What Really Happened in Benghazi - Devastating Bret Baier Report


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What Really Happened in Benghazi - Devastating Bret Baier Report

 

What does anyone know about Benghazi?

 

I'm talking about mainstream Americans. What do they know?

 

Does anyone know where Benghazi is? Oh... we know it's in Libya... but how many people even know where Libya is?

 

There is one thing most Americans do know about Benghazi right now. It's the name of a foreign place over there somewhere and some USA government people were killed there. People know this because the press won't stop talking about it.

 

Benghazi is a vague image in the mainstream mind. There's the somewhere over there part, but the stronger mental load seems to be like some kind of metaphorical football each side of the election is trying to grab and carry across the goal line. 

 

And that's the problem. It is literally a floating abstraction in the mainstream mind.

 

So what's the cure? Easy. Give it some conceptual referents.

 

That's a primary thing and it needs to be done. When the issue is this important and the problem is deeply ingrained in the popular mind, the best way is to go back to grade school.

 

I'm serious.

 

The best was is Show And Tell.

 

Then the name Benghazi will mean something more than a political football about a foreign somewhere.

 

This is exactly what Bret Baier did with a special Fox Report called "Death and Deceit in Benghazi." He showed. He told. He let other people show and tell.

 

When I first looked at this on the Real Clear Politics Video page, I saw it was a little over 40 minutes. Ugh... Who wants to sit through 40 minutes watching people say that Obama is a liar while Obama supporters say Romney is a liar and is to blame for public misconceptions?

 

But, I thought I would at least take a peak. Once I turned it on, after a couple of minutes, I couldn't take my eyes off it. Benghazi suddenly turned into a real place. "Compound" suddenly turned into a walled off house with other small buildings. It was in a neighborhood that I could look at. Grass. Trees. Roads. Other houses. I could imagine myself walking around there.

 

"Terrorist attack" suddenly had terrorist bodies, an attack plan with graphics explaining it, a sequence of events. It was almost like watching someone describe the stages of a video game, but with real people.

 

Although Baier slightly slanted the report toward the election (but only slightly), the main epistemological force of this program has nothing to do with the election.

 

Well, it does in once sense. Baier tells two intertwining stories in this report. The first is the story of the attack itself. Gritty war stuff. The second is the story of the way the Obama administration talked about it to the public. That has its own timeline.

 

The weird part is just how separate these stories are, even though they are about the same event. It's like they took place in two different realities. I don't know if you have ever used a remote control to watch two different TV shows, say a cop show and a cartoon, bouncing back and forth between them to avoid the commercials, but that is exactly what it felt like when I saw it just now.

 

In Baier's report, the Benghazi attack--qua act of war--has the same image as any normal attack in any of the recent wars. American election politics is not part of that world. The election has its own conceptual referent. One we see on TV every day with crowds and contentious talking heads.

 

There's an important crossover, though. Election politics is present in the attack image in one small sense. Imagine a war movie where there are soldiers in Army uniform carrying gear. As they are moving around through enemy territory, they complain about some unseen snafu military bureaucrat in Washington who is making their lives miserable with namby-pamby rules. Then they get on with the fighting.

 

 

If this report gets viewed widely, that is where Obama's spin machine is going to lose out big time. There is no way to spin Benghazi once people have clear images of what it really is. There is no way to spin the attack once people see a clear story about it they can understand, one that makes sense to them. And there is no way to spin the Obama Administration's own story of how it tried to manipulate the public images of this event by focusing on an anti-Islamic video as the cause.

 

I think the most devastating part will not be the weird spin about the video. It will be the shock of people having a strong election story with a vague or nonexistent image of Banghazi in their minds from the Obama spin machine, then suddenly seeing a very familiar war story presented to them that is totally outside that imagined reality. 

 

It will be the sudden newness in the narrative.

 

In fact, this is the same shock people had when they first saw Romney in the debate after weeks of only perceiving him as a monster from Obama attack ads and the liberal mainstream press (and even conservative press). They didn't see the archetype of evil, but instead a nice man. Gentle but firm. And genuinely concerned. How many thought at that moment, even those who disagree with Romney, how in hell can that be evil?

 

I'm talking gut level reaction, not philosophical abstraction.

 

It's a mental moment when people think woah! Wait a minute! This was supposed to be a whole lot different.

 

That's the importance and the impact of Baier's report. It's fascinating to see this effect happen inside yourself (if you have the same experience I did). Watch the video and pay attention to any newness of image shock you might feel. if it happens to you, it's actually pleasurable.

 

 

I don't think Obama's spin machine can recover from this one. What's worse, it happened at one hell of a bad time for him. For those like me who want to see him out of office, let's hope it happened soon enough to trigger a landslide defeat.

 

Michael

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To me the main question left partially open between Fox News and Glenn Beck reporting are the details of the gun running operation from Libya to Syria.

Are the guns/weapons purposefully being given to the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda with Obama's help or is the administration just looking the other way?

Was the attack fallout from that gun running operation? al Qaeda not happy with their share of the weapons or attempts to keep them from shoulder fired anti-aircraft

missiles?

3 levels of problems: al Qaeda growing in strength because of failed policy, coverup and misinformation about what happened, gun running to al Qaeda and the

Mulism Brotherhood under our watch with assistance from our Turkish allies.

3 rotten apples on that slot machine.

Dennis

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Money quote for us objectivists...at 32:38...

"The problem is that we are avoiding reality and bad things happen when we avoid reality and we have just seen that."

Correct.

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Good grief. can these folks possibly be this ignorant?

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They spend their time in social media-land and teach each other all they know--about . . . ?

At least they're getting educated. I wonder what they study? I guess they'll learn accounting when it's time to service their student debts.

I didn't know there was an "Ohio University." Ohio State University is in Columbus.

--Brant

~flush~ ~flush~ ~flush~ (Damn!--it didn't help!)

edit: OH U is in Athens OH.

Edited by Brant Gaede
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Money quote...

Adam,

For a powerful money quote election-wise, I caught the following (at 40:25). I was going to include it in my post, but I forgot as I was writing it.

This should become a bumper-sticker or something. Maybe right under the phrase, "From the offensive video I saw:" or maybe "Obama's America" or something along those lines.

The Banghazi attack staggered America. We now have another reason to mourn on 9-11.

Obama managed to make our 9-11 legacy worse by playing ideological games with terrorists and hoping they would play nice. His approach literally raised the death count.

Michael

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Money quote...

Adam,

For a powerful money quote election-wise, I caught the following (at 40:25). I was going to include it in my post, but I forgot as I was writing it.

This should become a bumper-sticker or something. Maybe right under the phrase, "From the offensive video I saw:" or maybe "Obama's America" or something along those lines.

The Banghazi attack staggered America. We now have another reason to mourn on 9-11.

Obama managed to make our 9-11 legacy worse by playing ideological games with terrorists and hoping they would play nice. His approach literally raised the death count.

Michael

Michael:

Yes. I liked that statement also. Check out what the NY Times reported this afternoon in the thread I started the other day...

The October Surprise That Proves O'bama Is As Dangero...

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Money quote...

Adam,

For a powerful money quote election-wise, I caught the following (at 40:25). I was going to include it in my post, but I forgot as I was writing it.

This should become a bumper-sticker or something. Maybe right under the phrase, "From the offensive video I saw:" or maybe "Obama's America" or something along those lines.

The Banghazi attack staggered America. We now have another reason to mourn on 9-11.

Obama managed to make our 9-11 legacy worse by playing ideological games with terrorists and hoping they would play nice. His approach literally raised the death count.

Michael

Michael:

Yes. I liked that statement also. Check out what the NY Times reported this afternoon in the thread I started the other day...

The October Surprise That Proves O'bama Is As Dangero...

It would seem there is not enough time for the story to get out before the Monday debate - if Obama brings it up virtually

no one will have heard about it yet so it would sound like pulling BS out of the air.

In any case everyone is used to Iranian and N. Korean stalling tactics - they are meaningless.

Dennis

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Question for both of you...

Do you think that this "revelation" by the NY Times and the indication that these "secret" talks have been going on since the beginning of his administration would help his re-election bid, or, hurt it?

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Question for both of you...

Do you think that this "revelation" by the NY Times and the indication that these "secret" talks have been going on since the beginning of his administration would help his re-election bid, or, hurt it?

I don't think it will have any effect - too little too late and not enough time for the word to get out in any useful detail.

Dennis

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Adam,

I think it's noise to try to take the focus off the Libyan scandal.

But Romney is disciplined and focused. I expect him to go firmly but gently in for the Libyan issue kill on Monday night. And I think Obama is going to embarrass himself trying to trip Romney up with tangents.

Notice that everything Romney has won in this election--right from the very beginning all the way up to now--has been by inches. Not a single Hail Mary pass.

That's what Obama is trying because that's his only chance. I've read that even Gloria Allred is being hauled out with something or the other. That's another Hail Mary. But I expect it to flop and fizzle. It's true that she managed to take out some politicians, but they were nowhere near as vetted as Romney. They were relative newcomers to the nasty side of politics. Whatever she's got will most likely roll off Romney's back like water off a duck.

I fully expect to see Romney finish off Obama's reelection chances according to the same pattern he has done so far.

Inches.

Ground game.

Michael

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Adam,

I think it's noise to try to take the focus off the Libyan scandal.

But Romney is disciplined and focused. I expect him to go firmly but gently in for the Libyan issue kill on Monday night. And I think Obama is going to embarrass himself trying to trip Romney up with tangents.

Notice that everything Romney has won in this election--right from the very beginning all the way up to now--has been by inches. Not a single Hail Mary pass.

That's what Obama is trying because that's his only chance. I've read that even Gloria Allred is being hauled out with something or the other. That's another Hail Mary. But I expect it to flop and fizzle. It's true that she managed to take out some politicians, but they were nowhere near as vetted as Romney. They were relative newcomers to the nasty side of politics. Whatever she's got will most likely roll off Romney's back like water off a duck.

I fully expect to see Romney finish off Obama's reelection chances according to the same pattern he has done so far.

Inches.

Ground game.

Michael

Another big fear is a Hail Mary voter fraud move of some kind. Ohio would be the likely target since it has a history of voter fraud and is

a key swing state. A reason why Glenn Beck has been saying that Romney must win by at least 2% or they will steal the election through

criminal means - like Franken in Minnesota and dozens of other races in the last few decades.

Dennis

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Biden, Hillary Clinton, Panetta and O'bama should be indicted if this is true.

"Retired CIA officer Gary Berntsen believes help could have come much sooner. He commanded CIA counter-terrorism missions targeting Osama bin Laden and led the team that responded after bombings of the U.S. Embassy in East Africa.

'You find a way to make this happen,' Berntsen says. 'There isn't a plan for every single engagement. Sometimes you have to be able to make adjustments. They made zero adjustments in this. They stood and they watched and our people died.'"

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-33816_162-57536611/could-u.s-military-have-helped-during-libya-attack/

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Biden, Hillary Clinton, Panetta and O'bama should be indicted if this is true.

"Retired CIA officer Gary Berntsen believes help could have come much sooner. He commanded CIA counter-terrorism missions targeting Osama bin Laden and led the team that responded after bombings of the U.S. Embassy in East Africa.

'You find a way to make this happen,' Berntsen says. 'There isn't a plan for every single engagement. Sometimes you have to be able to make adjustments. They made zero adjustments in this. They stood and they watched and our people died.'"

http://www.cbsnews.c...g-libya-attack/

If Glenn Beck's view is correct - that the attack was about gun running deals gone bad - the administration may not have wanted the

ambassador to survive the attack. He was the go between man getting arms from Libya to Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and

al Qaeda fighters. Turkey provided the transport. The Turkish representative left just before the attack started.

The fact that they left all the papertrail of records there for weeks to let the locals pick through it indicates they didn't want the human

or papertrail to survive.

Expendable loose ends of a failed policy.

Dennis

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I think it's noise to try to take the focus off the Libyan scandal.

There was some support for your view this morning when Chis Wallace of

Fox News Sunday attempted to float it in support of Obama. Wallace has

outted himself as a leftist supporter when he was recently discovered to

party during off duty hours with the extreme leftist George Clooney.

Like father like son I guess.

Dennis

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Chris Wallace is definitely an inside-the-Beltway kind of guy.

But I see no evidence that he supports Barack Obama.

The New York Times story about the deal-cutting with Iran suggested that the ruling Ayatollahs don't want to finalize a deal till after the election. If that is the case, none of it is going to help Obama's prospects on November 6.

Robert Campbell

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Although Baier slightly slanted the report toward the election (but only slightly), the main epistemological force of this program has nothing to do with the election.

Well, it does in once sense. Baier tells two intertwining stories in this report. The first is the story of the attack itself. Gritty war stuff. The second is the story of the way the Obama administration talked about it to the public. That has its own timeline.

The weird part is just how separate these stories are, even though they are about the same event. It's like they took place in two different realities. I don't know if you have ever used a remote control to watch two different TV shows, say a cop show and a cartoon, bouncing back and forth between them to avoid the commercials, but that is exactly what it felt like when I saw it just now.

Michael,

I don't watch many 1-hour specials on Fox News. Many are overhyped and short on substance.

This one was the real deal.

I don't see how anyone can see the grounds of the now-ruined consulate in Benghazi, or the shots of the surrounding neighborhood, and think for one minute that it was the sort of place where a street riot would just brew up.

Robert Campbell

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Dennis,

Chris Wallace is a leftie because he has a famous friend who is a leftie?

That's what you've got?

Guilt by association?

Dayaamm!

Are you into propaganda epistemology for deriving normative values?

I use a different method.

Michael

I have been watching Chris Wallace like a cockroach egg under a microscope since he came to Fox News. He lets his leftist bias slip out once in a while. I view him as the next

Walter Chronkite or Dan Rather - go for the long haul with the appearance of unbiased reporting waiting for the big kill where he can make a difference for the progressive socialists.

I trust him exactly zero.

Dennis

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He's not going very far from where he is. Compared to his father he comes up short in brains, looks and the ability to project honesty. The name that helped him into the business is the name that limits him.

--Brant

an actor can also be helped by his name, but once in the door it's sink or swim for people are counting money project to project

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He's not going very far from where he is. Compared to his father he comes up short in brains, looks and the ability to project honesty. The name that helped him into the business is the name that limits him.

--Brant

an actor can also be helped by his name, but once in the door it's sink or swim for people are counting money project to project

I am hoping they get a new host - I am getting tired of fast forwarding through half or more of every show.

Dennis

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