Comments on the NYT Benghazi Piece.

It is discouraging to hear media people marvel that there apparently was no AQ connection to the Benghazi attacks.  It has always been true that Sunni jihadism is a movement rather than a group.  Get it?  pl

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2013/benghazi/#/?chapt=0

pl

Comments

[Fred]

"The fixation on Al Qaeda might have distracted experts from more imminent threats. Those now look like intelligence failures." The NYT points out the obvious, yet fails to recognize that this has been true even as BHO was running for re-election claiming to have 'decimated' the leadership of Al Qaeda. Even better is the quote from page one: "..the risks of expecting American aid ... to buy durable loyalty" Has anyone at the NYT heard of Jonathan Pollard and the repeated demands by Israeli politicians to release him? What loyalty has all that aid 'bought'?

"In this case, a central figure in the attack ...." Of course the central figure is one lone 'eccentric' surely all those young men would never rally to a man who spent a lifetime in prison. Didn't South Africa just bury a man who fits that description? Oh he had a formal education, so surely no one would follow an uneducated man. Mr. Abu Khattala seems to understand American politicians far better than they understand Libya: “It is always the same two teams, but all that changes is the ball,” he said in an interview. “They are just laughing at their own people.”

[Jose]

Very credible newspaper...very credible author...very credible job of clearing Haillary's path...

[William R. Cumming]

So time to choose up sides? Sunnia or Shia?

Implications of attack in Russia on train station?

[b]

The piece misses the whole story of the CIA weapon transfer business from Benghazi to FSA proxies in Syria in which the ambassador was deeply involved.

The AQ affiliates did want the weapons for their own folks in Syria. They launched the video protests as cover for their operations. Then they kicked the CIA out of Benghazi and took over the depots there.

The NYT misses the whole story on that. It is a whitewashing fairy tale.

[jonst]

It's an all too familiar routine for me. Watching the 'lawyerly pettifogging' going on over the assertion or denial of the term Al Qaeda...displaying sweeping ignorance and/or mendacity of the complexity of world events. A bunch of lawyers/PR types arguing over the words in a contract. With one side displaying its own reasons for not only insisting on the inclusion of a given term...but just as insistently, providing its definition. And then moving on to the next transactional matter, and turning the definition right on its head because that interpretation works better for your client, in that given case. And all sides, in this case with AQ, are doing it. Dems, GOP types, media whores, think tank creatures and such. And the American people become less informed by the minute. Pathetic.

[Bill H]

AQ is the bogeyman who is coming to kill us all in our beds and Osama bin-Laden, founder of AQ, lives on long after he is dead as we keep trying to defeat AQ with drones all over the world.

[JohnH]

Touché! The former Senator from Wall Street gets her back covered.

[jon]

I'm glad to see the conspiracy theory version fall further apart. There are limits to the reach and capability of US military and diplomatic power. A tragedy that the Benghazzi assault happened, and perhaps avoidable or might have been lessened, but inevitable eventually in the efforts of a nation engaged in the broader world. Libya is one more tragic example of the relative ease of effecting regime change, and the difficulty of transitioning to a stable, more democratic, more humane government following revolution.

[Walrus]

"A fuller accounting of the attacks suggests lessons for the United States that go well beyond Libya. It shows the risks of expecting American aid in a time of desperation to buy durable loyalty, and the difficulty of discerning friends from allies of convenience in a culture shaped by decades of anti-Western sentiment. Both are challenges now hanging over the American involvement in Syria’s civil conflict."

Decades of anti western sentiment????? How well earned and fully justified contempt and distrust
as a direct result of decades of Western meddling and fucking over the Middle East as a great power plaything? What will it take to get it through the thick heads of these narcissists that the rest of the world does not want to be like us and does not relish our attention?

[Fred]

I would say it will take awhile. Just read the latest from the Wapo:

http://tinyurl.com/lnontws

After decades in DC Mr. Pearlstein hasn't figured out that DC has changed far more than the rest of the nation. The NYT is just trying to catch up in the lack of integrity department.

[tv]

Just more of the same....
Dog bites man.
Sun rises in the East.
NY Times - or take your pick of media outlet - continues as Obama pom pom girls.