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Did Clinton and Obama Believe Their Benghazi Baloney?

Townhall.com ^ | May 13, 2013 | Michael Barone

Posted on by Kaslin

What were Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton thinking? Why did they keep pitching the line that the 9/11/12 Benghazi attack that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans started as a spontaneous protest against an anti-Muslim video?

One possible explanation is confusion. There was such an attack on our embassy in Cairo earlier that day that fit that description.

When Hillary Clinton on Sept. 14 talked of a "mob" and "violent attacks" over the caskets of the Americans slain in Benghazi, she could have been referring to the attacks in Cairo. In that case, she would not exactly be lying, as many have charged.

But she would have been misleading people, quite possibly intentionally. We know that she assured one victim's father, Charles Wood, that "we're going to prosecute that person that made the video."

Not entirely successfully, by the way. "I knew she was lying," Woods said after the House committee hearing on Benghazi last week.

It's hard to escape the conclusion that Clinton was knowingly attempting to mislead. She certainly knows the difference between Cairo and Benghazi.

And it's undisputed that Gregory Hicks, the No. 2 man in our Libya embassy, reported that it was an "attack" on Sept. 11. That was the word he heard in his last conversation with Chris Stevens.

It's undisputed as well, after testimony at the House committee hearing last week, that Beth Jones, acting head of State's Near Eastern Division, emailed on Sept. 12 that "the group that conducted the attacks, Ansar al-Shariah, is affiliated with Islamic terrorists."

That email went to Clinton counselor Cheryl Mills and State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland, among others. You may remember Mills as one of the lawyers defending Bill Clinton in his impeachment trial.

On Sept. 15, the day after Clinton's assurances to Woods, State Department and White House officials prepared talking points for members of Congress and for Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, who was scheduled to go on five Sunday talk shows the next day.

Who chose Rice as the administration's spokesman? As Barack Obama said after the election, when she was reportedly under consideration to be the next secretary of state, Rice had "nothing to do" with Benghazi.

Selecting which officials go on the Sunday talk show is a White House function. Either the president or someone who had good reason to believe he was reflecting his wishes selected someone who was out of the loop on the issue.

The expectation must have been that she would say exactly what she was told -- and would not betray any inconvenient facts known to those in the loop like Clinton.

The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes got hold of the series of Sept. 15 emails in which White House and State Department officials prepared the talking points.

Deleted were references to warnings State received before Sept. 11 of Ansar al-Sharia and al-Qaida-linked attacks in Benghazi. Nuland describes these as "issues ... of my building leadership."

The final talking points said "the currently available information suggests that the demonstration in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S. diplomatic post and subsequently its annex." Rice went on TV and parroted the line.

That was refuted by Hicks. The video was a "non-event" in Libya, he told the House committee. And he testified that he was chastised by none other than Mills for briefing Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz without a lawyer present.

The FBI did not find time to interview Hicks. But State did find time to yank him out of his job and give him a desk job he regards as a demotion.

Obama continued to attribute the Benghazi attack to a protest against a video on Sept. 18 ("Letterman"), Sept. 20 (Univision) and Sept. 25 ("The View" and the United Nations).

There were obvious cynical political motives for attempting to mislead voters during a closely contested presidential campaign.

Obama did not want his theme of "Osama is dead, al-Qaida is on the run" to be undercut by an Islamist terrorist attack on our ambassador.

Clinton did not want her department's denial of pleas for additional security in Libya to become known.

But maybe they were also trying to deceive themselves. Which may be even more disturbing.



TOPICS:

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KEYWORDS:

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To: Kaslin

hey bill.....what difference does it make now?



To: Kaslin

Why did they keep telling the story of that Video trash? Because the idiots who support them believed it. They even went so far as to put the video producer in jail. He is still there.



To: Kaslin

Incompetence is just their fallback defensive position. The truth is much worse.



To: Kaslin

They thought it was a Mostest Excellent Idea ever ,that will protect the Muslim Brothers



To: Kaslin

No, their argument is along the lines of :

‘So what if we lied? Who cares now? Its not against the law to lie, especially not in an election year. The GOP is just up to its usual tricks of trying to hurt our President and Hillary Clinton. Americans dont care about this, they want to hear about our president's new jobs plan. Or gun bill...or pre-school lunches...’



by 6 posted onby sickoflibs (To GOP : Any path to US citizenship IS putting them ahead in line. Stop lying about your position.)

To: Venturer

And some of them still believe it



by 7 posted onby Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)

To: Kaslin

They’re both too busy looking for their next lay, ya think?



To: Kaslin

Dunno it they believed it themselves, but they surely did believe the press would help them make us believe it!



by 9 posted onby null and void (The motto of all liberals is "Using your guilt and your gelt we can get away with anything!")

To: sickoflibs

Its not against the law to lie Point of order? It is against the law for one of us to lie to the government.



by 10 posted onby null and void (The motto of all liberals is "Using your guilt and your gelt we can get away with anything!")

To: Kaslin

But maybe they were also trying to deceive themselves. Which may be even more disturbing. Barone, get your head out of your a$$. They were trying to deceive us period.



To: Kaslin

Radical leftists don’t really believe or disbelieve anything. They hold a thought in their mind and profess it if it helps their cause.

Truth has no meaning for them. Promoting their cause does.



To: Kaslin

Maybe is was gun running and saving his reelection and securing canklesaurus her presidency in 2016... but barrone knows as much as we do and still he refuses to be honest with himself and us... typical beltway animal... the lowest form of life in the Republic. LLS



by 13 posted onby LibLieSlayer (FROM MY COLD, DEAD HANDS!)

To: Kaslin

If she were that easily confused, being the Secretary of State, she had no business being Secretary of State. What? Did she pick up the wrong set of notes prepared for her by her Chief of Staff and read them? The Administration, including Rice, Clinton and Obama, perpetuated the ‘movie’ excuse for 3 weeks afterward. Were they confused? Hardly. At that level, every word, except for Obama off-teleprompter, is heavily weighed, edited, scripted.



To: Kaslin

Did you see that some asshat tweeted that Stevens probably committed suicide to escape from his “Re-thug-lican mother?”



To: null and void

Either the president or someone who had good reason to believe he was reflecting his wishes selected someone who was out of the loop on the issue. And they put Rice out there because even if someone in the press did challenge her account, she had no real knowledge of it.



To: Kaslin

And some of them still believe it I spent a little time recently reading through DUmmieland and let me tell you, most DUmmies are terrified by what's coming out about Benghazi. Yeah, they're DUmmies and partisan hacks, but they're smart enough to know when real blood is in the water. Keep the pressure on folks. More and more people will come forward and tell what they know.



by 17 posted onby Kharis13 (That noise you hear is our Founding Fathers spinning in their graves.)

To: Kharis13

Those have to be the smart ones, the low information voters, or as I call them the idiots still believe it



by 18 posted onby Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)

To: N. Theknow

I don’t go to these left wing lunatic sites



by 19 posted onby Kaslin (He needed the ignorant to reelect him, and he got them. Now we all have to pay the consequenses)

To: Travis McGee

I agree. I think Obama sees AQ and the Muslim Brotherhood as the legitimate powers in the ME (even though they are having turf wars among themselves) and I also think he’s working for the establishment of a global caliphate. This may be because he’s a Muslim (which he is, although how practicing a Muslim is open to debate) or just because he sees Islam as the only force that can destroy the US and the West that he hates so much and which will open the way to a socialist and totally government managed world. Islam is theocratic and wants to control every aspect of human life, and this is what Obama wants, too; I really do think he sees himself as fulfilling some Islamic prophecy. He’s nuts, but unfortunately, he’s also the President of the US.



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