Even the left-partisan editorializing cannot fully blunt what Politico reports
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) says the State Department is sitting on $2.2 billion that should be spent on upgrading security at U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide, but the Obama administration will not spend the funds.
Issa made his comment during an appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” to discuss the recent attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans dead. Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, held a highly partisan hearing on the incident last week.
Issa claims the State Department will not spend the already approved funds because they didn’t want to the appearance of needing increased security.
“The fact is, they [the State Department.] are making the decision not to put the security in because they don’t want the presence of security,” Issa said. “That is not how you do security.”
With Republicans turning the Libya into a political issue, Democrats have countered that House GOP leaders actually sought to cut funding for embassy security, which Issa tried to refute.
“You can’t always look to [new] money when there’s money sitting there,” Issa said. “We’re going through a ‘Mission Accomplished’ moment. Eleven years after Sept. 11 [2001], Americans were attacked by terrorists who pre-planned to kill Americans. That happened, and we can’t be in denial.”
No one died at Watergate, but Chris Stevens’ body is to be dismissed as a partisan issue.
Shameless. Disgusting.
h/t Pablo
Just remember Obama’s strategy tonight:
***********************************************
UPDATE Wag the Dog?
Today, the Associated Press reports that “the White House has put special operations strike forces on standby and moved drones into the skies above Africa, ready to hit militant targets from Libya to Mali, if US investigators can find the al-Qaida-linked group responsible for the death of the US ambassador in Libya.”
Oh, they can’t do that until the investigation is completed! They can’t even answer questions, let alone kill people, until the investigation is completed. Which, I’m told, will be after the election.
The media set-up looks like it indicates Obama will give the “special operations strike force” its go order during the town-hall blabfest tonight, just to demonstrate his strength to anyone who has doubts.
if US investigators can find the al-Qaida-linked group responsible for the death of the US ambassador in Libya.”
– Just from what we’ve learned so far, it’s entirely possible that this White House couldn’t find their asses with a high powered telescope and a company of Marines.
anyone see Argo yet?
Carter at least knew to keep his trap shut, even though he was a horrible President.
In other words, if OBama had been President 30 years ago, he would have made an announcement that he might be taking measures to get the 6 missing embassy staff memebers out of there. Maybe by shooting a fake movie.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: One of the first orders of business for a new administration is to fire every employee of the State Department down to the lowest file clerk, strip them of their security clearances (ideally their pensions as well) and prohibit their working at any government agency or contractor.
After this is done, create a newer, much-smaller State Department focusing exclusively on the two-dozen or so countries that are actually relevant to American interests.
eCurmudgeon, I bet you recall the story told about George Schultz in the early days of his tenure as Sec. State, calling into his office Ambassadors for private get-to-know-you sessions and asking each of them while pointing at a world map, “Now tell me, which is your country here?” and then when the Ambassador would indicate Belgium or Chad or whatever, Schultz would correct them, saying “No, your country is the United States of America [idiot].”
Yes, you heard that right: they’re lookin’ for the “real killers”…
re: the update, whaddaya wanna bet that SCOAMF gives the “go” order right there on live TV during the debate?
Good thing Obama is holed up on a golf course in Virginia.
Problem is, the proper response to an answer like that should have been a simple “Thank you. You’re dismissed.”
Hey, maybe I should read the comments before submitting. At least sdferr and I share similar unhelpful, Visigothy, furry-toed paranoid delusions.
I sure hope you’re both wrong. That would be the worst kind of showboating as a show of force since WJC bombed the baby mik factory.
Saving that those words would have to have come from the mouth of Ronald Reagan at whose pleasure they’d serve, I can’t otherwise disagree, eC.
It’s that but it’s infinitely more. I find it utterly baffling how having been raised on a steady diet of WATERGATE! and even Carter’s Iran, this nation will accept Benghazi as is, with hardly an outcry outside the usual conservative channels. Even the NYT relegates these lethal, catastrophic, and deeply indicative foreign proceedings — and both their impetus and aftermath — to something other than the front page!
Those conservative channels, of course, can be marginalized by the NYT ilk. Conservatives, after all, naturally lack objectivity in dealing with the reality that the entire American Mideastern presence shall be and is being overrun.
I’m not saying the US doesn’t need to have its entire State Department fumigated, just that the BUSH WAR! crew not only haven’t the integrity to report on a matter a hundred times worse than the last REPUBLICAN SCANDAL!, but they haven’t the integrity to prevent their cultivated narratives these past few decades from continuing as before.
This is some craven shit.
It’s one thing to misrepresent out of partisanship. It’s another to conceal — to willfully lie. But it’s really a whole new ballgame when your work is to warp an entire national ethos in favor of the dark side and to do so in such an intentional, overt, obvious, and morally corrupted manner.
Fuck these people. I suggest that the push back has been entirely too timid.
Hillary can stop all the bucks she wants but we don’t believe her. (why start now?)
I want to know what BHO has on the Clinton’s. Or maybe it’s a certain Saudi Prince who’s BHO’s guardian angel.
I would never have believed those two would shuck and jive for anyone let alone some choom scam artist from South Side Chicago.
Sad, so sad how the mighty Clintons have been tamed.
“Sad, so sad how the mighty Clintons have been tamed.”
Don’t see how this is so, especially regarding H.R. Clinton’s performative pretense last night: seems to me she (or they, to the extent W.J. is helping inform her planning) intends to get away scot-free again. With the help of the Party (or the news media), that is.
I don’t think she’s doing this out of some sense of loyalty to Obama or even the Democrat party.
I’d say given what she’s said just recently before this, that she was TOLD by someone she’d better do this OR ELSE.
I can’t imagine how this helps her or any of her post Obama political plans. It doesn’t help Bill either.
That they even took the post was amazing to me. The Sec State is not the path to higher office. Not even higher speaking fees. (considering who she is and what she could get with out being SecState.)
You think that her making the statement that her Dept. made the decisions on security somehow gets her and Obama off the hook?
I don’t think so. I think Hillary just said bye bye to any Presidential plans for 2016 and beyond.
Well, I just took a look at Ace and DrewM made some good points and now I can see how some could view Hillary’s come to Jesus moment as getting her off the hook. Temporarily. And only with some people who’s judgment is questionable.
I still think it did more damage than it may look like but now I can see how in the short term some might applaud her for this somehow. Even though we know she doesn’t believe a word of what she’s saying.
If pretending to own responsibility without actually owning responsibility can’t help her, taking on herself none of the consequences rather than taking on any consequences (Les Aspin!) doesn’t do the trick, then nothing will. Of course none of this is done out of loyalty to Obama — and no one suggests you thought otherwise — it’s all about saving H.R.C.’s political skin. Thus far, at least judging the way people are currently talking — that is to say, they’re fine with the pretending without the substance (Les Aspin!) — she appears to be good to go.
But then, we know the story isn’t done, just as H.R.C.’s beloved investigation isn’t done, so the way people talk or make assumptions today won’t necessarily be the same two, four, ten years from now.
I said nothing about getting Obama off the hook, by the way. Wherever did you get that idea? Hillary has jumped down in a foxhole or under the bus, while Obama remains standing and exposed just as the indirect fires come in to fill the air with shards.
It makes her the only person in the administration willing to sack up and say “The buck stops with me.”
Of course, she immediately followed that with “But I didn’t do it. It’s the security peoples’ fault.”
Leadership 2012.
It makes her the only person in the administration willing to sack up and say “The buck stops with me.”
On which for further ruminations, see: “Hillary Apologizes for Benghazi, But Where’s Obama?”
See Alana’s ease there with “If he lets an underling like Hillary accept responsibility. . . ” as though H.R.C. is actually accepting responsibility (Les Aspin!)? And Alana, one might suppose, is a political antagonist to Clinton, yet apparently is satisfied with the pretending. When people fall on swords, they bleed and die.
Look at what she said. It was not “I am responsible for the security failure.” It was “I take responsibility. I’m in charge of the State Department, 60000+ people all over the world, 275 posts. The President and VP certainly wouldn’t be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals. They’re the ones that weigh all of the risks and the threats and the needs and make a considered decision”
So, whose failure is this, according to Hillary?
Security professionals. The ones that made the decision, without consulting anyone up the food chain. Who shall of course remain nameless.
Translated: “The power pyramid truncates right here. It never makes Barry’s desk.”
She knows the debate is tonight. Boom.
Which, it’s time folks started seeing Barry as the petulant, blaming child he is. The Clintons are hardcore. At this they are not kids.
Kept Walking
Yep, no change: he’s still as dumb a dumbass as he’s ever been.
Hey Barry! Get down in the foxhole (FAUX!hole) with Hillary, dumbass!
Remember when Bush was personally directing the nitwits at Abu Ghraib? Good, good times.
If he let’s an underling like Hillary accept responsibility, he’s going to look even weaker than he has over the past few weeks.
– Say what you want about Hillary, she’d no dummy. She just set the Wonce up for the pipe.
– Senator OldFart this morning: “Its very laudable for Mrs Clinton to take the blame, but the security of Americans is not the responsibility of the Secratary of State, its the direct and chief responsibility of the president.”
– Looks like her and Bill figured out a way to dodge the bus in a way where it will back up over Bummblefuck.
Pulling a “Reno” is to have try to have her cake and eat it too.
Responsibility with rewards and without consequences, isn’t.
Any action Obama takes in Libya at this point is useless. The action he didn’t take – leading up to the attack, and immediately after it started, is all we need to know about his inability to respond to terrorism.
Obama’s the Captain of a ship he has allowed to run aground on rocks, who yet supposes he can keep his commission for another cruise. Funny world he lives in with its unicorns, butterflies and communist intentions.
Minor nit: Can we please take the saying “Fall on your sword” by the neck and fling it forcefully from the vocabulary?
That is, until we start giving government officials actual swords.
Or service pistols.
Because of the reportagé !
In addition to purging the phrase “fall on your sword,” let’s please stop adding “-gate” to every scandal.
As has been said many times about Fast & Furious and Benghazi vs. Watergate, the latter didn’t involve a body count. Obama’s arming of thugs in Mexico & the middle east, and his inexplicably deficient security for our diplomats in Libya, should not be trivialized with cutesy “-gate” labels.
Ain’t it good to know a Big-Shouldered American city like Chicago can be so sober and self-possessed it can find its way to re-elect a Congressman who hasn’t been seen in public for months? What could be more reassuring as to the nation’s prospects in the face of such a heart warming story?
Libby, R. S. McCain thinks we should use the -quiddick suffix for scandals with a body count. Hence, Benghaziquiddick.
I kinda like the idea.
My father always talked fondly of how J. Edgar, under the orders of FDR, apprehended alive almost all of the pilots who bombed Pearl Harbor, and who were then tried and given multi-year sentences in federal prison. Man, those were days to be proud of how our nation acted in such a grownup fashion. So unlike those childish nations who considered such attacks to be acts of war.
I prefer the phrase “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” myself. Has a nice ring to it.
– If its any consulation to our side, here is the results of Hillary’s “taking responsibility” – a very typical comment from a Post at HuffPoop:
“Hillary Supporters for Romney/Ryan 2012 …. Obama lied cheated and stole the election from her … and threw her under the bus in the end. ….. you know I’m right “
– Clinton supporters are coming out of the woodwork to defend the Hildebeast. Added to the Conservative/classic Liberals/Moderates etc., its really getting ugly for the Wonce.
Romnrys question to Jug ears as soon as anything is mentioned about foreign policy:
– “As president do you agree that secratary Clinton is to blame for Benghazi?”
Importing to repost after a wrong-threaded error:
Let’s repeat that: Instituting a doctrine of mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors.
“Our” credibility is enhanced by utterly separating ourselves from sin, attributing all to the “predecessors”. That’s just about a perfect statement of Obama’s stance. He will have none. They will have all.
Susan Rice: “It was purely a function of what was provided to us,” she said.
That’s her story and she’s sticking to it. She’s content that as to where she got that story we should have no clue. Gutfeld’s question stands: Who? — who in particular — Who told you this is what you should say [Pres. Obama, V.P. Biden, Sec. Clinton, Amb. Rice, Amb. Kennedy, whoever else fronted the story of the “video mob”]? Where did the story originate?
Andy Card says it came form the White House.
– The intelligence people have already shot that lie down.
– Issa needs to get Rice and intel reps in the same room and ask which one of them is lying right to their faces.
Evidently, the withdrawal date from Afghanistan in 2014 is now being negotiated for a later date.
Lyin’ Joe Biden steps in it again.
link
Imperialists on the march! heh. h/t Totten at Insty
Also, (and funny in its own way even as it bolloxes the details): Behind her skirt
War by bureaucratic wordsmithing. The Islamic terrorists do quake.
That’s her story and she’s sticking to it. She’s content that as to where she got that story we should have no clue. Gutfeld’s question stands: Who? — who in particular — Who told you this is what you should say [Pres. Obama, V.P. Biden, Sec. Clinton, Amb. Rice, Amb. Kennedy, whoever else fronted the story of the “video mob”]? Where did the story originate?
Aren’t you forgetting the Get Out Of Jail Free card? Executive Privilege! Any joker can play it.