Yeah, it's a fantasy, but I can dream about Romney apologizing to Obama at Monday night's debate.
"I'm sorry, Mr. President, for asserting that you and your administration misled the American people about what happened in Benghazi right after the attack on our consulate. Now information has come out that supports the initial analysis of the situation."
This assumes that Romney reads the Los Angeles Times, and saw its recent "No evidence found of Al Qaeda role in Libya attack" story.
Excerpts:
The assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi last month appears to have been an opportunistic attack rather than a long-planned operation, and intelligence agencies have found no evidence that it was ordered by Al Qaeda, according to U.S. officials and witnesses interviewed in Libya.
…The attack was "carried out following a minimum amount of planning," said a U.S. intelligence official, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a matter still under investigation. "The attackers exhibited a high degree of disorganization. Some joined the attack in progress, some did not have weapons and others just seemed interested in looting."
A second U.S. official added, "There isn't any intelligence that the attackers pre-planned their assault days or weeks in advance." Most of the evidence so far suggests that "the attackers launched their assault opportunistically after they learned about the violence at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo" earlier that day, the official said.
…The description by witnesses also differs from some of the administration's recent statements. Officials, most notably Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, at first said they believed the attack was motivated by a controversial anti-Islamic video produced in the United States. More recently, officials downplayed any connection. But in Benghazi, witnesses said members of the group that raided the U.S. mission specifically mentioned the video, which denigrated the prophet Muhammad.
Tarek, an off-duty police sergeant who asked that his full name be withheld to shield him from reprisals, said he came to the scene about an hour after the attack began and found militants blocking the road leading to the compound.
"They drew their guns on me and they told me that the Americans were abusing our prophet," he said. "That's why they said they had come to fight."
…Rice has been widely criticized for comments she made on a round of talk show appearances Sept. 16, when she said the attack appeared to have stemmed from a protest over the video, similar to the violent demonstration at the embassy in Cairo. Rice was echoing a set of CIA talking points that have since been made public.
American officials now say there was no protest in Benghazi, only the attack, which began at 9:40 p.m. and continued at a second facility into the next morning.
…Now, however, said another official with access to the intelligence, "it may turn out that the initial assessment was not that far off."
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The fact is that the State Dept. made the grave mistake of removing security from a dangerous place and the administration handled the fallout from the subsequent event poorly, at best.
I think R will win because of the sentiments expressed in the following, pasted from a news aticle:
“Matt Blunt is a 42-year-old IT manager from Sterling, Va., in Loudoun County, outside Washington[an important county in this swing state]. Blunt voted for Obama in 2008, hoping he could change Washington’s bitter tone, but now backs Romney.
“What I see in Romney is the stronger potential for leadership than we’ve seen in the past four years,” Blunt said, adding that Obama “hasn’t lived up to the promise.”
“Potential” is the key word. I think a lot of people who voted for O feel like Blunt does. O has been a very polarizing president, at least as much as Bush. O promised to be a unifier, one who could change how business is done in Washington. People saw that potential and voted for him, but that potential did not manifest. Now he has been revealed as just another deceptive politician who promises much and delivers little.
Many people will now look for potential elsewhere.
[Note from Blogger Brian: right-wing lies aren’t tolerated on this blog, and DJ is a habitual liar. I’m sharing his comment as an example of how ideology trumps respect for the truth. Vote Obama, if you value reality.
Here’s a good overview of the truth about Benghazi. It isn’t known who was responsible for the attack. So DJ is wrong about Al Qaeda being responsible, or the attack being pre-planned more than a few hours before.
http://seattletimes.com/html/politics/2019591792_apususlibyaqa.html?prmid=head_main
DJ also is wrong about Obama denying that this was a “terror” attack. Obama did this repeatedly, beginning the day after the attack. Another right-wing lie. PolitiFact does say that several interpretations of the attack were given by administration officials. These came from intelligence agencies and evolved as more was known about the attack. http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/oct/17/mitt-romney/romney-says-obama-waited-14-days-call-libya-attack/
There was a quick response from a CIA team immediately after the attack. Another Fox News lie debunked. The Obama administration did not tell the CIA to “stand down.”
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/11/new-detailed-account-of-benghazi-attack-notes-cias-quick-response/
Lesson to be learned: don’t believe Fox News. Believe in credible sources. I enjoy DJ’s comments because they make me proud to be part of the reality-based community, which likely is going to triumph on election day tomorrow.
Warning: lies follow, below the line. DJ: another warning to you. It takes time for me to refute your lies. From now on I simply won’t publish them. Do your fact-checking before you submit a comment, please. I shouldn’t have to be like a fourth-grade teacher who corrects obvious misspellings because a child refused to use a dictionary.
–Brian]
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We now know, in the two weeks since the LA Times report above, that the report’s central premise (unplanned attack…no Al Qaeda role) is wrong.
And we now have definitive proof that Romney’s “Obama didn’t call it a terrorist attack for two weeks” assertion was in fact true in the mind of the POTUS himself – despite his Oct. 16 Debate 2 righteous indignation. That proof comes via CBS 60 Minutes release of yet another round of additional interview footage not originally aired. The interview was recorded with Steve Kroft on Sept. 12 AFTER Obama’s Rose Garden speech BEFORE he left that same day for Vegas. Obama had no wiggle room – the contents of his speech were fresh in his mind and on paper in Steve Kroft’s hands.
CBS released the first round of additional footage (abridged) shortly after Debate 2 – and that abridged clip seemed to support Obama’s debate contention that he had identified Benghazi as an act of terror in the Rose Garden speech.
But yesterday (2-1/2 weeks after Debate 2) CBS finally (WTF CBS??) released the lead-in question to the abridged 60 Minutes footage – and the full context shows that Obama agreed with Steve
Kroft (note the lack of righteous indignation) that he had intentionally avoided connecting Benghazi with terrorism when delivering the Rose Garden speech hours earlier:
KROFT: Mr. President, this morning YOU WENT OUT OF YOUR WAY to avoid the use of the word terrorism in connection with the Libya Attack, do you believe that this was a terrorism attack?
OBAMA: Well it’s too early to tell exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans. And we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure that we bring these folks to justice, one way or the other.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50134495n&tag=mg;60minutes
Over the next two weeks Obama/Clinton/Rice would make their rounds on the Sunday morning talk shows, press conferences, in front of the UN, on The View, and on Libyan television blaming a video for a spontaneous uprising and denying what we now know they knew as four Americans died while the drones hovered over Benghazi: That this was indeed a 9-11 Al-Qaeda linked (the CIA cites knowing in real-time that it was Ansar al-Sharia) terrorist attack on US soil and US souls for which US military aid was desperately requested but never rendered.
Americans Died. Their names were Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, and Glen Doherty. Obama’s Lies and his administration’s dishonorable foot dragging and cover-up continues.
Sincerely,
Big Oil