When the State Department is ratcheting up its rhetoric to eleven it’s time to take a look at why …
CNN reported on the personal journal of slain American ambassador Christopher Stevens over objections from his family, a State Department spokesman said Saturday.
The news channel, in a story posted online Saturday, said that it found a journal belonging to Stevens four days after he died in a Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Three other Americans also were killed.
CNN broke a pledge to the late ambassador’s family that it wouldn’t report on the diary, said State Department spokesman Philippe Reines, a senior adviser to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
In a blistering statement, Reines called CNN’s actions “indefensible.”
The channel said in the story online that it took “newsworthy tips” from Stevens’ diary and confirmed them with other sources. Citing an unidentified source “familiar with Stevens’ thinking,” CNN said that the ambassador was concerned about security threats in Benghazi and a “rise in Islamic extremism.” […]
The public has a right to know what CNN learned from “multiple sources” about fears and warnings of a terror threat before the Benghazi attack, the channel said, “which are now raising questions about why the State Department didn’t do more to protect Ambassador Stevens and other U.S. personnel.”
CNN’s reporting was not of salacious nor irrelevant gossip from a personal diary, but of seven pages of direct, work-related observations and opinions of Chris Stevens. Now Hillary’s advisor is blasting CNN “for the family”?
“Whose first instinct is to remove from a crime scene the diary of a man killed along with three other Americans serving our country, read it, transcribe it, email it around your newsroom for others to read” and then call the family?” Reines asked. […]
In its online story, CNN said it found the journal on the “floor of the largely unsecured consulate compound where he was fatally wounded.”
Why is this described as a “crime scene”? This smacks of the same obscenity as describing Nidal Hasan’s jihadist murder of 13 Americans as “workplace violence.”
Since the area was not secure, should the person who stumbled across the journal left it there? Puh-leese.
Asked to comment on CNN’s report that Stevens was concerned about a “hit list,” Reines referred to a news conference last Thursday at which Clinton was asked about it.
“I have absolutely no information or reason to believe that there’s any basis for that,” Clinton had said.
Hillary is either lying or so incompetent in the running of her own department she needs to resign immediately. Not that she’ll be fired. Even people shown to be law-breakers get to keep their jobs under The One.
And that’s the motivation of the full-court press against CNN. The Obama administration will not be shown as the fools they are. CNN slipped the leash and must be punished.
President Barack Obama, Univision interview:
“And my number-one priority is always to keep our diplomats safe and to keep our embassies safe.”
Exactly, and that is why you sent an Ambassador, Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods and close to 40 other American civil servants into a meat-grinding war zone without adequate security: To keep them safe, because keeping them safe is always your personal number-one priority.
This will be turned around against Hillary instead of Teh Won-and-Done. In fact the focus on State instead of TOTUS shows that’s already the spin.
“Run against Obama’s anointed successor in 2016? Not if we can help it!”
How do the families of those four slain men hear Obama’s words? Does he even bother to consider them?
Bill Kristol is a douche, but he did give Romney one bit of good advice this morning (on FNS): Attack Obama hard on foreign policy and on the Benghazi lies.
McGehee
if O! loses against Romney, I’ll bet you right now that Obama will be the Dem nominee in 2016
I could see Obama as a latter-day Gus Hall…
Hell, by 2024 he’d be begging Hillary to be his running mate, but she would have left the Democrats to join a major party.
…probably the Republicans, unless she suddenly decides to like freedom and the Constitution and shit.
Finders keepers, or what?
Shoulda helped them self to a lamp or something, maybe that wristwatch left on the counter too. Unsecured, right?
This failure rests solely with Hussein. He takes credit for every small success, and dodges monstrous.failures. This time he’ll have to answer for his Benghazi bloody hands. If Mitt has enough voice to make that point resonate.
Why should we believe anything the administration says after their non-stop lying and spinning since the 9/11 murders? It was rioters, no, people angry about an obscure movie, no wait, the crowd was actually rescuing Stevens not desecrating his body, oh, and the retired Navy SEALS failed to protect them, no, we didn’t have advance warning, and by the way, the consulate was totally secure – except for those murders & the destroyed consulate…What/who else can they blame this on?
How does a diary, presumably made of paper, survive a fiery blaze?
Boosh!! The talking points are already distributed.
And when this move causes trouble a few years down the road the cry will not be that Obama is at fault, no sirree.
leigh
Stranger things have happened
lee
but this book wasn’t a lamp and neither was this the scene of a “crime.”
Steven’s writings on the situation at hand are relevant … that they prove embarrassing to the Obama administration is the motivation behind the slams against CNN here, nothing more.
Darleen, I read about that note. It is an artifact and is scorched. A terrific find for the family, for sure.
I’m going to have to disagree with you about that the sight of the consulate not being a crime scene. Yes, it was. Our Ambassador was murdered there. A crime was commited.
About the diary, the room shown—which leads to another round of questions—is nothing but a bunch of smoldering ash. Is this really the room in which the Ambassador “died of smoke inhalation”? Is it a handy file photo of a smoldering room? That must be one magic journal to have survived in one piece with nary a scorch. Where is it? Are there photos of it? Presumably it was photocopied/transcribed. Someone saw it. Presumably several someones.
Every night on the newz we are treated to film of Syrians blowing the shit out of Aleppo and I’ll be darned if I can tell if they are new or recycled film. Piles of rubble look like piles of rubble, particularly when they are obscured by smoke/dust.
I’ve become even more of a cynic and a skeptic over the last couple of years. And for someone who is by nature a cynic and a skeptic, that is a mighty feat.
<i.Bill Kristol is a douche
No he isn’t. He’s no Irving Kristol, but it’s often hard to fill your father’s shoes.
Bill has been consistent throughout the campaign. He didn’t want Romney from the git-go. He was a Rubio/Ryan guy. Now that Romney is the nominee he’s trying to make the best of it, even though he was for a changing of the guard to a younger, more vital candidate.
leigh
The consulate is sovereign soil. The murder of the ambassador was an act of war.
It is obscene to call it a “crime.”
Ah. Never mind, then.
It needs investigating, like a crime scene. Punishment, however, meted out by Judge Drone.
[…] Stevens and other U.S. personnel.”Here is the CNN video report:More commentary from Protein Wisdom, Ann Althouse, The Lonely Conservative, Twitchy, Gateway Pundit and NewsBusters.Related: […]
Yes, Bill Kristol is a douche.
From that Kristol article, Feb 2011:
Yeah, that crazy ol’ Glenn Beck sure was wrong about all of that! Nothing to see here!
That article is almost two years old, Pablo. No one has a crystal (sic) ball.
Obama flubbed his whole “Arab Spring” crapfest when he didn’t embrace the elections in Iraq.
Fast forward to today with all the Muslim world on fire and chants of Death to America! Death to Israel!
Forgive me if I seem a bit harsh, but when murderous ignorant savages are given “free democratic elections”, they tend to elect… murderous ignorant savages.
I was all “democracy, fuck yeah!” back in the 2003-2005, but since then I’ve adopted a more Derbyshire-esque attitude. The internal affairs of third-world shitholes are of no vital national concern to us — that the 9/11 (ver. 1) attackers were from said holes of shit and demonstrably became a national concern is far more damning of a bleeding-heart “let’s just be nice to the poor dears” attitude on our part.
Why were they allowed into the US in the first place? What wonderful improvement to our lives was envisioned from letting in who-knows-how-many people from places that kill Jews, poofers, and un-bagged women on general principle? Sure, only some of them launched attacks against us on our own soil, but what exactly was the imagined upside re. the rest?
That we failed in Iraq, allowing them to freely-elect an Islamic government completely incompatible with American ideals, just indicates to me that if we no longer have the will to “do it” democracy-building-wise (see Germany and Japan, c. 1946), we should pretty much stop trying.
I don’t think that’s harsh at all, John. I felt the same as you including the Derb part.
I want all the fuckers out of the US, but we haven’t rounded up people since WWII and that would be one hell of a mess if we did that now.
What’s the solution? Beats the hell out of me, and I’m sure they would, given half a chance. I just want our soldiers home. Like yesterday.
Yes, and now we can see how utterly, completely and thoroughly wrong he was. But we didn’t need to wait until now to see him being a douche.
“What’s the solution?”
One among the various elements of a solution would be to never again elect to the highest Executive office a radically anti-American the likes of Barack Obama.
In its online story, CNN said it found the journal on the “floor of the largely unsecured consulate compound where he was fatally wounded.”
So of course CNN chooses to contaminate a crime scene before investigators have processed it. There’s probably a crime there somewhere…obstruction of justice…something, anything. Charge those involved.
If it had been processed, then fire the investigators for incompetence.
@PurpAv, the FBI team is still in Tripoli. 12 days later, they still haven’t been to Benghazi. The crime scene is beyond contaminated by now. Neglect will do that.
How was CNN able to stroll in, and walk off with something like that? Because everyone else could too. It’s not secured.
So in the last few days there have been stories about Obama potentially transferring the blind sheik, bin Laden’s bodyguard, and releasing 1/3 of the Guantanamo detainees. Seems like he’s setting up Romney for some terrorist attacks during his presidency. Unbelievable.
sdferr says September 23, 2012 at 3:27 pm
Amen.
Bill Kristol is gullible. Five days earlier some gulling was published.
[…] Ambassador’s Stevens’ papers were found by an American reporter, via Darleen Click, Protein Wisdom: CNN broke a pledge to the late ambassador’s family that it wouldn’t report on the diary, said […]
Thank you. Gullible is much better than douche.
More likely Obama’s pitiful attempts to appease the jihadis will encourage them to escalate their rioting and their attacks on American interests, both in the Middle East and here at home, starting now. Yes, this will surely spill over into the Romney regime, but you don’t pour gasoline on the fire in hopes it won’t flair up for a month. This is a very stupid move on Obama’s part.
a gullible douche?
The media needs it’s collective ass kicked, as suggested by Pat Caddell today. 20 embassies attacked in one day and not a peep from those asshats.
Bob Beckel: Douche
Alan Colmes: Douche
Bill Kristol: Gullible
True. A looter packs off what he can capitalize on.
A responsible entity on the other hand, like an international news conglomerate, passes the spoils on to the appropriate party, be that family or investigating authorities.
Acting like any unsecured evidence/property at the scene of an atrocity is fair game seems unethical to me. Like if I stumbled across a murder victim and helped myself to his wallet.
lee
what if you stumbled across a murder scene where the murderers might still be in the vicinity, absolutely no security, and noticed next to the body a camera.
Would you leave it there for the perps to come back and destroy the evidence or take it, wondering if the victim got pics of his murderers right before the deed?
You see, it is all well and good to posit what should happen at a so-called “crime scene” where the cops come in, secure it, and then Grissom comes in to solve everything in 60 minutes.
But when the “cops” in the area might be the ones that helped facilitate the crime, all bets are off.
Back Off, Bill Kristol!
From newrouter’s link, immediately above:
Some people get that way from well-deserved experience. Just sayin’.
How did anyone know that the diary was there? A CNN correspondent (or whomever) waltzes in and just happens to “find” the diary/journal lying in the middle of the carnage is risable.
If it was Ahmed or some other local who found the thing, that’s even more questionable. Ahmed reads? He reads English? He knows this is a journal that belonged to the Ambassador, picks it up, and hands it over to CNN?
I’m calling bullshit on the whole story.
That article is rather ironic, nr.
No one said anything nice about Mitt Romney around pw for ages (and some still don’t). Prelutsky isn’t saying anything ground-breaking. He just wants Kristol to shut up and get on board when Bill has been upfront since the jump that he didn’t want Romney.
It’s what they did after they picked up the camera. Acted like it was theirs…
Not that I want to be in the position of defending CNN, but:
That’s the right thing to do with it. Stevens clearly wasn’t coming back for it.
I mean, you take the camera, develop the film, and sell the pictures before the police know a camera was there?
If it is bullshit then either the State Dept. was fooled too or they are in on it for some undisclosed purpose.
CNN treated it as they would a background source at least getting other sources and reporting those ones by name while citing the diary only as “unidentified source “familiar with Stevens’ thinking,””. It seems that it was the State Dept. who outed the diary as the source.
As for finding it there. The whole place didn’t burn to the ground. After a fire and the crowd trampling through, anything there was probably scattered about if no one thought it of value to sell. A small notebook with 7 pages written in it in English script writing wouldn’t look like much to a looter there anymore than a burglar here would want one in Arabic.
It does tell us what Stevens’ concerns were about the security situation, and those belie the claims by State that he and the consulate were properly protected and that this was some spontaneous, unforeseeable attack.
Frankly, I’m pleasantly amazed that the Clinton News Network reported on it. And I’m further pleased that State decided to invoke the Streisand Effect regarding that reporting.
If they were exploiting personal or salacious details from it, that would be another matter.
Three days after he was killed, CNN found a journal belonging to late U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. The journal was found on the floor of the largely unsecured consulate compound where he was fatally wounded.
CNN notified Stevens’ family about the journal within hours after it was discovered and at the family’s request provided it to them via a third party.
The journal consists of just seven pages of handwriting in a hard-bound book.
CORRECTION
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated when CNN found the journal belonging to late Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. The journal was found three days after the fatal attack on the Benghazi consulate.
For CNN, the ambassador’s writings served as tips about the situation in Libya, and in Benghazi in particular. CNN took the newsworthy tips and corroborated them with other sources.
A source familiar with Stevens’ thinking told CNN earlier this week that, in the months leading up to his death, the late ambassador worried about what he called the security threats in Benghazi and a rise in Islamic extremism.
link
I’ve not seen any pictures of the entire compound, just film of it seeming to be engulfed in flames. Or it’s possible I’m conflating the consulate with another burning embassy. Lord knows there are enough of them.
Obama THANKS Egyptian President For Protecting US Embassy After Protesters Storm Grounds & Torch US Flag
proggslam explained:
This state of affairs is a symptom of the decline of nations. Gillard and Hassan are both consequences of post-nationalism, as are Obama and Morsi, or Hollande and Ahmed in the banlieue. These leaders pay lip service to national identity, but imagine a world without national borders and divisions. That is something they have in common with Muslims, who see nations or borders as abstract entities in the same way that their leftist enablers do.
Gillard subscribes to a post-national identity, and Hassan to a pre-national identity. This is only a technical difference that matters as much as the location of the endpoint of a circle, but in the practical sense they are members of dramatically different identity groups with their own incompatible forms of multiculturalism.
The left’s post-national identity is based on a secular political multiculturalism. Islam’s post-national identity is based on a religious theocratic multiculturalism. The left has heresies that it prosecutes as hate crimes and Islam has heresies that it prosecutes as blasphemy. Gillard would understand, though condemn, a riot based on some offense to gay rights or aboriginal rights, as an offense against her brand of multiculturalism. The Mohammed riots may be more understandable to her as an offense against Muslim multiculturalism.
link
oh my
Passionately describing Mr Biden’s work ethic she began: ‘I’ve seen Joe up close,’ making a wide motion with her hands, before blushing as she realised the innuendo she had just made.
link
I suspect the diary is a metaphor for the State Department having smoking gun documentation of the White House dithering on adding security to the Bengazi Consulate.
A Hillary shot across the bow so to speak.
A Hillary shot across the bow so to speak.
because the sos can’t buy any security with her security budget of 2010 $1.6 billion see page 33
link
I call them both transnational fascism with different surface finishes, but toe-may-toe, toe-ma-toe.
MS. BUCHANAN: The key here is which side are you on?
She has the budget line item. Not sure how that eliminates any push back on her behalf. Were Stevens concerns kept in house or perhaps were the CIA and NSA also aware of potential dangers.
Not sure how that eliminates any push back on her behalf.
hil can push all she wants. she’s stuck with the barack hussein marshall davis “tar baby” – racist 11!!11
Were Stevens concerns kept in house or perhaps were the CIA and NSA also aware of potential dangers.
BT, I had read elsewhere that Stevens was a spook for the CIA and this was no accident.
According to the “diary” Stevens had forebodings for at least 7 entries. Was a Marine FAST team requested from the DOD?
Like the ones dispatched after the fact?
Must be a Blue Democratic Moon out tonight.
Libya Threatens Clinton’s Legacy — and State Does Damage Control
I’d be curious to know what the CIA dispatches were saying about security in Benghazi. A disregarded briefing or slowboated request for additional security to the DOD would get Hillary out of the spotlight as it returns stage left to Obama.
Does the buck ever get to Obama?
Does the buck ever get to Obama?
dude that be racist what with buck and obama in the same ?. you do know not to call your dog boy?
Dude, i’m white and live in the south.
I could be deaf, dumb and blind and would still be called a racist.
Besides my dogs name is Boy. How else am i supposed to call him?
….How else am i supposed to call him?
– Here Obama.
– BTW, in case you thought there was ever going to be a time when Bummblefuck stop digging our hole he’s planning on repeating “it was the video” to a session at the UN.
How else am i supposed to call him?
here piggy? islamophobia 911!!11
When I was a kid I was taught to call black people “black people”.
I was told that the word “colored” was old fashioned but should not be used because it made people made.
I was told that the word negro was correct and clinical but people don’t like it when others call them by clinical sounding name so avoid that.
I was told that “nigger” was unfriendly and aggressive and that I was not to waste my life being an unfriendly and aggressive person, AKA a bully and troublemaker. Thus using nigger was very bad conduct. My mom would refer to niggers here and there but would not do so to a black person’s face as that was the word used when she was a kid, and apparently not always with rancor.
Words we NEVER used amongst ourselves, that I picked up from hollywood, and ‘the news” that I generally associate with fraudulent reports of racism (at least regionally): boy, buck, mandingo, night fighter, blackie, darkie, frickies, tribals, ungala-boongala, zulus, etc. References like really did not happen. Nobody talked like that and if they did we would have instantly decided that the speaker was probably an asshole with a chip on his shoulder and ridiculous. You said black if you were hip and nigger if you weren’t or if you were being a nasty little shit.
Talk of watermelon, fried chicken, catfish, collard greens as racist lingo would seem like babbling because YO, WE ATE THATS STUFF TOO! We were the kids of kids poor southern german/swedish immigrant enclave farmers who had moved to town in the 50’s. THAT WAS THE MENU!
Likewise I had to have the work “kike” explained to me after seeing Porky’s 2. (I think it was 2). Jews were just those kids who couldn’t come over on friday or saturday and who you weren’t to invite over around Christmas because…just don’t. Of course I found out that a couple of the kids who DID come over on friday or Saturday were unobservant jews.
And I remember there being more school yard friction with catholics. And THAT was pretty minor. Usually over US having dinky little churches and THEM having big fancy ones and taking more trips for Christian youth programs than we did. THEY went to a youth camp with horses. WE had a weenie roast in someone’s yard with smores and a guitar singalong. There was some argument as to whether were heretics or not. Usually a protestant adult or catholic adult would tell both sides to shut up about it since nobody had done any fighting about it for 150 years or so and we were kids in school anyway. It was explained to us that Catholics who couldn’t be nice to protestant kids were bad catholics and protestants who couldn’t be nice to catholic kids were bad protestants and that if protestant kids wanted to go to the catholic youth camp they were welcome to have their parents ask about it. In short we were told that the catholic and protestant adults got along fine and so should we even if we did differ on some matters of doctrine.
Nor did I understand that Native Americans AKA Indians were a target of the KKK. I did not even really associate the indian-blooded kids I knew with the indians shown in westerns.
Mexican descended kids were viewed as white. They might know some spanish. They might not. Hell I knew a little german so I could talk to my grandmother.
We got along better then than we do now.
PROGRESS!
“because it made people made.” – > Made people mad. As in angry. No one was admitted into the secret levels of the mafia because of this. That I know of.
” I had to have the work “kike” explained to me ” -> word. I know of no work titled “kike”. I don’t want to either. Especially if it is an opera.
The New York Times agreed to withhold locations and details of these operations at the request of Obama administration officials, who said that disclosing such information could jeopardize future sensitive government activities and put at risk American personnel working in dangerous settings.
No, their positions have nothing to do with who is occupying the White House. None. Zero. Zip. Nada
– BTW, in case you thought there was ever going to be a time when Bummblefuck stop digging our hole he’s planning on repeating “it was the video” to a session at the UN.
You have got to be fucking kidding me.
??? Dated yesterday:
Someone is being less than truthful.
Given that CNN found the journal 3 days after the attack, my money is on the New York Times.
Wait, 13 days is “more than a day.” So, totally true, right?
And oh, the capper: the hilarious exchange between State spokestool Philippe Reines and BuzzFeed email jockey Michael Hastings. If there was any doubt that the Four Year Re-Election Campaign is cracking under the pressure of its own dim-witted bumblef**kery…
Google Ambassador Stevens and Man’s country. Stevens is known by the gay community for his homosexual relationship with Obama and Rham Emanuel during their mutual membership in Chicago’s gay bathouse, “Man’s Country.”
Stevens was given the Ambassadorship to keep him quiet about his gay experiences with Barack and Rham. Then the journal became known and its very existence was a threat to Obama. So to end the threat of Stevens publishing the journal which certainly included facts about his gay experiences with Obama, Obama staged the attack which was to destroy the journal, but Stevens was to have survived to be taken hostage then freed when traded for the Blind Shiek. (October Surprise). Two problems solved — almost.
Trying to salvage their deal with Obama, the attackers took Stevens to the hospital, but it was too late. He died, not of gunshot wounds or explosion, but of accidental smoke inhalation.
Then Obama had to make up a quick hokey lie to cover and of course he had to keep the FBI and CIA out of the area for weeks while his own CNN sanitized the scene and edited the journal down to the seven pages sent to the family. And that’s just what he did. But there may have been copies. Most writers make them. That would be a real story.