The Benghazi attack killed four people, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, and injured ten others. Although at the time, the motive of the attack seemed to be unclear, a U. S. State Department investigation found the attack to be premeditated and carried out by Islamist militants.
There has been much controversy around how the United States, specifically the Department of State of President Obama responded to the attacks. A Congressional investigation found more than twelve violent events during six months prior to the attack, and stated in their report that, “these events indicated a clear pattern of security threats that could only be reasonably interpreted to justify increased security at the compound.” Yet, the Department of State ignored or denied requests from Benghazi for more guards at the compound and a security upgrade. In addition, President Obama received much criticism regarding how he categorized the attack, with some news stations reporting he said the attack was a spontaneous protest that got out of hand, rather than a premeditated terror attack, while others said he was not forceful enough in denouncing terror.
The investigation as to who knew what and when did they know it, is currently underway. Some say that foreign diplomats know and understand the risks they are taking when they are posted to embassies in dangerous locations. In other words, it comes with the job, much like the military. Others say this is a massive government cover-up that may derail President Obama’s second term. So my question to you this week involves a little research. First, spend a little time getting to know more about the attack and the foregoing investigation. Then tell me, “What do you think about how the U.S. handled it? Is it a massive cover-up, or is the media making too much of the story? What should the United States have done differently?” Answers are due no later than Wednesday, June 5th, 2013.
I have been keeping up with this story as much as I could becasue it heated me up. Top officials from the U.S. handled this situation like a bunch of clowns. This was a massive failure on our behalf. There is an unwritten rule in the military: Don't be the highest ranking man (or woman) with a secrect. First of all it was september 11th: even at the podunk base I was stationed at in Pascagoula Mississippi, on september 11th we up'ed the security (the whole week), and this was our soil in the middle of America hating Lybia. So if I knew, the government knew to have better security which leads me to believe it is closer to a cover-up. As soon as this attack happened the state department sent out clueless ambassador Susan Rice and lied to the country blaming the attack on a spontaneous protest due to a youtube video. Then her, the president, Hillary Clinton, and rest of the state dept went out and spouted the attack was because of a video for at least two weeks. To the extreme that the maker of the video is now in jail. The media isn't making enough of the story. Why did it take almost a year for the mainstream media to pay attention to this story. Not to mention all this happened at a crucial election time, so they definately didn't want it to look like any of it could have possibly been avoided. The seals were engaged in hours of combat, so during that time they could have sent in a team to help out or hide their evidence or whatever. Dude this president is the king of drone strikes, so what, did his drones take september 11th off too, come on. But the cover up might not have just been for the election: there was just a rebelion in which Khadafi was taken out, a rebelion in which we were aiding the rebels who took out Khadafi. How would we do that, by giving them weapons. I actually heard a theory that the Lybian embassy was really a CIA weapons cache, where they were holding retrieved weapons from the rebellion. I'm not sure, but I do know the state department hasn't let the truth out and has continued to stone wall questions and throw people under the bus. That's shady as hell to me, and the messed up thing is that most of the country is just now hearing about this...
ReplyDeleteI think when it comes to the Benghazi incident and much of how President Obama handled it (and how he is still handeling) is that the President did misinterpret something of the findings, especially the emails that were evaluated and some of the talking the points by Susan Rice the US ambassador to the United Nations. But there is clear evidence when the attack first happened and now that the talking points Susan Rice used have said that the attack grew out of a spontaneous demonstration in response to the Cairo protests. That was in the original draft of the talking points, and it remained in the final draft of the talking points. There has been no evidence showing an election-year cover-up for the Benghazi Scandal.
ReplyDeleteI'll be honest, I haven't kept up with this story as much as I should have been, but what I do know of it is that it's been handled by the White House very, very poorly. What bothers me is that we still have no real details about it and it happened almost an entire year ago. I feel that more details should be brought to light about the entire thing because a lot of people are just now hearing about it.
ReplyDeleteI think the US handled it extremely poorly. Who care what the government called the attack the first day or two. Conservatives think the White House is trying to cover up the story just because they didn't immediately seizing to the word "terror". The media really is making too much of the story. Even president Obama called this issue a "sideshow". The embassy wasn't even embassy it was an information office that had no diplomatic status. The office was being use to monitor an AL-Qeda group and to track down weapons. Also the AL-Qeda group was link to the malaysia group aka "February 17th Martyrs Brigade" that were hired by the State Department to defend the mission in Benghazi. That was a huge mistake on the US side for hiring a group linked to terrorist.
ReplyDeleteThe US have handled it poorly. I hardly remember this story so you can tell by that there hasn't been enough media coverage on it. The descriptions I found for it my research in term seem to be just as vague and blaming it on Obama, or how he tried to remedy the situation after it happened. Ultimately, it was handled poorly and there isn't enough substance to not make it anti-obama.
ReplyDeleteI'll be honest, I haven't been keeping up with this story at all really. After some skimming through articles about it though, I found that the news is trying to force the blame on Obama which I don't really find surprising. The media is always so quick to point the finger at him the moment they have even an inkling of information. I also think that the US didn't handle the situation very well at all. I'm not sure if it's a cover-up for something else the government is trying to hide from us or not, though I also don't think they're making too much of the story either considering I haven't really heard a whole lot about it. As far as what we should have done differently, maybe instead of just sending a video camera to just watch what was going on actually having people their to protect like they're trained to do.
ReplyDelete(Side note: I always thought it kind of strange that we heighten security on a week of the month that we've had terrorists attacks before. There are 51 other weeks in the year. Unless there's this unspoken rule between countries where each country has a specific week out of the year where they're allowed to do terrorists acts to another country. Just a random thought)
I have to be honest and say that I didn't really follow the story at all. But, I did read some articles about it and from what I understand, there is supposedly a cover-up and Obama is taking heat from how it was handled. I also heard from one source that the way in which it was handle has some political motivations due to the election last year.
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with how the situation was handle. From what I read, Obama claimed that while they did know about it, they didn't send in any reinforcements because they weren't sure exactly what was going on there. I think personally that they did know it was a terrorist attack (Obama called it one when he addressed the nation the very next day) but they tried to cover it up in a way to make the Obama administration look like heroes and the plan didn't exactly work out that way. I mean, the story as to why the attacks happened changed from day to day.
I think that they knew about it and handled it poorly. And because the administration was trying to win an election, they tried to give everyone the run-around to cover it all up. I understand why it happened; I just don't agree with how it was handled.
I wish that the administration had stepped up when it needed to and taken responsibility for its actions. To me, that is much more admirable than trying to cover up the mistake that they made.
Of course, like I said, I didn't closely follow the story, so I'm not entirely sure that my opinion is completely accurate.
I'm with the bunch that hasn't followed the story well. I didn't, actually, know what Benghazi was about until this blog post (shameful, I know). I'm having a difficult time finding accurate, actual information about what happened, outside of he said, she said. To be honest, I've read through our class responses after having read a few articles to cross check the information--which I think is strange.
ReplyDeleteAs vast as our media coverage is, and this could just be me out of the loop, but I can't seem to find a detailed list of events that actually happened--no "truth" or "what really happened". While America doesn't censor much, this has, at least, mild censorship written all over it.
But I digress. This situation was handled about as great as Katrina. I read somewhere that there was an actual phone call for help, but wasn't picked up because the person didn't recognize the number. I assume, if working for the government, one would pick up the phone, regardless of what number was calling. Then there's the fact that the gov'ment had knowledge that jihadists were threatening to break it.
Apparently threats aren't important anymore.
To go back to what Joseph said about upping security: these were Americans in a foreign country with the anniversary date looming and the American gov'ment didn't think to up security on the compound? I'm calling bull that this was a "random" extremist attack. In the end, there was ample time to send reinforcements, if the short span of time it took for help, when it was actually deployed, to arrive is any indication.
I think the US handled it very poorly. I barely even remember hearing about this story. The news tried to blame it on Obama which makes no sense. More details should be brought forth about this incident so we can be better informed. The Us should of tried to protect them better instead of just sending a camera to capture what happened. Instead of covering up the mistake they should've handled it properly instead of poorly.
ReplyDeleteI believe that it was a cover up. Its not the first time and it surely is not the last. There was a constant pattern of attacks and as history repeats itself nothing was done to make change. Security/guards- their should have been a lot more of them on sight not just on standby. I personally hope Obama is replaced before his second term in office is over but its not like "we the people" have a say so in the matter.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion, everything is a conspiracy. The crowd that killed the four ambassadors at the Benghazi embassy were conspiring to kill Americans who were working there, and that conspiracy was successful.
ReplyDeleteBeing in any occupation in a foreign country for the United States is a dangerous job that could result in death, and yes like the military; it comes with the job. In violent countries that are rather hostile to "Americans", one must always be precautious.
If there is anything Western Media can do to protect it's citizens abroad; it would be to stop spreading bad propaganda about other countries. Especially those with hostility towards our culture. I think that is why others hate this country so, cause our Media tend to make others out as heathens, and backwoods or desert dwelling idiots. Everyone around the world knows what CNN and FOX News is, and they do watch what we say about them.
I think they handled this situation horribly. This could have gone better and yes I believe it was a cover up. Reading earlier comments like Joe said, this happened at a very important election time and none of this was mentioned as far as I remember. This makes the president look worse than he already did. They had no back up and there was plenty of time to send another team to help out or some way to remove them but nothing was done. This makes me think that are military are not seen as American people but robots at disposal as whoever pleases. Makes me sick to think that the people that volunteer their lives for this country are treated like a re-cloneable drone.
ReplyDeleteI do agree that the government failed them by not providing protection that had clearly become needed. The government should have taken the escalating events at embassies around the world more seriously.
ReplyDeleteI also believe that the Obama Administration may have tried to downplay the incident by blaming the protests, but I do not think this means there is a full blown cover up.
Sadly, anymore it's hard to know what you can believe or what is being left out about foreign affairs and the activity of the government.
--Nicole Watkins
Upon researching more information about the Benghazi incident, I have come to conclude that in regards to the actions that the United States have enacted during a time of crisis was less to satisfactory. The current investigation that was conducted by the FBI has lasted within the time frame of 24 hours. Is this a sufficient time required in order to handle a delicate situation at this? Although with the disagreements on both State Department of Defense and FBI, it suggest that the FBI whom flew in with United States military troops are in best regards enacting the effort to resolve this situation. So why was the State Department of Defense disagreeing with the actions taken? This already appears to be a conspiracy but I believe it to not be. As for the actions that were taken, the United States has handled this incident reportedly stating, "We're satisfied with the progress." There should have been more time taken both on investigation and other methods, time is what is missing.
ReplyDeleteThe US handled it like Charlie Sheen on cocaine, horrible.I think that If massive protests are going on, you need to send the guard to protect them because if you remember the Egyptian revolution a couple years ago, things over there can get pretty hectic. On that note I will also say that I believe that the white house may be covering up something, but it's not as big as the media wants us to believe. After all, the media is trying washing us! Just kidding. OR AM I?!?
ReplyDeleteWhether it was a coverup for some conspiracy, or whether the media is making a big deal about nothing, either way I think the US has handled the situation very poorly. I think that if important US citizens are going to be in a place of danger, they need to have much more protection and protocols in place than it looks like they did. No one seems to know what happened or where to find answers, and now it feels like everyone just sort of shrugged it off and is going about their everyday business as if nothing happened.
ReplyDeleteI think that they didn't handle it well at all. whether it was a conspiracy or not is not the case. however this could just be another way for the media or government to avert the peoples attention from a more important issue. kind of like what happened with the girl that were captives since they were little girls. besides that i feel that if Citizens are going to be in dangerous areas, they should know that their government is going to protect them and they didn't. it was wrong and more protective attention should have been provided from the U.S. and they did not deliver.
ReplyDeleteI think that the President and the Democratic party are both aware that with the way that the last few years have gone politically, people are likely more inclined to vote for a republican President. I think that the Democratic party and President Obama are doing whatever they can to try and have the country believe that President Obama's mistake is not a mistake at all. I think that the President wanted to live up to his no war promise and thus intentionally brushed the incident off. The government had an obligation and they ignored that obligation.
ReplyDeleteIts very hard to know what to think a lot of the time. I thinks its ridiculous that you can watch CNN and get one story about it and you can go to Fox News and get a completely different side that can be summed up with down with the President and all democrats, yet their slogan is "fair and balanced". However, I find it impossible to believe that the President and his advisors were unaware of the threat seeing how he is trying very hard to undermine it and pretend it is less of a scandal than it is. People think this IRS thing is big, but Benghazi is where it really is.
ReplyDeleteI think that the US had good intentions when handling this situation, but that they did so in a way that still fostered speculation. Because of the kind of machine that the media has become since the events of 9-11, I am always under speculation that something, no matter how big or insignificant that may be, is being covered up. I feel that the American public has been conditioned to speculate, and that is why we assume that we are not getting all of the facts. I think that it would have been handled in a much more positive light had there been more information made available from the beginning than there was.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know anything about the attacks and when I personally tried to seek out enough information to form an intelligible opinion I didn't manage to. I do know that I have no doubt that the US would and could successfully cover up whatever they intend to. It is so difficult to retrieve information that is completely accurate and even harder to filter through all the lies to find the truth.
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