Phi for All

Ahhhh, here we have it at last. You think we're making "excuses justifying those murders". Since no one here has tried to excuse the actions of the terrorists who attacked the embassy, you must be accusing President Obama of murder. That means I'm done with this thread until the investigation is over and Congress has a chance to weigh in. It's pointless to discuss it further with you now, rigney. I told him, and he said you're welcome, and asked me to tell you your knowledge of military procedure seems outdated and lacks sound judgement. He would never trust you to watch his back.

That's bullshit and we've been over this already three times. We don't have the funding or the manpower over there to respond to every request for added security, we just don't. You have tunnel-vision over this, assuming Benghazi is the only consulate in dicey territory that would have felt safer with a few more guards. That 16 man special team that spent most of the year assigned to Libya would probably be dead right now if they'd stayed. A friend of mine who finished his second tour of Iraq a few years back told me that, in his military opinion, it would have been stupid to send any amount of men short of a full company into a situation where you didn't know what you're facing. Sure, every grunt would've happily volunteered to defend that consulate, but their commanders are not fond of throwing lives away on dicey intel. In his opinion, this was neither a spontaneous attack nor a long-term, thoughtfully planned assault with Stevens as the target. And it's one of the most difficult to defend against, since it has enough organization and manpower to be difficult to stop, yet not enough time for the intelligence community to really get any decent information about. Add in everything else, from Stevens being there in the first place on that day of all days, his cell calls that weren't recognized, the protests in other cities, the militia guards being completely overwhelmed by trucks bearing militia logos, the lean security budgets everywhere, the lean security in this particular post, the ambiguity on who had the major security tasks between State, the CIA and the local police and militias, and it is anything but an open and shut case.

! Moderator Note One thread per topic, please. It makes it easier for everyone to follow the discussion. Thanks, and welcome.

Like, when he's asleep, sneak up on him with a pair of scissors, get them right down close to his eyelid and hope he doesn't startle awake when you snip them?

Don't you think it started out pretty tangled? How could action have been taken before it started? And how can you continue to say this isn't a witchhunt when you're requiring the people involved to use their magic to tell the future? I agree. I think it was the terrorists.

It's not really any lack of prowess, rigney, but part of it is what you choose to attach importance to. Just like your response to my post. Why did you key on my compliment to D H when it was the only part that wasn't directed at you? Why ignore all the other things I said that did refer to you? It's perfectly allowable to use terms like that with regard to someone's argument, their stance or perspective on an issue. It's NOT allowable to refer to the person that way, and if you feel that's happened you should report it. Yet you watch FOX News exclusively?! That hardly makes sense. They are neither fair nor balanced, and have been proven to lie in their stories in a court of law. Re-read the last few pages of this thread and see how many times "quite knowledgeable" was wrong.

For one thing, you and navigator keep harping on the administration lying about protests over the anti-Islamic video being part of the attack. I definitely think this was a mistake on their part, but only because the administration did what you and navigator are so proud of doing: they connected the dots without knowing all the facts. Other embassies were having violent protests over the video so they connected the dots and released that story. And they ended up being wrong. navigator's stance requires that the video has to be obscure, otherwise it's not a dot he can connect, so he keeps arguing for that, even though others have shown that the video sparked protests in 20 countries that killed 49 people, a whole order of magnitude greater than we lost in Benghazi. If that video is obscure, what does that make the attack on our embassy? You both have put forward evidence that has then been refuted. I look over this monster of a thread and I see the same things being repeated, and repeatedly refuted, and yet you wait a while and then repeat them again. It really has nothing to do with right wing/left wing, it's all about facts vs suppositions. You've been asking all along if there was something that could have been done to prevent the attack on our embassy, and that's always been a good question, but it's plain to see that you simply haven't liked any of the answers given. You seem to prefer unsubstantiated supposition ("they watched the attack happening real time and did NOTHING!") rather than accept the facts as they are revealed (the drone arrived after the main assault was over). I've appreciated the candid and objective input from D H, someone I know is definitely not a partisan liberal, and probably wouldn't consider himself to be even left-leaning. He is just being smart and objective, an intellectual person who knows that connecting the dots is just a justification for jumping to conclusions.

This is what neo-conservative obfuscation is all about. The whole point is to delay progress that doesn't serve your agenda or might hamper it. Pointing out every seeming weakness means you might get more money for private armies, more munitions deals and more opportunities for rabid fear-mongering. Economy, jobs? The people who profit from waging war have plenty of money. Climate? Fixing that means hampering a lot of revenue streams and paying for regulatory compliance. Education? Ignore it long enough and, like other federal and state bureaucratic programs that maximize use of public funds, you can get Americans to vote to privatize it. Healthcare? If you let people see how much more efficiently it could be run, you lose out on all the extra profits Americans pay for health. So you get people fixated on bullshit. It doesn't matter what it is as long as it stifles progress, keeps us angry at foreign countries, and makes us feel like we're unable to change anything for the better, so falling back on known traditional ways and morality will at least be second best.

You call our intellectual honesty into question yet you call a video that sparked protests in 20 countries obscure?! Was it an obscure video that led to Pakistan blocking YouTube countrywide? Was it an obscure video that cost at least 49 human lives? Then why did President Obama say, the following day, that he would bring the killers to justice over this "act of terror"? It's pretty simple to comprehend that your assertion is false. As long as any president is on top of things and shows a firm hand and a willingness to go after the perpetrators of an attack, his score would either remain the same or increase overall. Bush got elected to a second term despite misreading better and more detailed intelligence about the original 9/11 attack. So you think "let's investigate and get all the facts before we draw any conclusions" means "we believe EVERYTHING Obama and the media says"? Don't you think that's a strawman of what's really being said here? Please accuse more clearly. What exactly do you mean by "playing both sides of the fence"? Are you accusing him of being the president AND trying to win re-election? I don't know that it wasn't. I have a lot of objections to some of Obama's decisions, but I'm actually pretty happy about his treatment of security matters, especially about keeping security matters secure and not compromising intelligence assets. You still haven't shown me that a terrorist attack on his watch is automatically something bad he has to cover up. As I said, it's an opportunity to let us see his leadership in action. The hurricane helped him in the election because he takes federal bureaucracy seriously and uses it like a leader should. As far as I can see, he's taking this attack very seriously as well, he just knows he has good people and procedures in place and the investigation will tell him what he needs to know.

I hope you fully realize the complete and utter stupidity of a stance that, on one hand, touts your ability to "connect-the-dots" before all the facts are known, and on the other hand, questions the intellectual honesty of those you're discussing the matter with. It must be marvelous to have such an ingenious mind that you no longer need facts to support your conclusions. Why are you on a science site? In questioning our intellectual honesty in pointing out the flaws in your premise, you have shown yourself to be a simple partisan hack. You have lost all the credibility I was according you as a participant in this discussion. How are those blinders working that make you oblivious to all the other embassies that were threatened that day? Are you assuming that just because this administration isn't blabbing about them that other threats didn't exist? Ah, so impeachment when all the "lies" come out after the election wasn't worrying at all to the president. Got it. I feel at such a disadvantage discussing this with you, since you have such an absolute knowledge of what the president would have done, wouldn't have done, all he knows and all he doesn't know. You should at least tie one arm behind your back to make it fair.

Which was part of the transcript I linked to. The added comments by Chaffetz should only go to show that the House, the State Department and the White House all had to prioritize. When you do that, you run the risk of being wrong, and second-guessing after the fact by those interested in smearing the judgement of those involved is pointless and cowardly, imo. I certainly don't blame the Republicans for their mistakes in budgeting on embassy security, any more than I blame any single part of what went wrong. Wow, that's just... weak. I mean, they even had Ansar al-Sharia claiming responsibility two hours after the attack, so why not play up that it wasn't al Qaeda, or that Ansar al-Sharia is a rebranding of al Qaeda as they struggle to retain their power? Why make something up that obviously falls apart fairly quickly as more information comes in? You seriously don't even consider that the Republicans would be much more worried about their austerity measures being linked to security failures that caused four American deaths, and that's why they pulled their patented "blame the other guy first" maneuver? You'd rather try to gain support for more unbelievable scenarios?

So how do you think that link refutes my point? I gave you a transcript of the whole interview in MY link. How does your link support your position better than it supports mine? The Republican House cut embassy security budgets, and when that results in the loss of American lives, that's something they would want to keep from their ultra-conservative supporters. That's a much clearer reason for coverup than anything you've implied. It should seem quite obvious to anyone who's been following this story objectively that this is one of those scenarios where many things went wrong, giving a chance for a larger misfortune to happen. Take out any single item and it may not have happened, or it may have been worse. Give them the special team support that they requested and they still would have been outnumbered 8 to 1. Maybe we'd have 20 deaths to mourn instead of four. How much more security would you, in hindsight, have allocated to defend against 150 organized and well-trained terrorists? Now think about how, with tight budgets and all the rest of the mitigating circumstances, you would have justified such an allocation of resources based solely on the intelligence we had prior to the attack. Perhaps there is no witch for you to hunt here. That's not the yellowcake that got us involved in Iraq. Your article states quite clearly that it was there, stored in the same barrels, since before 1991. The fictional yellowcake from Niger is what D H was referencing. Perhaps you have trouble understanding D H or are so driven by political ideology that being objective is not possible. Yeah, you keep harping on that video when everyone else has realized it was just faulty early intelligence, backed up by officials in the Libyan government. It's been refuted as the cause, it was bad intel that got repeated because people wanted answers, at a time when giving up answers might endanger security at other installations. Why are you the only ones still blaming the Obama administration for using an explanation they had been given at the time?

I would wonder why something that could create the whole universe would want my worship. As a father I don't even want that kind of blind, unquestioning adoration from my child. Does worship fuel his godly power cells or something, and is there a synthetic alternative?

"Not appropriated very wisely"? Seriously, you're playing the hindsight card on how the funding was allocated? Republican Jason Chaffetz, congressman from UT, member of both the Budget Committee and the committee on Oversight and Government Reform, when asked if he voted to reduce funding for embassy security, had this to say: http://transcripts.c...0/10/sp.01.html Since there is only supposition and "maybes" and arguments from incredulity to support some kind of coverup on the part of the Obama administration, I think it's equally likely that House Republicans are using this blame-game to take the heat from their austerity measures and budget cutting. Why aren't Republicans outraged that their control of the House led to cutting security budgets that resulted in the deaths of four Americans? None of the coverup scenarios smeared on the Obama administration pass the stink test as well as covering up underfunding of security that leads to American deaths.

I think crowd-funding could be advantageous (not advertised here, of course), but I'd like the JOBS Act to set up stricter regulations. They should have these soon, and then I think you'll see more people embrace the concept. I would not support it if it turns out to be an attempt to loosen the regulations surrounding such transactions. It could end up being a repeat of the financial sector problems that we're still dealing with.

I just forgot it was here.

! Moderator Note This thread has failed to show any relevance to mainstream scientific knowledge and the OP continues to argue against a stance none of the replies seems to take. Since many students come to the main fora for help with school, I'm moving this to our Speculations section.

Really? That's the way you think it works? Is this to give Republicans something else to test out their new mountain-making equipment on? So that when something happens they can blame Obama for downsizing one of the busiest embassies in the world? At this point, you're just playing a nice game of hindsight.

! Moderator Note chandragupta, you are failing to address the individual points in the replies of others, choosing instead to simply repeat what you have asserted before, which you've also failed to adequately support. This is evident from all the replies you've gotten and simply brushed aside. This is known as preaching or soapboxing, and is against the rules you agreed to when you joined. It's a very frustrating style of discourse and fails to be actual discussion since you are clearly ignoring anything others are discussing. Please address the issues others have included in this discussion so as to make it more productive for all. As always, if you have a problem with this modnote, please report it or PM another moderator. Do NOT further derail the thread by discussing the modnote here.

rigney, there's a Tastykake program that can help you with the Twinkie withdrawals and the Ho-Ho jonesing. You need professional help, man.

http://articles.cnn....doherty-tripoli What further objectives do you feel were missed? I see what you did there. If your scout reveals that aggressive action would be unproductive, NOT risking more lives is hardly ignoring the intel. Nice that you can really get inside the president's head like that. Does your mind-reading ability tell you why he would want that, knowing it would come out anyway, and also knowing that dealing with a terrorist threat in a swift, commanding way would have done his campaign much more good than lying about it for no reason or benefit? In your opinion, are these people really that stupid?

Like many things, it's the mistakes we make, the bad times we have, the stupidity that gets pointed out that seems to motivate us to change, in addition to adopting the right perspective on our goals. We saw a surge of national interest in electric cars when gas hit $5 a gallon. We didn't need this last election to show us that things need fixing. But I agree that there's a vested interest out there that wants us to keep viewing the problem as insurmountable rather than just agreeing to fix it. With every system you're going to have people who've found ways to make it work very well for themselves and don't want it to change no matter how much it could improves life for everyone else.

I started to write a book about this, but I forgot where I put my notes and then just lost interest. I'm very interested to see if recent legalization attempts can produce more legitimate studies on the effects of marijuana as a medicine, as well as how it compares recreationally with alcohol, and how hemp products will effect commerce. One aspect that will be crucial, imo, is the effect on a patient who needs to operate a vehicle. Is there a testable amount of cannabis that can be used that provides the known medical effects but doesn't exceed a limit recognized by law enforcement as unsafe?

What aspect of "Truth" are you seeking to defend with regard to science? The posts I quoted quite clearly reference Truth as something obvious and undeniable, like it comes complete with a beacon attached that shines in a part of the spectrum only the few Truly intelligent can discern. Truth, like proof, are not goals science should concern itself with; always seeking the better explanation, the explanation with the most evidence to support it, is a more objective, meaningful, trustworthy goal. The minute you think you've found The Truth, everything else is cast off, but seeking the best explanation forces us to continually refine our theories. To me, Truth is related to faith, belief in things you can't know with certainty. Trust is more related to the natural world, the scientific world, and is belief in the best explanations using sound methodology.

I use this guideline as well. We get so many students that come to discuss science and the last thing we'd want to do is mess up their grades by having explanations that are outside accepted science in the main fora, where they expect to find mainstream answers. When they check out Speculations, they know they shouldn't be using any of the answers there on next week's test.