October 3, 2012

NEWSMAX
Report: White House Knew Libya Attack Was Terrorism
by Thompson/Reuters
October 2, 2012

Within hours of last month's attacks on U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya, President Barack Obama's administration received about a dozen intelligence reports suggesting militants connected to al Qaeda were involved, three government sources said.
Despite these reports, in public statements and private meetings, top U.S. officials spent nearly two weeks highlighting intelligence suggesting that the attacks were spontaneous protests against an anti-Muslim film, while playing down the involvement of organized militant groups.

It was not until last Friday that Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's office issued an unusual public statement, which described how the picture that intelligence agencies presented to U.S. policymakers had "evolved" into an acknowledgement that the attacks were "deliberate and organized" and "carried out by extremists."

The existence of the early reports appears to raise fresh questions about the Obama administration's public messaging about the attack as it seeks to fend off Republican charges that the White House failed to prevent a terrorist strike that left a U.S. ambassador and three others dead.

"What we're seeing now is the picture starting to develop that it wasn't a problem with the intelligence that was given, it's what they did with the intelligence that they were given," Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, said in an interview on Tuesday.

"This picture is still a little fuzzy but it is starting to come into focus and it appears that there were, very early on, some indications that there was jihadist participation in the event," he said.

The Obama administration has strongly defended its public accounts of what happened in Benghazi, and said its understanding has evolved as additional information came in.

"At every step of the way, the administration has based its public statements on the best assessments that were provided by the intelligence community. As the intelligence community learned more information, they updated Congress and the American people on it," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

Some officials said U.S. spy agencies tried to avoid drawing premature conclusions about how the violence began and who organized it.

"Unless you have very good reports that strongly suggest who was behind the attack for sure, it is prudent to be careful, because placing emphasis publicly, even tentatively, on any one group or groups too soon can lead everyone down the wrong path," said one official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Republicans have sought to make the shifting stories told by administration officials about the attack, and inadequate security precautions at the U.S. diplomatic site in Libya, a major issue in the presidential campaign leading up to the Nov. 6 election.

Two House Republicans said they would hold Congress' first hearing on the matter on Oct. 10.

CIA TALKING POINTS

The stream of intelligence flowing into Washington within hours of the Benghazi attacks contained data from communications intercepts and U.S. informants, which were then fashioned into polished initial assessments for policymakers.

Officials familiar with them said they contained evidence that members of a militant faction, Ansar al-Sharia, as well as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, were involved in the assaults.

The report did not allege the attacks were a reaction to the anti-Muslim film, but acknowledged it was possible that the attackers sought to use an outbreak of violence in Cairo over the film, which insulted the Prophet Mohammad, as a pretext for attacks.

One official said initial reporting suggested militants had begun planning attacks on U.S. targets in Benghazi before Sept. 11, but may well have decided to use the protests as a pretext for moving forward that day.

Reuters reported on Sept. 12, citing U.S. government officials, that the attacks may have been planned and organized in advance, and that members of Ansar al-Sharia and AQIM may have been involved.

Yet on Sept. 15, administration officials, relying upon what they said was other information from intelligence agencies, circulated to members of Congress a set of talking points prepared by the CIA that purported to summarize what U.S. intelligence knew.

The talking points said: "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. diplomatic post in Benghazi and subsequently its annex."

The document then noted that "There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations." It contained no further elaboration.

The talking points reflected information that White House officials and Congress were given in closed-door intelligence briefings in the days immediately after the attacks. In one such session, CIA director David Petraeus used lines which paralleled the talking points.

"It seems increasingly clear that the briefings provided to Congress and the public about the Benghazi attack were at best incomplete and at worst misleading," Senator Saxby Chambliss, the Republican vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Reuters.

"Within hours of the attack, intelligence assessments highlighted the role of al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists, but the administration focused instead on a video that appears to have had little, if anything, to do with the violence in Benghazi," Chambliss said.

Read more: http://goo.gl/i2dnS

TOWNHALL
Biden: Hey, the Middle Class Has Been "Buried the Last Four Years"
by Guy Benson
October 2, 2012

I swear, they still think it's 2008:

“This is deadly earnest, man. This is deadly earnest,” the vice president said. “How they can justify, how they can justify raising taxes on the middle class that has been buried the last four years — how in Lord's name can they justify raising their taxes with these tax cuts.”

A quick note to the Vice President:

MEMORANDUM

To: Biden, Joseph
Cc: Obama, Barack 

You've been in charge for the last four years, just FYI. 

Cheers,
America

By the way, Republicans cannot "in the Lord's name" justify raising taxes on the middle class -- which is why they are proposing to do precisely the opposite.  I'll have much more on this tomorrow morning, but Barack Obama has already raised taxes on the "buried" middle class.  Mitt Romney, on the other hand, is calling for middle class tax cuts, and Obama's lying about it to distract from his own past and future middle class tax hikes.  This latest major flub from Slow Joe reminds me of another tale of woe he spun over the summer:

“You know, I talk about ‘the longest walk.’ You have heard me say that," said Biden. "The longest walk a parent can make is up a short flight of stairs, to their child’s bedroom, to say, ‘Honey, I am sorry you cannot go back to sing in the choir next year. You cannot play on that Little League team. Daddy, Mommy, we lost our jobs. The bank says we cannot live here any more.’ You know, you know people who have made that walk.”

Yeah, roughly 23 million Americans are painfully familiar with that "longest walk."  And your policies have been in place for four years, the first two of which featured total Democrat control of Washington.  Aside from their trite and shallow "Bin Laden dead, GM alive" refrain, the Obama campaign seems like they want Americans to forget who the incumbent is in this election.

Read more: http://goo.gl/PHtNH