PAUL RAHE: The Unofficial Campaign’s Latest Disinformation Offensive.

In support of the administration’s attempt to deflect attention from the defects of its policy, our Department of Justice, which is by now little more than an arm of the President’s re-election campaign, has responded by having its subordinates track down and identify the film-maker, release his name and that of at least one of his associates to the press, and haul him in after midnight to check whether he has violated the terms of probation imposed on him two years ago in a bank fraud case. And, of course, the mainstream press – which constitutes this year, as it did four years ago, what one Journolist member in 2008 accurately termed Barack Obama’s “unofficial campaign” – has loyally fallen in line, reporting that the video “sparked” the disturbance in Benghazi and intimating thereby that the attack was a spontaneous outburst.

All of this is meant to obscure the obvious – that the attack was planned well in advance. To begin with, it is not fortuitous that it took place – months after the video was posted – on 11 September. Nor can it have been the case that the perpetrators simply picked up in a fit of righteous anger the rocket launchers in their closets. Equipment of this sort is rarely ready to hand. Moreover, if the attackers bagged an American ambassador, it was surely because they had advance warning of his visit, and this means in turn that they had excellent intelligence of the sort that presupposes the cooperation of someone inside the consulate or the inside the embassy in Tripoli. . . . For the most part, the press’s contribution to the administration’s disinformation campaign is deliberate and calculated. But one must not underestimate the role played by stupidity.

Read the whole thing. And as a reminder that it wasn’t about that dumb video: Al-Qaeda Says Attack On U.S. Consulate In Benghazi “Revenge” For Recent Drone Killing Of Abu Yahya Al-Libi.