US Officials Knew Libya attack was work of Al Qaeda 24 hrs..

Post Reply New Topic

So you're telling me the CIA, state department, and everyone else wouldn't notice 2 attacks on our own consulate, including 1 where there was a hole big enough to drive a truck through?

Excuse me, but that takes incompetitence to a whole new level, and that's before we drag the other stuff into this. Looks more like you are trying to throw the CIA under the Obama bus.



Actually I would have labeled the death of Bin Laden as a good thing, but then they had to blab about Seal Team 6 (which cost quite a few people their lives) as well as get our informant locked up in a Pakistani Prison cause they couldn't keep their mouthes shut.



Do you realize how nonspecific that is? Seriously, Bin Laden determined to attack America. Let me point out some blatently obvious things.
1. Method of planned attack unknown
2. Clinton had gutted our intelligence gathering networks
3. Targets were unknown
4. Shear size of the United States

Bush really didn't have anything to go on, assuming this "memo" you refer to even existed to begin with, which I would like a source please.

Now let me point out some blatently obvious pieces of information.

1. Consulate had been attacked twice before.
2. Ambassador was begging for increased security, which his superiors ignored.
3. Two assassination attempts on the British Ambassador, including one with a rocket propelled grenade...
4. Red Cross being attacked by terrorists.
5. Panic button was hit as well as message sent that Ambassador was in peril and/or missing.

The 5th point is especially important because that means the usual message channels were completely bypassed. The watch officer on duty at the White House has a message pop up on his screen that he actually has to give a receipt that he received it. Then it is taken by another officer directly to the President of the United States or most senior official present.

The argument can easily be made in Bush's case that he never received any information about things leading up to 9/11/2001. The same case cannot be legitimately made in the case of Obama for the following reasons.

1. He was the one that countermanded Hillary Clinton's orders for more security at the Consulate (no other administration official could do that).

2. When the Ambassador was in peril/missing all the lower level people were bypassed and the message goes directly to the President or highest ranking official present. Hell they would even contact the President if he was on Air Force One. It is given the highest priority and the argument cannot legitimately be made that it was lost in the shuffle.

As a matter of fact, when Bush had been handed the memo, he told the guy who gave it to him, "Alright, you're covered your ass." He got it, alright, but apparently disregarded it. That's in fact documented, and was made known of during the 9/11 investigation - which President Bush had opposed.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Again, source it...

Furthermore, that isn't exactly detailed putting it mildly. That memo wouldn't exactly have been much to go on if you think about the size of New York City, let alone the size of the United States, or hell the entire world.

Again, there is only 1 person that could countermand Hillary Clinton. Furthermore, when the attacks were underway, all the lower level people are cut out of this, the emergency message goes directly to the President, not to a bunch of low level desk jockeys, then to office clerks, and up a long ladder. Everything gets bypassed, so it isn't lost in the clutter.

Why would the President want to put his Libyan ambassador in danger? Especially since he was popular with the Libyan people, and would be of far more worth alive. That, and Obama had appointed the ambassador, and knew him personally. Sometimes bad decisions are inadvertently made, or something just isn't really brought to the President's attention. The right is beating a dead horse here.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

I'm not saying Obama wanted the Ambassador dead, I'm saying Obama was putting politics over the safety of our Ambassador and the others at the Consulate and Embassy.

If he had allowed more security to be there, it would be an admission that Libya wasn't safe and his foreign policy wasn't working. That's the same reason why he was pushing that some stupid video was the reason why the violence took place, when we all know the video had nothing to do with it.

I seriously doubt beefing up security would have made his foreign policy appear flawed - that's just the right grasping at straws.
As for that video - Al Qaeda had in fact used that as a pretext to attack the embassy. In other Islamic countries, the video had inspired demonstrations.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

There is no way in hell that video was responsible for the attack, nor is there any possibility of the video being the cause of what happened in Egypt. Both incidents had rather blatent signs of having been planned in advance, and in the case of Egypt, it was fairly obvious that the current Egyptian government had a hand in the "protest."

The radicals certainly had used the video to whip people up against America.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

There is a serious flaw in that argument, the majority of the people over there don't have computers let alone access to the internet. They were protesting because some cleric or other ordered them to in the case of Egypt.

In the case of Libya, there was never any protest to begin with.

Whether they have computers or not is irrelevant - they had been told about the video's existence, which is incitement enough. And even if there were no legitimate protests in Libya, the extremists still had used it as a pretext to justify their attack.
The fact is, because the terrorist attack had originally been wrongly perceived as a protest against the movie had probably lulled everyone in Washington into a sense that there was no serious danger. But again, that was probably what Al Qaeda was going for.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

They could be told a video exists even if it didn't and they'd still riot. This blaming a video that had less than 2,000 views, doesn't hold water.

I wasn't blaming the video itself, per se, but rather, I'm saying it was used as a pretext for the attack. It should be recalled, even Mitt Romney had thought the video was the cause of the attacks, when he said we needed to stick to our values of free speech and expression.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

Romney isn't the President of the United States though, if I remember correctly he wasn't getting the intel briefings (even though he had requested them and was supposed to be receiving them) until mid-september at the earliest.

My point is, it was everyone's perception that the video was the cause of the tumult, even if it turns out it was not. If you recall, at the beginning of this thread, I agreed with you that the video was not the real cause.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

The President did have access to the intel briefings though, heck they were watching what was happening in real time.

Seeing it, and knowing exactly what you're seeing, can be two different things. Very often, hindsight is necessary to understand what you just witnessed.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer