Is this finally the Benghazi smoking gun?
Please forgive my cynicism, but I don’t think America cares about Benghazi.
It’s a yawn because it’s been officially declared a yawn by the administration and far more importantly the MSM. And so I’m not at all confident that this new revelation will matter (see also this):
Emails sent by senior White House adviser Ben Rhodes to other top administration officials reveal an effort to insulate President Barack Obama from the attacks that killed four Americans.
Rhodes sent this email to top White House officials such as David Plouffe and Jay Carney just a day before National Security Adviser Susan Rice made her infamous Sunday news show appearances to discuss the attack.
The “goal,” according to these emails, was “to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.”
Did I write “revelations”? The emails may be proof of the orchestration of the lies, but that’s probably no revelation since they merely underline what almost everyone paying attention already knew, which is that the administration’s blaming the video was a purely and utterly political act with purely and utterly political motivations.
In fact, a great deal of what this administration does is purely and utterly political, to a degree that is unusual even compared to previous presidencies. This is no accident, either, since Obama has more political and PR advisors in policy positions than previous presidents have had.
I’ve written about the situation before, in a post about Ben Rhodes’ background and his then-merely-suspected involvement in the Benghazi mess, and a more general one about the huge policy footprint of Obama’s political advisors. That phenomenon has been one of the hallmarks of Obama’s administration, which is one of the reasons it was so easy to see and to believe that the Benghazi-was-about-a-video meme was promulgated by the administration for political reasons and political ends.
Rhodes is probably merely the tip of the iceberg. We still haven’t had the most basic questions about Benghazi answered, such as where was Obama that night? But if Obama responds to the news about Rhodes’ emails at all, it will probably be to do one or all of these things: deny he knew a thing about it, say Rhodes was merely instructing people to say what the administration actually thought was the truth, and/or ask what difference does it make now, anyway?
Roger Simon (and others) call for a full investigation and possible impeachment, and in a just country the administration would be forced to answer for what it did and didn’t do regarding Benghazi. However, I regretfully have to say I believe that those who think this call of Roger’s will be answered: “American ‘liberals’ and their media consorts should search their souls” are living in a dreamworld.
Simon adds, “We will now see if there is even a figment of honesty in our mainstream media and if our elected representatives are to be trusted in any way.” Again, I think we know the answer. But I hope I’m wrong.
The media investment in Benghazi Barry is complete and not gonna change.
A lot of us do still care.
Here’s another basic question that’s never been answered: Who, and where, are the survivors?
It doesn’t matter what this admin puts out, or the msm tries to paint. They are both beyond irrelevant at this point. The problem with getting steam behind anything is, at this point, those of us who do give a damn realize there… really… is no law. No one will do a thing about Zero, not the courts, not congress, not civil servants. No one is going to do squat among those who should have arrested him by now and have him awaiting trial for treason and other high crimes and misdemeanors. There simply is no enforcement of law.
That is the problem. And it’s only going to get bigger. Everything he and they do, at this point, just separates most of us from most of them. Even Rand Paul seems to have been bought, or threatened, out of resistance. If he ever really did resist. Never sure how much of all that is just for show, or even to collect names.
We have every reason to be pessimistic that BHO and his cronies will ever be called to account; but BHO is down in the polls and approaching GWB levels of disapproval, and his approval rating will nosedive as more sticker shock, brought to you by obamacare hits this fall. So, if the dems take a huge loss in the senate the worm may yet turn.
Then, if the house turns to new leadership (a real hope for change) they may finally be willing to go to the limit to get to the bottom of Benghazi, F&F, and the criminality of the IRS. What is revealed on CSPAN, if it is as sordid and treacherous as we suspect, along with a few indictments, could begin to unravel the MSM myth and actually leak over into the ABCCBSNBCCNN monolith. I’m not optimistic, but still holding onto wish to see Holder impeached and the messiah shown to be the nasty, corrupt Chicago thug that he is.
I am very uncomfortable with calling this Administration’s actions as purely and utterly “political.” Political? How about lying, corrupt, illegal, malicious, amoral, seditious, treasonous, tyrannical, evil?
When the polled majorities are in opposition, how/why is “political” a goal that makes sense?
Why make “political” the ultimate dirty word?
By doing so we’ve lost another point in the game, playing by their rules.
My pessimism just deepens. Nothing will come of this. Why? Because the GOP has also been compromised. Look at the news of Boehner’s “secret” immigration deal.
It’s going to take something drastic to clean out the cesspool of DC and the MSM. And by that I mean both the GOP and the Dems. I don’t like where these thoughts are leading to, but I fear it may be the only solution.
Don Carlos:
You’re not making sense. Even in this post I used the word “lies” when I wrote “The emails may be proof of the orchestration of the lies…”
But more importantly, if you read this blog regularly (and I know you do) I’ve written literally hundreds of posts accusing this administration of lies, corruption, amorality, tyranny, and lawlessness, as well as impeachable offenses. Many of those posts have been about Benghazi and the administration. In this post I’m writing specifically about the Rhodes email and what it reveals about the political motives of the lie about the reason for the Benghazi attack. “Political” is not the ultimate dirty word. And calling the adminstration’s motives “purely political” does not mean that their actions are not lying, corrupt, tryrannical, etc. The two work in concert—the lies are in service of the politics of taking power and remaining in power.
Obama will stall and the clock will run out.
The MSM was challenged on Benghazi by Senator Trey Gowdy on this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1jeJmeeMjs
If the MSM will ignore this kind of challenge, we can be pretty sure they will never do their job of oversight of this administration. This kind of press conference will only be carried by Foxnews. The alphabet stations and the print media are ignoring the very pointed, germane questions that the Senator asked. And that speaks volumes.
J.J,
I like Gowdy, he is one of the few who does not back down. FYI he is a member of the house, not the senate.
physicsguy: “It’s going to take something drastic to clean out the cesspool of DC and the MSM. And by that I mean both the GOP and the Dems. I don’t like where these thoughts are leading to, but I fear it may be the only solution.”
Right. The solution is not in the GOP. There are no magical messianic saviors there. Even if there are men and/or women with potential to be mythical political heroes in the GOP fold, they would be structurally constrained from making the changes you want. They would require dynamic active outside influences to do what needs to be done within the establishment.
The solution requires a full-spectrum social fix that manipulates the political establishment but is outside of it. The only mechanism that can both compete with the Left’s activist social movement and correct the whole social-political environment is a proper, competitive, first, non-stop, and always, proselytizing and virally spreading, Marxist-method activist social movement by the Right.
“Please forgive my cynicism, but I don’t think America cares about Benghazi.”
And yet, 2/3 of respondents in a recent Fox poll said that they wanted the case pursued.
The truth is the truth. If we make our case and it turns out to fall on deaf ears…at least we made our case.
Also, always in the back of my mind is the left’s strategy of demoralization; getting you to self-censor. I ain’t down with that.
The people that watch Fox News are already rebelling against the Left’s Faux News propaganda.
So it doesn’t include the majority of the zombies.
I like to question how an American people that merely obeys whatever the Hussein Regime tells them, in around 68% of cases, thinks they deserve honest politicians.
“American ‘liberals’ and their media consorts should search their souls” are living in a dreamworld.”
American Liberals have souls? That’s his first mistake.
As the ranking cynic on this blog, I concur with all who think nothing at all will come of it. And as physicsguy mentions, the Republicans, led by my favorite stiff John Boner, have no interest in distracting the public from their one note message “Obama care is bad, vote for us”.
And They’re staying on their non-message like a jetliner on autopilot, and nothing short of a nuclear war will deter them from doing nothing about everything. They even seem to be good at it.
Neo quoting: “The “goal,” according to these emails, was “to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure or policy.”
Doom: “Even Rand Paul seems to have been bought, or threatened, out of resistance.”
I doubt Rand Paul would pursue the Benghazi controversy because he’s a libertarian, not a liberal-aka-neocon, and the “broader failure or policy” in the Benghazi incident is that Obama’s Libya policy was marketed deliberately to the world as the superior smarter, more effective alternative to Bush’s Iraq policy.
Libertarians like the Pauls were in bed with the Dems and Left in the opposition to the definitively liberal US-led Iraq enforcement and peace-building mission.
The sharply delineated contrast between the Obama Libya and Bush Iraq policies was crucial due to the Democrats’ all-in investment in the false narrative of the Iraq mission as their chief device to gain the advantage over the Republicans.
Obama then doubled down on the false narrative of the Iraq mission by making it a cornerstone basis of actual US foreign policy.
Since highlighting Obama’s “broader failure or policy” with Libya carries the greater wrong for libertarians of rehabilitating Bush’s liberal Iraq policy, the libertarians most likely won’t attack an area where they’re in bed with the Dems and Left, despite that correcting the narrative of the Iraq mission would collapse a critical part of the foundation of the Dems’ strategic advantage.
Thanks, parker. He was surrounded by Senators, and I just assumed, without checking, that he was with his colleagues from that body. 🙁
Unfortunately, jumping to conclusions is one of my main forms of exercise these days. Have to take more time, heh? 🙂
southpaw: “And as physicsguy mentions, the Republicans, led by my favorite stiff John Boner, have no interest in distracting the public from their one note message “Obama care is bad, vote for us”.
And They’re staying on their non-message like a jetliner on autopilot, and nothing short of a nuclear war will deter them from doing nothing about everything.”
I disagree. It’s not a matter of “no interest” on the part of the GOP. They’ve simply made a realistic appraisal of the lay of the American social-political landscape and responding rationally to the incentives. The GOP can’t do what they haven’t been given the capability to do.
The GOP is constrained in their capability to shape the social-political landscape. So are the Dems.
The difference between the GOP and the Dems is the Dems work with Left activists who operate full spectrum and methodically, persistently, aggressively, dynamically shape the nodes of the American social cultural/political landscape.
Think of Left activists like a union negotiating with the factory owners, Dems, using their control of labor as leverage.
The Left provides the means to the Dems to be dynamic in government and rich and powerful outside of office. The trade-off is the public-sector Dems are made accountable and beholden to the private-sector Left.
For insight on the Dems-Left business relationship, I suggest Matt Continetti’s article at http://freebeacon.com/columns/divorce-beltway-style/ .
The GOP lacks the multiplied capabilities and incentives that Left activists provide the Dems. With this fundamental disadvantage in a competitive arena, the GOP has been forced to adjust accordingly.
In order for the GOP to lead as you want them to, the people of the Right must provide the full-spectrum activist capabilities to the GOP that Left activists provide to the Dems.
When – and only when – Republicans are provided the necessary activist capabilities to compete with the Dems-Left alliance, and the GOP is accountable and beholden to an independently influential Right activist social movement, will the Republican leadership do what you want them to do.
Changing the GOP and saving America is not up to the GOP acting irrationally within current social-political conditions. It’s up to the people of the Right to become activist, shape the social-political landscape, and provide the GOP with the means and compelling incentives to change.
Anybody who was sentient during the Carter administration knows what the Iranian hostage crisis did to Carter’s reelection prospects. With Benghazi, a mere two months before the ’12 election, they saw deja vu all over again (“they” = Obama, his minions, and the MSM), and they were bound and determined not to let it happen again.
Nothing will come of any investigation of the Obama adminstration. Anyone criminaly culpable has their pardon drawn up and ready for signature.
Eric,
You jest?
“The only mechanism that can both compete with the Left’s activist social movement and correct the whole social-political environment is a proper, competitive, first, non-stop, and always, proselytizing and virally spreading, Marxist-method activist social movement by the Right.”
At this point, and probably always, the left and the right are two heads of the same snake. Using “their” methods would only inculcate us into their system. That will never work. It is how leftists became mainstreamed and how conservatives from outside, who got in and tried it, became the same.
The system has to be… reset. It won’t come from words, or ideas. The time for that is gone. That is why they are ramping up bureaucratic arming, militarization.
Some humor about Benghazi and Obama courtesy of Jay Leno:
On Obama saying he didn’t know about the IRS scandal:
“He was too busy not knowing anything about Benghazi to not know anything about the IRS.”
“The White House has a new slogan about Benghazi: Hope and change the subject.”
“Fox News has changed its slogan from ‘Fair and Balanced’ to ‘See, I told you so!'”
On a Chicago man who set a record for riding a Ferris wheel: “The only other way to go around and around in a circle that many times is to read the official report on Benghazi ..”
On White House claims of ignorance on the scandals:
“They took ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ out of the Pentagon and moved it into the White House.”
Now the last, and I think best!–
“These White House scandals are not going away anytime soon. It’s gotten so bad that People in Kenya are now saying he’s 100 percent American.”
‘Tis better to laugh than to weep.
I have to agree with Neo — nothing will happen. When Administration officials — Holder, Clinton, Rice, etc., etc., etc. sit in front of Congress and blatantly lie, and nothing happens to them, why would anyone think the President is impeachable? And I’ll bet nothing comes of the Lois Lerner contempt charge, either.
Doom: “You jest?”
Not at all. Activism is merely a method, a workshop of tools, sociology weaponized – not an ideology.
Activism is a proven method that can be used by anyone to reify any cause.
“Their system” is the collective consciousness of human society, particularly Western social culture.
You can’t switch it out because activism’s effectiveness is based in how people, at least Western people, actually tick socially.
The word ‘power’ is often used as the political goal, but the word ‘power’ is imprecise. The goal is control with normalize and stigmatize used to achieve that end.
Resetting the system is a function of control. Activism done right will win you effective social cultural/political control, whatever names and faces are in elected office. That’s the purpose of activism and what it’s designed to do. It works.
Skipping activism for armed insurgent struggle is dumb.
First, the goal of armed insurgent struggle is the same goal as activism: control.
Second, to win any asymmetrical political contest as a guerilla, armed struggle or not, requires you to be a competitive activist. In an armed insurgent struggle, your activist capability is at least as important as your combat capability.
Third, if you believe an armed struggle will win you what you want, you’re wrong. You’ll lose.
The US military, historically and contemporary, is a proven master at counterinsurgency. The only things that have defeated a US military counterinsurgency are left activist propaganda and borders that provide sanctuary to the enemy, neither of which would be there for you in a guerilla fight on US soil. If the US military or police break ROE and do more than pour water on a wet towel over your nose and mouth and stack you in a naked pyramid, no left activist propagandists will raise an Abu Ghraib-esque outcry to support you.
In an armed insurgency against a Left-controlled US, Left activists plus US military counterinsurgents plus police forces would crush you while left activist propagandists made sure the world cheered your destruction.
If you’re going to compete for control, you need to be activist either way. But your only realistic choice to win the control necessary to change the system is winning the activist game.
What I desire is not revolution, a 360 degree back to where we started, but re-evolution. The beginning of social construction from one man, one woman.
In some ways, Eric’s process is one of reform, not of resetting the system. The Left used social control to obtain power because the Constitution jammed them up in their quest to obtain legalized tyranny. Now that they have acquired legalized tyranny, their mask of social nicety and consensus is dropping: it will be Obey or Forced to Obey now. Think the rights thoughts, or else be forced to think the right thoughts.
The Left’s social control methods were designed against a Western civilization that allowed the Left to fund itself. That is why the Left won’t allow the activists to be funded. They will be treated as domestic insurgents, their funding confiscated and their bank accounts stripped for Hollywood and Holder legal IRS battles.
As such, Eric’s path is a version of reform, to reform or update the current rotten system.
A revolution destroys the system, starts us back at square one, only to end up here again after a century or two.
It’s going to take something drastic to clean out the cesspool of DC and the MSM. And by that I mean both the GOP and the Dems. I don’t like where these thoughts are leading to, but I fear it may be the only solution.
There will come a time when purging 80% of the bureaucracy in fire and ice will be considered to be a cheap solution by the American people.
People on the net found that unbelievable when I talked about it a few years ago. Perhaps they are beginning to connect the dots though. The more people suffer, the wiser they become.
And the higher one gets to enlightenment, the more hatred of humanity’s flaws manifest.
“Political” is not the ultimate dirty word. And calling the adminstration’s motives “purely political” does not mean that their actions are not lying, corrupt, tryrannical, etc.
That depends on which political system is being used. Politics of one sort comes directly from the ethical and epistemological system supporting politics.
Thus the politics of what I consider an ethical creature, is not the same as the politics of an unethical creature. Or in this format, of someone with a different ethical system. Thus it’s not important whether they are political or not, but what kind of political system they are backing.
The timing of this limited hangout is as good as the administration could hope for. Everyone’s pretty much burned out on the Benghazi scandal (especially the MSM) and it’s still more than 6 months until the mid-terms.
To answer an old rhetorical question: I’m afraid that at this point this revelation really doesn’t make much difference; after all, it only confirms what everyone has known all along, no?
The US military, historically and contemporary, is a proven master at counterinsurgency. The only things that have defeated a US military counterinsurgency are left activist propaganda
Which is why the Left is purging the US military of US loyalists and patriots, replacing them with women careerists and other obedients.
All the counterinsurgency geniuses, like Petraeus and those he promoted, are getting put out of the field and back into civilian life. It will be hard for Democrat fascists to find obedient dogs that are also competent, after purging the US military of competence. Household troops aren’t as good as professionals, after all.
Of course they are doing so because at present, the US military will not Obey the Left in all things.
Eric,
Activism and methods to implement a message are certainly important, but the GOP leadership has no message, no guiding principles, nothing. Since Newt Gingrich lost the house after squandering it, they have lived to play defense or to keep from aggravating the opposition and MSM as much as possible, and under GWB when they controlled everything, they adopted traditionally left wing policies and behaved a lot like Democrats.
I don’t accept that Boner et al are playing a smart game or the one they were dealt – they played a safe game to protect seats that were relatively easy to defend, and haven’t done squat to energize anyone with a conservative view to follow them. They did so out of self interest, and the more they did so, the less interest they generated for themselves by conservatives.
And they’re lazy. Boner is so risk averse, that he refuses to convene a special council to investigate some of the most outrageous violations of our civil rights by any administration. The president rewrites law at will, and he sits back happy that he did, simply because he won’t have to do something himself, nor would he if he had the votes.
He doesn’t do anything because having his name tied to something the media might criticize on a regular basis jeopardizes his own career. He lacks the ability to articulate why he should do about anything the media might criticize. He’s fond of saying that “if you do the right things every day, good things will happen.” The right thing to do is to seriously investigate the IRS and Benghazi, but he’s not going to stick his neck out to do the right thing when he can sit on his ass and play it safe. 4 dead Americans aren’t a good enough excuse to stand up and do what’s right. No cause is worth making waves to a guy like boner, and he’s demonstrated that principle time after time.
The GOP will get control of the Senate, and then side with the democrats for Boner and McCain’s grand bargains”, and then eliminate any conservative influence in the house and senate. They do this because for all their posturing about limited government, their big donors want things from government.
They will hold some power until the following election, and then lose again after completely pissing off the base of the Republican Party- and they won’t care. The same bunch of clowns will survive and start the same process all over again.
If you live in a district with a Boner, vote for the other guy, or don’t vote for him. That’s the kind of activism that’s needed. You’re not winning with these guys in charge, you’re just losing under a different brand.
“and far more importantly the MSM”
Jonathan Karl went on a tear today against Jay Carney so maybe at least one member of the MSM is waking up from their somnolence. Any crack in the media wall is a reason for (a smidgen of) hope.
“…neither of which would be there for you in a guerilla fight on US soil.”
Most of the weapons and capabilities of the military will be utterly worthless in Civil War 2.0. Big Army would love to refight the Battle of Chancellorsville and this time beat Bobby Lee. It isn’t going to happen. Drones don’t come from the drone pixies. They come from workers who don’t live in Green Zones.