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The result of the move request was: page moved per nom. DrKiernan ( talk) 10:20, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
U.S. Consulate attack in Benghazi → Attack on the U.S. Diplomatic mission in Benghazi – Per WP:COMMONNAME, "Ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources." — Hasdi Bravo • 19:03, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
The website of U.S. Embassy of Libya in Tripoli (e.g., http://libya.usembassy.gov/tw091312.html), described the incident as the " attack on the U.S. Diplomatic mission in Benghazi", of which the proposed title is adopted. The latest word from the administration referred to the attack as done to "U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya."
However, all this namings make sense once you realize that the word " diplomatic mission" technically refers to a group of people that is headed by an ambassador (i.e., J. Christopher Stevens) rather than the building of the permanent diplomatic mission (a.k.a. the embassy) in Tripoli, Libya. While there is no U.S. embassy in Benghazi, there may be a consulate or a consular office, which is a similar but distinct function from a diplomatic office. There were two separate attacks, one of which may not be consular office at all. The administration thus used the general term "diplomatic facilities" which could refer to an embassy building, a consular office, a safe house, or any building that is operated by U.S. government in Libya. Anywho, with the passing with the ambassador, this is clearly an attack on the diplomatic mission in Libya, defined as a group of people lead by Stevens, so I think the proposed title is most accurate. — Hasdi Bravo • 19:03, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
If this article is to be encyclopedic, rather than an opinion piece, the term used to describe the facility the "facility" is important. Embassies, consulates and Diplomatic Missions are all specific official US designations, and are listed here: http://www.usembassy.gov/ . I think it is premature to describe it further, as it may be more of a military outpost, to coordinate (lead?) the effort for military and political control of Libya. All US officials are careful to parse how this "compound" is described. See the nuances here, at moonofalabama.org, comment #50 citing US State Department statements:
See also: http://reanimatedresidue.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/there-is-no-us-embassyconsulatemission-in-benghazi-libya/
which has collected various news stories on what the compound may have been (perhaps the Guardian's photos of the "gated compound" could be included to show that physical distinction. I suggest "U.S. Compound" rather than either "consulate" or "diplomatic mission" Erichwwk3 ( talk) 01:53, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps the whole section shouldn't necessarily be deleted, but I do think it takes up too much space on a page its not directly related to (its in essence the opposition's response to the gov'ts response to the situation, usually we don't give so much coverage to responses of responses). The section's length is comparable- and if anything longer- than the background section. And in my view at least, it doesn't deserve so much coverage, at least not on this page (see below).
This topic- internal US political squabbles and finger-pointing - isn't directly related to the consulate attack. Perhaps we could make a separate page (where perhaps opposition presidential candidate Mitt Romney's comments regarding the Cairo Embassy can go too), and have an abbreviated version here?--
Yalens (
talk)
14:43, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
It looks to me like there's a consensus that the section shouldn't be removed but that redundancy and unnecessary elaboration can be trimmed out. Am I wrong?
I think I'll do the following:
1) Remove the SYN with John McCain. Although that's the logical assumption based on his party, neither he nor the article stated that he was criticizing the government with his statement. Other similar instances that may be found later also apply.
2) Remove the "according to some people" statement because (a) it's dubious and (b) its already elsewhere on the page.
3) Generally removing excessive names and quotes except when the person has an important position (like Rogers of the House Intelligence Committee), instead, only mentioning briefly on what terms x-thing was criticized in a sentence or two.
Any issues?--
Yalens (
talk)
19:43, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
Why is the attack on the American embassy listed as part of the Libyan Civil War? The attack took place nearly a year after the official end of the war. Spirit of Eagle ( talk) 00:50, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
This page has been moved to " Attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi" per my earlier proposal, but after some digging I think we have a good case to change it to " Attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi" instead. Both titles would be correct, but the later is probably more WP:COMMONNAME. Right after the attack, U.S. Embassy did refer to it as an attack on the consulate [11] and also diplomatic mission. [12] This is because the technical definition of "diplomatic mission" refers to the diplomatic agents including the ambassador, who were killed in the attack. However, the attack also took place in the U.S. compound for the consulate [check layout of the compound in the satellite image on wikimapia as stated in the coordinates for this page]. This consulate has been attacked before with no casualties (see the June 2012 entry on 2011–present Libyan factional fighting of which I have copied the references from), and the daily beast also stated an earlier attack on April 2012.
So, the existence of U.S. consulate in Benghazi is likely common knowledge in Libyan residents for some time. I can only speculate why the U.S. administration is avoiding the term "consulate", e.g., maybe the compound also serves diplomatic purposes other than consular services. I read rumors that the consulate is actually a CIA nest, based on news reports that CIA personnel left Benghazi a week or so ago. At best, this still means that the compound is still primarily for the consulate, it's just that there could be a legitimate intelligence gathering office in the compound, much like our CIA HQ in Langley. Not necessarily anything nefarious.
Thoughts welcome. — Hasdi Bravo • 14:42, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
From this it seems clear that these buildings (described as a consulate, and an annex), was actually a secret CIA base: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-letting-us-in-on-a-secret/2012/10/10/ba3136ca-132b-11e2-ba83-a7a396e6b2a7_story.html?hpid=z7 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.71.226.54 ( talk) 14:44, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
The content of this article gives the impression that the Obama administration fabricated the idea that the Benghazi attack resulted from the anti-Islam video, and that the attack was a spontaneous reaction of protesters.
The truth is that the Associate Press and others reported these very thing on day one, citing the assessment of a Libyan government official.
Here is the report:
And here are some key excerpts from the report:
"Wanis al-Sharef, a Libyan Interior Ministry official in Benghazi, said the four Americans were killed when the angry mob, which gathered to protest a U.S.-made film that ridicules Islam's Prophet Muhammad, fired guns and burned down the U.S. consulate in Benghazi."
"According to al-Sharef, the angry mob stormed the consulate after the U.S. troops who responded fired rounds into the air to try and disperse the crowd."
"Al-Sharef said the Libyan guards employed to guard the consulate building were far outgunned by the protesters, and thus retreated when the building was stormed."
"Hours before the protest erupted in Benghazi, protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, tearing down and replacing the American flag with an Islamic banner."
"One of the [armed Islamic] groups to emerge in post-revolution Libya, Ansar al-Sharia, claimed responsibility Wednesday for the attack in Benghazi, which has been condemned by the country's new government."
Note that Ansar al-Sharia is an Islamic militia group, not a terrorist group. So this would have also added to the initial confusion. (It shows that it would have been premature to assume a terrorist attack.) That a militia group was widely suspected is born out by the fact that pro-American Libyans subsequently protested against the militias and the Libyan government initiated a crackdown on them. (I think this information *is* reported in this Wikipedia article.)
Here's another, independent, report:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/09/20129112108737726.html
To be fair to the Obama Administration, and for the sake of clarity and completeness, this information should be reported in this Wikipedia article. If nothing else, it shows that there were independent reports that the Obama administration could have base their initial story on. This info should be included in a number of places, including the timeline. The article is dated Sept. 12, but it appears to me that the quotes from Wanis al-Sharef likely came shortly after the attacks. His assessment was contradicted by the president of Libya and others later on.
I have Republican friends who insist Obama's team made this stuff up as a part of a cover-up. They quit talking when I showed them the articles I cite here. — SDLarsen • 00:48, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
FYI, it is already stated on this page that Libyan government disputed that the attack as prompted by the film, which is essentially in the two cites you pointed out. But put them anyway in the Investigation timeline section. The US administration suggested early on that the attack it was a spontaneous response of the the film, which made it difficult for some of us to spin off this page from 2012 diplomatic missions attacks. It's best not to judge the administration on this, but just focus on what actually happened. See my earlier comments on this. — Hasdi Bravo • 01:22, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
I posted what I did so the article could be improved. The initial reports I point out are pertinent -- even though later corrected -- because the information given in them perfectly match the Obama Administration's narrative in the controversy going on between them and Republicans. Though I do occasionally make *simple* improvements to Wikipedia articles myself, I won't add this information myself for a number of reasons. (I'm not that great at writing; I don't know how to do references and other things and don't have time to learn, and even if I did learn I would forget; I don't want to argue with people about this; etc.) Past experience has taught me that a few editors tend to "own" certain articles and they end up getting their way, which is fine because I don't care that much. I'm just trying to be helpful, and if it ends up to naught then, well, I tried. (BTW, I wasn't chastising others for anything, as one person suggested. Just trying to fill a hole the best I could with the knowledge I have.) Have a pleasant day. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SDLarsen ( talk • contribs) 05:05, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
It's been over a month since this terrorist attack. We've known for weeks these brave young men were private contractors who heroically ran to the fight without any official duty to do so.
You people need to show some respect for facts, research and most importantly -- Fallen Americans. 24.12.87.61 ( talk) 17:57, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Hey Hasdi, thanks for doing all that work of putting all that text into table format. First I hated it, then I loved it, now my honeymoon is over. :D I'm sure you've done this enough so that you can point to other examples on Wiki here for such use of a table. I'd like to conform as much as possible to an "accepted" Wiki way as we all are putting more information in. Thanks!! Oh, and, at what point do you think the investigation section gets to be too much and we start thinking about making it its own page? -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 22:22, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Also, now that all that info is in that table, you can read through it and clearly see that some of the info has NOTHING to do with "investigation." Thoughts on how to handle this? -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 22:25, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
How to handle the timeline? I think I don't even need to say it anymore. You guys already know my favorite line: new. page.
But seriously, while timelines may be discouraged in some cases, personally I actually kinda like them, provided they're relevant and don't have OR or POV or any of those things. The timelines for the Yugoslav wars, at least based on the last time I saw them, are good examples in my book. --
Yalens (
talk)
14:44, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
I know I've already floated this elsewhere, but I wanted to get a discussion going specifically on this topic. Here's the problems I see:
1) About 50-60% of the page is dedicated to the investigation and political controversy in the U.S.
2) As others have stated, the heavy media coverage on this means that it has at least some degree of notability. However, in my view it should take up about 20% of this page at most. This page is about the embassy attack.
3) Obviously, deleting it would not be popular, and I wouldn't support that either.
So the obvious solution in my mind, right now, is to make a separate page for the U.S. investigation and political controversy surrounding it. So far, the only person who has replied to this idea (as far as I know) is Hasdi, who said it wouldn't be notable enough it didn't "deserve" its own page, also noting that there was a POV issue. To that, I would say that POV issues can be fixed, and clearly, it seems that most people agree that the heavy news coverage of it makes it notable.
And there seems to be plenty of info here to fill the page with.
So that's my two cents. What are other editor's thoughts?-- Yalens ( talk) 14:17, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
1. The 9/11 article has so many spin-off articles that there's a whole template. This article has zero. That's the difference in my mind.
2. Talk pages are supposed to be about discussing pages, not editors. But for the record, I hope you guys read the history and know that I wasn't the one who threatened to put on the POV tag, since I get the impression I'm the editor being talked about in third person here. Although based on Cirrus' statement, quite clearly there is some disagreement about POV between editors here...
3. Since you hardworking editors do a lot of research on this topic, is there specifically a problem with devoting a separate page to it? Not every reader comes to this page to read about U.S. politics. --
Yalens (
talk)
18:42, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
I am undoubtedly late to the party, and not experienced at this so mea culpa for the poor formatting- here's my nickel (inflation ;):
I. Hasdi Bravo and Yalens make excellent and valid points about splitting the political controversy/investigation onto a separate page as that is the standard not the exception in WP as far as I have seen. The countering 9/11 page analogy is not valid as
II. I am quite convinced that this event page deserves a POV citation immediately and until it excises the attempt to lay blame for the attack on those who were attacked. Such does not exist in the 9/11 page even tho there is ample evidence that an attack was expected by the Clinton NSA but such was virtually ignored by the Bush NSA, that the FBI was monitoring extremists surveying the Wall Street area in the year prior to 9/11, and the Italian and German gov'ts had warned State/NSA that al Qaeda was planning on using hijacked planes to attack Western sites (i.e. the G8 mtng in Genoa and elsewhere) well in advance of the 9/11 attack. I am not making an argument for any conspiracy theory but for the fact that such material was excised from the 9/11 page yet is supported on this event page.
III. More reason for a POV banner: in surveying those WIKI entries on the 30+ attacks against overseas US consular entities during the Reagan and Bush Admins ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist_attacks_on_U.S._diplomatic_facilities) that are inherently far more analogous to the Benghazi attacks than is the 9/11 page - one finds no precedent for discussing political controversy/leveling blame on the country attacked on any other page describing a terrorist attack against US diplomatic entities:
This wide differential between Wikipedia's descriptions of ALL past US diplomatic attacks and the recent Benghazi attack indicates strongly that the Benghazi event is receiving unprecedented treatment based on current politics (aka the very close election) - making it a very strong candidate for POV at least until the Presidential election has been concluded.
Relocating the political controversy/investigation to a separate page of its own would go a long way towards resolving that issue efficaciously and I urge the lead editor/author to do so with all haste. Then the issue of political electioneering thinly veiled as investigation by Issa & Co can be explored/discussed appropriately on its own page and not the event page itself. BeBopnJazz ( talk) 13:49, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
...and btw, since we started this discussion, the problem has actually worsened considerably. Now US-politics takes up about 70% of the page, by rough estimate :(. That's a little depressing. -- Yalens ( talk) 21:44, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Can other notable events help us decide how to handle the page? See pages for Iran–Contra affair, JFK assassination and Cuban missile crisis. -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 00:36, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Anything "wrong" with the page going like War in Afghanistan (2001–present)? -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 00:43, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
If you feel it'll be useful for the article, please feel free to replace the picture of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton with a video that just got uploaded to Wikimedia Commons: File:President Obama's statement on US Consulate in Benghazi attacks 2012-09-12.ogv. odder ( talk) 20:23, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
The 2nd sentence of the lede is grammatically and factually incorrect. It is now: "The sustained 5-hour gunbattle took place in a walled U.S. diplomatic compound and, in the early hours the next day." The problem is that the four Americans were killed in two different locations a half mile apart from each other. Please see the NYT interactive map and click through to the 2nd map [23]. Part of the confusion may stem from the wording in the section titled "The attack". In that section I don't think it is clear that there were two compounds a half mile apart, and that the attack came in two waves, first at the main compound, and then in the early morning hours the next day at the second compound, which was hit by indirect mortar fire (killing two more Americans). -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 21:03, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Also, why is the first sentence about "rogue militias" doing the attacking? The investigation is still ongoing, and many sources are stating different things about the attackers and who they suspect they may be aligned with. I think this is misleading to write "rogue militias" did the attacking, and it waters down the meaning, too; as if it were just rogue militias with no suspected ties to the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. Suspected perps right now are Ansar al-Sharia, Abu Sufian bin Qumu, and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 22:44, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
I think it's an overstatement to say that the crowd the chased out the extremists was "pro-American". So I removed that part from the sentence. I hope you guys are okay with that. -- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 01:35, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
I think the cat is out of the bag since last week. Does anybody have any issue calling the second compound an intelligence post for the CIA? — Hasdi Bravo • 01:33, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Not sure why these lengthy bios are in this article on the attack. Stevens and Smith have their own page. So these two also properly belong on their own bio pages. How do we remove the redirects someone placed and move them onto their own pages?-- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 14:56, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
Ummm... I don't why it's necessary to have a table of images for the victims if only half the victims have images. Can't we write about the victims in prose and then include the two pictures we do have on the side of the article? -- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 17:51, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
I don't have any problems with the way the images are displayed, but do we really need to go into this much detail about their lives? Is it really necessary to note that Doherty co-authored on this page, really? I certainly don't see why its necessary... -- Yalens ( talk) 21:52, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Obama never said that the attack was a reaction to Innocence of Muslims. His statements about the attack didn't even mention the film. He's only mentioned the film in reference to the unrelated storming of the US embassy in Cairo by flag-burning protestors the same day, and to the similar protests that sprung up across the region in following weeks. 24.214.230.66 ( talk) 14:20, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Given last night's presidential townhall debate, I wonder if the interplay between Obama, Romney, and moderator Crowley would shed light on the attack and the timelines involved. Several opinion pieces [28] [29] [30] make reference to Romney making direct accusations about when the president did and did not name the Benghazi attack an "act of terror" ... see transcript from this link:
- OBAMA: Secretary Clinton has done an extraordinary job. But she works for me. I’m the president and I’m always responsible, and that’s why nobody’s more interested in finding out exactly what happened than I do. The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people in the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we’re going to hunt down those who committed this crime. And then a few days later, I was there greeting the caskets coming into Andrews Air Force Base and grieving with the families. And the suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the Secretary of State, our U.N. Ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we’ve lost four of our own, governor, is offensive. That’s not what we do. That’s not what I do as president, that’s not what I do as Commander in Chief.
- CROWLEY: Governor, if you want to...
- ROMNEY: Yes, I -- I...
- CROWLEY: ... quickly to this please.
- ROMNEY: I -- I think interesting the president just said something which -- which is that on the day after the attack he went into the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror.
- OBAMA: That’s what I said.
- ROMNEY: You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack, it was an act of terror.
- It was not a spontaneous demonstration, is that what you’re saying?
- OBAMA: Please proceed governor.
- ROMNEY: I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.
- OBAMA: Get the transcript.
- CROWLEY: It -- it -- it -- he did in fact, sir. So let me -- let me call it an act of terror...
- OBAMA: Can you say that a little louder, Candy?
- CROWLEY: He -- he did call it an act of terror. It did as well take -- it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea there being a riot out there about this tape to come out. You are correct about that.
- ROMNEY: This -- the administration -- the administration indicated this was a reaction to a video and was a spontaneous reaction.
- CROWLEY: It did.
- ROMNEY: It took them a long time to say this was a terrorist act by a terrorist group. And to suggest -- am I incorrect in that regard, on Sunday, the -- your secretary -- ... Excuse me. The ambassador of the United Nations went on the Sunday television shows and spoke about how -- ... this was a spontaneous --
- CROWLEY: Mr. President, let me --
- OBAMA: I’m happy to have a longer conversation --
- CROWLEY: I know you --
- OBAMA: -- about foreign policy.
- CROWLEY: Absolutely. But I want to -- I want to move you on and also --
- OBAMA: OK. I’m happy to do that, too.
- CROWLEY: -- the transcripts and --
- OBAMA: I just want to make sure that --
- CROWLEY: -- figure out what we --
- OBAMA: -- all of these wonderful folks are going to have a chance to get some of their questions answered.
Also, CNN fact checked this debate and concluded "The conclusion: Romney's precise comment was false. Obama did describe the killings in Benghazi as an act of terror twice in the two days after the attack. In an interview two weeks after the incident, though, he appeared to reserve judgment, and some Obama administration officials, including Carney and Rice, suggested in the days after the attack that the United States had no indication that it was a planned assault. [31] Peace, MPS ( talk) 20:00, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
An assessment of the CNN fact check should take into consideration the likelihood that CNN is going to fact check in a way that makes the "real time" fact check of their moderator look wrong in hindsight. Should this article have called more attention to the President's Rose Garden speech on September 11 earlier? One could argue that Wikipedia was biased against Obama by not giving this rebuttal to Republican criticisms a higher profile. But the problem there is that there were few sources out there calling attention to the September 12 remarks prior to Obama doing so last night. Indeed, one could perhaps argue that Wikipedia ended up biased against Romney by potentially keeping him in the supposed "conservative media bubble" which ignored the September 12 remarks and so contributed to his overplaying his hand last night, leading to a dramatic "show cards" show down that the moderator called for Obama. But I think the Wikipedia community was not especially aware of the existence of the September 12 remarks not because we are in any "conservative media bubble" here but because we are in a "media bubble" period. The Rose Garden speech was a largely unexpected rebuttal, and had Wikipedia tried to make this rebuttal prior to Obama making it, there would have been a dispute about how effective a rebuttal it really is. Indeed there is still a dispute about just how effective a rebuttal this is such that it is not clear how Wikipedia should handle this.-- Brian Dell ( talk) 21:28, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
This could be useful to refer to, not in the least because it has links to a wealth of sources for our timeline: [ [34]].-- Yalens ( talk) 13:56, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
This section seems pretty one-sided. The content is almost all quotes from Republicans, and only seems to represent that side of the reaction. Given that the section is called Reaction (or response?) instead of "Criticism" of, I'd say we've run afoul of due weight. The republican response is not the sole or even overwhelming response. To only represent one side, democrat or republican, when due weight suggests both are represented in appreciable amounts in the category in question, is slanting things a bit. Either change the heading to "criticism" or please make it less one-sided. I know this is election season. I know spirits are high. But let's please keep some civility in our dealing with the death of an american citizen serving our country. This is not the time, even after the event, to be trying to score political points over the body of an american diplomat. 204.65.34.219 ( talk) 19:04, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
This section opens with the sentence: "Some officials in the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama purportedly described the attack as an off-shoot of the protest over the film, although one U.S. official acknowledged that the attack was likely organized and deliberate." [39] That cite is from Sept. 26, which is 15 days after the attack. To open the U.S. government response section with a cite that is that old is really odd. I'll try to get some earlier cites that are better suited to what the U.S. government response was on Sept. 12, 13, 14 that timeframe. Also, to put into the lead sentence in this section that one "U.S. official acknowledged that the attack was likely organized and deliberate", just seems like a reach. The NYTimes put that tidbit in the 17th paragraph of their article. That's how much weight the NYT attributed to it; yet it appears in the opening sentence to this section. Not balanced. -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 19:57, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
In the interest of transparency, I've removed this from the U.S. government response section: "Before the ceremony, Carney spoke of the video in relation to the protest in Egypt, not Libya. [1]" As I explain in my edit in the article itself, this is not what Carney stated. Here is the actual full exchange from the press briefing on Sept. 14:
So even after Mr. Carney is informed that the Sec'y of Defense and the Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs is briefing senators on "indications" that the Benghazi attack was a terrorist attack, preplanned, premeditated....he goes back to the video. -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 20:29, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
Here is the opening sentence I removed from this section:
I provide reasons above for this. -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 21:52, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
References
I thought this might be helpful to fellow Wikipedians, or anyone, really. I've collected here some popular source materials.
The Economic Times Benghazi collection [40]
The Chicago Tribune Benghazi collection [41]
Los Angeles Times Benghazi collection [42]
CNN Benghazi collection [43]
Foreign Policy Initiative provide a very nice collection of abstracts and links to many different source materials. Day by day:
...and on and on. Just search by date.
For these collections I've just saved the search criteria from Google. So we have searches on each site for "benghazi attack" at:
This last one might be really useful. It's a search on "benghazi attack" on all .gov sites. So this will find U.S. government sites, such as the White House, the State Department, Congressmen, Congressional Committees, etc:
Search "benghazi attack" on all .gov sites [52]
Happy hunting! -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 23:52, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
I am nominating this page for {{ POV-check}} until the 2012 United States elections is over. Specifically, this page cannot be an considered an authoritative source regarding the allegation of cover-up and duplicity by the U.S. administration under Barack Obama on the Benghazi attack. While editors have worked to resolve WP:POV issues, we may not be able to catch them all and correct new ones in a timely manner. And I don't think splitting off page will help, and may even lead to WP:POV-fork. Let's focus on what had happened, not what should have happened. Thank you. — Hasdi Bravo • 20:44, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Does anyone deny that this page has a POV? It seems to me that almost everyone thinks that it has some sort of POV (the remainder have - or perhaps had - no opinion), though they don't agree on what it is. Does anybody deny there is an issue?-- Yalens ( talk) 22:46, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
This article certainly should be tagged in some way to warn readers. As I commented earlier regarding the changes I made to U.S. government reaction, there is a lot of confusion in this article about who said what when, and were they talking about Benghazi or other places. Obama and Jay Carney are White House. Clinton is State Department. Rice is UN Ambassador. Olsen is NCTC. Each of those websites have all the statements, press releases and so forth. On September 12, Obama and Clinton were clear the Benghazi attack was by militants, not 'protestors'. The lede implied the Administration believed otherwise, and that simply isn't supported by their statements. No doubt there was unofficial conjecture by unknown staffers about all sorts of triggering factors, but it certainly wasn't the official position. I haven't yet reviewed Susan Rice's statements and talk show videos, so I left the current summaries of her statements as is for now. Our job is not to report what any of these people supposedly meant, but what they said and did. It's not right to claim they blamed a video for Benghazi's attack when they blamed it for Egypt's protests and attack. Those are two different places, people! 184.78.81.245 ( talk) 23:39, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
The article is being changed in ways that I don't think it would be if this topic had not come up in the Presidential debate last night. Who are these "others" who "believed the Benghazi attack appeared to have been planned in advance and professionally executed"? It used to be more specific (excluding people like the President or Susan Rice), and it used to say that they believed this "early on" or "within hours" in order to correctly suggest that some were faster than others and that the administration was not in the fast group. Guess who said the following on September 30?
"Friday [September 28] we got the administration's sort of definitive statement that this now looks as though it was a pre-planned attack by a terrorist group, and some of whom were at least sympathetic to al Qaeda.
Why do you think and are you [Mr McCain] bothered that it has taken them this long from September 11th to now to get to this conclusion?"
Answer: Candy Crowley. This article used to read like Crowley - and most media sources who have following the development of this story - would have wanted it to read (as evidenced by that quote from September 30). Now it's changed but did anything really change? Did Crowley suddenly change her opinion and start believing that what was said on September 12 is as significant as September 28 in terms of how the matter should be fairly characterized? The more plausible explanation is that she just got hung up on a technicality last night and Wikipedia can and should avoid this.--
Brian Dell (
talk)
02:27, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
You know what, guys. I am going to take out one paragraph in the lede to avoid bipartisan edit-whoring (until the election is over). The lede is too long anyway and there are other sections in this article that need attention. Please place any "he said, she said" stuff in the " Investigation timeline" and withhold judgement. If anybody wants to stick {{ POV-section}} in " U.S. government response" section, feel free. TQ. — Hasdi Bravo • 02:38, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
The section titled "Fatalities and injuries" seems to only discuss the dead, not the injured. Perhaps we should change the title? -- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 13:15, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
In light of the Benghazi attack being mentioned in the Presidential debated and multiple RS articles written on the "Benghazi scandal", it may be good idea to have this new section as h2-level heading, possibly combining it with the section "Criticism of U.S. response" that is currently a h3-level. Moreover, this section can prepped to be WP:SPLIT off it takes up more than a third of this page, which is probably in line with Yalens' earlier proposal. Thoughts welcome. — Hasdi Bravo • 01:14, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
I found an interesting article [54] detailing the chronology of the U.S. government's response and investigation of the attacks. One interesting thing it says is that "within 24 hours of the attack, the C.I.A.’s station chief in Tripoli, Libya, e-mailed headquarters that witnesses said the assault was mounted by heavily armed militants." -- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 16:01, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
If anyone is offended with term " Full Ginsburg" then argue your case on that page, i.e., have her entry removed from Full Ginsburg, don't take it out on this page. What she has been referred as that [55] and I don't see anything wrong with what she did. If you do, then you have issues. — Hasdi Bravo • 15:13, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
I removed a hatnote {{ About}} and it was replaced with a {{ For}} with a link to Reactions to 'Innocence of Muslims'. Both of these templates are being misused. cygnis insignis 00:02, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
I've trimmed the section 'Investigation timeline', but it needs to be furthered trimmed. Wikipedia is not a news source, to report the blow by blow of every statement made about the attacks. Also, the timeline should be restricted to reports on investigations into the attacks, it shouldn't include reports about the grandstanding of various congressmen who want to use the event as political fodder for their re-election campaign. So, please restrict to only news articles about actual investigations on the attack——no speculation and no political grandstanding please. FurrySings ( talk) 14:43, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
Okay, due to the controversy this is causing, I say we revert the major deletions that editor made and then have a clear discussion about what exactly to remove and what to keep in the timeline. After agreeing on what to remove, then we start removing content. -- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 02:13, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
I advocated for the timeline in the beginning due the conflicting and evolving reporting on the attack. Eventually, we have to summarize them and have the timeline reduced to briefly mention key news, possibly with links to relevant section on this page. Unfortunately, due to the controversial nature of this topic, any kind of summarizing will be perceived as bias for or against the Obama administration. Even quoting only part of full text, will be accused of taking a quote out of context.
I am hoping all this will go away after the election is over. Until then, we can use the timeline to put screened news/cites that are relevant to this page, waiting to "find a home" on one of the section. We don't have to keep everything. Many news/cites are just echos of key ones plus commentaries that are irrelevant in enlightening the reader on the Benghazi attack.
Thoughts welcome. — Hasdi Bravo • 02:31, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/24/us-usa-benghazi-emails-idUSBRE89N02C20121024
Where can I find the emails which are being reported on? Are the emails available to the general public? 71.52.199.48 ( talk) 10:40, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
This is already a long article. Apparently both Hasdi and Yalens aren't content to have "A 22-year-old freelance videographer, Fahd al-Bakoush, later published a video" mentioned once, this has to be in the article twice (because they reverted my minimization of it to once without removing the first mention when they put back the second). Does this really have to be in the article twice? There is already a lot of repetition in this article but there is little point in my, or anyone else, trying to condense this article if there isn't a consensus to do this. The ambassador "died of asphyxiation" is mentioned repeatedly, twice alone in the material that was reverted back in. "According to U.S. officials, security personnel were separated from Stevens during the attack in the chaos of smoke and gunfire that ensued." Didn't we already very clearly say that? Why repeat this? "Stevens and foreign service officer Sean Smith were inside the consulate with a regional security officer. They got separated in the smoke." Again, this is quite clear from the "Attack" section which provides more detail about who the "regional security officer" is and how they got separated. "he tried for 90 minutes to resuscitate him with no success" also needs to appear the article twice? "Stevens' body was later returned to U.S. custody" is also in the article already with more details on how the body was repatriated. "Seif Eddin Zoghbia was the general surgeon on duty" only appears once but really how notable is this when this person isn't the doctor who worked on the ambassador (who is already mentioned). This isn't an article about the Benghazi Medical Center and it has nothing to do with the events at either the consulate or the annex since it concerns developments at a hospital. Last I checked a hospital was not attacked. At most who "the general surgeon on duty" was is relevant to the fate of the ambassador and therefore appropriate for that biography. Would the New York Times have these sorts of details if it did a single article summary of the attack? If someone really thinks this is a must have, fine, that, along with things like "The crowd cheered 'God is Greatest'" (we already know the local population was sympathetic to the ambassador because they later drove suspect militias out of town, and at the time they didn't know this was the ambassador) could go in, but why not fit it into the narrative of the attack? These multiple sections are a major driver of all the redundancy in this article. The argument that this part of the article needs to be long because the rest of the article is too long doesn't make any sense to me. I would think it would make far more sense to split off the other material into a separate article if you don't think that other material is relevant to the topic or notable as opposed to packing the narrative of the night's events with redundancy. I was going to continue to the rest of the article but appears that it is going to be an uphill battle trimming this article back. "Romney claimed to have previously met Doherty at a gathering in La Jolla, San Diego" needs to be mentioned twice? With "As reported in the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The New York Times and other news sources" as well? "Romney said. '[Woods and Doherty] rushed there to go help. This is the American way." This can't be removed either? Romney is a notable person but this is just fluff and it isn't relevant to the controversy either, which like it or not is getting far more media coverage than these biographic details and if Wikipedia is neutral it takes its weighting cues from how the sources weight.-- Brian Dell ( talk) 16:48, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
Mkay, two things. First of all, the point in a talk page is to work out issues, not to call each other names or speculate about so-and-so's motives when you really don't know. Second of all (and more importantly), I do agree with Bdell that the bio info (Doherty writing a book, blablabla, etc) should be moved to a separate page. In an earlier discussion about this, Hasdi noted that the pages of the individuals were deleted. If I can get support, however, for making one page for all the victims, I will begin that page in my sandbox. -- Yalens ( talk) 13:43, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Brian Dell, I have been MIA for a while so I didn't get a chance to respond to you earlier. Thing is, I want the attack section to be as detailed as possible. Right now, it is very skimpy, and there are more detail on the aftermath and the politics, than the attack itself. I am not happy about this. As for your edits, some sentences are redundant so these can be consolidated, but you also removed some detail that I rather you not take out. If you don't want "Recovery of Stevens" to be a separate section that's fine for now, but once we have expanded on the detail of the attack, we may need to break up into 3-4 sub-sections, one of which will be the recovery of Stevens, which happened before the attack at the CIA annex. Thank you. — Hasdi Bravo • 00:46, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
References
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link)
Isn't there supposed to be a subsection to discuss the POV nom? That link on the main article has the URL of: [56]. How can this be fixed? -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 19:58, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
I am withdrawing this nomination to switch it over {{
controversial}} until the election is over. Seem more fitting. Sorry for being MIA for a while. —
Hasdi Bravo •
00:11, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
The Blaze cites Lt. Col. Schaffer as saying his unnamed sources place POTUS in WH situation room at the time of Behghazi attack. This is untrue. POTUS was at Walter Reed, Bethesda, MD, at the time of the US Consulate attack. [57]
Sorry I'm a newbie and probably not doing this right. Just wanted to point out that in the section on Wood's he is describe as serving as a Seal until 2010 and then a couple of line latter state that he retired as a Senior Chief in 2007. Being a Senior Chief I know you can not serve as a Seal (or any part of then Navy) for 3 years after you have retired. Not sure which year is right but one of these is clearly wrong. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.53.210.93 ( talk) 16:24, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 |
The result of the move request was: page moved per nom. DrKiernan ( talk) 10:20, 7 October 2012 (UTC)
U.S. Consulate attack in Benghazi → Attack on the U.S. Diplomatic mission in Benghazi – Per WP:COMMONNAME, "Ambiguous or inaccurate names for the article subject, as determined in reliable sources, are often avoided even though they may be more frequently used by reliable sources." — Hasdi Bravo • 19:03, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
The website of U.S. Embassy of Libya in Tripoli (e.g., http://libya.usembassy.gov/tw091312.html), described the incident as the " attack on the U.S. Diplomatic mission in Benghazi", of which the proposed title is adopted. The latest word from the administration referred to the attack as done to "U.S. diplomatic facilities in Benghazi, Libya."
However, all this namings make sense once you realize that the word " diplomatic mission" technically refers to a group of people that is headed by an ambassador (i.e., J. Christopher Stevens) rather than the building of the permanent diplomatic mission (a.k.a. the embassy) in Tripoli, Libya. While there is no U.S. embassy in Benghazi, there may be a consulate or a consular office, which is a similar but distinct function from a diplomatic office. There were two separate attacks, one of which may not be consular office at all. The administration thus used the general term "diplomatic facilities" which could refer to an embassy building, a consular office, a safe house, or any building that is operated by U.S. government in Libya. Anywho, with the passing with the ambassador, this is clearly an attack on the diplomatic mission in Libya, defined as a group of people lead by Stevens, so I think the proposed title is most accurate. — Hasdi Bravo • 19:03, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
If this article is to be encyclopedic, rather than an opinion piece, the term used to describe the facility the "facility" is important. Embassies, consulates and Diplomatic Missions are all specific official US designations, and are listed here: http://www.usembassy.gov/ . I think it is premature to describe it further, as it may be more of a military outpost, to coordinate (lead?) the effort for military and political control of Libya. All US officials are careful to parse how this "compound" is described. See the nuances here, at moonofalabama.org, comment #50 citing US State Department statements:
See also: http://reanimatedresidue.wordpress.com/2012/09/19/there-is-no-us-embassyconsulatemission-in-benghazi-libya/
which has collected various news stories on what the compound may have been (perhaps the Guardian's photos of the "gated compound" could be included to show that physical distinction. I suggest "U.S. Compound" rather than either "consulate" or "diplomatic mission" Erichwwk3 ( talk) 01:53, 1 October 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps the whole section shouldn't necessarily be deleted, but I do think it takes up too much space on a page its not directly related to (its in essence the opposition's response to the gov'ts response to the situation, usually we don't give so much coverage to responses of responses). The section's length is comparable- and if anything longer- than the background section. And in my view at least, it doesn't deserve so much coverage, at least not on this page (see below).
This topic- internal US political squabbles and finger-pointing - isn't directly related to the consulate attack. Perhaps we could make a separate page (where perhaps opposition presidential candidate Mitt Romney's comments regarding the Cairo Embassy can go too), and have an abbreviated version here?--
Yalens (
talk)
14:43, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
It looks to me like there's a consensus that the section shouldn't be removed but that redundancy and unnecessary elaboration can be trimmed out. Am I wrong?
I think I'll do the following:
1) Remove the SYN with John McCain. Although that's the logical assumption based on his party, neither he nor the article stated that he was criticizing the government with his statement. Other similar instances that may be found later also apply.
2) Remove the "according to some people" statement because (a) it's dubious and (b) its already elsewhere on the page.
3) Generally removing excessive names and quotes except when the person has an important position (like Rogers of the House Intelligence Committee), instead, only mentioning briefly on what terms x-thing was criticized in a sentence or two.
Any issues?--
Yalens (
talk)
19:43, 4 October 2012 (UTC)
Why is the attack on the American embassy listed as part of the Libyan Civil War? The attack took place nearly a year after the official end of the war. Spirit of Eagle ( talk) 00:50, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
This page has been moved to " Attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi" per my earlier proposal, but after some digging I think we have a good case to change it to " Attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi" instead. Both titles would be correct, but the later is probably more WP:COMMONNAME. Right after the attack, U.S. Embassy did refer to it as an attack on the consulate [11] and also diplomatic mission. [12] This is because the technical definition of "diplomatic mission" refers to the diplomatic agents including the ambassador, who were killed in the attack. However, the attack also took place in the U.S. compound for the consulate [check layout of the compound in the satellite image on wikimapia as stated in the coordinates for this page]. This consulate has been attacked before with no casualties (see the June 2012 entry on 2011–present Libyan factional fighting of which I have copied the references from), and the daily beast also stated an earlier attack on April 2012.
So, the existence of U.S. consulate in Benghazi is likely common knowledge in Libyan residents for some time. I can only speculate why the U.S. administration is avoiding the term "consulate", e.g., maybe the compound also serves diplomatic purposes other than consular services. I read rumors that the consulate is actually a CIA nest, based on news reports that CIA personnel left Benghazi a week or so ago. At best, this still means that the compound is still primarily for the consulate, it's just that there could be a legitimate intelligence gathering office in the compound, much like our CIA HQ in Langley. Not necessarily anything nefarious.
Thoughts welcome. — Hasdi Bravo • 14:42, 8 October 2012 (UTC)
From this it seems clear that these buildings (described as a consulate, and an annex), was actually a secret CIA base: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/dana-milbank-letting-us-in-on-a-secret/2012/10/10/ba3136ca-132b-11e2-ba83-a7a396e6b2a7_story.html?hpid=z7 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.71.226.54 ( talk) 14:44, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
The content of this article gives the impression that the Obama administration fabricated the idea that the Benghazi attack resulted from the anti-Islam video, and that the attack was a spontaneous reaction of protesters.
The truth is that the Associate Press and others reported these very thing on day one, citing the assessment of a Libyan government official.
Here is the report:
And here are some key excerpts from the report:
"Wanis al-Sharef, a Libyan Interior Ministry official in Benghazi, said the four Americans were killed when the angry mob, which gathered to protest a U.S.-made film that ridicules Islam's Prophet Muhammad, fired guns and burned down the U.S. consulate in Benghazi."
"According to al-Sharef, the angry mob stormed the consulate after the U.S. troops who responded fired rounds into the air to try and disperse the crowd."
"Al-Sharef said the Libyan guards employed to guard the consulate building were far outgunned by the protesters, and thus retreated when the building was stormed."
"Hours before the protest erupted in Benghazi, protesters scaled the walls of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt, tearing down and replacing the American flag with an Islamic banner."
"One of the [armed Islamic] groups to emerge in post-revolution Libya, Ansar al-Sharia, claimed responsibility Wednesday for the attack in Benghazi, which has been condemned by the country's new government."
Note that Ansar al-Sharia is an Islamic militia group, not a terrorist group. So this would have also added to the initial confusion. (It shows that it would have been premature to assume a terrorist attack.) That a militia group was widely suspected is born out by the fact that pro-American Libyans subsequently protested against the militias and the Libyan government initiated a crackdown on them. (I think this information *is* reported in this Wikipedia article.)
Here's another, independent, report:
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/09/20129112108737726.html
To be fair to the Obama Administration, and for the sake of clarity and completeness, this information should be reported in this Wikipedia article. If nothing else, it shows that there were independent reports that the Obama administration could have base their initial story on. This info should be included in a number of places, including the timeline. The article is dated Sept. 12, but it appears to me that the quotes from Wanis al-Sharef likely came shortly after the attacks. His assessment was contradicted by the president of Libya and others later on.
I have Republican friends who insist Obama's team made this stuff up as a part of a cover-up. They quit talking when I showed them the articles I cite here. — SDLarsen • 00:48, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
FYI, it is already stated on this page that Libyan government disputed that the attack as prompted by the film, which is essentially in the two cites you pointed out. But put them anyway in the Investigation timeline section. The US administration suggested early on that the attack it was a spontaneous response of the the film, which made it difficult for some of us to spin off this page from 2012 diplomatic missions attacks. It's best not to judge the administration on this, but just focus on what actually happened. See my earlier comments on this. — Hasdi Bravo • 01:22, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
I posted what I did so the article could be improved. The initial reports I point out are pertinent -- even though later corrected -- because the information given in them perfectly match the Obama Administration's narrative in the controversy going on between them and Republicans. Though I do occasionally make *simple* improvements to Wikipedia articles myself, I won't add this information myself for a number of reasons. (I'm not that great at writing; I don't know how to do references and other things and don't have time to learn, and even if I did learn I would forget; I don't want to argue with people about this; etc.) Past experience has taught me that a few editors tend to "own" certain articles and they end up getting their way, which is fine because I don't care that much. I'm just trying to be helpful, and if it ends up to naught then, well, I tried. (BTW, I wasn't chastising others for anything, as one person suggested. Just trying to fill a hole the best I could with the knowledge I have.) Have a pleasant day. — Preceding unsigned comment added by SDLarsen ( talk • contribs) 05:05, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
It's been over a month since this terrorist attack. We've known for weeks these brave young men were private contractors who heroically ran to the fight without any official duty to do so.
You people need to show some respect for facts, research and most importantly -- Fallen Americans. 24.12.87.61 ( talk) 17:57, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Hey Hasdi, thanks for doing all that work of putting all that text into table format. First I hated it, then I loved it, now my honeymoon is over. :D I'm sure you've done this enough so that you can point to other examples on Wiki here for such use of a table. I'd like to conform as much as possible to an "accepted" Wiki way as we all are putting more information in. Thanks!! Oh, and, at what point do you think the investigation section gets to be too much and we start thinking about making it its own page? -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 22:22, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
Also, now that all that info is in that table, you can read through it and clearly see that some of the info has NOTHING to do with "investigation." Thoughts on how to handle this? -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 22:25, 15 October 2012 (UTC)
How to handle the timeline? I think I don't even need to say it anymore. You guys already know my favorite line: new. page.
But seriously, while timelines may be discouraged in some cases, personally I actually kinda like them, provided they're relevant and don't have OR or POV or any of those things. The timelines for the Yugoslav wars, at least based on the last time I saw them, are good examples in my book. --
Yalens (
talk)
14:44, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
I know I've already floated this elsewhere, but I wanted to get a discussion going specifically on this topic. Here's the problems I see:
1) About 50-60% of the page is dedicated to the investigation and political controversy in the U.S.
2) As others have stated, the heavy media coverage on this means that it has at least some degree of notability. However, in my view it should take up about 20% of this page at most. This page is about the embassy attack.
3) Obviously, deleting it would not be popular, and I wouldn't support that either.
So the obvious solution in my mind, right now, is to make a separate page for the U.S. investigation and political controversy surrounding it. So far, the only person who has replied to this idea (as far as I know) is Hasdi, who said it wouldn't be notable enough it didn't "deserve" its own page, also noting that there was a POV issue. To that, I would say that POV issues can be fixed, and clearly, it seems that most people agree that the heavy news coverage of it makes it notable.
And there seems to be plenty of info here to fill the page with.
So that's my two cents. What are other editor's thoughts?-- Yalens ( talk) 14:17, 10 October 2012 (UTC)
1. The 9/11 article has so many spin-off articles that there's a whole template. This article has zero. That's the difference in my mind.
2. Talk pages are supposed to be about discussing pages, not editors. But for the record, I hope you guys read the history and know that I wasn't the one who threatened to put on the POV tag, since I get the impression I'm the editor being talked about in third person here. Although based on Cirrus' statement, quite clearly there is some disagreement about POV between editors here...
3. Since you hardworking editors do a lot of research on this topic, is there specifically a problem with devoting a separate page to it? Not every reader comes to this page to read about U.S. politics. --
Yalens (
talk)
18:42, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
I am undoubtedly late to the party, and not experienced at this so mea culpa for the poor formatting- here's my nickel (inflation ;):
I. Hasdi Bravo and Yalens make excellent and valid points about splitting the political controversy/investigation onto a separate page as that is the standard not the exception in WP as far as I have seen. The countering 9/11 page analogy is not valid as
II. I am quite convinced that this event page deserves a POV citation immediately and until it excises the attempt to lay blame for the attack on those who were attacked. Such does not exist in the 9/11 page even tho there is ample evidence that an attack was expected by the Clinton NSA but such was virtually ignored by the Bush NSA, that the FBI was monitoring extremists surveying the Wall Street area in the year prior to 9/11, and the Italian and German gov'ts had warned State/NSA that al Qaeda was planning on using hijacked planes to attack Western sites (i.e. the G8 mtng in Genoa and elsewhere) well in advance of the 9/11 attack. I am not making an argument for any conspiracy theory but for the fact that such material was excised from the 9/11 page yet is supported on this event page.
III. More reason for a POV banner: in surveying those WIKI entries on the 30+ attacks against overseas US consular entities during the Reagan and Bush Admins ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist_attacks_on_U.S._diplomatic_facilities) that are inherently far more analogous to the Benghazi attacks than is the 9/11 page - one finds no precedent for discussing political controversy/leveling blame on the country attacked on any other page describing a terrorist attack against US diplomatic entities:
This wide differential between Wikipedia's descriptions of ALL past US diplomatic attacks and the recent Benghazi attack indicates strongly that the Benghazi event is receiving unprecedented treatment based on current politics (aka the very close election) - making it a very strong candidate for POV at least until the Presidential election has been concluded.
Relocating the political controversy/investigation to a separate page of its own would go a long way towards resolving that issue efficaciously and I urge the lead editor/author to do so with all haste. Then the issue of political electioneering thinly veiled as investigation by Issa & Co can be explored/discussed appropriately on its own page and not the event page itself. BeBopnJazz ( talk) 13:49, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
...and btw, since we started this discussion, the problem has actually worsened considerably. Now US-politics takes up about 70% of the page, by rough estimate :(. That's a little depressing. -- Yalens ( talk) 21:44, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Can other notable events help us decide how to handle the page? See pages for Iran–Contra affair, JFK assassination and Cuban missile crisis. -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 00:36, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Anything "wrong" with the page going like War in Afghanistan (2001–present)? -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 00:43, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
If you feel it'll be useful for the article, please feel free to replace the picture of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton with a video that just got uploaded to Wikimedia Commons: File:President Obama's statement on US Consulate in Benghazi attacks 2012-09-12.ogv. odder ( talk) 20:23, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
The 2nd sentence of the lede is grammatically and factually incorrect. It is now: "The sustained 5-hour gunbattle took place in a walled U.S. diplomatic compound and, in the early hours the next day." The problem is that the four Americans were killed in two different locations a half mile apart from each other. Please see the NYT interactive map and click through to the 2nd map [23]. Part of the confusion may stem from the wording in the section titled "The attack". In that section I don't think it is clear that there were two compounds a half mile apart, and that the attack came in two waves, first at the main compound, and then in the early morning hours the next day at the second compound, which was hit by indirect mortar fire (killing two more Americans). -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 21:03, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Also, why is the first sentence about "rogue militias" doing the attacking? The investigation is still ongoing, and many sources are stating different things about the attackers and who they suspect they may be aligned with. I think this is misleading to write "rogue militias" did the attacking, and it waters down the meaning, too; as if it were just rogue militias with no suspected ties to the Taliban or Al-Qaeda. Suspected perps right now are Ansar al-Sharia, Abu Sufian bin Qumu, and Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 22:44, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
I think it's an overstatement to say that the crowd the chased out the extremists was "pro-American". So I removed that part from the sentence. I hope you guys are okay with that. -- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 01:35, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
I think the cat is out of the bag since last week. Does anybody have any issue calling the second compound an intelligence post for the CIA? — Hasdi Bravo • 01:33, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Not sure why these lengthy bios are in this article on the attack. Stevens and Smith have their own page. So these two also properly belong on their own bio pages. How do we remove the redirects someone placed and move them onto their own pages?-- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 14:56, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
Ummm... I don't why it's necessary to have a table of images for the victims if only half the victims have images. Can't we write about the victims in prose and then include the two pictures we do have on the side of the article? -- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 17:51, 13 October 2012 (UTC)
I don't have any problems with the way the images are displayed, but do we really need to go into this much detail about their lives? Is it really necessary to note that Doherty co-authored on this page, really? I certainly don't see why its necessary... -- Yalens ( talk) 21:52, 16 October 2012 (UTC)
Obama never said that the attack was a reaction to Innocence of Muslims. His statements about the attack didn't even mention the film. He's only mentioned the film in reference to the unrelated storming of the US embassy in Cairo by flag-burning protestors the same day, and to the similar protests that sprung up across the region in following weeks. 24.214.230.66 ( talk) 14:20, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Given last night's presidential townhall debate, I wonder if the interplay between Obama, Romney, and moderator Crowley would shed light on the attack and the timelines involved. Several opinion pieces [28] [29] [30] make reference to Romney making direct accusations about when the president did and did not name the Benghazi attack an "act of terror" ... see transcript from this link:
- OBAMA: Secretary Clinton has done an extraordinary job. But she works for me. I’m the president and I’m always responsible, and that’s why nobody’s more interested in finding out exactly what happened than I do. The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people in the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened. That this was an act of terror and I also said that we’re going to hunt down those who committed this crime. And then a few days later, I was there greeting the caskets coming into Andrews Air Force Base and grieving with the families. And the suggestion that anybody in my team, whether the Secretary of State, our U.N. Ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we’ve lost four of our own, governor, is offensive. That’s not what we do. That’s not what I do as president, that’s not what I do as Commander in Chief.
- CROWLEY: Governor, if you want to...
- ROMNEY: Yes, I -- I...
- CROWLEY: ... quickly to this please.
- ROMNEY: I -- I think interesting the president just said something which -- which is that on the day after the attack he went into the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror.
- OBAMA: That’s what I said.
- ROMNEY: You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack, it was an act of terror.
- It was not a spontaneous demonstration, is that what you’re saying?
- OBAMA: Please proceed governor.
- ROMNEY: I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.
- OBAMA: Get the transcript.
- CROWLEY: It -- it -- it -- he did in fact, sir. So let me -- let me call it an act of terror...
- OBAMA: Can you say that a little louder, Candy?
- CROWLEY: He -- he did call it an act of terror. It did as well take -- it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea there being a riot out there about this tape to come out. You are correct about that.
- ROMNEY: This -- the administration -- the administration indicated this was a reaction to a video and was a spontaneous reaction.
- CROWLEY: It did.
- ROMNEY: It took them a long time to say this was a terrorist act by a terrorist group. And to suggest -- am I incorrect in that regard, on Sunday, the -- your secretary -- ... Excuse me. The ambassador of the United Nations went on the Sunday television shows and spoke about how -- ... this was a spontaneous --
- CROWLEY: Mr. President, let me --
- OBAMA: I’m happy to have a longer conversation --
- CROWLEY: I know you --
- OBAMA: -- about foreign policy.
- CROWLEY: Absolutely. But I want to -- I want to move you on and also --
- OBAMA: OK. I’m happy to do that, too.
- CROWLEY: -- the transcripts and --
- OBAMA: I just want to make sure that --
- CROWLEY: -- figure out what we --
- OBAMA: -- all of these wonderful folks are going to have a chance to get some of their questions answered.
Also, CNN fact checked this debate and concluded "The conclusion: Romney's precise comment was false. Obama did describe the killings in Benghazi as an act of terror twice in the two days after the attack. In an interview two weeks after the incident, though, he appeared to reserve judgment, and some Obama administration officials, including Carney and Rice, suggested in the days after the attack that the United States had no indication that it was a planned assault. [31] Peace, MPS ( talk) 20:00, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
An assessment of the CNN fact check should take into consideration the likelihood that CNN is going to fact check in a way that makes the "real time" fact check of their moderator look wrong in hindsight. Should this article have called more attention to the President's Rose Garden speech on September 11 earlier? One could argue that Wikipedia was biased against Obama by not giving this rebuttal to Republican criticisms a higher profile. But the problem there is that there were few sources out there calling attention to the September 12 remarks prior to Obama doing so last night. Indeed, one could perhaps argue that Wikipedia ended up biased against Romney by potentially keeping him in the supposed "conservative media bubble" which ignored the September 12 remarks and so contributed to his overplaying his hand last night, leading to a dramatic "show cards" show down that the moderator called for Obama. But I think the Wikipedia community was not especially aware of the existence of the September 12 remarks not because we are in any "conservative media bubble" here but because we are in a "media bubble" period. The Rose Garden speech was a largely unexpected rebuttal, and had Wikipedia tried to make this rebuttal prior to Obama making it, there would have been a dispute about how effective a rebuttal it really is. Indeed there is still a dispute about just how effective a rebuttal this is such that it is not clear how Wikipedia should handle this.-- Brian Dell ( talk) 21:28, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
This could be useful to refer to, not in the least because it has links to a wealth of sources for our timeline: [ [34]].-- Yalens ( talk) 13:56, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
This section seems pretty one-sided. The content is almost all quotes from Republicans, and only seems to represent that side of the reaction. Given that the section is called Reaction (or response?) instead of "Criticism" of, I'd say we've run afoul of due weight. The republican response is not the sole or even overwhelming response. To only represent one side, democrat or republican, when due weight suggests both are represented in appreciable amounts in the category in question, is slanting things a bit. Either change the heading to "criticism" or please make it less one-sided. I know this is election season. I know spirits are high. But let's please keep some civility in our dealing with the death of an american citizen serving our country. This is not the time, even after the event, to be trying to score political points over the body of an american diplomat. 204.65.34.219 ( talk) 19:04, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
This section opens with the sentence: "Some officials in the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama purportedly described the attack as an off-shoot of the protest over the film, although one U.S. official acknowledged that the attack was likely organized and deliberate." [39] That cite is from Sept. 26, which is 15 days after the attack. To open the U.S. government response section with a cite that is that old is really odd. I'll try to get some earlier cites that are better suited to what the U.S. government response was on Sept. 12, 13, 14 that timeframe. Also, to put into the lead sentence in this section that one "U.S. official acknowledged that the attack was likely organized and deliberate", just seems like a reach. The NYTimes put that tidbit in the 17th paragraph of their article. That's how much weight the NYT attributed to it; yet it appears in the opening sentence to this section. Not balanced. -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 19:57, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
In the interest of transparency, I've removed this from the U.S. government response section: "Before the ceremony, Carney spoke of the video in relation to the protest in Egypt, not Libya. [1]" As I explain in my edit in the article itself, this is not what Carney stated. Here is the actual full exchange from the press briefing on Sept. 14:
So even after Mr. Carney is informed that the Sec'y of Defense and the Vice Chair of the Joint Chiefs is briefing senators on "indications" that the Benghazi attack was a terrorist attack, preplanned, premeditated....he goes back to the video. -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 20:29, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
Here is the opening sentence I removed from this section:
I provide reasons above for this. -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 21:52, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
References
I thought this might be helpful to fellow Wikipedians, or anyone, really. I've collected here some popular source materials.
The Economic Times Benghazi collection [40]
The Chicago Tribune Benghazi collection [41]
Los Angeles Times Benghazi collection [42]
CNN Benghazi collection [43]
Foreign Policy Initiative provide a very nice collection of abstracts and links to many different source materials. Day by day:
...and on and on. Just search by date.
For these collections I've just saved the search criteria from Google. So we have searches on each site for "benghazi attack" at:
This last one might be really useful. It's a search on "benghazi attack" on all .gov sites. So this will find U.S. government sites, such as the White House, the State Department, Congressmen, Congressional Committees, etc:
Search "benghazi attack" on all .gov sites [52]
Happy hunting! -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 23:52, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
I am nominating this page for {{ POV-check}} until the 2012 United States elections is over. Specifically, this page cannot be an considered an authoritative source regarding the allegation of cover-up and duplicity by the U.S. administration under Barack Obama on the Benghazi attack. While editors have worked to resolve WP:POV issues, we may not be able to catch them all and correct new ones in a timely manner. And I don't think splitting off page will help, and may even lead to WP:POV-fork. Let's focus on what had happened, not what should have happened. Thank you. — Hasdi Bravo • 20:44, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
Does anyone deny that this page has a POV? It seems to me that almost everyone thinks that it has some sort of POV (the remainder have - or perhaps had - no opinion), though they don't agree on what it is. Does anybody deny there is an issue?-- Yalens ( talk) 22:46, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
This article certainly should be tagged in some way to warn readers. As I commented earlier regarding the changes I made to U.S. government reaction, there is a lot of confusion in this article about who said what when, and were they talking about Benghazi or other places. Obama and Jay Carney are White House. Clinton is State Department. Rice is UN Ambassador. Olsen is NCTC. Each of those websites have all the statements, press releases and so forth. On September 12, Obama and Clinton were clear the Benghazi attack was by militants, not 'protestors'. The lede implied the Administration believed otherwise, and that simply isn't supported by their statements. No doubt there was unofficial conjecture by unknown staffers about all sorts of triggering factors, but it certainly wasn't the official position. I haven't yet reviewed Susan Rice's statements and talk show videos, so I left the current summaries of her statements as is for now. Our job is not to report what any of these people supposedly meant, but what they said and did. It's not right to claim they blamed a video for Benghazi's attack when they blamed it for Egypt's protests and attack. Those are two different places, people! 184.78.81.245 ( talk) 23:39, 17 October 2012 (UTC)
The article is being changed in ways that I don't think it would be if this topic had not come up in the Presidential debate last night. Who are these "others" who "believed the Benghazi attack appeared to have been planned in advance and professionally executed"? It used to be more specific (excluding people like the President or Susan Rice), and it used to say that they believed this "early on" or "within hours" in order to correctly suggest that some were faster than others and that the administration was not in the fast group. Guess who said the following on September 30?
"Friday [September 28] we got the administration's sort of definitive statement that this now looks as though it was a pre-planned attack by a terrorist group, and some of whom were at least sympathetic to al Qaeda.
Why do you think and are you [Mr McCain] bothered that it has taken them this long from September 11th to now to get to this conclusion?"
Answer: Candy Crowley. This article used to read like Crowley - and most media sources who have following the development of this story - would have wanted it to read (as evidenced by that quote from September 30). Now it's changed but did anything really change? Did Crowley suddenly change her opinion and start believing that what was said on September 12 is as significant as September 28 in terms of how the matter should be fairly characterized? The more plausible explanation is that she just got hung up on a technicality last night and Wikipedia can and should avoid this.--
Brian Dell (
talk)
02:27, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
You know what, guys. I am going to take out one paragraph in the lede to avoid bipartisan edit-whoring (until the election is over). The lede is too long anyway and there are other sections in this article that need attention. Please place any "he said, she said" stuff in the " Investigation timeline" and withhold judgement. If anybody wants to stick {{ POV-section}} in " U.S. government response" section, feel free. TQ. — Hasdi Bravo • 02:38, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
The section titled "Fatalities and injuries" seems to only discuss the dead, not the injured. Perhaps we should change the title? -- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 13:15, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
In light of the Benghazi attack being mentioned in the Presidential debated and multiple RS articles written on the "Benghazi scandal", it may be good idea to have this new section as h2-level heading, possibly combining it with the section "Criticism of U.S. response" that is currently a h3-level. Moreover, this section can prepped to be WP:SPLIT off it takes up more than a third of this page, which is probably in line with Yalens' earlier proposal. Thoughts welcome. — Hasdi Bravo • 01:14, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
I found an interesting article [54] detailing the chronology of the U.S. government's response and investigation of the attacks. One interesting thing it says is that "within 24 hours of the attack, the C.I.A.’s station chief in Tripoli, Libya, e-mailed headquarters that witnesses said the assault was mounted by heavily armed militants." -- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 16:01, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
If anyone is offended with term " Full Ginsburg" then argue your case on that page, i.e., have her entry removed from Full Ginsburg, don't take it out on this page. What she has been referred as that [55] and I don't see anything wrong with what she did. If you do, then you have issues. — Hasdi Bravo • 15:13, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
I removed a hatnote {{ About}} and it was replaced with a {{ For}} with a link to Reactions to 'Innocence of Muslims'. Both of these templates are being misused. cygnis insignis 00:02, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
I've trimmed the section 'Investigation timeline', but it needs to be furthered trimmed. Wikipedia is not a news source, to report the blow by blow of every statement made about the attacks. Also, the timeline should be restricted to reports on investigations into the attacks, it shouldn't include reports about the grandstanding of various congressmen who want to use the event as political fodder for their re-election campaign. So, please restrict to only news articles about actual investigations on the attack——no speculation and no political grandstanding please. FurrySings ( talk) 14:43, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
Okay, due to the controversy this is causing, I say we revert the major deletions that editor made and then have a clear discussion about what exactly to remove and what to keep in the timeline. After agreeing on what to remove, then we start removing content. -- FutureTrillionaire ( talk) 02:13, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
I advocated for the timeline in the beginning due the conflicting and evolving reporting on the attack. Eventually, we have to summarize them and have the timeline reduced to briefly mention key news, possibly with links to relevant section on this page. Unfortunately, due to the controversial nature of this topic, any kind of summarizing will be perceived as bias for or against the Obama administration. Even quoting only part of full text, will be accused of taking a quote out of context.
I am hoping all this will go away after the election is over. Until then, we can use the timeline to put screened news/cites that are relevant to this page, waiting to "find a home" on one of the section. We don't have to keep everything. Many news/cites are just echos of key ones plus commentaries that are irrelevant in enlightening the reader on the Benghazi attack.
Thoughts welcome. — Hasdi Bravo • 02:31, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/24/us-usa-benghazi-emails-idUSBRE89N02C20121024
Where can I find the emails which are being reported on? Are the emails available to the general public? 71.52.199.48 ( talk) 10:40, 24 October 2012 (UTC)
This is already a long article. Apparently both Hasdi and Yalens aren't content to have "A 22-year-old freelance videographer, Fahd al-Bakoush, later published a video" mentioned once, this has to be in the article twice (because they reverted my minimization of it to once without removing the first mention when they put back the second). Does this really have to be in the article twice? There is already a lot of repetition in this article but there is little point in my, or anyone else, trying to condense this article if there isn't a consensus to do this. The ambassador "died of asphyxiation" is mentioned repeatedly, twice alone in the material that was reverted back in. "According to U.S. officials, security personnel were separated from Stevens during the attack in the chaos of smoke and gunfire that ensued." Didn't we already very clearly say that? Why repeat this? "Stevens and foreign service officer Sean Smith were inside the consulate with a regional security officer. They got separated in the smoke." Again, this is quite clear from the "Attack" section which provides more detail about who the "regional security officer" is and how they got separated. "he tried for 90 minutes to resuscitate him with no success" also needs to appear the article twice? "Stevens' body was later returned to U.S. custody" is also in the article already with more details on how the body was repatriated. "Seif Eddin Zoghbia was the general surgeon on duty" only appears once but really how notable is this when this person isn't the doctor who worked on the ambassador (who is already mentioned). This isn't an article about the Benghazi Medical Center and it has nothing to do with the events at either the consulate or the annex since it concerns developments at a hospital. Last I checked a hospital was not attacked. At most who "the general surgeon on duty" was is relevant to the fate of the ambassador and therefore appropriate for that biography. Would the New York Times have these sorts of details if it did a single article summary of the attack? If someone really thinks this is a must have, fine, that, along with things like "The crowd cheered 'God is Greatest'" (we already know the local population was sympathetic to the ambassador because they later drove suspect militias out of town, and at the time they didn't know this was the ambassador) could go in, but why not fit it into the narrative of the attack? These multiple sections are a major driver of all the redundancy in this article. The argument that this part of the article needs to be long because the rest of the article is too long doesn't make any sense to me. I would think it would make far more sense to split off the other material into a separate article if you don't think that other material is relevant to the topic or notable as opposed to packing the narrative of the night's events with redundancy. I was going to continue to the rest of the article but appears that it is going to be an uphill battle trimming this article back. "Romney claimed to have previously met Doherty at a gathering in La Jolla, San Diego" needs to be mentioned twice? With "As reported in the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, The New York Times and other news sources" as well? "Romney said. '[Woods and Doherty] rushed there to go help. This is the American way." This can't be removed either? Romney is a notable person but this is just fluff and it isn't relevant to the controversy either, which like it or not is getting far more media coverage than these biographic details and if Wikipedia is neutral it takes its weighting cues from how the sources weight.-- Brian Dell ( talk) 16:48, 25 October 2012 (UTC)
Mkay, two things. First of all, the point in a talk page is to work out issues, not to call each other names or speculate about so-and-so's motives when you really don't know. Second of all (and more importantly), I do agree with Bdell that the bio info (Doherty writing a book, blablabla, etc) should be moved to a separate page. In an earlier discussion about this, Hasdi noted that the pages of the individuals were deleted. If I can get support, however, for making one page for all the victims, I will begin that page in my sandbox. -- Yalens ( talk) 13:43, 26 October 2012 (UTC)
Brian Dell, I have been MIA for a while so I didn't get a chance to respond to you earlier. Thing is, I want the attack section to be as detailed as possible. Right now, it is very skimpy, and there are more detail on the aftermath and the politics, than the attack itself. I am not happy about this. As for your edits, some sentences are redundant so these can be consolidated, but you also removed some detail that I rather you not take out. If you don't want "Recovery of Stevens" to be a separate section that's fine for now, but once we have expanded on the detail of the attack, we may need to break up into 3-4 sub-sections, one of which will be the recovery of Stevens, which happened before the attack at the CIA annex. Thank you. — Hasdi Bravo • 00:46, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
References
{{
cite web}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (
link)
Isn't there supposed to be a subsection to discuss the POV nom? That link on the main article has the URL of: [56]. How can this be fixed? -- Cirrus Editor ( talk) 19:58, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
I am withdrawing this nomination to switch it over {{
controversial}} until the election is over. Seem more fitting. Sorry for being MIA for a while. —
Hasdi Bravo •
00:11, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
The Blaze cites Lt. Col. Schaffer as saying his unnamed sources place POTUS in WH situation room at the time of Behghazi attack. This is untrue. POTUS was at Walter Reed, Bethesda, MD, at the time of the US Consulate attack. [57]
Sorry I'm a newbie and probably not doing this right. Just wanted to point out that in the section on Wood's he is describe as serving as a Seal until 2010 and then a couple of line latter state that he retired as a Senior Chief in 2007. Being a Senior Chief I know you can not serve as a Seal (or any part of then Navy) for 3 years after you have retired. Not sure which year is right but one of these is clearly wrong. Thanks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.53.210.93 ( talk) 16:24, 30 October 2012 (UTC)