White House holds 'deep background' Benghazi briefing -- Politico, Dylan Byers

[bsteadman1]

White House holds 'deep background' Benghazi briefing

Politico
Dylan Byers
5/10/2013

Excerpt:

The White House held a "deep background" briefing with reporters on Friday afternoon to discuss recent revelations about the Benghazi investigation, sources familiar with the meeting tell POLITICO.

The meeting was conducted on "deep background," according to White House spokesman Josh Earnest, but sources told POLITICO that the existence of the meeting was "off the record." The meeting began around 12:45 p.m. and postponed the daily, on-the-record White House press briefing until mid-afternoon.

The session was announced to reporters in the wake of an ABC News report showing that White House and State Dept. officials were involved in revising the now-discredited CIA talking points about the attack on Benghazi.

Emails obtained by ABC News show that State Dept. spokesperson Victoria Nuland requested that the CIA scrub references to an Al Qaeda-linked group, which, Nuland told White House officials, “could be abused by members [of Congress] to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings."

Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly referred to the meeting as "off the record." Though the existence of the meeting was off the record, it was conducted on "deep background."

UPDATE (3:05 p.m.): I asked Earnest to explain the meaning of "deep background," as defined by the White House, for my readers. He emails:

Deep background means that the info presented by the briefers can be used in reporting but the briefers can't be quoted.

UPDATE (3:30 p.m.): White House press secretary Jay Carney addressed the meeting at today's public briefing. He said reporters from 14 news organizations were present, including television, print and online.

View the complete article at:

http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/...ng-163704.html

[bsteadman]

Video: Jay Carney On Benghazi Scandal 'All Of This Is A Distraction From The Key Issues'

http://youtu.be/AgmnU17y3Eo

Published on May 10, 2013

During Friday afternoon's White House press briefing, President Barack Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney, was asked to explain the report in ABC News which claims that the State Department edited out references to Islamic terrorism in their explanation of the attack on an American consulate in Benghazi. Carney said that both the president and United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice both referred to terrorism in the immediate wake of the attack and the ABC News scoop was a "distraction" conjured up by Congressional Republicans.

ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl, the reporter who broke the news that the State Department had edited the official talking points relating to Benghazi, grilled Carney over his assertions that the White House was not involved in the process and that the CIA was primarily responsible for those edits.

The CIA original version include references to Al Qaeda, references to Ansar al-Islam -- the original CIA version include extensive discussion of the previous threats of the terrorist attack in Benghazi," Karl insisted. "Those were taken out after the CIA wrote its initial draft."

"And then the CIA wrote another draft," Carney countered."With input from the State Department," Karl interjected. "Do you deny that?"

"No, Jon," Carney replied. He said that the process of editing the talking points did, like many other processes, include a number of agencies. Carney insisted that the administration only put forward the information they knew to be correct in the immediate wake of the attack.

We knew it was extremists, or we knew that extremists had participated," Carney said. "There was also the belief by -- from the beginning -- by the intelligence community in these points that there had been protests out of which the attack occurred."

"The whole effort here by Republicans to find some hidden mystery comes to nothing because the president called it an act of terror," he noted. "The ambassador to the United Nations that very Sunday, that has caused Republicans so much concern, talked about the possible involvement of Al Qaeda and Ansar al-Sharia."

"All of this is a distraction from the key issues: a diplomatic post was attacked by individuals in Libya, in Benghazi," Carney added. "Four Americans lost their lives."

[bsteadman]

Free Republic is running a thread titled, 'W.H. holds off-the-record Benghazi briefing', which was started 5/10/2013 by 'Perdogg'

The thread references a 5/10/2013 Politico article written by Dylan Byers - http://www.politico.com/blogs/media/...ng-163704.html

View the complete Free Republic thread at:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3017936/posts

[bsteadman1]

Cartoon: Obama to Press Corps - SEND HELP!

http://www.wasobamaborninkenya.com/I...ELP!-5-10-2013

[bsteadman]

'Scrubbing the truth from Benghazi'

American Thinker
Rick Moran
5/11/2013

A headline from some rabid right wing site? A statement by a fringe conservative?

Wrong on both counts. One of the best political reporters in the country, Ron Fournier, writing in the respected National Journal, skewers the administration for "playing politics with Benghazi":

Politics: It would be naïve to expect any White House to ignore the political implications of a foreign policy crisis occurring two months before a presidential election. But there is a reason why no White House admits to finessing a tragedy: It's unseemly. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland injected politics into the U.S. response to Benghazi when she raised objections to draft "talking points" being prepared for Rice's television appearances.

One paragraph, drafted by the CIA, referenced the agency's warnings about terrorist threats in Benghazi in the months prior to the attack, as well as extremists linked to the al-Qaida affiliate Ansar al-Sharia. In an email to officials at the White House and intelligence agencies, Nuland said the information "could be abused by members (of Congress) to beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings, so why would we want to feed that either? Concerned ..."

The paragraph was deleted. The truth was scrubbed.

[...]

Credibility: The White House has long maintained that the talking points were drafted almost exclusively by the CIA, a claim that gave cover to both President Obama and his potential successor, Clinton. "Those talking points originated from the intelligence community," White House spokesman Jay Carney said in November, adding that the only editing by the White House or the State Department was to change the word "consulate" to "diplomatic facility." The emails prove him wrong. Significant edits to the talking points were discussed at the White House the day before Rice's appearance on five Sunday shows, said the official familiar with Nuland's thinking, who added that she did not attend the meeting. As I wrote yesterday ("Why Benghazi is a Blow to Obama and Clinton"), Obama has earned the trust of most Americans but credibility is a fragile thing.

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View the complete article at:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/..._benghazi.html

[bsteadman]

Politics Disguised as the Fog of War

American Thinker
Russ Vaughn
5/11/2013

Excerpt:

That title is not mine; it's taken from an excellent article by Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal titled The Inconvenient Truth About Benghazi. Noonan went a little wobbly back in the 2008 campaign when she, like so many others, let her emotions overrule her commonsense judgment about Barack Obama. This latest posting at the WSJ shows she's stable and clear headed once again. In fact, it is the best explanation I've read yet as to why there was no effective military response by American forces.

Quite simply, there was no aggressive response because, as we've long suspected, a political decision was made early on not to respond. It was not that we didn't have forces available, both air assets and troops, ready and able to intervene; despite all the excuses made by the administration and even our dishonorable military commanders, it wasn't that we couldn't do something, it was because a decision had been made that we were not going to do anything.

As Noonan explains, the truth that this was a terrorist attack was politically inconvenient to the Obama 2012 re-election campaign. The Democrats, including their leader, had been gloating that with the demise of Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda was dead, no longer a serious threat to American interests. An Al Qaeda led attack on a sovereign American possession, even on foreign soil, put the lie to that boast. More importantly, such aggression by Al Qaeda required an aggressive response by our military forces.

On the other hand, and this is where Noonan nails it, a mere out of control demonstration by angry Muslims, outraged over a sophomoric You Tube video, would not require a military response. In fact, an American military response to a mere riot would be a clearly inappropriate intervention into the sovereign affairs of Libya. And right there, folks, is the answer as to why the orders to stand down were issued. In order to meet the political needs of the Obama re-election campaign, this event could not be seen as a terrorist attack so it was hurriedly morphed into a deadly demonstration incited by an American-made video.

The political decision to remake this Al Qaeda attack into a demonstration didn't come from the military, even though the current command structure is clearly carrying water for the Obama administration; nor did it come, as the White house has claimed, from the intelligence community. The recent congressional whistleblower testimony makes that clear. So that leaves Hillary Clinton's State Department and Obama's White House, most likely working in collusion, to create the false narrative. Their motive seems fairly simple: maintaining Democrat control of the executive branch.

That's cold, really cold; a political decision is made that a terrorist attack must be presented to American voters as a demonstration and therefore no military response is possible, no matter how dire the consequences may become for those under attack. As we now know, it was a death sentence for four Americans, one of whom was our ambassador to that country. What we don't know is who the scheming, calculating politicos were who made that cold, deadly decision.
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View the complete article at:

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/...og_of_war.html