The kidnapping of about 300 hundred Nigerian schoolgirls by a Nigerian extremist group called Boko Haram is now officially about Benghazi on The O’Reilly Factor. Oh, and it’s also Hillary Clinton’s fault. Or close enough to say so, as far as Fox is concerned.
Yesterday, I wrote about O’Reilly Factor host Laura Ingraham gratuitously dragging Benghazi into the story about the Nigerian schoolgirls. Tonight, Ingraham more explicitly blamed Clinton and more explicitly made the story about Benghazi. Even though it really should be about neither.
As Media Matters noted earlier, right-wing groups have rushed to tie Clinton to the abductions because the State Department did not designate the Boko Haram a foreign terrorist organization. Sure enough, Ingraham said:
Terror experts are now saying that that decision may have hurt our ability to confront this vicious Muslim terror outfit which has been brutalizing Christians and others for years.
To Ingraham “may have” is as good as “did.” Had she bothered to do any investigation, she would have found out that, as Reuters reported, a) in June 2012, while Hillary Clinton was still Secretary of State, the “kingpins” of Boko Haram were listed as “foreign terrorists” and b) “U.S. officials say the decision to list individual Boko Haram members, rather than apply the more sweeping ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization’ label to the group as a whole as some U.S. lawmakers have demanded, reflected a desire not to elevate the group’s profile.”
But why ruin a cheap political point with information and facts?
Instead, Ingraham moved on to her next cheap political stunt: using African American Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee’s call for the use of “all resources to bring the terrorist thugs to justice” to suggest that she cares more about Africans than Americans.
Ingraham played a clip of Jackson Lee, then sneered:
Strong words, indeed but where was that powerful drumbeat for justice against those who slaughtered American citizens in Benghazi? Have they ever demanded that we ‘use all resources’ to get to the bottom of what happened that night? We don’t even have one person in custody for those murders. And let’s not forget, the FBI didn’t even arrive at the Benghazi compound for three and a half weeks after the attack.
Justice should be brought to Boko Haram. But we as a nation should be just as outraged, just as united regardless of political party in our demand for answers, accountability and justice for the American victims in Benghazi.
Only on Fox News would a host have the nerve to use an international tragedy to smear a Congresswoman, question her patriotism, blame a Secretary of State for a situation she had no involvement in, draw a baseless comparison to a Republican attack point – and then wrap it all up by suggesting the Congresswoman was being divisive.
It takes a special kind of person to go so low. But clearly Ingraham’s down for the job. Watch Ingraham exploit tragedy to hate monger, as she wears a large Christian cross, in the video below.
And you may be right in that they really are deliberately uninformed themselves. If that’s the case, it’s pitiful – here we are just regular folks and we are aware that the leaders of Boko Haram were put on the terrorist list in June 2012 — but the FOXies and The Blaze’s National Security Editor don’t know? LOL!
Side note: In case the readers here haven’t heard, Larry Wilmore (the Senior Black Correspondent on “The Daily Show”) is going to be taking over Colbert’s time slot when he leaves to replace Letterman. His new show is going to be called “The Minority Report” (I can just imagine the fits that show title will cause over at FOX “news”) and it will be produced by Jon Stewart. Wilmore is hysterical on TDS so it should be good.
It’s actually not clear that the hosts are deliberately withholding the info. My sense is they do almost no reading on their own, only the summaries and links their producers give them. That allows their “outrage” to seem more genuine in cases like Boko Haram and the terrorist list.
And btw, the president of Nigeria strenuously pushed not to put the group on the list when he came to visit with Obama a few years ago.
But with regards to Reuters report that states that the leaders of Boko Haram were indeed placed on the terrorist list in June 2014, I have yet to hear FOX “news” report it. Anyone else hear them point this fact out? In fact, in this F&F segment that I saw today, Kooiman, Tucker and their guest – Buck Sexton from Glenn Bek’s “The Blaze” – had the perfect opportunity to tell their viewers these facts but it wasn’t mentioned by anyone. Sexton noted that being put on this terrorists list “does come with some very specific tools that are attached to that. You can do things when someone or in a group and the individuals in it are designated that you can’t do otherwise and she decided not to do it.”
But, Buck, “someone” and “individuals in it” (3 leaders of Boko Haram!) WERE put on the list in June 2012. Why didn’t you at least tell the viewers that? You could even take the opportunity to call it insufficient but you didn’t – instead you said nothing about it opting instead to try and make Hillary look soft on terror. Someone from Bek’s “Blaze” and the FOXies keeping facts from the folks? Yeah, I know, no surprise there. Why tell the folks all the facts when a poorly informed audience is so much easier to manipulate?
Btw, in this segment about Boko Haram, er, Hillary, F&F gratuitously slipped in a video clip of Hillary’s Benghazi testimony which included an introduction by the right-wing tool, Anna Kooiman, in which she quipped, “and we can’t forget the time she downplayed Benghazi.” Geez.
Excerpts (from the above Reuters link) that pertain to the 3 leaders being placed on the list – you know, some facts that the FOX “news” viewers should know as a part of FOX’s supposed “fair & balanced” coverage…
“The United States on Thursday named three alleged leaders of the Nigerian militant group Boko Haram as “foreign terrorists,” the first time it has blacklisted members of the Islamist group blamed for attacks across Africa’s most populous nation."
“These designations demonstrate the United States’ resolve in diminishing the capacity of Boko Haram to execute violent attacks,” it said, saying that Boko Haram or associated militants were responsible for more than 1,000 deaths in the past 18 months."
“The action by the State and Treasury Departments, first reported by Reuters on Wednesday, followed growing pressure on the Obama administration to take stronger action against Boko Haram, which has stepped up attacks on Christian places of worship this year in its drive to establish an Islamic caliphate in northern Nigeria.”
But that’s really the essence of Fox’s ugly campaign. It can be Boko Haram or urban street thugs or the head of the NAACP or the attorney general of the United States, never mind the POTUS.
Boko Haram is a perfect villain for Fox. They’re both radical Islamists (well,sorta, actually, they’re mostly just very violent gangsters) and black. What could possibly be more wonderful for the Fox agenda!!
So true. But if only they came from Benghazi! Maybe Fox reporters are digging around for a connection now!
One detail, though— they can’t arrest him because Libya has denied the U.S. permission to arrest anybody there. They’d have to do an incredibly dangerous covert “snatch and grab,” which would look just great to the domestic audience here, but not accomplish much and enrage the LIbyans.
FOX “news” talking heads have often commented that there’s one particular guy that everyone suspects is at least partially responsible and they go into apoplectic fits that this guy has not yet been arrested. Pundits such as Ingraham, BOR, the F&F stooges, Hannity, etc. are not in a position to REALLY know what is going on with regards to the investigation. As per 2 of my friends/former neighbors (retired CIA and NSA), it is highly likely that we have undercover agents, double agents and local assets in country that are surveilling this guy, other suspects and the people they come into contact with. They strongly believe that the guy that the FOXies are so pissed off about (because he has not been arrested) has persons keeping tabs on him. My friends insist that it’s a smarter move to surveil this guy, get contact names/evidence to build a case and to see how wide a circle of terrorists they can discover through this guy and his contacts than it is to arrest him now. They insist that patience, persistence and smart moves by our assets are key to bringing the perpetrators of Benghazi to justice.
Of course, none of this is top secret info and makes some sense from an investigative standpoint. But it’s as if none of these surveillance scenarios/tactics have even occurred to the FOXies. If they have, they don’t seem to have an interest in discussing them in front of the folks (as that might damage the right-wing spin against Obama). Nah, instead we see FOXies who are impatient and want someone arrested (killed?) now – and, if that doesn’t happen, they are going to beat Obama over the head with it. Funny how they didn’t seem to have this same demanding sense of impatience when it came to Bush getting Bin Laden but now, with Obama and Benghazi, it’s 24/7 politically-driven outrage.
Plus…once you throw in the CIA op that was being run out of Benghazi (and the suspicions that Amb. Stevens was helping facilitate the op), it does complicate matters. The link is to some interesting Benghazi info that doesn’t get the deserved (any?) attention on FOX “news” as the FOXies are far more interested in going after Hillary and Obama…
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-secret-cia-mission-in-benghazi-2013-8
It must be so nice for FoxNoise and its bobbleheads to have such short-term memories.
Boko Haram is a perfect villain for Fox. They’re both radical Islamists (well,sorta, actually, they’re mostly just very violent gangsters) and black. What could possibly be more wonderful for the Fox agenda!!
Send Ms. Laura to Benghazi. We won’t miss her.