You can't watch Fox News for longer than a few minutes (if that long) without hearing their overheated reporting on Benghazi - a thinly-veiled partisan attempt to turn a tragedy at our American consulate in Libya into a national security Watergate, despite pleas from the likes of Condoleezza Rice. Well, surprise! Surprise! It turns out Fox's version of events, that the administration did nothing to help its ambassador and three other Americans as they came under siege is, in the words of Chrysler executive Ralph Gilles responding to Donald Trump's allegation that Jeep production is being shipped to China, "full of shit."
Think Progress waded through a series of news reports today and noted:
The Los Angeles Times’ version of the CIA’s role focuses the most heavily on pushing back on Fox’s spin:
“At every level in the chain of command, from the senior officers in Libya to the most senior officials in Washington, everyone was fully engaged in trying to provide whatever help they could,” a senior intelligence official said in a statement. “There were no orders to anybody to stand down in providing support.”
Furthermore, reporting by Fox's Jennifer Griffin that the Obama administration had denied requests for assistance is specifically contradicted. For example, the New York Times reports that according to a "senior military official,"
(T)he military diverted a Predator drone from a reconnaissance mission in Darnah, 90 miles away, in time to oversee the mission’s evacuation. The two commandos, based at the embassy in Tripoli, joined the reinforcements. And a military transport plane flew the wounded Americans and Mr. Stevens’s body out of Libya.
Think Progress also notes that there's new information that the CIA, President Obama and Secretary of Defense Panetta did order U.S. forces into the region, but the CIA was the first to respond to the attack, arriving on the scene in under half an hour.
Anyone want to bet "Chief White House Correspondent" Ed Henry is in a furious huddle with Karl Rove figuring out how to spin their witch hunt into some realm of plausibility?
Were you to step back and listen more carefully, you’d probably realise that almost everything that is said on Fox is presented in the most postive or negative light according to a clear agenda, namely praise one side and slam the other.
-If it’s something good (e.g. the improving jobs situation), the current administration is NOT responsible or it’s clearly NOT happening.
-If it’s something bad (like failure to remedy the effects of a massive storm within a week’s time) the current administration is most emphatically responsible. During the previous administration, their position (I call it bias) was exactly the opposite, namely anything the administration did was good and people saying differently were tagged as unpatriotic … automatically.
What Fox presents as “analysis” or “debate” is NEVER other than a series of sound-bites and crosstalk that furthers their agenda which depends on who’s in office (not what that person does).
It wouldn’t surprise me a bit to discover that some if not all those cables they’re presenting as evidence of wrong-doing for Benghazi are forgeries. Right now, I don’t know but I’m 100% sure that we won’t hear anything about that on Fox. I’ve never heard them admit, for example, that the documents allegedly revealing the production of yellow-cake (uranium) in Niger were forgeries. The previous administration sent someone to Niger to confirm that story and he came back saying it was a lot of bull. Shortly thereafter, his wife – who was a CIA covert operative – was outed along with her network of informants throughout the Middle East. Was that his reward? If it was a lot of people died. In any case, I’ve heard nobody on Fox refer to that disgraceful affair.
On Benghazi, I’ll wait for the investigation finding and subsequent comments by specialists (including Condolezza Rice, General Hayden and General Keane: all people ignored by Fox because they did not stay on script) before deciding one way or the other. I will most certainly will NOT take Fox’s word for anything because I’ve never seen them “just ask questions”. Never.
Yet apologists will still quote them until the end of time.
Anyhow, the foxy faithful would know absolutely nothing about the very existence of an article presenting a detailed timeline provided by an (unfortunatly) unnamed CIA officer. So much for “we report, you decide”.
I remain a bit bothered by the fact that the CIA officer who spoke to the NYT did so without allowing his name to be used. However, the timeline he provided has the advantage of being coherent from start to finish (no gaps and the sequencing makes sense). I am comforted by the feeling that my faith" (yes: “faith”) that any American spooks or military – if they were indeed on the ground or nearby – would not have been able to sit and look on. I also remain convinced that Ambassador Stevens and his staff were competent and recognised by the WH as being the people with the best intelligence on what was happening. Had Stevens and his staff felt that Benghazi was dangerous, they would not have gone there with such meagre security. The Ambassador could have taken the full contingent of marines based at Tripoli had he wanted to do so.
There’s still a lot more to be known about this situation before anybody can claim that the full truth and nothing but the truth is out. The sensationalism on Fox is dispicable as well as treasonous (IMO).
I await the findings of the investigation to be released and will be sifting through the comments by reputable specialists. Anybody whom I’ve seen on Fox will probably not fall in the latter category. Rivera is on notice because growing a pair once in a while is about as worthless as never having had any (and he’s no way as cute or as amenable as Shep).
Remember Douglas Ashe, Joshua Hatheway, Lawrence Jenkins, Tina Newby, Evan White, “Timm Tebow”, etc.?
(You’re forgiven if confused by the names — since they were most likely the same person.)
The above “persons” posted nearly nonstop on every NH thread that contained the word “Benghazi” for three or four days . . . their posts were as frenzied as they were numerous.
They were ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that President Obama was to blame for not supporting the embassy during the attack (even though that wasn’t true), refusing to call the attack a terrorist attack (even though he did), insisted there was a cover-up between the Administration, the CIA, and the State Department (even though there wasn’t), and — loudly insisted that “we” [Newshounds] were “in the tank for Obama.”
In doing this, they angrily used every Fox-approved adjective to describe the President — “lazy,” “incompetent,” “disengaged,” “a Muslim apologist,” and were just ITCHING for an “investigation” that would result in the President’s impeachment.
But now that the real facts are coming out, they’re strangely silent . . . I imagine they’re feverishly awaiting Fox/Rush Limpballs-approved talking point responses to entertain us with . . .
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So predictable.
That can’t be.
In order for Fox’s credibility to be damaged, they’d have to have some to begin with . . .
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