Review chairman: Clinton didn't make Benghazi call

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Excite

By PHILIP ELLIOTT

WASHINGTON (AP) - The seasoned diplomat who penned a highly critical report on security at a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, defended his scathing assessment but absolved then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. "We knew where the responsibility rested," Thomas Pickering said Sunday.

"They've tried to point a finger at people more senior than where we found the decisions were made," Pickering, whose career spans four decades, said of Clinton's critics.

The Accountability Review Board, which Pickering headed with retired Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did not question Clinton at length about the attacks but concluded last December that the decisions about the consulate were made well below the secretary's level.

Pickering and Mullen's blistering report found that "systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels" of the State Department meant that security was "inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place."

FULL story at link.



Read more: http://apnews.excite.com/article/20130512/DA67VD201.html

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In this Sept. 14, 2012 file photo, Libyan military guards check one of the U.S. Consulate's burnt out buildings during a visit by Libyan President Mohammed el-Megarif, not shown, to the U.S. Consulate to express sympathy for the death of the American ambassador, Chris Stevens and his colleagues in the deadly attack on the Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. 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. (AP Photo/Mohammad Hannon)

[patrice]

1. K&R

[chuckstevens]

2. Fuck You Darrel Issa!

Did You Hear That Issa? You can stop the Joe McCarthy bit now. Honest to God, anyone who voted who voted for this dishonest jackass in Southern California should be ashamed of themselves!

[patrice]

3. The people of Libya were in the streets the day this 9/11/12 happened; they had many signs in

several languages, including 3 or 4 in English, in which they expressed their sorrow for Ambassador Stevens. Those photos were posted here too that night.

[onehandle]

4. But she did strangle Vince Foster with Monica Lewinsky's panty hose.

Issa is just fucked up to take that bait.

[Boomerproud]

11. Good one. You aren't far off which what they've implied over the years.

When Hillary's headbands became a story is when I started heading toward the cliff to jump off.

[patrice]

5. Political paranoia: The U.S. Senate protects PRIVATE arms markets around the world.

Apparently the killing is just fine, as long as it's freelance.

[JDPriestly]

6. On September 12, 2012, the day after the incident.

1) CBS news showed video and called the incident an Al Qaeda terrorist attack.

2) Hillary Clinton stood by Obama in the Rose Garden where Obama denounced the "attack" and spoke of terrorist attacks and the both the memories of 9/11 2001 and the Benghazi attack. He linked the two.

3) Hillary Clinton also spoke about the attacks in what I assume was the Rose Garden.

Simply Googling will get you this information.

I have posted this so many times, I cannot tell you.

I am not an Obama sycophant, but these Republican attacks are outrageous.

This is what they do when they want to distract from some crime they are concocting behind the backs of the American people.

I am very suspicious. What isn't being reported while we are all watching this diversion? Let's ask that important question.

What is really being covered up?

Cuts to Social Security? The damage that the sequester is doing to our economy? Some scandal in Republican quarters.

There is not there there to the Benghazi scandal. Can't the Republicans find something with more substance to rave on about?

[another_liberal]

7. The Republicans' billionaire sponsors . . .

The Republicans' are dependent on the support of their billionaire sponsors, and those people want a scandal which will lead to the impeachment of President Obama (after they contribute enough millions to win the Senate next year). Benghazi might be that scandal, so the Republicans will obediently ride it like a birthday pony. And they will continue to ride it until they are dragged kicking and screaming from its thoroughly exhausted back.

[CBHagman]

8. The other thing I keep hearing from the GOP is that it was ridiculous to attribute...

...the attacks to protests about an online video called The Innocence of the Muslims, but of course the newspapers were full of accounts of protests in at least a score of countries around the world. In addition to that, there'd been a nonlethal assault on the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, and staff there were trying to calm things down.

[kelliekat44]

9. Another GOP fail. nt

[elleng]

10. Napoleon said: Never ascribe to malice what which is adequately explained by incompetence.

[Cha]

12. thanks Steve

[John2]

13. People don't want to go this

route, but I will continue to take a different view. The Government, meaning Congress and the Administration are not honest with the American public about what that structure really was. I'm taking this view because the only people killed was the Ambassador and three people attached to the military (CIA). Stevens was the only American civilian in or near the building. Also, a structure for the CIA was operating in that part of Libya. And the Republicans are trying to exonerate the CIA in this mess.

What was really going on in that building and why was Stevens there? Whom was he meeting? The embassy was in Tripoli not Benghazi. You are showing Libyan military guards in that photograph,but a real time video showed them leaving the area when the assailants carried out their mission also. When the attack was made, a witness in the area reported the assailants attacking did mention the You tube video. You also give this person the Title of President in Libya, was there an election or is he appointed by the groups that overthrew Gaddaffi?

This entire regime change Policy is a policy Obama has signed on to with people that got us into Iraq with. He also has appointed certain Bush operatives to carry out this strategy. So the people who want regime change now is trying to change the Obama regime. How ironic is that. That looks more like an undercover CIA operation than a peaceful consulate or embassy they are trying to cover up because it involves classified information. The only way the American people will know the real truth about Benghazi is if they release all the information including the classified parts about what the CIA was really doing in that area. The Republicans know the President want do that and his hands are tied so it is convenient for their attacks.

The Republicans and Media are spinning. The Media has been very hostile towards this President. Notice the difference in their tone towards him compared to Bush and Cheney leading up to Iraq. They accepted everything the Bush Administration had to say. That is why I consider the whole American Foreign Policy rightwing driven. The Media has become too bias in this country for one Party ever since Reagan started to attack the Press as Liberal. The Press needs to be more diverse also, especially in the Beltway.

The point being missed is Libya is not a stable state after the Gaddaffi government was overthrown. Gaddaffi was assasinated by those same militias after reportedly trying to surrender. Chris stevens was in Libya coordinating with those same militia groups in the overthrow of the Gadaffi government. When do you cross the line of the duties of an Ambassador and operating as an CIA agent yourself and facilitating the overthrow of a Foreign Government? And I might say the media is used in the same way. There is also questions about coordinating weapons tranfers in this whole grand scheme of the Middle East which are now ending up in the Syrian Civil War and extremists from Libya. The entire regime change scheme is a neocon Republican Policy continued by Obama just like the Drone strikes. I think he need to drop the entire Policy and worry about home. He needs to worry about the extremists in this country trying to bring about a coup instead of carrying out their Policies.

[Franker65]

14. Media Spin

The attack was unfortunate and not entirely forseeable. If action was taken and US forces fired on the crowd, the situation might have turned out even worse.