This is really sad and pathetic. It's not just Chucky Krauthhammer with his head up his ass, now it's rapidly becoming the standard GOP line that there's still something "fishy" about Benghazi.
Just listen to Ron (Right-Wing Weasle) Christie try to continue to argue that "Romney was Right" about the "Act of Terror" not really meaning "Act of Terror" in the Rose Garden.
Christie: The American people did want the truth, the American people have not gotten the truth from this President.
-Crosstalk-
Chris Kofinas: Governor Romney made a mistake. Can you admit that he made a mistake?
Christie: No, he did not make a mistake.
Kofinas: He did make a mistake.
Christie: This Administration made a mistake Chris. The fact of the matter is that ..
Kofinas: In terms of what he was attacking the President on in this debate, he was factually wrong.
Christie: This actually, former Governor of MA, was factually right!
Kinda makes your head want to explode doesn't it? Just wait, it gets worse - over the squiggle of power.
Christie: The fact of the matter is, Ed let me state this very clearly, the Governor said "Mr. President as a fact you came out in the Rose Garden on Sept 12 and said 'Act of Terror' but you weren't specifically speaking about Benghazi.
Ed: So he didn't go far enough in his verbiage?
Christie: But here's the thing... --crosstalk--
Ed: He did say "Act of Terror".
Christie: No, The President did say "Act of Terror". He absolutely did.
Ed: But Mitt Romney didn't...
Christie: The President was corrected by Governor Romney for saying you weren't speaking specifically about Benghazi.
Ed: So we're now word-smithing, we're now word dissecting and coming to a determination that the President admitted that it was a terrorist attack. That's where the criticism is?
Christie: No, no no. That's not where the criticism is.. this is not a partisan issue for me, Ed and Chris. This should be, the President of the United States needs to be...
Ed: I, I, get that Ron.. but it seems to be a partisan issue for Mitt Romney because of the way he reacted within 12 hours of what happened without all of the information. He was putting a label on all of this, which I think is dangerous. But Candy Crowley, why is she being criticized? The Truth Matters. Chris, doesn't the truth matter?
Kofinas: Of course it matters. At the end of the day here, again, I think this is Republican frustration with what they thought was going to happen in that debate. And what they thought was going to be an ability to attack the President on Libya. They weren't successful, and they can sit there an attack Candy Crowley all they want but the reality is what the President said, what Romney attacked him about was wrong.
They then go to showing video from Megan Kelly on Fox news where she claims with a straight face that an "Act of Terror" is somehow different from a "Terrorist Attack".
Exactly how is it different? How exactly can you perform an act of terrorism, without it being terrorism? What is it - a bar mitzva gone bad?
And then Christie gets to the meat of his "issue".
Christie: Here's why - I was in the White House on 9/11. I think terrorism is not a partisan issue.
Ed: Sure.
Christie: I think this is a very, very serious issue that we're dealing with. I think the American people weren't leveled with by this Administration. I think the President would have been very smart to come out and said, immediately, "This was an Act of Terrorism".
Ed: Well, they didn't have all the information. They have said that they didn't have all the information.
Christie: Oh, C'mon. The National Counter-Terrorism Center said, 24 hours later, this was a Act of Terrorism. I think this is a Cover-UP. I think this is more significant than Watergate. No one died in Watergate.
Kofinas: You can not say that. You can not say that on National TV, that's "It's a Cover-up" with no evidence of anything like that. It isn't. You can argue that the Administration didn't handle this well, but you can not say it was a cover-up. That is a Sinister Agenda, that is going too far.
Christie: Look, my friend. The United States Ambassador to the United Nations came out that Sunday and said it was all related to the video. 17 days later..
Kofiinas: NO, that is not correct.
Christie: ..wait a second. You're sounding like the President They came out 17 days later and said in fact, this was not a spontaneous demonstration. This in fact was a.
Kofinas: That's not correct.
Christie: ... terrorist attack.
Kofinas: Ambassador Rice Qualified What She Said. Listen to exactly her comments. She qualified it and made if very clear they didn't have all the information.
Bottom line, Kofinas was
Dead on it and it needs to be said again and again. I said it in
a Diary days ago Ambassador Rice never said
definitively whether this was an act of terrorism or not. But she
certainly did not rule it out - she said they would have to wait until they FBI Investigation was completely to know the full story.
Gregory: you talked about this as spontaneous. can you say definitively that the attacks on our consulate in lybia that killed ambassador stevens and others there was spontaneous? was it a planned attack? was there a terrorist element to it?
Rice: let me tell you the best information we have at present. first of all, there's an fbi investigation that's ongoing and we look to that investigation to give us the definitive word as to what transpired. but putting together the best information that we have available to us today, our current assessment is that what happened in benghazi was, in fact, initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in cairo, almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video. what we think then transpired in benghazi is that opportunistic extremist elements came to the consulate as this was unfolding. they came with heavy weapons, which unfortunately, are readily available in post revolutionary libya. and it escalated into a much more violent episode. obviously, that's our best judgment now. we'll await the results of the investigation, and the president has been very clear we'll work with the Libyan authorities to bring those responsible to justice.
If this was an attempt to "coverup" that this could have been a terrorist attack, Ambassador Rice did horrible job of making that case. The fact is she didn't make that case. She never said that the
demonstrators attacked the Consulate, she said
Other People Came with Heavy Weapons and attacked the Consulate while demonstrations were taking place. They have been confused about which demonstrations where taking place where - but they
Never Said the Attack was because of the Video.
Christie claims this isn't "Partisan" but having been in the White House on 9/11, he should know by now the danger of jumping to the wrong initial conclusions!
Let me put it this way...
Christie was part of the White House who Jumped to the Wrong Conclusion on Iraq, Saddam's connection to al Qeada, their nuclear aspirations and their "WMD Stockpile". They were Wrong On Every Count, and they couldn't be convinced otherwise. They can't even admit it now. Now they tried to blame it on "Bad Intelligence", but the intelligence wasn't wrong. They were.
There was a dispute between the State Dept and CIA over the "Yellowcake" memo, remember? State said it was a forgery, but the CIA - as directed by Dick Cheney - kept digging and ultimately sent Ambassador Wilson to Niger to get some answers.
He came back and essentially confirmed he Yellowcake receipt was fake. And just how was this information received by the Bush Administration?
Not very damn well.
In the IRAQ NIE included a long dissent by both the State Department and the Energy Dept who said the "Aluminum Tubes" were of the wrong composition to be used as centerfuges disputing the conclusion that Saddam was reconstituting his Nuclear program.
They didn't listen.
When European CIA Chief Tyler Drumheller tried to warn George Tenet not to use any information from Curveball about "Mobile Labs" because he couldn't be trusted.
They didn't listen.
When the UN Inspectors said the U.S. WMD intel on the ground was yielding nothing but garbage after garbage.
They didn't listen.
When General Hussein Kamel told U.S. Intelligence that "Saddam had destroyed his WMD's", President Bush said "Why doesn't he tell us something useful!."
They then had him go on to Forge a Letter claiming that Saddam was Responsible for 9/11
President Bush committed an impeachable offense by ordering the CIA to to manufacture a false pretense for the Iraq war in the form of a backdated, handwritten document linking Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, an explosive new book claims.
The charge is made in “The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind, released today.
Suskind says he spoke on the record with U.S. intelligence officials who stated that Bush was informed unequivocally in January 2003 that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. Nonetheless, his book relates, Bush decided to invade Iraq three months later — with the forged letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam bolstering the U.S. rationale to go into war.
The Bush people have argued they had nothing to do with the letter, but they never said that Habbush didn't tell them
Saddam didn't have any WMD's.
They just didn't LISTEN.
Ultimately the Duelfer Report confirmed exactly what Habbush had told them before the War Started. Saddam had destroyed his WMD in 1992.
Now, you wanna talk about Cover Up? Dick Cheney outed the identity of a CIA Agent simply to protect his cover up. Yeah, that's worse than Watergate.
To see the difference taking the time to get the right answer makes you can also look back to the example of how Chris Wallace came after Bill Clinton over "Why they didn't do something about the Bombing of the U.S.S. Cole?"
There’s a new book out, I suspect you’ve already read, called
The Looming Tower. And it talks about how the fact that when you pulled troops out of Somalia in 1993, bin Laden said, I have seen the frailty and the weakness and the cowardice of U.S. troops. Then there was the bombing of the embassies in Africa and the attack on the Cole.
CLINTON: OK, let’s just go through that.
WALLACE: Let me — let me — may I just finish the question, sir?
And after the attack, the book says that bin Laden separated his leaders, spread them around, because he expected an attack, and there was no response.
As we all know, Clinton's reaction to this was rather explosive, but I bring it up now to focus on this relevant portion.
Clinton: When all you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s book to look at what we did in a comprehensive, systematic way to try to protect the country against terror.
And you’ve got that little smirk on your face and you think you’re so clever. But I had responsibility for trying to protect this country. I tried and I failed to get bin Laden. I regret it. But I did try. And I did everything I thought I responsibly could.
The entire military was against sending Special Forces in to Afghanistan and refueling by helicopter. And no one thought we could do it otherwise, because we could not get the CIA and the FBI to certify that Al Qaida was responsible while I was president.
This is key. When you have different agencies with different conclusions do you
pick the one you like the most or do you wait and let the disagreement be resolved?
Clearly, the Obama Administration has learned the hard lessons of Shooting First and Aiming Later and are doing the responsible thing. Letting the FBI and other agencies do their investigation and updating the public as the facts become more clear. There's no Conspiracy of COVER-UP in that.
In fact, there's good reason for the Administration to be cautious about what it calls "Terrorism" and what it doesn't. The reason is that when the Administration determines something is "Terrorism" - is has the Force of Law.
SEC. 2. AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES.
(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.
If the President says that Benghazi is "Terrorism", he can legally
Unleash Holy Hell upon those who he believes are responsible, and he doesn't have to ask the permission of Congress, or a Judge, or a Jury, or the UN (under
Security Resolution 1368)
The resolution called on all countries to co-operate in bringing the perpetrators, organisers and sponsors of the attacks to justice and that those responsible for supporting or harbouring the perpetrators, organisers and sponsors would be held accountable.[2] The international community was called upon to increase efforts to suppress and prevent terrorist activities through co-operation and implementation of anti-terrorist conventions and Security Council resolutions, particularly Resolution 1269 (1999).
Resolution 1368 concluded with the Council expressing its readiness to take steps to respond to the attacks and combat all forms of terrorism in accordance with the United Nations Charter.[3]
This isn't something to be taken lightly. It's not something to done quickly, without all the facts on hand. That's something that someone who was "in the White House on 9/11" should know better than anyone.
The fact that he doesn't is clearly partisan and a God Damn Shame that he would stoop so low as accuse the Obama Administration of perpetrating a "Cover-Up Worst than Watergate" just to undermine the President and the nation's security while beating a hollow drum of False "Patriotism".
Sadly most of the GOP would happily do the same.
President Obama has been doing the right thing on this right from the start, we all need to understand that and back him on that.
Taking the time to Get The Facts Right Matters. Being willing to adjust your conclusion when the differ with they facts, matters. In fact it's a Life and Death Matter.
Vyan
3:56 PM PT: Talking Points Memo explains that Christie is no Outlier, the GOP Punditburo has been pushing the "Cover Up" line for some time.
If you had been listening to Republicans or watching Fox News in recent weeks, you knew that what Romney said wasn’t simply an off-the-cuff or clumsy error. For weeks now, opponents of the administration have been trying to paint the Benghazi attack not just as a possible security or intelligence failure that resulted in the deaths of Americans abroad, but as a scandal that the Obama administration tried to cover-up. And a key part of the Benghazi cover-up theory is the suggestion that the administration made a political decision to avoid or delay calling the assault on the consulate “terrorism,” and to resist the possibility that the attack was planned.
...
People with experience in intelligence and national security who spoke with TPM this week downplayed much of the debate. They said they see nothing unusual or nefarious in the official story having evolved over time. In fact, they said, it is all but expected that the first official account of a complex and fast-moving event will turn out to be wrong or incomplete.
“Sorting out what happened — in terms of the source of the attack, who knew what before the attack — is a very difficult, complicated, time-consuming process,” Vicki Divoll, former general counsel of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told TPM. “And it is legitimate for it to take several weeks or even longer before you have the answers you need.”
Yeah, what he said.
4:14 PM PT: What the latest Intelligence and Reporting says as of now via Hardball.
According to these reporters there was both an attack and a protest, but rather than the protest occurring first and then escalating into an attack - the attack happened first and a separate, apparently unconnectedk, protest of the video happened later.