President Barack Obama returns to the University of Miami for his third visit Thursday, but this time there’s a new twist.

After a lackluster debate last week, Obama’s campaign is looking wobbly for the first time in months.

And he’s getting attacked at what used to be a strong point: Foreign policy.

House Republicans Wednesday held a special hearing into the terrorist attacks on a U.S. consulate in Libya on Sept. 11, when four diplomatic staffers were killed.

Amid the four grueling hours of testimony, Obama administration officials admitted they refused to beef up security before the attacks, and they made misleading statements about what probably caused the attacks.

Obama has steered clear of Libya in his standard stump speech, which more often includes his foreign-policy successes.

"Al Qaeda is on its heels and Osama bin Laden is no more," Obama said Monday in a speech. After today’s UM event, he’ll head to a JW Marriott Marquis fundraiser with his campaign’s national co-chair, actress Eva Longoria.

Obama has also stepped up his attacks on Republican Mitt Romney’s veracity, saying his opponent is “hiding” his record.

Democrats have also tried to portray the House Oversight and Government Reform committee hearings Wednesday as a political show, noting that a lead lawmaker Utah Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz, is a Romney surrogate.

Romney has been surging in national polls after winning last week’s debates. Romney’s improved national standing will likely be mirrored in polls in Florida, a must-win battleground state for Romney that reflects the nation. Until last week, Obama was nursing an inside-the-error margin lead over Romney in Florida and nationwide.

This is Obama’s fifth-straight appearance at a college campus, a sign he feels the need to get out a youth vote that helped him win office in 2008. Since then, polls indicate, young people are relatively less enthusiastic about voting for the Democrat.

After the debate, Obama began criticizing Romney for saying he wanted to cut public-broadcast money and thereby go after Big Bird on Sesame Street. Obama’s campaign has switched tacks more recently and called out Romney for recent statements that seemed to downplay his commitment to crack down on abortion, a topic he more frequently mentioned during the GOP primary.

Obama’s campaign also noted that, during the debate, Romney misrepresented his healthcare plan by saying it covers pre-existing conditions. It doesn’t.

But after Wednesday’s hearing, Republicans had enough evidence to accuse the president’s administration of concealing information about the Benghazi consulate attacks that killed an American ambassador and three foreign-service workers.

Just before the attack, the administration had drawn down security forces in Benghazi and they denied requests to beef it up, said Andrew Wood, a former special forces lieutenant colonel who led a Libya-security team.

Wood, testifying Wednesday, said he recommended that the U.S. close the Benghazi mission as violent attacks increased. Wood also said other Western nation’s had withdrawn.

“We were the last flag flying in Benghazi,” Wood said. “I urged them to do something, anything to include withdrawal from Benghazi, although I knew that was impossible."

But Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Ambassador Susan Rice initially indicated the attacks were linked to a web video that offended Muslims worldwide. At the same time his administration was indicating the attack was “spontaneous,” some in his administration were saying it was terror-related.

Last month, when he visited the University of Miami, he declined to call it the attacks an act of terrorism. At the same time, his White House spokesman reversed the administration’s position and said it as “self-evident that what happened in Benghazi was a terrorist attack.”

Hours after the Sept. 11 attacks, Romney criticized the president’s handling of the situation. But his comments and timing had such a political ring to it that made some fellow Republicans queasy.

“Romney seems to have a tendency to shoot first and aim later,” Obama said at the time to 60 Minutes.

Since then, though, more evidence has shown that Obama and his administration also had a ready-fire-aim response to the attacks.

More recently, the family of one of the murdered foreign-service workers, Glen Doherty, has asked Romney to stop mentioning him on the campaign trail.

“I don’t trust Romney,” his mother, Barbara Doherty told WHDH.com 7 News in Boston. “He shouldn’t make my son’s death part of his political agenda. It’s wrong to use these brave young men, who wanted freedom for all, to degrade Obama.”

After the speech and fundraiser Thursday, Vice President Joe Biden debates Romney’s running mate, Congressman Paul Ryan. Democrats hope Biden does a better job against Ryan than Obama did against Romney.

“I was a little disappointed,” said Rabia Duggan, a 36-year-old Miami Beach Obama supported who voted early for him Wednesday.

“I want to see more spirit,” she said, “more fire.”

When House Republicans called a hearing in the middle of their long recess, you knew it would be something big, and indeed it was: They accidentally blew the CIA’s cover.

The purpose of Wednesday’s hearing of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee was to examine security lapses that led to the killing in Benghazi last month of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others. But in doing so, the lawmakers reminded us why “congressional intelligence” is an oxymoron.

Through their outbursts, cryptic language and boneheaded questioning of State Department officials, the committee members left little doubt that one of the two compounds at which the Americans were killed, described by the administration as a “consulate” and a nearby “annex,” was a CIA base. They did this, helpfully, in a televised public hearing.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) was the first to unmask the spooks. “Point of order! Point of order!” he called out as a State Department security official, seated in front of an aerial photo of the U.S. facilities in Benghazi, described the chaotic night of the attack. “We’re getting into classified issues that deal with sources and methods that would be totally inappropriate in an open forum such as this.”

A State Department official assured him that the material was “entirely unclassified” and that the photo was from a commercial satellite. “I totally object to the use of that photo,” Chaffetz continued. He went on to say that “I was told specifically while I was in Libya I could not and should not ever talk about what you’re showing here today.”

Now that Chaffetz had alerted potential bad guys that something valuable was in the photo, the chairman, Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), attempted to lock the barn door through which the horse had just bolted. “I would direct that that chart be taken down,” he said, although it already had been on C-SPAN. “In this hearing room, we’re not going to point out details of what may still in fact be a facility of the United States government or more facilities.”

May still be a facility? The plot thickened — and Chaffetz gave more hints. “I believe that the markings on that map were terribly inappropriate,” he said, adding that “the activities there could cost lives.”

In their questioning and in the public testimony they invited, the lawmakers managed to disclose, without ever mentioning Langley directly, that there was a seven-member “rapid response force” in the compound the State Department was calling an annex. One of the State Department security officials was forced to acknowledge that “not necessarily all of the security people” at the Benghazi compounds “fell under my direct operational control.”

And whose control might they have fallen under? Well, presumably it’s the “other government agency” or “other government entity” the lawmakers and witnesses referred to; Issa informed the public that this agency was not the FBI.

“Other government agency,” or “OGA,” is a common euphemism in Washington for the CIA. This “other government agency,” the lawmakers’ questioning further revealed, was in possession of a video of the attack but wasn’t releasing it because it was undergoing “an investigative process.”

Or maybe they were referring to the Department of Agriculture.

That the Benghazi compound had included a large CIA presence had been reported but not confirmed. The New York Times, for example, had reported that among those evacuated were “about a dozen CIA operatives and contractors.” The paper, like The Washington Post, withheld locations and details of the facilities at the administration’s request.

But on Wednesday, the withholding was on hold.

The Republican lawmakers, in their outbursts, alternated between scolding the State Department officials for hiding behind classified material and blaming them for disclosing information that should have been classified. But the lawmakers created the situation by ordering a public hearing on a matter that belonged behind closed doors.

Republicans were aiming to embarrass the Obama administration over State Department security lapses. But they inadvertently caused a different picture to emerge than the one that has been publicly known: that the victims may have been let down not by the State Department but by the CIA. If the CIA was playing such a major role in these events, which was the unmistakable impression left by Wednesday’s hearing, having a televised probe of the matter was absurd.

The chairman, attempting to close his can of worms, finally suggested that “the entire committee have a classified briefing as to any and all other assets that were not drawn upon but could have been drawn upon” in Benghazi.

Good idea. Too bad he didn’t think of that before putting the CIA on C-SPAN.

swampman posted:

cleanhands posted:

im not gonna waste time reading about some dead moron, someone summarize the inconsistencies bc the bolded parts arent helpful

Republicans claim the Obama administration misled the public on the reasons the Libyans released footage of you standing in an enormous crib wearing a "who, me?" expression and a swelling diaper.

legit imho