Andrew C. McCarthy:
What was the commander-in-chief of the United States armed forces doing through the night of September 11, 2012, while he knew Americans were under jihadist siege in Libya? You won’t learn the answer to that question by reading the mini-book-length, six-“chapter” revisionist history of the Benghazi massacre cooked up by David D. Kirkpatrick and the New York Times.
The Times report is a labor of love in the service of President Obama and, in particular, the Hillary Clinton 2016 campaign ramp-up. Former secretary of state Clinton, of course, was a key architect of Obama’s Libya policy. She was also chiefly responsible for the protection of American personnel in that country, including our murdered ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and the three other Americans killed by Muslim terrorists — State Department technician Sean Smith and a pair of former Navy SEALs, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods. Still, theTimes is banking on your not noticing that in its laborious 7,500 words, Kirkpatrick’s account utters the word “Clinton” exactly . . . wait for it . . . zero times.
The word “Obama” comes in for a mere six mentions, four of which are impersonal references to the current administration. The other two are telling, though fleeting.
One is a rehearsal of the president’s vow to exact “justice” against anyone found responsible for this “terrible act” of killing four Americans, including the formal representative of our nation. As it happens, the only person on the planet to have felt the lash of Obama’s justice is Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, the California-based “producer” who filmed the infamous “anti-Mohammed” movie trailer, Innocence of Muslims. In a despicable violation of constitutional free-speech principles, and a bow to sharia blasphemy rules that forbid criticism of Islam, Obama and Clinton publicly portrayed Nakoula and his “film” as the Benghazi culprits — implicitly accepting the Islamic-supremacist premise that verbal insults, no matter how obscure and trifling, justify mass-murder attacks.
In large part, the Times’ autopsy is a futile attempt to breathe new life into this demeaning farce. But Mr. Kirkpatrick is subtler about it than Obama and Clinton. He refers to the trailer as lighting “the fuse” that purportedly contributed to the attack — even the Times cannot quite bring itself to claim the trailer led to the attack. By contrast, Obama and Clinton (a) conspired to defraud the nation into believing the trailer was the singular, proximate cause — then dispatched their minion, Ambassador Susan Rice, to do their dirty work on the Sunday shows; (b) jointly appeared in a preening commercial aired on Islamic (but not American) television to stress that the U.S. government had no part in the video (translation: We elevate sharia blasphemy standards over the Bill of Rights guarantees the U.S. government exists to ensure); (c) told family members of our Benghazi dead that they would get, not the terrorists, but the man responsible for the video; and (d) then trumped up a prosecution against Nakoula: The Justice Department arrested him in the dead of night, imprisoning him on a bogus “violation of supervised release” that no experienced prosecutor would regard as meriting such severe treatment . . . but that could conveniently be portrayed to Muslim countries as the administration’s enforcement of sharia against Americans.
Kirkpatrick’s other mention of President Obama alludes to the president’s policy of supporting what the Times gently calls Libyan “militiamen” — translation: a gaggle of Muslim groups prominently including rabidly anti-American jihadists — in their “uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.” It is a passing reference, and fittingly so. After all, this exercise in revisionism is a politically motivated whitewash. In point of fact, Obama’s reckless Libya policy, part of his broader appeasement of Islamic supremacists, is the heart of the matter.
On that score, the Times may soon be able to run another bells-’n’-whistles story headlined “Mission Accomplished!”
Obama and Hillary are betting on another case of issue slide and fatigue at trying to keep them on point.
What did Obama do that night?
Did he refuse to sign a Cross Border Authority, or were his underlings a-scared to approach him about it?
Whose side is Obama on in the ME?
In law, if two cars are coming at one another and they both swerve without touching one another, any resulting accident is only the fault of the driver of that car, not of the other car.
In Benghazi somehow the fault of the 4 deaths was a video, the equivalent of the car that hit nothing.
Not true.
I recall funny headlines about how ”an SUV” did this or that. as it it had a mind of its own!
Liberals wrote those headlines.
Just like they write about how ”guns” do this or that.
Now it is ”a video” doing this or that.
No.
Muslims were the ones who killed people that night.
Angry Muslims who used a liberal construct of’ ” a video” as an excuse.
Obama loves this.
Anything to deflect from what he failed to do that night.
no way obama would at the election time say the killing of the four AMERICANS WAS DONE BY THE
Alqaeda,
he shout out for all to hear, ALQAEDA IS ON THE RUN,
he did not say toward where they where running, we found out it was to kill AMERICANS,
and more of, we also learned that LIBYA IS KNOWN BY OTHER MANY COUNTRIES TO BE A NEST OF ALQAEDA, and a dangerous COUNTRY,
he though great of leaving the AMERICANS ALONE AND WITHOUT HELP WHICH THEY ASK FOR,
because he made friens with the new leader he help to get the seat, ironic that ALL THE LEADERS HE PUT ON LEADERSHIP< ALL are more tyran than the one, he force to leave,
only ASSAD STOOD UP TO HIM, AND HE TRYED SO HARD TO PUT HIM DOWN,
GOOD THAT AMERICANS STOOD UP ALSO TO HIM, ON THAT DECISION,
IT TOLD AMERICANS THAT THEY CAN USE THEIR POWER OVER ABUSIVE POWER FROM LEADERSHIP AND BREAK THEM DOWN, IT WORK ON FOREIGN DECISIONS,
IT WILL WORK ON AMERICAN DECISIONS ALSO,
THE PEOPLE ARE VERY INTELLIGENT AND CAN DEFINE THE WRONG ABUSIVE POWER, BUT THEY ARE TOO TOLERANT AND WAIT TOO LONG TO DEFUND THE WRONG POLICY,
WHERE WOULD THE CLOSE TO BILLION GONE TO A CANADIAN NAME TIED TO
GLOBAL TECK, BUSINESS GOMPANY, BY OBAMA’S DECISION,
IF IT WOULD HAVE BEEN SPENT ON AMERICAN SOIL WITH AN ECONOMY CRASH ON TOP OF IT ?
AND HIS OWN SUPER INTELLIGENT SILICONE VALLEY TECKNOLOGY WIZARDS OF THE WORLD’S BEST,
BAD DECISIONS ROLLING OUT FROM HIS MINDSET,