Tuesday, October 02, 2012

Foreign Policy Nutmeg: 'Why Don't they Love Me?'

WSJ: The Three AM call came at 5 in the afternoon..

The logic here is akin to supposing that because the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center failed to bring down the towers, nobody need have been concerned thereafter. But let's still make allowances for the kind of bureaucratic ineptitude that knows neither administration nor political party.

The more serious question is why the administration alighted on the idea that the attack wasn't a terrorist act at all. Also, what did the White House think it had to gain by adopting the jihadist narrative that a supposedly inflammatory video clip was at the root of the trouble?
Nobody can say. All the administration will acknowledge is that it has "revised [its] initial assessment to reflect new information that it was a deliberate and organized terrorist attack."
That's from James Clapper, the director of national intelligence. It suggests that our intelligence agencies are either much dumber than previously supposed (always a strong possibility) or much more politicized (equally plausible).

No doubt the administration would now like to shift blame to Mr. Clapper. But what happened in Benghazi was not a failure of intelligence. It was a failure of policy, stemming from a flawed worldview and the political needs of an election season.
 In case it's not clear, the official line on what happened in Benghazi came from the West Wing. To say it was a failure in State makes Hillary a goat.. she is not stupid. 
And Susan Rice, {UN Ambassador} who must have vomited before and after blaming the video certainly didnt believe it. She's spent her whole adult life on Middle East affairs.  Andwas the GO TO source of policy for the Libya incursion.
 
No.. this is all the earmarks of Valerie Jarret and David Axelrod.. they both really believe you can make a lie true just by repeating it enough. It's the Chicago Way.