![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I Voted and Benghazi
Nov. 6th, 2012 10:19 amI Voted
I voted this morning just before 8:00 AM, and if I read the digital counter on the ballot box correctly (we use optical scan of paper ballots in Illinois) I was the 118th voter at my polling place. We have two precincts that share one ballot box, so I don't know how significant that number is.
I suspected back in August that Obama would win re-election, and I stand by my prediction. This election looks to me to be a repeat of 2004, in which a Massachusetts politician whose chief claim to fame is that he's not the incumbent looses to the incumbent.
Benghazi
As I suspected, reporting confirms that no US military forces were in a position to immediately help the consulate at Benghazi. It's a valid question to ask "why not?" although not the one that the President's critics have focused on. (I will note that the Ambassador died in the first hour, and it's nearly impossible to even get somewhere in that time.)
Some of The Usual Suspects are still not believing that the military didn't have anybody immediately to hand, and are still claiming forces were ordered to stand down. To which I said, "rooms full of generals, admirals and their staffs would have been aware of the order to stand down. Are all of them and the members of the units in question willing to take the fall for Obama?" The response to this is silence, of course - logic is not something partisans are interested in.
The bottom line is that war is not a Chuck Norris movie. In war, sometimes the enemy wins a battle. You can't be everywhere all the time.
I voted this morning just before 8:00 AM, and if I read the digital counter on the ballot box correctly (we use optical scan of paper ballots in Illinois) I was the 118th voter at my polling place. We have two precincts that share one ballot box, so I don't know how significant that number is.
I suspected back in August that Obama would win re-election, and I stand by my prediction. This election looks to me to be a repeat of 2004, in which a Massachusetts politician whose chief claim to fame is that he's not the incumbent looses to the incumbent.
Benghazi
As I suspected, reporting confirms that no US military forces were in a position to immediately help the consulate at Benghazi. It's a valid question to ask "why not?" although not the one that the President's critics have focused on. (I will note that the Ambassador died in the first hour, and it's nearly impossible to even get somewhere in that time.)
Some of The Usual Suspects are still not believing that the military didn't have anybody immediately to hand, and are still claiming forces were ordered to stand down. To which I said, "rooms full of generals, admirals and their staffs would have been aware of the order to stand down. Are all of them and the members of the units in question willing to take the fall for Obama?" The response to this is silence, of course - logic is not something partisans are interested in.
The bottom line is that war is not a Chuck Norris movie. In war, sometimes the enemy wins a battle. You can't be everywhere all the time.
