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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsBolton Unwittingly Puts Stake In Heart of Benghazi Ghouls' Scandalmongering
from Media Matters:
Fox News contributor John Bolton delivered a devastating blow to the right-wing scandal mongering over Benghazi when he acknowledged that it was impossible to know at the exact moment of the September 2012 terrorist attack whether it was appropriate to shift security resources away from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli.
A key aspect of the right's conspiracy theory posits that an Obama administration official refused to send reinforcements to the Benghazi diplomatic outpost to defend Americans under sustained attack by terrorists. It's been amply established at this point that a team of reinforcements was dispatched from Tripoli, where the main embassy is located, to Benghazi, some 400 miles away, after the attacks began. That security team arrived after a first attack ended, the attack that ended in the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya, but before a second attack began.
Bolton, appearing on the May 8 edition of Fox News' Happening Now, took issue with the decision not to send a second reinforcement team to Benghazi - a central component of hyper-partisan congressional hearings underway this week. Critics of the administration have pointed to that decision as evidence that it abandoned Americans who were under attack. But the additional reinforcements would not have been able to get to the Benghazi compound before the second attack was concluded. Here's Bolton's response:
When the attack began, no one could know when it would end. No one could know what the geographical limitation was. Was it simply an attack in Benghazi? Could terrorists be poised to attack the embassy in Tripoli? Were other posts around the Middle East in jeopardy? So the notion that you're just going to sit and wait for this to work itself out left a lot of other people at risk.
But it's precisely the fact that it was unclear that the embassy in Tripoli was safe that informed the decision over whether to send a second reinforcement team away from the embassy. NBC News reported that Department of Defense officials confirmed that a second unit was denied authorization to leave Tripoli for Benghazi during the night of the attack, in part because the security situation in Libya remained unclear . . .
U.S. military officials confirmed late Monday that a four-man Special Operations Forces team was denied permission to leave the US Embassy in Tripoli following reports that the consulate in Benghazi had been attacked.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the team was reviewing security at U.S. embassies throughout the Middle East and was not prepared for a combat assault mission, being armed with only 9mm sidearms.
They also noted that the situation at Benghazi remained unclear and there were concerns the Embassy in Tripoli also could become a target.
Bolton's seemingly accidental acknowledgement should put an end to the campaign - enabled and encouraged at every step by Fox News - to drum up a scandal of Watergate-sized proportions.
read/watch clip of Bolton: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/05/08/the-john-bolton-acknowledgment-that-should-end/193964
tweeted by, David Axelrod ?@davidaxelrod 44m
Issa showily claims Accountability Review Board chiefs refused to testify. Co-chair Pickering tells @mitchellreports he offered to come.
Tommy Vietor ?@TVietor08 (ex-Obama speechwriter) 43m
Pickering to Andrea Mitchell: "Yes, I'm willing to testify. I made that clear yesterday He (Issa) declined." @RichardGrenell @jonkarl
Andrea Mitchell ?@mitchellreports 1h
Amb. Thomas Pickering, co-chair of #Benghazi review board responds to @DarrellIssa hearing: "Yes, I'm willing to testify." on #AMR right now
WaPo Benghazi Hearing Live Blog
AgingAmerican
(12,958 posts)...is someone to ask a Republican on TV, "Why was there no GOP reaction to the 11 embassy attacks with 52 dead during the Bush presidency?"
LiberalAndProud
(12,799 posts)I don't.
bigtree
(86,005 posts). . . does the republican party get any traction at all from today's hearing with Hicks?
No. They may have even set their cynical and imaginative campaign against the nebulous 'Hillary Clinton' campaign back a step.
starroute
(12,977 posts)Conservatives were so desperate not to have the deaths blamed on a provocation from right-wing forces in the US that they seized on indications that this was a pre-planned terrorist attack that was not motivated by the film. (Though it may have used the protests against the movie for cover.)
But once they'd jumped on that, they had to keep up the drumbeat to maintain the diversion -- or perhaps they simply saw an opportunity to get more pre-election mileage out of the administration's apparent initial misinterpretation of events.
But whatever the secondary motivation may have been, the primarily motivation was no different from all the other attempts to close down any discussion of right-wing terrorism and/or right-wing provocation in the US. Conservatives know they're on morally shaky ground, they can't disavow the extreme right but they also can't accept the taint of being associated with it, and that leads them to act in some very bizarre ways.