Lie-a-Prompter-in-Chief

Yesterday's bombshell was a September 2012 email from Obama aide Ben Rhodes outlining a prep session that would enable Susan Rice to go on the Sunday talk shows and claim that the murder of four Americans in Benghazi could be attributed to an inflammatory video.  Under "Goals," Rhodes listed:
  • To convey that the United States is doing everything that we can to protect our people and facilities abroad;
  • To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy;
  • To show that we will be resolute in bringing people who harm Americans to justice, and standing steadfast through these protests;
  • To reinforce the President and Administration's strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.
A later section entitled "Benghazi" instructs Ms. Rice to state that the Benghazi demonstrations were "spontaneously inspired by the protests at the US Embassy in Cairo."

Heartless conservatives jumped on this email, pointing out that they'd said all along that the White House deliberately misled us about Benghazi, in part, by trumping up the ridiculous video story. Voters didn't buy the conservative criticism; they thought Mitt Romney was mean for bringing it up in the debates, and they re-elected Obama.  The White House has denied to this day that it was lying, in between bouts of demanding that we all move on already, and complaining that Republicans are cherry-picking or "doctoring" the documents to create the false impression that the Benghazi response was politicized.

So what was the White House's response when this smoking-gun email came to light? If you can believe it, Jay Carney stood up at the podium at a press conference today and asserted with a straight face:  "The email and the talking points were not about Benghzai. They were about the general situation in the Muslim world."  I guess the White House was planning to bring people to justice somewhere besides Benghazi.  Come to think of that, events have borne that supposition out:   we've done diddly to bring anyone to justice for Ambassador Stevens' murder.

Remember Hillary Clinton's passionate denouncement of the video when the bodies of the Benghazi victims returned to the U.S.?  What are the odds any of this will have an impact on her 2016 campaign?

3 comments:

Ymar Sakar said...

So, where did AQ get their weapons used to take back Fallujah III.

Grim said...

*Sigh*.

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Delay the truth coming out until no one cares anymore. Then complain that everyone should Move On.

It's been damn effective these last two decades, hasn't it?