Friday, October 12, 2012

Why Presidential Daily Briefings Matter

     Last month it was reported by multiple media outlets that President Obama attends fewer than half of his daily intelligence briefings. He chose instead to scan the talking points of the meetings. At the time we told by White House spokeskid, Jay Carney, that President Obama is, "The most sophisticated consumer of intelligence on the planet and he doesn't need to attend all the briefings in person."  We also learned in last night's vice-presidential debate that the President and Vice-President didn't know of any request for additional security from our diplomats on the ground in Libya. As we all now know, that diplomatic outpost was attacked on September 11 of this year by Al Queda, which resulted in the deaths of our ambassador and three other Americans.
     Also this week, State Department officials testified before the House Oversight Committee, chaired by Republican Darrell Issa. We learned two bits of information: 1) That there were numerous requests for increased security in Libya from our Ambassador (the requests went unanswered) and 2) The State Department never issued any intelligence at any time that stated the attacks were a spontaneous protest in response to an anti-Muslim video. The Obama administration in the persons of Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Jay Carney and even the President himself advanced the "protests spurred by the video" angle for up to two weeks after the incident. The Libyan President said the attacks were perpetrated by terrorists and had nothing to do with any video. He said this within 24 hours after the attacks. The administration engaged in the video lie so they could continue to advance the narrative that since Osama Bin Laden was dead, so was Al Queda. When they were recently caught in their lie, they blamed their public assertions about the video on faulty intelligence, which the State Department now says they never gave.
     If Vice-President Biden is to be believed, which is in serious doubt after his debate performance last night, the administration didn't know what was going on in it's own State Department with regards to such a volatile country as Libya and that President Obama's own ambassador there had requested increased security more than once. This is why it is essential for the President, who is the Commander in Chief with people he has put in harm's way, to attend the daily briefings. By not attending his briefings he has shown he has no desire to execute the primary duty of his office, the national security of this country. I just hope the voters next month relieve him of that duty he finds so burdensome.

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1 comment:

  1. the media is pretending not to notice one of the strangest episodes of behavior ever witnessed during a political debate. Biden, replete with shiny new dental work , was just weird, laughing, giggling, making faces. It was like he couldn't control himself. And I really don't recall Ryan saying anything so preposterous or off the wall that would elicit such outrageous response from Biden. So what the hell was going on? This administration has lost so much credibility, I didnt vote for Obama, but I never imagined it would be this bad. He promised to be different, unique, transparent, conciliatory.He has rarely lived up to these promises. But what is even worse is the media, and how complicit they have been. Despite 500,000 Twitter comments about Biden's odd behavior, its being largely condoned and/or ignored as our collective attention is directed towards some singular, innocuous remark about Big Bird. The media has done an unbelievable job in preventing the people of this country from focusing on the grim reality that there has been a terrorist attack on American soil, on the anniversary of September11, which included the assasination of an U.S. ambassador and 3 other Americans.I would actually love to see Rachel Maddow tackle this story and I've tuned in to her show thinking she would but I havent seen it, I may have missed it. And as the facts of what really transpired emerge, the administration's attitude appears to be "that's my story and I'm sticking to it". And that's not that hard to do when most of the mainstream media have got your back. I mean really, come on you know, its like, you know , i mean....come on , man, my channel changer is just an echo chamber.

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