McClatchy (!) has decided to get in on the Benghazi dogpile, probably because, hey, no line for this one*!
Lost in the controversy over who requested revisions of CIA-written talking points on September’s attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans is one key fact: In every iteration of the document, the CIA asserted that a video protest preceded the assaults, and no official reviewing the talking points suggested that that was in error.
Yet interviews with U.S. officials and others indicate that they knew nearly immediately that there had been no protest outside the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi before attackers stormed it, setting a fire that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and Sean Smith, a State Department computer expert. A subsequent attack on a CIA annex nearby killed two security contractors, former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods.
Why the CIA insisted that there had been a protest tied to a YouTube video that mocked the Prophet Muhammad for several days after the attack, mirroring some news reports, has never been publicly explained.
Well, never been publicly explained by the CIA. Everybody reading this knows that the actual reason that the protest was linked to the video is because the Obama administration could argue that there’s no realistic way to predict when a random event like a ‘spontaneous demonstration’ would go deadly. But a planned terrorist operation? Yeah, the American public has an expectation that counter-terrorism agencies are supposed to catch that sort of thing. Goodness knows that the Obama administration has been pushing itself as being hyper-competent and on-the-ball; a disaster like Benghazi** might have destroyed that narrative. Which is why they kicked the can down the road by claiming that nonsense about a video.
Well, guess what? This is the new spot on the road: this is the can; and this is the VRWC’s foot, keeping the latter firmly in contact with the former. So let’s hear about what actually happened.
Via
McClatchy has bitten on to a #Benghazi weak spot and is shaking it like a shark.mcclatchydc.com/2013/05/13/191…
— Elizabeth Scalia (@TheAnchoress) May 14, 2013
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*Given that the reason that there’s no line for it is because everybody’s off looking at the AP secret subpoena and IRS political harassment scandals (and others), this is probably not much comfort for the Obama administration.
**You may come across people who do not understand why the targeted terrorist murder of an American Ambassador – one where the attackers got away and who are still at large – should be described as a ‘disaster.’ You may safely ignore those people as being abject fools.