Fox News host Chris Wallace admitted that Fox's “stand down order” narrative about the 2012 Benghazi attacks was false, but still allowed disreputable source Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) to desperately try and redefine the debunked claim into a new attack on the Obama administration

Fox News has persistently pushed the myth that the administration had issued a “stand down” order to stop reinforcements from coming to the aid of American diplomatic facility in Benghazi, Libya during the September 11, 2012 attack. Though the claim was rapidly discredited, by June 2013, the network had repeated the charge at least 85 times in prime time segments, and the allegations didn't stop there. In early February, a House Armed Services Committee report and a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report put the myth to rest.

On the March 2 edition of Fox Broadcasting Network's Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace admitted that the Senate report had thoroughly debunked claims of a “stand down” order and reported that The Washington Post Fact Checker had given Issa “four pinocchios” -- the rating it issues for "whoppers" -- for his suggestion that “Secretary Clinton told [then-Defense Secretary] Leon [Panetta] to stand down, and we all heard about the stand-down order for two military personnel. That order is undeniable.”

But Fox's focus on the facts was short lived. Though Wallace's acknowledgement of the facts led Issa admit that the term “stand down” was not “used in some sort of an explicit way,” Wallace made no move to question Issa's attempt to spin the administration's supposed “failure to react” to the attack as the kind of thing that could “represent a stand down” :

WALLACE: But to be honest, you do not have any evidence that Secretary Clinton told Leon Panetta to stand down. ISSA: Well, the use in answering questions in a political fundraiser -- that was in response to a question -- the term “stand down” is not used in some sort of an explicit way. But rather the failure to react, the fact that only State Department assets and only assets inside the country were ever used, that members arms forces, gun carrying, trained people were not allowed to get on the aircraft to go and attempt to rescue. Those kinds of things through State Department resources represent a stand down. Not maybe on the technical terms of “stand down, soldier,” but on the American people believe is a failure to respond what they could have. WALLACE: All right.

Even Issa's effort to repackage his attack falls flat. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has already debunked claims that further assistance could have been sent from U.S. military bases, criticizing the conservative media's “cartoonish impression of the military” which has ignored the need for “planning and preparation before we send people in harm's way.” As Gates said: