Is Jim Webb The Real Threat to Hillary Clinton?

While the Republican field of would be 2016 presidential nominees contains a plethora of clown car candidates (think Rick Santorum, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, etc.), on the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton has few would be challengers.  Efforts to recruit Elizabeth Warren by the progressive wing of the Democrat Party continue to elicit statements that Warren is not running.  The only other would be contender is former Virginia Senator Jim Webb who, unlike Warren, has said he is contemplating a run for the presidential nomination.  A column in the New York Times maintains that Webb, not Warren, is the real threat to Hillary.  Here are column excerpts:

THE conventional wisdom is that Hillary Rodham Clinton will be almost impossible to dislodge from the Democratic presidential nomination and that even if she does encounter some hiccups, they will come from her left flank on economic policy. But if Mrs. Clinton runs, she may face a serious and very different threat: her own foreign policy record. While she can pretty much split the difference with any primary opponents on economic policy, the divisions over foreign affairs could be a lot harder to paper over for Mrs. Clinton, who has been tacking to the right on Iran, Syria and Russia in anticipation of Republican assaults during the general election.

This is why it isn’t really the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren who should worry the Clinton camp. It’s the former Virginia senator Jim Webb, a Vietnam War hero, former secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration, novelist and opponent of endless wars in the Middle East. Late last month, Mr. Webb formed an exploratory committee.

[S]he would find him much more complex than dealing with liberals. He’s not a liberal, but a lot of what he says might appeal to liberals. He does not get carried away by humanitarian intervention.”

Mr. Webb’s attacks on free trade and economic elites, coupled with a call for America to come home again, might well prove a potent combination in the early primaries, attracting antiwar progressives as well as conservative-minded Southern white men whom he believes the party can win back. His credo is as simple as it is persuasive: Rather than squander its power and resources abroad, America should rebuild.

Unlike Mrs. Clinton, who continues to struggle to explain her vote for the Iraq war, Mr. Webb publicly attacked the George W. Bush administration in 2002, presciently asking, “Do we really want to occupy Iraq for the next 30 years?” As a member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees he also castigated the Obama administration for its intervention in Libya in 2011. He was right. It’s a move that has boomeranged, creating further instability and emboldening jihadists across the region.

In contrast to Mrs. Clinton, who has gotten into hot water for trying to retroactively amend her views and record, Mr. Webb did not arrive at these beliefs casually or opportunistically. As his recent memoir, “I Heard My Country Calling,” makes clear, his opposition to ventures abroad is as much viscerally emotional as intellectual. Growing up as a self-described military brat, he spent his formative years in Britain, where he saw firsthand the effects of loss of empire and the devastation wrought by World War II. “Britain was bled out and spent out,” he writes. “They understood the great price of the recent wars in a much more sobering way than did most Americans.”

Whether Mr. Webb will attempt to begin a successful maverick campaign is an open question. But he is an eloquent and forthright speaker whose foreign policy experience would make it difficult for Mrs. Clinton to paint him as an isolationist or a novice who will leave America open to attack, as she attempted to do to Mr. Obama during the 2008 primaries. On the contrary, it’s Mrs. Clinton whose interventionist foreign policy record leaves her politically vulnerable.

Will Hatred of Obama Lead to GOP Overreach?

As noted many times before, the angry whites and racists of the Republican Party base simply hate Barack Obama and seemingly are constantly incensed that a man that they consider as black and unfit for the presidency as a result, continues to occupy the White House.  And Congressional Republicans, either ever fearful of the party base or equally as insane as the party grassroots, are only too happy to win points with their Neanderthal, white supremacist constituents by piling on witch hunts against Obama.  A piece in the Washington Post suggests that in doing so, they may be setting  the GOP up for a fall.  Here are excerpts:

A few of us on the left have been arguing that the current scandal-mania gripping the GOP risks bringing about a rerun of 1998, when the frenzy amid the Monica Lewinsky revelations led the GOP to overreach, resulting in backlash.

Now we have a longtime respected nonpartisan observer, Charlie Cook, arguing that this possibility is very real. Cook’s piece, entitled “Republicans’ hatred of Obama blinds them to public disinterest in scandals,” notes that the scandals have not moved the needle at all on Obama’s approval rating, just as happened in 1998:

The simple fact is that although the Republican sharks are circling, at least so far, there isn’t a trace of blood in the water…Maybe that will change. Maybe these allegations will start getting traction with voters. But it might just be that Americans are more focused on an economy that is gradually coming out of the longest and deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression. [...]

One wonders how long Republicans are going to bark up this tree, perhaps the wrong tree, while they ignore their own party’s problems, which were shown to be profound in the most recent elections. Clearly none of these recent issues has had a real impact on voters yet. Republicans seem to be betting everything on them, just as they did in 1998 — about which even Newt Gingrich (who was House speaker that year) commented recently to NPR, “I think we overreached in ’98.”

More to the point, majorities believe Obama is focused on their problems, and Republicans aren’t — again confirming Cook’s diagnosis. Only 33 percent say Republicans are focused on things that are important to them, versus 60 percent who say they aren’t. By contrast, 51 percent say Obama is concentrating on things that are important to them.  

In a reference to 1998 GOP overreach, Cook concludes:

Republicans became so consumed by their hatred of Clinton and their conviction that this event would bring him down that they convinced themselves the rest of the country was just as outraged by his behavior as they were.

In the case of Obama, of course, his personal conduct is not at issue, and there is still no evidence that Republicans will be able to tie the current storylines directly to him. But the widespread conviction among Republican base voters that we’re seeing Watergate-level presidential wrongdoing will require that Republican officials keep chasing after evidence of it. It’s for these reasons that Democratic strategists are betting that GOP scandal overreach will play a key role in the 2014 elections.

We may be seeing a rerun of the 1990s in more ways than one.

The other reason, of course for the conduct of the Congressional Republicans is that it distracts voters from the reality that they have no plan or proposals for moving the nation and/or the economy forward.  Hopefully, voters outside the delusional GOP base will figure this out. 

Mitch McConnell Backs Away From GOP Claims Of Benghazi Cover Up

As noted before, based on what is currently known, none of the three "scandals" that the Congressional Republicans are currently hyperventilating about add up to any real scandal and certainly nothing that implicates the White House and Barack Obama.  Not that this matters to much of the GOP base which is so outraged at having a black man in the White House that they will grasp at anything in the hope of destroying the man.  Interestingly enough, today Mitch McConnell - for who I have no use whatsoever - seemed to be at last backing away from the shrill screams of "cover up" emanating from some GOP circles.  Think Progress looks at McConnell's new found moderation.  Here are excerpts:

On Sunday, during an appearance on Meet The Press, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) — the GOP leader in the senate — distanced himself from Republican efforts to portray the Obama administration’s response to the attacks on a U.S. diplomatic issue in Benghazi, Libya as a Watergate-level scandal that should result in impeachment. McConnell’s comments come just days after the White House released 100 pages of emails undermining GOP claims that administration officials doctored the public talking points U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used to discuss the incident on the Sunday morning talk shows.

“You’re talking about others who may have said various things about this, let me tell you what I think about it. It’s clear there was inadequate security out there and it’s very clear that it was inconvenient within six weeks of the election, for the administration to in effect announce, that it was a terrorist attack,” McConnell said. “I think that’s worth examining, it is going to be examined.”

But asked repeatedly if Republicans should tone down their attacks against the administration, McConnell demurred, saying only that Obama should allow for an investigation. He also couldn’t identify specific evidence of an administration cover-up:

DAVID GREGORY (HOST): But you have specific evidence that they made up a tale, or was it based on information they had at the time?

MCCONNELL: Well, the talking points clearly were not accurate. I think getting to the bottom of this is an important investigation.

E-mails between the White House, CIA, State Department, Justice Department, and the FBI show that Rice’s remarks reflect the early view of the intelligence community and were produced with few changes from the White House.    On Thursday, CBS’ Major Garrett reported that Republican sources misquoted or significantly embellished the emails officials used to draft Rice’s remarks in order to implicate the administration in a conspiracy to mislead the public about Benghazi. 

The GOP Fanned "White House Scandals" Are Falling Apart

Despite the mixture of breathlessness and outrage among the GOP base and GOP demagogues like John Boehner, the situations being described as scandals that could topple Barack Obama have little actual substance - so concludes a piece in the Washington Post.  So why the furor?  Because (a) much of the racist GOP hates Obama and wants to see scandal in everything, (b) the supposed scandals are a way to distract the public from the reality that the Congressional Republicans are not doing their jobs and legislating on issues in dire need of solutions, and (c) the so-called scandals are convenient tools for GOP demagogues to fund raise and fleece their delusional party base for money.   Here are highlights from the Post article that looks at why the scandals so loved by the GOP and an always lazy main stream media are likely to fall apart and evaporate out side of the Kool-Aid drinking circles:

1) The Internal Revenue Service: The IRS mess was, well, a mess. But it’s not a mess that implicates the White House, or even senior IRS leadership. If we believe the agency inspector general’s report, a group of employees in a division called the “Determinations Unit” — sounds sinister, doesn’t it? — started giving tea party groups extra scrutiny, were told by agency leadership to knock it off, started doing it again, and then were reined in a second time and told that any further changes to the screening criteria needed to be approved at the highest levels of the agency.

The White House fired the acting director of the agency on the theory that somebody had to be fired and he was about the only guy they had the power to fire. They’re also instructing the IRS to implement each and every one of the IG’s recommendations to make sure this never happens again. .  .  .  .  .  so it’s hard to see where this one goes from here.

2) Benghazi: We’re long past the point where it’s obvious what the Benghazi scandal is supposed to be about. The inquiry has moved on from the events in Benghazi proper, tragic as they were, to the talking points about the events in Benghazi. And the release Wednesday night of 100 pages of internal e-mails on those talking points seems to show what my colleague Glenn Kessler suspected: This was a bureaucratic knife fight between the State Department and the CIA.

As for the White House’s role, well, the e-mails suggest there wasn’t much of one. “The internal debate did not include political interference from the White House, according to the e-mails, which were provided to congressional intelligence committees several months ago,” report The Washington Post’s Scott Wilson and Karen DeYoung. As for why the talking points seemed to blame protesters rather than terrorists for the attack that killed the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans? Well:

According to the e-mails and initial CIA-drafted talking points, the agency believed the attack included a mix of Islamist extremists from Ansar al-Sharia, a group affiliated with al-Qaeda, and angry demonstrators.

White House officials did not challenge that analysis, the e-mails show, nor did they object to its inclusion in the public talking points.

But CIA deputy director Michael Morell later removed the reference to Ansar al-Sharia because the assessment was still classified and because FBI officials believed that making the information public could compromise their investigation, said senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the internal debate.

So far, it’s hard to see what, exactly, the scandal here is supposed to be.

3) AP/Justice Department:. This is the weirdest of the three. There’s no evidence that the DoJ did anything illegal. Most people, in fact, think it was well within its rights to seize the phone records of Associated Press reporters. And if the Obama administration has been overzealous in prosecuting leakers, well, the GOP has been arguing that the White House hasn’t taken national security leaks seriously enough. The AP/DoJ fight has caused that position to flip, and now members of Congress are concerned that the DoJ is going after leaks too aggressively. But it’s hard for a political party to prosecute wrongdoing when they disagree with the potential remedies.

Insofar as there’s a “scandal” here, it’s more about what is legal than what isn’t. The DoJ simply has extraordinary power, under existing law, to spy on ordinary citizens — members of the media included.

Because there was no actual evidence of presidential involvement in these events, the line for much of this week was that the president was not involved enough in their aftermath. He was “passive.” He seemed to be a “bystander.” His was being controlled by events, rather than controlling them himself. 

The smarter voices on the right are also beginning to counsel caution. ”While there’s still more information to be gathered and more investigations to be done, all indications are that these decisions – on the AP, on the IRS, on Benghazi – don’t proceed from [Obama],” wrote Ben Domenech in The Transom, his influential conservative morning newsletter. “The talk of impeachment is absurd. The queries of ‘what did the president know and when did he know it’ will probably end up finding out “’just about nothing, and right around the time everyone else found out.’”

The GOP base hates Obama - and I believe hate is the correct word - and this hatred is causing the base and the whores who comprise the GOP members of Congress to try to seize anything they can to destroy Obama and appease the lynch mob that is the base of today's GOP.

Ignorance and Conspiracy Theories - The Core of Today's GOP

I realize that I frequently beat up on the today's Republican Party a - s opposed to the GOP as it once was when I was an activist - but it is difficult not to do so when one sees the open embrace of ignorance and suspicions of conspiracies under every bush the cretins of the party base dream up.  My grandparents and late parents would be horrified at what the GOP has become and would want nothing to do with it.  Indeed, when John McCain tapped Sarah Palin as his VP nominee, my late mother said she simply could not hold her nose and vote for a ticket that included Palin.  Now, things have gotten even worse and I again can only conclude that to be a Republican nowadays, one needs to either (i) have had a lobotomy, (ii) be a white supremacist, or (iii) be a religious extremist/homophobe.  A new a new PPP poll underscores the ignorance of the GOP base:

41 percent of Republicans say they consider this to be the "biggest political scandal in American history" compared to only 43 percent who disagree. Only 10 percent of Democrats and 20 percent of independents agreed.
 
Of the 41 percent of Republicans who consider Benghazi to be the worst political scandal in American history, 39 percent are unaware that Benghazi is located in Libya. 10 percent said it’s in Egypt, 9 percent in Iran, 6 percent in Cuba, 5 percent in Syria, 4 percent in Iraq, and 1 percent each in North Korea and Liberia, with 4 percent unwilling to venture a guess.

One can only hope that these ignorant, uninformed individuals in the GOP base do not actually go out to the polls and vote.  I'd also posit that I hope they are using birth control and not spawning more cretins like themselves.   Other interesting findings from the PPI poll are as follows:

Voters trust Hillary Clinton over Congressional Republicans on the issue of Benghazi by a 49/39 margin and her favorability rating shows no signs of decline at 52 percent versus 44 percent unfavorable. Congressional Republicans remain unpopular with a 36/57 favorability rating.

By a 56/38 margin voters say passing a comprehensive immigration reform bill is more important, and by a 52/43 spread they think passing gun background checks should be a higher priority than Benghazi.

As I have argued before, the intellectual collapse of the GOP ties - in my view - directly with the rise of the Christofascists in the GOP and the attendant flight of sane party members who were repulsed by the Christofascists and their refusal to recognize the concept of the separation of church and state. 

 

And when it comes to clinging to every insane conspiracy theory, no one is worse than today's GOP and its Christofascist/Tea Party base.  A case in point?  An op-ed piece in the misnamed  Christian Post imagining a conspiracy surrounding the Boy Scouts of America's revisiting its anti-gay policy is illustrative.  Here are highlights:

 

[W]hy the top down full court press on the Boy Scouts by gay-rights leaders around the country?

Well, unbeknownst to the BSA officials who were being pounded by activists from all sides, the two same-sex marriage cases were also slowly and silently making their way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

If you are a Supreme Court "watcher" most agree that any close decisions are usually about Justice Anthony Kennedy. He is the most obvious and most often-discussed swing vote on the high court. And if you read his previous opinions on social issues, Kennedy does not seem as concerned with legal issues as with public opinion. Kennedy's opinions are not filled with extensive analyses of the nuisances of equal protection, state's rights or statutory construction. He seems more concerned with culture, polling numbers and signs of the times.

If the BSA changes its membership policy and allows open homosexuality among its boys, you can be guaranteed that this event will be cited to by Justice Kennedy in his decision on the same sex marriage cases.

So as the Supreme Court is taking up the next big "gay rights" issue this year, it's no large leap to consider the timing of this latest BSA gay rights push as aimed at influencing those few Justices who are susceptible to the court of public opinion, especially when it comes to cries of "discrimination."

What's at stake in this Boy Scout controversy is not just the future of Scouting. It is also the future of the institution of marriage and whether or not we will undergo yet another "fundamental transformation of America."

At times I have asked when will the local GOP city and county committees pass out KKK style robes at the beginning of their meetings.  Perhaps the better question is when will these committees begin handing out straight jackets before the nutcases convene.

 

 

Robert Gates Mocks GOP Attacks On Obama’s Handling Of Benghazi

The fever ridden, fetid swamp that is today Republican Party continues to grow in insanity and toxicity as the far right elements and those within the GOP who are only to willing to prostitute themselves to these elements continue to try to conflate the attack on the U.S Consulate in Benghazi, Libya into a scandal.  Their motivation is two fold: (i) a racist motivated hatred towards Barack Obama and (ii) a desperate desire to harm Obama and Hillary Clinton politically.  Reality has nothing to do with much of anything in today's GOP.  Its like an insane asylum where the attendants have all fled and left the crazies in charge.   Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates is one of the few Republicans left willing to call out GOP insanity.  As Think Progress reports he basically bitch slapped his GOP contemporaries on Face the Nation yesterday.  Here are story highlights:

Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a Republican who was appointed to the position by George W. Bush, told CBS News on Saturday that he would have handled the situation in Benghazi the same way that the Obama administration did last September.

During an interview that aired on CBS’ Face the Nation on Sunday morning, Gates defended the administration’s reaction to the attacks in Libya and dismissed many of the criticisms leveled by his fellow Republicans as “cartoonish”:

“Frankly, had I been in the job at the time, I think my decisions would have been just as theirs were,” said Gates, now the chancellor of the College of William and Mary.
“We don’t have a ready force standing by in the Middle East, and so getting somebody there in a timely way would have been very difficult, if not impossible.” he explained.
Suggestions that we could have flown a fighter jet over the attackers to “scare them with the noise or something,” Gates said, ignored the “number of surface to air missiles that have disappeared from [former Libyan leader] Qaddafi’s arsenals.”
[...]
Another suggestion posed by some critics of the administration, to, as Gates said, “send some small number of special forces or other troops in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually going on on the ground, would have been very dangerous.”
“It’s sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces,” he said. “The one thing that our forces are noted for is planning and preparation before we send people in harm’s way, and there just wasn’t time to do that.”

Gates also defended former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has increasingly become the subject of Republican criticism. Gates responded with a simple and emphatic “no” when asked if he believed Clinton could possibly be involved in any sort of a cover up, as some Republicans have baselessly suggested.

John Boehner’s Benghazi Smoking Gun Email Backfires

The Republicans are continuing to try to inflate the attack on the U. S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and the immediate aftermath into some sort of major scandal.  Why?  To harm Barack Obama politically, but more likely to try to damage Hillary Clinton whose popularity for a potential 2016 run for the presidency literally annihilates any of the possible GOP contenders.  As if the GOP transparency wasn't obvious as to the real agenda, this scandal mongering is coming from the party that took America to war in Iraq based on deliberate lies.  A war that many in the GOP political class continue to try to justify as a positive good.  The hypocrisy is simply mind blowing.   Politicususa looks at the latest backfire of the GOP efforts.  Here are highlights:

It turns out John Boehner’s smoking gun Benghazi email was more like a firecracker that has blown up in the Speaker’s face.  At his press conference yesterday, Speaker Boehner demanded that the the White House turn over a Benghazi related email:

I hope you all tuned in to yesterday’s hearing on the tragedy in Benghazi. We learned that on September 12 – the day after the attacks and four days before Susan Rice’s TV appearances – a senior State Department official emailed her superiors to relay that the Libyan ambassador – she had told the Libyan Ambassador that the attack was conducted by Islamic terrorists.

The State Department would not allow our committees to keep copies of this email when it was reviewed. And I would call on the president to order the State Department to release this email so that the American people can see it.

According to Boehner this was the Benghazi smoking gun, only it wasn’t.  The New York Times has looked at the email, and it doesn’t say what Boehner thinks it says:

But a copy of the e-mail reviewed by The New York Times indicates that A. Elizabeth Jones, the senior State Department official who wrote it, referred to “Islamic extremists,” not terrorists.

The distinction is important, administration officials said, because while the White House did not initially characterize the attack as terrorism, senior officials, including Ambassador Susan E. Rice, acknowledged the possibility that extremists had been involved in the assault.

Speaker Boehner demanded the release of an email that he thought would prove the White House Benghazi cover up, only to find that the email supports what the Obama administration has been saying.

This hasn’t stopped Republicans from claiming that it doesn’t make any difference whether the administration referred to Islamic terrorists or Islamic extremists, even though Boehner based his entire argument on the belief that the email referred to Islamic terrorists.

John Boehner has become a cartoon character. He is Wile E. Coyote falling off the cliff, as one harebrained scheme after another goes wrong.

 

Make no mistake.  I dislike John Boehner whose hypocrisy is further underscored by his devout Catholicism which means he supports vile old men who participated in a world wide conspiracy to enable and protect child rapists.  Now there's family values for you.  The man makes me sick.

 

GOP Star Witnesses Debunk Right-Wing Benghazi Conspiracy Theories

The right wing has been salivating over supposed bombshells that would damage Barack Obama - who they despise because of his race - and Hillary Clinton in connecting with the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.  And yesterday, they hoped to set the bombshell off, precept it didn't happen.  Their star witness debunked their wild conspiracy theories.  Yes, Benghazi could have been handled better, but the freepers are so over wrought with their hatred of Obama that objective reality never seems to factor into their fantasies.  Think Progress looks at the let down for the far right.  Here are excerpts:

The “whistleblowers” at today’s House Oversight Committee hearing on what really happened in Benghazi, Libya last September were supposed to break the dam that would lead to President Obama’s eventual downfall, in the eyes of conservatives. Instead, these witness actually served to debunk several theories that the right-wing has pushed on Benghazi, leaving the hearing a fizzle for the GOP:

1. F-16s could have been sent to Benghazi

Part of the prevailing theory surrounding the events the night of the Benghazi attacks is that the Obama administration did not do enough militarily to respond to the crisis. Gregory Hicks — a Foreign Service Officer and the former Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya — claimed during his pre-hearing testimony that fighter jets could have been flown over Benghazi, preventing the second wave of the attack from occurring. 

Ranking Member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) questioned that statement, asking Hicks whether he disagreed with Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Gen Martin Dempsey’s assessment that no air assets were in range the night of the attack. Hicks didn’t disagree, saying he was “speaking from [his] perspective” and what “veteran Libyan revolutionaries” told him, rather than Pentagon assessments.

2. Hillary Clinton signed cables denying additional security to Benghazi

House Republicans came to the conclusion in their interim report on Benghazi that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lied to them about what she knew and when during her testimony this January. This includes her statement that at no time was she aware of requests for additional security at the diplomatic facility in Benghazi prior to the attack. 

Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) used her time to take issue with this claim, asking all three witnesses about standard protocol for cables leaving the State Department. All three agreed with Maloney, that the Secretary of State’s name is placed at the bottom of all outgoing cables and telegrams from Foggy Bottom, whether the Secretary has viewed them or not, shooting down the GOP claim.

3. A Special Forces Team that could have saved lives was told to stand down

One of the most shocking reveals in the lead-up to today’s hearing was that a team of Special Forces in Tripoli were told not to deploy to Benghazi during the attack. That decision has led to an uproar on the right, including claims of dereliction of duty towards Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey for not taking actions that could have saved lives. 

During questioning, Hicks confirmed that the team was ready to be deployed — not to join the fighting at the CIA annex — but “to secure the airport for the withdrawal of our personnel from Benghazi after the mortar attack.” Hicks also confirmed that it was the second such team to be readied for deployment, with the first having proceeded to Benghazi earlier. Despite the second team not deploying, the staff was all evacuated first to Tripoli, then to Germany, within 18 hours of the attack taking place.

4. The State Department’s Accountability Review Board isn’t legitimate

Republicans have been attacking the State Department’s official in-house review of the shortcomings seen before, during, and after the assault in Benghazi. That criticism prompted House Republicans to write their own report. When asked point blank about the recommendations of the Board, however, the witnesses didn’t cooperate with the GOP narrative. “Absolutely,” Eric Nordstrom, the Regional Security Officer for Libya prior to the assault in Benghazi, answered when asked if he believes implementing the recommendations would improve security. “I had an opportunity to review that along with other two committee reports. I think taken altogether, they’re fairly comprehensive and reasonable.” Hicks, when questioned, said that while he had some issues with the process by which the Board gathered its information, he demurred on criticizing the report itself.

 Reality means nothing to the far right and their political prostitutes in the GOP.  Hence, be assured the conspiracy theories will remain alive and well in freeper land.  Remember, these folks still insist that Obama wasn't born in America.

Hillary Clinton Strikes Back at Amnesia Burdened GOP Senators

Apparently worried that Hillary Clinton may run for president in 2016 and whip the GOP's ass, in a hearing before Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Republican senators went out of their way to try to bloody Hillary Clinton.  In the process, however, these disingenuous GOP senators displayed shocking levels of amnesia in terms of GOP lies and dropped balls under the watch of Chimperator George W. Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney.  For those who need to be reminded of GOP misdeeds, let us not forget (i) Bush/Cheney's failure to stop the 9-11 attacks even though intelligence reports existed that warned of the attacks and (ii) the deliberate lies that Bush/Cheney used to drag America into the fiasco known as the Iraq War, a war that took over 4,000 American lives and help create the nations burgeoning budget deficit.  And if the security of American embassies and consulates is really an issue as GOP senators pretended, lets not forget the $300+ million cut from the State Department budget by the GOP controlled House of Representatives.  The Daily Beast looks at Hillary's counter attack on lame and disingenuous GOP senators.  Here are some highlights:

Throughout the hearing Wednesday, Clinton was often poised, marshaling the complex facts of the government assessment and investigation of the incident with flair. In her opening statement, she got a little choked up, recalling the events that killed Ambassador Stevens. 

In a back and forth with Sen. Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, Clinton’s voice rose slightly when asked why the American people were not told what the diplomatic security officers knew at the time of the attack—that it wasn’t a spontaneous protest tied to an anti-Islam film.

Clinton responded, “With all due respect, the fact is, we had four dead Americans. Was it because there was a protest or was it because there were guys who went out for a walk one night who decided they would kill some Americans?” she asked. “What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and to do everything we can to make sure it never happens again.”

In her testimony, Clinton made the point that her top priority in those first days after the attacks was to figure out how to keep U.S. diplomats safe. She said the State Department didn’t want to interfere with the FBI investigation or question diplomatic-security officers who were witnesses to a crime scene. She explained that on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 she was dealing with protests at U.S. embassies throughout the Muslim world.

But she was adamant that there was no cover-up. The closest Clinton came to voicing contrition for the public statements about Benghazi after the attack was when she faulted the administration for not explaining how unclear the picture was on the evening of the attack. “I understand trying to figure out what was going on and why were we told this, that, and the other,” she told Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican from Arizona. “I can only assure you, as the information came to light, we tried to share it, but that took some time.”

Clinton also responded to questions about last week’s hostage crisis in Algeria, including reports suggesting that some of the Benghazi attackers may have participated. Clinton said she could not confirm those reports. “It’s coming from the Algerian government related to some of the terrorists who they took alive. We don’t have anything to confirm it yet,” she said.

What the GOP senators sought to do today goes hand in hand with the repeated lie that Barack Obama is a big spender when in fact, the most explosive increases in spending over the last 15 years occurred under Bush/Cheney, not the Obama administration.  Like their Christofascist masters, the GOP senators seem incapable of telling the truth.

  

Caption This: John McCain Batshitery

I once held John McCain in high respect.  His selection of the lunatic from Wasilla as his running mate in 2008 ended that.  Now, having selected one of the most unqualified candidates ever, McCain has the nerve to criticize Susan Rice.  Oh, and if we are talking about dropped balls and incompetence in the foreign affairs realm, McCain has amnesia when it comes to Condolezza ice's major failings that (1) allowed 9-11 to happen and (2) allowed the USA to be taken to war in Iraq based on lies.

Condoleeza Rice Pours Cold Water On "Benghazi-Gate"

Mitt Romney and demagogues in the Republican Party have been working strenuously to turn the sad events in Benghazi, Libya on September 11th into some sort of scandal - a Benghazi Gate" if you will.  Imagine their angst when former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice threw cold water on the effort by stating that it was not as unusual for the White House and State Department to be lacking information as the GOP talking heads have tried to claim it to be.  Indeed, Rice flat out said that sometimes it is difficult to know what is really happening, especially with fast moving events.  Here are highlights from Think Progress where Rice pokes a hole in the GOP storyline:

Former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice broke with the majority of her party last night on Fox News, as she tried to hit the brakes on the right wing’s politicization of the recent attack in Libya.

Host Greta Van Susteren asked Rice directly and repeatedly about a set of emails uncovered by Reuters. In what has been dubbed “Benghazi-Gate,” the conservative media has jumped on the emails as definitive proof that the Obama administration has been lying about what it knew and when in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attack on a diplomatic mission in Benghazi. Rice’s response was likely not what Van Susteren expected:

RICE: But when things are unfolding very, very quickly, it’s not always easy to know what is really going on on the ground. And to my mind, the really important questions here are about how information was collected. Did the various agencies really coordinate and share intelligence in the way that we had hoped, with the reforms that were made after 9/11?

So there’s a big picture to be examined here. But we don’t have all of the pieces, and I think it’s easy to try and jump to conclusions about what might have happened here. It’s probably better to let the relevant bodies do their work.

 Yes, Rice definitely peed in the Cheerios of many of the right wingers who always put ideology and hatred of Obama ahead of reality.

Romney's and the GOP's Amnesia on Failed Presidential Leadership

In the lead up to tonight's third presidential debate it is likely that Mitt "If My Lips Are Moving I'm Lying" Romney will again try to make political hay out of the September 11, 2012, attack of the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.  Lindsey Graham, a/k/a the Palmetto Queen on this blog, has given a foretaste of the crap that Romney will again likely try to throw at Obama.  Hypocrisy doesn't begin to describe the GOP's  - and Romney's - hypocrisy on this issue.  Andrew Sullivan puts in all in perspective: 

"This is going to be a case study, studied for years, of a breakdown of national security at every level, failed presidential leadership — senior members of the Obama administration failed miserably," - Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.

So Bush and Cheney's failure to prevent the massacre of 3,000 civilians in NYC after an explicit warning from the CIA was less of a failure than a confusing attack on a consulate in Libya, which killed four people?

 And Andrew doesn't even begin to factor in the American lives wasted in the Iraq War that Bush and Cheney advocated for based on knowingly false information.  If Romney tries to go down this road, Obama needs to remind Americans what Romney's style of foreign policy got us under Bush/Cheney. 

Romney's Attempt to Politicize the Benghazi Aattacks Bomerangs

While watching the presidential debate on Tuesday night I took some delight when Candy Crowley set the record and Mitt Romney straight on the nature of Barack Obama's statements soon after the horrible attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya.  Now, it seems that Romney's transparent political gamesmanship is biting him in the ass even more as CIA documents are released that support the Obama administration's initial reactions and statements on the incident.  All of which underscores Romney shameless willingness to say anything to try to get elected.  A column in the Washington Post looks at how Romney is hopefully going to get his just deserves.  Here are some highlights:

The Romney campaign may have misfired with its suggestion that statements by President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice about the Benghazi attack last month weren’t supported by intelligence, according to documents provided by a senior U.S. intelligence official.

“Talking points” prepared by the CIA on Sept. 15, the same day that Rice taped three television appearances, support her description of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate as a reaction to Arab anger about an anti-Muslim video prepared in the United States. According to the CIA account, “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.”

The CIA document went on: “This assessment may change as additional information is collected and analyzed and as currently available information continues to be evaluated.” This may sound like self-protective boilerplate, but it reflects the analysts’ genuine problem interpreting fragments of intercepted conversation, video surveillance and source reports.
 
The senior intelligence official said the analysts’ judgment was based in part on monitoring of some of the Benghazi attackers, which showed they had been watching the Cairo protests live on television and talking about them before they assaulted the consulate. 

“We believe the timing of the attack was influenced by events in Cairo,” the senior official said, reaffirming the Cairo-Benghazi link.  .  .  .  . “It was a flash mob with weapons,” is how the senior official described the attackers. The mob included members of the Ansar al-Sharia militia, about four members of al-Qaeda in the Maghreb, and members of the Egypt-based Muhammad Jamal network, along with other unarmed looters.

The official said the only major change he would make now in the CIA’s Sept. 15 talking points would be to drop the word “spontaneous” and substitute “opportunistic.” He explained that there apparently was “some pre-coordination but minimal planning.” 

The Benghazi attack produced a swirl of intelligence reporting, some of it contradictory. The Associated Press reported Friday that within 24 hours of the assault, the CIA station chief in Libya cabled headquarters that eyewitnesses said the attack had been carried out by militants. But the analysts evidently didn’t feel that they had any single report that allowed them to make a definitive determination about the nature of the attack.

 
Ironically, the Sept. 15 talking points that were the basis for Rice’s televised comments were requested by the House intelligence committee. Ideally, the congressional oversight committees would provide bipartisan support for intelligence officials who are probing the attack. But in the heat of the final pre-election weeks, the murky details of what happened in Libya have instead become political assault weapons.

Disingenuous Mitt: Romney to Stop Mentioning Navy SEAL After SEAL's Mother and Friend Slam Him

Proving yet again that he's a sleazy liar who will stoop to virtually anything in his quest for the White House, Mitt Romney had been mentioning a former Navy SEAL killed in the attack on the American consulate in Libya.  Or he was until the dean man's mother and a friend slammed Romney for politicizing the man's death and his shallowness at the time he actually met the former SEAL.  Glen Doherty's friend stated on Rachel Maddow's show last night that when Romney had met Doherty at a function, Romney had introduced himself four times not even remembering that he'd already introduced himself just minutes earlier.  The friend described Romney as shallow and insincere.  With Mitt, it's all about Mitt and no one else.  Doherty's mother summed it up well when she said "I don't trust Mitt Romney."  Neither do I.  The man is truly reprehensible.  The Washington Post looks at Romney's slap down by Doherty's mother.  Here are highlights: 

Mitt Romney will stop mentioning a former Navy SEAL killed in the attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Libya last month in his campaign speeches, according to aides, after the man’s mother said the GOP presidential candidate should stop invoking her son’s name.

“I don’t trust Romney. He shouldn’t make my son’s death part of his political agenda,” Barbara Doherty said in a statement broadcast Wednesday on WHDH-TV in Boston. “It’s wrong to use these brave young men, who wanted freedom for all, to degrade Obama.”


Barbara Doherty’s son Glen was killed last month in the consulate attack.

Think Progress reports on what Glen Doherty's friend had to say about Romney which is equally bad:

Romney’s not only telling the story against the wishes of Doherty’s family, he’s also mischaracterizing his encounter with the former SEAL. According to Glen Doherty’s longtime friend, Doherty said Romney had introduced himself four times in the span of less than 30 minutes, saying it was”pathetic” that Romney didn’t know the two had just met:

“He said it was very comical,” [Doherty friend Elf] Ellefsen said, “Mitt Romney approached him ultimately four times, using this private gathering as a political venture to further his image. He kept introducing himself as Mitt Romney, a political figure. The same introduction, the same opening line. Glen believed it to be very insincere and stale.” [...]
“He said it was pathetic and comical to have the same person come up to you within only a half hour, have this person reintroduce himself to you, having absolutely no idea whatsoever that he just did this 20 minutes ago, and did not even recognize Glen’s face.”

Ellefsen said it makes him “sick” that Romney is using the story out on the stump. “Glen would definitely not approve of it,” he said, adding, “He probably wouldn’t do much about it. He probably wouldn’t say a whole lot about it. I think Glen would feel, more than anything, almost embarrassed for Romney. I think he would feel pity for him.”

I suspect that most prostitutes have more integrity than Mitt Romney. I can only hope that voters open their eyes to the shallowness of this man and his rank dishonesty before November 6th.

Peggy Noonan Continues to Slam Mitt Romney

Some are predicting a GOP civil war thanks to Mitt Romney's hapless campaign.  And the brickbats from the thinking, rational members of the GOP pundit class that haven't already fled the party continues to be relentless.  I noted recently Peggy Noon's bashing of Romney who she described as a cyborg.  Well, she's back with another column in the Wall Street Journal that continues her assault on Romney.  Here are some highlights:

[H]ere's one tough, cool-eyed report on what is happening in the presidential race. It's from veteran Republican pollster, now corporate strategist, Steve Lombardo of Edelman public relations in Washington. Mr. Lombardo worked in the 2008 Romney campaign. He's not affiliated with any candidate. This is what he wrote Thursday morning, and what he sees is pretty much what I see.

"The pendulum has swung toward Obama." Mitt Romney has "a damaged political persona." He is running behind in key states like Ohio and Virginia and, to a lesser extent, Florida. The president is reversing the decline that began with his "You didn't build that" comment. For three weeks he's been on a roll. The wind's at his back.  How did we get here? What can turn it around?

1. Mr. Romney came out of the primaries "a damaged and flawed candidate." Voters began to see him as elitist, rich, out of touch. "Here the Democrats' early advertising was crucial." Newt Gingrich hurt too, with his attacks on Bain.

2. The Democrats defined Mr. Romney "before he had a chance to define himself." His campaign failed in "not doing a substantial positive media buy to explain who Mitt Romney is and what kind of president he might be."

3. "Perceptions of the economy are improving." Unemployment is high, but the stock market has improved, bringing 401(k)s with it.

4. Obama's approval ratings are up five to six points since last year. He is now at roughly 49% approval, comparable to where President Bush was in 2004.

5. "The president had a strong convention and Romney a weak one." The RNC failed "to relaunch a rebranded Romney and create momentum."

6. Team Romney has been "reactive," partly because of the need for damage control, but it also failed to force the Obama campaign to react to its proposals and initiatives.

7. The "47%" comment didn't help, but Mr. Romney's Libya statement was a critical moment. Team Romney did not know "the most basic political tenet of a foreign crisis: when there is an international incident in which America is attacked, voters in this country will (at least in the short term) rally around the flag and the President. Always. It is stunning that Team Romney failed to recognize this." 

The Romney campaign has to get turned around. This week I called it incompetent, but only because I was being polite. I really meant "rolling calamity." A lot of people weighed in, in I suppose expected ways: "Glad you said this," "Mad you said this." But, some surprises. No one that I know of defended the campaign or argued "you're missing some of its quiet excellence." Instead there was broad agreement with the gist of the critique—from some in the midlevel of the campaign itself, from outside backers and from various party activists and officials. 

There were wistful notes from the Republicans who'd helped run previous campaigns, most of whom could be characterized as serious, moderate conservatives, all of whom want to see Mr. Romney win  .   .   .   but they're in despair at the Romney campaign.

Federal Officers Question Anti-Muslim Film Maker

It seems more and more certain that Christian extremists were behind the making and Internet promotion of the vile film "Innocence of Muslims," that denigrates Islam and the Prophet Muhammad and which has ignited violence across the Arab world.  The Virginian Pilot has coverage on the questioning of one of the principal players in the making of the anti-Muslim screed - a self described Coptic Christian and felon, Nakoula Basseley Nakoula.  As seems to always be the case, "Christians" like Nakoula apparently has no problem lying, defrauding people and trashing the Gospel message in general.  It's truly a perverted example of "living one's Christian faith" and is yet another strong example why anyone truly moral would not seek to wear the Christian moniker.  Here are some story highlights:

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, was interviewed at the station in his hometown of Cerritos, Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputy Don Walker said.  Federal officials have said they were investigating the activities of Nakoula, who has been convicted of financial crimes. If the probation department determines Nakoula violated terms of his release, a judge could send him back to prison.

 

The probation department is reviewing the case of Nakoula, who was previously convicted on bank fraud charges and was banned from using computers or the Internet as part of his sentence. The review is aimed at learning whether Nakoula violated the terms of his five-year probation.

Karen Redmond, a spokeswoman for the administrative office of the U.S. courts, confirmed Friday the review is under way.

Federal authorities have identified Nakoula, a self-described Coptic Christian, as the key figure behind "Innocence of Muslims," a film denigrating Islam and the Prophet Muhammad that ignited mob violence against U.S. embassies across the Middle East. A federal law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Thursday that authorities had connected Nakoula to a man using the pseudonym of Sam Bacile who claimed earlier to be writer and director of the film.

While it was unclear what might have provoked authorities' interest, the filmmaker's use of a false identity and his access to the Internet through computers could be at issue, according to experts in cyber law and the federal probation system. Nakoula, who told the AP that he was logistics manager for the film, was under requirements to provide authorities with records of all his bank and business accounts.

The probation order authorized in June 2010 warned Nakoula against using false identities. Nakoula was told not to "use, for any purpose or in any manner, any name other than his/her true legal name or names without the prior written approval of the Probation Officer."

There are indications that "Innocence of Muslims" may have already been under way as a film project when Nakoula was arrested. A casting call for actors and crew for a film called "Desert Warrior" ran in Backstage magazine, based in Los Angeles and New York, in May and June 2009. The casting call described the film project as a "historical Arabian Desert adventure" and listed a "Sam Bassiel" as producer.

One notice identified "Pharaoh Voice Inc."as the film's production company. California state records show Pharaoh Voice was incorporated in September 2007 by a "Youssef M. Basseley." The principal address for Pharaoh Voice in Hawaiian Gardens, a southern California community, is the same location where Nakoula lived until 2008, according to state records.

 Needless to say, I'd love to see this douche bag go back to prison.  People like Nakoula underscore that far right Christianity is a cancer on society and a threat to both domestic and international peace.  It's really little better than Islamic extremism.  Just less violent - at least so far.

Right Wing Christians Behind Anti-Muslim Video That Started Riots

I often remark that I view fundamentalist religion in general and fundamentalist Christianity in particular as being one of the great scourges of mankind.  Fundamentalist Islam likewise destroys lives and perpetuates hate, bigotry and intolerance.  But back to the Christofascists.  The Guardian is carrying a story that provides more information about those who are behind the production and promotion of the horrid movie "The Innocence of Muslims."   As once might have surmised, the responsible parties appear to be far right Christians and Coptic Christians who sought to destabilize post-Mubarak Egypt and inflame the U. S. political campaigns.  These people may well have the blood of four Americans on their hands and demonstrate why I have growing contempt for far right Christians who by their conduct make a mockery of the Gospel message of Christ.  Here are highlights from the Guardian story:

[E]ven though the deadly scene in Benghazi may not have resulted directly from the angry reaction to the Islamophobic video, the violence has helped realize the apocalyptic visions of the film's backers.

Produced and promoted by a strange collection of rightwing Christian evangelicals and exiled Egyptian Copts, the trailer was created with the intention of both destabilizing post-Mubarak Egypt and roiling the US presidential election. As a consultant for the film named Steve Klein said: "We went into this knowing this was probably going to happen."

After being duped by Bacile, AP traced his address to the home of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a militant Coptic separatist and felon convicted of check fraud. On September 13, US law enforcement officials confirmed that "Sam Bacile" was an alias Nakoula used to advance his various scams, which apparently included the production of The Innocence of Muslims.

According to an actor in the film, the all-volunteer cast was deceived into believing they were acting in a benign biblical epic about "how things were 2,000 years ago". The script was titled Desert Warrior, and its contents made no mention of Muhammad – his name was dubbed into the film during post-production.

Before Nakoula was unmasked, the only person to publicly claim any role in the film was Klein, an insurance salesman and Vietnam veteran from Hemet, California, who emerged from the same Islamophobic movement that produced the Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik. Styling themselves as "counter-Jihadists", anti-Muslim crusaders like Klein took their cues from top propagandists like Pamela Geller, the blogger who once suggested that Barack Obama was the lovechild of Malcolm X, and Robert Spencer, a pseudo-academic expert on Muslim radicalization who claimed that Islam was no more than "a developed doctrine and tradition of warfare against unbelievers". Both Geller and Spencer were labeled hate group leaders by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Klein urges a violent response to the perceived threat of Islam in the United States, posting an image to his website depicting a middle-American family with a mock tank turret strapped to the roof of their car. "Can you direct us to the nearest mosque?" read a caption Klein added to the photo.

Through his friendship with Nasrallah, Klein encountered another radical Coptic separatist named Morris Sadek. Sadek has been banned from returning to his Egypt, where he is widely hated for his outrageous anti-Muslim displays.

As soon as the film appeared on YouTube, Sadek promoted it on his website, transforming the obscure clip into a viral source of outrage in the Middle East. And like clockwork, on September 11, crowds of Muslim protesters stormed the walls of the US embassy in Cairo, demanding retribution for the insult to the prophet Muhammad. The demonstrations ricocheted into Libya, where the deadly attack that may have been only peripherally related to the film occurred.

For Sadek, the chaos was an encouraging development. He and his allies had been steadfastly opposed to the Egyptian revolution, fearing that it would usher in the Muslim Brotherhood as the country's new leaders. Now that their worst fears were realized, Coptic extremists and other pro-Mubarak dead-enders were resorting to subterfuge to undermine the ruling party, while pointing to the destabilizing impact of their efforts as proof of the government's bankruptcy.

For far-right Christian right activists like Klein, the attacks on American interests abroad seemed likely to advance their ambitions back in the US. With Americans confronted with shocking images of violent Muslims in Egypt and Libya on the evening news, their already negative attitudes toward their Muslim neighbors were likely to harden. In turn, the presidential candidates, Obama and Romney, would be forced to compete for who could take the hardest line against Islamic "terror".

A group of fringe extremists had proven that with a little bit of money and an unbelievably cynical scam, they could shape history to fit their apocalyptic vision. But in the end, they were not immune to the violence they incited. 

According to Copts Today, an Arabic news outlet focusing on Coptic affairs, Sadek was seen taking a leisurely stroll down Washington's M Street on September 11, soaking in the sun on a perfect autumn day. All of a sudden, he found himself surrounded by four angry Coptic women. Berating Sadek for fueling the flames of sectarian violence, the women took off their heels and began beating him over the head.

If these men and their supporters are the face of Christianity, the world would be a far better place if Christianity were to become a dead religion.  Likewise, fundamentalist Islam needs to find its way to the trash heap of history. 

New York Times Slams Romney

As noted before, the blow back against Mitt Romney (shown smirking after his attack on Obama) just seems to go on and on even as some of the usual shrills of the lunatic far right try to offer up tortured support for his insensitivity and rashness.  Today's New York Times main editorial slams Romney and his craven effort to make political points out of a tragedy.  The man is truly a lying, self-centered, out of touch douche bag.  Here are excerpts from the Times' editorial:

Libya and its pro-democracy revolution had no better friend than J. Christopher Stevens, the United States ambassador who was killed along with three other Americans in Tuesday’s attack on the consulate in Benghazi.

President Obama’s statement of outrage and his vow to bring the killers to justice received bipartisan support, including from politicians otherwise committed to partisan warfare, like the House speaker, John Boehner, and the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, who rarely misses a chance to attack Mr. Obama. 

But not from Mitt Romney, who wants Americans to believe he can be president but showed an extraordinary lack of presidential character by using the murders of the Americans in Libya as an excuse not just to attack Mr. Obama, but to do so in a way that suggested either a dangerous ignorance of the facts or an equally dangerous willingness to twist them to his narrow partisan aims. 

Mr. Romney could easily have held his fire during this crisis, if he could not summon the decency to support the United States government. Instead, he misrepresented the administration as “sympathizing” with the attackers. There was no truth in what he said. In fact, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton made the first official comment on the killings, a strong condemnation, before Mr. Romney released his statement. Even after having a night to reconsider his response, Mr. Romney merely doubled down on his false charges, as he is prone to do.

Libya’s shaky new government will need American support to bring the killers to justice. The origins of the video, which mocks the Prophet Muhammad, are not clear. There is considerable speculation about who even produced the film, which largely went unnoticed until it was promoted on the Internet by Morris Sadek, an Egyptian-born Coptic Christian ally of Terry Jones, a Florida pastor and hatemonger whose threats to burn a copy of the Koran inspired deadly riots in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011. 

However offensive the video is, it could never justify the violence in Benghazi and Cairo. But Mr. Jones, Mr. Sadek and whoever made the film did true damage to the interests of the United States and its core principle of respecting all faiths.

The worst thing now would be for the United States to turn away from its commitments to work with Libya and Egypt as they try to build stable new societies. A number of Libyan security guards died trying to save the Americans, and Libyan leaders have condemned the killings and promised to work to apprehend those responsible.

Negative Reactions Continue to Dog Romney and His Cairo Statement

To me, Mitt Romney is an arrogant man who made a fortune as a vulture capitalist and who is seemingly incapable of feeling empathy towards anyone else outside perhaps his immediate family.  His political history has demonstrated that he will do anything and say anything - and change his positions incessantly - if at any particular moment he thinks it furthers his interests.   As noted before in an earlier post, the unfeeling and out of touch Romney sought to capitalize on yesterday's sad events in Cairo and Benghazi and attacked Barack Obama and tangentially the State Department for coddling anti-American protesters.  As we all know, the facts have not borne out Romney's statement and the negative reactions continue to reverberate - even from Republicans who are in some cases ripping Romney a new one.  Here are excerpts from BuzzFeed:

Mitt Romney's sharply-worded attack on President Obama over a pair of deadly riots in Muslim countries last night has backfired badly among foreign policy hands of both parties, who cast it as hasty and off-key, released before the facts were clear at what has become a moment of tragedy.

Romney keyed his statement to the American Embassy in Cairo's condemnation of an anti-Muslim video that served as the trigger for the latest in a series of regional riots over obscure perceived slights to the faith. But his statement — initially embargoed to avoid release on September 11, then released yesterday evening anyway — came just before news that the American Ambassador to Libya had been killed and broke with a tradition of unity around national tragedies, and of avoiding hasty statements on foreign policy. It was the second time Romney has been burned by an early statement on a complex crisis: Romney denounced the Obama Administration's handling of a Chinese dissident's escape just as the Administration negotiated behind the scenes for his departure from the country.
"It’s deeply unfortunate when the circumstance of the statement becomes the story," said Rick Perry's former foreign policy adviser, Victoria Coates .   .   .   .   Other conservatives were less sympathetic.

"It's bad," said a former aide to Senator John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. "Just on a factual level that the statement was not a response but preceding, or one could make the case precipitating. And just calling it a 'disgrace' doesn't really cut it. Not ready for prime time."

A third Republican, a former Bush State Department official, told BuzzFeed, "It wasn't presidential of Romney to go political immediately — a tragedy of this magnitude should be something the nation collectively grieves before politics enters the conversation."

Heather Hurlburt, who heads the National Security Network, a Democratic group, said the statement "shows not just poor judgment and a willingness to use tragedy for political gains, regardless of the security consequences — but also poor management. He has policy people on his team who know better. Clearly they weren't consulted."

[S]aid Steve Clemons, the founder of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. "An attack on an Embassy, the murder of U.S. officials including an Ambassador, is an attack on all Americans and the idea of America — and Romney gave terrorists what they want — a divided country still torn emotionally and politically by the events of 9-11. Romney talks of leadership but with his reckless commentary when events were fragile and still unfolding, he belly-flopped."

A column in Forbes - not exactly a left wing news outlet - was equally scathing in its rebuke to Romney.  Here are excerpts:

While the Romney campaign chose to turn yesterday’s events in Cairo and Benghazi into a political opportunity by criticizing the Obama Administration for a statement issued by our embassy in Cairo earlier in the day (more on that in a moment), a check of Twitter and other communications sources reveals that, as of the time of publication of this piece, Governor Romney has not yet seen fit to so much as express his condolences to the families of Ambassador Stevens and the other Americans who lost their lives in service to their country. Now, if I’ve somehow missed Romney’ issuance of condolences, I’m sure that there are many readers who will gladly point this out. I, in turn, will be more than willing to correct the record if this is the case—however a close search of all sources reveals that no such statement has been forthcoming from the Romney camp.

These words were uttered at the time when the families of our fellow countrymen were being notified of the terrible fate that had befallen their loved ones.

Is this really how leadership works?  A leader waits until all the facts are available and the impact of one’s words can be more fully assessed. In speaking out before he was fully aware of the situation on the ground, Governor Romney chose the path of the impulsive politician rather that the road taken by a measured leader—and all in the quest of political gain.

I’m sure the irony of our Ambassador’s death at the hands of such a mob is completely lost on Governor Romney who has now cashed in the decency I have always ascribed to the man in exchange for his willingness to do anything—and say anything—if it helps him capture the prize he so intensely seeks. No doubt, the Romney campaign tells itself that trading their souls is the price they must pay for the greater good. No doubt, they convince themselves of some wisdom they find in speaking first and thinking later if that is what must be done to save the American people from themselves. Yet, I think all Americans know how that storyline ends.

Ouch!!  Sometimes the truth hurts and the truth is that Mitt Romney is an unfeeling, calculating man who seems incapable of the empathy and emotions that most of us find to be an important part of ourselves.  I guess that's why he felt nothing for all of the employees who were fired and left with nothing during his vulture capitalist days at Bain Capital.