Friday, September 21, 2012

HRClinton's briefing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was supposedly to deal with highly classified materials on the attack on the Benghazi Consulate. Instead, she and other high Administration officials stonewalled the Senators:
Several high-level GOP senators emerged from Thursday afternoon's classified briefing with top administration officials incensed that Obama team had offered them no new information and answered none of their questions about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that resulted in the death of four Americans. "That was the most useless, worthless briefing that I have attended in a long time. Believe me, there is more written in every major and minor publication in America about what happened." said Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Bob Corker (R-TN), emerging from the all-senators briefing that included Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Deputy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and Joint Chiefs Vice Chairman Adm. Sandy Winnefeld. "It was like a one-hour filibuster with absolutely not one single bit of new information being brought forth... very disappointing." Corker said that the briefing was so poorly received by senators that it would spur Congress to push for more independent investigations about the causes of the attack, the perpetrators, the security at the consulate, and the personal security of Amb. Chris Stevens, who died in the attack. "[The briefing], if anything, built far greater distrust about what's happening than just answering questions. It was pretty unbelievable," said Corker. "In every event, when a serious question was asked, the answer was, ‘It's under investigation.' If I were them I would not have come to the Hill ... I think it is going to cause folks to push for something different, because it was received so poorly." Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Republican John McCain (R-AZ) agreed and said the briefing was indicative of the administration's pattern of not sharing information with Congress about important national security matters. He also said the administration is maintaining its argument that the Benghazi attack was the result of militants taking advantage of protests spurred by an anti-Islam video on the Internet.
Dozens of neighbors of the Consulate who were alarmed by the outbreak of heavy weapons fire maintain steadfastly that there was NO demonstration at all. Just a sudden attack with extremely deadly weapons wielded by almost 100 men who arrived in Jeeps and other vehicles. The Obama Administration is still maintaining that there was a demonstration hijacked by some terrorists and that the attack had nothing to do with the 9/11 anniversary or with revenge for the drone attack in Pakistan that killed the Libyan who was Number Two in Al-Qaeda, al-Libi.
"I learned nothing in that briefing that I hadn't seen or read in the media," said McCain. "They still are blaming the video and they have a fundamental misunderstanding. It's not the video; it's the Islamists that are pushing this video throughout the world to inflame passions on the part of people of the Muslim faith." McCain highlighted recent statements from administration officials acknowledging that the Benghazi incident was a "terrorist attack" and said that while he didn't know exactly how long it had been pre-planned, there was mounting evidence that significant planning did go into the assault. "It's very likely that there is a terrorist organization, affiliated with al Qaeda, that at least had some role in this attack, which had mortars, heavy equipment, and rocket propelled grenades -- not exactly a spontaneous demonstration," McCain said, citing open source information, not the briefing, which was classified. Senate Foreign Relations Committee member Marco Rubio (R-FL) was also critical of the briefing, and said that the situation in Benghazi was materially different from protests last week in Egypt, Yemen, Sudan, and other places, where protesters cited the video directly. "The only demonstrations in Libya have been anti-terrorist demonstrations. Compare Libya to the other countries -- in Libya, there aren't anti-American protests going on there," Rubio said. "We heard on Sunday that this was all the result of a YouTube video; now it's clear that's not the case. [The administration is] not accurately assessing what happened in Libya, and that's not helping anyone." Democratic senators emerging from the briefing declined to speak with reporters. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said earlier Thursday, "It is self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack," but maintained that there was no specific intelligence pointing to planning by the attackers in advance.
Of course, the Libyans maintain that they passed intelligence three days prior of some sort of terrorist attack they discovered about the anniversary of 9/11. This administration insists on lying to the American people because they know that the press and media will not hold them accountable. Brian Williams and Diane Sawyer of the NBC/ABC are part of the many DNC outlets obscuring and ignoring any malfeasance by the Obama crew. At least Scott Pelley at CBS does bring up the absence of a demonstration and the evidence for a large terrorist operation as being responsible for the Benghazi attacks.

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