Benghazi Special Investigation

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, DEMOS!

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Sorry, I missed the dates.

Marriage can do that. Just don't tell your wife and you'll be fine.

This topic has kind of quietly been swept under the rug what with the new focus on ISIS. Guess it was only a big deal that we needed to sort out and impeach the President over until something better came along.

Just like the other 20 or so incredibly important reasons to impeach Osama that have come before.

Robear wrote:

Just like the other 20 or so incredibly important reasons to impeach Osama that have come before.

Not sure if on purpose...

Well his avatar is a troll...

That's not why it's my avatar. I've mulled changing it for that reason. It was simply my primary WoW character.

If you guys think I'm a troll, then I should definitely change it.

If you think I was referring to the Republican stereotype, yeah, you're right.

We know. It's just too fun to rattle your cage about it once in a while.

Because no one else rattles my cage lol.

It's okay, though, I know you're good people.

I guess I should not be surprised by how often Benghazi is brought up in casual conversation by tin foil hat types who regard it as gospel truth that Obama murdered an ambassador and covered it up. But it is more than a bit dismaying that major broadcast media does so pretty consistently without being contested.

No wonder that half the country believes in angels and can't find Brazil on a map.

Robear wrote:

Just like the other 20 or so incredibly important reasons to impeach Osama that have come before.

What's super frustrating is that there are very real reasons to impeach him (the surveillance bullsh*t and drone strikes are probably the two biggest), but they ignore those completely.

Malor wrote:
Robear wrote:

Just like the other 20 or so incredibly important reasons to impeach Osama that have come before.

What's super frustrating is that there are very real reasons to impeach him (the surveillance bullsh*t and drone strikes are probably the two biggest), but they ignore those completely.

They don't ignore -- they love them.

Quintin_Stone wrote:
Malor wrote:
Robear wrote:

Just like the other 20 or so incredibly important reasons to impeach Osama that have come before.

What's super frustrating is that there are very real reasons to impeach him (the surveillance bullsh*t and drone strikes are probably the two biggest), but they ignore those completely.

They don't ignore -- they love them.

Yeah, it's kinda hard to try and impeach someone for things you hope will still be in place once your guy gets the authority to use them.

So the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee quietly published the results of the seventh investigation into Benghazi on Friday. I say quietly because it's conclusions were essentially the same as the six other investigations: the Obama administration acted appropriately, the CIA and the military responded as best they could, and there was no order given for other assets in the area to stand down.

Sen. Lindsay Graham responded to the results of the investigation by saying "the report is full of crap" and that the Congressional investigators did a "lousy job" on their two-year investigation.

That only leaves one more investigation--the House Select Committee on Benghazi's investigation--to uncover the Obama administration's abject incompetence. Or is it the Obama administration's secret plot to kill Americans? I can't keep up on crazy conspiracies.

What I can be confident in is that we won't hear a damn thing from the House Select Committee on Benghazi until the 2016 presidential election gets in full swing and they can question Hillary about why she was so terrible as Secretary of State, why she purposefully endangered American lives, and why she lied to the American public.

Definition of insanity... Republicans really want to own that tshirt.

Other than a committee declining not to take up an investigation (and that's not going to happen while republicans are around) is there any control/law in our government that can stop this ridiculous witch hunt and prevent further reviews?

I think you folks are all missing the point here.

It doesn't matter that it was a lie to begin with. What matters is that they have forced you to address it time and time again in the constant Gish Gallop that is the Right Wing Noise Machine(tm). And by the time you have actually addressed it for the 10000th time, they have already repeated lies about death panels, swift boats, intimidated climate scientists, Hispanic ballot box stuffers, and Clinton's assassins.

Confronting a Right Wing nutbar with facts doesn't seem to help. They mostly just view it as intellectual "bullying" and see it as an infringement of their "right to an opinion".

Sometimes the only thing you can do with a fool is write them off.

Paleocon wrote:

I think you folks are all missing the point here.

It doesn't matter that it was a lie to begin with. What matters is that they have forced you to address it time and time again in the constant Gish Gallop that is the Right Wing Noise Machine(tm). And by the time you have actually addressed it for the 10000th time, they have already repeated lies about death panels, swift boats, intimidated climate scientists, Hispanic ballot box stuffers, and Clinton's assassins.

Confronting a Right Wing nutbar with facts doesn't seem to help. They mostly just view it as intellectual "bullying" and see it as an infringement of their "right to an opinion".

Sometimes the only thing you can do with a fool is write them off.

Hard to write them off when they control Congress and 2/3 of state legislatures. Oh, and most if not all of their presidential candidates will be repeating this stuff.

Dezlen wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

I think you folks are all missing the point here.

It doesn't matter that it was a lie to begin with. What matters is that they have forced you to address it time and time again in the constant Gish Gallop that is the Right Wing Noise Machine(tm). And by the time you have actually addressed it for the 10000th time, they have already repeated lies about death panels, swift boats, intimidated climate scientists, Hispanic ballot box stuffers, and Clinton's assassins.

Confronting a Right Wing nutbar with facts doesn't seem to help. They mostly just view it as intellectual "bullying" and see it as an infringement of their "right to an opinion".

Sometimes the only thing you can do with a fool is write them off.

Hard to write them off when they control Congress and 2/3 of state legislatures. Oh, and most if not all of their presidential candidates will be repeating this stuff.

Pretty much. But on a personal level, anyone who mentions crap like that to me pretty much gets put in the "undermedicated" bin.

The fact is that all they have to do is to keep the words "Benghazi Hillary" in the press every few months until the campaign starts, and then they can haul her in front of Senate and House committees to be repeatedly subjected to grillings about how she got Americans killed through incompetence and tried to cover it up.

Ok, there is a far right guy on site and he always wants to talk politics. I usually can deflect to sports or something but then he mentioned this most recent report and how it shows "Obama is still hiding stuff".

Here is the link he gave me to read (I know FOXnews) http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014...

My question is how can I refute the parts in the foxnews like below:

Now, at least five survivors contacted by Fox News say they too are frustrated and concerned their testimony is not fully represented. Kris Paronto and John Tiegan, both members of the CIA Annex Security Team who responded to the attack in Benghazi, say the report has major flaws.

Paronto said: "Mike Rogers asked me ... 'Do you think that the delay cost lives?' ... and I looked him squarely in the eyes saying 'yes ... definitely.' We were told to wait and delayed three times which caused the deaths of Ambassador Stevens and Sean Smith. Why would the report say otherwise or our words be disregarded?"

I see this from the WaPo article above:

The committee also found “no evidence that there was either a stand down order or a denial of available air support,” rejecting claims that have fed persistent conspiracy theories that the U.S. military was prevented from rescuing U.S. personnel from a night-time assault that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

But I'm not sure if this is directly addressing that. Is there any articles refuting the foxnews stuff?

Thanks!

Karma, try this, pages 8 and 19-21.

Basically, what the investigations found is that the team geared up in about 5 minutes, then they began to contact local militias, looking for intelligence on what was actually going on, and for the loan of "heavy weapons" ("tacticals", trucks with mounted machine guns). After 20 minutes of planning and discussions, and having failed to secure local support, they left. They encountered firefights on the way; it took them at least 20 minutes to cover the mile.

That's pretty good for an ad-hoc tactical response to an unknown but dynamic situation. One of the officers involved noted that given the timing of events, if the team *had* left much earlier, they would quite likely have been wiped out, as they would have faced 150 armed fighters still concentrated in the area of the main gate, rather than spread out all through the area.

Some of the guys were apparently frustrated that they could not just leap in their vehicles and go, but it should be obvious that even though they have clanking brass balls, driving hell-bent for leather into the teeth of an assault, at night, with light weapons and no idea what they are facing, and no plan, would have been a recipe for disaster. As it was, they were run off by a subset of the attackers.

And it's likely that Smith and the Ambassador died *after* they arrived on the scene. These guys were not able to clear the compound and had to retreat, and came under severe assault soon after. There simply weren't enough forces available to do the job, whether they arrived earlier or later. They were lucky to be able to withstand the later assaults on the CIA compound; if the team had gone ASAP and gotten wiped out, we'd have lost that building and around 30-40 more civilians in government service as well.

But people have their own perceptions of events, and Obama is not terribly popular in the military, so these guys are going for their moment in the spotlight.

karmajay wrote:

Ok, there is a far right guy on site and he always wants to talk politics. I usually can deflect to sports or something but then he mentioned this most recent report and how it shows "Obama is still hiding stuff".

Try this web site. It was put together by the Select Committee on Benghazi and it specifically addresses the claim that the CIA Annex Security Team were told to wait.

The DL;DR is that four separate Congressional investigations looked into that question and found that the 23 minute delay by the CIA commander on the ground was entirely appropriate and reasonable given the chaotic situation and their reliance on local militia to provide security.

As to your friend's concern that "Obama is still hiding stuff" you should ask him how Obama would have known that terrorists were going to attack our "diplomatic compound" in Benghazi. That's because any intelligence that there was a pending attack would have literally come from that same "diplomatic compound" because it wasn't an embassy, it was a front for the CIA's intelligence operations all throughout Libya. If the guys on the ground didn't know something was going to happen then there would be no way for Obama or the State Department to know either.

You friend's concern only makes sense if he believes that the US government knows everything and also has the power to successfully intervene everywhere. If that was actually the case then 9/11 wouldn't have happened in the first place.

OG_slinger wrote:

You friend's concern only makes sense if he believes that the US government knows everything and also has the power to successfully intervene everywhere. If that was actually the case then 9/11 wouldn't have happened in the first place.

Did you forget the conspiracy theory that 9/11 was a government approved job? There comes a point when you have to realize some people cannot be reasoned with no matter how many facts you present to them.

Kehama wrote:

Did you forget the conspiracy theory that 9/11 was a government approved job? There comes a point when you have to realize some people cannot be reasoned with no matter how many facts you present to them.

True. But that would be on Bush's watch, not Obama's. And if the guy in question is worked up into a lather over the deaths of four people in Benghazi, he should be apoplectic about 9/11.

That or he believes that both Bush and Obama both those shapeshifting lizard aliens and therefore it's those damn Reptilians that are trying to hide things.

OG_slinger wrote:
Kehama wrote:

Did you forget the conspiracy theory that 9/11 was a government approved job? There comes a point when you have to realize some people cannot be reasoned with no matter how many facts you present to them.

True. But that would be on Bush's watch, not Obama's. And if the guy in question is worked up into a lather over the deaths of four people in Benghazi, he should be apoplectic about 9/11.

That or he believes that both Bush and Obama both those shapeshifting lizard aliens and therefore it's those damn Reptilians that are trying to hide things.

I think the better comparison with Benghazi would be Reagan's monumental fcuk up in Beirut.

Paleocon wrote:

I think the better comparison with Benghazi would be Reagan's monumental fcuk up in Beirut.

Blasphemer!!! St. Reagan was incapable of doing wrong!

OG_slinger wrote:
Paleocon wrote:

I think the better comparison with Benghazi would be Reagan's monumental fcuk up in Beirut.

Blasphemer!!! St. Reagan was incapable of doing wrong!

I was only 17 at the time and I remember thinking how asinine it was that the checkpoints they set up around the base could so easily be overcome by a speeding vehicle. That and the fact that all the guards were effectively unarmed.

GOP leader accidentally tells the truth about Benghazi committee

What you’re going to see is a conservative Speaker, that takes a conservative Congress, that puts a strategy to fight and win. And let me give you one example. Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?

But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known that any of that had happened had we not fought to make that happen.

Arise, thread, and walk again.

http://mediamatters.org/research/201...

Wayne Shelby Simmons, 62, of Annapolis, Maryland, a former occasional on-air commentator who appeared on a cable news network, was arrested today after being indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of major fraud against the United States, wire fraud, and making false statements to the government.

According to the indictment, Simmons falsely claimed he worked as an "Outside Paramilitary Special Operations Officer" for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from 1973 to 2000, and used that false claim in an attempt to obtain government security clearances and work as a defense contractor, including at one point successfully getting deployed overseas as an intelligence advisor to senior military personnel. According to the indictment, Simmons also falsely claimed on national security forms that his prior arrests and criminal convictions were directly related to his supposed intelligence work for the CIA, and that he had previously held a top secret security clearance. The indictment also alleges that Simmons defrauded an individual victim out of approximately $125,000 in connection with a bogus real estate investment. [Justice.gov, 10/15/15]

Rep. Richard Hanna (R NY) also asserts the Benghazi investigations have been political.

First came House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy's career-killing comment that the Benghazi committee deserved credit for dragging down Clinton's poll numbers. Now we have Rep. Richard Hanna (N.Y.) who told a local radio station this week that "this may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton." Hanna added: “I think that’s the way Washington works. But you’d like to expect more from a committee that’s spent millions of dollars and tons of time.”

When Republicans start screwing up their own political hit jobs, you *know* they are messed up. This was bread and butter stuff for them since the late 80's... Now they can't even keep message discipline?