I was wrong about Benghazi

[Shryke]

No, those are the ones I'm looking at. I see the revisions being made finally on page 63 (I noted them last page when I first went through them). But again, there's no indications who the redactions are specifically by, unless that's what the list of people and acronyms at the bottom of the page is about. The email itself is from CIA OPA.

The tweaks you mention on 82 seem to be about the small tweaks done by the two mentioned people only a few pages up that show up in the final version of the talking points, not the ones you mentioned before.

Page 97 doesn't say shit except that Rhodes has some sort of final approval on the process, which makes sense given his position. Doesn't mean he's the one who decided what got excised at 9:45.

This does not say what you think it does imo.

Funnily enough, I hadn't made it down that far earlier and hey, even more interesting bits on 91 about what I was telling FLOW earlier. "State had voiced strong concerns with the original text due to the criminal investigation."

Further down on the subject of reasons for the revisions, 94 contains a long paragraph that seems like the most frank and straightforward statement of what was altered, but whom and why. And it says they were bad because they encouraged the reader to infer that the CIA had warned of a specific attack on the embassy (Cairo one assumes here). It also states Morell said the points weren't good and had taken a "heavy editing hand to them". Morell is Mike Morell of the CIA I'm assuming.

Other interesting point on 95: "No mention of the cable to Cairo, either? Frankly, I'd just as soon not use this, then ... NSS's call, to be sure;" Not sure if that's their call on using them or their call on the lack of the Cairo cable though.

[Madfunkymonkey]

Except that wasn't the spin. That's your extremely hard spin on what was said. Because at no point can I find anyone saying that the area was totally safe and no one would have been hurt if it weren't for those meddling kids that damn video.

The video is referenced in that at the time, the attack was believed to have arisen as a spontaneous response to the protests in Cairo over the video. And that's it. (Notably, this part of the talking points is in from the very start and never changes. Apparently everyone agreed on that front.)

Yes, it was the spin. Sorry but the Obama Administration blamed the attack on the video.

[Shryke]

Yes, it was the spin. Sorry but the Obama Administration blamed the attack on the video.

Except that's not what FLOW said. They certainly said the attack evolved from a spontaneous protest sparked by the video. They did not say that "everything would have been perfectly fine if not for that video".

[Sci-2]

I haven't followed much of the arguments on the memos but for what's it is worth here's the pro-Obama side via Think Progress:

How The Full Benghazi Emails Undermine The GOP’s Cover-Up Claims

Sure to inspire great anger in some, mild apathy in many others.

[Madfunkymonkey]

Except that's not what FLOW said. They certainly said the attack evolved from a spontaneous protest sparked by the video. They did not say that "everything would have been perfectly fine if not for that video".

They didn't have to say that but they did blame the video for the attack and that was the spin.

Go to the 1 minute mark and listen for 10 seconds and you hear Hillary blame the video for the attacks.

Spin, Spin, Spin.

[Shryke]

They didn't have to say that but they did blame the video for the attack and that was the spin.

It wasn't spin, it was the facts as they knew them at the time. That's what they were told right from the start in the initial talking points from the CIA.

The first point of the initial talking points is:

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

We believe based on currently available information that the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the US Consulate and subsequently it's annex.

And that point doesn't change for a few days.

[Madfunkymonkey]

It wasn't spin, it was the facts as they knew them at the time. That's what they were told right from the start in the initial talking points from the CIA.

The first point of the initial talking points is:

http://abcnews.go.co...ts Timeline.pdf

And that point doesn't change for a few days.

So by that logic George Bush didn't lie about WMDs in Iraq.

[Ser Greguh]

I'll be honest. I haven't been following this brouhaha as thoroughly as I might have (work has exploded) and certainly can't be asked to read some 100 pages of emails back and forth trying to find the smoke behind the grassy knoll, but as I understand it, Raidne, your primary accusation seems to be that Ben Rhodes fabricated the narrative that the attack was related to the video that was released and by the demonstrations at the embassies in Cairo and elsewhere, that he edited and massaged memos back and forth between the CIA and the State Department, and that his motivation was for doing so was ... basically that he's flaky and probably thought it was the best narrative, I guess?

This to me seems much like many other conspiracy-oriented thought bubbles I've dealt with in the past. Once you get that narrative stuck in your head, every scrap of evidence you uncover seems like it proves your point, and anyone that attempts to provide an alternative interpretation or context for that evidence is just being willfully obstinant. That's resulted in the personal attacks that you've delivered toward myself and others on this topic.

(And yes, I take the accusation that I'm an Obama partisan quite personally. It is very far from the truth and something I pride myself very much on not being. However much I hate the Republican party and think they are a dangerous and destructive force, I am always the guy who is the first to admit that my team's receiver was out of bounds, if the evidence actually shows him out of bounds, so to speak).

Interestingly, the nature of the attacks you make at Ben Rhodes strikes me as eerily similar to the attacks you've made at me of being an Obama Partisan. If you're convinced I'm an Obama Partisan, then every comment that I make defending him that you don't agree with becomes presented as evidence of the truth of that accusation. Similarly, once you've got yourself convinced that Ben Rhodes is a Big Fat Liar Who Lied, then every scrap of evidence that you can find that he changed this document or manipulated that statement becomes evidence that your version of the narrative is correct.

So when you point out that Ben Rhodes made selective edits to this email or that email wrt what actually made it into the talking points, I have to apologize when I say that that fails to raise any red flags with me because, well, he's a speechwriter. I mean, that's his job: to parse information into soundbytes. As every email I've read so far points out, our understanding of just what had happened and why was very much in flux, and concrete information was basically non-existent. Pretty much everyone accepted at the time that there was likely some connection between the video and the attack (since, well, when violent protests occur at one embassy at basically the same time that an attack occurs at another, it's very natural to assume that they're related), and so for that narrative to float its way up to publically-released soundbytes seems to me to be perfectly natural, no matter how inaccurate such statements are revealed to be in the context of hindsight.

That, to you, I'm sure comes off as weaksauce apologestia, but to me, it's simple deduction based on the fact that I simply don't see a motive. Succinctly, what the fuck does the administration really have to gain from this? Putting it all on Ben "it builds the best narrative therefore Big. Fat. Lie." Rhodes simply doesn't hold water. That's a level of supposition regarding his motive that approaches an attempt at literal mind-reading. It strikes me as someone tying themselves into knots so as to support a story that best fits their preconceived notions, but that ignores (and often attacks) interpretations of the narrative that are far more friendly to Occam's Razor: succinctly, he fucked up.

Or, in other words, the exact same sort of confirmation bias that drives people to argue that 9/11 was an inside job, that the moon landing was staged, or any number of the so-called "false flag attack" accusations that plague the extremist right. I hate to use those comparisons on someone whose posts I generally respect as much as yours, but I've found that the same argumentative tactics that I frequently use on that sort of people are all applicable here, and for the same reasons.

So again, to repeat some challenges that have (as far as I can tell) gone completely unanswered by you:

* What evidence do you have that the interpretation of the attacks as emergent from a spontaneous demonstration was a conscious lie, rather than the repetition of what was commonly assumed to be an obvious link between the video, the demonstrations, and the Benghazi attack, at the time.

* Why is the accusation that Rhodes selectively pulled from CIA emails in order to craft a talking points document, and apparently had final say in what was released, damning or even noteworthy given his position as a high-ranking Obama speechwriter for whom that is probably quite literally a direct part of his job description?

* Is it your position that Rhodes had a very clear view of what the means and motives for the Benghazi attack were and consciously chose to ignore the truth in favor of an alternate narrative? If so, how do you reconcile that with the content of the emails in question that specifically emphasize that the full picture of the attack in Benghazi was unclear?

* Do you have any kind of proposed motive for Rhodes that goes beyond him thinking that it made for a better narrative than the truth? Is there anything tangible that anyone could conceivably gain as a result of this supposed coverup?

[Shryke]

So by that logic George Bush didn't lie about WMDs in Iraq.

Uh no. There's alot of evidence their justifications for the war were flimsy as shit. And they were all over that lie for ages.

The Benghazi talking points changed like 3 days later when they got newer information about what happened.

[Ser Greguh]

So by that logic George Bush didn't lie about WMDs in Iraq.

Incorrect. There were a great many people that bought the narrative that Bush never lied but was rather mistaken about Saddam's supposed WMD's, for quite some time (I even entertained the notion for quite some time), but the evidence chain that suggests conscious lies is in that case very damning.

[Madfunkymonkey]

What's funny is that Iraq did have WMDs. I would know. I was there.

[Guest Raidne]

...even more interesting bits on 91 about what I was telling FLOW earlier. "State had voiced strong concerns with the original text due to the criminal investigation."

I thought it was more interesting when the FBI Press office sent that email at 9:19pm to CIA OPA, Nuland, Vietor, Turner, etc. that said "FYI FBI says AQ (not AQIM) was involved and they are pursuing that theory. So we are not ahead of law enforcement now. So are we cleared to send to Congress?"

Someone tell me why they released these emails with that in there.

Also, page 63 is not an email. Page 94 is an email directly to David Petraeus, telling him all about the bullshit that went down with his talking points for Rep. Ruppersberger. Page 67-68 is a summary of what he'd told him already, which I imagine Rhodes was not pleased about, due to the line "Unrest in the Middle East creates a permissive environment for terrorists."

[Guest Raidne]

Raidne, your primary accusation seems to be that Ben Rhodes fabricated the narrative…

Nope. I think Tommy Vieter (the National Security Council spokesman), Jake Sullivan (deputy chief of staff to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton - who advises her on "almost every foreign policy issue she faces"); and Ben Rhodes (Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications), worked with Deputy Director of the CIA Michael Morell on, to borrow Sullivan's phrase from 8:40pm, 9/14/2012, "skinnying [the] list."

Curious of Morell to undermine Petraeus' effort to provide information to the ranking Democratic member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (and member of the Gang of Eight - who must be fully apprised of all intelligence actions "including significant failures" no matter how covert), but, you know, he did become Acting Director when Petraeus stepped down in November 2012, so maybe he had ambitions. Guess he didn't read this Washington Post article.

But I think that it all started when Victoria Nuland, the spokesperson for State (and former principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Dick Cheney) whined to Sullivan at 9:24pm, after CIA just did not seem to care about her freak out at 7:39pm, when she belatedly realized this shit was intended for Congress:

I just had a convo with [CIA OPA] and I now understand that these are being prepared to give to Members of Congress to use with the media.

On that basis, I have serious concerns about all the parts highlighted below, and arming members of Congress to start making assertions to the media that we ourselves are not making because we don't want to prejudice the investigation.

In same vein, why do we want Hill to be fingering Ansar al Sharia when we aren't doing that ourselves until we have investigation results…and the penultimate point could be abused by Members to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings so why do we want to feed that either? Concerned…

She added Sullivan and David Adams, the Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs, to the email chain at that point, and also sent a private email to Sullivan. Adams seconded Nuland's concerns.

Sullivan had a private conversation with Tommy Vietor, and, at 9:32pm, told Nuland, privately, "Talked to Tommy – we can make edits." (Vietor is 32 years old and started off as the driver of Obama's press van, and just left the administration in March to start a political communications firm. Sulllivan's been working in government since 2007, starting about four years after he graduated from Yale Law school. He graduated high school in 1998.)

Two minutes later, we get that now-familiar Rhodes email confirming that the whole thing will be tabled until the next day and the White House will handle it at the Deputies' meeting. CIA freaks out. The draft email to Petraeus:

Sir – We've tried to work through the draft talking points for HPSCI through the coordination process but have run into major problems. Perhaps as a result of the afternoon teleconference, a number of agencies have been looped in. The White House cleared quickly, but State has major concerns. The Bureau cleared with a few comments but asked that Justice, which would handle any criminal problems, be brought in. It is evident that will not happen tonight, and Ben Rhodes has asked that this be reviewed tomorrow morning at the Deputies' meeting.

Additionally, Eric Schmitt of the NYT contacted us to let us know that he had spoken with Rep. Ruppersberger, who had given him a readout of your session.

Petraeus shakes his head at how utterly useless the remaining "talking points" are. Sullivan tells an unknown individual in the United States Mission to the United Nations office that "you and [uSUN] should confirm w Ben that Susan can deploy tomorrow." (Curious how Jake can be talking to USUN, but also mean you and USUN, isn't it?) USUN responds to Rhodes at 5:59pm 9/15/2012:

Is this the final language you want to use on Benghazi? Have short window to get something on paper soon.

Rhodes, at 7:12pm on 9/15/2012, responds: "Yup."

[The Anti-Targ]

What's funny is that Iraq did have WMDs. I would know. I was there.

Given according to US law the Boston bombers used WMDs then yes Iraq did have WMDs, clearly. But nukes, bio and chem weapons in the time leading up to Bush Jnr invading, you're talking shit. We know he had chems back in the 80s thanks to the USA, but they were long gone by 2003.

[The Anti-Targ]

I thought it was more interesting when the FBI Press office sent that email at 9:19pm to CIA OPA, Nuland, Vietor, Turner, etc. that said "FYI FBI says AQ (not AQIM) was involved and they are pursuing that theory. So we are not ahead of law enforcement now. So are we cleared to send to Congress?"

Someone tell me why they released these emails with that in there.

Also, page 63 is not an email. Page 94 is an email directly to David Petraeus, telling him all about the bullshit that went down with his talking points for Rep. Ruppersberger. Page 67-68 is a summary of what he'd told him already, which I imagine Rhodes was not pleased about, due to the line "Unrest in the Middle East creates a permissive environment for terrorists."

Transparency?

It all looks like certain people want to read certain things as damning and incriminating, and others read them as trying to deal with a rapidly evolving situation and figuring out what can and can't be told to the public and Congress. All depends on your political motivations I guess.

So don't look at what's been written, but look at the slant of your motives.

[Guest Raidne]

I'm looking at an FBI email from September 14-15 that says they know Al Qaeda is involved - not even just Al Qaeda in the Maghraib. And they gave it the green light for release.

Then I'm seeing State and the White House agree to scrub the AQ references out of concern for the integrity of FBI's investigation.

What are you seeing?

[Guest Raidne]

(FYI, I'm a progressive liberal and federal employee who believed Obama was going to rebrand the US abroad and reverse the Bush Administration's policies of historic levels of secrecy and civil rights abuses, because that's the track Clinton was on when he was in office, and who blames Congress for just about everything bad that's happened since 2010 - just ask FLOW how hard I trashed him for raising this theory back in 2012 - and that's another serious bias I have - not wanting to admit that FLOW was ever right about anything.)

[Usotsuki]

Sadly, only the latter is true. Not going to have time to get to it for awhile.

Raidne,

I do apologise. I had no idea that you were on any medication I had thought I was making a joke about Lindsay Lohan, following the slow destruction of her once promising career is one of my minor vices, ranking somewhere between my love of White Collar and my tendency to sing Iggy Azalea's Work in the elevator at the office..

Once again I am sorry.

[Guest Raidne]

Wow. I just find it absolutely amazing that anyone actually taking prescription stimulants could have truly pulled a Lohan, i.e., to utterly and thoroughly fuck up all chance of professional success.

And no harm, no foul - it just wouldn't be the first time that's happened, or I would not have suspected anything. And dear gods, you don't even want to know the extent to which I am paying for borrowing the time for an exhaustive review of the cache of the emails. I had to transcribe about half the text in there just to get an accurate sense of what was going on.

[Shryke]

I'm looking at an FBI email from September 14-15 that says they know Al Qaeda is involved - not even just Al Qaeda in the Maghraib. And they gave it the green light for release.

Then I'm seeing State and the White House agree to scrub the AQ references out of concern for the integrity of FBI's investigation.

What are you seeing?

Well, technically they say:

FBI says AQ (not AQIM) was involved and they are pursuing that theory.

So are they sure or is it a theory?

Either way, it seems more and more like the big redaction was, as you say here, for preserving the integrity of the investigation. (there's stuff about consulting with the NSS in there too)

Which ... doesn't seem to lend any credence to any of the narratives I've ever seen FLOW express or indicate anything resembling a scandal. Or line up very well with your previous thoughts on the issue from a few pages back.