Benghazi scandal demands answers
The Benghazi controversy is not one, but four separate scandals — each of which calls into question the president’s leadership.
First, Benghazi raises legitimate questions about Obama’s competence as commander in chief. In last week’s debate, the president said that his No. 1 job is to keep Americans safe. Then why did he not do so in Benghazi?
Was the president unaware of the threat in Libya? Or did he simply fail to treat it with the requisite level of seriousness? The British saw the danger and closed their consulate months earlier. Once the attack was under way, why did the president fail to send assistance?
Second, the president’s reaction to Benghazi reveals his utter lack of integrity. That he allowed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to fall on her sword rather than man-up and accept responsibility for his administration’s failure was not only despicable, it was cowardly.
Third, Benghazi reveals the president to be dishonest. It is now clear that the administration knew almost immediately that the Benghazi attack was a premeditated act of terrorism. But, in order to protect his own political hide, the president engaged in a misinformation campaign aimed at deceiving the American public.
And the president continues to lie daily in order to hide the cover-up. His most recent claim (and who can keep track, with his story constantly changing?) that he made information public as it became available to him has been proved patently false. And yet, he continues to claim that if he provided inaccurate information, it was simply “the fog of war.”
Fourth, Benghazi reveals Obama’s deeply flawed ideological principles. Ironically, despite his flippant “fog of war” defense, Obama has never indicated that he regards the Benghazi murders as an attack upon America. To the contrary, his reflexive response was to describe the attack as a random act of violence provoked by American religious bigotry. He then went on to minimize the seriousness of this violence by calling it “less than optimal” and by jetting off to Vegas for a major fundraiser in the immediate aftermath of the attack.
That the Obama administration views the murders in Benghazi through the prism of crime rather than the prism of war should come as no surprise. After all, this is the same administration that coined the euphemism “man-made disasters” to refer to acts of terrorism; it is the same administration that characterized the Fort Hood massacre not as an example of ideologically motivated Islamic jihad but as just another incidence of “workplace violence.” Those events provided important clues as to this president’s guiding philosophy. But Benghazi demonstrates the dangerous geo-political consequences of such a world-view.
Benghazi raises serious questions about the president’s competence, integrity, and honesty. And it reveals more clearly than ever before Obama’s reflexive impulse to blame, rather than defend, America.
http://bostonherald.com/news/opinion/op … 1061171010
Obama and the Power of Propaganda
When President Obama fails in his predictions and forecasts on the economy or on foreign affairs, good propagandists can get us to focus instead on Obama’s picks for the NCAA basketball tournament or his appearance on a late-night comedy show.
Obama’s health care plan looks like it will cost much more than expected and may drive many doctors to quit practice. So, let us change focus from the hard numbers into a debate about Republicans stealing the birth control methods used by women.
From Sixth Avenue to Hollywood, and from Wolf Blitzer to Jay Leno, our TV hosts parrot the Obama party line about “the war on women.”
We have a similarly skewed view on the “war on terror:” Obama says there is no terror and no war, while the media assure us Obama won the war. Both are wrong. There were more actual and abortive terror attacks in the U.S. in the last three years than in the previous eight.
There were 30 assaults or plots on army bases, transportation hubs, and synagogues: from Little Rock to Seattle, from Riverdale to a New York air base, from Fort Hood Texas (the massacre and a later copy-cat plot), to New York’s subways, from a plane over Detroit to a Times Square car bomb.
Most plots are not on the scale of 9-11, but there is a pattern of growing danger, not a diminishing threat. Most media prefer to show Obama as the sheriff who got Bin-Laden and ended the threat. They do not want to examine how the terror threat has grown with new generations of Islamic terrorists who were born here or converted here
Team Obama prefers to make or encourage “documentary” films using sensitive information. This makes Obama look good, but it makes all of us a little less safe.
President Barack Obama is an able and attractive politician commanding government and Democratic Party public relations machines. He enjoys a pliant press steering focus away from the bad economy to the personal portfolio of Mitt Romney.
Obama’s foreign record is as bad as his economic one. He bet he would find common ground with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, selling out U.S. friends in Georgia, Ukraine, Poland and the Czech Republic. We lost those bets, but the media pretend that Romney “really blew it” with a remark about the Olympics in London.
Obama and Joe Biden made Israel their personal punching bag from 2009-2011. They forced an Israeli building freeze in Jerusalem and the West Bank that led to a freeze in Arab-Israeli talks for the first time in 20 years.
President Obama undermined Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, a strong U.S. friend, while boosting the Muslim Brotherhood—a group that spawned Al-Qaeda. Our media did not really examine how much the U.S. lost on those bets or Obama’s support of Bashar Assad in Syria, sending an ambassador there against the express wishes of Congress.
Obama and Hillary Clinton ignored Iranian dissidents’ pleas for help during Iran’s rigged 2009 elections. They delayed dealing with Iran’s atom bomb plans. That is a quite a resume for the people who promised hope and change at home and abroad.
Have the media probed the gap between Obama promises and his results—from Cairo to Istanbul, from Libya to Syria? They report how Romney criticizes Arab culture, for being anti-peace and tribal—all of which is absolutely correct.
Our media scoff at Romney for being “clumsy.” That angle suits the propaganda line that Obama-Biden-Clinton are deep thinkers and doers on foreign policy. Better to have us consider Romney’s tone than to examine Obama’s foreign policy record.
The media agenda is to lacerate Romney rather than doing real journalism: checking how Obama-Clinton were criminally negligent to leave U.S. diplomats unguarded on the anniversary of 9-11.
Have we noticed how the sophisticated terror attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya disappeared from the front page of The New York Times, and have we noticed how the Associated Press gave us a half-cocked “timeline” to show Romney was hasty?
Maybe the propaganda will distract us long enough for Obama to get re-elected, but then again, maybe not. Perhaps Abraham Lincoln will be proved right again when he said: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”
http://www.algemeiner.com/2012/09/30/ob … ropaganda/
So let me get this straight. Within a thread you created for the purpose of propaganda, you are quoting propaganda that poses as an article about propaganda, in order to demonstrate that the OP is not propaganda. That is pure genius. I want to vote you for President just for thinking of it!
The thread I created was sourced from the Boston Herald. It is an opinion piece, it is what it is. I was a tad put back to see such a gnarling oped coming from the liberal plateau of Massachusetts. It's not like it is a Breitbart piece!
What about the cover of the N.Y. Post, pretty shocking?
Thanks for playing
"Propaganda often presents facts selectively (thus possibly lying by omission) to encourage a particular synthesis, or uses loaded messages to produce an emotional rather than rational response to the information presented. The desired result is a change of the attitude toward the subject in the target audience to further a political or religious agenda."
Shocking? No. Predictable? Yes.
LOL its the New York Post. What do you expect from a newspaper that is known for its sensationalist headlines and it is one of the least-credible major news outlet in New York
Any New Yorker will tell you, the Post is good for turning to Page Six (gossip and star sightings around town) and of course its Sports coverage.
So sorry Reality Bytes, your posting this cover is not shocking at all. More like to be expected.
How about the oped from the Boston Herald? Is this paper also biased, or is it just the opinion of the author?
Just looked into the Herald and sorry but like the Post it seems to be a tabloid. Im sure there are viable opinions to be had in both newspapers, what you have posted here in this thread along with its links, lead me to think this is all about sensationalism.
From all I have seen and continue to see,we have a President that shows both integrity and leadership, and is getting himself ready to make an acceptance speech.
I lived in Boston for 17 years, Wavegirl.
Trust me.
The Herald is the Beantown equivalent of the Post.
MM
The Boston Herald and the New York Post are NOT liberal.
They are both sensationalist tabloids.
Here is one the Prez needs to get aquainted with and perhaps to start using it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth
And here's one I think Mitt may already be acquainted with, and perhaps needs to stop using.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit
We could also discuss whether or not Romney is correct with his Jeep predictions, I mean that is if anyone would care to discuss gloomily immense world events?
RB,
If you want to get into the Chrysler debate go here,
http://hubpages.com/forum/topic/105699? … ost2248613
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