This is a pet peeve of mine because you hear this claim made again and again not just from GOP talking points but largely from even members of the media. Even those who are advocates of Susan Rice say "everybody makes mistakes" and that any errors in what she said in the September interviews should not be held against her. Or, at best that she simply read the talking points the CIA asked her to stick to so that she can't be blamed for whatever omissions these contained.
I've argued this before-that she said nothing wrong but that there really isn't any "mistake" either in what she said nor any deep problems in the Obama Administration's narrative that requires any deep explanations for.
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/11/since-john-mccain-knows-everything.html
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/10/cia-reports-on-libya-backs-up-susan-rice.html
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/10/so-many-have-been-so-wrong-about-libya.html
Now I see that a piece by Scott Monje makes this point really well and succinctly. His title says it all Confusion in Benghazi for that's really the heart of it. A big part of why there's so much misinformation about Benghazi is there's so much misunderstanding about what really happened. The source of the problem is confusion.
We saw how confused Mitt Romney was in the second debate when he thought he was about to bloody Obama's nose on never using the word terrorism. Turns out this was an urban legend that Romney believed no doubt from watching too much Fox News.
Yet the confusion is much more widespread-as we saw above many of those who actually wish Ms. Rice and the Administration well and say she should still be confirmed as Secretary of State miss the point by conceding that there was after all lots of conflicting stories about Benghazi that we need answers for.
Meanwhile the Republicans who are driving the train on Benghazi conspiracies-going as far as suggesting we need Watergate style hearings to get to the bottom of them missed a hearing last week that would have explained many of the questions they claim to be demanding answers for. John McCain explains that he already knows everything there is to know. So why have a hearing? Just tell us everything you know as that's everything.
At the heart of the confusion is the idea that there's something contradictionary between talking about the anti-Muslim video and talking about what happened as terrorist attack. There seems to be a presumption that it was either caused by the video or it was a wholly planned attack by al Qa 'ida that had nothing to do with the video at all. This is the fallacy. In fact the CIA believed as Ms. Rice said that the video did set the attacks in motion-that the Benghazi attacks were inspired by the Tripoli attacks which were inspired by the video.
The CIA and Libyan intelligence still believe this. In truth what the best intel seems to suggest is that they were of course terrorist attacks but that it was opportunistic rather than planned. Usually the choice is given between "planned" for months vs. wholly "spontaneous." What happened was that a spontaneous reaction to the anti-Muslim film-a reaction that was foreseen by the filmmakers, which seems to me to make them culpable; we do have freedom of speech but we don't allow screaming fire in a crowded theater-was used by terrorist groups-not necessarily primarily al Qa 'ida-as a cover for something they had sought an opportunity for and found it in the guise of the anti-video protest.
"in the Benghazi case, the two interpretations become caricatured as either a totally spontaneous event inspired by outrage over an Internet video or a terrorist attack planned long in advance by a known al-Qa’ida-affiliated organization that was untouched by emotion and uninfluenced by the video. The variants are treated as mutually exclusive, although there is no reason that parts of each cannot be true and it is unlikely that either is fully correct as is. Much of this political positioning occurs at the psychological level, before the conscious angling for advantage even begins."
"In connection with this, the classified version of Ambassador Susan Rice’s talking points reportedly laid responsibility to both Ansar al-Sharia and Al-Qa’ida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The Office of the Director of National Intelligence deleted the specific names and replaced them with the term “extremists” in the unclassified version. This was reportedly done because the link was considered “tenuous” even at that time. A further reason could have been to conceal from the two groups how much we knew (or did not know, as the case may be). Other leaked reports, however, suggest that AQIM was not directly involved after all and learned of the event only after the fact, when Ansar al-Sharia called them up to brag about it. The relationship between the two groups is still not fully understood.
"Regarding other aspects of the current “common knowledge,” it is worth mentioning that both Reuters and the New York Times have stood by their interviews with people described as unarmed demonstrators. It now appears, however, that they arrived at the scene after the attack was initiated rather than before, as observers, cheerleaders, or perhaps looters. Also, the CIA continues to stand by its assessment that the attack was inspired by the Internet video and the attack on the U.S. embassy in Egypt earlier that day. The agency apparently has evidence that the attackers watched the Egypt assault on TV; moreover, that is what Ansar al-Sharia told AQIM when they called to brag. It is also what the attackers told the unarmed bystanders at the time. So, if the attack was “preplanned,” the planning occurred that same day. In this connection, the CIA has dropped the description “spontaneous attack” in favor of “opportunistic attack.”
http://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2012/11/23/confusion-in-benghazi/
So there is no contradiction between a spontaneous outburst caused by a video or an elaborately planned terrorist attack planned months in advance. In truth it was a terrorist attack that was executed opportunistically from a spontaneous outburst against a Muslim baiting video. Again, I think the makers of this film do deserve some complicity-moral and legal-even if the terrorists no doubt would have at some point found another pretext for their attacks.
For more on this complicity see these links
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/09/nakoula-filmaker-of-innocence-of.html
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-innocence-of-muslims-are-there-any.html
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/09/feds-question-innocence-of-muslims.html
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/09/libyan-people-say-no-to-al-qaeda.html
http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2012/09/anti-muslim-filmmaker-held-without-bail.html
No comments:
Post a Comment