DiscussMormonism.com

Somewhere out there, a Republican feels apologetic for being such a jackass by attacking the President for this. The rest of them will probably just ignore the evidence and continue on with their blind attacks in ignorance. Anyway, here it is...

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) acknowledged on Wednesday that House Republicans had consciously voted to reduce the funds allocated to the State Department for embassy security since winning the majority in 2010.

On Wednesday morning, CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien asked the Utah Republican if he had "voted to cut the funding for embassy security."

"Absolutely," Chaffetz said. "Look we have to make priorities and choices in this country. We have…15,000 contractors in Iraq. We have more than 6,000 contractors, a private army there, for President Obama, in Baghdad. And we’re talking about can we get two dozen or so people into Libya to help protect our forces. When you’re in tough economic times, you have to make difficult choices. You have to prioritize things.”

For the past two years, House Republicans have continued to deprioritize the security forces protecting State Department personnel around the world. In fiscal year 2011, lawmakers shaved $128 million off of the administration's request for embassy security funding. House Republicans drained off even more funds in fiscal year 2012 -- cutting back on the department's request by $331 million.

Consulate personnel stationed in Benghazi had allegedly expressed concerns over their safety in the months leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks that killed four Americans, including Amb. Chris Stevens. Chaffetz and Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, claim those concerns were ignored.

"It seems to be a coordinated effort between the White House and the State Department, from Secretary [Hillary] Clinton to President Obama's White House," Chaffetz told Fox and Friends on Tuesday.

Chaffetz and Issa co-signed a letter to the State Department, demanding answers on to the Benghazi security detail. State Department officials and other witnesses will testify before the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense, and Foreign Operations on Wednesday.


Ahead of the hearing, some Democrats claim that partisanship and campaigning are corrupting the Libyan investigation, The New York Times reports. The charges come as some GOP members attempt to frame the incident as a failure of the Obama's foreign policy and to call criticize the administration for engaging in a "cover-up" of what really occurred.

The core problem with this entire manufactured "gotcha" assault on the wascally Republicans is that, although the Republicans did cut embassy security by 331 million in 2012, inadequate funding is not the reason given why the State Department refused repeated requests for additional security over a matter of months. The reason given was that, according to the State Department, and Joe Biden, security was perfectly adequate, based on the knowledge they had at the time (even though the very existence of repeated requests for more security is prima facie evidence that those actually there did not agree with that assessment).

Secondly, what was an American embassy doing in extremely dangerous place like Libya in the fist place, and with the anniversary of 9/11 right around the corner, why wasn't security beefed up as a matter of SOP?

The answer: leftism and the doctrine of multiculturalism that has intellectually and morally disarmed much of the federal government, including the long and traditionally vacuous State Department and even the higher level officer corps within the military itself and its institutional leadership. How insane has this already become?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ1dijip1os

If budgetary constraints were really the problem, then we had no business having an embassy there at all. But state department funding has doubled since 2004, so this is unlikely to be the case.

Cowering and always setting up our own soldiers and personnel to be sacrificed before the wretched of the post-colonial, American capitalist ravaged earth, that there we have a meaningful explanation, because only there does the insanity of political correctness manifest itself as irrational, mindless policy choices that appear to have no rational basis - but actually do have an ideological foundation.

I have an inkling that Huffington post is using ellipses on this. I heard Chaffetz interviewed by Wolf Blitzer on CNN and Chaffetz said that they had increased security for embassies. Tried to find the interview but was not successful.

Secondly, what was an American embassy doing in extremely dangerous place like Libya in the fist place, and with the anniversary of 9/11 right around the corner, why wasn't security beefed up as a matter of SOP?

Uh, the answer should be obvious to anyone who has actually been kept up to speed on this issue, beyond reading the after-the-fact hit pieces by the Right Wing bloggers. I previously posted a timeline of the relevant events which should make perfect sense to those using their brains. And most people understand that there have been twelve anniversaries of 9/11 and nothing like this ever happened before. Had anyone had a reason to anticipate a coordinated attack like this, obviously measures would have been taken. But the fact is this was all driven by some idiot in Florida who broadcast to the world that he was preparing a public humiliation of their Prophet Muhammed. Once this news was translated into Arabic and was circulated in the Arabic news, at that point the hostilities intensified, mostly in the form of verbal threats. The attacks took place during the same time this idiot in Florida was mocking Muhammed and the killings took place shortly afterward.

But the morons on the Right - desperately looking for ways to manipulate the reality of current events in order to illicitly attack Obama- well they think the simple fact that it was 9/11 should have been enough reason to beef up security in all embassies in the Muslim world.

Blaming Obama for this is just stupid. I bring up this thread to point out that it was the Republicans who defunded security. Droopy's claim that security doesn't require funding is typical of the kinds of ignorant remarks he's made over the years.

And nice going Jason, we can always count on you to exercise your capacity for skepticism, whenever the source hails from the Left. The fact that no one on the Right is challenging this is evidence that it is true. But who needs evidence.

And this has what to do with the state department's denying the request for additional security?

Focus Was on Tripoli in Requests for Security in Libya

WASHINGTON — In the weeks leading up to the attack last month on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, diplomats on the ground sounded increasingly urgent alarms. In a stream of diplomatic cables, embassy security officers warned their superiors at the State Department of a worsening threat from Islamic extremists, and requested that the teams of military personnel and State Department security guards who were already on duty be kept in service.

The requests were denied, but they were largely focused on extending the tours of security guards at the American Embassy in Tripoli — not at the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, 400 miles away. And State Department officials testified this week during a hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that extending the tour of additional guards — a 16-member military security team — through mid-September would not have changed the bloody outcome because they were based in Tripoli, not Benghazi.

The handling of these requests has now been caught up in a sharply partisan debate over whether the Obama administration underestimated the terrorist threat in Libya. In a debate with Representative Paul D. Ryan on Thursday night, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said White House officials were not told about requests for any additional security. “We weren’t told they wanted more security again,” Mr. Biden said.

The Romney campaign on Friday pounced on the conflicting statements, accusing Mr. Biden of continuing to deny the nature of the attack. The White House scrambled to explain the apparent contradiction between Mr. Biden’s statement and the testimony from State Department officials at the House hearing.

The White House spokesman, Jay Carney, said Friday that security issues related to diplomatic posts in Libya and other countries were dealt with at the State Department, not the White House. Based on interviews with administration officials, as well as in diplomatic cables, and Congressional testimony, those security decisions appear to have been made largely by midlevel State Department security officials, and did not involve Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton or her top aides.

While it is unclear what impact a handful of highly trained additional guards might have had in Benghazi were they able to deploy there, some State Department officials said it would probably not have made any difference in blunting the Sept. 11 assault from several dozen heavily armed militants.

“An attack of that kind of lethality, we’re never going to have enough guns,” Patrick F. Kennedy, under secretary of state for management, said at Wednesday’s hearing. “We are not an armed camp ready to fight it out.”

A senior administration official said that the military team, which was authorized by a directive from Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, was never intended to have an open-ended or Libya-wide mission.

“This was not a SWAT team with a DC-3 on alert to jet them off to other cities in Libya to respond to security issues,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the matter.

Security in Benghazi had been a growing concern for American diplomats this year. In April, the convoy of the United Nations special envoy for Libya was attacked there. In early June, a two-vehicle convoy carrying the British ambassador came under attack by rocket-propelled grenades. Militants struck the American mission with a homemade bomb, but no one was hurt. In late June, the Red Cross was attacked and the organization pulled out.

“We were the last thing on their target list to remove from Benghazi,” Lt. Col. Andrew Wood of the Utah National Guard, who was deployed in Tripoli as the leader of the American military security unit, told the House committee.

But friends and colleagues of Ambassador Stevens said he was adamant about maintaining an American presence in Benghazi, the heart of the opposition to the Qaddafi government.

“Our people can’t live in bunkers and do their jobs,” Mrs. Clinton said Friday. “But it is our solemn responsibility to constantly improve, to reduce the risks our people face and make sure they have the resources they need to do their jobs.”

At American diplomatic facilities overseas, the host nation is primarily responsible for providing security outside the compound’s walls. Inside the compound, the State Department is in charge, relying on a mix of diplomatic security officers, local contract guards and Marines. The Marines are responsible for guarding classified documents, which they are instructed to destroy if there is a breach of the compound. Senior diplomats are protected by diplomatic security officers, not a detachment of Marines, as Mr. Ryan asserted in Thursday night’s debate.

In deciding whether to extend a military security team, the State Department often faces a difficult financial decision at a time when its security budget is under severe pressure. The department must reimburse the Pentagon for the cost of these soldiers, an expense that can quickly run into the millions of dollars. For that reason, the State Department typically pushes to make the transition to local contractors, who are much cheaper.

In their debate, Mr. Biden responded to Mr. Ryan’s attacks by accusing him and his fellow Republicans of cutting the administration’s request for embassy security and construction. House Republicans this year voted to cut back the administration’s request, but still approved more than was spent last year.

In an agreement between the Pentagon and the State Department, the military team was extended twice — December 2011 and March 2012 — but when it came to a third extension, Eric A. Nordstrom, the former chief security officer in Libya, said he was told he could not request another extension beyond August.

Charlene Lamb, a deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, said at the hearing that a request from Mr. Nordstrom to extend the military team was only a recommendation and that the State Department had been right not to heed it. Ms. Lamb also testified that budget considerations played no part in considering additional security. Decisions on diplomatic security went no higher than Ms. Lamb and, in limited cases, Mr. Kennedy, officials said.

The broader strategy, Ms. Lamb said, was to phase out the American military team and rely more on the Libyan militiamen who were protecting the compound along with a small number of American security officers. Ms. Lamb said this model of relying on locally hired guards had worked at the United States Embassy in Yemen.

In a July 9 cable signed by Ambassador Stevens, the embassy requested that the State Department extend the tours for a minimum of three security personnel in Benghazi. The department had earlier approved a request for five guards for the mission, which was still in effect at the time of the July 9 cable.

Five American security agents were at the compound at the time of the assault, Ms. Lamb said, though it was later noted that only three were based at the compound and that two had accompanied Mr. Stevens from Tripoli. She said there were also three members of a Libyan militia who were helping to protect the compound.

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So given the facts, the decision not to deploy a security team, in fact saved lives, as they would have undoubtedly been counted among the dead.

subgenius wrote:And this has what to do with the state department's denying the request for additional security?

Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. The requests were repeated, people were getting scared, and those appeals went on for months. Inadequate funding had nothing, there is any evidence to show, to do with it.

Graham has to defend his Maoesque personality cult devotion to his idol, and to the Great God Government that he wishes to be master of his destiny (and whom, make no mistake, he and people like him wish to be masters of ours).

As expected, Droopy reads nothing that refutes his baseless assumptions. Because it is all "leftist" and from Satan, no doubt.

Kevin Graham wrote:While it is unclear what impact a handful of highly trained additional guards might have had in Benghazi were they able to deploy there, some State Department officials said it would probably not have made any difference in blunting the Sept. 11 assault from several dozen heavily armed militants.

“An attack of that kind of lethality, we’re never going to have enough guns,” Patrick F. Kennedy, under secretary of state for management, said at Wednesday’s hearing. “We are not an armed camp ready to fight it out.” .

So, the republican reduction of funding is rather meaningless to the event, making the only real issue that which was known and by whom.
Glad Obama has maintained his traditional stance of no culpability for anything that happens on his watch otherwise he would just look like he has literature to do with actually running the country.

So, the republican reduction of funding is rather meaningless to the event, making the only real issue that which was known and by whom.
Glad Obama has maintained his traditional stance of no culpability for anything that happens on his watch otherwise he would just look like he has literature to do with actually running the country.

The republicans are the ones who started pointing fingers in order to politicize this incident, not the Democrats. Remember that. They are the only reason this has become such a debated topic. I merely pointed out their hypocrisy with this information. Constantly we have been told that Obama is responsible for denying extra security, but when all was said and done, it turns out he knew nothing about these requests. They were kept at mid-levels in the State dept. Even Hillary didn't know about them. The ambassador never made a phone call directly to the President asking for troops to be deployed to Benghazi, which he probably could have done had he felt that strongly about it.

But more importantly, it turns out that the kinds of requests that were being made, would have had no effect on the outcome because 1) the forces being requested were too far away and 2) they weren't nearly enough to address the problem.

Ultimately, had their request been granted there would have been 16 more deaths we'd be mourning over.