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Jon Huntsman
Jon Huntsman, who is probably this close to following in the footsteps of another sane former Republican presidential hopeful, Charlie Crist, and bailing on the Ship of Fools that is the modern GOP, unloaded on his dorkier political brethren and cistern thus:
Former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman on Monday urged lawmakers, including those in his own party, to temper their criticism of the administration’s handling of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Huntsman, who served as U.S. ambassador to China under President Barack Obama, said that it would have been nearly impossible for authorities to instantly obtain accurate intelligence about who was responsible for the September attack, which resulted in the death of four officials. Because of that, he said, recent criticism of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for not immediately declaring the attack an act of terror was either politically motivated or misplaced.
“The issue of Benghazi, I think you can attribute to the fog of war, more than anything else,” Huntsman said in an interview with The Huffington Post. “When you’re in a wartime setting and you have an attack like that — let’s face it. No one is prepared for an attack like that. There is, as Robert McNamara used to say, there is a fog of war. And it takes awhile to sort through the details. And it doesn’t do a whole lot of good for the political class to point fingers before you even know what was behind it. And you’re not going to know that [immediately].”
Huntsman’s words fell on deaf ears. Susan Rice is a black woman, and the only black women named Rice that the GOP likes are those that fawn and toady to PNAC Platoon neocon leaders like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. The Republican Party is totally a prisoner of the base whose rabid racism and xenophobia the Party has spent decades encouraging as a way to get them to cut rich people’s taxes. You cut taxes, see, and then the gummint doesn’t have the money to spend on nonexistent Cadillacs for nonexistent black welfare queens in Deee-troit. (Ever wonder why Reagan had his nonexistent black welfare queen driving an American-made car as opposed to a Mercedes or Toyota? Hmmmm. But I digress.)
The next two years are going to be very ugly.
59 Comments
Benghazi-Gate! I cannot keep up with events. I think that all Three Amigos, Lieberliar, Lindsey, Crazy, have all rejoined Team Benghazi. Susan Rice may be sent to Gitmo. And Ollie North is still on the loose, looking for drugs and guns.
My new favorite, is Susan Phelan. SHE WANTS ANSWERS!
We demand answers, damn it!!! especially if you are blah, you know. Our base needs to know how you coulda screwed this up so bad. Gotta stop shopping for your next Mercedes and do your job, woman.
AND SHE SHALL HAVE THEM……….as soon as they’re off the copier in Frank Luntz’ office.
Is it me, am I really as stupid as I think I am, but what is it about Benghazi?
Four died………. awful stuff, but where’s the scandal?
So sayeth the NYT. That’s it. You’re history now.
John McCain – Former Patriot.
Lindsey Graham – Continued Twinkie.
Kelly Ayotte – uh, Who????
She lied after all !!! So now you wanna know so what? I’ll get back to you on that.
If there’s any truth to this PressTV piece ecahnomics posted, we may have been bitten in the behind by some Al Qaeda-linked assets we were cultivating in Bengazi to undermine Syria:
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/11/19/273240/coup-and-countercoup-in-washington/
If so, these Republican senatorial complaints are so much Kabuki–maybe a kind of threat to Obama to out him on the adventure. . . or pressure him for more action on Israel.
Have no idea how much faith to put in the story, but if we are dealing with Al Qaeda while drone-bombing them the phony war on terror is even more of an outrage that I thought it was.
Any assumption that Rice is virtuous here, however, is unwarranted.
Oh, yes.
Oh for a smart phone in McBombsalot’s office before and after Rice’s visit.
that’s what I said – who the heck is she?
My mistake, PHALEN. The Susan Phalen scandal is massive contractor theft in Afghanistan. The records were confusing. Phalen helped conceal the corruption.
Now She is spokesperson for the 97 R’s that are on a Witch Hunt. Phalen wants Benghazi answers about who changed the talking points.
There certainly are other Benghazi scandals. Scandals-Palooza!
“…the only black women named Rice that the GOP likes are those that fawn and toady to PNAC…’
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/rice-378894-war-administration.html
“The problem with making Susan Rice secretary of state isn’t Benghazi. It’s war. Rice, like her “mentor,” former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, and the current secretary, Hillary Clinton, has supported just about every proposed U.S. military intervention over the two decades. The president should nominate someone that occasionally opposes a war.
Of course, being reliably bellicose is no sin among either party’s foreign policy elite – in Washington today, extramarital affairs get you bounced from top foreign policy jobs, and unconstitutional wars get you nominated for them…”
http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-woman-who-brought-400-rabbis-to-their-feet-susan-rice/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/06/aipac-susan-rice-obama-israel_n_1323398.html
http://thehill.com/blogs/global-affairs/middle-east-north-africa/249721-rice-no-daylight-between-us-israel-on-approach-to-iran
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/Flash.aspx/254835#.ULWFGoZ9U_w
… and YAY(!) for Huntsman and Christ?
What’s wrong with that picture, huh?
I assumed that nearly everyone knew that the entire thing was a calculated attempt by Republicans to find some trumped-up “gate” in hopes that they could get the snowball rolling enough to do anything on a scale from embarrassing to impeaching a Democratic President, and that was pretty much it.
Then it’s just a question of how much media hysteria they can whip up, how fun CNN and others decide the story is, and so on, but virtually everyone I assume, even McCain, knows that what Huntsman is saying above is true, there’s nothing really there.
Huntsman is wrong. Why did Rice go on FIVE TV shows prattling about a video response when everybody knew that the CIA cell in Benghazi had been under a mortar attack? Because the election pitch was that Obama had destroyed al Qaeda? For whatever reason, she lied after the ambassador died.
Needing a nobody Republican to defend an Obama cabinet member is pretty weak.
Just because Republicans are politicizing Benghazi to oppose Rice does not mean that the rest of us should support her nomination (if it comes) as Secretary of State. She supports military intervention as foreign policy. I say to hell with her.
Thank you, bigchin. I don’t have time to read the links, but I’ll add a note. Rice was one of the main authors or R2P over Libya, having stated that her ‘failure’ to convince Clinton to stop the genocide in Rwanda, tra la la…informed her advocacy. Thus, she had reason to know what was going on there with the CIA on the ground, the video not being a motivator for some ‘spontaneous protest’, etc.
But now. See how involved she has been in not allowing a report that Rwanda has been backing M23 in Congo.
A diarist said to me today that since the neo-cons hate her, she can’t be all bad. I submitted that they might hate her for the wrong reasons, as in: partisan politics.
Oh, forgot, Rice is untouchable b/c she’s black.
Honestly, PW, I have my doubts about Susan Rice and the next two years will be ugly, but, not necessarily in the way you’re implying…!
Here’s a very sober outlook… Obama’s New National Security Team Should Be Asked Serious Questions About U.S. Foreign Policy (But Probably Won’t Be)…
Spokeswomen Phalen says the DNI, Clapper spokesman is a lying sack of crap. Chairman Rogers looks forward to kicking Clapper’s butt as soon as possible. This new explanation fails to explain. How. Why. Susan Rice LIED on Sunday tee vee talk shows. How do we tell the children.
Someone changed the Talking Points of the Intelligence Community. The whole world is watching.
You know, all the intrigue would be kinda fun …. except it’s so downright disgusting. Go govern…. and someone take McCain out for a soda… he’s clearly dottering into childhood again.
….I submitted that they might hate her for the wrong reasons…
Exactly, M’dear…! ;-)
Is that a directive?
Yes. Of course, hell is not an actual place, but you can drop her off in the middle of Afghanistan and that will do.
Nothing about what happened in Benghazi is surprising, complicated, or even interesting. Allow me.
1. Obama administration rains down cruise missiles, drone rockets, and laser-guided bombs on yet one more defenseless bunch of disobedient third-world gooks who won’t get with Washington’s program.
2. Surviving group of gooks grease a few members of the American transition team tasked with bribing and/or torturing and/or assassinating anyone who still won’t get with Washington’s program.
3. Republican and Democratic politicians yowl and screech like baboons, desperately competing to see who can tell more lies.
Any fucking questions?
That makes me think of the following quote from a movie many of us probably know:
“ANSWERS! I need ANSWERS!”
Hint: It involves drug use.
…Any fucking questions?
*heh* None whatsoever…! ;-)
Would that this were so. But the Republicans want a trophy kill after being humiliated in the elections, and so the same people that forgave Condi Rice’s lies about 9/11 and its hundred-times higher death toll (not to mention its use as a bogus pretext to invade Iraq, where the death toll for Iraqis is over a hundred times higher than that of the 9/11 attacks and still climbing) are out to destroy Susan Rice.
Ah, but the things of which you and I would disapprove are what would be the most pleasing to the very people who are currently running their mouths off attacking her, if only her name was Condi.
PW, please don’t nail yourself to a cross for Susan, she’s truly not worthy of your of your noble efforts…! 8-(
*sigh* I really miss the edit button…!
Thanks for the reminder!
How far we’ve come from the days when a hawk like Harry Truman was also so dedicated to fighting corruption in the War Department that he spent much of World War II at it, and was rewarded by being given the VP slot on the 1944 ticket.
[Rice is untouchable b/c she’s black.]
Why should Rice be untouchable b/c she’s black?
Obama never was, at FDL.
Why are you playing the race card with Rice?
Gee, and I just thought I was telling the truth. I didn’t think I was spurting blood from my palms.
Question: If the Republicans succeed in taking down Susan Rice, what makes you think her replacement as nominee will be Amy Goodman?
Why are you playing the race card with Rice?
I wonder if she is, or, because of such Partisan rancor…! Either way, she shouldn’t shed a tear…! 8-(
You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
(Thanks for setting up such a perfect Princess Bride reference!)
I would agree it’s slim pickings, but, maybe, just maybe, some real figures may emerge from the fracas…!
Questions:
1) If Rice goes down, what’s the likelihood that her replacement will be even worse by your standards?
2) Why would you want the persons attacking her — the same ones who backed Condi Rice and her bosses to the hilt — to win this fight, knowing that if they do, the only person who could subsequently pass muster would almost literally make Susan Rice look like Noam Chomsky?
I remember seeing this same fight in the Clinton impeachment horror. There were those who thought “who cares about Clinton, he’s a centrist creep, let him get taken out”, and those of us who realized that if Gingrich et al got away with taking out Bill Clinton, they wouldn’t stop there. (Gingrich, you will remember, actually planned a double impeachment — both Clinton and Gore — which of course would have made Newt, who was Speaker at the time, President.)
I’m reminded of Rick Wolff’s audio lectures about capitalism in the United States. Professor Wolff has many times reminded his listeners that Franklin D. Roosevelt didn’t start out as a progressive president — he in fact ran on a balanced-budget platform. But then he was forced by America’s labor unions (which were backed by a strong leftist movement) to do a 180 and then go hit up the titans of industry for the hundreds of billions needed to get Social Security started, get the WPA started, and do a host of other things to get Americans back to work. (He almost wrecked it all in 1936-7 when he unwisely gave in to his deficit-hawk impulses and cut back on the stimulus he’d been injecting into the economy, and it took World War II to finally get America fully back on its feet.)
In other words, Roosevelt was much like Obama when he first assumed office, but unlike Obama, he a) knew what had to be done and b) had a group of people (i.e., the labor unions) who were able to make him do it.
PW, I’m under no delusions that any other potential replacement would be better, but, Susan is no peach…! 8-(
Huntsman and Christ are more progressive than Obama.
The last 350 years have been pretty ugly in America so two is no big deal for the sickness that plaques this country. The rich in America have always been students of propaganda and marketing is our greatest gift to the world besides the Military Industrial Complex. When you sell disease rather than prevention to make money, and it works, why stop there. The last vestige of a scoundrel seems to reside in all our governmental vestiges. Maybe it ‘s time to create a new vestige, eh?
Wish I could remember where, but following all of Frank33′s links yesterday, one source mentioned that Jared Polis (D-CO) is on the short list. Gay multi-multi-millionaire, and while I haven’t followed his votes, he’s seemed pretty decent.
Mr. wd just reminded me that he’s been way on the wrong side of some issues near and dear to both our hearts, so take the above as not very useful.
How do you get liberals to support a war mongering interventionist?
Just tell em that Republicans are saying mean things about her. Then instead of questioning the war monger that never met an African country she didnt want to occupy, liberals will get distracted and support the interventionist from those mean ole Republicans…
I am no more happy to have been lied to for weeks about a terrorist attack by a Democratic administration than I would be if a Republican administration had done the same.
Frankly, I don’t understand anyone’s defending that or pretending it is not a big deal when an Administration deceives the people who pay the bills.
Nor should Muslims be happy about having been so lightly mis-portrayed as people willing to slay 4 humans over a bad You Tube Video.
The administration should have said something like,
“We are investigating. We have no definitive information yet and speculation during an investigation of matters this serious would be totally inappropriate.”
And left it at that.
Apart from anything else, by lying to the American people, the Administration gave a gift to the Republicans that they used before the election to help Romney and other Republicans and are continuing to use.
Yesterday, Rachael Maddow said that this is more about their wanting Kerry to be the nominee for Secretary of State instead of Rice–so that Scott Brown can run for the Senate in another special election. And that is the first thing I have heard from anywhere about the obsession with this that makes any sense to me.
Christ was not a progressive (whatever the hell that means), but a radical.
If he did today to the PTB the equivalent of what he did to the Herod and the Romans, he’d be under heavy surveillance by the Administration. And, who knows, maybe by ALEC, the Bilderberg Group and others, as well.
And all that took place in his first 100 days?
Roosevelt did so much in his first 100 days that assessing the first 100 days of a new President became a thing.
All kinds of pressure was put on Obama as well, both as to jobs and as to Obamacare, but Obama was stronger than FDR and ignored it.
Unless the impeachments of Clinton and Gore were simultaneous, the Speaker would not become President. As soon as Clinton was out, Gore would have been sworn in and appointed a VP.
And, in any case, a Democratic President like Clinton or Obama is not necessarily less evil than a Republican President. If nothing else, Democrats in Congress and all over the country, elected or not, will oppose a Republican President. They are much less likely to do that with a DINO President.
Stop it, just stop the blood-letting. There is enough of that in Dee Cee. I think there is a song that describes this.
:) She pleases me too.
Ya know anyone can post a diary, and many of us do.
Ain’t it great?
The Republican reaction to any Obama nominee is pretty predictable, regardless of race. This is no surprise. He will no doubt nominate, and eventually have confirmed, a neocon war-mongerer of one race or another.
As far as the next two years being ugly – during the next two years:
Republicans will say horrific things about black people, gay people, women, poor people, and people in other vulnerable demographics.
Democratic supporters will be horrified.
While all this is happening, the TPP, drilling/fracking, wars, suppression of dissent, and the gutting of the safety net will occur. Black people, gay people, women, poor peope and almost everyone else will be seriously harmed.
Democratic supporters will be “disappointed.”
2014 will be the Most Important Election of Our Lifetime. Ralph Nader will be invoked.
You only forgot:
Lather, rinse, repeat…
Quite agree, otherwise.
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and a proto socialist to boot!
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illegal US black site rendition dungeon behind the US mission headquarters in Benghazi?
counterpunch article
only one of several that the prez uses ..
“Military officials said as recently as this summer that the Afghanistan jail and another like it at the Balad Air Base in Iraq were being used to interrogate high-value detainees. And officials said recently that there were no plans to close the jails.”
it’s called ‘torture’ friends
Oh, I say the same thing. Rice is a particularly nasty piece of work, considering she has supported the Congo genocide for as long as she has been in politics.
http://blackagendareport.com/content/second-wave-genocide-looms-congo-susan-rice-point
I agree with Glen Ford that Rice should face life imprisonment for protecting and facilitating genocide. People who support and/or defend her need to ask themselves why they do.
My point above, lefttown. Funny that the BAR newsletter just came in with all those stories; might get me posting again. ;o)
As far as the GOP is concerned, Condi’s in the house and Susan’s in the quarters.
“This year, a cabal of generals evidently believed it could secure the White House for Mitt Romney by staging the Benghazi incident and using it as the signal for a cold coup under cover of elections — probably including computer-generated election fraud — to bring down Obama. They guessed wrong.”
The moment I heard of the attack I said staged. Covert with the desire to influence and election. The BS we witness is to avoid the question. Who is really responsible? Truth will appear with time and it won’t be pretty.