The three headed dragon against Obama

[Ckmlb1]

badgenome said:

Ckmlb1 said:

He was hesitant because the CIA was telling him there was no solid intelligence on it being Al Qaeda or not. What does the misleading gain Obama by the way? An attack on a consulate in a war zone was going to change the election results? 

Probably not, but remember that Biden was running around with that "Bin Laden is dead, and GM is alive!" line at the time. If they acknowledged an al-Qaeda affiliate had hit us on 9/11 despite advance warnings, it might disrupt the narrative they were pushing that he was Obama the Osama-slayer.

It's strange to insist that he wouldn't do this unless the election hinged on it. Political campaigns are long haul tit-for-tat mudslinging affairs. You get into the habit of trying to manage and advance your narrative at every turn while undermining your opponent's, and you don't necessarily measure it out in terms of doing only what you absolutely have to do to win. You want to blow the other guy out of the water, not eke out a victory.

And again, it might have been the State Department more than Obama himself who didn't want to acknowledge that this was an al-Qaeda linked group.

The fact that this was done by an Al Qaeda linked group doesn't change the fact that Bin Laden was killed or that the leadership of the original Al Qaeda has been greatly diminshed. One successful attack in a war torn country like Lybia is far from showing Al Qaeda on the rise again. So even if they did leave out the information at first (information that could not be agreed upon), it seems pretty pointless. Terrorism was one of the lowest polled issues when the election was held.