| Ckmlb1 said: He was conflating because that was something the intelligence community believed at first and either way whether it was a mob of people angry over a video or a group that had planned it ahead of time it was terrorism. There's no denial of terrorism in saying the video was a possible cause. |
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree, then. I could understand there being some initial confusion with all these protests, and maybe they could have thought that one of them had just gotten way out of hand. But that doesn't seem to be the case. There had been warnings that al-Qaeda was going to hit the place, and Greg Hicks briefed Clinton that very night that it was an attack and mentioned Ansar al-Sharia by name. The emails show that, at the very least, Nuland was very worried about this being used for political purposes and was trying to change the talking points to blunt any Republican attacks that might come from it. I'm not at all convinced that the "act of terror" stuff in the days after was a reference to Benghazi instead of 9/11. Taken out of context it's impossible to tell if even the "no act of terror will go unpunished" line is a reference to Benghazi because, again, it could just as easily refer to bin Laden.
Without falling into the conspiracy stuff floating around (the consulate was arming Syrian rebels and the administration denied sending help because they didn't want people to find out, or whatever it is) the only explanation I have for the constant flogging of that video long after they knew better is that either the Obama campaign couldn't bear to let it be known that al-Qaeda had once again drawn blood on 9/11, or the State Department didn't want people to know about their failures to address the security problems at the consulate, or both.
