hello and welcome to cross talk where all things considered i'm peter a live oh is it turning into an overblown scandal or a reflection of a foreign policy poorly thought out and executed the terrorist attack on the american diplomatic outpost in benghazi last september has become a political football to attack the obama administration and hillary clinton it appears mistakes were made but is there a proper focus on the most agree just wants. to crosstalk the benghazi affair i'm joined by raymond tanter in washington he is the president of the iran policy committee and author of the upcoming book arab rebels in iranian dissidents also in washington we have raymond mcgovern he is co-founder of veteran intelligence professionals for sanity and in atlanta we cross to jay bookman he's a columnist and blogger at the atlanta journal constitution all right gentlemen

crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want if i go to you first in washington is this is scandal or just incompetence or both. well the scandal is all out of proportion and what needs to happen is adults need to look at the situation and determine number one what happened number two why it happened and i'm not talking about additional security measures and three can it happen again and will it be able to be prevented and the answer to that last one key one is no it cannot be prevented because the reason why it happened is not a lack of security measures but it has to do with u.s. policy with that part of the world that's why they hate us that's why all our diplomats are at more peril than ever before ok interesting they're ready if i can go to you if i go to you in washington incompetence or a real scandal. well there's a bit of both incompetence and real scandal that said the united states is not

responsible for the terror attacks in benghazi in september eleventh two thousand and eleven the united states is responsible for its own actions but else. the militant terrorist group is responsible for the what happened to the ambassador stevens and his colleagues at the diplomatic post in benghazi i was fortunate enough to serve president reagan and i had libya as part of my portfolio and i always worried about the tribes in benghazi but that was forty years ago and everyone on the team kept saying to me don't worry about the tribesmen guys they will hold on to benghazi and he will always be subservient to tripoli but it didn't happen that way ok the greyman what do you think how do you feel about obama's response to all of this i mean initially there is

a cover up. and i don't believe there's a cover up i believe that that's where the incompetence comes out comes in you don't go. if you don't get ahead of the story by releasing all the information early like all the e-mails should have been released a year ago then those e-mails will come back to bite you that's incompetence that's exactly what's happening that's what's happening right now isn't it. yes that's what's happening and that's the that part is the incompetence part but it's not the united states' fault that the benghazi attack occurred it's not american policy it's what. will it come to that e.j. you want to answer this question scandal or incompetence or both. some of both but i think it's vastly overblown as to its importance when you have u.s. personnel and it with what is essentially

a war zone and been gazi. chris stevens knew the risk he was taking when he put himself in that situation the state department. let him make his own decisions about where he went and how much security he took with them because they trusted him as the in this country expert. he bade a bad choice a bad decision but to turn that into a a major political scandal i think it is vastly exaggerated reporting of what happened there when mcgovern what do you think was actually happening there why did this story change with the cia doing something there. no they don't want to talk about they don't want to talk about you know. well i'm free to talk about things because all i know comes out of that in the public media but we do have people like david brooks saying david brooks the conservative commentator in the new york times saying that this was a cia installation a cia operation we have a look of

a source very close to david petraeus at that point he was head of the cia and she says her name was broadwell or something like that she said publicly in denver that the cia was trying to interrogate people at a see the installation there in benghazi and that the locals knew these people were their brothers and sisters and that was the reason now no one has even looked into that so we have all manner of explanations as to why it happened what was going on and got to see why the ambassador was in benghazi is a question that hasn't even been addressed among all these talking points stuff but the thing that i would like to stress is this in mid october before the national election here in this country darrell ice the head of the government oversight committee held a hearing and they had star witnesses and they had this fellow big strapping

diplomatic security york nordstrom and he was their star witness and they said you asked for more security and get it yes sure well i we think that the more security would have prevented this what do you think now nobody knows but i will quote every dog strum quote having an extra foot of wall or an extra half dozen guards who are agents would not have enabled us to respond to this kind of attack the ferocity and intensity of the attack was nothing we had seen in libya or that i had seen in my time in the diplomatic security service end quote. what does it mean that means that all our diplomats are at risk of the state of the art with what degree rocket propelled grenades the shoulder fired missiles which twenty thousand was louche by our. attack on a libyan regime change regime change call it what it is to do regime change. and

what do you think about that what was the ambassador doing there no one likes to talk about that what was his relationship to the cia well i would like to talk about that either. well the chief of mission the ambassador is head of the entire. group of agencies the cia had an installation it was a diplomat called the diplomatic outpost and it was lightly secured and there was supposed to be a back up team of libyan locals to help but as jay bookman said. christie was called his own shots because he was the expert in the area and but i think it's state's fault to allow stevens to have a loud speaker as to call his own shots because that's not the way the interagency process ought to work you should have the inputs from various sectors including the the military on one and the agency to cia headquarters to decide where the investor

should be exposed because he's the bastard of the united states he's not christie fans ok jay what do you think about that i mean the ferocity of the attack you're going to jump in go ahead. i think mcgovern makes a very good point and quoting the security expert. the security experts opinion professional opinion is that nothing we could have done would have prevented that assault of that size from succeeding it was probably close to one hundred armed personnel who launched that assault there is no conceivable manpower the united states could place that that would have prevented well then why was there why it was even more truth why we see there than if he couldn't be protected. it was he'd come into benghazi by ship the rebellion was still underway he was used to taking these risks he thought he understood the risks he thought he

thought it was a legitimate risk to take what he was at what his mission there was doing i don't know the expectation is that the cia mission there among its missions was to try to capture some of the surface to air missiles that may have been a large ship said miss lewis on the way south re jump in to look like you want to say something go ahead. i think that there's abundant evidence that there were all manner of reasons why the cia was in benghazi on march so to speak one was going running to the serial to the syrian rebels but it seems clear another was just to kind of find out who these who these people in benghazi are that we liberated well. that's another really strange as it but we're trying to figure out you know are these good guys or the bad guys are the answer. or and so very little is known and you know the whole thing really smells when you have our top

diplomat the secretary of state cackling in saying we came we saw he died after the atrocious death of moamar could offie that sort of black in the c.n.n. eight states even more inspires people to do precisely what was done in benghazi to other diplomatic installations raymond would you like to apply that. again i think that ray mcgovern is blaming the united states with the actions of terrorist and incompetence on the part of the obama administration does not mask the fact that ansar al sharia or some other group that is been associated with al qaeda is responsible for the action itself almost like saying that willie sutton the bank robber he was asked why he robbed banks a set of because that's where the money is really sucking didn't say i robbed banks

because i disagree with the policies of the philadelphia city council he didn't talk about policy he talked about getting the money the terrorist are terrorists al-qaeda nine eleven why did that happen ray mcgovern has written that it's because of george w. bush that nine eleven happened that's nonsense it's not true. good way to do a show break i'll wait for a reply to that after our short break stay with r.t. . as. we speak your language another day of. school music programs and documentaries in

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welcome were all things considered i'm peter lavelle to remind you we're talking about the benghazi affair. ok we're going to go to you said something about what you've said in the past but i'd like to before that point out or ask a question how many terrorists like like this kind were in libya before this happened before regime change. well i think when hillary clinton and her advisors decided to bomb and to bomb libya and depots the. gadhafi that there were relatively few terrorists there now it's teeming with terrorism reminds me of iraq before we attacked iraq now it's caning with

terrorists but getting back to raymond's point here you know i have never accused george bush of letting nine eleven happen i have accused him of incompetence you know just a month before nine eleven he was warned by my colleagues in the cia osama bin laden determined to attack within the united states and he did absolutely nothing so at best it's it's misfeasance rather than malfeasance but the point is here why why did highly cheaper hommage the mastermind behind nine eleven why did he say that he did it now they captured him before the nine eleven report and this is what the nine eleven report says on page one forty seven and i have it committed to memory quote honey check one home it's on the most toward the united states stem not from his his studies here as a person in north carolina but rather from his deep hatred of u.s.

policy favoring israel period end quote that's never able to be mentioned in the press but terrorists so-called people who don't like what the israelis are doing in palestine the west bank and elsewhere and who don't like our support for ridiculous regimes like the one and out rain or saudi arabia you know they take it seriously when our policies impinge upon their neighbors their brothers and sisters you have to look for the reason this you say and what we're hearing here i should say what we're hearing here is blowback you agree or disagree. i think to some degree there is blowback of course but i think it's also it's not as if we can with big draw from the middle east israel is part of it but there's another part of it it's a critically important. area it's. if it goes to hell so to speak we'll be back in there with

a lot of military force and it's to our benefit to try to you know jay i mean. maybe you're right and you know with oil and stuff like that i can understand a bit mean should the united states and nato be in the business of regime change well the fear of the united states and nato did not begin the rebellion in libya the libya really being rebellion was had been underway for months before we intervened and when the bombing campaign started working when the bombing campaign started that's when the death toll really started to escalate. if i mean if i can go to you would you like to react to what ray mcgovern said. yes on march twenty ninth. as i've written in my book arab rebels in the rain in dissidents president obama gave the order to commit u.s. air. support to the to be libyan civilians and that

was a turning point in the war because obama brought sarkozy and cameron along with him in order to complete the triad. of actors some western actors nato actors to help on sea colonel qadhafi now with respect to the issue of regime change it's different strokes for different folks it regime change i think can work in a place like iran now from within because there is in the rain an opposition but there is no opposition there was no opposition in libya and therefore when the libyan people try their best to overthrow the regime they got in trouble what about the trouble in iraq said about the trouble in iraq what about the trouble in libya you're saying we should do it again ray mcgovern go ahead again with syria i guess i think what let me go ahead bring it me a personal observation ok as an army officer i took a solemn oath. to support and defend the constitution united states against all

enemies foreign and domestic this war against libya was illegal it was unconstitutional the power to declare war is finished it in the first article the constitution in our elected representatives in the congress and we had leon panetta and hillary clinton saying that doesn't matter the president can do what every once in the name of national security when you start wars like this without the proper constitutional backpacking this is the kind of trouble you get into jay what do you think about that what is the learning curve here on the war on terror. that we're going to make mistakes and we will continue to make mistakes because there's no way we did not have perfect knowledge we did not have perfect and troll tragedies such as that at benghazi are going to happen it's part of the price of being involved in that part of the world it's a tough place we do but we don't have to say be right do you think that western

power should determine the political outcomes there i mean we've had so many x. examples so far the don't work i agree i thought the invasion of iraq was that it was a terrible decision right from the get go but. the you said earlier that there was no libyan opposition there certainly was a libyan opposition the libyan opposition is is who started the rebellion that's who that's that we didn't invent that there was you know let me also mention it's all the chord we came in and shorten the time frame of which that that rebellion took to go overthrow gadhafi but it came up out of the libyan people ok raman what do you account for of the chaos in libya today how do you account for that the chaos comes as a result of the sudden removal of authority and you have that anybody think about that for put anybody think about that at the time. i can't imagine that people hadn't thought about the consequences of using military force there's

a whole package put together every time force is about to be use where you talk about the secondary and tertiary consequences of using force but i want to get back to the issue of race mcgovern just statements about nine eleven i've done some research on his writing and he does in fact not just say that george w. bush was to be used to nine eleven as a vehicle to go into iraq he also says he malchus the conspiracy theory that george will be because bush created nine eleven now he can back away from that if he wants to but i want to go to make one more charge before he jumps in. the government said that. the resentment and u.s. support for the shah led to the seizure of the american embassy in tehran well it was told of khomeini who wanted to consolidate his rule of the islamist

after the secular mujahedeen had been the main driver in overthrowing the shah but khomeini was having a battle with the motor again about who was going to control polls shock iran so the notion that the american embassy seizure was due to american sport of the shah is simply nonsense as i point out and in my book case it looks i guess if the united states never makes any mistakes here go ahead. well i would have to say that i'm not but even mentioned the backing away from a church that i never made raymond i'm talking right out of the talking points of the neo cons what i will say with respect to iran was that raymond should remember that there was a duly constituted government in iran in one thousand nine hundred fifty three most addiction government freely elected and he had this posterous idea who the benefits

of that should read down to the iranian people oh my goodness i became basically him that's amazing cia by this so we overthrew him right and then we imposed the worst dictatorship since adolf hitler on iran the shah's brutal brutal regime and everyone who's been in iran knows that ok and so it really wanted to get back let's get back to libya here what is the learning curve here on the war on terror if any well learning curve is to find out why they hate us. ok jay you want to jump in there why do they hate us i think why they hate us is there's a whole variety of reasons that they hate us and some of them are actually pretty good. but that doesn't mean we can't learn from those mistakes not try to do those same things. to the poor people in syria today who hate us because we're not intervening because there's watching hundreds of thousands hundreds and thousands of their loved ones still women children being slaughtered and we're not

intervening i'm not advocating that we intervene but there are people there in syria today who hate us and will hate us for generations because we're not intervening it's a case in which there are on realistic expectations of what what the united states can do and should do and if the idea that we can please everybody in that region by not doing anything is simply untrue ok mo maybe if the united states stopped droning people some people would be happy ray you want to jump in go ahead. you know i think jay is absolutely right the key seems to me that when hillary clinton the secretary of state says assad regime has to go yes well that gives that provides a catalyst for each and every little terrorist group to make sure they're the ones that make it go and the unexpected or the the anticipation of support by the united states is what keeps this thing going in my view so united states gets together with russia an interested party and brings people to the table that's the solution

to this thing not arming stillmore rebels for regime change ok we're going to last word thirty seconds i mean washington regime change regime change from within. requires an organized opposition the mujahedeen in iran is an organized opposition to bring one hundred thousand plus people to paris everybody has a bad day almost everyone is a topic for another program gentlemen we have run out of here in these and many thanks to my guest today in washington and it will hand and thanks to our viewers for watching us here at r d c takes time and remember crosstalk.

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league the european union mons a crusade against the continent's bonking hobbes declaring open season on account privacy and tonks evaders alike. brush as a musician i couldn't see where this comes up from but faces obstacles from powers that want to bomb the rebel forces that despite evidence of atrocities committed by them in the ongoing civil war. under a rock is trouble to restore basic services and infrastructure left in taxes by the american occupation the country's devastated by a series of bombings that have left dozens dead.