
General David Petraeus the former CIA gave testimony behind closed doors Friday to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. The Committees are not interested in his affair; they want information on the attack on the Benghazi Embassy on September 11th that killed four Americans including the U.S. Ambassador.
Republicans have decided to invent a scandal around Ambassador Rice’s comments on Meet the Press where she said that from “what we know now” the attack was inspired by the video that set off the demonstrations at the U.S. embassy in Cairo. She said that extremists used that as cover to launch the attacks. Based on that, they say there is a scandal of Watergate proportions.
General Petraeus told the committee that within 20 hours after the attack he was certain that Al Quida was involved. He told lawmakers on Friday that classified intelligence reports revealed that the deadly assault on the American diplomatic mission in Libya was a terrorist attack, but that the administration refrained from saying it suspected that the perpetrators of the attack were Al Quida affiliates and sympathizers to avoid tipping off the groups.
Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser, told reporters. "If there were adjustments made to them [talking points] within the intelligence community, that's common, and that's something they would have done themselves," "The only edit ... made by the White House was the factual edit as to how to refer to the facility."
The session was closed and much of the information was classified but that did not stop Republicans from popping out and giving their spin to the press. Congressman Peter King (R-NY) was one of the main GOP spin doctors. Without giving any details to back it up, King inferred that the White House altered the CIA talking points memo on the attack. He vows to find out who and why.
According to Democrats at the hearing, Mr. Petraeus made it clear the change had not been done for political reasons to aid Mr. Obama. Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California said “The general was adamant there was no politicization of the process, no White House interference or political agenda.”
Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, said that Mr. Petraeus explained to lawmakers that the final document was put in front of all the senior agency leaders, including Mr. Petraeus, and everyone signed off on it.”
The Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA) actually read the CIA talking points memo for reporters:
“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. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.
This assessment may change as additional information is collected and analyzed and as currently available information continues to be evaluated.
The investigation is ongoing, and the U.S. government is working with Libyan authorities to bring to justice those responsible for the deaths of U.S. citizens.”
If you read the memo, it is consistent with what the ambassador said. The White House did not want to tip off Al Quida that the United States was on to them. The Administration wanted to catch them and hold them accountable. If the perpetrators thought we were thrown off course, they might not go into deep cover. The Justice Department did not want to jeopardize the criminal case.
Republicans don’t care about catching the murderers. They want a scandal over which they can impeach the president they could not defeat fair and square at the polls.
Senator John McCain and his constant companion Senator Lindsay Graham (R-SC) held a news conference demanding a “Watergate scale” investigation of this scandal. They skipped a briefing where they could have learned facts about the incident to hold this politically motivated news conference to make a baseless charge.
After the 911 attack, Democrats rallied behind George Bush and supported his efforts to find the ones responsible. No one tried to implicate the Bush Administration, at the time, for not preventing the attack. Contrast that with Republicans who are using the death of 4 Americans as a political weapon to hurt the president and in so doing, jeopardize our efforts to catch the perpetrators. Frankly, that behavior repugnant and un-patriotic.
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