Benghazi barfology
Five myths about Benghazi
By Michael Hirsh, Published: May 16, WashPost (Michael Hirsh is the National Journal’s chief correspondent)
The events surrounding the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, look dramatically different depending on your politics. Republicans tend to see a cover-up and a scandal. Democrats see an attempt to damage President Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton. A Pew poll suggests that the public is divided as well, with 40 percent saying the administration has been dishonest, 37 percent saying it has told the truth, and 23 percent saying they’re not sure. Let’s assess what we do and don’t know.
1. U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice gave a deliberately false account of the attack.
This is ground zero in the alleged scandal. Conspiracy theorists contend the administration covered up evidence that Stevens was killed in an organized terrorist attack because Obama, during the 2012 campaign, claimed he had “decimated” al-Qaeda. On Sunday talk shows five days after the attack, Rice gave interviews based on talking points supplied by U.S. intelligence agencies; she suggested that Stevens’s death resulted from “spontaneous” protests that spread from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, provoked by a movie trailer lampooning the prophet Muhammad.
In response to charges of a cover-up, the White House this past week released 100 pages of e-mails that show the State Department sought to remove references to possible links to Ansar al-Sharia, an Islamist group tied to al-Qaeda, and to earlier CIA warnings of extremist threats in Benghazi and eastern Libya.
Was there a cover-up? It does appear White House spokesman Jay Carney wasn’t giving the full story when he said, at a Nov. 28 briefing, that the White House and State Department had made only a “single adjustment” to the talking points, changing the word “consulate” to “diplomatic facility.” It is also possible that State wanted to tone down or remove passages that might cast the department or Clinton in a bad light.
(More here.)
The events surrounding the deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, look dramatically different depending on your politics. Republicans tend to see a cover-up and a scandal. Democrats see an attempt to damage President Obama and former secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton. A Pew poll suggests that the public is divided as well, with 40 percent saying the administration has been dishonest, 37 percent saying it has told the truth, and 23 percent saying they’re not sure. Let’s assess what we do and don’t know.
1. U.N. Ambassador Susan E. Rice gave a deliberately false account of the attack.
This is ground zero in the alleged scandal. Conspiracy theorists contend the administration covered up evidence that Stevens was killed in an organized terrorist attack because Obama, during the 2012 campaign, claimed he had “decimated” al-Qaeda. On Sunday talk shows five days after the attack, Rice gave interviews based on talking points supplied by U.S. intelligence agencies; she suggested that Stevens’s death resulted from “spontaneous” protests that spread from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, provoked by a movie trailer lampooning the prophet Muhammad.
In response to charges of a cover-up, the White House this past week released 100 pages of e-mails that show the State Department sought to remove references to possible links to Ansar al-Sharia, an Islamist group tied to al-Qaeda, and to earlier CIA warnings of extremist threats in Benghazi and eastern Libya.
Was there a cover-up? It does appear White House spokesman Jay Carney wasn’t giving the full story when he said, at a Nov. 28 briefing, that the White House and State Department had made only a “single adjustment” to the talking points, changing the word “consulate” to “diplomatic facility.” It is also possible that State wanted to tone down or remove passages that might cast the department or Clinton in a bad light.
(More here.)
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