Khattala

Obama just isn't fitting into Republicans' carefully-cultivated narratives about Democrats, and it must drive them completely bonkers.

You see, as a Democrat, Obama is supposed to be "weak" on national security issues - a namby-pamby, politically correct appeaser whose foreign policy can't match up to the patriotic machinations of his Republican betters.

Unfortunately, it was on Obama's watch that Osama bin-Laden was finally brought to justice, after seven years of Bush's smirking jokes about finding WMDs under a podium at the White House correspondent's dinner and "I'm just not that concerned about bin Laden". And it is now on Obama's watch that one of the masterminds behind Benghazi, Ahmed Abu Khattala, has been captured by American forces.

This comes, as you may know, after almost two years of Republicans hounding the president at every turn over made up scandalmongering involving the Benghazi terrorist attack. The most common line has been to criticize Obama for not finding the perpetrators of the attack fast enough to suit the GOP:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), for example, released separate statements on the two attacks. In his Benghazi statement, he says it's unacceptable that those responsible haven't been found.
"It is disgraceful that one year later, even though a number of the terrorists who participated in this attack have been identified, not a single one has been brought to justice," Boehner said.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2013/09/11/on-sept-11-anniversary-republicans-hit-obama-on-benghazi/

Now that Obama has completely proven Republicans wrong about their perceptions of Democratic foreign policy, however, the GOP can't seem to get its story straight on Khattala:

According to multiple sources on the ground, including some with direct knowledge of the operations to identify and hunt the Benghazi suspects, intelligence that could have been acted upon at times has been ignored or put on hold. Further, they say, the recent capture of Ahmed Abu Khattala -- now on a ship bound for the U.S., expected to arrive this weekend -- was an easy one.
"He was low-hanging fruit," one source told Fox News. "We could have picked him up months and months ago and there was no change, or urgency to do this now."

 Source: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/06/27/sources-us-letting-benghazi-suspects-off-hook-recent-arrest-small-potatoes/

…Mr. Abu Khattala likely was little more than a patsy. Yes, he was captured on video-surveillance footage at the scene of the burning diplomatic compound, but my sources say he was just part of a large “pickup team” of local jihadis that the attack’s real organizers successfully manipulated.

Source:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/jul/2/timmerman-finding-a-patsy-in-benghazi/?page=1

Let's see if I have this straight: before Khattala was in US custody, he was a terrorist mastermind whose capture was of the utmost importance to our national security, and it was an outrage that the president had not yet nabbed him.

Now that Khattala is in custody - captured by a Democratic president, to boot - he is suddenly "small potatoes" - a "patsy" whose apprehension gains us nothing.

Would we be hearing these same type of dismissive reports from Fox News if a Republican president had apprehended Khattala? It's doubtful.

The real issue here is not whether Khattala is truly "small potatoes", as Fox is so desperate for us to believe. Instead, the issue is that in the wake of its major national security disasters (Iraq, failure to find Osama, etc), Republicans are left with little alternative than to just discredit president Obama's successes.

Strange behavior indeed from people who claim to be such patriots.

Credibility, Thy Name Is NOT Cheney

Former Vice President Dick Cheney, that paragon of virtue, was interviewed over the weekend on national security matters. As you might expect, the interview was chock full of gems:

Cheney voiced support for the administration's recent decision to supply arms to Syrian rebel groups working to unseat Syrian President Bashar Assad, but said the infusion of aid may be "a day late and a dollar short."

"I think it is important that Assad go down. I think my instinct would have been to support the opposition sooner," he said. "You had an opportunity earlier to provide support without having to get American forces directly involved, and they took a pass. Now they are going to do it."

Overall, Cheney said, "I don't think it's been well-handled."

 (Emphasis mine) This from the Vice President who lied us into Iraq, claiming that there were non-existent "weapons of mass destruction" and promised that we would be "greeted as liberators"? A war from which we were only able to disentangle ourselves after ten years?

Cheney has about as much authority on matters being "well-handled" as my foot.

Source: CBS News

Then there was this:

He added that President Obama's defense of the eavesdropping programs is ineffective because Obama has been weak on security issues. Cheney complained that under Obama, the Internal Revenue Service had targeted conservative groups for extra scrutiny and the administration had made crucial errors in protecting Americans during terrorist attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, last year. Four Americans, including an ambassador, were killed in those attacks. "He's got no credibility," Cheney said of Obama.

 OK...let's, as they say on cable news programs, "unpack" this a bit, shall we?

Firstly, as I have been repeatedly saying on this blog and elsewhere: what scandal? Both the Benghazi and IRS "scandals" are a bust, as neither one has any apparent connection to Obama or the White House. I know that Republicans are trying very, very hard to milk these incidents for all they are worth, but as the president said: "There's no 'there' there".

Secondly, who is Dick Cheney, of all people, to dismiss anyone as having "no credibility"? Under Cheney's watch, 9/11 happened, torture happened, Gitmo happened, lying us into an unnecessary war with Iraq happened, and accusations of being a "traitor" for not following the Dubya administration unquestioningly happened. Cheney was repeatedly found not only to be wrong, but his actions in the wake of the so-called "War on Terror" proved to be extra-Constitutional.

If Cheney wants to point to anyone who has "no credibility" on national security issues, he need only to look in the mirror.

Why are we still listening to this man as though he knows what he's talking about?

A Letter To The Editor

A Letter To The Editor that I submitted to the Richmond Times-Dispatch was published today! Frequent readers of this blog will likely not be surprised by the content:


Washington is caught up in Scandalmania 2013, and so, it seems, is the letters section of this newspaper. Since news of the IRS scrutinizing conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status and the Benghazi attacks, there has been a flurry of letters from conservative correspondents breathlessly accusing President Obama of corruption and claiming that he is the second coming of Richard Nixon

As more facts have been released to the general public, however, Benghazi and the IRS controversy have begun to look less like scandals and more like molehills.

Take Benghazi. Emails released from the White House reveal that it was the intelligence community – not the White House – that was responsible for the infamous talking points from which Susan Rice read on Meet the Press. Besides Rice, Obama is also absolved from guilt, as military analysts have gone on record to say that even if military planes had been sent to Benghazi during the attacks, they would not have arrived in time to render aid. So much for Benghazi being used to derail Obama’s presidency.

Attempts to turn the IRS controversy have met with similar difficulties. Despite claims to the contrary, liberal groups received the same scrutiny as conservative groups, suggesting that the IRS was not targeting political opponents to the president but simply doing what it thought was its job. A conservative-leaning manager of the IRS recently told The Washington Post that he was responsible for the scrutiny of political groups and not the White House.

There are certainly valid reasons to be upset with Obama. Recent leaks revealing that the government has been spying on citizens’ phone records is appalling. If the president is to be criticized, however, he should be criticized for what he has done, and not imaginary scandals milked by the opposing party. What happened to Republicans vowing to focus on jobs, jobs, jobs?

The REAL Benghazi Scandal

Years ago - long before Obama's inauguration, when most Congressional Republicans' memories conveniently seem to begin - I remember a news outlet receiving harsh criticism for what was seen as biased reporting. CBS Evening News reported on leaked documents that seemed to call then-President Bush's National Guard into question.

As it turned out, the documents proved to be phony.

As a result, many conservatives blasted Dan Rather and what they derisively renamed "C-BS" for trying to derail Bush's reelection campaign. Rather, if I'm not mistaken, eventually lost his job for reporting on what he thought was news.

Fast forward to today. At the height of the Benghazi "scandal", ABC News reports that leaked e-mails show the White House scrubbing references to terror in the talking points about Benghazi. That ends up being untrue.

Source

It's true that ABC News was simply doing its job of informing the public of what they thought was news. Moreover, it remains unclear whether this incident betrays biased reporting at ABC. Nevertheless, both CBS and Dan Rather were forced to apologize for their reporting on information from untrue leaked documents.

Where are the calls for the heads of ABC executives' heads on platters, and when will ABC issue similar apologies for reporting untrue information?

WHY Are We Still Talking About Benghazi?

Last week, Congressional Republicans launched what was supposed to be the Hearings To End All Hearings on Benghazi. In addition to providing excellent fundraising fodder and red meat for an empty-headed conservative base, the Republicans were hoping against hope that the hearings would uncover hidden truths that would prove to be a presidency-ending scandal for Obama.

What actually happened, however, is that the hearings were a waste of everyone's time. They did not tell us anything we had not already known about the Benghazi attacks or the subsequent White House response to those attacks.

So here in reality land, where no right-winger has gone before, what are the actual facts compared to the Republican talking points on Benghazi?

Obama called it a "spontaneous attack"!
In its initial assessment, the intelligence community thought that the attacks were spontaneous. Thus, that's what they put in the talking points memo given to Obama:

http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/Benghazi%20Talking%20Points%20Timeline.pdf

When that was proven to be untrue, the intelligence community changed its assessment.


"Obama didn't call it an act of terror!"
The day after the attacks, Obama said the following in the Rose Garden at the White House:

                    "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that
                     character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for"

http://www.cnn.com/2012/10/17/politics/fact-check-terror


Why didn't the military respond to the attacks?
According to an assessment by Leon Panetta, fighters scrambled in response to the attacks would not have arrived at the embassy in time to actually do anything about the attacks:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/07/leon-panetta-benghazi_n_2638283.html


Republicans were champing at the bit in November to hear testimony from General Petraeus on the Benghazi matter. There were conspiracy theories at the time that word about Petraeus' affair had been timed to discredit him so that he could not spill the beans over the alleged cover-ups involving the Benghazi attacks.

Now that Petraeus has actually testified that there was no conspiracy involving Benghazi, Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) is now saying that Petraeus' testimony, formerly highly valued by Republicans, is not trustworthy:

GREGORY: Chairman, my reporting of the immediate aftermath of this talking to       administration officials is that CIA Director David Petraeus made it clear when he briefed top officials that there was a spontaneous element to this, that it was not completely known that this was a terrorist attack right away. You don't give any credence to the notion that there was some fog of war, that there were conflicting circumstances about what went on here?

          ISSA: David Petraeus said what the administration wanted him to say is the indication.

 http://www.nbcnews.com/id/51857413/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/#.UZGRu8plFWm


There is no conspiracy or cover-up surrounding Benghazi. It is not a scandal. Almost everything Republicans have been claiming about Benghazi is either a lie or a misrepresentation of the facts as we know them. There's no doubt that the loss of any American lives abroad - especially those lost due to terrorist activities - is tragic. We should be angry about what happened, and we should demand answers. Now that we have those answers, however, it's time to move on with our lives.