What USA Today‘s report was not. (cc photo: Seabright Hoffman)
USA Today‘s top headline yesterday (4/30/14) was “GOP Calls New Benghazi E-Mail ‘Smoking Gun.'”
What the memo actually proves is that “scandal” is defined as any deviation from the fantasy world jointly created by the Republican Party and its media accomplices.
USA Today‘s Oren Dorell begins:
An e-mail released Tuesday that Republicans called “a smoking gun” shows a White House official wanted the 2012 assault on the US Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, blamed on a protest that never happened there.
First off, that’s not what the memo says. The line in question, from a memo by national security staffer Benjamin Rhodes, says that in a round of upcoming interviews national security adviser Susan Rice should “underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”
“These protests”–meaning the protests against a video ridiculing Mohammed, the founder of Islam, that had sprung up around the Muslim world and were ongoing at the time that the September 14, 2012, email was sent. The memo goes on to talk about Yemen and Egypt, places where violent protests had continued subsequent to the Benghazi attack.
USA Today’s Oren Dorell
Not until the following page, some 12 paragraphs later, is Libya specifically mentioned, when Rhodes refers to cooperation with new Arab governments: “You saw that in Libya, where there’s been full cooperation with the United States and an outpouring of support for Chris Stevens and the work that he did.”
So the “protest”–“protests,” actually–that Rhodes were talking about certainly happened and were undoubtedly sparked by an Internet video. So that’s one thing that USA Today got wrong.
But the idea that the attack at Benghazi was not a protest against the video is also dubious. Dorell writes: “The CIA station chief in Libya reported from the outset that the attack was Al-Qaeda-linked and there was no protest.” Dorell doesn’t mention that that report came in an email sent September 15, 2012 (Media Matters, 4/1/14)–the day after Rhodes sent his memo. The early CIA analysis, as Slate‘s Dave Weigel (4/30/14) noted, was that “the attacks in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo”–which were about the video.
Reuters photo by Esam Omran Al-Fetori illustrating NYT follow-up report on Benghazi
Moreover, that later CIA assessment backing away from this theory is contradicted by first-hand news reporting based on interviews with the people actually involved in the attack. As the New York Times (9/13/12 ; FAIR Blog, 10/17/12) reported the day after the attack, and the day before Rhodes’ memo:
Fighters involved in the assault, which was spearheaded by a Islamist brigade formed during last year’s uprising against Col. Moammar Gadhafi, said in interviews during the battle that they were moved to attack the mission by anger over a 14-minute, American-made video that depicted the Prophet Muhammad, Islam’s founder, as a villainous, homosexual and child-molesting buffoon. Their attack followed by just a few hours the storming of the compound surrounding the United States Embassy in Cairo by an unarmed mob protesting the same video.
The Times returned again a month later (10/16/12) and again a year later (12/29/13), conducting further reporting and getting much the same picture (FAIR Blog, 12/29/13). As the Times‘ David Kirkpatrick wrote in December 2013, there is “no evidence that Al-Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault.”
Dorell is likewise disinforming his readers when he writes, “President Obama did not call it a terrorist attack until days later.” This is based on the peculiar right-wing notion (FAIR Blog, 10/19/12) that there is a profound difference between labeling something a “terrorist attack” and an “act of terror,” as Obama did in his initial statement on Benghazi: “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for.”
I am surprised to see such corporate “reporting” in FAIR. No one doubts the Republicans are liars and their investigation of Benghazi is a total sham, but-
Both USA Today and Naureckas (albeit uncharacteristically), are leaving out some key information about the Benghazi scandal which the Global Research site does a much better job at exposing. Please look into it ASAP!!
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-benghazi-scandal-is-obamas-watergate-but-worse/5380238
Disappointed to see this manipulative, partisan piece in FAIR — I’ve just read the material linked to it, and it’s very clear from the wording of the memo that the Obama administration was deliberately framing the Benghazi attack as provoked by that video. THAT indeed was the message.
FAIR needs to be impartial in order to retain credibility. If it continues to publish pieces which could just as well have been commissioned by the MSNBC, say, it will see its reputation for journalistic ethics fade. It’d be a shame to have it turn into a party-propaganda machine.
The bulk of the information now out,and the grudging release of information is proof enough that a special prosecutor is needed with powers to subpoena everyone.
Mr Naureckas (and whoever chose this article for publication) is taking a stand that relies on CIA accounts for its authority. It ignores the various reports fingering it as an attack on a CIA weapons cache; it misses the possibility of protests being hijacked (!) and it is dull.
One thing that is guaranteed by the word “Benghazi.” My mockery, insults, and derision poured upon anyone who keeps promoting that bogus scandal.
Oh, and that I absolutely, positively will not waste one second of my time reading whatever it is the purveyor is trying to tell me. Every news outlet that pretends Benghazi is a story, gets deleted from my feeds.
…and furthermore, why is FAIR is not asking the right questions about Benghazi? Namely–
Why are the Republicans, and corporate media, covering up the truth about Benghazi?:
http://www.occupycorporatism.com/home/10-facts-about-benghazi-even-the-whistleblowers-did-not-reveal/
Please FAIR, if you don’t stop promoting the usual “left/right” puppet show propaganda and start looking at who is pulling the strings behind the corporate puppet show instead, then how are you any different than the corporate media?