But what about Benghazi....

Why are they so out to get Obama for "four dead Americans" who died on his watch? How about the 3,000 who died on Bush's watch, in the middle of NYC. What about the thousands of dead Americans killed in Iraq executing his phony-ass war?

They need to find something else to come after Obama with. Or they should stop the bullshit and start doing their jobs. If I saw a Republican congressman in person I might want to tell him to stop being such a petty asshole and do his damn job. They're the worst this country has ever had. Useless.

Three reasons:

1. This issue resonates very well with far right wing voters.

2. They are trying to officially nail someone on a lie so they can prosecute. The holy grail is impeaching Obama.

3. Hillary Clinton was Sec. of State at the time and she is the early front runner for 2016. A recent poll even had her ahead of Jeb Bush among voters in Florida. They are trying to tarnish her image.

I am at a complete loss to understand what the issue is. The State department claimed it was more a "sudden demonstration" when it was really a terrorist attack? And the problem is... What? The Obama administration decided to try to downplay this in order to ease fears and tension in the area, to assure Libya, the EU, and the rest of the world that the US was not about to invade yet another country?

This is a non issue. And long before we question what happened after the fact, we need to question what happened before the attack. Congress is in charge of the spending for Embassies and their security; What the fuck was Congress doing to secure the embassy?

And we wonder why Congress has such a horrible approval record.

Queue my best gfy bud in 3...2...1..

They should investigate where all the "rebuilding Iraq" money went after Bush handed it out.

In 1983 under Reagan 281 marines lost their lives in an attack in Beirut. Where's the outrage?

They have nothing better to do while letting the country go to shit!

It's the "cover up". Same thing that took Nixon down.

When the President himself went on national television...even the David Letterman show, and flat out lied about what happened (claiming it was a video that sparked it)...he showed himself.

That's what Nixon did in Watergate. It was the cover up that did him in.

Pres. Obama doesn't have much to worry about. He got past the election before the truth started coming out (because his administration refused to give Congress anything but redacted documents on Benghazi).

But the person who is going to feel heat is Hillary.
The Republicans are going to use this big time in the next election. And you can bet that her statement of "What does it really matter" is going to be played again and again and again.

That is why Benghazi is a big issue. If Obama's team hadn't decided to lie about it in the first place it would indeed be a "non-story". But getting caught in the lie, and then adding in all the shady spy shit that's been going on is all adding up to trouble in the political world.

the government runs on 'reports' for example it's more important to 'report' your income to the IRS than it is to pay taxes in some respects.... had Nixon admitted Watergate no telling how it would have went down... had Clinton admitted the BJ.... who knows....

thing about Obama and Hilleary is the constant refusal to 'report' even Holder refuses to report...

and yes the there is the marine barracks and 911 HOW FUCKING EVER Regan or Bush never claimed NOT to know anything about it, never said 'what does it matter anyway' the marine barracks was a SUDDEN suicide bomb as was 911 a SUDDEN air attack...

a bit difficult to equate that to a situation that went on for 6-8 hours with military standing by 'begging' for permission to get their guys out of there and being told 'no'

if someone can't see and UNDERSTAND that they just another Obama apologist 'JAOA'

Yeah, we should. Afghanistan too. I've read a lot about Afghanistan this year, and bribes were just a way of life there. Billions wasted.

This is something Marines have not forgotten, trust me.

There was a memorial for this where I was stationed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beirut_Memorial

To cover up what?

That the CIA was operating in Libya? Of course the CIA was operating in Libya. The CIA operates in every country.

This is making a mountain out of a mole hill, plain and simple.

The fact that no one in the military went to their aid is another big issue. The military brass knew it was going on, but couldn't move without the say so of the commander and chief. So no help was sent.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/w...neral/8554559/

While the exact nature of the attack was not clear from the start, "what we did know early on was that this was a hostile action," retired Air Force brigadier general Robert Lovell said in his prepared statement Thursday morning to members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. "This was no demonstration gone terribly awry."

There were questions about whether the U.S. military could have responded to Benghazi in time, but "we should have tried," Lovell said.




All these people that think it's a non issue get their news from MSNBC who does nothing to report anything of bad light on the present administration. So they believe like sheep that it's a non issue. Lying to the American people during election time, it's bad in almost everyone's book. Sorry they can't see that.

QFT. Thank you. So sick and tired of this Benghazi shit to appease the far right when much much much MUCH worse happened on Bush's watch.

Fox News actually cut away from a live presidential news conference dealing with such issues as the Ukrainian crisis because no one was asking Obama about fucking Benghazi.

I kid you not. LINK

The best part about that attack, was Reagan pulled our troops out and essentially cut and ran.. He basically set the tone that if you kill some American troops we will pull out.

Robbie, why is it you will justify anything as long as it's against Obama.. They have investigated this numerous times now and every investigation even ones started by Republicans has said there was no cover up. They are just wasting fucking money playing politics. I thought you didn't like govt waste?

What fairy land do you live in, that you think the military can just waltz into a sovereign country unannounced with out it being a act of war? It doesn't matter if an embassy is under attack, we can't just send troops in. Shit Republicans had a conniption fit that we went Into Pakistan and killed Bin Laden and that was a successful mission.

Just think of the Republican outrage that would have gone on had Obama sent troops to Benghazi and a chopper was shot down adding even more dead. Let's not even mention that even the military has said they wouldn't of had time to react anyway, but facts need not get in the way of a Republican tax payer funded inquisition. Neither should common sense.

Face it, listening to Obama and the German chancellor talk about what they think should be done when it should have already been done in the Ukraine is not a hot topic.

General Lovell telling congress that he knew it was not what the administration told everyone is was, that is a hot topic.

And Fox is the number 1 cable news show, so they must know what they are doing! April 2014 Ratings: Fox News Marks 148 Straight Months At No. 1

The root of the problem here is that the American Right has realized in some fashion that most of their policies are outdated failures and they haven't come up with anything actually workable that also adheres to their ideologies - so they're stuck with either playing the fear card (SOCIALISM, immigrants, healthcare, etc) or just harping on these manufactured scandals that in the grand scheme are pretty irrelevant.

They're really just a hypocritical party going further & further adrift with nothing productive to offer. Just playing petty politics.

Which is a shame, because an intelligent rational voice offering true conservative principles would be good for the national conversation. I think in the next decade or so we'll see the Right start to fracture, and maybe then the sane portion can actually regain their clout.

And Walmart is the #1 shopped store in the U.S and Robin Thicke "Blurred Lines" was the longest running #1 pop song in 2013... that doesn't mean that the masses here have taste or intelligence.

LOL, no but it does mean then know marketing!

Never happen, because the liberal press will attack them for even the smallest thing, you really think the GOP are the only ones that are doing this?

Ratings for news channels is a oxymoron.. You get good ratings by spoon feeding your viewers what they want to hear.. Congrats Fox is good at spoon feeding their little brainless zombies. News isn't about ratings, it's about reporting the news..

In 2004 a US Embassy was attacked by al Qaeda. Nine people died, including five US embassy personnel. Oddly enough, President Bush failed to send in troops during the attack or after. Why is that?

Before you answer that, there has been nineteen serious attacks on US embassies since 2000. Not once did we send in troops. You do not invade a country because an embassy is attacked.

Grow up already.

If I recall correctly, we had a team of US Marines stationed in Italy as a "emergency response team" exact for such a contingency. US Marines typically handle security at US Embassies around the world.

However, this makes little difference. This is not something where you make a phone call and US Marines are landing in twenty minutes. It would take hours for the White House to make the decision, and then four - five hours for the Marines to plan it out... by then it was all over.

Then you have to factor in that we would have just invaded a foreign country - Very similar to what we did with Pakistan.

However, we shouldn't be questioning what "said after the fact" but instead look into what happened before the attack.... Congress has been cutting funding for security at US embassies by hundreds of millions of dollars PER YEAR, to the tune of a billion dollars since Obama took office. I would like to know why we aren't holding an investigation into the people who voted to reduce funding for security to embassies.

A quick search tells me my numbers might be off.... Congress cut the embassy security funding by $331 million in 2012, and $128 million the year before.

Not necessarily. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, left-leaning media were all over McCain's jock because he espoused real conservative ideals without mixing in tons of the contradictory bullshit of the modern GOP. Then after Bush's smear campaign against him in the 2000 primaries (it was horrible) McCain underwent some kind of transformation afterwards that brought him more or less in line with the rest of the party. I'm guessing he realized he'd be marginalized and made irrelevant by his own side unless he conformed.

That IMO marked a turning point for the American Right, because afterwards they've swung further and further to the fringes of the spectrum, to the point where they can't even really do any actual governing anymore. It's not sustainable though. There will be changes in the next 10 years.

Yeah, anyone who points out the fucking television ratings to defend the credibility of a news source is doing a pretty good job discrediting their own opinions.

Yup... that was my point as well.

That was then, this is now, because Bush did it, it's ok?

Did Bush lie about them later? That's what the issue is.

I hope there will be changes, I want to see changes in both parties.

LOL, I never said anything about credibility.

They changed the channel because they know their audience. It's all about ratings because that's how they make money.

Hate to break it to you, but the budget was never cut, it has actually gone up each and every year. That's just more democrat lies.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...31f9_blog.html

Politicians often play games with budget numbers, and so one must be careful at accepting numbers at face value. Note how Boxer asserted that House Republicans ?sought to cut more than $450 million from President Obama?s budget request.? That means she is talking about the president?s proposed budget ? which in any administration is often a pie-in-the-sky document.
In fact, the Congressional Research Service has documented that Congress, whether led by Democrats and Republicans, year after year did not fully fund the various pots of money for embassy security. (See page 25.) The State Department, for instance, was shortchanged by $142 million in fiscal year 2010, when Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.
There is always a give-and-take between Congress and the executive branch about funding issues. Boxer spent many years on the Appropriations Committee, and we assume she does not believe that Congress should just rubber-stamp a president?s budget proposals.
The funding gap was a bit higher in 2011 and 2012, when Republicans controlled the House, but we don?t understand why Boxer would frame the security funding problem in such partisan terms. As journalist David Rohde has written, this is ?an enduring post-9/11 problem that both political parties ignore.?
Moreover, while Boxer claims that Republicans ?cut? the budget, she is only comparing it to what the Obama administration proposed. The reality is that funding for embassy security has increased significantly in recent years.
?The Department of State?s base requests for security funding have increased by 38 percent since Fiscal Year (FY) 2007, and base budget appropriations have increased by 27 percent in the same time period,? said the bipartisan Senate Homeland Security Committee report on the Benghazi attack.
The report added that baseline funding requests have not been fully funded since fiscal year 2010, but noted that Congress had been responsive in providing ?Overseas Contingency Operations? funds to the State Department in response to emergent security-driven requests, mainly for Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
?However, there was no supplemental or OCO request made by the President for additional diplomatic security enhancements in FY 2010 or FY 2011,? the report pointedly noted. ?Neither the Department of State nor Congress made a point of providing additional funds in a supplemental request for Libya, or more specifically, Benghazi.?
Meanwhile, while the Accountability Review Board investigation into the attack lamented the failure of Congress to provide necessary resources ? and called for ?a more serious and sustained commitment from Congress to support State Department needs? ? it fixed the blame for the lack of security squarely on State Department officials.
One huge problem was that the facility was deemed temporary ? as we have noted, most of the officials there were working for the CIA, not State ? and thus it could not be funded with standard overseas building funds. (Despite persistent news media reports, this was not a ?consulate??far from it.) After the fact, the ARB report recommended allowing for greater flexibility in use of such funds and requiring minimum security standards for such temporary facilities.
(A side note: Given that the U.S. effort in Benghazi was basically a CIA operation, State Department funding issues may be largely irrelevant. Unfortunately, we don?t have access to the classified version of the ARB report. But it is worth remembering that the CIA was responsible for security at the ?annex??where most of the Americans in Benghazi were housed.)
A key finding in the ARB report was: ?Security in Benghazi was not recognized and implemented as a ?shared responsibility? by the bureaus in Washington charged with supporting the post, resulting in stove-piped discussions and decisions on policy and security. That said, Embassy Tripoli did not demonstrate strong and sustained advocacy with Washington for increased security for Special Mission Benghazi.?
During hearings into the attack last fall and this month, State Department officials were specifically asked if a lack of financial resources played a role in the attack. The answer was no.

Why didn't you call out Bush at the time? Come to think it, why didn't ANYONE call out Bush about embassy attacks? Or even why didn't anyone call out any of the other attacks on Obama's watch?

That's right... Because of something said after the fact. Never mind who is really at fault here.

No. He only lied about Iraq.

Really?

Your own quote says it all.

Let's see what the Republicans have to say... .

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) acknowledged on Wednesday that House Republicans had consciously voted to reduce the funds allocated to the State Department for embassy security since winning the majority in 2010.

On Wednesday morning, CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien asked the Utah Republican if he had "voted to cut the funding for embassy security."

"Absolutely," Chaffetz said. "Look we have to make priorities and choices in this country. We have?15,000 contractors in Iraq. We have more than 6,000 contractors, a private army there, for President Obama, in Baghdad. And we?re talking about can we get two dozen or so people into Libya to help protect our forces. When you?re in tough economic times, you have to make difficult choices. You have to prioritize things.?

For the past two years, House Republicans have continued to deprioritize the security forces protecting State Department personnel around the world. In fiscal year 2011, lawmakers shaved $128 million off of the administration's request for embassy security funding. House Republicans drained off even more funds in fiscal year 2012 -- cutting back on the department's request by $331 million.


(source)

I wish they had, but they at least told the truth
In 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee unanimously approved a report acknowledging that it "did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments." The following year, the bipartisan Robb-Silberman report similarly found "no indication that the intelligence community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."

http://articles.latimes.com/2008/jun.../oe-kirchick16


Four years on from the first Senate Intelligence Committee report, war critics, old and newfangled, still don't get that a lie is an act of deliberate, not unwitting, deception. If Democrats wish to contend they were "misled" into war, they should vent their spleen at the CIA.

The funds keep going up! 128 million off the request of 331 million!

So they got the funds of 203 million

This goes on every year and EVERY year, the funds go UP!

Read what I posted first

I'm pointing out the facts crockett. He LIED. He covered up. It's going to be used in the next Pres. election against Hillary Clinton.

Why are YOU justifying everything that Pres. Obama does?

He was supposed to be BETTER than Bush. That's why I voted for him.

It's pretty sorry for people to keep on saying "But Bush did bad things too! So Pres. Obama is GREAT!"

What a fucking pathetic attitude.

If that is true...then WHY doesn't MSNBC have the greatest ratings on Earth?

I don't get that liberals are tired of listening about Benghazi when MSNBC isn't really covering it. Only Fox is, I guess they are all watching Fox?

Read: "cutting back on the department's request by $331 million." They cut the budget by $331 dollars. That was after the hundred million dollar cut the year before.

Yes, every year the costs go up. Everything gets more expensive, we move into new areas, and new problems are identified. Haven't you figured this out yet? Bread costs more every year too. Milk too. And just like everything else, our taxes will go up and so will our healthcare.

Lied about what? Covered up what?

but...but.. Obama...

So what? That's just politics as usual. The Republicans are already using Bill Clinton's blowjob against Hillary as well. They'll use anything and everything they can against her.

And she'll do the same against them.


That's why I voted for him too and guess what? He was/is better than Bush.

It's like this: things haven't much better under Obama, but they haven't gotten exponentially worse either.

Can anyone say the same about Bush?

And then there's that little matter of the alternatives that the Republicans offered up for the last two presidential elections

I mean, were they actually serious??

Or were those picks just for shits and giggles?

Because most people on the left choose not to be spoon fed?

I used to think the Republican nominees were just throw always so they could blame everything on Democrats after the Bush fuck up. However looking at their party today, I'm starting to think that's the best they can put forward.

The only certifiably sane ones they have are Chris Christie, Jon Huntsman and Jeb Bush.

The first one has already self destructed, the second one is too sane and the last one is a Bush.

The Democrats will have to really, really fuck up to lose the next presidential election.

Unfortunately, they've all too often shown themselves capable of doing just that. Keep your fingers crossed.

That seems to be spot on... Unless they can come up with someone new.

Being as women always make less money than men, can we get away with paying Hillary 30% less?