Oct. 15: Clinton Blames ‘Fog of War’ Oct.

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Oct. 15: Clinton Blames ‘Fog of War’

Oct. 15: Clinton, in an interview on CNN, blames the “fog of war” when asked why the administration initially claimed the attack began with the anti-Muslim video, even though the State Department never reached that conclusion. “In the wake of an attack like this in the fog of war, there’s always going to be confusion, and I think it is absolutely fair to say that everyone had the same intelligence,” Clinton says.

“Everyone who spoke tried to give the information they had. As time has gone on, the information has changed, we’ve gotten more detail, but that’s not surprising. That always happens.”

Oct. 15: The New York Times reports that the Benghazi attack came “without any warning or protest,” but “Libyans who witnessed the assault and know the attackers” say it was “in retaliation for the video.”

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Joe Willmoe

https://www.quora.com/Did-Hillary-Clinton-bla...rorist-act

Politics of the United States of America


A fact checker careful reviewed public statements and concluded that Rubio's claim is false...that he earns two pinochios: Is Hillary Clinton a ‘liar’ on Benghazi?

Just a couple of points to make about this:

1. The video did generate multiple protests at multiple US embassies up to and during Sept. 11th--that is confirmed. It also included the seizure of the US Embassy in Cairo. All of this predates the attack on the US consulate and CIA annex in Tripoli. So it was entirely reasonable to assume "oh, this is part of the backlash to the video."

2. Susan Rice was using talking points that were based primarily on content provided and vetted by the CIA: CIA talking points for Susan Rice called Benghazi attack "spontaneously inspired" by protests Mike Morrell and David Petraeus have both confirmed this in testimony and publicly to the press.

3. My understanding is that while HRC did condemn the video, there is no statement where she publicly said "this video caused this attack." She condemned the video (which had had an impact on threats to other US facilities overseas).

And she condemned the attack in Benghazi. But she didn't say the video caused the assault. Additionally, there is a big difference about what you tell people privately (effectively saying "this is what I personally think happened or believe to be true" vs. public talking points (which is effectively saying "this is what the intelligence analysts and IC have approved to this point." .

I'm going to make one other point about this whole silly issue about the Benghazi talking points: I've talked to people in the intelligence community (career intelligence people, not political appointments, you'd call most of them Republicans based on their politics and values so it's not like they're biased to Obama).

They're a bit baffled at the reaction to the Susan Rice talking points. Their interpretation is that the points they crafted (and that Susan Rice delivered) did not say or rule out a terrorist event.

So they're a bit taken aback by the claims that the talking points say or imply no terrorists were involved. From their perspective (at least the IC analysts I spoke to), referring to a violent attack or riot doesn't mean it wasn't terrorists. None of them said that the Rice talking points crafted and approved by the IC meant or said that it wasn't a terrorist event.

Additionally, the IC analysts here in the DC area were arguing strongly that it was due to the video. Based on the radio/phone/web traffic they were seeing, that was what it led to. But there was little to no extremist group traffic prior to the attack. I can't speak for what was coming out of the field, only what the analysts monitoring NSA intercepts and website reviews were concluding.

Finally, one other analyst told me (and I believe this was speculation on his point--don't know if he knew this for a fact--but it also is consistent with how the IC would work on issues like this) is that the talking points did NOT say "this attack was fomented by Ansar al-Sharia" b/c at that point the IC had a human source inside that organization and did not want to endanger that source (so instead kept the talking points more general about violent protest rather than naming an extremist group and encouraging their leadership to look for a leak).

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