2012 Presidential Election (free for all edition)

[Giantone]

Originally Posted by Slingin Sammy 33

Do not for one second lecture me on ignoring the victims or their families. If the Obama Admin had done its job there would be no victims or caskets. This was a MAJOR FUBAR, and it's sure a hell of a lot more than a "bump in the road" or "not optimal".

Again BS,just like blaming Bush for 9/11,your statement is ignorant,you can't stop the unknown.Yes I do know about security at the embassies my son-inlaw just got back from being stationed at the American Embassy in Egypt ,he knows something went wrong, but over there not over here.

[firstdown]

Not sure why they didn't just pull them out of there. Let the attack happen to find no one home.

[Giantone]

Originally Posted by firstdown

Not sure why they didn't just pull them out of there. Let the attack happen to find no one home.

I will admit I don't know what happen,not alot of us do.I have 2 son in Laws both military ,one a Marine Sgt and one a Army SGT both have been in action,2 tours in Afghanistan for the Army and Egyt(at the Embassy) and Iraq for the Marine and both tell me how screwd up it is that they have outsource the security to "contractors" over there.Now did that have anything to do with anything...they don't know.

[saden1]

There is no doubt that the whole ambassador killing was a major fckup. It is inexcusable but it is equally inexcusable for the people who let 911 happen and cut 300 million from embassy funding to puff their chests and tell us "we could do better."

[Alvin Walton]

Sorry but the left is just gonna have to "eat" the Benghazi screw up.
I heard soooo many lefties say that 9/11 happened on "Bush's watch".
Well guess whos watch Benghazi happened on?

[12thMan]

Originally Posted by Alvin Walton

Sorry but the left is just gonna have to "eat" the Benghazi screw up.
I heard soooo many lefties say that 9/11 happened on "Bush's watch".
Well guess whos watch Benghazi happened on?

Yeah, not sure you can compare 9/11 to Benghazi. And exactly what was the screw up? Was this a preventable attack? I haven's seen one shred of reporting that would suggest otherwise.

9/11 was an American tragedy. Benghazi was an American tragedy. I wish you guys would fukcing get that through your heads.

[Chico23231]

Mitt seals it up tonight

[Daseal]

I think we as the American public really fail to understand how intelligence works. While there are systems currently being developed and tweak to help information sharing it is quite difficult to put together all the puzzle pieces. You get tons of small hints that you have to look at, in conjunction with other pieces, to give you an educated guess of what, when, where, why, and who. It is far from science and requires the analysts looking at this information to try to put that together. Now we have unstructured data going into place that can improve the quality of searches, but still difficult. A quick and dirty look at what you can do with systems like hadoop/mapreduce in this sense goes a little like this:

Analyst searches for: Obama likes apples.

You could get returns that look like: Obama likes apples (the best), Obama likes Peaches/Apples/McDonalds/etc. Additionally, you'll get other things such as: Romney likes apples, etc. So there's a ton of information, some of it contradictory, etc. It basically pulls out keywords and automatically makes some changes to check things having to do with important parts from all sorts of different sources.

Each intelligence agency has their own nomenclature, internal systems, tips, etc. Obviously, you can't share everything. You can't share sources, etc. Sources are sacred and should be seen by as few people as possible.

That is a very very rough run of what happens. While I'm far from an expert, for those interested -- I could explain a bit more. With all of that said, if you want to know more about the unstructured data stuff, I suggest looking at NetFlix's tech blog. Gives you some nice details on what and how it can do things. In fact, Netflix has nearly eliminated all SQL from their environment.

With that long rant above, I believe that it's impossible to blame any president solely for nearly any terrorist attack. It's very easy to look back at an event with 20/20 hindsight and say "We should have seen it!" I doubt this information even made it to Hill-dog's level. Asking for more security and tips probably happen 40x a day. You have to balance that with budgetary concerns. Budgets for federal government are shrinking quickly and these types of moves have to be more carefully considered before enacting. This probably stopped at the bureau level. This is not the first embassy attack, and it certainly won't be the last. There's only so much you can do in this situation. Would an additional 5 DS agents have stopped this? Very doubtful. Each embassy has quite a few Marines and some DS agents present -- but it would have been hard to stop this type of attack.

This isn't the first embassy/consulate attack and it certainly won't be the last. It's probably more common to see US owned housing get attacked. These attacks rise up quickly and often would be difficult to completely avoid.

When it comes down to it, US intelligence has done a good job of putting together the pieces of the puzzle. We've heard in the news multiple times lately of the FBI thwarting possible attacks. There will always be chinks in the armor where things slide through -- but we have to remember that the whole process is a guessing game, not irreputable facts.

[Slingin Sammy 33]

Originally Posted by saden1

There is no doubt that the whole ambassador killing was a major fckup. It is inexcusable but it is equally inexcusable for the people who let 911 happen and cut 300 million from embassy funding to puff their chests and tell us "we could do better."

Some more detail on the funding issues.

GOP cuts to embassy security draw scrutiny, jabs from Democrats - The Hill - covering Congress, Politics, Political Campaigns and Capitol Hill | TheHill.com

The way I see it, we should close a bunch of consulates....particularly in high risk zones. Too much risk, too much potential cost in lives and dollars.

[saden1]

Originally Posted by Slingin Sammy 33

Some more detail on the funding issues.

GOP cuts to embassy security draw scrutiny, jabs from Democrats - The Hill - covering Congress, Politics, Political Campaigns and Capitol Hill | TheHill.com

The way I see it, we should close a bunch of consulates....particularly in high risk zones. Too much risk, too much potential cost in lives and dollars.

So the question then for me at least is if you are going to claim these cuts are necessary and worth doing then how can you turn around and say cutting defense spending is a bad idea now matter what and chastising democrats for pretty much doing the same thing with respect to defense spending?

It's hard for me to take people seriously let alone vote for them if they aren't consistent. Consistency is forbearance of wisdom and a necessary character trait in those who seek to lead and while team Obama hasn't been consistent in it's speech with respect to the attack it is fair to say that he himself has.

To me criticism of administration with respect to Bengazi comes down to "you shouldn't send an ambassador with light detail in dangerous territory" and "always utilize 'no comments' until our investigation is complete" not "the president is unfit to lead" and "he sympathizes with terrorists."

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by 12thMan

Yeah, not sure you can compare 9/11 to Benghazi. And exactly what was the screw up? Was this a preventable attack? I haven's seen one shred of reporting that would suggest otherwise.

9/11 was an American tragedy. Benghazi was an American tragedy. I wish you guys would fukcing get that through your heads.

So your saying that the US is incapable of defending itself from terroist attacks under Obama? OK

[Daseal]

Originally Posted by Slingin Sammy 33

Some more detail on the funding issues.

GOP cuts to embassy security draw scrutiny, jabs from Democrats - The Hill - covering Congress, Politics, Political Campaigns and Capitol Hill | TheHill.com

The way I see it, we should close a bunch of consulates....particularly in high risk zones. Too much risk, too much potential cost in lives and dollars.

I couldn't disagree with you more. People going into the Foreign Service are aware of the risks. They know that they will often be in harms way because of where they are in the world. It's important that the United States have a presence in those areas for multiple reasons.
1. To be diplomats -- reach out to the community, engage everyone and learn about their culture and customs. It helps to build bridges.
2. To be available to solve issues for US citizens. That embassy is a little piece of America in every country and the diplomats are, for all intents and purposes, the president of the United States in those countries.
3. Intelligence. Where do you think we get intelligence. It's not on the streets of Georgetown. It's in these dangerous areas. This gives all of our communities a safe harbor in every country. Allowing for secure transmissions and safety.

What do you think Embassyies do, SS? Just grant Visa's? That's just how they create revenue -- it is a tiny portion of what the US Dept. of State actually does.

[Slingin Sammy 33]

Originally Posted by saden1

So the question then for me at least is if you are going to claim these cuts are necessary and worth doing then how can you turn around and say cutting defense spending is a bad idea now matter what and chastising democrats for pretty much doing the same thing with respect to defense spending?

I agree defense cuts are needed, but not the current level of cuts ($ 1T total - $ 500M previous + $ 500M sequestration). Jobs need to be preserved as much as possible and the "scapel" approach rather than the Obama "meat ax".

To me criticism of administration with respect to Bengazi comes down to "you shouldn't send an ambassador with light detail in dangerous territory" and "always utilize 'no comments' until our investigation is complete" not "the president is unfit to lead" and "he sympathizes with terrorists."

Agree on bolded.....but since I've got $$$ on the line I'll continue with the second set of points :cool-smil

[Slingin Sammy 33]

Originally Posted by Daseal

I couldn't disagree with you more. People going into the Foreign Service are aware of the risks. They know that they will often be in harms way because of where they are in the world. It's important that the United States have a presence in those areas for multiple reasons.
1. To be diplomats -- reach out to the community, engage everyone and learn about their culture and customs. It helps to build bridges.
2. To be available to solve issues for US citizens. That embassy is a little piece of America in every country and the diplomats are, for all intents and purposes, the president of the United States in those countries.
3. Intelligence. Where do you think we get intelligence. It's not on the streets of Georgetown. It's in these dangerous areas. This gives all of our communities a safe harbor in every country. Allowing for secure transmissions and safety.

What do you think Embassyies do, SS? Just grant Visa's? That's just how they create revenue -- it is a tiny portion of what the US Dept. of State actually does.

I know exactly what embassies do, I worked for NSA.

Unless I would send my son into a situation, I'm not sending someone else's son/daughter there. Countries with civil wars and terrorist training grounds are not places where "bridges" are built. U.S. citizens should be made aware of countries where we have no consulate and advised to travel at their own risk (that stuff is already out there on DoS's site).

There was no USMC detatchment at Benghazi. Had there been a USMC presence, doubtful this would've happened. Sorry, if I can't bring adequate US security assets in to protect my personnel, then I'm not setting up shop.

I agree the consulate is U.S. soil. I also agree there should've been some sort of counter-strike on any terrorist organizations/camps even remotely affiliated with this within days of the attack. Nothing invites more violence from evil people than perceived weakness.

[saden1]

Originally Posted by Slingin Sammy 33

I agree defense cuts are needed, but not the current level of cuts ($ 1T total - $ 500M previous + $ 500M sequestration). Jobs need to be preserved as much as possible and the "scapel" approach rather than the Obama "meat ax".

Agree on bolded.....but since I've got $$$ on the line I'll continue with the second set of points :cool-smil

The moment you bet with me is the moment you lost. There is no recovering from your deficit without a saintly miracle.