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 Seaward wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
Now that we're using the George W. Bush administration as a metric for the honesty in presidents, I can't imagine anything positive can continue here.

No, we aren't. We're pointing out that if Bush had done the same thing, there'd be paramedics at your house right now thanks to how hard and fast you were hitting those keys.

Why argue the matter at hand and the facts we have, when we can instead make observations about hypothetical situations that only exist in the pretend world we make up in our heads, huh?

If I could I would vote for somebody else besides those two, as it stands right now I am just going to leave that section of my ballot blank.

But the way the Republicans are desperate to create an "October Surprise" is pretty sad at this point.

 Ouze wrote:
Why argue the matter at hand and the facts we have, when we can instead make observations about hypothetical situations that only exist in the pretend world we make up in our heads, huh?

So in other words, you're perfectly willing to admit that if we had a generic president, you'd find continued attempts to cast the Benghazi attack as the result of a non-existent protest for over a week after it occurred, despite immediate intelligence to the contrary that it was in fact an act of terrorism on the anniversary of 9/11, as rather fishy, but because we're not dealing with that 'hypothetical' and it's Obama who's the president, all is kosher?

The Party uber alles, comrades!

He called it an act of terror at the first conference, what's so complicated about that?

 d-usa wrote:
He called it an act of terror at the first conference, what's so complicated about that?

He didn't, actually, and even if you don't bother to read the entire speech and decide to take one line, out of context, as the definitive statement on the issue, the rest of his administration didn't get the message, as he had high-ranking members thereof continuing to publicly say long afterwards that it was the unplanned result of a spontaneous protest against that dumbass flick.

 Seaward wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
He called it an act of terror at the first conference, what's so complicated about that?

He didn't, actually, and even if you don't bother to read the entire speech and decide to take one line, out of context, as the definitive statement on the issue, the rest of his administration didn't get the message, as he had high-ranking members thereof continuing to publicly say long afterwards that it was the unplanned result of a spontaneous protest against that dumbass flick.

I have read the whole speech. It's 3 paragraphs about the attack, one paragraph about the "old 9/11" and our soldiers, and then the statement about acts of terror. If you want to pretend all the talking about the attack didn't happen and that he was not talking about that then more power to you.

 d-usa wrote:

 Seaward wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
He called it an act of terror at the first conference, what's so complicated about that?

He didn't, actually, and even if you don't bother to read the entire speech and decide to take one line, out of context, as the definitive statement on the issue, the rest of his administration didn't get the message, as he had high-ranking members thereof continuing to publicly say long afterwards that it was the unplanned result of a spontaneous protest against that dumbass flick.

I have read the whole speech. It's 3 paragraphs about the attack, one paragraph about the "old 9/11" and our soldiers, and then the statement about acts of terror. If you want to pretend all the talking about the attack didn't happen and that he was not talking about that then more power to you.

D... you need to watch the speech.

It was OBVIOUS that he was trying NOT to label it as a terriorist attack...

Then he and the rest of his administration on the subsequent days blamed it on the riot/anti-muslim video...

 Seaward wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
Now that we're using the George W. Bush administration as a metric for the honesty in presidents, I can't imagine anything positive can continue here.

No, we aren't. We're pointing out that if Bush had done the same thing, there'd be paramedics at your house right now thanks to how hard and fast you were hitting those keys.

Well, youi've made up a story about what might have happened if in a parallell universe blah blah blah and surprisingly it proves your case.

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 Seaward wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
He called it an act of terror at the first conference, what's so complicated about that?

He didn't, actually, and even if you don't bother to read the entire speech and decide to take one line, out of context, as the definitive statement on the issue, the rest of his administration didn't get the message, as he had high-ranking members thereof continuing to publicly say long afterwards that it was the unplanned result of a spontaneous protest against that dumbass flick.

I have read the whole speech. It's 3 paragraphs about the attack, one paragraph about the "old 9/11" and our soldiers, and then the statement about acts of terror. If you want to pretend all the talking about the attack didn't happen and that he was not talking about that then more power to you.

D... you need to watch the speech.

It was OBVIOUS that he was trying NOT to label it as a terriorist attack...

Then he and the rest of his administration on the subsequent days blamed it on the riot/anti-muslim video...

Because the best way not to label something a terrorist act is to call it an act of terror.

Of course this comes from the same folks who believe that not compromising on anything makes the other guys non-bipartisan.

So, let's assume Obama is this master manipulator and acts entirely out of a desire to win the election. Why wouldn't he call it a terrorist attack? Remember the last time we had a terrorist attack on US citizens and the president took advantage of it (and the massive boost in popularity resulting from being seen as tough on terrorism) to pretty much do whatever he wanted? You know, a little event called 9/11? Wouldn't Obama benefit from doing the same, and using the attack to boost his approval rating right before the election? What possible motivation could he have for NOT calling it a terrorist attack?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Well, youi've made up a story about what might have happened if in a parallell universe blah blah blah and surprisingly it proves your case.

So you're fine with a president from either party attempting to downplay a terrorist attack to improve his reelection chances?

Or do you simply believe that nobody but Obama knew what the hell happened in Benghazi for a week afterwards, while CNN was moseying around picking up classified documents, and didn't bother listening to his apparent tell-all in the Rose Garden and continued to insist on referring to phantom protests despite clear evidence, right from the start, to the contrary?

At this point, it's best to just smile and nod when dealing with Whembly and the other Dakka Republicans.

They're far too invested in the idea that Obama is history's greatest monster to actually look beyond what Fox News or Romney say and make their own decisions based on facts rather than feelings.

 Peregrine wrote:
So, let's assume Obama is this master manipulator and acts entirely out of a desire to win the election. Why wouldn't he call it a terrorist attack? Remember the last time we had a terrorist attack on US citizens and the president took advantage of it (and the massive boost in popularity resulting from being seen as tough on terrorism) to pretty much do whatever he wanted? You know, a little event called 9/11? Wouldn't Obama benefit from doing the same, and using the attack to boost his approval rating right before the election? What possible motivation could he have for NOT calling it a terrorist attack?

The "unifying national tragedy" narrative doesn't really work when it turns out the ball was dropped on security and the guy who got killed pointed it out more than a couple of times.

 Seaward wrote:
So you're fine with a president from either party attempting to downplay a terrorist attack to improve his reelection chances?

Sure. I'd rather they downplay the attack instead of using it as an excuse to start another war in an effort to improve their reelection chances, which is probably much more effective at winning an election than denial.

 Seaward wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Well, youi've made up a story about what might have happened if in a parallell universe blah blah blah and surprisingly it proves your case.

So you're fine with a president from either party attempting to downplay a terrorist attack to improve his reelection chances?

Or do you simply believe that nobody but Obama knew what the hell happened in Benghazi for a week afterwards, while CNN was moseying around picking up classified documents, and didn't bother listening to his apparent tell-all in the Rose Garden and continued to insist on referring to phantom protests despite clear evidence, right from the start, to the contrary?

Now you've made an assumption about what the president was doing in secret and surprisingly it proves your case.

 Seaward wrote:
The "unifying national tragedy" narrative doesn't really work when it turns out the ball was dropped on security and the guy who got killed pointed it out more than a couple of times.

Sure it does, you just talk loudly about "freedom" and "they hate us because of our freedom" and "bringing freedom to anyone living under the threat of anti-freedom terrorism" and know that you'll gain more votes from that than you'll lose from the few people who bother to look into the security failures. After all, 9/11 was a tremendous achievement in the field of ball dropping and that didn't stop Bush from exploiting it for political gain.

 Kanluwen wrote:
At this point, it's best to just smile and nod when dealing with Whembly and the other Dakka Republicans.

They're far too invested in the idea that Obama is history's greatest monster to actually look beyond what Fox News or Romney say and make their own decisions based on facts rather than feelings.

Nod away...

And for the record... he's not the greatest Monster.

I just think he's the wrong man for the job now.

 d-usa wrote:
He called it an act of terror at the first conference, what's so complicated about that?

If you paid any attention at all to the press conferences and releases from the State Department, it was clear that they were trying to portray this as a one-off spontaneous 'incident', the result of many difficult to predict extraneous factors coalescing into a black swan event for many weeks after the event. There was no 'face' to the event and no one to retaliate against, and it was unfortunate but things are 'fine' now.

Every single piece of new information we get basically depics that whole framing as completely wrong and bogus, either a deliberate lie by State (a proxy for the Executive branch) or the result of mass incompetence from the Secretary down.

Regardless of where your political affiliation resides, that's actually a pretty big deal.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kanluwen wrote:
They're far too invested in the idea that Obama is history's greatest monster to actually look beyond what Fox News or Romney say and make their own decisions based on facts rather than feelings.

I would like to see which series of facts you can lay out that make the whole Benghazi incident look like anything but backpedaling and bumbling.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Seaward wrote:
The "unifying national tragedy" narrative doesn't really work when it turns out the ball was dropped on security and the guy who got killed pointed it out more than a couple of times.

Sure it does, you just talk loudly about "freedom" and "they hate us because of our freedom" and "bringing freedom to anyone living under the threat of anti-freedom terrorism" and know that you'll gain more votes from that than you'll lose from the few people who bother to look into the security failures. After all, 9/11 was a tremendous achievement in the field of ball dropping and that didn't stop Bush from exploiting it for political gain.

It didn't at all, no, but we're also in a post-9/11 world. Bush had the cushion of "oh my God I can't believe this happened" working for him, which is why he came out of it for years afterwards looking like some sort of hero despite sitting there wetting himself for the better part of ten minutes when initially informed of it. I don't think the American public would be quite as unconditionally supportive now that we've been in this game for a decade and have spent billions of dollars trying to prevent this sort of stuff from happening.

 Seaward wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Well, youi've made up a story about what might have happened if in a parallell universe blah blah blah and surprisingly it proves your case.

So you're fine with a president from either party attempting to downplay a terrorist attack to improve his reelection chances?

Or do you simply believe that nobody but Obama knew what the hell happened in Benghazi for a week afterwards, while CNN was moseying around picking up classified documents, and didn't bother listening to his apparent tell-all in the Rose Garden and continued to insist on referring to phantom protests despite clear evidence, right from the start, to the contrary?

Yes, Obama and his team got note of the attack and had this great idea:

"Hey guys, let's just pretend this wasn't a terrorist attack and just keep it all a secret for the next month or so. This will totally work because it wasn't an international incident and there is no such thing as 24 news, international intelligence, and the internet. Nobody will ever know..."

 Peregrine wrote:
So, let's assume Obama is this master manipulator and acts entirely out of a desire to win the election. Why wouldn't he call it a terrorist attack? Remember the last time we had a terrorist attack on US citizens and the president took advantage of it (and the massive boost in popularity resulting from being seen as tough on terrorism) to pretty much do whatever he wanted? You know, a little event called 9/11? Wouldn't Obama benefit from doing the same, and using the attack to boost his approval rating right before the election? What possible motivation could he have for NOT calling it a terrorist attack?

While that would help him out domestically...

But, it would mean that his foreign policy wasn't as successful and that's bascially his only strength over Romney.

 d-usa wrote:
Or do you simply believe that nobody but Obama knew what the hell happened in Benghazi for a week afterwards, while CNN was moseying around picking up classified documents, and didn't bother listening to his apparent tell-all in the Rose Garden and continued to insist on referring to phantom protests despite clear evidence, right from the start, to the contrary?

Yes, Obama and his team got note of the attack and had this great idea:

"Hey guys, let's just pretend this wasn't a terrorist attack and just keep it all a secret for the next month or so. This will totally work because it wasn't an international incident and there is no such thing as 24 news, international intelligence, and the internet. Nobody will ever know..."

 d-usa wrote:
Yes, Obama and his team got note of the attack and had this great idea:

"Hey guys, let's just pretend this wasn't a terrorist attack and just keep it all a secret for the next month or so. This will totally work because it wasn't an international incident and there is no such thing as 24 news, international intelligence, and the internet. Nobody will ever know..."

It sounds like a dumb plan to me, but then, it wouldn't exactly be the first drummed up in the Oval Office.

I have no idea if the administration was actually trying to Jedi mind trick everybody into believing it was a protest that got out of hand or if they simply failed to listen to the intelligence telling them otherwise, but either way, classifying it as 'not a failure' is a bizarre response.

 whembly wrote:
But, it would mean that his foreign policy wasn't as successful and that's bascially his only strength over Romney.

Just like 9/11 meant that our foreign policy wasn't successful, and it resulted in a drop in popularity for the president?


Plus there's also the fact that a traditional criticism of the democrats is that they're weak on defending the country, and loudly swearing vengeance on those responsible (and then killing an appropriate "guilty" party) would silence that criticism.

I am always amazed how people think that Obama is some genius master who fools the entire country into voting for some Muslim Kenyan so that he can destroy the United States from inside the highest office, while at the same time being such an idiot at coming up with mustache twirling evil plans.

 Peregrine wrote:

 whembly wrote:
But, it would mean that his foreign policy wasn't as successful and that's bascially his only strength over Romney.

Just like 9/11 meant that our foreign policy wasn't successful,

Right... that was a failure... the test was, what do we do afterwards?

So, in Libya... it was a failure... what did the current administration do?p

and it resulted in a drop in popularity for the president?

I think nationalism played that gave Bush his poplar bump early on...

 d-usa wrote:
I am always amazed how people think that Obama is some genius master who fools the entire country into voting for some Muslim Kenyan so that he can destroy the United States from inside the highest office, while at the same time being such an idiot at coming up with mustache twirling evil plans.

I hope you're not implying anyone here thinks that. I certainly didn't when I gave him a bunch of cash and voted for him.

 d-usa wrote:
I am always amazed how people think that Obama is some genius master who fools the entire country into voting for some Muslim Kenyan so that he can destroy the United States from inside the highest office, while at the same time being such an idiot at coming up with mustache twirling evil plans.

I don't see that...

I see that his world view is flawed and general incompetent.

But, I will give him this... outside of possible Bill Clinton, he's a damn good, savvy campaigner.

 whembly wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
I am always amazed how people think that Obama is some genius master who fools the entire country into voting for some Muslim Kenyan so that he can destroy the United States from inside the highest office, while at the same time being such an idiot at coming up with mustache twirling evil plans.

I don't see that...

I see that his world view is flawed and general incompetent.

But, I will give him this... outside of possible Bill Clinton, he's a damn good, savvy campaigner.

How is his world view flawed and generally incompetent?

 Seaward wrote:

 Ouze wrote:
Why argue the matter at hand and the facts we have, when we can instead make observations about hypothetical situations that only exist in the pretend world we make up in our heads, huh?

So in other words, you're perfectly willing to admit that if we had a generic president, you'd find continued attempts to cast the Benghazi attack as the result of a non-existent protest for over a week after it occurred, despite immediate intelligence to the contrary that it was in fact an act of terrorism on the anniversary of 9/11, as rather fishy, but because we're not dealing with that 'hypothetical' and it's Obama who's the president, all is kosher?

The Party uber alles, comrades!

As delighting as the prospect of engaging in hypothetical discussions of what I might have done in an imaginary situation are, the last line there clearly indicates you already know what imaginary-Ouze would do in these same hypothetical situations. It does not seem my presence is actually required for this "discussions" you're having with "me", and you seem to be having fun, so I see no reason to spoil your narrative with answers. Enjoy yourself, buddy!