Friday Morning Reads

Posted: November 16, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Foreign Affairs, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, morning reads | Tags: , , , , | 28 Comments

Good Morning!

So, I’m going to start out with a story about “The Great New England Vampire Panic” and some bizarre graveyard behavior that happened as a result.  Yes, I know it’s pass Samhain but I’m just trying to forget that National Crass Consumerism Season is upon us.  BB found this for me so I have to thank her for the distraction and feeding my curiosity about the way humans create bizarre rituals around graves and the dead.

Children playing near a hillside gravel mine found the first graves. One ran home to tell his mother, who was skeptical at first—until the boy produced a skull.

Because this was Griswold, Connecticut, in 1990, police initially thought the burials might be the work of a local serial killer named Michael Ross, and they taped off the area as a crime scene. But the brown, decaying bones turned out to be more than a century old. The Connecticut state archaeologist, Nick Bellantoni, soon determined that the hillside contained a colonial-era farm cemetery. New England is full of such unmarked family plots, and the 29 burials were typical of the 1700s and early 1800s: The dead, many of them children, were laid to rest in thrifty Yankee style, in simple wood coffins, without jewelry or even much clothing, their arms resting by their sides or crossed over their chests.

Except, that is, for Burial Number 4.

Scraping away soil with flat-edged shovels, and then brushes and bamboo picks, the archaeologist and his team worked through several feet of earth before reaching the top of the crypt. When Bellantoni lifted the first of the large, flat rocks that formed the roof, he uncovered the remains of a red-painted coffin and a pair of skeletal feet. They lay, he remembers, “in perfect anatomical position.” But when he raised the next stone, Bellantoni saw that the rest of the individual “had been com­pletely…rearranged.” The skeleton had been beheaded; skull and thighbones rested atop the ribs and vertebrae. “It looked like a skull-and-crossbones motif, a Jolly Roger. I’d never seen anything like it,” Bellantoni recalls.

You can read about the mysterious grave sites at The Smithsonian website link above.

Here’s another one of those pro-life, family values, Republican white Congress critters that turns out to be a total hypocrite.  Yup, it’s another crazy Tea Bagger with a messed up life as well as a messed up political philosophy.

A decade before calling himself “a consistent supporter of pro-life values,” Tennessee physician and Republican U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais supported his ex-wife’s decision to get two abortions before their marriage, according to the congressman’s sworn testimony during his divorce trial.

Obtained by the Chattanooga Times Free Press, the couple’s 2001 trial transcript also confirms DesJarlais had sexual relationships with at least two patients, three coworkers and a drug representative while he was chief of staff at Grandview Medical Center in Jasper, Tenn. During one affair with a female patient, DesJarlais prescribed her drugs, gave her an $875 watch and bought her a plane ticket to Las Vegas, records show.

Wow.  You just have to wonder how these guys think that their karma and conduct is not going to catch up with them eventually.

Things are not going well in Gaza and Israel.   I saw this horrifying photo of a dead little girl in Gaza juxtaposed with this essay at TDB by Emily Hauzer called “For Israel–with Love and Squalor”.

The sudden roar of violence in Gaza and southern Israel divides the world in many ways, not least between those who are willing (sometimes quite eager) to criticize Israel, and those for whom love of Israel means a rejection of any and all criticism, ever. Death rains from the sky and the rhetorical fury resumes even as walls shatter and blood spills, and no one listens to anyone.

Or so it can seem. But is that really the only choice? Is it really impossible to both love a place deeply, and criticize it honestly?

Hauzer, an Israeli-American writer, describes the horrors that are unfolding as innocents on both sides get caught in the fight between leaders of Hamas and Israel and their struggle for power and control.

And so yes, when Israel decides that now’s the time to assassinate the head of Hamas’s military wing (a man who, until this weekend, served as something of a “subcontractor, in charge of maintaining Israel’s security in Gaza,” according to Israeli journalist Aluf Benn)—Israel is also responsible. When the IDF’s “surgical strikes” kill not only their targets but also civilians, including a 19 year old pregnant woman, a 7 year old girl, and an 11 month old baby, it’s also responsible. If the husband or the brothers and sisters are filled with rage and want to strike a blow for their people and their grief—can we not understand? Can we not say that we would feel the same? That we do feel the same? And would we really care who had started “the latest round”?

The single biggest difference between the two sides of the current Israeli-Gazan hostilities comes down to one word: Power.

Gazan militants (not all of them Hamas—indeed, most of them not) launch rockets from within a tiny strip of land that is physically penned in on all sides by Israel (save for one small crossing with Egypt)—when Israel retaliates, 1.7 million Gazans literally cannot even run away. On the other hand, Israel is a military super power, with battleships off the coast of Gaza, jet fighters in her airspace, and the unstinting support of the world’s most powerful nation.

I watched Democracy Now on Wednesday night and saw Noam Chomsky interviewed on Gaza.

NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s kind of amazing and inspiring to see people managing somehow to survive in—as essentially caged animals and subject to constant, random, sadistic punishment only to humiliate them, no pretext. They’re—Israel and the United States keep them alive, basically. They don’t want them to starve to death. But the life is set up so that you can’t have a dignified, decent life. In fact, one of the words you hear most often is “dignity.” They would like to have dignified lives. And the standard Israeli position is they shouldn’t raise their heads. And it’s a pressure cooker, could blow up. You know, people can’t live like that forever.

AMY GOODMAN: You described it in a piece you wrote as an “open-air prison.”

NOAM CHOMSKY: It’s an open-air prison. As soon as you—you know, we’ve all been in jail for civil disobedience and so on. The overwhelming feeling everyone gets is somebody else is in total control of you. There’s an arbitrary authority who can control anything you do. Stand up, sit down, you know, find something to eat, go to the bathroom—whatever it may be, they all determine it; you can’t do anything. Now that’s basically what it’s like living there. And, you know, there’s—people find ways to adapt, but it’s just a constant—it’s constant subjugation to an external force, which has no purpose except to humiliate you. Of course, they have pretexts—everybody has pretexts—but they don’t make any sense.

Those of us that value peace wonder why these situations just recur with no attempt at resolution other than more bombs.  Here’s one more personal story of a journalist in Gaza whose 11 month old son was killed by the bombing.  The story also comes with this heart wrenching photo.  I looked for the story after reading Hauzer’s essay.

The front page photo on Thursday’s Washington Post tells, in a single frame, a very personal story from Wednesday’s Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip. Jihad Misharawi, a BBC Arabic journalist who lives in Gaza, carries the body of his 11-month old son, Omar, through al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City.

An Israeli round hit Misharawi’s four-room home in Gaza Wednesday, killing his son, according to BBC Middle East bureau chief Paul Danahar, who arrived in Gaza earlier Thursday. Misharawi’s sister-in-law was also killed, and his brother wounded. Misharawi told Danahar that, when the round landed, there was no fighting in his residential neighborhood.

“We’re all one team in Gaza,” Danahar told me, saying that Misharawi is a BBC video and photo editor. After spending a “few hours” with his grieving colleague, he wrote on Twitter, ”Questioned asked here is: if Israel can kill a man riding on a moving motorbike (as they did last month) how did Jihad’s son get killed.”

Hamas rockets are now targeting Tel Aviv. Three Israelis have died so far.  An Israeli ground assault is now expected.

Palestinian militants targeted densely populated Tel Aviv in Israel’s heartland with rockets for the first time Thursday, part of an unprecedented barrage that threatened to provoke an Israeli ground assault on Gaza. Three Israelis were killed.Air raid sirens wailed and panicked residents ran for cover in Tel Aviv, Israel’s commercial and cultural capital. Israel responded by moving troops and heavy weapons toward Gaza and authorizing the call-up of tens of thousands of reservists.

There was no word on where the two rockets aimed at Tel Aviv landed, raising the possibility they fell into the Mediterranean. A third rocket landed in an open area on the southern outskirts of Tel Aviv.

The fighting, the heaviest in four years, came after Israel launched a ferocious air assault Wednesday to stop repeated rocket fire from Gaza. The powerful Hamas military chief was killed in that strike, and another 18 Palestinians have died over two days, including five children. Some 100 Palestinians have been wounded.

Israeli warplanes struck dozens of Hamas-linked targets in Gaza on Thursday, sending loud booms echoing across the narrow Mediterranean coastal strip at regular intervals, followed by gray columns of smoke. After nightfall, several explosions shook Gaza City several minutes apart, a sign the strikes were not letting up, and the military said the targets were about 70 underground rocket-launching sites.

It’s just really hard to understand how these constant back and forth of rockets and missiles will solve anything.  I’ve gotten to the point where I think that solving things isn’t actually the point.  It just ruins a lot of lives on all sides of the hostilities.   You wonder if it will ever end. You also have to wonder how many people will die until the joint desire for peace is greater than the joint desire for power and control.

What’s on you reading and blogging list today?

Monday Reads

Posted: October 29, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 elections, Libya, morning reads | Tags: , , , | 105 Comments


Good Morning!!!

All things surrounding the elections are now up to 11.  I’ve seen some weird things in my days but I’m beginning to check my history books for more bizarre examples of crazy campaign antics.  Andrew Sullivan turned my last week’s observation of the similarities between the election maps of 2012 and those of the US directly before the civil war into a national conversation yesterday on ABC. I’m just pointing to ABC right now because I’ve had enough virtual visitations from the KKK for the time being.

During this Sunday’s edition of ABC’s This Week, Daily Beast writer Andrew  Sullivan claimed that if Republican nominee Mitt Romney wins back Florida and Virginia in the upcoming 2012 presidential election, especially due to the white vote, then the South’s electoral map will look exactly like the pro-slavery United States Confederacy during the Civil War.

This observation came in response to host George Stephanopoulos noting that the latest polls show that six out of ten white Americans intend to vote for Romney.

PBS reporter Gwen Ifill said that “we can’t ignore” the possible factor racial animus may play in deciding the election, noting that the poll indicates that, on some level, people are still willing to admit “racial bias.”

Sullivan then added: “If Virginia and Florida go back to the Republicans, it’s the Confederacy. Entirely. You put a map of the Civil War over this electoral map, you’ve got the Civil War.”

Perhaps we all really need to have a big conversation on racism in America.  It appears white people think they are victims of racism while still using racial stereotypes for people of color.  I’m confused.  Hasn’t any one had read any literature or history on institutional racism.  White people screaming racism is about like the current crop of republican men shouting they’re victims of misogyny.

Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly.

Fifty-one percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.

“As much as we’d hope the impact of race would decline over time … it appears the impact of anti-black sentiment on voting is about the same as it was four years ago,” said Jon Krosnick, a Stanford University professor who worked with AP to develop the survey.

Most Americans expressed anti-Hispanic sentiments, too. In an AP survey done in 2011, 52 percent of non-Hispanic whites expressed anti-Hispanic attitudes. That figure rose to 57 percent in the implicit test. The survey on Hispanics had no past data for comparison.

The AP surveys were conducted with researchers from Stanford University, the University of Michigan and NORC at the University of Chicago.

 The Romney campaign continues its strategy of lying by planning on using an ad in Ohio about a false, conspiracy theory on a jeep plant closing to move to China.  It’s been completely denied, debunked, and disproved so, Romney’s continuing to put it out there.  They’ve even put together an ad.

As you may have heard, Romney on Thursday scared the bejeezus out of Ohio autoworkers when, during arally, he cited a story claiming that Chrysler was moving Jeep production to China. Thousands of people work at a sprawling Jeep complex in Toledo and a nearby machining plant. Many thousands more work for suppliers or have jobs otherwise dependent on the Jeep factories. It’s fair to say that they owe their jobs to President Obama, who in 2009 rescued Chrysler and General Motors from likely liquidation. If Chrysler moved the plants overseas, most of those people would be out of work.

The story turns out to be wrong. As Chrysler made clear the very next day, in a tartly worded blog post on the company website, officials have discussed opening plants in China in order to meet rising demand for vehicles there. They have no plans to downsize or shutter plants in the U.S. On the contrary, Fiat, the Italian company that acquired Chrysler during the rescue, just spent $1.7 billion to expand Jeep production in the U.S. That includes $500 million to renovate and expand the Toledo facilities, with 1,000 new factory jobs likely to follow. On Monday, about the same number of people will report for their first day of work in Detroit, when Chrysler adds a third shift to a Jeep plant it operates there.

This is as bad as all the false narratives out there being repeated about Benghazi including the completely false narrative that Hillary Clinton asked for more security and Obama denied it.  Then, there’s the they didn’t send the military in to help meme that points to the White House too.  All of this is patently false but still harped on by Romney surrogates.  The desperation of Romney supporters is evident in all these lies.  That and the contempt they must have for the American people.  Even former Bush SOS Condi Rice says these Republican narratives are ridiculous.

It is being charged that requests for extra security in Benghazi were denied by the administration.

The suggestion is that the attack would have been stopped, and the ambassador still alive, if the requests had been granted.

But at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee this month, Charlene Lamb, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and head of the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, testified that the request was for added security in Tripoli, the capital of Libya, and not Benghazi.

The added manpower would have been based 400 miles away from the violence.

In addition, U.S. security officials report more guards could not have repelled heavy weapons used by the attackers.

The Wall Street Journal has reported “a four-man team of armed guards protecting the perimeter and four unarmed Libyan guards inside to screen visitors.”

In addition, “Besides the four armed Libyans outside, five armed State Department diplomatic security officers were at the consulate.”

There is an air of hypocrisy about this second charge from Republican critics.

House Republicans voted to cut nearly $300 million in funding from Embassy Security as part of their most recent budget.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) conceded this in a CNN interview.

“Absolutely. Look, we have to make priorities and choices in this country… When you’re in tough economic times, you have to make difficult choices how to prioritize this.”

Dean Baker has an excellent article up on the future of Social Security and Why Big Bucks Donors don’t like political discussions that strongly support the program.  He argues that any highly vocal support of Social Security by Obama would dry up his campaign contributions.

But there is another set of economic considerations affecting the politics of social security. These considerations involve the economics of the political campaigns and the candidates running for office. The story here is a simple one: while social security may enjoy overwhelming support across the political spectrum, it does not poll nearly as well among the wealthy people – who finance political campaigns and own major news outlets. The predominant philosophy among this group is that a dollar in a workers’ pocket is a dollar that could be in a rich person’s pocket – and these people see social security putting lots of dollars in the pockets of people who are not rich.

Cutting back benefits could mean delays in repaying the government bonds held by the Trust Fund . The money to repay these bonds would come primarily from a relatively progressive income tax revenue. The wealthy certainly don’t want to see changes like raising the cap on wages that are subject to the social security tax, which is currently just over $110,000.

For this reason, a candidate who comes out for protecting social security can expect to see a hit to their campaign contributions. They also can anticipate being beaten up in both the opinion and news sections of major media outlets. While, in principle, these are supposed to be kept strictly separate, the owners and/or top management of most news outlets feel no qualms about removing this separation when it comes to social security – and using news space to attack those who defend social security.

 

So, that’s my offerings this morning.  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?

The Foreign Policy Debate Wrap Up

Posted: October 22, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 elections, 2012 presidential campaign, Foreign Affairs, Live Blog | 77 Comments

Is it just me or has Romney just started using his basic stump speech instead of talking foreign policy now?

I think tonight’s Zinger Awards go to Potus.

Obama said that the Republican presidential candidate, by declaring Russia a “geopolitical foe” of the United States, was seeking to return the United States to a long-abandoned Cold War stance.

“The Cold War has been over for 20 years,” said Obama, turning to Romney as they sat at a table before moderator Bob Schieffer. “When it comes to your foreign policy, you seem to want to import the foreign policies of the 1980s.”

One of the best zingers was that Romney wants to get tough on China and Iran but he’s not beyond investing in companies that profit from both of them.

The Chinese investment by Mr Romney’s blind trust prompted accusations of hypocrisy from the Obama campaign on Monday, given Mr Romney’s criticism of Barack Obama for not being tough enough on Chinese “cheaters”.

“As he rolls his bus through many Ohio towns that are benefiting from [Obama’s] actions to . . . protect American workers from unfair Chinese trade practices, Mitt Romney will, as they say, have some explaining to do,” said an Obama campaign spokesman.

But Mr Romney’s investment in Cnooc also raises questions about his tough stance against Iran and is further evidence of how the former Bain Capital chief executive’s vast global share holdings have posed a challenge to his bid for the White House.

Last month, Cnooc Limited’s chairman, Wang Yilin, said in a speech that the company’s large-scale deep water rights were a “mobile national territory and a strategic weapon”, a description that highlights the political sensitivity surrounding the company.

Romney says China “steals” our jobs while he’s on the forefront of shipping jobs there.

All Romney can keep saying is that he’ll just do the same things Obama did and Bush did but, hey he’ll do it with gusto or strength or some kind of things you can only do with magic underwear, I guess.

“Gov. Romney, you keep on trying to airbrush history”

Live Blog: Obama vs. Romney, Round 3, Foreign Policy Debate

Posted: October 22, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, abortion rights, Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs, Libya, lobbyists, Mitt Romney, U.S. Economy, U.S. Military, U.S. Politics, War on Women, Women's Rights | Tags: | 121 Comments

Tonight is the last presidential debate. I have no idea what’s going to happen. I don’t understand what’s happening with the polls, and I don’t get why so many people are ready to vote for a lying flim-flam man like Mitt Romney. All I can do is take this one day at a time until we get the results on November 7th or 8th.

For those of you who want to look at analysis, here are the latest posts from the two poll aggregators we’ve been following: Nate Silver and Sam Wang.

Here’s today’s outrage from the Romney campaign: Staying Classy

Ronna Romney is the ex-sister-in-law of Mitt Romney. She’s apparently remained close to the Romney family. She has a minor role in the Romney campaign in Florida and has recently appeared at campaign events in Michigan with her daughter.

Earlier this afternoon she posted these grotesque images of the mangled body of the late Ambassador Chris Stevens with the words “Obama killed him” surrounded by dripping blood.

You can see the screengrab at the TPM link.

And here’s a little comic relief: Mitt Romney blimp crash lands in Florida

A blimp displaying a Mitt Romney campaign ad crash landed in Davie, Fla. Sunday evening.
Davie police said that wind forced the the aircraft to land in a field around 7:10 p.m., and two people got out safely….

The Sun Sentinel reports that the airship was headed from Boca Raton, the site of Monday night’s debate, to North Perry Airport in Pembroke Pines. It featured a picture of the Republican candidate with the slogan “America Needs Romney.”

“We saw the blimp hovering over the house, and it was floating backwards; it looked like it was actually coming down,” local Teri Balter told NBC News. “I thought boy, Mitt Romney really wants us to vote for him.”

How will the media report the third debate? Probably the same way they reported the second debate.

Which Mitt Romney will show up tonight?

It’s all coming down to stupid undecided voters.

I plan to watch the debate on-line and listen to MSNBC coverage on satellite radio. What are your plans? What do you expect to happen tonight?

We’ll use this post as a live blog until the comment thread gets too long, at which point I’ll post fresh thread and let you know to move up.

Let’s have fun watching–what do we have to lose at this point? And don’t forget to vote!!

Here’s some music to get us started: A Message to Republicans from Lesley Gore:

The Politics of Grave Dancing: Issa and Romney

Posted: October 20, 2012 | Author: | Filed under: Foreign Affairs, Libya | Tags: , , , | 64 Comments


The more the Republicans push for some kind of October Surprise on the Benghazi attacks, the more mortified we should all be about the politics of grave dancing. More information is coming out on the damage to US intelligence in Benghazi and the Middle East by Issa’s public hearings. Issa’s document dump has exposed safe houses and Libyans working for the US. He’s actually exposed US intelligence assets and put their lives in danger. This is yet another –ala Cheney–of the ways Republicans will actually kill US interests and people in an effort to put their political power and aims above everything else.

“The American people deserve nothing less than a full explanation from this administration about these events, including why the repeated warnings about a worsening security situation appear to have been ignored by this administration. Americans also deserve a complete explanation about your administration’s decision to accelerate a normalized presence in Libya at what now appears to be at the cost of endangering American lives,” Issa and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) wrote today in a letter to President Barack Obama.

But Issa didn’t bother to redact the names of Libyan civilians and local leaders mentioned in the cables, and just as with the WikiLeaks dump of State Department cables last year, the administration says that Issa has done damage to U.S. efforts to work with those Libyans and exposed them to physical danger from the very groups that had an interest in attacking the U.S. consulate.

“Much like WikiLeaks, when you dump a bunch of documents into the ether, there are a lot of unintended consequences,” an administration official told The Cable Friday afternoon. “This does damage to the individuals because they are named, danger to security cooperation because these are militias and groups that we work with and that is now well known, and danger to the investigation, because these people could help us down the road.”

One of the cables released by Issa names a woman human rights activist who was leading a campaign against violence and was detained in Benghazi. She expressed fear for her safety to U.S. officials and criticized the Libyan government.

“This woman is trying to raise an anti-violence campaign on her own and came to the United States for help. She isn’t publicly associated with the U.S. in any other way but she’s now named in this cable. It’s a danger to her life,” the administration official said.

Another cable names a Benghazi port manager who is working with the United States on an infrastructure project.

“When you’re in a situation where Ansar al-Sharia is a risk to Americans, an individual like this guy, who is an innocent civilian who’s trying to reopen the port and is doing so in conjunction with Americans, could be at risk now because he’s publicly affiliated with America,” the official said, referring to the group thought to have led the Benghazi attack.

Emptywheel lays it out even more clearly: ‘Darrell Issa Exposes the CIA as a Foreign Policy Debate Stunt”.  Here’s  a sample.  (H/T to RalphB).

Darrell Issa just released a bunch of documents so as to seed the Sunday shows in time for Monday’s foreign policy debate. [Update: See Josh Rogin’s reported description of some of the sensitivities Issa exposed.]

Here’s a running explication of what he released, all in the name of “national security.”

PDF 1: In December, Jeffrey Feltman asked Patrick Kennedy to approve “a combined footprint of 35 U.S. government personnel in Benghazi.” That would include 10 people identified as State: 8 State Department and USAID, and 2 temporary duty personnel.

Which leaves 25 people unaccounted for.

As it happens, the Libyans say there were 29 people they hadn’t expected when they came to evacuate the Americans. They complained afterwards that the Americans hadn’t told them about all the spooks they’d have onsite.

Well, now, Issa just confirmed they were not State or even USAID personnel. He has confirmed the Libyans’ claims–that they were spooks.

And then there’s this:

Because of budget considerations and the reduced footprint, Diplomatic Security’s current presence consists of two Special Agents…

As far back as December 2011, budget considerations were driving the small security footprint in Benghazi.

The budget considerations put into place by the GOP cuts to State’s budget.

.

We’ve heard many times over now that  CIA information was the basis of Susan Rice’s discussions with the press.  CIA documents back this up.

The Romney campaign may have misfired with its suggestion that statements by President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice about the Benghazi attack last month weren’t supported by intelligence, according to documents provided by a senior U.S. intelligence official.

“Talking points” prepared by the CIA on Sept. 15, the same day that Rice taped three television appearances, support her description of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate as a reaction to Arab anger about an anti-Muslim video prepared in the United States. According to the CIA account, “The currently available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. Consulate and subsequently its annex. There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations.”

The CIA document went on: “This assessment may change as additional information is collected and analyzed and as currently available information continues to be evaluated.” This may sound like self-protective boilerplate, but it reflects the analysts’ genuine problem interpreting fragments of intercepted conversation, video surveillance and source reports.

The senior intelligence official said the analysts’ judgment was based in part on monitoring of some of the Benghazi attackers, which showed they had been watching the Cairo protests live on television and talking about them before they assaulted the consulate.

“We believe the timing of the attack was influenced by events in Cairo,” the senior official said, reaffirming the Cairo-Benghazi link. He said that judgment is repeated in a new report prepared this week for the House intelligence committee.

The latest information is that there is now no evidence of an Al Qaeda role in the attack on the Benghazi consulate. This is also something falsely bandied around by Republicans like Sununu who insists the Libyan attack showed the President is lying about the strength of Al-Qaeda in the region.  Another shameless attempt to portray on foreign policy in the area as misguided and most likely another attempt to justify more military intervention and the Romney platform of $2 trillion increases in military spending.  It should also be emphasized that the attack did not occur on the US embassy in Libya because there’s also been this Republican inference that embassy security was weak and so allowed the attack.  Consulates are not embassies.

The assault on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi last month appears to have been an opportunistic attack rather than a long-planned operation, and intelligence agencies have found no evidence that it was ordered by Al Qaeda, according to U.S. officials and witnesses interviewed in Libya.

The circumstances of the Sept. 11 attack have become a matter of heated political debate, with President Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney clashing in their debate Tuesday about when Obama termed the assault an act of terrorism. But the emerging picture painted by intelligence officials and witnesses differs from the assertions of both sides.

Republicans have zeroed in on possible Al Qaeda ties to the Sept. 11 attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, and have criticized the Obama administration for not saying early on that it was an act of terrorism. But after five weeks of investigation, U.S. intelligence agencies say they have found no evidence of Al Qaeda participation.

The attack was “carried out following a minimum amount of planning,” said a U.S. intelligence official, who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a matter still under investigation. “The attackers exhibited a high degree of disorganization. Some joined the attack in progress, some did not have weapons and others just seemed interested in looting.”

A second U.S. official added, “There isn’t any intelligence that the attackers pre-planned their assault days or weeks in advance.” Most of the evidence so far suggests that “the attackers launched their assault opportunistically after they learned about the violence at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo” earlier that day, the official said.

The lack of a firm Al Qaeda link could constrain U.S. military options. The administration believes it has the right under international law to use lethal force against Al Qaeda operatives who kill Americans, but that case would be harder to make against members of a Libyan militia.

You may recall the Sununu meltdown on Soledad O’Brien’s CNN interview the other day. He should really look stupid and hyperpolitical now.

Republicans are continuing the Cheney-Bush policy of misleading people to further their own political and NeoCon agendas.  It is more important than ever that the press continue to ignore their grave dancing and follow the actual process of getting to the facts.   We’re basically seeing the same sort of crap that lead us into Iraq repeating. It’s nothing but basic Republican propaganda in support of NeoCon Lies.  Let’s hope that more of this comes to the surface during the Monday night presidential debates on foreign policy.  We don’t need any more unnecessary wars.

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