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Will the Libya scandal lose the election for Obama?

Will the Libya scandal lose the election for Obama?

  • Total voters
    71
Krystov said:
It's not just that. I'm not completely educated on the Iran matter, but I don't think Obama is doing anything, has done anything, or will do anything about their nuclear program until it's too late. He's had a trend of being soft with other countries when it comes to his foreign policy. The whole video apology lie is a great example of that. We shouldn't apologize for something that is our right, however screwed up the video may have been.
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1. I don't know Obama's Iran strategy, so I can't comment on it.
2. "Soft" like "killing Osama Bin Laden" or "sending countless drones into Pakistan" or "participating in the Libyan campaign to aid the rebels"?
3. There was no apology tour.

Stop and think about where you're getting your "facts."
 
Navy Pride said:
I am more interested in why Obama let them happen and then covered them up....We know who conducted them.
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I've seen no reason to think either of those things happened, and so far I can only conclude that this entire story belongs in the conspiracy theory forum.
 
Cardinal said:
What makes you think any of this?
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Well, I heard Obama say that it was the result of a video and that it was a spontaneous mob attack. Then I watched the hearing where people testified that 1) there was no mob riot 2) it was not spontaneous, it was planned 3) they had an AA gun and RPGs as well as automatic rifles (not things mobs just carry around with them) and 4) that that particular embassy had asked for more security but instead had security pulled out, even after 200 some prior incidents throughout the year which lead up to Benghazi.

All of this I heard either from the mouth of the president, or on CSPAN watching the hearing itself. Obama was even caught red handed in the middle of one of the debates talking about this.
 
Blackdog said:
Israel and India for all practical purposes are allied against Pakistan. So that is a non-issue. Iran is not our problem. We don't need to send our men and women to fight for Israel when they are perfectly capable of defending themselves with our financial and military (equipment) aid.

I mean the last two wars destroyed us economically, how can you support another financial disaster of a war?

PS we are now way off topic. So with that I am going to bed.
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Israel only friend in the middle east is us.
 
Cardinal said:
I've seen no reason to think either of those things happened, and so far I can only conclude that this entire story belongs in the conspiracy theory forum.
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You just don't believe how incompetent Obama is.
 
Navy Pride said:
Israel only friend in the middle east is us.
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Wrong again...

After decades of non-aligned and pro-Arab policy, India formally established relations with Israel in January 1992 and ties between the two nations have flourished since, primarily due to common strategic interests and security threats. Formation of Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) allegedly neglected the sentiments of Indian Muslims and blocking of India by Pakistan from joining OIC is considered to be the cause of diplomatic shift. - India

Israel has full diplomatic relations with Jordan since the signing of the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace in 1994.

There are more, but why bother. You are going to believe what you want.
 
What cover up? People knew about this the day it happened, and the president was under scrutiny for it right away. He was open and forthcoming about what happened, what they knew, and what they didn't know. Where was there a cover up? Stephen Colbert, of all people, was covering this.

The thing about the video? Do we no longer understand that people can make mistakes? It's not like administration ruled out the possibility of an organized terrorist attack. They simply reached a conclusion based on the available evidence. How is that a cover up?
 
Cardinal said:
I've seen no reason to think either of those things happened, and so far I can only conclude that this entire story belongs in the conspiracy theory forum.
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Have you watched the hearing? Did you see his speech to the UN? What about the debate where he got caught contradicting the news coverage of his speeches saying it was a video? There's plenty of evidence so far to suggest he covered it up. He even said "in the end the president is always responsible", or something of that nature.
 
Paschendale said:
What cover up? People knew about this the day it happened, and the president was under scrutiny for it right away. He was open and forthcoming about what happened, what they knew, and what they didn't know. Where was there a cover up? Stephen Colbert, of all people, was covering this.

The thing about the video? Do we no longer understand that people can make mistakes? It's not like administration ruled out the possibility of an organized terrorist attack. They simply reached a conclusion based on the available evidence. How is that a cover up?
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Except it wasn't a mistake. It was a cover up. They knew within 24 hours that it was in fact a terrorist attack, yet two weeks later they were still feeding us the story that it was a spontaneous mob attack in response to a video. There is proof of this. Go watch the hearing.

As far as I'm aware it wasn't until after the hearing that the administration came clean.
 
Krystov said:
Except it wasn't a mistake. It was a cover up. They knew within 24 hours that it was in fact a terrorist attack, yet two weeks later they were still feeding us the story that it was a spontaneous mob attack in response to a video. There is proof of this. Go watch the hearing.

As far as I'm aware it wasn't until after the hearing that the administration came clean.
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Okay, even if the administration (or part of it) decided to push the video angle... why is this a scandal? Still no evidence to suggest the deliberate decision to allow these people to die, as the OP suggests. Hey, how about the cool ways that the government has used this to push a pro-censorship policy? Oh wait, they didn't. How about all the political gain by taking the wrong side in this? Oh yeah, there really isn't any. Even assuming a deliberate deception (the deliberate part is very much in question), all it took was one little hearing to bring it all to light. That's not a cover up. That's a delay. You think maybe there could have been some danger to Americans still in Libya if they revealed the real details? It's just as legit a theory as any offered in the rest of this thread.

There is no scandal here. There's no cover up. There's a mistake, but for an administration that has a good record on foreign issues, especially responses to terror, this mistake doesn't tip the scales too much.
 
Cardinal said:
I've seen no reason to think either of those things happened, and so far I can only conclude that this entire story belongs in the conspiracy theory forum.
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It already is in the "conspiracy theory forum" that we know as Faux News.
 
Krystov said:
Well, I heard Obama say that it was the result of a video and that it was a spontaneous mob attack.
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Did you hear that on Faux News? Well, there you go, you can't believe what Faux News tell you. There was a group chanting against the video which the attackers used as a distraction, and it was a spontaneous attack.
Citing unnamed US officials and witnesses, the newspaper said the attack, which killed ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, was “carried out following a minimum amount of planning.”
Al-Qaeda not behind Benghazi attack: U.S. report



Then I watched the hearing where people testified that 1) there was no mob riot 2) it was not spontaneous, it was planned 3) they had an AA gun and RPGs as well as automatic rifles (not things mobs just carry around with them) and 4) that that particular embassy had asked for more security but instead had security pulled out, even after 200 some prior incidents throughout the year which lead up to Benghazi.
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Did you also hear that Republicans in Congress were the ones that turned down increased funding for more security? Of course you didn't. It is all speculation, mostly by the Republican party in a desperate attempt to gain some political points.
Mohave Daily News > Archives > News > Nation & World > Libyan witnesses recount deadly Benghazi attack





All of this I heard either from the mouth of the president, or on CSPAN watching the hearing itself. Obama was even caught red handed in the middle of one of the debates talking about this.
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You must not have understood what was being said in the debate, because the one I saw, Obama handed Romney his butt on a platter when Romney tried to insist that Obama hadn't said "acts of terror". Romney was thoroughly embarrassed.
 
Paschendale said:
Okay, even if the administration (or part of it) decided to push the video angle... why is this a scandal? Still no evidence to suggest the deliberate decision to allow these people to die, as the OP suggests. Hey, how about the cool ways that the government has used this to push a pro-censorship policy? Oh wait, they didn't. How about all the political gain by taking the wrong side in this? Oh yeah, there really isn't any. Even assuming a deliberate deception (the deliberate part is very much in question), all it took was one little hearing to bring it all to light. That's not a cover up. That's a delay. You think maybe there could have been some danger to Americans still in Libya if they revealed the real details? It's just as legit a theory as any offered in the rest of this thread.

There is no scandal here. There's no cover up. There's a mistake, but for an administration that has a good record on foreign issues, especially responses to terror, this mistake doesn't tip the scales too much.
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What? If it wasn't a cover up, then why were they still spewing the same video story two weeks after the event, even though they knew for sure within 24 hours? If it wasn't a cover up, why keep up the lie? Because it's bad for Obama's campaign. It happened on his watch, and he even claimed responsibility (as if that somehow makes it all right).
 
mertex said:
Did you hear that on Faux News? Well, there you go, you can't believe what Faux News tell you.
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Yes, I did hear it on Fox News. Did you know that Fox has been rated the most reliable news source? I wonder why that is. Put down your biases.
Beside that point, Fox showed a sound byte of Obama saying this in a speech at the UN. You can't fake a video of Obama saying it without suffering ridiculous scrutiny for falsifying that information, not to mention it would be incredibly hard to do.

There was a group chanting against the video which the attackers used as a distraction, and it was a spontaneous attack.
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This was in Egypt. An entirely different country. How could it be a distraction?

Did you also hear that Republicans in Congress were the ones that turned down increased funding for more security? Of course you didn't. It is all speculation, mostly by the Republican party in a desperate attempt to gain some political points.
Mohave Daily News > Archives > News > Nation & World > Libyan witnesses recount deadly Benghazi attack
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Yes, in fact I did hear this. But that doesn't excuse the president when there were 200 some prior incidents in the region throughout the year. You can bet that it was in his security briefing. So why didn't he so much as suggest more security?

You must not have understood what was being said in the debate, because the one I saw, Obama handed Romney his butt on a platter when Romney tried to insist that Obama hadn't said "acts of terror". Romney was thoroughly embarrassed.
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You must not have understood then. Did you miss the tidbit there where Romney asked for the transcript and the moderator said "Yes he did say that, and yes you are correct". Obama walked into a corner. Take off those Obama-lust glasses you have on and you might get a glimpse of reality.
 
Krystov said:
What? If it wasn't a cover up, then why were they still spewing the same video story two weeks after the event, even though they knew for sure within 24 hours? If it wasn't a cover up, why keep up the lie? Because it's bad for Obama's campaign. It happened on his watch, and he even claimed responsibility (as if that somehow makes it all right).
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Read the timeline from FactCheck . As various administration officials give answers on what happened it becomes immediately apparent that there was no coherent message on the incident as there was obviously no meeting to bring everyone up to speed. Coverups tend to be more organized than this. For the first few days after September 11 there was exactly the kind of confusion one would expect after a tragic international incident with loss of life, uncertainty of the participants and conflicting, incoming information. If Obama should be criticized for anything it's for not telling everyone in his administration, "Look, everyone needs to shut the hell up until we actually know something."

As conspiracy theories go this is a really weak one because the implied motives are confusing and tenuous. "Bush planned 9/11 so he could have an excuse to invade the Middle East for oil" was stupid, but as fiction goes at least it made sense (in the sense of weaving motives together to form a cohesive story). As a result all you can rely on is right wing blogs that make accusations in the form of questions.

As for your repeated mention of the video, I'd like a link of Obama claiming that it caused the Benghazi attack. I would like an example after September 14, when is around when most people started to chill the hell out and speak levelly about the incident.
 
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Navy Pride said:
You just don't believe how incompetent Obama is.
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It seems that there was a general incompetence is presenting a clear message to the public for the first few days following the attack, but that appears to be it.
 
If you look at the polls, Benghazi appears to have had zero influence on the state of the race. If Obama loses, and it's certainly possible, it will be because of the economy and his first debate. Benghazi has made it really easy to identify hacks and those who only read The Blaze and Breitbart, but that's about it.
 
Cardinal said:
Read the timeline from FactCheck . As various administration officials give answers on what happened it becomes immediately apparent that there was no coherent message on the incident as there was obviously no meeting to bring everyone up to speed. Coverups tend to be more organized than this. For the first few days after September 11 there was exactly the kind of confusion one would expect after a tragic international incident with loss of life, uncertainty of the participants and conflicting, incoming information. If Obama should be criticized for anything it's for not telling everyone in his administration, "Look, everyone needs to shut the hell up until we actually know something."

As conspiracy theories go this is a really weak one because the implied motives are confusing and tenuous. "Bush planned 9/11 so he could have an excuse to invade the Middle East for oil" was stupid, but as fiction goes at least it made sense (in the sense of weaving motives together to form a cohesive story). As a result all you can rely on is right wing blogs that make accusations in the form of questions.
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What about the sworn testimony from the hearing that said the administration was watching real time? What about the testimony that they knew it was an organized attack by terrorists? The difference between 9/11 and Benghazi is that people saw what happened in New York. There was no doubt about what happened and the only way they could blame Bush WAS through a conspiracy theory with no solid facts. Well we have solid facts from sworn testimonials of people dealing with the situation. They knew what it was within 24 hours. Fact. They continued to tell us 2 weeks later that it was something else. Fact. It cannot get any more simple than that.
 
Krhazy said:
If you look at the polls, Benghazi appears to have had zero influence on the state of the race.
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That's because it's tenuous and confusing. Christopher Nolan plots are easier to decipher than the one many Republicans are claiming happened. I mean, you've got a video, or not, and it did but it didn't make people angry in Benghazi or maybe it was Cairo or hell who knows maybe it was Morocco, and there was an attack which was planned (or not). Also, you've got something about a drone and somebody painting a target (what?). And Obama officials claimed on tv that it was planned and that it was a video and that it was neither and obviously this means there was a giant coverup to try to keep people from seeing that terrorism happened under his watch (even though he called it a terrorist attack).

KEEP IT SIMPLE, STUPID.
 
Krystov said:
What about the sworn testimony from the hearing that said the administration was watching real time? What about the testimony that they knew it was an organized attack by terrorists? The difference between 9/11 and Benghazi is that people saw what happened in New York. There was no doubt about what happened and the only way they could blame Bush WAS through a conspiracy theory with no solid facts. Well we have solid facts from sworn testimonials of people dealing with the situation. They knew what it was within 24 hours. Fact. They continued to tell us 2 weeks later that it was something else. Fact. It cannot get any more simple than that.
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Where's this testimony?
 
Krystov said:
The difference between 9/11 and Benghazi is that people saw what happened in New York. There was no doubt about what happened and the only way they could blame Bush WAS through a conspiracy theory with no solid facts.
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Really? So when the world trade center was on fire everyone was screaming "Oh my God, Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center!" Or did the fact that it was Al Qaeda come out later?
 
Cardinal said:
Really? So when the world trade center was on fire everyone was screaming "Oh my God, Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center!" Or did the fact that it was Al Qaeda come out later?
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No you misunderstand. Everyone saw what happened on 9/11. The fact that two planes hit in the same place, not to mention the other planes that went down in Pennsylvania and the one that hit the Pentagon, there was no doubt about what happened. Everyone knew what it was. With Benghazi no one here really knew what happened until the facts started to trickle through about what really happened. The only things that could have made Bush responsible for 9/11 were conspiracy theories, there were no solid incriminating facts. With Benghazi there are loads of facts that suggest it was deliberate misinformation.
 
Krystov said:
No you misunderstand. Everyone saw what happened on 9/11. The fact that two planes hit in the same place, not to mention the other planes that went down in Pennsylvania and the one that hit the Pentagon, there was no doubt about what happened. Everyone knew what it was. With Benghazi no one here really knew what happened until the facts started to trickle through about what really happened. The only things that could have made Bush responsible for 9/11 were conspiracy theories, there were no solid incriminating facts. With Benghazi there are loads of facts that suggest it was deliberate misinformation.
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No, there are loads of facts that suggest it was massive fubar confusion. Why else would everybody be saying something different in the three or four days after the incident?

As for 9/11, my point was not that Bush was responsible for 9/11, but that as a work of fiction the conspiracy theory is coherent. You can follow the theory from a to d. You can pitch the idea to a movie producer, he'll understand it, and it becomes a thriller blockbuster in the movies that summer. But the Benghazi "coverup" is not coherent as fiction or nonfiction. It just doesn't make sense on any level unless you assume dishonesty on the part of the Obama administration, and there's simply no reason for leaping to that point.
 
In addition to that Fact Checker site which establishes the timeline of the events of the attack and the days after, this article further clarifies a picture of confusion among the member of the administration before the idea that it was officially a terrorist attack was finally agreed on by all (even though it was indeed called that on September 12).

If the president referred to the attack as an “act of terror” twice in those two days, why has there been such a controversy over what Republicans call the administration’s deep reluctance to label the attack terrorism?

The “act of terror” references attracted relatively little notice at the time, and later they appeared to have been forgotten even by some administration officials. In the vice-presidential debate, for instance, Representative Paul D. Ryan declared, “It took the president two weeks to acknowledge that this was a terrorist attack.” Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. did not directly contradict the charge. What attracted more attention was a series of statements by administration officials, notably Susan E. Rice, the ambassador to the United Nations, that appeared to link the Benghazi attack to a protest against a crude anti-Islam video made in the United States that was circulating on the Web.
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And...

When did administration officials begin consistently to use the “terrorism” label?

On Sept. 19, Matthew G. Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said about the killings in Benghazi during a Senate hearing, “Yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy.” The next day, asked about Mr. Olsen’s testimony, Mr. Carney declared, “It is, I think, self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.”
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Questions and Answers on the Benghazi Attack - NYTimes.com

It was a tragedy, and there was more than enough confusion to go around. But this is simply the scandal that ain't. And more importantly to the OP, aside from what right wing hacks are trying to drum this up as, it doesn't come across as a scandal. It's just comes across as what it is: a tragedy.
 
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