The Benghazi Scandal In One Email | Power Line

The Benghazi Scandal In One Email | Power Line

One aspect of the scandal, anyway. The administration has released a series of emails in response to FOIA requests by Judicial Watch. You can read them here.....From the earliest hours after the attack, this is how the Obama administration saw Benghazi. The overriding imperative was to deflect attention from the “broader failure of policy” that led to the disaster.....The other striking fact about the emails is the complete absence of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Maybe someone was keeping them informed, but they are never mentioned in the emails (except when someone prepares a statement to be issued under their names). During the crucial hours, they are never referred to. There is no suggestion that they are playing a part; that they are in the loop; that they are making decisions; or that they are, in any way, important players. Maybe there are more emails, not yet disclosed, that would reflect their roles. Or maybe they really were ciphers–seat warmers with no concerns beyond the political, not expected to do anything in an hour of crisis.
UPDATE: And now Jay Carney is lying about the Rhodes email–of which, by the way, he was one of the recipients!

Fools and knaves: New York Times edition | Power Line

Link: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/12/fools-and-knaves-new-york-times-edition.php

In short, the Times story does not pass the smell test. I continue to be amazed by the MSM taking the Times seriously and parroting its reports as if they are gospel.

The New York Times’ revisionist account of Benghazi | Power Line

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/12/the-new-york-times-revisionist-account-of-benghazi.php

The Times bases its claim that neither al Qaeda nor any other international terrorist group had a role in the attack on its view that Ansar al-Shariah is a "purely local extremist organization." But Peter King, a member and former chairman of the House's Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, points out that Ansar al-Shariah is widely believed to be an affiliate terror group of Al Qaeda. King accuses the Times of engaging in mere semantics, and he is probably right.

The Times' claim that the Benghazi attack "was fueled in large part by anger" at the video about Islam also seems unpersuasive. Greg Hicks, the deputy to Ambassador Christopher Stevens who was killed in the attack testified to Congress that the video was "a non-event in Libya." Moreover, an independent review of more than 4,000 social media postings from Benghazi found no reference to the video until the day after the attack.
The New York Times seems to have uncovered social media references to the video that precede the Sept. 11 attack. Even so, the relative absence of such references undermines its claim that the video played a significant role in the attack.
I don't mean to deny that some of those who attacked the U.S. compound were influenced by the video. But the Times' own reporting shows that a "grave" threat to American interests in Benghazi predates the controversy over the video. The failure of the Obama administration, and especially Hillary Clinton, to prepare to meet that threat remains indisputable.
The Times stops short of claiming that the Sept. 11 attack in Benghazi was "spontaneous." It says, instead, that the attack was not "meticulously planned."
That may or may not be true. But the quality of the planning — good enough, as it turned out — seems irrelevant. Again, what matters is that the State Department should have been prepared for the attack and taken action accordingly. This the New York Times does not dispute.