3 calls for backup at Benghazi denied

[$tevie]

Don't rush to join Benghazi blame game:

Instead of trying to turn the Benghazi attack -- and the deaths of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans -- into a partisan blame game, policymakers would be better served by thinking about how to enhance U.S. intelligence capabilities.

Richard Betts writes in his seminal 1978 piece on intelligence failures, "Analysis, War, and Decision: Why Intelligence Failures are Inevitable," that "intelligence failures are not only inevitable, they are natural." In his 2002 piece, "Fixing Intelligence," he notes that "even the best intelligence systems will have BIG failures."

Betts says so much information is being collected around the globe regarding so many potential targets, with so many enemy actors adopting deceptive tactics to mislead analysts, that uncovering every threat and thwarting every possible attack is virtually impossible.

This overwhelming abundance of information, Betts says, may result in false alarms -- making it more difficult to discern if the threat of an upcoming attack is real. The global stream of information constantly includes vague information regarding security risks.

The tragic events in Benghazi mark the first killing of a U.S. ambassador since 1979. But the rarity of this kind of terror attack actually demonstrates the overarching success of U.S. intelligence agencies in keeping Americans safe.
...
In the final days leading up to the election, we must evaluate the performance of intelligence gathering in Benghazi in a fair and objective manner, with every effort to omit our biases and political views.

The intelligence community prides itself on such objectivity in its work and in serving both Democratic and Republican administrations. The public and policymakers should afford analysts the same courtesy by holding their judgments of the intelligence community to the same standard.

Editor's note: Tara Maller is a research fellow at the New America Foundation and a former CIA military analyst.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/25/opinio...index.html

[$tevie]

By the way the feed was an AUDIO feed. The right wing blogosphere is too stupid to know that you don't "watch" audio feed.


Meanwhile, CBS News correspondent Margaret Brennan reports that the FBI and State Department have reviewed video from security cameras that captured the attack on the consulate.

The audio feed of the attack was being monitored in real time in Washington by diplomatic security official Charlene Lamb. CBS News has learned that video of the assault was recovered 20 days later from the more than 10 security cameras at the compound.

The government security camera footage of the attack was in the possession of local Libyans until the week of Oct. 1. The video will be among the evidence that the State Department's review board will analyze to determine who carried out the assault.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57...-benghazi/

[mick e]

swampy - Why do you insist on politicizing this tragedy?

[$tevie]

Good grief. Even jackass Geraldo Rivera can see this for exactly what it is:

But Rivera got this question in: "Do we want to know what happened or do we want to try and influence the election with a tragedy that happened in North Africa?"

http://www.newshounds.us/geraldo_rivera_...y_10262012

[$tevie]

Yet the handling of these attacks by Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush never became the kind of partisan fodder that the loss of four American lives at Benghazi has become, pushed by the Romney/Ryan ticket and unprecedented critical coverage, both of which are politicizing every nuance of the Obama administration’s response.

In contrast with Mitt Romney’s relentless Libya critique, Clinton in 1992, Clinton opponent Bob Dole in 1996, Bush II and Newt Gingrich in 1998, Bush II again in 2000 and Bush II opponent John Kerry in 2004 did not exploit these incidents, while Walter Mondale’s attempt to do so in 1984 got little media support. As forcefully as Romney is attempting to depict the attack as a consequence of Obama’s perceived Middle East “weakness,” over 90 percent of the 538 Americans who died in these seven earlier incidents did so while a Republican was in the White House, and Obama’s tally of four fatalities in overseas incidents is the lowest death toll of any modern American president. Nonetheless, Romney’s drumbeat about the Libya attack, focused on the timetable of administration disclosures about the nature of the assault, has had a greater impact on this presidential campaign than the abject bungling of far more catastrophic events that preceded it.

http://www.thenation.com/article/170742/...azi-attack#

[$tevie]

The killing of four American patriots in Benghazi, Libya last month was an act of terror. Those four Americans, including the U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens, represented the best of our country. They put their lives on the line to advance American interests in a volatile region. They deserved the support of their government back home.

Instead of getting that support, their deaths are being used as a partisan attack on President Obama, part of a false narrative that the president failed them. What has failed them is our political system. Rather than supporting a serious, nonpartisan investigation into what took place and what went wrong, waiting to get all the facts out, conservatives are trying to affix blame for their deaths for political advantage.

This is how some conservatives use terrorist attacks against America. They blame their political opponents. We have seen this movie before, in the run up to the war in Iraq. Back then, conservatives argued that anyone who opposed invading Iraq was equivalent to being soft of terror, and implicitly, an appeaser of Osama bin-Laden.

Their public extortion of a national tragedy — the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks — was used to partisan advantage to start a war whose rationale was deeply flawed and whose results were disastrous for our country.

http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/p...zi-attacks

[swampy]

Not knowing what was going on? Geezus, they were watching the whole thing go down on a live feed. You had a Seal on a roof top with a laser pointer pointing to the mortar location. I'm sorry, but I'm not ready to accept that our people are expendable.

[Acer]

Live feed, you mean like those traffic camera shots of trucks crossing lanes and taking out lines of cars? WHY AREN'T THE COPS THERE TO STOP IT IF THEY CAN SEE IT ON TV???

[swampy]

Listen to the interview with Charlie Woods, father of Tyrone Woods say it's not about politics.

http://nation.foxnews.com/benghazi-gate/...nd-justice

[swampy]

Acer, I think if you gave the cops 6 hours they could be there.