Friday, May 17, 2013

The Obama Administration Lied

Mike L.

The Obama administration failed to defend our diplomatic team in Libya and then lied to us about it.  For purely partisan political reasons the Obama administration sought to pawn off responsibility for the attack on Benghazi not on the Islamists who committed the attack, but on some obscure internet video that practically no one had ever heard of before until United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, rolled it out on the Sunday talk shows directly after 9/11/2012.

At this very moment the Obama administration is bogged down under at least three scandals.  There is Benghazi.  The IRS abuse of power in persecuting both conservative organizations and Jewish organizations.  And the the Associated Press scandal.

Over the course of the coming weeks, and perhaps months, I will focus on Benghazi.  My interest when it comes to the current administration tends to be upon its failed and sometimes racist foreign policies, thus I will leave it to others to flesh out the IRS and AP scandals.  I will stay on Benghazi.

What I want to know at the moment is just how it was that this obscure internet video became the star of the show?  The CIA talking points make no reference whatsoever to any such video and focus entirely upon radical Islam.  Stephen Hayes of the conservative Weekly Standard has taken the lead on this story and in a recent piece writes this:
The new documents disprove claims by Obama spokesman Jay Carney, Hillary Clinton, and others that the White House and State Department had virtually nothing to do with rewriting the talking points. Carney maintained that officials from State and the White House were responsible for a “single adjustment” to the language. Clinton insisted that the intelligence community was the “principal decider” of what would be said. But the emails make clear that top White House and State officials played key roles in reshaping the CIA’s initial draft.

“The State Department had major reservations with much or most of the document,” wrote a CIA official from the Office of Public Affairs, at 9:15 p.m. on September 14. “We revised the document with their concerns in mind.”
We have both Clinton and Carney on record as suggesting that the White House and the Department of State had virtually nothing to do with any substantive changes to the CIA memorandum, but we now know, unequivocally, that they lied to us.  This is not a matter of bias.  This is not a matter of interpretation.  This is not a matter of partisanship.

It is a matter of fact.

The Obama White House and the Clinton State Department did not like the CIA's understanding of the attack on Benghazi so they arranged for the memorandum, the talking points, to be scrubbed of the vital and necessary information that should have been passed on to the American people.  Instead of alerting the American public that this was a Jihadi attack against the American facility in Benghazi, they pretended that it was a spontaneous uprising by righteous and angry Muslims over an insult to the prophet Muhammed.

The reason that the administration lied to the American public concerning the slaughter of Chris Stevens and his staff is because they had previously lied concerning the demise of al-Qaeda.  Of course, the lie about the demise al-Qaeda was part of a larger deception in which the Obama administration sought to minimize the problem of radical Islam entirely by diminishing it to virtually nothing but al-Qaeda.

That is the true heart of the lie.

The Obama administration sought to protect radical Islam because they hoped to work with radical Islam going forward.  We can only speculate about just why the Obama administration would have an interest in promoting radical Islamic groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, but a generous interpretation is one that emphasizes a desire to reform and moderate and democratize such groups because to do so would be in America's national interest.

So, while we know that the administration lied to the American people around a question of vital national security, we still do not know who hatched up this cockamamy scheme to deceive the American public by foisting off the internet video as the cause of the attack.

Hayes tells us this:
There had been a demonstration in Cairo. The leaders of that protest used a YouTube video to incite a mob. A Benghazi attacker had seen the Cairo protest. He later participated in the attack in Benghazi...

And yet within days this previously obscure film became a central component of the Obama administration’s messaging on the Benghazi attacks. The Obama administration moved quickly to elevate the importance of the video. An attack that evolved from what the president would call “natural protests” by a mob over a video was a much better fit with the president’s claim that “al Qaeda is on a path to defeat” than assaults planned by al Qaeda-linked jihadists on multiple U.S. diplomatic facilities on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11.
We still do not know just who came up with the brilliant idea to deceive the American public by suggesting that the Benghazi attack was somehow related to the video, but Barack Obama told us that this was the truth.
Asked about Benghazi on September 20, President Obama referred to “natural protests that arose because of the outrage over the video [and] were used as an excuse by extremists to see if they can also directly harm U.S. interests.” It was one of several times he would cite the video.
Did he know it was a lie?

Curious minds want to know.

7 comments:

  1. So much comes down to intent. There truly is a difference between the desire to reform and moderate and democratize set, who often show great ignorance of the situation, and those who have lost the ignorance and understand that non-reciprocal tolerance and cooperation will not work.

    Assisting those who actually want democracy and human rights should be a primary focus here.

    There is no doubt that deception occurred. The film was fortuitous. Otherwise, the attack would have occurred and there would have been no other explanation than the truth.

    I think the particular response by the Administration was as much about the election and to push aside continued scrutiny of the attack and what led to it until after the election. It reveals that altruism under Obama and Democrats also has a dark side, despite the image many try to convey, despite the claim that only others are corrupt.

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  2. Y'know, School, it never would even have occurred to me that non-reciprocal tolerance and cooperation could possibly work with people who sometimes stone women to death.

    This was the rank politicization of the murder of Chris Stevens and his team by the Obama administration for electoral purposes.

    As my dear old mom used to say, it stinks to high heaven.

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  3. When the divide is so large, how you get there seems no longer to matter. This applies to Republicans as well, who fan their own flames against societal interests they don't like.

    I find it revealing, however, to see how the supporters, who took Bush to the cleaners over every detail, are now so silent when the government misleads.

    Today's partisans live in echo chambers, and they can always find a way to justify the actions. Or just blame and demonize the other side as malicious.

    In this episode, what occurred could not be more clear. The movie bailed Obama out and created diversion, with press cooperation. Carney flat out misled the press. Could you imagine if it was Ron Zeigler?

    The golden rule approach might be more feasible if there were inklings that political Islamist were acting in good faith to create tolerant societies, but examination shows they do not have this intention. Some are too busy learning ways to blame Republicans and Israel for every offense to see the extent to which the hatred involved.

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    1. The hyper-partisans have turned public political debate into something more resembling sports talk radio these days, only with a bit less civility and decency toward others (at least Flyers fans don't call Penguins fans cockroaches, for instance).

      I would guess the current era began when Republicans collectively lost their minds over Bill Clinton in the 90s, and it's continued on since then to the point where it seems the current president's fanatics have taken it as far and as nasty as I hope it ever goes. The viciousness, anger and hatred out there is astounding. And sad.

      They and the Tea Party types truly deserve each other. I wish they'd all just finally go rent a convention center somewhere, stay there until they learn to treat those who think differently with decency again, and leave the rest of us the hell alone, so we can move on and get back to work on fixing things, no matter which side's ideas end up being best.

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  4. I'm more concerned by the IRS issue. While it doesn't rise completely to the level of outright election fraud, rigging and racketeering it's close. Non profits have to pay bills like everyone else. If suddenly decide they're not non profits not only will people stop giving to them they have less cash on hand to pay for phones an photocopies and coffee etc. Pushing non profits off the campaign at the end stage of a hotly contested election is something Chavez did, or the kind of thing you see in Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan, Malaysia, places like that. It's essentially the same thing as taxing or fining the opposition. And so either the left is oblivious to this which is sort of dangerous, or they're entirely supportive of it, which is worse. The left seems less than perturbed by this at all. I guess they don't understand it will eventually come back at them or if it doesn't then we've officially entered an era of one-party government.

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    1. Not all of us on the left aren't bothered by these things. The Chavez comparison actually hits close, at least in terms of the usual reactions of the president's supporters. Though I think my sports fan analogy comes a bit closer. The whole "Go Team!" thing. It's a symptom of a system and our social contract coming perilously close to breaking down, if I may be allowed to be somewhat negative in outlook tonight...

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  5. As far as Bengazi goes, I have to say it's but murky what anyone wants to happen as a result. They're not going to impeach anyone and a few bodies were already thrown on the fire. Obama is never going to fire Eric Holder. Never. So what's left? 2016 is an awfully long time away. I have a hard time believing this is all about the Coronation of Hillary. At least I hope it isn't. This tableaux of Capulets and Montague's that American politics has become is trite. Apparently we can have any President we like as long as it's either a Bush or a Clinton, or the black guy once in a while. If I were an up and comer in the DNC I would be furious that the leaderships wants everything to be locked down from today for a decade or more. Should we start tabbing Obama's kids for a slot in 2032? Or Chelsea in 2024? There's probably some younger Bush around we can hoist.

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