With the release of the riveting new film, “13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi” – go see it! – a fresh wave of mendacity has swept over progressive America.
Film critics, White House officials and the Hillary Clinton campaign have begun spinning their concoctions anew, as though there were no such thing as eyewitnesses, the Internet and especially family members of the dead.
The most palpable of all the lies told was the Hydra-headed one of who knew what when. “We revealed to the American people exactly what we understood at the time,” President Barack Obama told Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly on Super Bowl Sunday 2014.
Here, Obama was lying on multiple levels. The “we,” which includes Hillary Clinton most notably, not only lied about what they understood at the time, but they have also lied about what they revealed at the time.
The give-away is Obama’s overlooked first interview about the Benghazi attack, which took place, inappropriately enough, on a late night comedy show a full week after the attack.
There had been much dissembling, of course, in the run-up to Obama’s encounter with David Letterman. Hillary Clinton had launched the White House’s sneak attack on the truth while the CIA annex in Benghazi was still under siege.
“Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet,” said Clinton in a press release posted shortly after 10 p.m. Washington time on the night of Sept. 11, 2012.
“The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.”
Yes, murdering innocent Americans is bad, but then again so are blasphemous art forms – except maybe “The Book of Mormon” on Broadway, which Clinton saw and rewarded with a standing ovation.
The next morning in Washington, even before the families of the dead had been notified, President Obama, packed and ready to leave for a Las Vegas fundraiser, addressed the nation from the Rose Garden.
“Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths,” said Obama, echoing Clinton’s assigned motive for the attack.
“We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But there is absolutely no justification to this type of senseless violence. None. The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts.”
On Sunday, Sept. 16, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice appeared on five political talk shows and served America extra helpings of the lie it had already grown used to hearing.
On “Meet the Press,” for instance, Rice told host David Gregory that what happened initially in Benghazi was “a response to a hateful and offensive video that was widely disseminated throughout the Arab and Muslim world.” She made the same claim on the other four shows.
Curiously, less attention was paid to what Barack Obama was saying. That was due in no small part to the fact that he was spinning his nonsense on Obama-friendly redoubts like the David Letterman show.
We know now, of course, that Clinton and Obama fully understood the nature of the attack on the night of the attack. Clinton even shared the truth with daughter Chelsea.
On Sept. 16 Libya President Mohamed Magariaf publicly insisted the attack was planned. Said Magariaf, the idea that the attack was a “spontaneous protest that just spun out of control is completely unfounded and preposterous.”
Two days later, Letterman remained in the dark. “Now, I don’t understand, um, the ambassador to Libya killed in an attack on the consulate in Benghazi,” he asked Obama. “Is this an act of war? Are we at war now? What happens here?”
“Here’s what happened,” Obama answered. “You had a video that was released by somebody who lives here, sort of a shadowy character who made an extremely offensive video directed at … at Muhammad and Islam.”
Letterman’s shocked response deserves its own plaque on the crowded walls of the left’s Hall of Blame: “Making fun of the Prophet Muhammad!”
This is the same David Letterman who a year later would say of Pope Francis, “And I’m telling you if there’s anything the kids can’t get enough of, it’s a 76-year-old virgin. Come on! World Youth Day. Or as the Vatican calls it, salute to altar boys.”
“Making fun of the Prophet Muhammad,” affirmed a wounded Obama. “And so, this caused great offense in much of the Muslim world.”
If the media have been willing to forget – and by forgetting they don’t have to forgive – the family members of the dead have been less obliging.
As the late Sean Smith’s mother told Megyn Kelly recently. “I know what [Clinton] said and not only did she say it, but Obama said the same thing to me. And Panetta. And Biden. And Susan Rice. I went up to all of them, begging them to tell me what happened. And they all said that it was the video.”
Added Smith emphatically, “Every one of them.”
Media wishing to interview Jack Cashill, please contact [email protected].
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