It took nearly nine months for the White House to release the trail of E-Mails about the talking points furnished to Susan Rice (See ABC News Link here). While this may not be the entire story, it pretty much clears up the notion that there was a conspiracy in the Whitehouse to confuse the issue. Instead, if you read through the entire set of e-mails you tend to see a bumbling group of hangers-on that cannot get anything done right. Clearly, this is the gang that couldn't shoot straight.
How much of this is Obama and how much is so-called career professionals? Certainly there were career (so-called) professionals like Victoria Nuland (27 years at State?) who (now) famously objected to the potential political potential of the original version. The first person in line to substantly alter the talking points, however, was an Obama political appointee, the CIA General Counsel Steven W. Preston. His apparent objections centered on the DOJ/FBI requests to not discuss "internally or externally" the possible bad guys for fear it would hurt any future prosecution. Well intentioned or not, this is paralysis by analysis. Did the FBI ever get to Benghazi anyway?
So why did it take nine months to release this? Maybe the Obama administration was just embarrassed. Considering what we pay all of these folks, the resulting talking points were less than worthless. I remarked today to a friend that they might well have said, "Consulate attacked, still looking for
clues.” Or, even better, “Consulate attacked, still looking for clues in
the DOJ garage because the light is better there.”
Does this tell the whole story? Well, was there any political pressure on the CIA prior to coming up with the first set of talking points or are they as incompetent as they seemed after 9/11? Incompetence or conspiracy?
No comments:
Post a Comment