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Letter: From Ayotte, a truly disappointing performance

For the Monitor

Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Call it Three Blinded (by) Rice. Here they stood for cameras, Sens. John McCain of Arizona, Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, and, sadly, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire.

I could only wonder, as Ayotte – about whom I had bragged in touting my home state’s mass elevation of women to government leadership posts – lurched with these two in a meaningless political pas de trois about Susan’s Rice abilities to be the next secretary of state. They were writing her off because of her use of fractured (or perhaps intentionally misfed) U.S. intelligence information about the Libya embassy attack.

Ayotte looked like a doe stunned in McCain’s headlights, not the tough leader I thought she would be. Where was she, and where were the others, on the attacks on U.S. embassies and outposts down the years that have led to far many more deaths than this tragedy?

Sen. Ayotte, despite my braggadocio about New Hampshire to friends across America, you force me to apologize to them for our election of you.

ROYAL FORD

Concord

Otis B. Driftwoodzxcv wrote:
28/11/2012

Good letter. McCain, Graham and Ayotte are playing politics with what should be a bipartisan effort to get at the truth. There was no cover-up here--only the fog of war resulting in confusion over the events that transpired leading up to the tragic deaths of 4 Americans in Behghazi--a virtual war zone still in the aftermath of Libya's revolution. Tom Ricks of the WaPo properly called out Faux News for their attempts to play up the Benghazi attack before the election, during his abbreviated interview with that media arm of the far-right GOP. His comments apply also to the three politicians--not a statesman among them. I used to respect McCain as a GOP maverick with integrity (MCain-Feingold for example). That changed with the 2008 race and his election loss.
ItsARepubliczxcv wrote:
29/11/2012

Ahhhhh driftwood, love driftwood, I use it as my primary photo on facebook!! Now to your comments, this was a cover up and all of the extreme progressives throw tomiatoes at Republicans in denial, just exposes the progressive agenda. If this was Bush, you would be calling for impeachment. Susan Rice put on the Taylor performance, you know, Elizabeth. Liz.

SCOzxcv wrote:
29/11/2012

No cover up?? "The ambassador walked guests out at 8:30 or so; there was nobody on the street. Then at 9:40 they saw on the security cameras that there were armed men invading the compound," a senior State Department official said. "Everything is calm at 8:30 pm, there is nothing unusual. There had been nothing unusual during the day outside." The ambassador himself said "NO PROTESTS" at the consulate. Rice knew this. No fog of war. Thats silly.
BunnyHopzxcv wrote:
29/11/2012

The slew of Anti Ayotte letters in the CM all have one thing in common. No references as to why we need answers about the attack. Instead we got the following: Aligning herself with angry white men. Senator Annoyance. Racist Dog Whistles. Wearing a Red Dress. Now about that Fog. Fog means you cannot see what is going on right. At the time of the attack we had an aerial drone providing surveillance. Real Time Video being watched. Mortors being fired. E Mail requests. So where was the fog?
Otis B. Driftwoodzxcv wrote:
29/11/2012

Re: "where was the fog?" That surveillance drone encountered an on-going assault. It likely was not clear what was transpiring over a few short hours, nor would it have been clear where our personnel were, or whether some were dead or taken hostage--that's the fog of war. This wasn't a t.v. western where we send in the cavalry to save the day--it was still, in effect a war zone of the kind the ambassador had been working in for months. Critics of the administration seem already to have made up their minds about the attack--as their comments demonstrate. They never let a chance to denigrate and cast aspersions go by. Tom Ricks called Faux on it, and it applies equally to those who watch it. Give it a rest, and let the facts play out. But spare us the phony indignation you could never muster during the Bush years. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/26/fox-news-interview-guest-network-wing-republican-party_n_2192506.html

Vanzxcv wrote:
28/11/2012

Thank-you Kelly Ayotte for exposing Obama's lies and holding him accountable. Doing the job the leftwing media refuses to do. A lot of Concord Monitor readers are just now getting a whiff of the Stench of the Obama administration handling of death of 4 Americans in the Libya embassy attack. Of course you will have those whose are disappointed that Obama is being held accountable for anything, let alone frequent lies that Obama spouts.
freezeframezxcvzxcv wrote:
28/11/2012

"They were writing her off because of her use of fractured (or perhaps intentionally misfed) U.S. intelligence information about the Libya embassy attack." Correct! The same way the democrats wrote of President Bush regarding the weapons of mass destruction issue. Oddly, Saddam did use such weapons. But I guess it is okay for the liberals to overtly obfuscate and expect everyone to pass it off as a blunder. Blame shifting should never be a quality possessed by the Secretary of State and the President for that matter. Exactly what other attacks did you have in mind: Richard Welch, CIA station chief in Athens, Greece, assassinated by the terror group November 17, 1975 (get it terror group not a movie). Maybe it was 1984: William Buckley, CIA station chief in Beirut, Lebanon, kidnapped and murdered by the Islamic Jihad. No mistake there note a movie! Or maybe 1988: Marine Corps Lt. Col. William R. Higgins kidnapped and murdered by Iranian-backed terrorists while serving with a U.N. peacekeeping force in Lebanon. Not a movie either.
Otis B. Driftwoodzxcv wrote:
28/11/2012

Your claims regarding Bush and Iraq's alleged WMD's are misleading and inaccurate. Saddam used poison gas against the Kurds--which he likely got with our assistance. Or at least we overlooked it, since we still regarded Iraq as a counterweight to Iran at the time. Saddam wanted the world to believe he had nukes--but the inspections conducted prior to the Iraq war--and the inspectors who made them, were correct in assessing Saddam had no nukes--contrary to Bush/Rice assertions. It's a bit of a stretch to claim poison gas is a WMD--but that's what your claim consists of at the end of the day. Any claims to the contrary rely on bad/false intelligence from the far right/neocons, who won't ever admit they lied to foment a war to "democratize" the middle east. We know how well democracy at the point of a gun works--see Iraq and Afghanistan.
BunnyHopzxcv wrote:
28/11/2012

The we is us. My point was that it was about security. A point you seemed to have missed. If we cannot protect our folks overseas, than where else are we having issues with security? We seem to be looking away when it comes to answers these days. Like every issue, it is the left that makes it political. With the help of the media, they are allowed to cover up incompetence, bad investments with taxpayers money, and the fact that this admistration has no clue about what they are doing. Anybody that questions them is called out. How dare they. Now the American Idol president is in campaign mode. He is out trashing the folks who he said he wanted to work with instead of sitting down and working out a plan that would benefit all of us, he goes after business again.. You know the plan that will finance the govt for 8 days. And where are those reforms we were promised? Not on the table. Kinda like the budget, that never arrives. An enemy of business, will kill the economy. I would think that the last 4 years have proven that. But I guess for some they have to do the same thing over and over before they realize it does not work.
gracchuszxcv wrote:
28/11/2012

"This is not political"? Of course it is. Unless BH can document his/her outrage when Secretary of State Colin Powell presented to the UN General Assembly the case for invading Iraq, every particular of which has since been shown to be not merely inaccurate but out and out falsified. And who is the "we" who are trying to get answers? The three senators who skipped out of a real "under oath"l hearing in order to present their conspiracy theories to reporters? If BH spent more time with the news and less with Fox [so-called] News perhaps the answers might be forthcoming. By the way, it wasn't an embassy. It was a consulate, and heavy security would have spilled the beans about its being a CIA station.
BunnyHopzxcv wrote:
28/11/2012

Anytime we try to get answers, and folks are not forthcoming, we have a problem. We are talking about an embassay here and the loss of lives. Now we have the folks involved blaming someone else every day. Where is Hillary, where are the folks who refused security in a hot zone that had been attacked prior? This is not political. It is about security and why on 9/11 it was not there. If we have issues with security at our embassies, it frightens me to think where else security wise we just might have problems also.

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