones, however, the article in question does a very good job making factual statements and providing supporting evidence. FWIW, the article that you are referencing simply states that Republicans are throwing a hissy fit. (No one would dispute this). What the article doesn't do is fact check any of the statements that the Republicans are making. Indeed, the very purpose of the Mother Jones article is to point out that those claims are unfounded.

Oops... I've gotten up to three points and from the looks of things you have trouble counting past four. Better play it safe and stop now...

[Flem72]

hrothgar, on 2012-October-25, 06:11, said:

Then again, I can count past four which is a skill which seems to elude you since "about" has five letters and "mortars" has seven...

Tsk tsk. I so wish you hadn't taken that bait.

[Flem72]

Let's continue to ignore the point that "best information we have to date" is pretty much the whole shebang (wasn't), and the admin's folks have been all over the place. And then some. Of course, Rice later claimed that she hadn't seen the updates before she went on the talk shows. Oh, wait, she got the emails instantaneously. Gosh, I get so confused when I try to count past four different explanations of the same series of events.

[hrothgar]

Flem72, on 2012-October-25, 07:54, said:

Tsk tsk. I so wish you hadn't taken that bait.

I failed to appreciate that elementary errors in arithmetic was a deliberate trap and part of your master plan...

[Vampyr]

I have a third option, which is that the issue is entirely irrelevant.

[Flem72]

Vampyr, on 2012-October-25, 10:01, said:

I have a third option, which is that the issue is entirely irrelevant.

Just curious, how did you feel about the recent assassination attempt on Her Majesty's Ambassador to Libya? Was withdrawal of the embassy the proper response?

[Vampyr]

Flem72, on 2012-October-25, 10:49, said:

Just curious, how did you feel about the recent assassination attempt on Her Majesty's Ambassador to Libya? Was withdrawal of the embassy the proper response?

I do not have enough information to answer this question. Luckily it was up to people with a lot more experience in diplomatic matters than I have to make this decision.

In any case, back to the OP topic, what is the President expected to do except give the best information his intelligence have gathered at any given point in time? I thought that Republicans granted omniscience to only one person -- or have they deified Obama?

[ArtK78]

Coverup or incompetence? I prefer the way that the Mother Jones article put it: "properly cautious." Something the republican candidate for president clearly was not.

[mikeh]

I find it amusing, but also ominous, that so many people seem to get not only their 'facts' but also their views/opinions from those whose stock in trade is simplistic cartoon depictions of complex topics.

Does Flem have ANY idea of how events unfold in the real world? Particularly events as tumultuous as the attack in Libya? Those in Washington responsible for interpreting the events and explaining them to the public would have been receiving a myriad of different and often at least partially inconsistent reports on what had actually happened.

It is apparent to anyone who checks the records, as opposed to what Fox News and similar organs of propaganda spew, that the US Gov. understood very early that there was a possibility that organized extremists/terrorists had committed the attack, whether as an opportunistic seizing upon the video-inspired demos or because of the anniversary of 9/11 (or both) not being clear.

My experiences with attempting to reconstruct often chaotic and unexpected events is on a far different and usually less tragic scale....I do a lot of litigation that arises out of accidents of one kind or another....I have done plane crash fatalities, 'bad baby' claims, and both fatal and serious injury mva litigation. It is a truism that if you have, say, 5 witnesses to an accident, you will find, when you question them, that they are describing 5 different accidents.....often the differences are in detail, but on occasion they can be matters of substance on which a person naive to the effect of stress on memory (even of trained professionals....I have litigated police shooting cases) would be astounded at the contradictions.

I don't claim, of course, to have any direct knowledge of what went on in Washington, but it is apparent to anyone willing to 'think' and do any research into what was actually said over the first two or three days, that there is currently no strong indication of either coverup or incompetence in the response to the incident.

I do not know enough to offer any opinion on whether there was any level of incompetence before the attack.

[Phil]

mikeh, on 2012-October-25, 11:58, said:

My experiences with attempting to reconstruct often chaotic and unexpected events is on a far different and usually less tragic scale....I do a lot of litigation that arises out of accidents of one kind or another....I have done plane crash fatalities, 'bad baby' claims, and both fatal and serious injury mva litigation. It is a truism that if you have, say, 5 witnesses to an accident, you will find, when you question them, that they are describing 5 different accidents.....often the differences are in detail, but on occasion they can be matters of substance on which a person naive to the effect of stress on memory (even of trained professionals....I have litigated police shooting cases) would be astounded at the contradictions.

MikeH is to ellipses as I am to semi-colons; take that for what it is worth.