Let me repeat what I said last night. I was not suspicious originally and I don’t want to be suspicious. It is the Obama Administration’s handling of information about the Libya killings that has made me suspicious. I get suspicious when people try to sell me something silly or unbelievable. I can’t help but wonder, why are they telling me that? And yes, the YouTube story was silly – and they kept repeating it – and has made me suspicious.
QUOTES [WH Jay Carney]
Carney on Libya from Press Briefing:
“Initial assessments in the immediate aftermath of the attack in Benghazi were made and it was a government-wide assessment that the foundation of what Ambassador Rice said, what I said, and what others said. What we knew based on the limited facts we had available to us at that time.”
*The above doesn’t ring true with me. There was testimony just a short time ago by Deputy Assistant Sec of State Charlene Lamb and she said that the State Department was monitoring the events in real time here in Washington, D.C. Plus, the information given the media last night in the conference call (where Fox was not included) was that there was nothing unusual right before the attack — meaning NO PROTESTS.
One other thing, it was not ‘government wide’ — last night the State Dept briefing was that they NEVER said that it was video / protest.
“The president is absolutely committed to following the facts to wherever they may lead and to making sure that we take steps to ensure that our diplomatic personnel around the world in Libya and elsewhere are adequately protected and that our facilities are secured.”
*I would like to believe the President is committed to following the facts wherever they may leave. However, he was part of the YouTube video story — either he was acting foolishly and uninformed (not unlike when he jumped the gun and criticized the Cambridge, Mass cop when he had an altercation with President’s friend Prof Gates before the President had done any fact investigation) or the President was attempting to mislead us.
“I think there is no question that when four Americans are killed at a diplomatic facility that something went wrong and that is why we need to asses through the accountability review board the security posture there.”
“There is no question that the security was not enough to prevent that tragedy from happening.”
“There was not security enough to protect those four Americans.”
[Source: White House Press Briefing; Jay Carney; October 10, 2012]
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By the way, if you don’t get the Cambridge reference above, below is the reference:
President Obama Original Statement – July 22, 2012
Now, I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that, but I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge Police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That’s just a fact.
[source: The White House, “NEWS CONFERENCE BY THE PRESIDENT,” July 22,2009 http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/news-conference-president-july-22-2009]
