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njlauren -> RE: Why Were Republicans Silent When Reagan’s ‘Benghazi’ Killed 241 American Servicemen? (5/12/2013 6:02:40 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Owner59
quote:
ORIGINAL: njlauren
Benghazi and Lebanon were two different beasts, and quite frankly, Lebanon was much worse. The GOP are trying to make a mountain out of Libya (and citing Fox News as a source is pretty bloody dubious, Fox News reported 12 dead at the Boston Marathon, they said it was the work of Al Qaeda, and oh yeah, still insist Hussein had WMD's and for a year after we invaded Iraq, insisted they were part of 9/11..real factual) because they are losing on so many fronts, young people think the GOP are a bunch of bible thumping rednecks, the GOP congress has an 18% approval rating, the tea party has driven people out of voting for the GOP, and their ideological rigidity has made them look childish and stupid. When the speaker of the house cannot deliver after agreeing to a budget with the white house, it makes them look like it is loony central..so they are looking for any kind of dirty to throw on Obama they can, because they know if he stays relatively popular, and the economy keeps at least appearing to be recovering, they will get their ass handed to them in 2016, too. They tried the birther nonsense, they tried the socialist label, they tried to claim Obama care was unpopular, and it all failed..so they are left with Benghazi. It was a fuck up, I don't doubt it, but whether Obama called it terrorism or not initially, didn't change that it happened. Arguing that because it was terrorism and therefore Obama had to know is fraught, because then you can argue that Bush should have known 9/11 was going to happen, because they had specific warnings, about Arabs taking flight lessons not wanting to know how to land, chatter all over the place..and the answer is, that the incident in Benghazi, while it was tragic, was not foretold, there wasn't the warning the GOP wants everyone to believe, it was a fuck up in the country was disintegrating, but guess what, happens all over, we had embassies bombed in Kenya and Saudi, how come there was no howling then? Reminds me of all the crap about how Clinton refused to go after Osama Bin Laden after the Stark was hit, same kind of drivel.
The difference with Lebanon was that what happened there was a gigantic military fuckup, and Reagan was to blame as commander in chief. The Seal Team Six members there refused to stay in the barracks building, they saw it for the trap it was, they knew there were militias in the hills above the area, and they also knew the orders to be unarmed was absolutely idiotic (read Chuck Pfarrers memoirs, really enlightening). They had several company of marines in close quarters (to get 269 killed, they must have had 6 or 7 hundred Marines in their, in close quarters) in combat conditions, which every person I know who served in the military, including 20 year marines who served in Vietnam and Korea, said was criminal. They had unarmed sentries (lebanese, mind you) guarding the barracks...... putting troops into combat conditions like that, surrounded by enemies, sending Marinese on patrol unarmed, was criminal stupidity, and Reagan as CIC gave those orders. You can argue Benghazi was a fuck up, but take a look at Lebanon, what led to the tragedy, and what you see is literally folly, something that was so obvious and they ignored it, and it wasn't hindsight. Conservatives argued it was the UN's fault, but that is horseshit, those were US military under US military command, not UN troops.
And yeah, Reagan never did jack shit, the only ones who struck back were ironically the French, they took out the Hezbollah headquarters, they wiped out a lot of people in revenge for what had happened, whereas Reagan did absolutely nothing.
Then of course, we found out that st.ronnie was illegally selling hi-tech weapons to the folks behind the murders of our men.....Iran.
[sm=banghead.gif]
Didn't count, he couldn't remember it, so it never happened.
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