Benghazi Talking Points Revisions Pushed By State Department

[ErikJ]

Source: AP

By DONNA CASSATA, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Senior State Department officials pressed for changes in the talking points that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used after the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya last September, expressing concerns that Congress might criticize the Obama administration for ignoring warnings of a growing threat in Benghazi.

An interim report by Republicans on five House committees last month had detailed how the talking points were changed, days after the Sept. 11 attack and in the heat of the 2012 presidential campaign. New details about the political concerns and the names of the administration officials who wrote emails concerning the talking points emerged on Friday.

The White House has insisted that it made only stylistic changes to the intelligence agency talking points in which Rice suggested that protests over an anti-Islamic video set off the attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. Before the presidential election, the administration said Rice's talking points were based on the best intelligence assessments available in the immediate aftermath of the attack.

But the report and the new details Friday suggest a greater degree of White House and State Department involvement.

The latest developments are certain to add fuel to the politically charged debate over Benghazi. Republicans have suggested that the Obama administration sought to play down the possibility of terrorism during the campaign and has misled the country. A senior administration official reiterated Friday that the talking points were based on intelligence assessments and developed during an interagency process, which included the CIA, officials from the Director of National Intelligence, State Department, FBI and the Justice Department.

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Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/10/benghazi-talking-points_n_3253638.html?utm_hp_ref=politics

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uh oh.

[JoePhilly]

1. Yawn

[zbdent]

2. If only a fraction of this level of scrutiny had been applied

to the WMD threat ...

[ErikJ]

4. Stunning hypocrisy.

1. Reagan's sitting-duck Beirut massacre of 220 Marines telling them to not load rifles.
2.Bush's WMD lies to sell the Iraq War
3. 11 embassy attacks under Bush with 53 Americans killed
4. The GOP under-funding the embassy security last year by $300 million less than requested.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. The Benghazi saga = "storm in a teacup"

[JaneyVee]

5. When did Benghazi become an argument about semantics? It was only last week that

the Republicans were painting a picture of Obama giving stand down orders while watching Benghazi burn in real-time and nefariously laughing like Satan while 4 people died, this week not so much. Just a semantics debate.

[bhikkhu]

8. The day after the attack it was already an argument over semantics

...the repugs don't care what actually happened, but they have it down to a fine art tearing people down for thinking wrong.

Today at my work it was BENGHAZI!!!! all morning. Seriously, guys red in the face with anger over how Obama...something or other.

I never got a clear explanation of why they were mad, but they did insist it was a lie that congress cut embassy security funding in 2011 ("you got that straight out of the liberal media!&quot , and they are still sure Obama denied it was terrorism (in spite of his referring to it as an act of terror that day), and so forth...I could have argued further, but they just change the subject to food stamps if they start losing.

[bitchkitty]

10. I am so glad I don't have to work in an office any more.

I know exactly what you're going through, and you have my deepest sympathy.

they just change the subject to food stamps if they start losing.

[humbled_opinion]

17. Yep I experience the same thing...

They are celebratory claiming that deeper investigation will show that Obama and State collude to make changes for political advantage in the run up to the election..... they want a special prosecutor to get people under oath and to "spill the beans" on how politics vs. truth was front and center in Obama admin decisions on the talking points.... Side attack is going on about how Obama had said everything was done that could have been done and yet new testimony reveals that more options i.e., FEST were scrubbed off the mission list than were added... all with the caveat that no one new how long this attack would last so why no deployments no activation of military special forces, seals, fast attack teams etc,,,, they claim next hearings will reveal that State colluded with the Pentagon to take military options off the table even as the President said everything was being done....

Somehow they believe that getting a special prosecutor will spell the nail in the coffin or this admin and for Hillary.

[golfguru]

19. Not if the special prosecutor is ex-congressman Wiener

[Ford_Prefect]

6. Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain...

In this case the whining noise is all that matters...And the press loves good public scandal, any kind of scandal, especially one where the boundaries of truth and fiction can be made to appear so fluid.

Then the GOP Indignant Victims Association revs up the hype while making every new pronouncement seem to reveal yet another layer of perfidy and moral decay.

Its like Sarah Palin's road show on steroids: It goes on and on, and on. Ever louder and more distorted, it orbits further and further from reality without ever once touching earth.

[Grassy Knoll]

7. ....

[John2]

9. The Press and the

Republicans are in spin mode because they are lying. They are lying because all this information was known and reported. The White House reported they had nothing to do with the talking points except making changes about the complex and the best intelligence at the time. Issa, Chaffetz and the Media, are now essentially insinuating the intelligence are now part of some conspiracy to coverup. They got pushed back by Pickerings investigated team and now they are trying to find this avenue. The bottomline is the Intelligence officials signed off on it and cleared the talking points. That is their testimony, nice try! it just shows the media pundits are complicit in this witch hunt to stick something on this Administration instead of focusing on other issues that are more important. They are just trying to give this rightwing Congress some legitimacy because they have no credibility in the Public. The American people need to get rid of the Republican party and send more honest people to our Government. The media pundits are acting the same way they did in the drum beat to attack Iraq. They never put a microscope on the Republicans at all. That is why people was scared to question them. They should not be spinning and look at the facts!

[hoosierlib]

11. Ethical? No. Illegal or impeachable? Fuck No!

So someone higher up at the State Department pushed to initially downplay what we now know was ultimately terrorist attack. That's the scandal and nothing else. There is a reason the general public isn't paying attention to this or giving a shit. Its nothing but a poltical witch hunt. I hope the GOP keeps pushing the issue, wasting their time and resources pushing this. Anyone remembef what happened in 1998? I do. The FOP wasted a year pushing for impeachment and ending up getting smacked in the mid-terms. History will repeat itself.

[humbled_opinion]

18. They claim there is much more to come...

they are going to open up an attack about credibility and than hit the incompetence button... they hope a special prosecutor will be the end result.... It is kind of strange to see much of media following Faux news on this none issue.

[DCBob]

12. The only thing I see of question here is the State Dept request to remove some comments..

from the talking points that might expose them to criticism for not paying attention to the warnings. Thats not good but clearly not a major scandal or coverup equal to Watergate.

[chuckstevens]

13. The Wimpocratic Party's Stunning Silence

The next time Darrel Issa opens his lying criminal ass mouth, a Democratic with an ounce of courage should simply state the following:

"Why did my self righteous Republican colleagues remain silent when the last Commander in Chief let almost 4,000 Americans on US soil die on his watch?" "Why were these same Republicans not outraged that President Bush was told in the Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6, 2001, that Bin Laden was determined to attack the USA with high jacked airplanes?" "Furthermore, if President Obama had been given that same report and replied, OK, you've covered your ass,", what would their reaction be?" "There were 40 other Americans were killed ion embassy attacks during the Bush/Cheney years?" "Where were the investigations?" "Finally, do most Americans realize that it was the GOP that cut millions of dollars in funding for in embassy security worldwide?"

"No, my Republican colleagues do not give a damm about the lose of Christopher Stevens and the other 3, rather, they are desperately and cynically trying to create a scandal with the goal of at least damaging Secretary Clinton's reputation and at best impeaching President Obama for something that was not his fault." "Is there no limit to the hypocrisy of the Republican Party?"

[AnnieK401]

14. I am truly shocked that there is politics in politics.

This must be the first time in history that someone has edited talking points.

[bemildred]

15. My God these people are stupid; recursive, impacted, self-referential stupidity.

This is what we are supposed to freak out about:

Senior State Department officials pressed for changes in the talking points that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used after the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya last September, expressing concerns that Congress might criticize the Obama administration for ignoring warnings of a growing threat in Benghazi.

So basically, the Executive Branch, for some reason, was concerned about the PR aspects of that debacle. I would think that is their job.

[DallasNE]

16. This Report Is Misleading

There is nothing new being reported here. These emails were part of a briefing the Obama administration gave to Congress and while Boehner didn't attend he was invited. Also, these same emails were discussed in the confirmation hearings for the new CIA director. Right now this is all about attempting to derail a presidential bid in 2016 by Hillary Clinton. I'm not sure why HuffingtonPost would be reporting on this in this manner without doing the research because it is just repeating Republican talking points. And why is DU not independently fact checking it themselves.