Lack of intelligence community

JD Barleycorn's Avatar
You're drooling WTF. Try to metabolize the alcohol before posting. Oh, you're wrong as well.

I didn't see anyone say anything about war with Iran except you (straw man alert!). International politics is closer to playing poker than chess. In chess you know all the options available to your opponet and you can try to counter program. In poker you need to make your opponent believe what you want him to believe. Iran has to believe that this country is willing to go to war to prevent them from getting a weapon. We do that with words and deeds. The time for deeds has past (to clarify for WTF, deeds is a past demonstration of your resolve) so Obama has put us in a position where we may have to go to war because that will be the first demonstration of our resolve. Unfortuneately, I don't think he has it in him but that problem will be resolved in about five months. We could dismantle a lot of Iran's military with little risk to our men and women in uniform. The real question, which you have been avoiding, is do we want Iran to have nukes and what are we willing to do to prevent that.
Guest123018-4's Avatar
Nobody said a thing about gong to war with Iran.
This thread is about the out and out lying and manipulation by the administration and them thinking they can get away with it without being exposed for what they are.

I am not faulting the intelligence community, I am faulting our so called leaders for the lying manipulations and trying to play it both ways.

I really don't giver a flying fuck about Iran or Libya, but I do give a flying fuck about the insult to the intelligence of the American people.
But then again, Biden was basically speaking to their supporters who will buy this sort of shit ande thus the swallowing by the left of their crap.
LexusLover's Avatar
Only the ignorant believe that Iran will nuke Israel should they obtain nukes. Originally Posted by WTF
Unfortunately, shortly after it happens you won't be posting so no one can call you out on your "prediction" that "Iran will not nuke Israel should they obtain nukes."

I guess that is why Obaminable killed the European missile defense system ...

.. not necessary, because Iran will not use its nukes after Iran "obtains" them.

Or was it that Iran was going to use them on Europe and not Israel in the first place, and your "intelligence" is based on the same sources that concluded that additional security was not needed for the guys in Libya so they were brought home and less than a handful were left behind to keep the Ambassador company while the non-existent terrorists murdered him, then them, or was it them first and him last, all at the same time, or .... (waiting for the FBI report),
I B Hankering's Avatar
It is called getting reelected. Jimmy Carter did as you say and was not reelected.

Kinda hard to fix the last thirty years of GOP fuck ups if you are not reelected.

More Americians die of snake bites in this country than were killed in Benghazi. Dying is part of life. Nobody was over there aganist their will. While tragic, it is nothing more that a political football at this point. Neither side cares about the dead like they pretend, they care about their side winning the election. If not , this would not be front and center. Originally Posted by WTF
Odumbo fucked up in Egypt the same way Carter fucked up in Iran. Odumbo fucked up in Benghazi the same way Carter fucked up in Tehran.

BTW, Argo is a decent flick though the ending sequence is largely fiction.


Is it that the intelligence community is so inept that they could not anticipate the actions of terrorists on 9/11 in Libya but know enough about Iran that we should feel just as safe as our ambassador that was killed by terrorists?
. Originally Posted by The2Dogs
The nuclear issue in Iran is easily studied and there's a great deal of resources being applied to it for a very long time. It's improbable that there could be an intelligence failure there.

In Libya however there's a highly fluid situation going on, changing every day, with new characters drifting in and out.

And to me it's unimportant as to whether the assaults were planned by "terrorists" or not, or how premeditated it may or may not have been. The outcome is the same, and it was not preventable under any circumstance save withdrawing everybody from there, which is not what anyone wanted.

There have been many dangerous situations for embassy staffs in many places over time, and sometimes they are targeted and there are casualties. When it happened in Beirut, Saigon, Kenya and other places no one pointed fingers then. It's stupid to blame a President for such acts.
I B Hankering's Avatar
The nuclear issue in Iran is easily studied and there's a great deal of resources being applied to it for a very long time. It's improbable that there could be an intelligence failure there.

In Libya however there's a highly fluid situation going on, changing every day, with new characters drifting in and out.

And to me it's unimportant as to whether the assaults were planned by "terrorists" or not, or how premeditated it may or may not have been. The outcome is the same, and it was not preventable under any circumstance save withdrawing everybody from there, which is not what anyone wanted.

There have been many dangerous situations for embassy staffs in many places over time, and sometimes they are targeted and there are casualties. When it happened in Beirut, Saigon, Kenya and other places no one pointed fingers then. It's stupid to blame a President for such acts. Originally Posted by theaustinescorts
Once again your memory and interpretation of history diverges from fact, TAE. There was an over abundance of finger pointing for Beirut and Saigon. Kenya was rightly different.

Furthermore, a squad of armed Marines would have devastated the 50 or so individuals in the armed rabble that attacked the consulate in Benghazi.
I B Hankering's Avatar
The nuclear issue in Iran is easily studied and there's a great deal of resources being applied to it for a very long time. It's improbable that there could be an intelligence failure there.

In Libya however there's a highly fluid situation going on, changing every day, with new characters drifting in and out.

And to me it's unimportant as to whether the assaults were planned by "terrorists" or not, or how premeditated it may or may not have been. The outcome is the same, and it was not preventable under any circumstance save withdrawing everybody from there, which is not what anyone wanted.

There have been many dangerous situations for embassy staffs in many places over time, and sometimes they are targeted and there are casualties. When it happened in Beirut, Saigon, Kenya and other places no one pointed fingers then. It's stupid to blame a President for such acts. Originally Posted by theaustinescorts
Once again your memory and interpretation of history diverges from fact, TAE. There was an over abundance of finger pointing for Beirut and Saigon. Kenya was rightly different.

Furthermore, a squad of armed Marines would have devastated the 50 or so individuals in the armed rabble that attacked the consulate in Benghazi. Odumbo, et al, rightly deserve the blame for Benghazi and their attempts to hide the facts from the American public only serves to under score the degree of their culpability.
After the bombings in Saigon and Beirut there was nothing like what's going on here. To blame the White House or the Ambassador to the UN and claim "dereliction" because an embassy is attacked is more than over-reaching.

As for how many Marines could have prevented this or that, remember if it was a planned event they would have merely changed it to account for the new defenses anyway.

The only way to really prevent such attacks is to leave, and no one wanted that.

To me this raises a more serious question which is how lame it is to try to blame Obama for each and every thing that happens.

Obama is responsible for so many terrible things that it weakens the arguments against him when phoney ones are used.

Undecided people will never blame him because someone attacks an embassy, but these criticisms make his detractors look crazy.
I B Hankering's Avatar
After the bombings in Saigon and Beirut there was nothing like what's going on here. To blame the White House or the Ambassador to the UN and claim "dereliction" because an embassy is attacked is more than over-reaching.

As for how many Marines could have prevented this or that, remember if it was a planned event they would have merely changed it to account for the new defenses anyway.

The only way to really prevent such attacks is to leave, and no one wanted that.

To me this raises a more serious question which is how lame it is to try to blame Obama for each and every thing that happens.

Obama is responsible for so many terrible things that it weakens the arguments against him when phoney ones are used.

Undecided people will never blame him because someone attacks an embassy, but these criticisms make his detractors look crazy. Originally Posted by theaustinescorts
You must have been living on Mars, TAE. People burnt effigies of LBJ on a very regular basis, and he was forced out of the presidential race by the violence in the streets. And Reagan is still being hammered for Beirut, ask CBJ7.
You must have been living on Mars, TAE. People burnt effigies of LBJ on a very regular basis, and he was forced out of the presidential race by the violence in the streets. And Reagan is still being hammered for Beirut, ask CBJ7. Originally Posted by I B Hankering
I must beg to differ.

LBJ wasn't forced out by "violence on the streets," as the violence on the streets didn't begin until after he announced he wasn't running, which was all the way back in like April or May of 1968 after McCarthy made a strong showing in the New Hampshire primary.

The very first campus unrest was at the University of Wisconsin in like October of 1967, very shortly before LBJ withdrew.

The bulk of the real unrest was in the summer of 1968 and after, particularly in 1970 when the US invaded Cambodia, and that's when the killings happended at Kent State in Ohio.

So I think you maybe oughtta get your history right Dude.
I B Hankering's Avatar
I must beg to differ.

LBJ wasn't forced out by "violence on the streets," as the violence on the streets didn't begin until after he announced he wasn't running, which was all the way back in like April or May of 1968 after McCarthy made a strong showing in the New Hampshire primary.

The very first campus unrest was at the University of Wisconsin in like October of 1967, very shortly before LBJ withdrew.

The bulk of the real unrest was in the summer of 1968 and after, particularly in 1970 when the US invaded Cambodia, and that's when the killings happended at Kent State in Ohio.

So I think you maybe oughtta get your history right Dude. Originally Posted by theaustinescorts
It's your history that is incorrect, TAE.

Incidents of Civil Disturbance:

  • 1962
  • June. Tom Hayden writes the Port Huron Statement for the anti-communist Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
    1964
  • March. A conference at Yale plans demonstrations on May 2.
  • April 25. The National Guardian published a pledge of draft resistance by some of these organizers.
  • May 2. Hundreds of students demonstrate on New York's Times Square and from there went to the United Nations. 700 marched in San Francisco. Smaller demonstrations take place in Boston, Madison, Wisconsin and Seattle. These protests were organized by the Progressive Labor Party, with help from the Young Socialist Alliance. The May 2nd Movement was the PLP's youth affiliate.
  • May 12. Twelve young men in New York publicly burn their draft cards to protest the war—the first such act of war resistance.
  • Fall. Free Speech Movement at the University of California at Berkeley defends the right of students to carry out political organizing on campus. Founder: Mario Savio.
    1965
  • February–March. Protests at Kansas University, organized by the Student Peace Union.[4]
  • March 24. First SDS organized teach-in, at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. 3,000 students attend and the idea spreads fast.
  • March. Berkeley, California: Jerry Rubin and Stephen Smale's Vietnam Day Committee (VDC) organize a huge protest of 100,000.
  • April 17. The SDS-organized March Against the Vietnam War onto Washington, D.C. was the largest anti-war demonstration in the USA to date with 15-20,000 people attending. Paul Potter demands a radical change of society.
  • May 5. Several hundred people carrying a black coffin marched to the Berkeley, California, draft board, and 40 men burned their draft cards.
  • May 21–23. Vietnam Day Committee organized large teach-in at UC Berkeley. 10-30,000 attend.
  • May 22. The Berkeley draft board was visited again, with 19 men burning their cards. President Lyndon B. Johnson was hung in effigy.
  • June 27. End Your Silence, an open letter in the New York Times by the group Artists and Writers Protest against the War in Vietnam.
  • July. The Vietnam Day Committee organized militant protest in Oakland, California ends in inglorious debacle, when the organizers end the march from Oakland to Berkeley to avoid a confrontation with police.
  • July 30. A man from the Catholic Worker Movement is photographed burning his draft card on Whitehall Street in Manhattan in front of the Armed Forces Induction Center. His photograph appears in Life magazine in August.
  • October 15. David J. Miller burned his draft card at a rally held near the Armed Forces Induction Center on Whitehall Street in Manhattan. The 24-year-old pacifist, member of the Catholic Worker Movement, became the first man arrested and convicted under the 1965 amendment to the 1948 Selective Service Act.
  • October 15–16.
  • October 20. Stephen Lynn Smith, a student at the University of Iowa, spoke to a rally at the Memorial Union in Iowa City, Iowa, and burned his draft card. He was arrested, found guilty and put on three years of probation.
  • October 30. Pro-Vietnam War march in New York City with 25,000.
  • November 6. Thomas C. Cornell, Marc Paul Edelman and Roy Lisker burned their draft cards at a public rally organized by the Committee for Non-Violent Action in Union Square, New York City.
  • November 27. SANE-sponsored March on Washington in 1965. 15- 20,000 demonstrators.
    1966
  • From September 1965 to January 1966, 170,000 men had been drafted and another 180,000 enlisted. By January, 2,000,000 men had secured college deferments.
  • March 25–26. Second Days of International Protest. Organized by the National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam, led by SANE, Women Strike for Peace, the Committee for Nonviolent Action and the SDS: 20,000 to 25,000 in New York alone, demonstrations also in Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, Detroit, San Francisco, Oklahoma City. Abroad, in Ottawa, London, Oslo, Stockholm, Lyon, and Tokyo.
  • March 31. David Paul O'Brien and three companions burned their draft cards on the steps of the South Boston Courthouse. The case was tried by the Supreme Court as United States v. O'Brien.
  • Spring. Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam founded.
  • May 15. March Against the Vietnam War, led by SANE and Women Strike for Peace, with 8-10,000 taking part.
  • Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay) refused to go to war, famously stating that he had "got nothing against no Viet Cong" and that "no Viet Cong ever called me nigger." According to a writer for Sports Illustrated, the governor of Illinois called Ali "disgusting" and the governor of Maine said that Ali "should be held in utter contempt by every patriotic American." In 1967 he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but was released on appeal.
  • July. First national antiwar Mobilization Committee established.
  • November 7. Protests against Robert McNamara at Harvard University.
  • Late December. Student Mobilization Committee formed.
    1967
  • January 29-February 5. Angry Arts Week, by the Artists Protest group.
  • April 15. At Sheep Meadow, Central Park, New York City, some 60 young men including a few students from Cornell University came together to burn their draft cards in a Maxwell House coffee can. More join them, including uniformed Green Beret Army Reservist Gary Rader. As many as 158 cards are burned.
  • April 15. Spring Mobe protests in New York City (300,000) and in San Francisco. Founded in November 1966 as the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Its National director was Reverend James L. Bevel.
  • May 20–21. 700 activists at the Spring Mobilization Conference, Washington, D.C. . A National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (the Mobe) is created.
  • June 1. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War formed. Veteran Jan Barry Crumb participated in a protest on April 7 called the "Fifth Avenue Peace Parade" in New York City. On May 30 Crumb and ten like-minded men attended a peace demonstration in Washington, D.C.
  • June 23. The Bond, the first G.I. underground paper established.
  • In the summer of 1967, Neil Armstrong and various other NASA officials began a tour of South America to raise awareness for space travel. According to First Man, a biography of Armstrong's life, during the tour, several South American college students protested the astronaut, and shouted such phrases as "Murderers get out of Vietnam!" and other anti-Vietnam War messages.
  • October 16. A day of widespread war protest organized by The Mobe in 30 cities across the U.S., with some 1,400 draft cards burned.
  • October 20. Resist leaders present draft cards to the Department of Justice, Washington, D.C. .
  • October 21–23. National Mobe organized The March on the Pentagon to Confront the War Makers. 100,000 are at the Lincoln Memorial on the D.C. Mall, 35,000 (or up to 50,000?) go on to the Pentagon, some to engage in acts of civil disobedience. Norman Mailer's The Armies of the Night describes the event.
  • December 4. National draft-card turn-in. At San Francisco's Federal Building, some 500 protesters witnessed 88 draft cards collected and burned.
  • December 4–8. Stop the Draft Week demonstrations in New York. 585 arrested, amongst them Benjamin Spock.
    1968
  • January 15. Jeannette Rankin leads a demonstration of thousands of women in Washington, D.C..
  • April 3. National draft-card turn-in. About 1,000 draft cards were turned in. In Boston, 15,000 protesters watched 235 men turn in their draft cards
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest...he_Vietnam_War


LBJ did not seek re-election because the Vietnam War -- the Saigon embassy attack - Tet, etc., -- made him unpopular. He announced he would not run on March 31, 1968, AFTER the Saigon fiasco and while the Tet Offensive was still underway.
JD Barleycorn's Avatar
Okay Austin let me break it down for you. LBJ bowed out in March of 1968 after Eugene McCarthy made a strong showing in New Hampshire. In 1968 democrats (and republicans) did not choose the candidates with primaries. Primaries were a beauty contest to show the elite that you had popular support. Of the protestors the Yippies were created four months BEFORE LBJ dropped out. Harder to pin down the hippies but I count from the Summer of Love in 1967 around San Fransisco. The SDS was regenerating in the early 1960s. So there were many protests before LBJ dropped out but was that the reason? Only 13 states held primaries in 1968 for the democrats and LBJ won in New Hampshire but it was a narrow win. As the nominee apparent Johnson should have did much better than 50%. He saw the handwriting on the wall. The democratic party was divided having six candidates with a president running for reelection. LBJ got out because he could not win because of the war in Vietnam, his personal unpopularity, and increasing violence threatened by protestors like Abbie Hoffman.

Wow, you were writing while I was writing. Where did you get your paste material?
CuteOldGuy's Avatar
The nuclear issue in Iran is easily studied and there's a great deal of resources being applied to it for a very long time. It's improbable that there could be an intelligence failure there.

In Libya however there's a highly fluid situation going on, changing every day, with new characters drifting in and out.

And to me it's unimportant as to whether the assaults were planned by "terrorists" or not, or how premeditated it may or may not have been. The outcome is the same, and it was not preventable under any circumstance save withdrawing everybody from there, which is not what anyone wanted.

There have been many dangerous situations for embassy staffs in many places over time, and sometimes they are targeted and there are casualties. When it happened in Beirut, Saigon, Kenya and other places no one pointed fingers then. It's stupid to blame a President for such acts. Originally Posted by theaustinescorts
You may be right about blaming the President for such acts. But how do you explain the weeks of lies about the attacks, all emanating from the White House?

Obama may not have been able to thwart the attacks, but he was the one who instigated the lies.