Fools or knaves, Benghazi special edition
Fools! say White House officials, after being guaranteed anonymity:
“We’re portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots,” said one Obama administration official who was part of the Benghazi response. “It’s actually closer to us being idiots.”
Egad.
Read the whole thing.
I believe its possible to be both a fool and a knave at the same time.
Texasyankee: absolutely correct.
And I believe that’s most definitely what very many of them are. Some (like perhaps that anonymous “White House official” who made the quoted statement) are merely fools, however.
Of course, you can be both a fool and a knave. A knave with evil intent, but a knave who is also a fool, and whose execution of that intent is a disaster.
It seems to me that, between being thought a fool and being thought a knave–and risking being prosecuted for it, most people would take being thought a fool any day.
It is kind of hard to pose as fools when your actions point to ruthless villainy.
Neo
Croatia WAS where the next wave of transshipped weapons for al-Nusrah came from.
THAT’S exactly what the FEST team was working on — they were — in real time — in on the very same project as the Benghazi (CIA) crew.
BTW, this CIA crew is an appendage to the State Department — a de facto diplomatic army. (i.e. a military force that doesn’t leak untidy details up through the Pentagon.)
This CIA wing is NOT involved in analysis back at Langley, not by a long shot.
It’s as if the Church committee had never existed.
This is all a part of having an extra-military military force — one that is as politically aligned as the Praetorian Guard ever was.
As for the IRS scandal — the Wan sluffed a card — better to burn a jack than cough up his whole hand.
blert,
goddammit, enough with the weird dashes and completely fruity grammar.
Bring your mind to the table with normal spices please.
Better to claim to be a fool than a murderer, eh?
And completely cold-blooded for going to bed (being able to sleep!) while the terrorist attack on our consulate raged on for hours.
They wish we thought they were idiots.
Def Leppard: an amazing amount of sameness and a incredibly number of songs?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaHxSnyof3A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urNFQw8VIvA
“..idiots..” Okiey Doakie. IF ‘only’ that, then kindly Get the F*** OUT!!!!
“They wish we thought they were idiots.”
Exactly, this is such BS. They think they can piss down everyone’s back and we’ll all believe its raining. The more Team Obama attempts to misdirect they more loathsome they become and they were already extremely loathsome.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN5XevNGuus
“Took my chances on a big jet plane, never let them tell you that they’re all the same.”
Good scepticism.
This is about containing the problem and assigning the fall-out.
“Idiots” is a people problem, not a policy problem. “Lying” is a policy problem.
The damage of a people problem ends at throwing folks under the bus. They can be recompensed later if necessary. Obama is in his 2nd term; he can’t be fired anyway.
A policy problem, on the other hand, opens the door for big picture and long term political effects.
If the Dem plays the game right and the GOP do not, there won’t be any greater harm for the Dems resulting from the Benghazi controversy. Just noise that will go away.
The GOP needs to establish a sufficient frame, context, and narrative to fix the value of the Benghazi controversy for public perception so that it will make a difference.
The GOP, so far, has failed to do so. The GOP is only making noise.
The GOP. The GOP.
It’s us. Look back and find it us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvMwlCHF9M0
Too many citizens of the US have to be “told” what/how to think. The dinosaur media fills the role of instructor. Four Americans can be killed, including the first sitting ambasador in decades, and the Secretary of State (smartest woman in the world) can say: “what differance does it make?” Nothing is made of this, nothing to see here, go about your business. If it does not fit the narrative, it is not reported on properly. We are a strong country, I hope we can withstand this.
How did our sythesis of the 60’s become Obama’s finale?
We had Marlynn McCoo singing with Paul Williams? We had beginning?
What stopped our harmony?
Who?
Who has the most to benefit from the shit now going on?
Roman: “If it does not fit the narrative, it is not reported on properly.”
Which is why the GOP should supply the media and public with a contextual frame and narrative where it does fit.
Hillary Clinton did the GOP a favor with the “what differance does it make?” line because that’s exactly the question the GOP needs to answer for the public so that the controversy will make a difference. That’s called spoon feeding.
What the Dems and the left did to Bush – and the GOP by association and extension – is a contemporary model for creating a controversy from the raw material that by design generates political effects for a big picture, long term difference. The GOP (and the right) has so far failed to meet that standard.
These are demons sent to cause us to in confusion kil each other. Obama is a demon. We have been deceived by him. Time to destroy him and his minions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHCcM_uV-r8
Not just a problem with policy but Obama & Hillary’s character. Mark Steyn says it best:
“On a question of foreign policy or counterterrorism strategy, men of good faith can make the wrong decisions. But a failure of character corrodes the integrity of the state.
That’s why career diplomat Gregory Hicks’ testimony was so damning – not so much for the new facts as for what those facts revealed about the leaders of this republic.”
http://tinyurl.com/cdh5x88
Remember, it is Obama and his administration, not all the people who supported who didn’t really know.
This is a man’s world (and you women want it thay way).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rCd5uGaM8s
At the very least Obama’s armor is chinked. He’s in for far rougher sledding from here on out. And some on his side are less willing to carry his water or to cover for him now. And I’m thinking Obama and Axelrod, et. al. are in way over their heads as political operatives now too. All that at the very least. Could amount to more. We get to watch it all and see.
The media say something like that, when caught in a particularly egregious howler. “We aren’t crooks, we’re stupid.” IOW, they made a (huge) mistake. They didn’t lie, they didn’t make stuff up.
I suppose it’s the best they can come up with, which is probably why they can’t afford to think about the cumulative effect of a string of admissions of enormous incompetence.
So, to the current administration: Okay. You’re not crooked. You’re the most incompetent outfit since the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. You don’t have to go to confession. But you do have to go someplace…else.
Actually, that isn’t very satisfying unless a number of the bigs go to jail.
Simple. If I’m an Eejit, you have to forgive me. If I’m a liar, you get mad and put my arse in jail.
Cool. So why do you guys still have jobs involving national security issues if you are not even aware of the capabilities of your teams?
I think these admissions are almost worse in some ways. They did not know what they were doing, they did not involve key counterterrorism groups because “those are lower level now.” Well, why is that? Because they wanted terrorism to be a thing of the past. Best way to do that? Demote the counterterrorism response group!
Idiots and knaves.
See also: http://www.asiantribune.com/node/62584
Now, I don’t think that activity is, for the right anyway, as big of a scandal. But secret gun running operations that don’t go to mexican drug cartels? For the Left, that is scandalous.
Romney the non-warrior, on Leno: ” “I’m not a fan of the president, in case you didn’t know that,” Romney said. “But look, I believe he cares for the country and wants to make America a better place for the American people. But I think he’s not being successful as he would have hoped to have been.”
What a wimp we would have had had, had he won. But our wimp; and better, perhaps, a wimp, than a wicked knave.
Ugh, why are Romney and the other Republicans still giving Obama the benefit of the doubt? Has Romney forgotten everything that Obama and his campaign said about him? They accused him or murder and tax fraud for starters. Or is he just trying to avoid an audit?
It doesn’t pass the laugh test. But in a way it’s bullet-proof, at least in politics. It didn’t work so well for Ken Lay, but, hey, he was a private-sector crook, and we hold them to a higher standard. In politics, the Clintons have been working this shtick forever, Hillary in particular. Although she would be loathe to refer to herself personally as anything akin to stupid, let alone an “idiot,” she played the same game with her “I can’t recall” bubble. “What difference does it now make” is just a new wrinkle on it.
Like Watergate, if any of this ever gets that far, it’ll come down to what did the president know and when did he know it. Obama being Obama he’s aloof and uninvolved by nature.
What I still see lacking is a contextual frame and narrative where the GOP is presented as a superior political alternative.
The GOP trying to drag Obama and the Dems down to the low ground of Dems-made BDS only works if the GOP also positions itself on the political high ground by contrast and comparison.
Or else, if the GOP only succeeds in dragging the Dems down onto the political low ground together … then, with the election options limited to A and B, the Dems still offer more stuff.
Eric, seek the truth.
G Joubert,
The truth is politics is a competition of either winner or loser where in case of a draw, the champion retains the title.
Eric,
“Get the facts first, you can distort them later.”
–Mark Twain
As long as you characterize investigation and discussion of what you find as “political framing,” you leave yourself wide open for being dismissed on that basis. Just seek the truth.
G Joubert,
Don’t “characterize” it. Just do it. The game is the game.
I wrote this here in 2009 to describe Obama:
Perhaps what Lincoln said of General Fremont also accurately describes the Obama “the damndest scoundrel that ever lived, but in the infinite mercy of Providence he was also the damndest fool”.
Watergate was an FBI coup for the most part. Due to some director not being promoted by Nixon. Same guy that gave Ayers immunity to prosecution for terrorism charges.
When you can get the military, cia, and FBI against the IRS and Obama, then there might be something. otherwise, no.
And it was never the media that was in charge of exposing Watergate. They were, as always, tools of dictators and megalomaniacs.
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