More right-wing politicians are warning incoming international observers not to interfere in the U.S. elections, or else. Among them is Texas Attorney General Greg Abbot, who sent the head of an Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observers team a terse letter informing them that any attempt to meddle in voting will result in arrest and prosecution. The OSCE did not take kindly to the insinuation in a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:

“The threat of criminal sanctions against OSCE/ODIHR observers is unacceptable,” [Ambassador Janez Lenarčič, the Director of the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR),] said. “The United States, like all countries in the OSCE, has an obligation to invite ODIHR observers to observe its elections.”

The ODIHR Director also stressed that any concerns or reports that the election observers intended to influence or interfere with the election process were groundless. He underlined that OSCE/ODIHR election observers adhere to all national laws and regulations, as well as a strict code of conduct.

“Our observers are required to remain strictly impartial and not to intervene in the voting process in any way,” Lenarčič said. “They are in the United States to observe these elections, not to interfere in them.” Yet Abbott isn’t convinced. He repeated his warning Wednesday on Fox News:

Abbot’s reaction is part of a larger narrative being spun by the right, in which the observers’ presence serves as a threat to their attempts to crack down on supposed voter fraud. This comes despite the fact that these observers have been present at every U.S. national election for the last decade.

In an example of the sudden Republican distrust of these observers, Rep. Connie Mack (R-FL) said in a statement that the idea that the United Nations “would be allowed, if not encouraged, to install foreigners sympathetic to the likes of Castro, Chavez, Ahmadinejad and Putin to oversee our elections is nothing short of disgusting.”

Despite all the fearmongering, the OSCE monitors have agreed to (and are mandated to) abide by state and local law. According to OSCE spokewoman Giovanna Maiola, the team will be observing the complete election process, focusing on a number of areas on the state level, including the overall legal system, election administration, the campaign, the campaign financing and new voting technologies used in various states.

In an interview published today in Foreign Policy magazine, Efraim Halevy, former head of the Israeli spy organization the Mossad, slammed Mitt Romney for repeatedly turning Israel into a campaign issue during the election:

“Regarding the election, I think many of the statements made by the Republican candidate are very undesirable as far as Israel is concerned. I remember an article of Governor Romney’s in the Washington Post in March where he advocated dispatching American warships to the Eastern Mediterranean. Shooting from the hip on these matters is a very dangerous sport to be engaged in. And I think that drawing Israel into this campaign is detrimental to Israeli interests, and I regret that one of the candidates is doing this.”

Romney has criticized the Obama administration’s relationship with Israel throughout the campaign, claiming that the president has “thrown allies like Israel under the bus.” Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan described Obama’s treatment of Israel as “indifference bordering on contempt.” In this week’s debate in which Romney echoed many of Obama’s views, the former governer used Israel to try to differentiate their positions. Romney said that there has been “turmoil with Israel” under President Obama. But Halevy says the Obama administration has been fine: “On the practical side, the United States has been very supportive of Israel during President Barack Obama’s administration — both financially and strategically, we have received a lot of support.”

Just today, Halevy wrote an op-ed in the New York Times directed at Romney’s “under the bus” comments, saying that U.S. pressure on Israel “has come from Republican presidents, not Democratic ones.”

Israeli officials and politicians, like Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres, have repeatedly said that the U.S.-Israeli relationship is in good shape under the Obama administration. In July, Barak, Israel’s defense minister, told CNN: “I should tell you honestly that this administration under President Obama is doing, in regard to our security, more than anything that I can remember in the past.”

Halevy’s comments published today follow an interview he gave on Sunday to Al-Monitor in which he said of Romney: “What Romney is doing is mortally destroying any chance of a resolution without war.” In the same interview, Halevy lauded President Obama’s approach: “Obama does think there is still room for negotiations. It’s a very courageous thing to say in this atmosphere.”

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said on CNN last night that neither he, nor the Iranians, would consider an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities an act of war.

Rogers said that he believed there are options “short of war” that could prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and, strangely, CNN host Erin Burnett wondered if bombing suspected nuclear weapons facilities would be an option that is “short of war.” While Rogers at first appeared taken aback by Burnett’s odd question, he then went a bit further, saying definitively that such an attack would indeed be “short of war” and the Iranians would see it that way too:

BURNETT: Do you think that bombing those key facilities, whether it’s Parchin or Fordow, is that short of war, in your opinion, or would that actually spark a war? If we use one of those, you know, massive ordinance, penetrators, 30,000 ton bombs that could actually penetrate deep under the ground, where as you say they have been placing some of their facilities?

ROGERS: Well, again, I would be cautious of — short of war. I will say that —

BURNETT: So that’s not — that would be war. OK.

ROGERS: Well, in very targeted strikes, we use very targeted strikes against al Qaeda. And so if it is a very targeted strike, many would argue that that’s short of war. And if it only seeks to go after their nuclear program, that is — we’re not talking about invasions or naval engagements or troops on the ground, none of that. And this has been used by other — President Clinton used this tactic.

But there’s also other things under that. I’m not saying that’s — that is the right answer. That is an option that I believe is short of war if it is very selective, very targeted, only to the nuclear program. And we do know, those — that the Iranians believe that there is a whole panoply of options — war and then these targeted strikes they don’t see as — wouldn’t see as an act of war.

Watch the clip:

There’s really no question about this one. Attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities with missiles and/or bombs would be an act of war and the Iranians would most likely see it that way too.

A new report that the White House knew within hours that an Islamist group had claimed credit on Facebook and Twitter for an attack on a U.S. diplomatic mission in Libya has renewed the right-wing’s furor towards the administration’s handling of the incident. Ansar al-Sharia — the militant group now suspected of carrying out the attack — posting on social media is the sole new detail in the emails obtained by Reuters and others. Despite that, the conclusion is being drawn by the right, again, that the Obama administration misled the American people. (A screenshot of the email does not indicate further corroboration of the militia’s claim.)

Soon after the emails’ release, Fox News’s Greta Van Susteren bluntly accused the White House of lying about the attack in Benghazi. And Fox News contributor Liz Cheney joined in this morning, claiming falsely that the Obama administration definitively blamed an anti-Muslim YouTube video rather than saying that an investigation was ongoing. Cheney wanted even more pressing answers as well:

CHENEY: Mr. President, did you go to sleep that night while you knew that attack was underway? Our consulate was under attack, our Ambassador was missing, did you go to bed without any action, doing anything to prevent that attack, doing anything to stop the attack and save those people. And if so, why did you wait seven hours?

Watch Cheney’s interview here:

But the reality is that the new emails reflect the current knowledge on what the administration and the intelligence community knew in developing their response to Benghazi. According to talking points prepared by the CIA for the Obama administration and Congress, initial analysis indicated that the “Innocence of Muslims” played a large role in the impetus for the attack on the mission in Benghazi. More recent reporting has confirmed that the video played at least some role in the genesis of the assault.

Processing raw intelligence into a coherent analysis involves combing through multiple reports, sifting for corroboration between stories and attempting to thread them together into a narrative. The initial report is almost always heavily hedged and changes frequently as more information is acquired. The new emails were likely part of the initial analysis and were deemed unable to be confirmed. It’s worth noting that in one of the emails, Ansar al-Sharia also called for an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli, which never materialized. While interesting, the new emails remain a data point, not the start of a new narrative on Benghazi.