Ambassador Rice was right: Last night, David Brooks became a traitor to his class.
Jeffrey Brown asked him about the ugly attacks on Susan Rice. Brooks basically said it’s a big pile of crap.
He cited David Ignatius:
BROWN (10/19/12): What do you think? Is this [the focus on Benghazi] hurting the president, as it kind of drags on?This is the piece to which Brooks referred. Note the headline. Duh:
BROOKS: I personally don't think so. I think the hardest argument—the argument that they could make, the Republicans could make of the president is, you spent four or eight years criticizing Dick Cheney for misleading the country based on false intelligence, and now you're misleading the country based on false intelligence.
So, it's obviously not the same size issue, but that's basically what they did. They had bad information. It was politically convenient for them, and they repeated them. I don't think many people really blame them. They were given what the CIA— David Ignatius is reporting the CIA told them, this is what happened. They repeated it.
IGNATIUS (10/20/12): CIA documents supported Susan Rice’s description of Benghazi attacksThere’s more, and you should read it. (Could someone please alert Salon?) But Ignatius deserves a lot of credit for doing something that’s never done:
The Romney campaign may have misfired with its suggestion that statements by President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice about the Benghazi attack last month weren’t supported by intelligence, according to documents provided by a senior U.S. intelligence official.
“Talking points” prepared by the CIA on Sept. 15, the same day that Rice taped three television appearances, support her description of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate as a reaction to Arab anger about an anti-Muslim video prepared in the United States. According to the CIA account, “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.”
The CIA document went on: “This assessment may change as additional information is collected and analyzed and as currently available information continues to be evaluated.” This may sound like self-protective boilerplate, but it reflects the analysts’ genuine problem interpreting fragments of intercepted conversation, video surveillance and source reports.
In the face of a furious right-wing assault, Ignatius stood up and said bullshit.
Darlings, this was simply never done in the Clinton-Gore years! Many, many pigs were killed because of the Extended Group Silence—and because of the gullibility of folk like those apes at Salon.
Make no mistake—the Romney campaign will try to kill the number-one pig with this theme next Monday. It still might work, due to the complicity all over the mainstream press world.
Also, due to the silence and haplessness of our own so-called “liberal” world.
This is a very dangerous theme—and the theme is still in play. At the town hall debate, Obama gave a horrible non-answer regarding this matter. Romney saved him when he made his foolish, ginormous blunder.
But Romney will make another try—and this theme remains dangerous. Based on yesterday’s behavior, the apes at Salon may grunt and howl as they endorse what he says.
Tomorrow: Back to John King’s disgraceful conduct on CNN last night. This assault is being conducted all through the mainstream press.
The children still haven't quite noticed.
Repeated mentions of the video serve to provide a distraction from the date of 9/11 and ignored pleas for security resulting a successful terrorist attack
ReplyDeleteWhat we do know is that the natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video were used as an excuse by extremists
ReplyDeleteAwkward hard sell. What they do know is it was 9/11 and security was insufficient to prevent 4 murders.
Anonymous you are on a rampage over this. Even with evidence that the administration was simply passing on the information it got from the CIA when talking about this tragedy, disproving your claim that the president was intentionally hiding the truth, you persist, shifting gears to asserting that the administration ignored pleas for more security, (which pleas, to the extent they occurred, didn't work their way up to the White House). Romney is pretty much a zero on foreign policy, and in Rove-like fashion has latched onto this as an issue. It's all concocted. What are we supposed to do, vote for Romney because of this?
DeleteEmphasizing and de-emphasizing elements (video, 9/11), saying they didn't know the details while repeatedly pointing to the video as a way of minimizing any negligence in providing security (on 9/11). Better to help out the murderers with excuses and avoid characterizing the event as an organized terrorist attack (known within 24 hours) than risk that ignoring requests and permitting an attack on the most predictable day of the year will define the story.
DeleteWe are supposed to find out what they knew and when, and how they chose to present the information, why the video was emphasized, why the feds decided to investigate and arrest the filmmaker two weeks after the attacks.
Uhhh...didn't the Ignatius article make that clear? That's what the CIA was reporting to them! There's no political conspiracy. They played it straight, and reported the uncertainty while suggesting the motivations that were suggested by the CIA.
DeleteAnon 3:16, 3:25 & 5:48, we are witnessing someone (you) going off the deep end on this. This is weird.
DeleteAC/MA
So your argument is that an administration would never promote a preferred, favorable and unsupported narrative in statements they make about an event (conclusive statements alongside disclaimers that they know nothing). Let's agree to disagree.
Delete"They played it straight, and reported the uncertainty while suggesting the motivations that were suggested by the CIA."
DeleteWhich is a dumb thing to do. When addressing such a highly critical issue, you don't "suggest" anything. You speak about that of which you are 100 percent certain, or you don't speak at all, especially when the investigation has barely begun.
Sometimes the best response is the true response: "We don't know yet, but we'll certainly tell you when we do."
11;37, I am the guy saying Rice's statement was dumb AND the right-wing echo chamber has gone off the deep end about it.
DeleteBut I am also to understand why the administration would "prefer" a narrative of spontaneous attack growing out of a protest outside the mission over the video.
Using the principle of Occam's Razor, I am quite open to the possibility that Rice's dumb word choice was hers alone.
Clarification: "I am also AT A LOSS to understand why the administration would 'prefer" a narrative . . ."
DeleteI sure hope that someone can explain to me what political advantage this "narrative" could have possibly been gained.
But I am also to understand why the administration would "prefer" a narrative of spontaneous attack growing out of a protest outside the mission over the video.
DeleteIt moves the focus away from "real (evil Al Qaeda) terrorism" Americans are afraid of as opposed to "ragtag mob" they aren't afraid of (unless working overseas) and offers a way to focus attention on a video (which they did, repeatedly) and away from failure.
These are not central to the issue of failure but can be put together to make a nice tale about how a video made some crazies mad and "no one could have predicted" it (on 9/11) to provide adequate security, and "if this were REAL terrorism, the important kind, we would have caught it" are defenses against accountability for failure.
Much emphasis on the video and the "spontaneous" nature of the attack. Few notices of 9/11 and nothing but excuses and buck passing about security negligence.
Maybe it's just me, but I would find more comfort believing there is one, single evil network that we can name and whose leaders we can identify that is responsible for all the terrorism in the world, rather than a whole slug of "ragtag mobs" we can't even begin to count, and armed with mortars rocket-propelled grenades.
Delete"to help out the murderers"
ReplyDeleteOK, thanks Anonymous.
It's good of you to make perfectly clear what you are.