What a remarkable opening:
When Chris Stevens was killed in Benghazi, Libya, on the anniversary of September 11th last year, it was only the sixth time that the United States had lost an ambassador to its enemies. The events of that night have been overshadowed by misinformation, confusion and intense partisanship. But for those who lived through it, there's nothing confusing about what happened, and they share a sense of profound frustration because they say they saw it coming.
"...overshadowed by misinformation, confusion, and intense partisanship." About that misinformation. In 20-20 hindsight it's clear that the administration knew right away that Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Foriegn Service Officer Sean Smith, and former Navy Seals Tyrone Woods and Glenn Doherty were all killed in a well planned terrorist attack. Yet five days later President Obama sent UN Ambassador Susan Rice off the the Sunday talk shows to say that the attack was a spontaneous reaction to a YouTube video that insulted Islam.
U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi last week was not premeditated, directly contradicting top Libyan officials who say the attack was planned in advance.
“Our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous – not a premeditated – response to what had transpired in Cairo,” Rice told me this morning on “This Week.”
Later on President Obama made prominent mention of that YouTube clip in a speech to the UN General Assembly, implying that somehow the video was a catalyst for the violence in Benghazi. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even promised to prosecute the film maker.
Woods explained, “I do appreciate her taking the time from her schedule to meet with the four families. While we were in the pod over there with our family she came over shook my hand and I reached out and hugged her shoulder. Her countenance was not good. And she made the statement to me that first of all she was sorry and then she said ‘We will make sure the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.’ ”
It's as if the murderers themselves were not to blame.
60 Minutes may be commended for finally working up the integrity to report how additional security for the consulate in Benghazi had been requested and denied. Unfortunately, the program studiously avoided any investigation into why the Ambassador's requests were denied. The names Clinton and Obama are conspicuously missing from the program script.
We got what we normally get from the mainstream media — a pretense at integrity, an attempt to rehabilitate a reputation destroyed by the partisan bias of its own reporting. Events were overshadowed, CBS says, by "misinformation" and "confusion." Unmentioned is that the misinformation originated in the White House and the confusion was desperately needed in order to get Obama re-elected.
For promoting the diversion that saved Obama's re-election, Susan Rice was rewarded. She got onto the short list of nominees for Secretary of State.
U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice is set to go straight from misleading the country about a matter of national security to a promotion.
A top candidate to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, Rice famously purveyed erroneous information about the Benghazi terror attack on five Sunday shows a few days after the deadly incident.
But, hey, these things happen.
For the sin opposing a Secretary of State nominee who deliberately misinformed the American public about what happened in Benghazi, Republicans were labeled racist. This is the "intense partisanship to which CBS referred in its introduction to the Benghazi piece.
Ironically, every word that CBS said is true: Events of that night really have been overshadowed by misinformation, confusion and partisanship. But in the context of the moment CBS can be confident that the larger part of its audience will believe that Republicans were guilty of intense partisanship for grilling administration officials about what actually happened. 60 Minutes can reasonably expect that its audience will chalk up the misinformation and confusion to the fog of war, not from the fog that emanated from the White House.
CBS has not set the record straight. it's a year after the critical re-election of Barack Obama, and now CBS has judged that it's safe to broadcast some of the facts about Benghazi. In fact, now it's probably even necessary. The 60 Minutes Benghazi broadcast is a bid to re-establish the illusion of integrity. Without it the network will be hamstrung in its battle to elect a Democratic in the 2016 presidential race.
Is that what it is? Or have they decided they'd rather have Liz Warren as the 2016 nominee?
Posted by: Rob Sama | October 30, 2013 at 08:06 PM