In case you missed it, liberal pundit Eleanor Clift, a former Fox News contributor, is in hot water with conservatives for saying that Ambassador Christopher Stevens was not murdered in Benghazi. Last night, The O’Reilly Factor discussed this latest excuse to attack a liberal outrage with the kind of compassion Karl Rove could have scripted for him: by saying, “This isn’t personal… She’s elderly, alright? I don’t know if she has a full grasp any more of what she’s actually saying.”
You have to wonder if O’Reilly had a touch of Rove envy. After all, this remark came on the heels of Rove’s successfully devious medical speculation about Hillary Clinton’s health earlier in the week.
Or maybe O’Reilly got his “medical training” from Fox News psychiatrist Keith Ablow. Ablow doesn’t need an examination to come up with diagnoses of public figures. Why should O’Reilly need a degree?
For the record, what Clift meant was that Stevens died of smoke inhalation while he was holed up in the “safe room” of the CIA compound. She wanted to distinguish what she called, “an opportunistic terrorist attack that grew out of that video” from an act of murder.
After the right erupted, Clift elaborated in a Daily Beast column:
My information came from a former ambassador who lamented that complex and chaotic events in Benghazi are being way oversimplified. He pointed out that Ambassador Chris Stevens died of smoke inhalation in the safe room of a CIA outpost, that he wasn’t murdered in the sense that word is normally used. I thought this was an appropriate observation and still do, despite the hysteria my saying so has ignited on the right.
There is shared blame for the fact that Stevens wasn’t properly guarded and defended, but the chaos of that night and the days following stemmed from herculean efforts to keep the CIA’s involvement secret. Stevens was a very brave and assertive ambassador. He knew the language and the people, and he took risks he shouldn’t have. The former ambassador whose views I relied on believes that Stevens was in Benghazi to confront the CIA about prisoners they were holding and interrogating at the outpost. He speculates the attack on the facility was to free the prisoners.
Now, one can argue with Clift’s opinion but the “No Spin Zone” was pretty much all spin. O’Reilly played a brief clip of Clift – offered none of her later explanation - and started the attack, along with his two conservative guests. He said his guests were there to “disparage that incredibly boneheaded statement.” Guest Bernard McGuirk called it “very offensive.” He went on to "joke" that the last he heard of Clift was back during the Monica Lewinsky, when she (Clift) "applied to be a White House intern."
For “balance,” O’Reilly said that, “number one,” one of his producers said Clift “is one of the nicest people he’s ever dealt with… so this isn’t personal.” Well, nothing personal except for suggesting she’s suffering from dementia. Because O’Reilly’s “number two” came immediately therafter: “She’s elderly, alright? And I don’t know if she has a full grasp any more of what she’s actually saying. …Everyone knows that (Stevens was murdered) except for Eleanor Clift.”
And except for a former ambassador. But what would he know compared to Armchair General O’Reilly?
By the way, Clift is a former paid contributor to Fox News. Nice to know this is how they treat one of their former colleagues.
Also, remember how just one night before, Fox host Shannon Bream suggested she thinks that, “We’re getting to a place where, if your opinion does not agree with other people, you can’t share it?” Bream was talking about her conservative guest not being able to share her disgust at Michael Sam’s televised gay kiss. But I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict that we won’t hear Bream expressing the same concern for Clift’s comments about Benghazi.
I’m sure the families of those four dead Americans feel better somehow to know that their loved ones weren’t murdered in a terrorist attack. They were ‘just’ KILLED.
And that distinction makes their deaths less grievous and the attack less offensive.
Good to know.
You people are very strange.
See, troll, in a LEGAL situation, the prosecution and police must PROVE INTENT TO KILL. People die from being hit by cars all the time but, WITHOUT PROOF OF INTENT TO KILL, they’re not charged with murder.
In fact, by YOUR OWN DEFINITION, that means that Bush and Cheney should be held accountable on THOUSANDS of counts of MURDER because they UNLAWFULLY killed thousands of innocent Iraqis during the invasion. And don’t give me this “well that was war”; “war”—again, in YOUR words, “would certainly qualify as AFORETHOUGHT.”
ALL we can know FOR CERTAIN is that the terrorist(s) PLANNED to attack the EMBASSY COMPOUND. Plenty of embassies were attacked when Dubya was in charge (both with and without casualties) but I don’t recall any Congressional hearings charging Dubya and crew with any negligence, nor did I hear anyone on the right calling any of the casualties “murder victims.”
Malice can be expressed (intent to kill) or IMPLIED. Implied malice is proven by acts that involve reckless indifference to human life or in a death that occurs during the commission of certain felonies.
A terrorist attack is mighty felonious.
This woman would be better aptly named Eleanor Daft.
Anyone anywhere who questions the meme is immediately branded by Bildo and Fux Noise as a senile, liberal loon pinhead or other equally attractive moniker.
