Teabaggers frothing about "Gen. Ham tried to save ambassoror, now Obama fired him" What's up?

[BlueStreak]

It seems this is the latest BS frenzy from the teabaggers, but I haven't seen anything by way of factual treatment. Can anybody provide a fact-based reference?

[struggle4progress]

1. "I bet he found Obama's long form birth certificate in Kenya!"

The tea-bangers are blowing smoke outta their butts

[BlueStreak]

2. Does anybody have any information about this General Ham thing?

[Indpndnt]

15. There's nothing to get. Faux has created this out of nothing.

They're even pushing the "Omg!Omg!Omg!Omg! Consulates are sovereign U.S. soil! We should've sent in troops to defend it and rescue those men! Omg!Omg!Omg!OMG!!!" false meme.

No, they're not and no, we couldn't.

[struggle4progress]

16. He's retiring after about forty years service. So, naturally, the mixed nuts

decided to make up a bunch of slanderous crap

[deutsey]

3. Doing a Google search only dredged up rightwing sources

[sinkingfeeling]

4. "Pentagon denies claims general was fired over Benghazi attacks"

http://www.examiner.com/article/pentagon-denies-claims-general-was-fired-over-benghazi-attacks

On Monday, U.S. military officials denied claims from a Washington Times blog that Gen. Carter Ham, former head of U.S. Africa command, may have been fired due to an intent to disobey defense secretary Leon Panetta's order to "stand down" while the Sept. 11 attacks in Benghazi were underway.

This story is gathering steam as Charlie Woods, father of slain Navy SEAL Tyrone Woods, went on the Glenn Beck show this past weekend to claim that President Barack Obama had shown no remorse for his son's death during their meeting. (YouTube Video
***************************

More RW make-believe.

[BlueStreak]

5. Here's some broad commentary from Snopes

http://www.snopes.com/politics/military/benghazi.asp

[frylock]

11. all of this herp derp is based on ONE fox news report..

which cites "sources on the ground" several times. no other news agency has made such claims.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/10/26/cia-operators-were-denied-request-for-help-during-benghazi-attack-sources-say/

[justiceischeap]

13. And according to them, that makes it a grand conspiracy.

They are frothing, raving nuts over this story. I'm shocked someone hasn't posted that the President was at a gay strip club, getting a lap dance, smoking & drinking while watching everything on an iPad as he slips dollar bills into some stripper's g-string. I mean, some of the stuff they're ranting about is cuckoo.

[still_one]

6. Do I really care what the tea bagger racists are frothing about? NO

[hexola]

7. Drudge rolling with new Benghazi email rumours nt

[BlueStreak]

8. Here is a Mother Jones article, but it doesn't say much

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/10/real-real-story-behind-benghazi

[frylock]

12. GOP's Benghazi Smoking Gun Goes Up in Smoke

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/10/benghazi-libya-state-emails

[exboyfil]

9. What would we expect from first responders in the U.S.

At Columbine the police were criticized for not storming into the school. This is almost an international version of that incident. The primary goal of our military is to protect the lives of US citizens. We have a consulate under attack, and we have to wait for more information?

I absolutely do not want Romney to be president, but along with the grandiose fantasies of the right wing are legitimate questions that need to be answered. It would be good to have those answers before the end of the election. As usual the right wing goes off half cocked polluting the pool for legitimate inquiry.

[progressivebydesign]

17. If u want the answers before the election, then I'm thinking you're not really an Obama voter.

I mean really? Why do you want the answers before the election?? Just curious.

The right wing has been fabricating hateful bullshit on the Libya attack and they're getting worse, almost two months out. And you believe some of that shit??? Are you kidding me??

[exboyfil]

20. Look at my other posts on this board about not supporting Obama

I have contributed more to his campaign than any other presidential campaign. I have been far more engaged than at any other time. I have written to newspaper chat boards and on my Facebook account. I have even alienated some of my friends about my declaration of intent to vote for Obama.

I would like to be an informed voter including what happened in Benghazi. I have Sec DoD statement that assets could not be put into an uncertain situation, and I am troubled by that. I drew an analogy to Columbine. I would not pretend to know the ins and outs of troop movement, but if our military isn't in place to protect its citizens (especially an ambassador), then what are they for? You could ask the same question of police.

If you are content to run out the clock then so be it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/world/africa/panetta-tells-of-monitoring-situation-in-benghazi.html?_r=0
"Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Thursday that he and top military commanders “felt very strongly” that deploying American forces to defend against the fatal attack last month on the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, was too risky because they did not have a clear picture of what was happening on the ground. "

[frylock]

24. The Benghazi Controversy, Explained

Why was President Obama initially unwilling to call it an act of terror?

He wasn't. The day after the attack, on September 12, he gave a Rose Garden speech in which he said, in reference to the assault, "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation." At campaign stops that day and the next, he again referred to the Benghazi assault as "an act of terror." A McClatchy report sums up the evidence: "In the first 48 hours after the deadly Sept. 11 attacks on U.S. diplomatic outposts in Libya, senior Obama administration officials strongly alluded to a terrorist assault and repeatedly declined to link it to an anti-Muslim video that drew protests elsewhere in the region, transcripts of briefings show."

A day after the attacks, the CIA station chief in Libya reported to Washington that there were eyewitness reports that the attack was carried out by militants. Why didn't Obama administration officials say so?

They did. Hillary Clinton, for one, referred to it as an attack "by a small and savage group."

Okay, but that McClatchy report quoted above also says that a few days after the attacks administration officials started putting more emphasis on the "Innocence of Muslims" video. Why? It had nothing to do with the Benghazi attacks.

That's not what locals said. As David Kirkpatrick reports: "To Libyans who witnessed the assault and know the attackers, there is little doubt what occurred: a well-known group of local Islamist militants struck the United States Mission without any warning or protest, and they did it in retaliation for the video…The fighters said at the time that they were moved to act because of the video, which had first gained attention across the region after a protest in Egypt that day."

<more>

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/10/cutting-through-fog-benghazi-brief-qa

[JDPriestly]

10. Intelligence is, by its nature, partly guess-work.

Our government cannot respond to every rumor of terrorist attack. Ask Bush.

He got it wrong on so many of his guesses about the value of specific intelligence. There were several warnings about 9/11 -- about terrorists grabbing planes and flying them into buildings. Bush and Condi guessed it wouldn't happen even though Clinton and members of Clinton's administration had warned them just how dangerous the Al Qaeda threat was.

Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack. In fact, Saddam Hussein had opposed the one group of Al Qaeda that was believed to have tried to hide in Iraq. Yet Bush blamed Hussein and invaded Iraq on the excuse that it had harbored and aided Al Qaeda in the 9/11 attack.

How many of our soldiers and personnel died in Iraq? In recent years, members of the Bush administration attributed that unnecessary and probably illegal war to an error in intelligence.

How many of security forces and diplomatic personnel died in Benghazi? Maybe four? The intelligence was undervalued this time. What should we have done instead? How many troops do the Republicans think we should have sent to Libya? As I recall, the Republicans in Congress opposed the fact that Obama even provided air support in Libya during the revolution. Why the sudden change of heart?

Obama faces constant intelligence warnings from various parts of the world. Most of the time, nothing bad happens. Intelligence is partly guesswork. It will never be perfect. The reason is obvious. People make threats they don't carry out. And people also suddenly act in ways that cannot be foreseen.

I was never in intelligence, but I can tell you that we lived right on the edge of Eastern Europe for years during the Carter and Reagan administrations. We saw the crumbling of the Soviet dominance from our position across the border. It was so obvious. Yet when we came back to the US and told our friends what we had seen, nobody believed us.

The break in the border between Austria and Hungary was no surprise to us, not at all. That's because Austria and Hungary developed quite a trade relationship and permitted lots of travel in the early 80s already. Polish refugees were not uncommon in Austria.

When the wall came down in Berlin, we could not believe that the Reagan administration took credit. The conditions that had led to that fall were put in place during Carter's presidency. The opening of the borders was the natural result of the opening of trade and the revolts in Poland and other countries. Russia never really developed the industrial capacity it pretended to have. We have to have known that very early on.

Intelligence is always very imperfect.

If it could be more reliable there would never have been a WWI even considering the limited intelligence capability of the time.

Thanks for your concern. We should all be able to figure this out for ourselves.

[Jeff In Milwaukee]

14. On the "calling for backup" nonsense...

This isn't a fucking sandwich from Jimmy Johns. IF (and this is still a big IF) someone at the embassy called for reinforcements during the assault, it should be noted that the nearest military assets would have been at the U.S.Embassy in Tripoli, which is more than 400 miles away.

Assumption #1: There were troops at the Embassy that could have been redeployed to Benghazi -- bear in mind that riots were breaking out everywhere, and it might not have been safe to weaken the Embassy's security detail at that time.

Assumption #2: There were at least three Black Hawks available to transport troops from Tripoli to the Consulate -- bear in mind that these helicopters would NOT have been on the ground in Tripoli, but likely on a naval vessel in the Gulf of Sidra.

So from the time an S.O.S. came from Benghazi (if it ever did), it would have been hours before reinforcement could have arrived, and the damage would have been done.

Additional Food For Thought: Let's assume that a commander decided to put twenty Marines on three Black Hawks that magically appeared in the Embassy compound. This detail would have been flying blindly into a combat zone with an unknown number of hostiles and (possibly) no place suitable as a Landing Zone. They might have been circling the hot spot with no ability to engage the enemy in helicoptors that were precisely one rocket-propelled grenade from disintegration. Any officer foolish enough to give that order should spend the rest of his military career scrubbing toilets in Greenland.

[progressivebydesign]

18. My understanding is that it all happened quite quickly, as well.

And all of what you wrote is rational. Fox News, Drudge, and the right wing haters, are not.

They sat by and said jack shit about the fact that Bush/Cheney's grand incompetence and arrogance, allowed 9/11 to happen. I mean TALK about ignoring a threat!!! They were never forced to answer for that.

The fox news assholes don't give a shit about the people who perished in that Libya attack. They only want to make it the "thing" that takes down Obama. Period. They have no conscience about sending thousands of our troops to die and be injured in Iraq over lies... but this is suddenly the worst thing that a President has ever done.

they are shameless.

[noel711]

19. It's all a faux distraction...

from the election.

RMoney is pathetic, they know it, and have no good news about
his campaign so they're grasping at straws.

The issue of Bengazi is still unfolding, and they are constructing
a house of cards.. as evidence that the president is evil.

And the masses will believe anything from them...
the power of propaganda.

[applegrove]

21. Apparently the General had plans to go since early summer. Before Benghazi.

[Erose999]

22. Benghazi is their only talking point. They're pinned down on EVERYTHING else. Sandy, Mourdock/Akin

economy improving, Mitt's lies about Jeep exposed by the media, etc.

Benghazi is the last stand of the hard core reichwingers. Its really all they have in the tank.

[Iggo]

23. Herp.

Herpa Derp.

Derpa Derp.

Derp.