Obama Benghazi Statements Highlight Low Intel Briefing Attendance Record
During a Monday press conference, President Barack Obama dismissed concerns and congressional inquiries into the Benghazi attack that claimed the lives of four Americans including U.S. Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens.
"And suddenly three days ago this gets spun up as if there's something new to the story," Obama told reporters. "There's no there there."
Obama added: "Keep in mind by the way these so-called talking points that were prepared for Susan Rice, five, six days after the event occurred, pretty much matched the assessments that I was receiving at that time in my presidential daily briefing."
The careful parsing of Obama's statement indicates the Administration’s sensitivity to the president’s lackluster attendance record on daily intelligence briefings. As Breitbart News exclusively reported the day after the September 11, 2012 terrorist attack, Obama did not attend his intelligence briefings (known officially as the presidential daily brief, or PDB) for the week leading up to the attacks.
Indeed, the last time the White House calendar publicly confirmed Obama attending his presidential daily briefing was September 5th. (The White House did not provide an official public calendar for September 8-10.)
A report by the Government Accountability Institute found that in his first 1,225 days in office, Obama only attended 43.8% of his daily intelligence briefings.
     |
2012 RNC Benghazi Attack Ad That Never Aired
ABC News has uncovered a hard-hitting 2012 Republican National Committee (RNC) television ad attacking President Barack Obama for failed leadership on Benghazi that never ran after the Romney campaign objected over concerns the spot would detract from Romney’s focus on the economy.
The ad, which is based on Hillary Clinton’s famous “3 a.m. phone call” from her failed 2008 presidential run, features a ringing phone that goes unanswered as images of the flaming U.S. consulate in Libya appear on the screen.
“The Call Came…On September 12, 2012,” reads the screen. “Security Requests Denied. Four Americans Dead. And an Administration whose story is still changing. The Call Came.”
As Breitbart News reported exclusively, in the week leading up to the terrorist attacks that claimed the life of U.S. Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens and three members of his staff, the White House calendar showed no public record of Obama attending his daily intelligence briefings.
A study by the Government Accountability Institute revealed that Obama attended just 43.8% of his daily intelligence briefings in his first 1,225 days in office.
Click below to watch the video:
| |
Rice’s Failure in Rwanda Precludes Her from Becoming Secretary of State
That Susan Rice either willfully misled the American people on the Benghazi attacks, or lazily absorbed intelligence briefings without the least bit of personal involvement, is obvious. That she was covering for the Obama Administration in denying a terror attack just weeks before the election is speculative but likely. That she does not, therefore, deserve to become Secretary of State is arguable.
But what is not arguable is that she deserves to be denied the post for a different reason altogether: Rwanda. What emerges when taken together--Rice’s weak response in Benghazi, blaming the murder of four Americans on a stupid video, and her shameful lack of action in the Rwandan genocide--is a career diplomat of singular weakness, lacking the spine or muscularity to assert American moral influence in the world.
Rice was part of Bill Clinton’s National Security Team, whic in 1994 refused any involvement whatsoever in the Rwanda genocide leaving more than 800,000 men, women, and children to be hacked to death by machete in the fastest genocide ever recorded. The Clinton Administration had just been spooked by the "Black Hawk Down" incident in Somalia and wanted no further foreign entanglements. But the lengths to which they went to deny assistance to the Tutsis, with Rice being central to the decision-making process, will forever live in infamy.
But not content to insist on American non-involvement, the Clinton administration went a step further by obstructing the efforts of other nations to stop the slaughter. On April 21, 1994, the Canadian UN commandeer in Rwanda, General Romeo Dallaire, declared that he required only 5000 troops to bring the genocide to a rapid halt. In addition, a single bombing run against the RTLM Hutu Power radio transmitting antenna would have made it impossible for the Hutus to coordinate their genocide. But on the very same day, as Phillip Gourevitch explains in his definitive account of the Rwandan genocide, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We will Be Killed with Our Families, the Security Council, with the Clinton Administration’s blessing, ordered the UN force under Dallaire reduced by ninety percent to a skeleton staff of 270 troops who would powerlessly witness the slaughter to come. This, in turn, was influenced by Presidential Decision Directive 25, which "amounted to a checklist of reasons to avoid American involvement in UN peacekeeping missions," even though Dallaire did not seek American troops and the mission was not peacekeeping but genocide prevention. Indeed, Madeleine Albright, the American Ambassador to the UN, opposed leaving even this tiny UN force. She also pressured other countries "to duck, as the death toll leapt from thousands to tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands… the absolute low point in her career as a stateswoman."
In a 2001 article published in the Atlantic, Samantha Power, author of the Pulitzer-Prize winning A Problem of Hell and arguably the world’s foremost voice against genocide, and who currently serves on the National Security Council as an aide to President Obama, referred to Ambassador Susan Rice and her colleagues in the Clinton Administration as "Bystanders to Genocide." She quotes Rice in the 2002 book as saying, “If we use the word 'genocide' and are seen as doing nothing, what will be the effect on the November congressional election?"
Rice’s subordination of a human tragedy of epic proportions to partisan politic interests mirrors the current allegations of why she denied a terror attack in Benghazi. Rice joined Madeline Albright, Anthony Lake, and Warren Christopher as part of a coordinated effort not only to impede UN action to stop the Rwanda genocide, but to minimize public opposition to American inaction by removing words like "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" from government communications on the subject.
In the end, eight African nations, fed up with American inaction, agreed to send in an intervention force to stop the slaughter provided that the U.S. would lend them fifty armored personal carriers. The Clinton Administration decided it would lease rather than lend the armor for a price of $15 million. The carriers sat on a runway in Germany while the UN pleaded for a $5 million reduction as the genocidal inferno raged. The story only gets worse from there, with the Clinton State Department refusing to label the Rwanda horrors a genocide because of the 1948 Genocide Convention that would have obligated the United States to intervene--an effort in which Susan Rice participated.
I recently met Gourevitch at a press conference I hosted for the Rwandan Minister of Foreign Affairs, Louise Mushikiwabo, where she announced that Rwanda would be opening an Embassy in Israel in the next six months. It was an honor for me to encounter an American who had done so much to highlight the brutal slaughter of innocent Africans while the most powerful country on earth did nothing.
But why honor Susan Rice for the ignominy of doing nothing while six in Rwanda died every minute? Why elevate a woman so oblivious to American moral principles and the value of African life that she thought we out to sit this one out?
It was painful enough to watch Kofi Annan elevated to Secretary General even though as head of UN peace-keeping forces worldwide he sent two now infamous cables to Dallaire forbidding him from any efforts to stop the genocide (the cables are on display in the Kigali Genocide Memorial where I visited in the summer). But to elevate Rice would make a mockery of those who believe that “Never Again” ought to mean just what is says.
Better that Rice remain where she is--a UN Ambassador whose spinelessness perfectly matches the organization she’s in.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, whom Newsweek and The Washington Post calls “the most famous Rabbi in America,” is the international best-selling author of 29 books, and will shortly publish “The Fed-up Man of Faith: Challenging G-d in the Face of Tragedy and Suffering.” His website is www.shmuley.com. Follow him on Twitter @RabbiShmuley.
Romney’s Foreign Policy Approval Skyrocketing
In the last several weeks, Mitt Romney’s foreign policy poll numbers have skyrocketed.
If Mr. Romney sustains his present momentum and surges to a presidential victory next Tuesday, campaign historians and election chroniclers will laser in on the moment when he passed the all-important “commander-in-chief" threshold and solidified his foreign policy bona fides.
From September to October, Pew found that Romney scored a 15-point gain on foreign policy issues. Romney’s foreign policy surge has been so dramatic that on Wednesday the New York Times sought to slow his momentum by blurring President Barack Obama's and Mr. Romney's positions in an article titled “Two Candidates, One Foreign Policy.”
What caused such a drastic shift, especially against a sitting president who presided over the killing of Osama bin Laden?
At least two events dramatically altered Mr. Romney’s foreign policy trajectory.
On September 10th, Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen set off a firestorm of controversy with the publication of an article titled, “Why is Obama Skipping More Than Half of His Daily Intelligence Meetings?” The article cited a simple three-page study conducted by the Government Accountability Institute that found that Mr. Obama had attended just 43.8% of his daily intelligence briefings (officially known as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB). The same day, when MSNBC’s Chuck Todd asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney about the report, Mr. Carney blasted the Government Accountability Institute’s finding, calling it “hilarious.” Mr. Carney added: “This president is very much steeped in the details of national security issues.” Furthermore, he explained, the president gets the briefing in writing, often on his iPad.
The very next day, with legitimate questions about Mr. Obama’s spotty PDB attendance record swirling in the mainstream media, on September 11th, the U.S. embassy in Cairo was attacked and the Al Qaeda flag was raised on American soil. Later in the day, the U.S. consulate building in Benghazi came under terrorist attack, and U.S. Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were murdered. Stevens' corpse was dragged through the streets amid cheering crowds.
On September 12th Breitbart News ran an exclusive report revealing that the White House calendar showed that Mr. Obama had not attended his daily intelligence briefings the entire week leading up to the Benghazi attack.
Now, with documents revealing that the consulate in Benghazi had warned the White House they had “no police support,” adding to a growing list of known security concerns, the New York Times is reporting that just 38% of voters approve of “the administration’s handling of the attacks on the consulate in Libya.”
Whether Mr. Romney can carry his present foreign policy momentum through the weekend and into Election Day remains to be seen. If he does, having closed a 15-point gap on foreign policy issues in such a short span of time will prove to have been a critical component in paving the path to victory.
Romney’s Foreign Policy Approval Skyrocketing
In the last several weeks, Mitt Romney’s foreign policy poll numbers have skyrocketed.
If Mr. Romney sustains his present momentum and surges to a presidential victory next Tuesday, campaign historians and election chroniclers will laser in on the moment when he passed the all-important “commander-in-chief" threshold and solidified his foreign policy bona fides.
From September to October, Pew found that Romney scored a 15-point gain on foreign policy issues. Romney’s foreign policy surge has been so dramatic that on Wednesday the New York Times sought to slow his momentum by blurring President Barack Obama's and Mr. Romney's positions in an article titled “Two Candidates, One Foreign Policy.”
What caused such a drastic shift, especially against a sitting president who presided over the killing of Osama bin Laden?
At least two events dramatically altered Mr. Romney’s foreign policy trajectory.
On September 10th, Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen set off a firestorm of controversy with the publication of an article titled, “Why is Obama Skipping More Than Half of His Daily Intelligence Meetings?” The article cited a simple three-page study conducted by the Government Accountability Institute that found that Mr. Obama had attended just 43.8% of his daily intelligence briefings (officially known as the Presidential Daily Brief, or PDB). The same day, when MSNBC’s Chuck Todd asked White House Press Secretary Jay Carney about the report, Mr. Carney blasted the Government Accountability Institute’s finding, calling it “hilarious.” Mr. Carney added: “This president is very much steeped in the details of national security issues.” Furthermore, he explained, the president gets the briefing in writing, often on his iPad.
The very next day, with legitimate questions about Mr. Obama’s spotty PDB attendance record swirling in the mainstream media, on September 11th, the U.S. embassy in Cairo was attacked and the Al Qaeda flag was raised on American soil. Later in the day, the U.S. consulate building in Benghazi came under terrorist attack, and U.S. Libyan Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were murdered. Stevens' corpse was dragged through the streets amid cheering crowds.
On September 12th Breitbart News ran an exclusive report revealing that the White House calendar showed that Mr. Obama had not attended his daily intelligence briefings the entire week leading up to the Benghazi attack.
Now, with documents revealing that the consulate in Benghazi had warned the White House they had “no police support,” adding to a growing list of known security concerns, the New York Times is reporting that just 38% of voters approve of “the administration’s handling of the attacks on the consulate in Libya.”
Whether Mr. Romney can carry his present foreign policy momentum through the weekend and into Election Day remains to be seen. If he does, having closed a 15-point gap on foreign policy issues in such a short span of time will prove to have been a critical component in paving the path to victory.
Romney: Biden ‘Doubling Down on Denial’ of Libya Failures
After a new Virginia poll showed Romney with a 7-point lead over Obama in the state, Mitt Romney campaigned in Richmond, Virginia on Friday and put more pressure on the Obama administration to tell Americans the truth about what they knew before terrorists attacked the U.S. consulate in Libya, killing Chris Stevens, the U.S. Ambassador to Libya.
Romney said Vice President Joe Biden "directly contradicted the sworn testimony of State Department officials" during his debate with Paul Ryan on Thursday.
"He's doubling down on denial," Romney said.
Romney said Americans have a "right to know" what happened leading up to the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Libya, and "we're going to find out."
During Thursday's vice presidential debate, Biden said, "we weren't told they wanted more security there ... We did not know they wanted more security."
His words contradicted the testimony of State Department officials who on Wednesday said they had turned down requests for more security from Americans in Libya.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney on Friday said when Biden said "we" during the debate what he was really referring to was himself and Obama, which leads opens the question of whether they would have known had Obama attended his in-person intelligence briefings and asked his briefers questions.
Romney, in Richmond, also focused on the economy and called Obama the "status quo" candidate of "high unemployment" who would take the country down the road to "fiscal calamity."
Romney said entrepreneurs will risk their savings to start businesses so long as they know "we are not on the road to Greece."
He said the Obama campaign was more concerned about saving Big Bird than jobs.
Progressives Attempt to Debunk GAI Report on Obama’s Skipped Intel Briefings
Progressive outlets like The Washington Post and ThinkProgress are still trying to discredit a factual Government Accountability Institute (GAI) report that found President Barack Obama had missed nearly half of his daily intelligence briefings, instead opting to read those reports on his iPad. They are doing so even though the White House essentially conceded these reports were true when Obama changed his schedule to attend the briefings in person in recent weeks.
Breitbart News wrote about the Government Accountability Institute (GAI) study which revealed Obama had missed nearly half of his daily intelligence briefings, known has “PDBs.” A followup revealed there was no record of Obama having attended his daily intelligence briefing in the week leading up to the attacks on the U.S. consulate in Libya that resulted in murder of U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens. Former Bush administration official Marc Thiessen first reported the GAI findings in his column at The Washington Post.
After these stories put pressure on the White House, Obama attended the live briefings seven days in a row for the first time in seven months. As Breitbart News’ Wynton Hall aptly wrote, Obama finally “ditched his iPad” and instead “opted for the live briefings.”
And yet, The Washington Post, which publishes Thiessen's column, “fact-checked” his claims and tried to say they were bogus even though its “fact-checker” could not contest the GAI's numbers. Instead, Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s “fact-checker,” said Thiessen was wrong because presidents in the past “have structured their daily briefing from the CIA to fit their unique personal styles.” “Many did not have an oral briefing,” he argued, while others “preferred to deal directly with a CIA official.”
Kessler’s basic claim is Thiessen is wrong because reading an intelligence briefing on an iPad instead of attending the briefing live is just a difference in "personal style;" therefore, it does not affect the quality of the briefing or the level of the president's comprehension.
“Obama appears to have opted for a melding of the two approaches, in which he receives oral briefings, but not as frequently as his predecessor,” Kessler wrote. “Ultimately, what matters is what a president does with the information he receives from the CIA.”
After Kessler's "fact-check," former Washington Post writer Dan Froomkin, who now writes for the Huffington Post, took a swipe at Thiessen on Twitter by tweeting, “WaPo op-ed page is a facts-optional zone. Shame on them.” And the liberal ThinkProgress, which is funded by liberal financier George Soros, jumped into the debate and called Thiessen’s claims “bogus.”
In response to Kessler’s “fact-check,” Thiessen noted that when he asked National Security Council spokesperson Tommy Vietor if there had been instances where Obama attended the PDBs that did not appear on the White House’s official public calendar, Vietor could offer no examples.
Thiessen also said neither Vietor nor White House officials have challenged the numbers the GAI reported.
“So, as a factual matter, Kessler offers no evidence that the information I presented on Obama’s PDB meeting attendance is wrong,” Thiessen wrote. “Perhaps Obama does not feel he needs such daily interaction. But the fact that he has not been having it is indisputable.”
Thiessen asserted that “comparing lax presidential briefing habits before and after 9/11 is like comparing lax presidential security habits before and after the Kennedy assassination.”
“If live briefings are no better than paper briefings, why has Obama suddenly begun receiving briefings in-person?,” he asked.
As Thiessen wrote, attending the daily intelligence briefings is important because it offers the president “an opportunity to ask questions of the briefers, probe assumptions and request additional information.” According to Thiessen, the briefings are also important for those preparing the brief because “meeting with the president on a daily basis gives them vital, direct feedback from the commander in chief about what is on his mind, how they can be more responsive to his needs, and what information he may have to feed back into the intelligence process.”
“This process cannot be replicated on paper,” Thiessen wrote.
White House press secretary Jay Carney initially dismissed Thiessen’s original report as “hilarious,” but what is more laughable are the attempts by these so-called "fact-checkers" to debunk a report that even the White House has essentially conceded was true.
WaPo: After Controversy, Obama Now Attending ‘Nearly 100 Percent’ of Intelligence Briefings
Two weeks ago, Peter Schweizer’s Government Accountability Institute reported that President Obama was ditching over half of his intelligence briefings. According to their study, drawn from Obama’s own White House calendar, “During his first 1,225 days in office, Obama attended his PDB just 536 times — or 43.8 percent of the time. During 2011 and the first half of 2012, his attendance became even less frequent — falling to just over 38 percent.” Breitbart News covered Obama’s briefings shortcomings from the outset, bringing pressure to bear on the Obama administration to get their president to sit down and hear our intelligence. Our first story posted September 10, 2012. The next day, our consulate in Benghazi was attacked and our ambassador was murdered.
The Obama administration immediately fought back, with White House spokesman Jay Carney explaining, “The President of the United States gets the presidential briefing every day.”
That sent the Washington Post’s Obama-acolyte fact checker Glenn Kessler on a rampage. First, he labeled the claim that Obama “skips” his intelligence briefings “bogus.” He gave it three Pinocchios. Then he updated his column to give the claim four Pinocchios, explaining, “Upon reflection, we now realize that the GAI report had a bit of a math problem. The White House public schedule does not list meetings on weekends, so Obama automatically loses 28 percent of the “meetings” because of that fact.” This, of course, was not true – the GAI report took into account weekends, since it cross-tabulated White House data with Politico’s own data on Obama’s activities, which includes weekends.
But Kessler and the Obama lackeys have another problem. The public outcry over Obama missing his intelligence briefings has caused Obama to start attending his intelligence briefings.
According to Kessler’s own Washington Post.
Today, the Washington Post reported that President Obama is now attending nearly “100 percent” of his intelligence briefings. If the original claim was so bogus, why is Obama suddenly overhauling his schedule to attend significantly more intelligence briefings?
If these were all lies, it's news to Obama.
“Next thing you know,” writes Al Kamen of the Post, “the White House Calendar, starting Sept. 14 (four days after Thiessen’s column) and for every workday last week and up to Monday, says that Obama — and sometimes, Vice President Biden — is briefed. No comment yet from the White House on why the apparent recent uptick in Obama’s ‘attendance.’”
According to Kessler and his other fact-checking Obama bootlickers, this must all be just a giant coincidence. Unless he’s willing to give his colleagues at the Washington Post a few Pinocchios.
Fact Spell-Check: WaPo Watchdog Defends Obama’s Failure to Attend Intel Briefs
Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post “Fact-Checker” gave three Pinocchios Monday to the claim that President Obama has attended less than half (43.8 percent) of his Presidential Daily Briefs (PDB) on intelligence, a claim Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen made based off a report by the nonpartisan Government Accountability Institute.
Yet Mr. Kessler (pictured above) never once disputes the numbers the Government Accountability Institute reported. Indeed, he can’t.
The figures used to tabulate Mr. Obama’s PDB attendance came from Politico’s White House calendar, roundly regarded as the most comprehensive keeping of the President’s daily schedule. Instead, Mr. Kessler says that because past presidents have received their daily intelligence briefings on paper, no one should care that Mr. Obama does the same via iPad.
The difference, of course, is that America is at war. Moreover, as Jim Geraghty of National Review and Marc Thiessen of the Washington Post point out, live briefings afford a Commander-in-Chief the opportunity to challenge assumptions and drill deeper into potential threats.
In the wake of the murder of U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three American members of his staff, Mr. Obama now apparently agrees that live briefings are better than paper or iPad briefings. Indeed, for the last seven days straight, Mr. Obama has received his Presidential Daily Briefing in person. The last time Mr. Obama took his PDB seven days in a row was in February, a fact Mr. Kessler curiously fails to mention. That raises an important question: if live briefings are no better than intelligence briefings on paper, why then has Mr. Obama gone to in-person briefings all the sudden?
Embarrassingly, Mr. Kessler’s “fact-check” also misspelled the topic he was fact-checking three times in a single article. Thrice, Mr. Kessler referred to the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB) as the “PBD,” or Presidential Briefs Daily. To be sure, everyone is prone to the occasional typographical error; however, it’s a humorous irony that the “fact-checker” apparently didn’t scrutinize his own piece closely enough to catch the inaccuracy.
Nevertheless, Mr. Kessler’s attempt to label as “bogus” Mr. Obama’s failure to attend over half of his Presidential Daily Briefs on intelligence cannot change this fact: in the five days leading up to the attacks on the U.S. embassy in Cairo and the murder of Ambassador Stevens and his three staff members, Mr. Obama’s own official White House calendar shows no record of the president attending his daily briefing. What’s more, we now know that the “the U.S. State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert,” and the Ambassador’s own diary reveals he was worried about Benghazi security.
No, Mr. Kessler’s real beef, it seems, is with a devastating new ad by American Crossroads that utilizes these facts to portray Obama's as an "empty chair" presidency.
The mainstream media may not like the facts, but that doesn’t change them.
As Al Qaeda Burns the Flag, Obama Replaces It
As Al Qaeda burns the American flag, President Barack Obama replaces it with his own.
As Americans mourn the 9/11 attacks, President Obama appears on the "Pimp With a Limp" show.
As the Arab world explodes in anger, President Obama praises the Arab Forum and its dictator host.
As terrorists kill our diplomats, President Obama announces further cuts to embassy security.
As our embassies are attacked, President Obama blames a film and abandons the First Amendment.
As the Taliban kill our troops, President Obama poses for photo shoots and hangs out with celebrities.
As our sailors battle Middle Eastern pirates, President Obama tweets about "Talk Like a Pirate Day."
As Israel asks for help, President Obama says he is too busy to meet with its leader.
As intelligence warns of attacks on Americans, President Obama misses intelligence briefings.
As he celebrates the death of Osama bin Laden, President Obama leaks secrets of the raid to Hollywood.
As America's global reputation declines, President Obama hands out his autobiography overseas.
As Obama rises, America falls.
Image credit: Suzi Q
