Four families have lost loved ones during the attack on our US embassy in Benghazi, Libya. When the President spoke this morning, two of those families were being told that their wife or husband, son or daughter, had died.
Other families are worrying about their loved ones injured in the attacks on US embassies in Cairo and Benghazi. And now it seems that the attack in Benghazi was far from spontaneous.
U.S. Suspects Libya Attack Was Planned
By PETER BAKER, DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and ALAN COWELL
Published: September 12, 2012
WASHINGTON —The Obama administration suspects that the fiery attack in Libya that killed the American ambassador and three other diplomats may have been planned rather than a spontaneous mob getting out of control, American officials said Wednesday.
Officials in Washington studying the events of the past 24 hours have focused on the differences between the protests on the American embassy in Cairo and the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, the Libyan city where Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and the other Americans were killed.
The protesters in Cairo appeared to be a genuinely spontaneous unarmed mob angered by an anti-Islam video produced in the United States. By contrast, it appeared the attackers in Benghazi were armed with mortars and rocket-propelled grenades. Intelligence reports are inconclusive at this point, officials said, but indications suggest the possibility that an organized group had either been waiting for an opportunity to exploit like the protests over the video or perhaps even generated the protests as a cover for their attack.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Mr. Romney didn't bother to take the time to understand the events in Egypt and Libya. The only thing that mattered was political expediency.
Unlike him, our American family is grief stricken, horrified and trying to comprehend this unfolding tragedy.
Mr. Romney could not wait for facts. His gleeful opportunistic attack on not only the President, but our diplomats in Egypt is devoid of understanding or respect.
Earlier today, officials at the U.S. Embassy in Egypt issued a statement that “condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.” The embassy said the statement was drafted and released before the protests. But the succession of events drew widespread criticism in the United States after violence broke out for appearing weak in the face of threats.
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
What else could our people in Cairo have done? They work and live in Cairo. They know Egypt and its people far better than Mitt Romney. That is why they released a statement in hopes of averting the storm they saw brewing.
Would we have done any differently? What other options did they have? What would Mr. Romney have done if he was standing in their shoes? Give a speech? Go to France for some missionary work as he did during the Vietnam war?
I doubt he even tried to imagine being behind the walls of our Embassy in Cairo. It would have taken too much thought and empathic imagination.
Instead Romney used our people on the ground in Cairo, our dead and injured in Benghazi, to attack President Obama and the Administration's foreign policy.
“I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”
So Romney politicizes a genuine crisis in which a Foreign Service Officer has been killed. And the attack itself is based on a falsehood. The reference is to a statement released by the Embassy in Egypt which in fact came out before the attacks took place. The entire thing is based on a lie.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/...
Mr. Romney did not hesitate to conflate and distort three distinct entities - the statement released by our people in harms way in Cairo, the Obama administration's response to this crises and their on-going Foreign Policy. Romney is again trying to portray the man who put his Presidency on the line to take down bin Laden as weak, as "apologizing for America."
He engages in an obscene dance on the graves of our dead, before they've even returned home to their families. Facts be damned. National Security be damned. The lives of our people be damned. Our grieving families be damned. They are all merely fodder for his political ambition.
The clear and present danger to our country is a man who does not see our dead, our Diplomatic Corps or our National Security as deserving of respect and thoughtful, intelligent, consideration. That man is Mitt Romney.
12:27 PM PT: Update: Please read, share, and support CrazyHorse's superb diary on what today has been like from the perspective of someone who works at the State Department. His post should be read by every American.
http://www.dailykos.com/...