'admin' pid='11769' datel Wrote:
Just for the sake of balance..
Busting myths about Benghazi
Clarence Page
October 28, 2012
Hear ye, hear ye! Sarah Palin hereby accuses President Barack Obama of the high crime of shucking and jiving or, more precisely, a "shuck and jive shtick" with "Benghazi lies."
Evidence? Lawdy, Massa. She don't need no blinkin' evidence.
In the art of paranoid politics, one needs only to raise questions — and suspicions.
"Why the lies?" she wrote on her Facebook page about the aftermath of the tragic Sept. 11 attack on our consulate in Benghazi. "Why the cover up? Why the dissembling about the cause of the murder of our ambassador on the anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil? We deserve answers to this. President Obama's shuck and jive shtick with these Benghazi lies must end."
Predictably, some sensitive souls charged that the former Alaska governor's use of "shuck and jive" smacks of racism. But quite frankly, if all racism were this mild, I think we'd have a much happier world.
I am much more concerned about Palin's central charge. "Benghazi lies" has become like "Obama's phony birth certificate," a bundle of allegations based less on a desire to find the truth than to feather one's nest as a five-star foe of the president.
Republicans and other conservatives have alleged that Team Obama tried to protect the president's re-election chances by blaming the attack on a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muslim YouTube video, made in the USA, that touched off violent protests in Cairo that day.
Palin's outrage was set off by a newly reported State Department email that indicates the Obama administration knew while the consulate was under siege that an al-Qaida affiliate, not a spontaneous uprising, claimed responsibility.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and two other Senate Republicans also wrote this past Wednesday to Obama, saying: "These emails make clear that your administration knew within two hours of the attack that it was a terrorist act and that Ansar al-Sharia, a Libyan militant group with links to al-Qaida, had claimed responsibility for it."
But not quite. Closer examination reveals that the email may only have been one of several inaccurate spot reports on a chaotic, confusing and rapidly changing situation.
And Ansar al-Sharia, for what it's worth, denied responsibility for the attack, although it praised the attackers. Modesty is not an attribute for which terrorist groups are widely known, unless they really didn't do what other people might say they did.
In the meantime, political partisans back here at home have the luxury of cherry-picking information that raises suspicions about the administration, even when they sometimes trip over the facts.
That's what happened to Obama's Republican challenger Mitt Romney in the second presidential debate when he claimed, "It took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror."
No, as the president corrected him, by simply citing the transcript, available on the White House website, of his speech in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12.
Obama also could have cited the transcript of his campaign speech the next day in Golden, Colo., where he was even more specific about the "act of terror" that "killed our fellow Americans."
Or he could have cited a CBS "60 Minutes" interview he recorded just before he stepped into the Rose Garden on Sept. 12, in which he discounted the video and instead suspected "folks involved in this who were looking to target Americans from the start."
United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice aroused the political right the following Sunday by mentioning the anti-Muslim video on TV talk shows. But she also added that "soon after that spontaneous protest," the best information indicated "extremist elements" joined the mob "with heavy weapons."
U.S. intelligence had uncovered evidence that same weekend that discredited earlier reports of a video-inspired protest, but the new information did not get to Rice before her talk show appearances, CBS News and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported Oct. 19.
All of this needs to be investigated, but investigations take time, especially when even the FBI has had trouble getting in and out of the crime scene.
Unfortunately, the worst time for a slow-moving investigation is during a tight presidential race, but it's a great time for paranoid politics.
Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/pagespage.
And again, just for the sake of the truth..
I am honestly worried about an inability (unwillingness?) for some to keep timelines, statements and deeds in proper context. Charles Page is intellectually dishonest.
What you highlighted as a 'silver bullet' is truly a dishonest and idiotic statement, which is easily disproved, just by visiting Obama's UN General Assembly address 2 weeks later on 9/25/12.
..."Or he could have cited a CBS "60 Minutes" interview he recorded just before he stepped into the Rose Garden on Sept. 12, in which he discounted the video and instead suspected "folks involved in this who were looking to target Americans from the start."...
Obama, word for word directly from the teleprompter to the world' ears 9/25/12. He mentions the video 6 times, and also throws in a few references to it also. He connects the video directly as the cause of the Embassy attack. So was Obama lying on 9/12 to 60 mins. or between 9/12 to at least 9/25?
Obama UN:..."And that is what we saw play out in the last two weeks, where a crude and disgusting video sparked outrage throughout the Muslim world. Now, I have made it clear that the United States government had nothing to do with this video, and I believe its message must be rejected by all who respect our common humanity. It is an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well.
For as the city outside these walls makes clear, we are a country that has welcomed people of every race and every faith. We are home to Muslims who worship across our country. We not only respect the freedom of religion, we have laws that protect individuals from being harmed because of how they look or what they believe.
We understand why people take offense to this video because millions of our citizens are among them. I know there are some who ask why don't we just ban such a video. The answer is enshrined in our laws. Our Constitution protects the right to practice free speech.
Here in the United States, countless publications provoke offense. Like me, the majority of Americans are Christian, and yet we do not ban blasphemy against our most sacred beliefs. As president of our country, and commander in chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day, and I will always defend their right to do so.
(APPLAUSE)
Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views -- even views that we profoundly disagree with. We do so not because we support hateful speech, but because our founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views and practice their own faith may be threatened.
We do so because in a diverse society, efforts to restrict speech can quickly become a tool to silence critics and oppress minorities. We do so because, given the power of faith in our lives, and the passion that religious differences can inflame, the strongest weapon against hateful speech is not repression, it is more speech -- the voices of tolerance that rally against bigotry and blasphemy, and lift up the values of understanding and mutual respect.
I know that not all countries in this body share this particular understanding of the protection of free speech. We recognize that. But in 2012, at a time when anyone with a cell phone can spread offensive views around the world with the click of a button, the notion that we can control the flow of information is obsolete.
The question, then, is how we respond. And on this we must agree: There is no speech that justifies mindless violence.
(APPLAUSE)
There are no words that excuse the killing of innocents. There is no video that justifies an attack on an embassy. There is no slander that provides an excuse for people to burn a restaurant in Lebanon, or destroy a school in Tunis, or cause death and destruction in Pakistan.................We do not expect other nations to agree with us on every issue. Nor do we assume that the violence of the past weeks or the hateful speech by some individuals represent the views of the overwhelming majority of Muslims any more than the views of the people who produced this video represents those of Americans.
*Hillary even told the dead former SEAL's father upon the return of his sone in a casket they 'were going to arrest and prosecute the man who made the video responsible for this'. Listen to the father, Charles Woods.
Partisan spin articles from editorial board members of large liberal US newspapers will not trump the truth here. There is a truth trail which is quite easy to follow if you are willing.
