Tom Toles for November 16, 2012

Very true. Saying both worked for the O administration last time.

I really, really do feel sorry for John, but “Gay-ham”, he’s not deteriorating, just what he’s always been.

Republicans never care when it’s under their watch. Didn’t you get the memo?

When McCain first announced his candidacy I thought he might be a worthy opponent. Then he began to Romney on me and he’s gone down hill ever since. It is just sad to see that happen to any man. Graham…eeech.

Three hundred American and French servicemen in Beirut were killed in an attack by Hezbollah, and while the president vowed that we would not be intimidated or abandon our mission, our troops would not be driven out, etc., all American forces were out of the country in 4 months, and all other international forces in 2 month more. The responsibility was never pinned on anyone in particular, no one was “brought to justice.” The president “accepted full responsibility” for what happened, but there were no consequences for him. Another president ignored repeated warnings of impending attack until 3000 Americans were killed by Al Qaeda terrorists. Even assuming that we were unprepared in Libya, and reacted too slowly, etc., is there nothing strange in people who gave Reagan a pass in 1983, and Bush a pass in 2001, to damn Obama in 2012 for a tragedy that happened on his watch? Five U.S. ambassadors were killed between 1968 and 1979. Scores of foreign service officers have died in the line of duty, very many in the last ten or fifteen years. Meanwhile, McCain and another senator skipped the president’s briefing on Benghazi so that they would not miss the talk shows where they went to complain that they were not being given enough information about the events there. The same folks who voted to reduce the budget for diplomatic security. Not every tragedy, not every screw-up, is a scandal. And politicians are not bound by oath to treat them as such: only anti-administration (whichever administrator) pundits are paid to be scandalmongers. Legislators are paid for a different job. Should they get at the truth, certainly. But their efforts should be exactly the same no matter who is in the White House. Can anyone really believe that they guys would have acted this way if these events had taken place in 2008?

Either way, send a drone with Hellfires to say hello.

McCain needs to take care of his own poor state and stop frothing at the mouth. Graham just needs to shut-up.

Seven Americans killed by hostile fire so far this month. In Afghanistan. Nov. 2012. Any mention of them by McCain or Graham?http://icasualties.org/OEF/Fatalities.aspx

As several posters pointed out above, deaths of diplomats have occurred under multiple administrations of all partisan stripes. Selective outrage at just one party or administration is hypocritical in the extreme, so don’t expect sympathy when that is what you display.

When McCain picked Palin that showed that he is incompetent to make decisions.

Just serendipity — party out of power criticizing anything with traction.

Tigger, You realize that money to upgrade security was turned down by the Republican House?

Plus, we’ve got people attacking Susan Rice for telling what she had been told was the truth (and it wasn’t that it “wasn’t a terrorist attack,” that’s a Fox News fiction. She said that it appeared that a video protest was used as cover for an organized attack, and she’s been misquoted consistently). Yet McCain put Sarah Palin, a true proud ignoramus who asserted falsehoods almost every day, in the vice president’s chair; and they both supported Condaleeza Rice for Sec of State though she was already known to have passed along bad information on WMDs that actually had consequences. There’s no there there. The Republicans are going to lose this one. They need to start coming back to the fact-based world, and this is a really bad sign that it’s not happening yet.

Drink. He said “Free Stuff”.

ne7minder55: You also might mention the 330 million dollars the Republican House struck from the state department’s consular security budget. If there is a conspiracy (and I doubt there is), this might be a good place to start looking.

they had their impeachment paperwork drawn up as soon as they realized obama won the election. like Mad Libs (for those of you who remember mad magazine). they’re just looking to fill in the blanks on anything they can do to keep obama for getting credit for anything. you’d think they would have learned. or at least you’d think they’d be patriotic enough to put the country first with a ‘laser like focus on jobs’.

then you look and see how they refused federal money for infrastructure projects in order to keep unemployment in their states high.

hard to fathom the hate they hold for the united states.

I"m a Dem and and I don’t get a free pass on a damned thing. Get out of your mommie’s basement once in a while twinkie.

A report from CIA insiders stated they knew about the attack in the minute it began. They contacted local authorities who were supposed to be defending the embassy. Ten minutes later they gathered a small group, I think they had six people. They were on site within twenty five minutes of first notification. The forces attacking the consulate were too big and too well armed and after an attempt to move in from another direction failed, local troops showed up but were generally ineffective from the well armed locals.I am cynical enough to believe there are dozens of individual “units” of terrorists waiting for a the right moment to make an attack. Whether one person with a suicide bomb, or one thousand with rocket launchers and AK 47s, they wait and scheme scenarios where they can do damage to enemies. I no longer believe the attackers were mixed in with “movie demonstrators”, I do believe that those inside could have thought the initial attack to be part of the protests they would have learned of by then. Ambassador Stevens also had confidence in local protections, a tragic overestimation of their abilities. But if he did know of the protests he might not have given the threat the concern it needed in hindsight.One lesson to learn from Benghazi is to an attack may come in under a “cloud of smoke”. A natural disaster, a severe weather event, a political protest, can give a well prepared group a window of opportunity for which few can fully prepare. I am glad the hearings are ongoing. I hope folks have their concerns settled soon, and the lessons learned are quickly put into practice.Respectfully,C.

Doughfoot….I don’t recall the President in 2008 trying to cover up anything about 911….

Maybe I missed something, but I don’t see how this was a terrorist attack. When I think of a terrorist attack, I think of flying planes into office buildings, or throwing grenades into crowded nightclubs. This was an attack on an official US government building, which was evidently cover for a CIA operation. I’m not making excuses — I’m not saying it was justifiable — but just as a matter of trying to think clearly about these things, I don’t see that we should call it a terrorist attack. So what should we call it? What about “an attack on the US government and its personnel”?

Ambassador Stevens was well known for not asking for high security, which would only make him more visible. He preferred meeting one-on-one to get to know the players. Also, how was it that a “safe house” was attacked after the consulate? Sounds like an inside job there. I think our CIA is relying too much on cyber intercepts, and not enough on operatives. Libyans in general liked Stevens, and protested his killing.

Editors only do the owners’ bidding.

@trustedmechanic, just a clarification. under king baby bush they were not called "protest zones’, they were called “free speech zones”. how orwellian. I thought the entire USA was a free speech zone. everything else you said was precisely correct. the other term that really bothers me is ‘homeland security". sounds rather nazi-esque – homeland always reminds of ’der fatherland’.

Having had experience with “events” to include being overrun by an opposing force inside your perimeter, “sit” happens. Also, the run from one site in Benghazi to the “safe house” with 15 rigs says something more was going on, including the rescue and safe removal from Libya of some 30 staffers.

There are many things that CIA and other folks not only DON’T tell, but shouldn’t. There are things that blabbermouths like “Gay-ham” and others, like Issa, definitely should NOT be allowed to know! McCain has just become a sad disappointment, a shell, of a man I used to hold respect for. That is an “American tragedy”.

Thank you. For the rcord I’ve been SUPPORTING MYSELF since I turned sixteen. That was in 1970. Nobody ever handed me anything but a paycheck earned by my hard work. It can be done, and maybe good luck has looked over me. But I’m damned if I will take dittoisms spewed by marginally educated basement dwellers as anything but wasted atmosphere from this point forward. Ima, YOU ARE A MINORITY in this country. Careful who you bash!

the palestinians have lobbed over 800 rockets, willy nilly into israel over the last 6 months targeting civilians, and even no one in particular. How many missles and How long would we tolerate canada lobbing missles into detroit, or wyoming? Israels response has been highly targeted, and not at civilians. Hamas has a habit of using human shields, children work best, as you can hold dead children up for the newscameras to record. The palestinians target Israeli schoolbuses with children in them. whose side are you on?

No, cognitive dissonance is when you realize that you’ve been playing with your guitar out of tune. Or is that “dissonant cognition”?

Palestinians were told by the Arab countries to come, and they would be protected, and fought for, and they would get their homeland back. We are now going on three generations of refugees, with no apparent Arab regard for them as anything but pawns. Israel also bears the burden of recalcitrance. Whenever it seems there might be a breakthrough, or at least a softening of positions, there is another decree that more settlements will be built, in violation of UN resolutions. This keeps putting US in a bad place, as Israel is or only ally in the region. One has to question, however, whether an ally that consistently goes out of its way to provoke a situation is really an ally. And I am not talking about the killing of the Hamas defense minister. The defense minister of a declared enemy is a reasonable target.

@lonecat.

war is declared between state players (read that as nations), and is usually declared – one government against another by whatever political process they use.

attacks by non-state players are considered ‘terrorists’ because they are presumably not sponsored by a government under a declaration of war.

so, one nation can delcare war against another and then must play by the rules of war (geneva convention). these are well understood by those who prosecute wars.

when a non-state player – such as ‘islamic terrorists’ commit an act of violence against a nation – like 9-11 was here, they do not have to play by any rules. using 9-11 as an example, we don’t know who to declare war on as there was no nation that comitted the act (thats official, i think we should have declared war on saudi arabia, but they are our ‘friends’, so long as we support the royal family – much like we supported the shah of iran, or saddam huessein).

our solution was to declare a war on ‘terrorism’, which defies definition. terrorism is a tactic, and one can not proscecute a war against a tactic without massive redefinitions of international law. which is why bush then named ‘terorrists’, ‘enemy combatants’, which made attacks on them outside the rules of the geneva convention.

it’s also why palestine doesn’t really want to beome an official state. if they lob missles into israel as the terrorists they are, by international law, israel can’t really respond. once palestine is a state, there are legal reprecussions. Each current act of terrorism they commit against israel (each rocket shot at tel-aviv or jerusalem) would become and act of war and they probably don’t really want to be at war with israel.

^it’s not my definition, it’s an academic discussion.

can the fire-bombing of dresdin, the atomic-bombing of nagasaki be considered acts of terrorism? I think it depends on opinion (i picked those because they have been called that) and definition.

when it comes to war (between state actors), specific acts can be legal or illegal (peace is not the legal opposite of war). mustard gas, shooting surrenduring opponents are illegal acts in war and prosecutable, as it murdering refugees. inundating an invading force with refugees and surrendurees is a valid tactic in war.

so states can commit illegal acts during war AND in opinions those acts may or may not be considered terror.

offensive acts of violence comitted by NON-state actors are generally considered terrorism.

you will find this is the game with israel and palestine. the palestinians keep moving the line for statehood further away everytime they get close. Israel would LOVE a two-state solution, but if you read the PLO charter and Osama bin ladens fatwah, they explain quite clearly why the palestinians do NOT want a state.

right now when the palestinians fire rockets into israel, legally, israel can not respond because legally and technically gaza and israel are not in a state of war, so israel is, by definition, wrong. Once palestine is a state, then the firing of rockets against tel-aviv and jerusalem is by definition an act of war, and i don’t think any arab state wants to be at war with israel.

the arab world considers itself “ONE” singular entity, and they consider the borders drawn between the countries to be invalid and something they’re not interested in. Osama bin laden calls arab nations to be artificial and “paper statelts”. it was imposed on them by westerners and only exists on paper, not in reality.

it would do us westerners good, to understand what our subjugated countries concept is of the world. This would avoid future ‘shah of iran’, saddam hueseins (remember the pictures of bush hugging and kissing the shah?), ferdinand marcos, the saudi royal family, et alll.. all of whom have done the bidding of the western world, been handsomly rewarded for it, and subjugated and abused their populations.

the vernacular use is, all of the above. i specifically used nagasaki and not hiroshima as my example, as i wanted to make that distinction clear.

if you were living under the rain of hamas rockets, even if one didn’t hit you, you might not think they were ineffectual at striking terror in your heart.

and yes, i agree with you, targeting schoolchildren and party-goers is easy to call a terror attack. what do you call it when you place your offensive weapons (missle launchers) in the middle of an elementary school?

^i see why. if it wasn’t conducted by non-state actors (like hamas), then it is legitimate to call it a terror attack. By your definition, since it was AGAINST a government installation, it was NOT a terror attack.

that’s why the obama-haters turning blue over this makes no sense. it all depends on what the definition “is”. and didn’t the republicans have a failed impeachment over this kind of crap? makes you think maybe 9-11 wouldn’t have happened if they weren’t so distracted.