I hope you will all have seen the news breaking this morning prior to the meeting of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. I first saw it on Powerline, in a piece by John Hinderaker. Now, Paul Mirengoff of that site has a piece about leaking classified briefing information to Leslie Gelb, a friend of Joe Biden’s. Perhaps this was to ensure that the president read or heard the information? Maybe not.
Gelb defended Rice by blaming the intelligence community. He wrote:
Her mistake was taking the initial intelligence at face value. The White House briefers made the same error, and so did I. I too repeated in an op-ed on The Daily Beast what the intelligence briefers told me.
I have a question and it is a real question because my sense of the timeline of events is sketchy. My memory is that the news about the death of the ambassador and the claim that it was caused by a protest gone bad was accompanied by the information about the video, the infamous “Muhammad Movie Trailer”. Here is my question: How did that video come to light? Was it common knowledge and were there protests of the video prior to the September 11 attack on Ambassador Stevens? Do I misremember that the State Department threw out the explanation of the horrible anti-Islamic video as the cause of the Libyan attack and then the world erupted in protests?
October 10th, 2012 | 11:43 am
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October 10th, 2012 | 12:49 pm
No, I think your timeline is wrong. Way back when these things were going on the MSM ripped Romney to pieces for his reaction to the US embassy in Egypt grovelling before demonstrators allegedly protesting the movie, and there was a little addendum to the stories saying that there were ALSO protests in Libya, and that some embassy employee (singular, I’m pretty sure) there had been killed, and the next day the truth came out, and it’s been unraveling every since…
October 10th, 2012 | 12:52 pm
Here is a Michael Totten post from Sep. 11 which I remember reading that illustrates what I’m talking about…
October 10th, 2012 | 2:39 pm
Thanks, I needed that.
October 10th, 2012 | 6:39 pm
There is this piece on the Libya timeline stuff from Bret Baier.
http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/special-report-bret-baier/videos#p/86927/v/1892704860001
October 10th, 2012 | 7:21 pm
Thank you, John. That was very useful. It does make me wonder when and how justice will be done, as the president promised.
October 16th, 2012 | 6:51 pm
But how did they find out about the video to begin with? I’m sure there are hundreds, if not more, of these types of videos online. Did someone tell the terrorists about this video? Perhaps the terrorists shared it with protestors via FB, Twitter to get everyone all riled up and planned their attack around the protests they new they’d start?
October 16th, 2012 | 7:50 pm
Lynn Davis, that is a good question. It is not hard to imagine the number of amateur videos offering rude portrayals of Muslims or Mohammed are legion, as I’ve seen offerings ranging from The Four Lions to stop-action LEGOs. This was a trailer and perhaps the protests were meant to forestall a full-length feature.
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