WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2012
The coast is now clear for Rachel: From this new post by Kevin Drum, we see that Obama stoutly defended Susan Rice today.
We’re glad that Kevin has pointed it out. We're glad Obama did it.
More good news:
This means that Rachel Maddow, Our Own Rhodes Scholar, will now feel free to defend Rice too! At long last, the truth of this matter will be perfectly safe for our team’s most adorable hustler.
Sounds like Bob's back on his meds.
ReplyDeleteShe really is adorable, I agree.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, to be fair: Rachel has a glass ceiling, and through it she looks up at Chris Matthews' balls. (Gross.) Until somebody puts him out to pasture, there's a limit to how far outside the Matthews-party line she can tread.
No wonder she's a lesbian.
DeleteOne reason Rachel remains my favorite of the MSNBC nighttime lineup is that she's such a gifted windbag herself, she relies least on the usual gang of idiots that are called to testify on all the other shows. I swear, there must be a room full of cots somewhere at 30 Rock. Don't these people have homes?
ReplyDeleteI can certainly agree with that. The others have guests only to act as mirrors of themselves. They ask questions but only to cue them to agree with the host. Chris Matthews is the worst of the lot. If they stray even an inch from his party line he shuts them down.
DeleteRachel asks intelligent questions, listens, and accepts their answers. You actually learn something from her guest.
The worst thing about this is that it's given Lindsey Graham and John McCain something else to bitch and moan about as they plot their next war.
ReplyDeleteIts so nice to know that Joe Lieberman (I-LIE) is no longer one of those three stooges.
DeleteSo, no we know, it was the President, or his White House staff, who instructed Ambassador Rice to push a misleading description of Benghazi.
ReplyDeleteAmbassador Rice read the latest CIA reports only hours before she went on air. She said exactly what they said. If the CIA reports were wrong or incomplete, blame the CIA, not Rice or the President.
DeleteGee, I remember not so long ago when we viewed CIA reports and talking points with skepticism because of the pressure applied by the White House.
DeleteBut, it's Obama. So it's all cool.
But as Bob reminds us, not all of what Rice said was false, just when she said there was a demonstration. And when she said that security was adequate. Other than that, she was great.
DeleteI am now real curious how the Benghazi story will play out. I may be wrong but it seems to me that people like McCain and the usual suspects(Fox) played pure politics with this from the very start and that is a genuine story worthy of attention. I hope Obama continues to call out McCain and pushes the media to lay this thing out correctly. I fear it will remain a murky he said, she said story that the so called liberal press fails to cover professionally.I don't have cable so I rarely see Maddow and never saw Glen Beck. I used to wish the left had someone to be our "Limbaugh" but I now agree with Bob that the tactics of right wing talk radio are ugly and harmful to all and the answer and hope is to stay focused on presenting the truth as best as possible and let the cards fall where they may.
ReplyDeleteHere's my guess as to how it will play out. It will fizzle. Die on the vine. There is no "there" there. Whatever figure of speech you want to use.
DeleteThere is no grand conspiracy. Sorry, to disappoint the right-wing about that, but it would have been far better for Obama to paint the attack as long-planned and well-executed from the get-go, so he could use the old Rovian tactic of "The world is a dangerous place full of well-organized terrorist cells who want to attack, and I am the guy who killed bin Laden who can best protect you."
Right now, based on his record, I have no reason other than to take Obama at his first words: That the attack will be investigated, that the perpatrators will be identified, and they will be brought to justice.
End of story.
Eli Lake, national security reporter, explains it:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/10/01/the-intel-behind-obama-s-libya-line.html
The theory that the attacks were spontaneous was echoed by White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on Sept. 14, just three days after the attacks, and again on Sept. 16 by Ambassador Rice. On Sept. 18, Carney said, “Based on information that we—our initial information, and that includes all information—we saw no evidence to back up claims by others that this was a preplanned or premeditated attack.”
The intelligence that helped inform those talking points—and what the U.S. public would ultimately be told—came in part from an intercept of a phone call between one of the alleged attackers and a middle manager from al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the group’s north African affiliate, according to U.S. officials familiar with the intercept. In the call, the alleged attacker said the locals went forward with the attack only after watching the riots that same day at the U.S. embassy in Cairo.
However, the intercept was one of several monitored communications during and after the attacks between members of a local militia called Ansar al-Sharia and AQIM, which, taken together, suggest the assault was in fact a premeditated terrorist attack, according to U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials not authorized to talk to the press.
In one of the calls, for example, members of Ansar al-Sharia bragged about their successful attack against the American consulate and the U.S. ambassador.
It’s unclear why the talking points said the attacks were spontaneous and why they didn’t mention the possibility of al Qaeda involvement, given the content of the intercepts and the organizations the speakers were affiliated with. One U.S. intelligence officer said the widely distributed assessment was an example of “cherry picking,” or choosing one piece of intelligence and ignoring other pieces, to support a preferred thesis.
You do know that the well-armed terrorists could have been planning to do something but didn't know exactly what, and the attack on the Benghazi compound could still be spontaneous and inspired by the Cairo demonstrations and al-Sharia's call to action.
DeleteIt doesn't take much advance planning to grab your weapons, pile into some cars, and attack the nearest American installation you can find.
And if the communications were "during and after the attack" how does that suggest pre-meditation?
I'm thinking it was Petraeus who selected the talking points. He is an army-action guy, not an intel-analysis guy. Also, he would not want his resume further blemished by failure at the CIA, after failures in Afghanistan and Iraq.
DeleteIf you (Anonymous earlier) count Petraeus as part of the White House, then so be it. I don't. I think Petraeus needed to go, and by good fortune Obama was handed the weapon to get rid of him without mussing his own hands.
The President commented:
ReplyDelete"But when they go after the U.N. ambassador, apparently because they think she’s an easy target, then they’ve got a problem with me."
The president is obviously a skilled slayer of strawmen. People are going after Rice, not because she is an easy target, but because she made statements that are now recognized as false.
The president also said:
"If Senator McCain and Senator Graham and others want to go after somebody, they should go after me. And I’m happy to have that discussion with them. But for them to go after the U.N. ambassador, who had nothing to do with Benghazi and was simply making a presentation based on intelligence that she had received and to besmirch her reputation is outrageous."
Again with the funnies. Why did the administration think it wise to put on the teevee thingy someone "who had nothing to do with Benghazi."
Well then, let's hear from someone who had something to do with it and might therefore be equipped to recognize phony talking points.
"People"? You mean the President's political opponents, don't you? Because there's no reason to go after Rice at all, unless she was instrumental in concocting false reports or at least unless she knew they were false. For which there is no evidence, your phony claim about "phony talking points" notwithstanding.
DeleteThe administration put Rice on TV because she's our ambassador to the UN. UN ambassadors often speak for the country on international matters, but they're rarely a party to diplomatic or military incidents abroad.
I'd guess that McCain and Graham looked at what happened to the last Republican phony to take on Obama over Benghazi, and decided to lower their sights a bit. Graham did issue a statement in which he squeaked that he considered Obama a failure as Commander-in-Chief and to demand "hearings" and "accountability" for what he called a "debacle." Graham's been in office since 2003. Somehow I'm suspicious of his new-found standards for judging C-in-Cs and his righteous fervor in investigating this country's foreign debacles.
That's absurd! Why should the administration choose someone who knows anything about an issue to brief the public?
DeleteYou ask for explanations and answers to your questions. It's not our job to educate you to sift through the media minefield of political rhetoric and come up with some basic grasp of the situation. It was your parents job to teach you how the world works and it looks like they dropped the ball.
DeleteABL, Anonymous: "someone" such as...?
DeleteUnspecified, of course.
You don't want to name anyone who's merely a perfectly obvious and usual spokesperson who has received the most-current intelligence information, no!
Idiots.
Hillary Clinton, Petraeus, for example. Someone who had "something" to do with Benghazi, as Obama put it.
DeleteRealize that Obama's comments came after Lindsey Graham and John McCain shot off their mouths about how Rice isn't qualified to be Secretary of State.
ReplyDeleteNow he was on ground he could fight and easily win -- the character and reputation of Susan Rice, rather than some ill-advised (and I can think of no better definition of "ill-advised" than this) and utterly inconsequential remarks she made two months ago on national TV.
Fighting the right-wing nut machine on their grounds -- that the remarks she made were perfectly accurate at the time but are no longer true -- is to use the old Nixonian "no longer operative" defense.
And Obama has wisely avoided wandering into that briar patch no matter how loudly certain "liberal" bloggers and pundits have screamed for him to do so.
Incidentally, this particular Rachel Maddow takedown of every single Republican conspiracy theory talking point during the campaign was classic, and it has gone viral. Wonder why Somerby has never said anything about it:
ReplyDelete"Ohio really did go to President Obama last night, he really did win. He really was born in Hawaii, and he really is, legitimately, president of the United States again. And The Bureau of Labor Statistics did not make up a fake unemployment rate last month. And the Congressional Research Service really can find no evidence that cutting taxes on rich people grows the economy. And the polls were not skewed to oversample Democrats. And Nate Silver was not making up fake projections about the election to make conservatives feel bad. Nate Silver was doing math.
"And climate change is real. And rape really does cause pregnancy sometimes. And evolution is a thing! And Benghazi was an attack on us, it was not a scandal by us. And nobody is taking away anyone's guns. And taxes have not gone up. And the deficit is dropping, actually. And Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction. And the moon landing was real. And FEMA is not building concentration camps. And UN election observers are not taking over Texas. And moderate reforms of the regulations on the insurance industry and the financial services industry in this country are not the same thing as communism."
Yes, so clever. It's a scandal Bob hasn't commented.
DeleteLast night on a plane flight I did what, as a rather mainstream liberal, I almost never do: turned down the dial to the one true liberal channel and saw what was going on at the dreaded MSNBC. Both Ed and Lawrence could not have been more emphatic in their defense of Rice, though I suppose the Daily Howler would not have been satisfied that they didn't go back and take apart Her now famous TV appearance once again. What the Daily Howler won't say, I'm guessing, is the McCain and Graham have pandered to the Fox nuthouse with a crude vulgarity indicating a level of dementia it would be difficult for anybody to answer effectively with rational arguments and facts and figures. Neither Ed nor Lawrence were great as journalists, but they said what needed to be said.
ReplyDelete"What the Daily Howler won't say, I'm guessing"
DeleteBzzzzztt! WRONG, of course.
But do keep playing, please!
Where does he say it? Quotes please....
DeleteHe doesn't, it seems. Why are the most dishonest DH butt kissers always Anonymous? Or maybe it's just one guy. TDH is very critical of McCain (though being "Angry" is hardly his problem), really says nothing about the always creepy Lindsey Graham.
DeleteIn the end, however, there is quite a bit of validity in TDH's point, and Rice's original statement should not be lost by her defenders. She said and did nothing wrong. Why the big trashing of Rice? Why the flight to the utterly irrational.....could there...God forbid... be an element of..... (deep breath).... RACE at play? Perish the damnable thought forever!!!
Shorter Greg:
DeleteOK, yeah Somerby has talked about McCain, contrary to my "guessing," and his work has "validity" -- But if you agreed with Somerby before I did, you're a "butt kisser."
It was a State Department consulate branch that was attacked. The person to speak was Hilary Clinton. I gather Clinton was too busy to make the talk show rounds. Some consider the UN ambassador, if not second in command, then at least by stature a natural surrogate.
ReplyDelete
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