Most of the media agree that the behind closed door testimony of former CIA Director, David Patraeus, still leaves much in doubt about what happened in Benghazi last September 11th. I disagree. In fact, I'd say
it confirms what I have been saying all along: the administration withheld information they had on the attacks for reasons of national security.
But he said the administration initially withheld the suspicion that extremists with links to Al Qaeda were involved to avoid tipping off the terrorist groups.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with this so the Right's mental meltdowns over Benghazi strike me as odd. They're saying that the administration purposefully misled the public on whether or not the attack was Al Qaeda linked and, instead, kept talking about the movie trailer. This seems odd to me for two reasons. First, since when did the Right embrace Julian Assange and call for more openness when it comes to military intelligence? It seems to me that they are now acting just the way he does which, in my view, is dangerous on a number of levels. The reason why we win and lose wars is due to intelligence and some government secrets, in particular with the military.
Second, throw a dart somewhere and you're likely to hit a conservative pundit bitching about how we announce things to our enemies (pulling out of Iraq, Afghanistan etc) and how that's bad. So why should we announce, mere days after the attack when an investigation is still under way, that we know it's Al Qaeda and we're coming to get them? This would be a terribly stupid thing to do.
I also don't get why there is all this bile being heaped upon Susan Rice. The Patraeus testimony confirms that when she made her remarks, she was going on what the intelligence said at the time...the intelligence that was not classified, mind you. Besides, she's the US ambassador to the UN, not a member of the CIA or the State Department. The attacks on her are tremendously unjustified.
Petraeus also said some early classified reports appeared to support Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, when she said five days after the deadly raid in Libya that it had grown out of a protest that was hijacked by extremists — comments that some Republicans contend were meant to downplay the significance of the attack before the presidential election. Even now, the intelligence community has evidence that some attackers were motivated by protests earlier that day in Cairo over an anti-Islamic video, sources familiar with the intelligence said.
I realize that there are still a lot of sour grapes after the complete incompetence pre and post the 9-11 attacks regarding the Bush Administration. But Benghazi isn't even in the same ballpark, folks. And we aren't even done with the investigation yet on what exactly went wrong and why. Obviously, the Right's not going to be patient about this and have even more sour grapes about the election.
Perhaps they might want to learn a thing or two about what happened on November 6th and withhold further comment until we hear more testimony from the people who were more actively involved.
