FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2012
Susan Rice can go hang in the yard: The thing we’ve found most offensive in this is the way they’re willing to waste Susan Rice.
The way they’re willing to take her out with their insultingly stupid "logic" and their cherry-picked quotes.
We don’t know Rice, but she has always seemed smart and decent to us. Now she’s being taken out, as was done to so many others back in the Clinton-Gore years.
And how strange! Rachel, upset by the war on women, is hiding beneath her big desk! They keep pounding away at Rice—and Rachel keeps very silent.
Open letter to Maddow:
Get off your ass, you big piece of slick! Stand up on the air tonight and call out these tribunes to power!
Name their names! (Their names are many.) Stop clowning around with your endless stores of bullshit.
Fantasy over! Rubes, get real:
Rachel will keep her trap shut tonight! Darlings! Among the multimillionaire crowd, things like that simply aren’t done!
Go ahead—watch her program tonight. The silence will be very loud—and the White House may hang in the balance.
Also silent about this war on a smart decent woman: Joy-Ann and Alex and Krystal and Ana. Have we heard a peep out of Harris-Perry?
Dearest darlings, come to your senses! Pelley and Crawford are Major Guild Power! Why, Crawford used to be on the NewsHour!
Critiques of such people aren’t done!
"Open letter..."
ReplyDeleteYeah, that'll get her attention.
Do you doubt Maddow's staff are aware of this site?
DeleteIt would be more becoming for you to simply come out and say that, like Maddow, you couldn't care less about Rice being hung out to dry.
Aware of this site? Maybe. Give even a tinker's damn about it? Doubtful.
Delete" ...you could care less about Rice being hung out to dry."
DeleteNice non sequitur.
So 3:33, are you saying that Rice will get hung out to dry unless Maddow rides to the rescue?
DeleteNot at all.
DeleteIt is not a given that Maddow confronting this would be sufficient.
But given her (Maddow's) pretensions to thoroughness and honesty it should be necessary for her to confront it.
Why shouldn't she?
Because she's only got five hours a week to devote to her show? Less if there is a debate on that week?
DeleteAnd what are you saying? That if Rachel Maddow would have devoted an entire segment, hour or even a week explaining Susan Rice's comments, that the right-wing echo machine would have been stopped in its tracks and wouldn't have dared spin the lies they are spinning now?
Are you really that naive?
Your reading comprehension circuits have failed, but your Maddow-apology functions are in perfect order, sir.
Delete"It is not a given that Maddow confronting this would be sufficient."
You might give comprehending that sentence another try -- Perhaps your failure mode is only intermittent.
And once again, it's not just "the right-wing echo machine" where these lies are being spun at this point.
You know, when all a guy can say over and over is "reading comprehension" it's like the loser in a debate complaining about the moderator or the other guy being mean. It means you lose.
DeleteAnd by the way, the right-wing echo machine does certainly originate and spin the lies. They are given oxygen when so-called mainstream "fact-checkers" like PolitiFact breathes life into them.
Which is exactly what Maddow said. And Somerby. Only they can't be saying the same thing because Somerby says she's wrong for saying it. And Somerby's cattle have more sweet hay to low on.
“I have seen that report, and the story is absolutely wrong. We were not aware of any actionable intelligence indicating that an attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi was planned or imminent. That report is false.”
ReplyDelete— Carney, news briefing, Sept. 14
* * * * *
“Based on the best information we have to date ... it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo, where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video. 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.... We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned.”
— Susan E. Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Sept. 16
* * * *
QUESTION: “Simply on the basis of what Ambassador Rice has publicly disclosed, does the United States Government regard what happened in Benghazi as an act of terror?”
SPOKESWOMAN VICTORIA NULAND: “Again, I’m not going to put labels on this until we have a complete investigation, okay?”
QUESTION: “You don’t — so you don’t regard it as an act of terrorism?”
NULAND: “I don’t think we know enough. I don’t think we know enough. And we’re going to continue to assess. She gave our preliminary assessment. We’re going to have a full investigation now, and then we’ll be in a better position to put labels on things, okay?”
— exchange at State Department briefing, Sept. 17
* * * *
“Well, you’re conveniently conflating two things, which is the anniversary of 9/11 and the incidents that took place, which are under investigation and the cause and motivation behind them will be decided by that investigation.”
— Carney, news briefing, Sept. 17
* * * *
QUESTION: “We have reports that the White House said today that the attacks in Libya were a terrorist attack. Do you have information indicating that it was Iran, or al-Qaeda was behind organizing the protests?”
OBAMA: “Well, we're still doing an investigation, and there are going to be different circumstances in different countries. And so I don’t want to speak to something until we have all the information. What we do know is that the natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video were used as an excuse by extremists to see if they can also directly harm U.S. interests.”
— President Obama, Univision Town Hall, Sept. 20
* * * *
QUESTION: “I heard Hillary Clinton say it was an act of terrorism. Is it? What do you say?”
OBAMA: “We are still doing an investigation. There is no doubt that the kind of weapons that were used, the ongoing assault, that it wasn’t just a mob action. Now, we don’t have all the information yet so we are still gathering.”
— Obama, on ABC’s “The View,” Sept. 25.
* * * *
QUESTION: “Is there any reason why the President did not — he was asked point-blank in The View interview, is this a terrorist attack, yes or no? Is there any reason why he didn’t say yes?”
CARNEY: “He answered the question that he was asked, and there's no reason that he chose the words he did beyond trying to provide a full explanation of his views and his assessment that we need to await further information that the investigation will uncover. But it is certainly the case that it is our view as an administration, the President’s view, that it was a terrorist attack.”
— Carney, news briefing, Sept. 26
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/from-video-to-terrorist-attack-a-definitive-timeline-of-administration-statements-on-the-libya-attack/2012/09/26/86105782-0826-11e2-afff-d6c7f20a83bf_blog.html
I think it's an excellent challenge. Rachel's perch isn't so high and mighty that she looks down on the rest of us. She just doesn't have what it takes.
ReplyDeleteIt's ugly and sickeningly ironic how so many are up in arms over this particular incident, yet are able to completely overlook the vastly more damning evidence of gross incompetence/collusion in the events/signs leading up to 9/11.
ReplyDelete5:15, the only thing your string of quotes demonstrates to me is an administration being very cautious about what it says while the investigation is underway.
ReplyDeleteNow you might construe that denying it was an "act of terror" despite all the statements that said it was, which you conveniently ignore since it doesn't fit the spin you want to put on it.
But I really see it as keeping your yap shut until you know what you are talking about.
What a concept, and certainly foreign to the Romney campaign and its band of merry followers.
And his timeline also conveniently omits every reference to the incident as an act of terror.
DeleteSusan Rice has not seemed decent to "us", not when "we" first saw that she had led the charge to keep the UN from investigating war crimes by Israel in Gaza. Of course people in her position are paid to take disgusting stances.
ReplyDeletelink
Susan Rice is a wild-eyed war-monger who is a critical part of a disastrous, aggressive American foreign policy.
ReplyDeleteYeah, too bad we still don't have the level headed John Bolton at the U.N. (sarcasm).
DeleteI'm the anonymous of October 19 6:09, the one who mentioned Gaza.
DeleteAnyway, yeah, the Republicans are worse. I hope Obama wins. I also think parts of his foreign policy are disgusting.
We have a horrid foreign policy, complete with illegal and un-Constitutional act and destructive and self-destructive as can be. Susan Rice defends all this. I have no respect for her at all.
ReplyDeleteOh, for the good old days when waterboarding, renditions and warrantless wiretaps were part of our foreign policy.
DeleteAnon 6:52 & 6:42
DeleteYou are attacking her from the opposite side than Romney & Republicans. Their manufactured outrage is based on the claim that she's too soft, too liberal/leftist.
A/C in Ma
Now it's just most of those things, not all.
DeleteOr so we are told.
And some apparently believe it. Huh!
I don't understand why it is so important that average Americans are informed of the exact nature of a attack on our embassy in Libya. It seems to me the important issue is that our intelligence people were pretty quick in getting to the bottom of things and hopefully reacting properly. Whats wrong with waiting till the facts are fully understood before making public comments? I think this whole issue about when the attacks were called terrorist instead of part of a mob action is silly. All I want to know is that the people that attacked and killed our Ambassador and other Americans have been killed or captured.
ReplyDeleteThis controversy is simply an example of the Karl Rove manufactured type of issue that the press seems to have mindlessly played right into.
DeleteAC / MA
I'm not sure why Maddow should be held to such strong account for not coming to the defense of Susan Rice. Susan Rice and the Obama administration seem to me to want Rice to remain under the radar in the this election-year manufactured controversy. Not sure of all their reasons (smart election-year politics of their own? internal power struggles: should Obama win, when Hillary resigns, who will be named new Sec. of State?), but this "conspiracy of silence" seems pretty big.
ReplyDeletePossibly Rice is being hung out to dry. Don't know. It is interesting, though, this silence from her and about her by the administration.