Why did Obama lie so blatantly about Benghazi?
I noticed today that Ann Althouse asks a series of questions about why Obama decided to put out such a blatant, easily debunked, lie about Benghazi. Her queries are similar to those I was planning to ask in a post today. So I needn’t bother to ask them myself; I’ll just link to her, and offer my answers.
First, her questions in a nutshell:
Quite aside from the wrongness of lying, generally and specifically, in this case, and quite aside from the motivation to lie ”” I’m going to presume, without more, it was campaign politics ”” why did Obama think he could get away with this lie long enough, and why was he not daunted by the risk entailed in going on and on, doubling down on the lie, and even lying in a U.N. speech? How did he have the nerve to co-opt our U.N. ambassador, Susan Rice, and subvert her credibility and honor? How did he get this millstone around the neck of Hillary Clinton, who has such a strong interest in her independent career and who knows a thing or two about the devastation of getting caught lying?…
It wasn’t respectful at all to promote this caricature of Muslims as people who look at a stupid video and lose their minds, take to the streets, and work themselves up into a murderous rage. The video story could only work as a cover for the truth if it could be leveraged on an offensive stereotype of Muslims. It is the story about the response to the video ”” far more the video itself ”” that has “a deeply cynical purpose, to denigrate a great religion”! Why didn’t Obama care that he was insulting Muslims in this weird charade about caring for Muslims?
Answers?
Obama thought he could get away with the lie because he always has. There was no reason for him to think the media would hold his feet to the fire on this particular issue; why would he? Unless I’m forgetting something, for the most part (if you exclude Jake Tapper and the media on the right, which hardly counts in the scheme of things), when have they ever done so?
So it was in a sense a no-brainer for him, because to have admitted the truth would have been to admit that his approach to the Middle East Islamists/terrorists is wrong.
As for the co-option of Rice and Clinton, Hillary lost all credibility with me as Secretary of State long ago—probably from the moment she took on the job, which is clearly above her pay grade. Among Obama’s very first foreign policy acts was his stance on Honduras, which remains one of his worst (although the press basically ignored it or covered for him). If that didn’t cause her resignation or protest, she has no integrity left. She has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Obama, as has her husband. Whatever they may be plotting behind the scenes, that is the case at the moment.
Rice is more of an unknown. Perhaps she was misled; perhaps not. Perhaps she was being a good diplomat and saying what the administration told her to.
As for Obama’s view on Muslims, he has been very consistent in parroting the PC party line, which is that no insult to Islam is allowed, and it is to be expected that they will riot as a result. The entire approach of the left to the behavior of what used to be called “the Muslim street” is that their acts of rage are justified, and if that position infantilizes them then so be it. It’s a very small price to pay, one the left probably doesn’t even recognize as an issue. Remember the PC Commandments, from 2005? If you don’t, here’s a refresher:
1. America is uniquely evil.
2. America is never justified in defending itself.
3. Illiterate people from poor societies are superior to Americans.
4. The Earth would be better off without human beings.
5. Making a profit is always immoral.
6. Differences between individuals or groups are unfair.
7. For Designated Victim Groups, strong feelings excuse all behavior.
8. Policies informed by Judé¦o-Christian principles are inherently suspect.
9. Conservatives are hypocrites; liberals are sincere.
10. There are no acts of God; there are only acts of Government.
11) We defend the right to free speech for ourselves, but anyone else whose speech hurts our feelings must be censored.
12) In any conflict between a third-world nation and a first-world nation, the third-world nation is always right.
13) Tyranny in third-world countries is not our concern unless the US (or Israel) can be blamed in some way.
14) All criticism or disagreement with any policy of a third-world nation, culture, or person is, by definition, racism.
I have some questions of my own to add: has Obama finally gotten into significant trouble for this? How deeply has it penetrated the public consciousness, and will it matter? I keep thinking his polls should be in the 20s right about now. But although they’ve moved downward, it’s been a small shift considering the magnitude of his offenses. How many people are even following the story? Will that number increase as time goes on, or will the media minimize and excuse?
In other words, will Obama’s gamble pay off?
It’s not simply the lying about the cause, there’s also his immediate response to the assault. Ninety minutes after learning about the attack, he went to bed. The next morning, he got onto a plane to go to Las Vegas to raise money and campaign among the craps tables and nearly naked show girls. This isn’t just incompetence, it’s dereliction of duty. A CEO in the private sector would have been fired within twenty four hours for similar behavior.
Coincidental story at
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/10/10/wasserman_schultz_wrong_statements_about_libya_doesnt_mean_they_were_false.html
While many libs like to chant, “Bush lied, people died,” we get this from Debbie Wasserman-Schultz:
“I keep thinking his polls should be in the 20s right about now. But although they’ve moved downward, it’s been a small shift . . . .”
Neo,
I offer this: Don’t obsess about the polls. There is a cadre of voters who will vote for Obama because he is still the messiah. There are those who will vote for him simply because he’s not a Republican. There are those who “say” they will vote for him and they are all represented in the polling samples. If poll response is only about 9% of contacts, remember that one is hearing from only the most enthusiastic, or rabid, fans.
If Romney is showing 1 and 2 point leads in D +6 and D +8 samples, he’s much further ahead than that.
Besides, the polls don’t matter. Our speculations don’t matter (even my own). I believe that more than enough of the voting public have now recognized that Obama is un-American in spirit and in vision. Of course, that is another one of my own speculations, but I do see evidence of this “on the street.”
Trust the American voter who believes that s/he did build that and that Romney’s self-made success is a Horatio Alger story that, far from resenting or despising it, they would like to emulate themselves.
That is in our DNA.
Because it was necessary at all costs to bury this inconvenient truth:
President God has not destroyed Al Quaeda. In fact it’s spreading. And one reason why is that our “smart diplomacy” replaced a useful dictator with a boiling kettle of lunatics.
(4 dead Americans. meh, just “bumps in the road”. Literally.)
It was likewise Smart Diplomacy to abandon a loyal American ally, this time in Egypt.
Obama. The vain fool who lost the Middle-East.
Obama. The vain fool who showed every thug and dictator what happens if they DON’T get nuke weapons.
Obama. The vain fool who showed the world the worth of America’s handshake.
Sic ’em tonight, Ryan. Sic ’em!
With regard to polls; has anyone noticed that the only poll with a record of reliably, Rasmussen, shows Obama INCREASING in popularity! Likewise Gallup shows Obama up 5 in RV and MOE in LV. And this after lying about Benghazi and messing up a debate as well as everything else he touched.
“T” either you are too optimistic or I am too pessimistic, considering the number of people I met who are voting for Obama who should know better it looks like pessimism is warranted. Your observations about Americans seem more apt for an earlier generation. Regrettably as Neo noted, democracies more than other states deserve what they get.
armchair pessimist –
“President God” – LOL! Might be my favorite Obama monicker yet.
Re the polls. I read a comment somewhere, likely Maggie’s Farm, that an awful lot of people he spoke to haven’t even heard of this. Apparently it’s not in the MSM, or it’s buried.
“Why did Obama lie so blatantly about Benghazi? “
Political necessity.
“will Obama’s gamble pay off?”
No, not if Ryan and Romney continue to do well in the debates. Biden is going to blatantly lie tonight and appeal to emotions with his lies. I hope Ryan is prepared for attacks which ignore facts and reason. Get set for some jaw dropping lies from both Biden and Obama. It’s all they have left.
“Just win baby!” is their motto and mantra.
Obama should be in the 20s and the fact that he is not suggests are large portion of the population is voting for social spending perks. That seems like a good reason to have a constitutional convention. Federal government will not be as important if politicians are prohibited from creating entitlements and limited in their ability to impose them through regulation.
There will be little negative fallout for Barry and his bunch. It will be minimized by the dinosaur media to the point of insignifance. Alternate reporting is looked at, mostly by the left, as not reliable “real” reporters, and not to be taken seriously.
Too many citizens do not read past headlines, or sound bites and are influenced by the campaign ads in the last few weeks before election day.
I still struggle how anyone could have ever imagined the risk of these lies outweighs the risk of getting called on it. I keep thinking there is something missing to the story because the lie is so big and so precarious. Surely they are not this stupid, surely there is more?
The fallout will hopefully be in the debate with Romney. Romney will have the opportunity to call him on it without any gloves on and without any filter. If the media have done a poor job on the story before then it could be even more devastating to Obama if Romney is the one to introduce and set the narrative of the issue in front of the voters.
It has the potential to be the final nail.
Another way to understand Obama’s reaction to the terrorist attack and targeted assassination of our Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others (Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith and former Navy SEALS Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty): SPINELESSNESS and OBFUSCATION.
By denying that it was a terrorist attack, Obama could abdicate his duty of responding forcibly and immediately and shift our nation’s response to a debate amongst ourselves. I admired the way Turkey responded to the shelling of its territory by Syria: Immediate retaliation. We should have done the same. Now we are seen as even weaker.
All I’ve seen reported today in most of the MSM regarding yesterday’s Libya hearings is that the committee’s questions caused the existence of a CIA facility in Benghazi to be revealed. Conveniently ignored is that the NYT reported the existence of this same facility in September and that it has been abandoned and nonfunctional anyway since the attack. As to the revelations regarding the attack itself, inadequate security beforehand, coverup afterward — at least on the online front pages of the major papers, I saw nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing at all.
Having typed that, I realized that I had accidentally quoted a favorite poem by Archibald MacLeish, and had to go get it. I hope to goodness it is not as apropos as it sounds.
The End Of The World
Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot
The armless ambidextrian was lighting
A match between his great and second toe,
And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting
The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum
Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough
In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb–
Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:
And there, there overhead, there, there hung over
Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,
There in the starless dark the poise, the hover,
There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,
There in the sudden blackness the black pall
Of nothing, nothing, nothing–nothing at all.
“Why did Obama lie so blatantly about Benghazi? “
I’m with Bernard – President “Present” didn’t want to get involved in a stand-off with terrorists, especially not before the election. Instead, he chose to blame it on the video, just as he always chooses to argue with straw men instead of the actual arguments against his own policies. It’s much easier to take care of one vulnerable filmmaker in the US than deal with an unknown number of armed, blood-thirsty terrorists.
At his core, Obama is a man of words, not action. Responding to the AQ attack requires courage, conviction, and a commitment to dealing with the consequences of this action.
Bob from VA,
Let me note from the outset that I am nowhere near a Pollyannish optimist. I am, however, a historian as a carryover from a former “life”.
I will put aside all of the evidence on which I base my opinion because I’ve mentioned it extensively here and I’m sure some fellow commenteers are tired of hearing it. Two exceptions:
The first argument is simple–47% of voters rejected Obama’s bill-of-goods in 2008 when he had no track record to speak of. He’s not getting any of those votes this cycle either, and with his record now, I can’t believe that at least 4% of his 2008 supporters would not have changed their minds.
The second issue bears on my former work as a historian. What I have noticed in studying the past is that human behavior has not changed in at least 40,000 years. We still are motivated by and seek the same things our primal ancestors sought. The envelope changes around us, and as we distance ourselves from nature and the environment (mostly through technological achievements) we think of ourselves as different from our forbearers, but we are not.
In like fashion, the same reason new immigrants come to this country today are the same reason my ancestors and your ancestors came to this country for the past 200 plus years. They were willing to chance it all because they recognized that where they were had nothing for them and where they were going had everything to offer to them. Each of them was their own Columbus seeking out their own new world, oftentimes a land whose language they couldn’t even speak, and with no guarantee that they would ever have even enough money to return home if they failed.
This han’t changed. We are the descendants of these intrepid adventurers and I offer, as I have said here for the past 18 months, that such is in our DNA.
As I said, not Pollyannish optimism but a fundamental belief in what we were, what we still are and what we shall remain as a country. There are no lines of immigrants waiting to enter Cuba or North Korea. That the United States is still the destination of choice is, in my mind clear proof of our continuing exceptionalism.
Here are a few assumptions I have about the Obama administration:
– There are no strong leaders in the Whitehouse
– They are short sighted, reactive rather than proactive
– The only thing they care about is the campaign
Putting those together and my explanation for the lie is that after the news came out, some relatively low level person (probably Rice) came up with an answer they thought would shut up the reporters, then moved on. When the reporters kept asking questions, they tweaked the original story in a way that would shut them up, then moved on.
I’m not sure anyone in the Whitehouse was concerned about what actually happened in Benghazi. They just said stuff they thought would make the problem go away.
It wasn’t respectful at all to promote this caricature of Muslims as people who look at a stupid video and lose their minds…
Um. It’s not a caricature. It’s dead right, spot on, balls accurate.
Please.
This is classic Althouse. I’m not the analyst here so I have no idea if this is clinical denial or if (as I suspect) Althouse is just being infuriatingly and insultingly obtuse. She does this kind of crap all the time.
You need to be very careful as you read Althouse. She voted for Obama in 2008 and she lately has been giving all the hint/indications that she is ready to vote for him again in 2012. This is not a wining intellect.
“It wasn’t respectful at all to promote this caricature of Muslims as people who look at a stupid video and lose their minds…”
Does Althouse even realize that Obama has perpetuated this so-called disrespectful caricature? Instead of telling the rioters and muslim leaders to grow up & learn how to deal with free speech he wants to stut down “those who slander the prophet of Islam.”
I’ve stopped reading Althouse because of this nonsense.
I, too, was surprised at the degree to which Hillary Clinton completely rolled over when she became SoS. She immediately became the biggest Obama toady out there.
Also, Neo, congrats on spelling ‘misled’ correctly. It is an exceedingly rare occurrence these days.
Neo – My 2 cents worth about the assessment he expects to get away with a lie is probably the simplest, and therefore the best answer. Nobody has proved him wrong yet, and my gut tells me he it’s worked for him since he was a kid.
You mentioned Hiliary and Susan Rice; I have no reservations believing Hilary sold her soul a long time ago. As for Susan Rice, I’m having a hard time hating her.I suppose I want to believe that she is a descent person who got sold a bill of goods, for no reason I can explain. Her accomplishments and career up to this point don’t spell political hack. Call it a hunch, but I think the story she repeated she believed – that she did believe it, or how she obtained it, are probably incidental, and don’t bode well for her. I just don’t get a sense she’s malicious or cut from the same self centered cloth as Obama and Hilary.
On Obama and Hilary, who I am sure knew exactly what they were saying -I don’t know how they could look at the pictures of Steven’s body getting dragged through the streets, and not want to apologize profusely and beg forgiveness for allowing a friend and coworker to meet his end that way. I can’t get my head around anybody with so little humanity they would not be distraught over what they either caused, or had not tried to prevent. Their incompetence doesn’t surprise me, but their lack of having a shred of humanity is unforgiveable. Steven’s was a fellow American and by all accounts a good man. You can’t look at those pictures without imagining the terror the guy must have gone through in the last hour of his life “A bump in the road” may be one of the most insensitive and callous things I’ve ever heard a person say about the murder of another person.
And Obama is the man half the country believes care about their economic future? He’s hollow and empty, devoid of any capacity to feel anything for anybody. In my unprofessional opinion, his behaviour is borderline sociopathic.
He has an infinite capacity to throw away lives and ruin them without giving it a second thought, and I hope it is soon noticed by a few decent people in the media. If they don’t, we will all be expendible commodities to prop up his immense ego.
Paul A’Barge,
You contradict yourself. First you say Althouse is wrong in believing Muslims would not spontaneously attack an embassy over a Youtube video. Then you accuse her of supporting the president who says Muslims did spontaneously attack an embassy over a Youtube video.
He isn’t contradicting himself. She has hinted she will vote again for Obama, because of Rush’s “racist” use of Obamaphone lady.
This brings up a point I have. In the Obama’s 2007 New Orleans speech, he lies to increase resentment among blacks. Essentially he was fanning the flames of black racism, resentment, etc. unsing an outright lie.
If Ann has issues with Rush because of percieved racism, shouldn’t Obama’s actual fanning or racial antaganism using actual lies bother her?
I think Hillary is easy to understand here. The failure was at root a failure of State. That is, she owns this failure.
Obama owns the failure also, on the principle of “the buck stops here” as well as the fact that he doubled down on the lie, probably to defend his failed foreign policy approach. But that doesn’t let Clinton off the hook.
I also think Clinton was a really bad SoS.
DonS,
So you’re saying that the last paragraph of Paul’s comment was a nonsequitur about Althouse’s opinion of race relations in this country?
Unfortunately, there is probably a good chunk of the population paying no attention and have no idea.
From the moment Susan Rice entered my field of vision, in 2007, she has consistently proven herself a political hack, and nothing more. Shed no tears for her. She, like Barack, exists on pretension, as opposed to talent. She was sent before the cameras b/c she could be relied upon to present herself professionally … as she blatantly lied.
Re: will Barack get away with it?
I think not. And the reason is that Barack performed so poorly in the debate. If Barack still looked like a winner, then he would get enough protection on Benghazi in order to get away with Benghazi. However, since Barack suddenly looks like a loser: some of his crucial protection will melt away like a sno-cone on cement in July. That’s the thing about a facade: the tiniest crack … and the entire con is revealed, and instantly ineffective.
Last: it is just a matter of time before leftists proclaim that nefarious rightys were behind Benghazi, and were behind the assassination of the Yemen diplomat, all for the purpose of defeating Prince Barack.
The last paragraph of the comment comes from the earlier Althouse comments about Rush, or perhaps even earlier Althouse comments that came out around 2007. She’s good at discovering racism even where it doesn’t exist.
That is consistent with her comments on the administration lies about the attacks, but that alone doesn’t show her tendency to see racism everywhere.
She is the one who seems to be inconcistent on Obama. Perhaps it is because she is an independent who doesn’t like many Obama policies, but she is very attuned to race and racism in a way that makes it easy to push her towards supporting Obama.
I’m simply assuming Paul is aware of the previous Althouse thread and is leveraging off of that.
Oh, good, you can read Althouse so I don’t have to.
It’s curious- here she cites Obama and his administration of personally fomenting racial stereotypes, or relying on them for cover. Yet she was exercised about a non-Romney person, allegedly, stirring up racial stereotypes. More outrage? Is it ugly, Althouse?
Anyway, I think the hearings are forcing some coverage, but few networks are reporting on them, let alone carrying it live. They don’t want the serious scene with the sound of snapping pictures and shuffling papers with critics of what the Administration did being paraded before the TV. It might confuse the people.
I have long expected this would happen. Covering for Obama probably isn’t fun, and it is costly to media’s standing. At some point it makes sense to throw him under the buss. They hoped to push the date this would happen until after Nov.
Althouse belatedly found out about Obama’s 2007 Stafford Act waiver lies just the other day and, in all fairness to her, strongly criticized Obama and called the lie “evil.” She’s now hinting that she’s no longer an undecided voter as the result of a recent “revelation” and I doubt she’ll be voting for Obama this time.
I’m not defending her, though. Like many others, I’ve given up on her after this last week, in which she called her commenters “ugly” for talking about the video (they were actually trying to tell her about the Stafford act lie, but she apparently wasn’t reading the comments she was criticizing.) Then she insisted that conservatives have some kind of responsibility to protect moderates and liberals — including her — from having “toxic” and “repulsive” feelings in discussions about race. What did she mean by this? I dunno, but I’m done trying to figure it out.
Mrs. W- interesting. But yes, I can’t abide being called a racist anymore.
As noted, he lies because he gets away with lying. The entire narrative of his life is a lie. There is no there there. He’s a supreme, pathological narcissist, and without the lies he’s not the smartest person in the room.
gcotharn: no argument. she had a chance to do the right thing. It would be nice if one person in this administration finds the courage or the heart. Any of them still has that chance to step up and say they blew it. That’s forgiveable. Covering up a murder isn’t.
In any case, when it comes to lying, the advise of Mark Twain is always helpful in remembering it’s been an effective tool since men began to speak, and emphasizes T’s point, men haven’t changed much.
“Truth is mighty and will prevail”–the most majestic compound fracture of fact which any of woman born has yet achieved. For the history of our race, and each individual’s experience, are sewn thick with evidences that a truth is not hard to kill, and that a lie well told is immortal.”
-from “Advice to Youth” a speech to a class of graduating students, that advises lying is skill paramount to success, and one they need to develop fully.
http://grammar.about.com/od/classicessays/a/adviceyouth_2.htm
Odd thought process.
Neo: Your heart tells you Obama should have about 20% support but, I’m betting your head knows this is a 47%-47% base of party support country.
I read a really interesting article (either Jay Cost or Sean Trende) several months ago about Michael Dukakis’ blow out loss. It was a tremendous wipe out but, he actually had the support of about 47% (not the 20% I had imagined). The key fact being he could only get to over 50% in 10 states.
So it wasn’t that he was so unpopular rather he was unpopular enough in a lot of states.
Hopefully, we’ll witness the same thing with Obama.
For those interested in the relevant Althouse quote about Obama’s 2007 speech, here it is:
She hadn’t originally realized the Stafford Act waiver had been passed by Congress several weeks earlier, and that he had voted against it. Then she became aware of it, and wrote the above.
For those interested in the relevant Althouse quote about Obama’s 2007 speech
We’re not interested. Anymore at this point.
althouse has been accusing Conservatives of ugliness while coyly not listenining to the facts. althouse is a peacock, strutting for attention while displaying the morals of a snake. She is untrustworthy.
Ignore her.
Neo, that Ann Althouse posting was on October 11. A poster on her blog had already alerted readers on October 3 that commenter Ken on YOUR BLOG had dug up the relevant facts on Obama’s lies about Nawlins and the Stafford Act. On October 3, page 4 of comments on “I identify myself as the outlier” from the Althouse blog,
Granted, poster Ctmom4 didn’t provide the link to Ken’s comment at Neoneocon. But if Ann Althouse had anything on the ball, she could have dug it up.
After this, I see Ann Althouse as a Blonde Ditz, which is another way of saying that I have lost respect for her.
Gringo: actually that’s my post that person at Althouse is linking to (see this). That post of mine got a fair amount of publicity because it was linked to by Powerline.
Several readers of Althouse’s pointed out that in her own comments section people had tried to tell her some of the salient facts about why Obama’s 2007 Hampton speech was important, referencing his Stafford Act dissembling. She responded that she doesn’t read all the comments on her blog and just hadn’t known.
I understand that with a comments section that regularly goes up to hundreds per post, it would be hard to keep up with it all. However, the fact that Obama lied about the Stafford Act was in most of the very early commentary in the blogosphere, back when the tape first came out; it was fairly common knowledge. The fact that Obama had himself voted against it came out later (I believe I was the first blogger to write about that).
“”Then she insisted that conservatives have some kind of responsibility to protect moderates and liberals – including her – from having “toxic” and “repulsive” feelings in discussions about race. What did she mean by this? I dunno, but I’m done trying to figure it out.””
Just maybe the problem is people like Althouse who for some reason can’t judge right and wrong until they first know the skin color of the persons they’re judging.
Althouse read a Thomas Sowell article that informed her as to what Obama did in that 2007 speech.
From Althouses October 9 posting: “Barack Obama in his old community organizer role,” doing “what community organizers do… rub people’s emotions raw to hype their resentments.”
Althouse comment@ 10/9/12 2:30 PM, responding to comment:
Althouse comment @10/9/12 2:34 PM :
I still find it rather annoying that the material was presented on HER BLOG, and she ignored it. How is there a communications problem with conservatives when Doé±a Althouse- and I added “Doé±a” to indicate her hauter -doesn’t read what conservatives post? She simply assumes RAAACIST. Andate, Doé±a Althouse.
Neo, I stand by my contempt for Doé±a Althouse.
Gringo: well, you know, Althouse is certainly not a conservative. She draws a lot of conservative readers, but she likes to tweak them.
In one sense, Doé±a Althouse is correct: whatever a wingnut will say, a lib will respond with RAACIST. THAT is the communications problem to overcome.
Just a reminder that THIS is what we’re dealing with on the Left and their “policies” about the Middle East.
Joe “Plagiarizin'” Biden, Foreign Policy Genius. A genius, I tell ya! [one who doesn’t know the difference between Arabs and Persians, but whatevs. . . .]
Oh, how I wish Ryan had brought that up tonight. And two other OMG moments that would stick in the audience’s minds, and pin this old guy to the wall like the doodlebug he is.
Neo, I have to disagree with the pass you’ve given to Susan Rice. Rice has done this before. Rice’s response to the Benghazi attacks is entirely consistent with the previous highlight of her foreign policy record: Rice, as the then-director of intervention in the NSC, is largely credited with orchestrating the Clinton admin’s response in 1994 to the Rwanda genocide in which, infamously, US spokesmen labeled the Rwanda genocide with the legal term of art “acts of genocide” rather than ‘genocide’ in blatant contradiction of the world-broadcast facts on the ground. The US thus avoided taking action in Rwanda. If I would blame anyone for the similar obfuscating response to the Benghazi attacks, it would be Rice. She’s done it before and she did it again. The legal term of art “acts of terrorism” was even used.
Is the intelligence agency the same one that told George Bush Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. As I recall this infuriated the liberals and he was blamed for going to war with mis-information. Shouldn’t Obama be held to the same criticism?