Tag: state department

Fox News reports that Benghazi consulate gave three hours’ warning of attacks.

Having a good morning? This will fix it.

Via Hot Air. Summary: the consulate warned their higher ups of the imminent attack, noted that their own Libyan security detachment was acting questionably, and reported that militia forces would likely be involved. And, relatedly, military intelligence was reporting that this was an organized terrorist attack within hours of the attack. So why the delay in the government admitting it? Fox News didn’t say why here, but I will: it’s because if the government admitted that it was Islamist terrorism, it would have stepped on their narrative that Islamist terrorism was in full retreat ever since Osama bin Laden was killed. So the government did nothing.

And good men died.

The Soon-To-Be-Epic Buzzfeed/State Department Email Meltdown.

Submitted without comment.  Unless a (NSFW) warning counts.  Or my eyebrow – which is not so much ‘raised’ as it is ‘in low Earth orbit’ – does.

Moe Lane

PS: OK, one comment… Yes, indeed, you are not the only person out there who thinks that neither side won that exchange.

#rsrh State Department prepares for the Lebanese Embassy being overrun.

That’s the semantic translation of this sentence: “Diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut have started to destroy classified material as a security precaution amid anti-American protests in Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East and North Africa.”  You always want to destroy the paperwork ahead of time; when the mob actually shows up at your door with torches and various hand weapons it’s usually too late.  And while sensible regimes always send along agents to make sure that embassy staff (well, the foreigners, at least) make it out alive*, they’re also there to make sure that as little paperwork as possible gets destroyed.  But you also don’t want to do it too early, either.  Or at all, if you can help it.

Apparently, they decided not to take the chance**.

But don’t worry! The President is on the case!

…sort of. Look, at least he didn’t move too far from where the White House staff parked him, OK? That’s… progress, if you squint and look at it right.

Moe Lane

*Don’t let this administration’s apparent disinterest in the murder of our Ambassador to Libya fool you; that was a legitimately big deal, and there eventually will be a proportionate response to it.

**By the way: just because something is ‘routine’ doesn’t mean that it’s not significant.  It’s actually routine to destroy the documents when you think that you’re about to lose control of your diplomatic station.