The Benghazi story has turned a new corner and it is devastating for both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Up until now, the main stream media refused to acknowledge the lack of integrity from this administration. I think deep down they knew this, but they couldn’t bring themselves to believe it. They were able to convince themselves that this was all just partisan politics.
This reminds me of when Bill Clinton bombed Iraq, during his impeachment trial. Ted Koppel was on ABC News and he commented on the political convenience of the attack, but he said he would not consider the possibility of that because it would be “unthinkable.”
The main stream media remains liberal and it remains anti-Republican. That is not going to change. But they have now been confronted with irrefutable evidence that this administration deliberately lied to them. No matter how one spins this, this administration conspired to deceive and they did it for purely political purposes. It is a breach of trust that has sent shock waves through the main stream media.
Many people think that the print media is dead and buried, but that is not true. Ultimately, with regard to a story of this magnitude, the print media still matters. That is because television is severely limited by time and everyone knows that a creative editor can really distort things. A well written news story is much harder to ignore. We are starting to see major newspapers who are fully engaged. Following are just some examples from today. First, the New Yorker:
But the mere existence of the edits—whatever the motivation for them—seriously undermines the White House’s credibility on this issue. This past November (after Election Day), White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”
The media is shocked that the White House is still trying to defend this:
This is an incredible thing for Carney to be saying. He’s playing semantic games, telling a roomful of journalists that the definition of editing we’ve all been using is wrong, that the only thing that matters is who’s actually working the keyboard. It’s not quite re-defining the word “is,” or the phrase “sexual relations,” but it’s not all that far off, either.
Maureen Dowd has written a column in the New York Times that is beyond devastating:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/opinion/sunday/dowd-when-myths-collide-in-the-capital.html?_r=0
The following paragraph is particularly stunning in that she uses the term “Clinton Rules.” Note that the New Yorker also made reference to Bill Clinton’s definition of the word “is.”
Clinton Rules, defined by a presidential aide on the hit ABC show “Scandal” as damage control that goes like this: “It’s not true, it’s not true, it’s not true, it’s old news.”
She even admits that some of the worst detractors on Fox News have a point:
The conservatives appearing on Benghazi-obsessed Fox News are a damage patrol with an approach that goes like this: “Lies, paranoia, subpoena, impeach, Watergate, Iran-contra.”
(Though now that the I.R.S. has confessed to targeting Tea Party groups, maybe some of the paranoia is justified.)
a simple truth: The administration’s behavior before and during the attack in Benghazi, in which four Americans died, was unworthy of the greatest power on earth.
She is forced to acknowledge that the State Department sent people into harm’s way without coming close to providing adequate security:
Yet in this hottest of hot spots, the State Department’s minimum security requirements were not met, requests for more security were rejected, and contingency plans were not drawn up, despite the portentous date of 9/11 and cascading warnings from the C.I.A., which had more personnel in Benghazi than State did and vetted the feckless Libyan Praetorian Guard. When the Pentagon called an elite Special Forces team three hours into the attack, it was training in Croatia — decidedly not a hot spot.
She then shreds the administration’s claim that no military assistance was available:
The defense secretary at the time, Leon Panetta, insisted, “We quickly responded.” But they responded that they would not respond.
But perhaps most shocking is the following comment regarding Hillary Clinton. The main stream media has been pretending that Hillary Clinton was an outstanding Secretary of State and they were engaged in a full scale puff Hillary campaign. The liberal left had moved on from Obama and was now focused on replacing him with Hillary in 2016. Maureen Dowd punctured that entire balloon with the following sentence:
Looking ahead to 2016, Hillaryland needed to shore up the mythology that Clinton was a stellar secretary of state.
In other words, the reason they lied is that the truth would destroy the myth that Hillary Clinton was a good Secretary of State.
I do not know the final outcome of Benghazi. It will definitely be bad for the President and it will be devastating for Hillary, but so far I don’t see evidence of an impeachable offense. However, the main stream media has been forced to recognize that the Obama administration looked them straight in the eye, and lied. That really matters.
It won’t stop at Benghazi. They are now going to challenge every statement made by this administration on every subject.
The first impact will be with regard to Fast & Furious. The media is going to take a second look at that story and it will be very skeptical of the story told by the administration. This may also affect the next judge who is wondering whether all those supoena’s are necessary. The administration had given the courts probably cause to investigate everything.
I haven’t even commented on the new story about the IRS targeting the Tea Party. That has already generated bi-partisan outrage.
Ronald Reagan once said that when dealing with Russia, we should “trust, but verify.” With the Obama administration we are now at a point where we definitely cannot trust and verification is a first priority. Obama has been exposed as nothing more than a Pompous Prevaricator. The bully pulpit is more appropriately named the “BS” pulpit. He still lectures people, only now everyone knows he’s lying through his teeth. A lot of us already knew that. Now the main stream media knows it too.
TDM