Sounds to me like somebody wants the blame put in the right place

While Democrats and the mainstream media -- but I repeat myself -- continue to claim that all of the questions about the deaths of four Americans during a terrorist attack on Benghazi, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya, have been answered and that there's nothing to see here, it seems that some important people disagree. Take former CIA Director Leon Panetta and former CIA Deputy Director Michael Morell, who appeared at a recent panel lecture and agreed that further investigation into the attack is warranted:

But Panetta and Morell, noting the attack has been subject to many investigations already, said they welcome the latest one in the House.
"If you look at the polling numbers a not insignificant percentage of the American people still have questions," Morell said.
Morell, who said he already has testified four times about Benghazi, said he is 100 percent confident the upcoming investigation will show that allegations "the intelligence community politicized its analysis" are false.
"Obviously there is a concern whether it's going to be a political effort to target an issue for a campaign," Panetta said. "I hope Democrats participate, and it really is a legitimate effort."Panetta, a former Central Coast congressman and Democratic Party stalwart, said there needs to be an investigation to lay out the full story to the public. "The problem has been sometimes bits and pieces of information keep coming out" that raise more questions, he said.

It seems clear that these two want to make sure everybody knows that the CIA did not provide the bullshit talking points that the administration tried to trot out, blaming the attack on a spontaneous protest against a You Tube video. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, the flunkiest of flunkies an administration could ever have, trotted that shit out on five different Sunday morning talk shows six days after the attack even though everyone involved knew from the beginning this was no spontaneous protest. What Panetta and Morrell want everybody to know is that the CIA didn't put out the horseshit that Rice spewed -- that the CIA's analysis was changed by the White House. The recent release of emails that were requested long ago but inexplicably withheld until last week show that this was the case, but Panetta and Morell want folks to be sure.

Guy Benson at Town Hall blasts Chuck Todd for his "all questions have been answered" stance, but concedes that Todd acknowledges that "larger" quests remain:

Yes, there have been a number of investigations into the deadly raid, including revelatory House hearings, aSenate report, and a State Department-mandated review. The House proceedings answered some questions, but raised others. The Senate Intelligence panel's report concluded that the attacks were preventable, andrebuked the Obama administration for "unnecessarily hamper[ing] the committee's review." The State Department's "Accountability Review Board" declined to interview key players, including Secretary Clinton. None of the Benghazi survivors have testified publicly. Furthermore, new information and perspectives have come to light within the last few weeks. A court-ordered document release turned up a relevant,previously-withheld email that further undermines the White House's official version of events regarding their post-attack talking points, and an Air Force General who was on duty at AFRICOM that night said the military never received a request for help from the State Department during the eight-hour ordeal. He went on to suggest that the US government should have attempted a rescue mission, which other military officers have testified wouldn't have been logistically feasible. A majority of the House of Representatives -- including a handful of Democrats -- clearly believes that unanswered questions remain. A large majorityof the American public is skeptical of the White House's veracity and supports keeping the investigation open and ongoing. Two former top CIA officials have endorsed the proceedings. Most Beltway Democrats, and apparently Chuck Todd, dissent. Todd is a journalist. It's therefore a bit jarring to hear him declare that "all" questions pertaining to a controversial matter have been answered, thus intimating that the issue is settled -- particularly after previously-unseen evidence has just recently emerged.

Benson then lays out 10 paragraphs of questions -- there are sub-questions within the paragraphs -- that have not been answered, and they are biggies:

(4) Where was the president during the hours-long raid? A former administration official recently revealed that Obama was not in the White House situation room. With an ambassador missing, a consulate under attack, and American lives hanging in the balance, why wasn't he actively managing the US response?

(5) During the attack, a rapid-response, investigative "FEST" team was reportedly told to stand down. Is that true, and if so, why? After the attack, why did it take American investigators weeks to access the burned-out compound? How could it be that the media first discovered Amb. Stevens' personal journal -- again, weeks after the event?

(6) When the administration's post-attack talking points were being formulated, who within the State Department's "building leadership" objected to references to Al Qaeda and previous attempted attacks on the facility? Who was "very upset" about initial (accurate) versions of the talking points, and why? Spokeswoman Victoria Nuland fretted in an email that including certain elements might lead to members of Congress criticizing the State Department for "not paying attention to warnings." Is that not an overtly political concern?

(7) Since the CIA never linked the Benghazi bloodshed to an internet video, how and why was that false linkage repeatedly cited by top administration officials days, and even weeks, later? As the attacks were definitively determined to have been a coordinated terrorist operation within hours, why did top officials continue to invoke the video, and hedge on the terrorism angle? Why was the creator of that video arrested and jailed? Does the administration stand by its claim that the White House and State Department only requested a single cosmetic change to the talking points, even after its been proven to be false?

 The administration has been lying. Then they lie about their lies. Sorry, kids, but these larger questions have to be examined. Who decided to reject repeated requests for more security in Benghazi? Who decided not to ask the military for help? What the fuck was the CIA doing in Benghazi in such force? Why was the ambassador there, and with so little secutiry? Who decided it was a good idea to oust Mohammar Quadaffy and then just step aside to let chaos rein in Libya? The administration doesn't want these and other questions answered because the answers most like involve the president himself and/or the former secretary of state who might kinda sorta hope to run for president in 2016. It seems unlikely that the answers to the unanswered questions will reflect well on either of those stalwarts. That is no reason to leave the questions unanswered. It is time to cut through the lies and silence the administration has put up surrounding the events at Benghazi.

Unless you think it's OK for the government to lie to you straight up, then Benghazi matters

The current effort among the mainstream media, Democrats and the Obama White House (but I repeat myself) is to paint the GOP efforts to investigate the attack on our Benghazi diplomatic facility on Sept. 11, 2012 (anything about that date sound familiar?) as a delusional, conspiracy-theory-fueled effort to gain electoral advantage for the fall midterms. How you gain electoral advantage from a delusional, conspiracy-theory-fueled investigation is beyond me, and the fact that Democrats are attempting to cast the investigation in that light tells me that there is substance there that will, in fact, hurt the Obama administration and, by extention, Democrats.

Don't believe me? Exhibit 1: "journalist" Eleanor Clift still trotting out the "protest against a video" meme that even the administration abandoned long ago and claiming that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens wasn't "murdered" in the attack in Benghazi because he died of smoke inhalation. Caused by the fact that the well-coordinated, mortar-supported terrorist attack on the Benghazi consulate set the damn place on fire. Totally coincidental, thereby proving that he wasn't killed by terrorists.

Of course, Stevens wasn't the only American killed that day, and the evidence indicates smoke inhalation wasn't the cause of death for at least one of them:

Looks like somebody didn't want to be dragged out of the consulate, hmmm? Of course, we've seen no information releases from the administration on how the other three Americans killed that night died, nor has the administration let any of the survivors testify before Congress, nor have we heard an explanation of why there was no attempt at a military response. The list goes on. Fuck, we don't even know where Obama was when all this was going on:

Just outside the Oval Office is a room called the Outer Oval, where the president’s secretary and personal aide sit and through which all visitors coming to see the president pass. Staff members in the Outer Oval keep track of the president’s location at all times. They carefully record the names of all individuals who walk into the Oval Office — when they entered, how long they stayed, what the topic of discussion was. They keep a record of all calls made and received by the president, including the topic, participants and duration. They even record the president’s bathroom breaks (they write “evacuating” into the log).
This and other data on the presidents’ whereabouts are collected by a career National Archives employee whose title is White House diarist. This individual preserves them as a minute-by-minute historical record of the presidency for future use by presidential scholars.
What this means is that there exists a minute-by-minute record of where the president was and what he was doing for all eight hours of the Benghazi attack.
So how is it that the White House has failed to give a full account of the president’s whereabouts during that eight-hour period? The White House knows precisely where he was and what he was doing, yet it is refusing to share that information with Congress and the American people. This is unacceptable. Imagine if 20 months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the George W. Bush White House had still refused to account for where the president was or what he was doing that day. There would be outrage and constant demands from the press, Congress and other investigators demanding to know the answer to a simple factual question: Where was the president?

Do you seriously believe that where Obama was, who he was with and what he was doing are unimportant? Fine, go vote for him for a third term. But it seems to me that something being so carefully hidden from view by the Most Transparent Administration Evah might be important.

Then, of course, there are the emails that show the White House was coordinating the lies that were fed to the public about a "protest over a video" crap that Susan Rice trotted out on five different Sunday morning talk shows five days after the attack -- roughly five days after the administration knew no video had anything to do with the Benghazi attack:

Previously unreleased internal Obama administration emails show that a coordinated effort was made in the days following the Benghazi terror attacks to portray the incident as “rooted in [an] Internet video, and not [in] a broader failure or policy.”
Emails sent by senior White House adviser Ben Rhodes to other top administration officials reveal an effort to insulate President Barack Obama from the attacks that killed four Americans.
Rhodes sent this email to top White House officials such as David Plouffe and Jay Carney just a day before National Security Adviser Susan Rice made her infamous Sunday news show appearances to discuss the attack.
The “goal,” according to these emails, was “to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.”
Rice came under fierce criticism following her appearances on television after she adhered to these talking points and blamed the attack on a little-watched Internet video.
The newly released internal White House e-mails show that Rice’s orders came from top Obama administration communications officials.

Hell, the White House tried to pretend the emails weren't even about Benghazi, despite the explicit references to Benghazi in the emails:

Jay Carney is, of course, a mendacious prick who would lie about anything because he gets paid to. But still.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, (R-S.C.) a former prosecutor who will be chairing the select committee investigating Benghazi, laid out in USA Today a fairly succinct case for why the investigation is necessary:

Why was security for our facility in Libya inadequate, and why were repeated calls for additional security unheeded and, indeed, explicitly rejected? Was our military response during the pendency of the siege sufficient? And in the days and weeks after the attack, was the Obama administration transparent and forthright with our fellow Americans in describing the impetus behind the attack?
Moreover, no one has been arrested, prosecuted, or punished for the murders of our fellow Americans. These outstanding questions, and others, are legitimate, and seeking the answer to these questions should be an apolitical process.

Haven't heard much about Benghazi? No surprise, since the mainstream media are trying desperately not to cover it to protect their Democrat partners. I think a refusal to cover legitimate news is a problem.

Unless, of course, you don't mind being lied to. In which case, I can assure you that absolutely nothing untoward or unexpected will happen in your mouth. Promise.

Jay Carney finally surpasses Baghdad Bob as the world's most brazen liar

More than a year after Congressional committees and Freedom of Information requests from various organizations and individuals sought the information, the White House has finally released some emails and other documents regarding the Islamist attack on our Libyan consulate that resulted in the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya. You know, the attack that the White House called a spontaneous demonstration against a You Tube video that was actually a planned terrorist attack that had nothing to do with any video. The email and other documents are part of the effort to spin the attack as unexpected, unpredictable, spontaneous and really just nobody's fault but some independent video maker.

Well, yesterday, White House spokesman Jay Carney got into it with a journalist over said emails, and, let's just say Jay did not cover himself with glory. Although he did achieve historic status, of a sort.

I'm sure all of us old enough to remember 2003 remember Baghdad Bob, the Iraqi government spokesman who nightly denied that American troops invading Iraq were doing anything but dying. I'll grant you, he was good. Even as American troops were entering Baghdad, good old Bob was denying away:

"They fled. The American louts fled. Indeed, concerning the fighting waged by the heroes of the Arab Socialist Baath Party yesterday, one amazing thing really is the cowardice of the American soldiers. we had not anticipated this."

Yeah, good times. Well, Baghdad Bob has been knocked from the top spot as the spokesman most willing to tell any lie to protect his regime. Jay Carney, Communist extraordinaire, has moved into the top slot.

How, say you? As Ace points out, he simply denies that the nose on his face is, in fact, his nose:

The White House's claim has been (for eighteen long months of lies) that whatever misrepresentations entered the talking points, and whatever truths departed from them (such as evidence that this was an Al Qaeda attack, that there had been previous attacks, that there had been previous warnings, etc.), it had nothing to do with the White House, asother people, not anyone in the White House, constructed the talking points.
Now comes this email from Ben Rhodes telling Ambassador Rice to go out there and sell the Internet Video cover story and so what does Jay Carney do?
He claims the talking points weren't about Benghazi.
Exit Quote: "If you look at the document in question, it is not about Benghazi."
Second Exit Quote: "The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations 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 its annex."

Jay's problem, of course, is that the email that isn't about Benghazi states pretty explicitly that it is about Benghazi:

Yeah, click on the image to enlarge, and you will see the ":Benghazi" portion of the email instructing Susan Rice, the then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and a total non-participant in any of the events on which she was being sent to appear on five, count 'em five Sunday morning talks shows. (There are only five such shows, and appearing on all of them on the same Sunday is rare and requires serious scheduling coordination.) Why send Susan Rice? Probably because she was the highest-ranking foreign-policy-related official in the administration not involved in any way in the Benghazi fiasco. With no first-hand knowledge, she could tell any lie she was handed and, if caught in the lie later, simply claim she was repeating what she was told. And that's what she did.

I'm not suprised Jay Carney is lying. That's his job. I just find it increasingly difficult to believe how much he will lie to cover up malfeasance and sstill attempt to maintain a straight face. No pride, and no shame.