Frankly, I’m surprised that a pollster could find a majority that even knows why Benghazi is in the news. So…progress!
On Libya, 54% of the country is dissatisfied with the administration’s response to the Benghazi attack, with only four in ten saying they’re satisfied with the way the White House handled the matter.
“But that dissatisfaction is not because Americans see a cover-up,” said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Only 40% believe that the inaccurate statements that administration officials initially made about the Benghazi attack were an attempt to deliberately mislead the public. Fifty-four percent think those inaccurate statements reflected what the White House believed to be true at the time.”
Well, that’s what a media blackout buys you.
There is no way that the White House believed that its Benghazi started from a movie schtick was true. No way.
Setting Ambassador Susan Rice aside for a moment, as she is really just one player in a multi-act play, the White House knew thanks to real-time information from the battle that it was a terrorist attack led by Ansar al-Sharia. That group had been identified as early as August by Library of Congress research as an al Qaeda branded Islamist group. The White House also knew that the Cairo attack was not a mere protest, but was a pre-planned attack. There was nothing save one terrorist exhorting his fellow attackers to use the Cairo protest as cover, to suggest that a movie had had anything to do with the attack.
The White House also knew that the Benghazi attack presented strong evidence that its campaign claim — al Qaeda is on the run — was not true.
For two weeks, all the way past Rice’s Sept 16 cavalcade of crap to President Obama’s shameful performances on The View and Letterman, right through his disgraceful speech at the United Nations, the Obama White House tried to keep the protest charade going. They jailed a movie producer. They attacked the First Amendment. The president declared that the future does not belong to those who “slander” Muhammad.
The media has an awful lot to work with in all of that, but has chosen not to pursue it with any zest. A few questions that the media could be, but are not, asking:
1. Who decided to blame a movie, and when did they make that decision?
2. Who changed the talking points from the CIA version, which identified al Qaeda, to the version that Rice and Obama used for two weeks?
3. Why did they make those changes?
4. Why haven’t then been identified and fired?
5. Did anyone on the Obama campaign play any role in the public Benghazi message?
6. If so, who, and what role did they play?
7. Why was Susan Rice tasked with appearing on the Sunday shows on Sept. 16 to explain Benghazi when, as President Obama recently said, she had nothing to do with Benghazi?
8. Doesn’t that tasking suggest that, at a minimum, someone who did have something to do with Benghazi had or has something to hide?
9. Why has the White House chosen not to release any photos from the Situation Room taken during the attack?
And so forth. But the media aren’t asking any of those questions.
So the majority of Americans aren’t aware that they’ve been misled.
Which is the point of misleading people, isn’t it?
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