Obama administration going with the idiot narrative on #Benghazi.

No, seriously, this is the angle that they’re going to run with:

“We’re portrayed by Republicans as either being lying or idiots,” said one Obama administration official who was part of the Benghazi response. “It’s actually closer to us being idiots.”

Personally, I take the position that the administration needs to embrace the healing power of ‘and,’ here. But as the philosopher once put it: men must paddle before they can swim.

The entire article is one of those profiles in candor you get when the principals are all speaking anonymously, but this part here on the FEST situation is particularly interesting:

The Foreign Emergency Support Team known as “FEST” is described as “the US Government’s only interagency, on-call, short-notice team poised to respond to terrorist incidents worldwide.” It even boasts hostage-negotiating expertise. With U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens reported missing shortly after the Benghazi attacks began, Washington officials were operating under a possible hostage scenario at the outset. Yet deployment of the counterterrorism experts on the FEST was ruled out from the start. That decision became a source of great internal dissent and the cause of puzzlement to some outsiders.

Thursday, an administration official who was part of the Benghazi response told CBS News: “I wish we’d sent it.”

The designated scapegoat for that decision will apparently be Patrick Kennedy, Hillary Clinton’s former deputy*: he’s listed by name as being the guy who (outside of channels) nixed the idea to use the FEST team.  All this despite that: FEST was ready to go; loudly considers it part of their job description to go; and “could have helped pave the way for the FBI to get into Benghazi much faster than the three weeks it ultimately took.” Reading between the lines… well, we all know that a political staffer of Kennedy’s status would be highly unlikely to push a policy position unless he knew that his boss agreed with him.  Or else it was really his boss’s policy position in the first place.

Well, Kennedy’s not the first person to sacrifice a career to the greater glory of the Clintons…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*You may have noticed that I am voluntarily engaged in assisting with that particular scapegoating. This would make me feel bad, except that it doesn’t.

Via

2 thoughts on “Obama administration going with the idiot narrative on #Benghazi.”

  1. Guy’s named Kennedy. I don’t want him anywhere near the US government, even if there is no direct relation.

    1. IIRC, there are two families Kennedy from New England. One (the Ridgeway-Kennedys[?]) views the other as little better than common thieves somehow elevated above their original rum-running, hooch-hocking station. This Kennedy could well be one of those.

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