""""Attention Obozo: You're Fucked! The Liberal New Yorker Shits All Over Obozo (snicker)

[Johnny Asia]

Attention Obozo: You're Fucked!
The Liberal New Yorker Shits All Over Obozo
Spinning Benghazi
It’s a cliché, of course, but it really is true: in Washington, every
scandal has a crime and a coverup. The ongoing debate about the attack
on the United States facility in Benghazi where four Americans were
killed, and the Obama Administration’s response to it, is no
exception. For a long time, it seemed like the idea of a coverup was
just a Republican obsession. But now there is something to it.

On Friday, ABC News’s Jonathan Karl revealed the details of the
editing process for the C.I.A.’s talking points about the attack,
including the edits themselves and some of the reasons a State
Department spokeswoman gave for requesting those edits. It’s striking
to see the twelve different iterations that the talking points went
through before they were released to Congress and to United Nations
Ambassador Susan Rice, who used them in Sunday show appearances that
became a central focus of Republicans’ criticism of the
Administration’s public response to the attacks. Over the course of
about twenty-four hours, the remarks evolved from something specific
and fairly detailed into a bland, vague mush.

From the very beginning of the editing process, the talking points
contained the erroneous assertion that the attack was “spontaneously
inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved.”
That’s an important fact, because the right has always criticized the
Administration based on the suggestion that the C.I.A. and the State
Department, contrary to what they said, knew that the attack was not
spontaneous and not an outgrowth of a demonstration. But everything
else about the changes that were made is problematic. The initial
draft revealed by Karl mentions “at least five other attacks against
foreign interests in Benghazi” before the one in which four Americans
were killed. That’s not in the final version. Nor is this: “[W]e do
know that Islamic extremists with ties to al-Qa’ida participated in
the attack.” That was replaced by the more tepid “There are
indications that extremists participated in the violent
demonstrations.” (Even if we accept the argument that State wanted to
be sure that extremists were involved, and that they could be linked
to Al Qaeda, before saying so with any level of certainty—which is
reasonable and supported by evidence from Karl’s reporting—that
doesn’t fully explain these changes away.)

Democrats will argue that the editing process wasn’t motivated by a
desire to protect Obama’s record on fighting Al Qaeda in the run-up to
the 2012 election. They have a point; based on what we’ve seen from
Karl’s report, the process that went into creating and then changing
the talking points seems to have been driven in large measure by two
parts of the government—C.I.A. and State—trying to make sure the blame
for the attacks and the failure to protect American personnel in
Benghazi fell on the other guy.

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.”

Remarkably, Carney is sticking with that line even now. In his regular
press briefing on Friday afternoon (a briefing that was delayed
several times, presumably in part so the White House could get its
spin in order, but also so that it could hold a secretive pre-briefing
briefing with select members of the White House press corps), he said:

The only edit made by the White House or the State Department to those
talking points generated by the C.I.A. was a change from referring to
the facility that was attacked in Benghazi from “consulate,” because
it was not a consulate, to “diplomatic post”… it was a matter of non-
substantive factual correction. But there was a process leading up to
that that involved inputs from a lot of agencies, as is always the
case in a situation like this and is always appropriate.
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.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/benghazi-cia-talking-point-edits-white-house.html?mobify=0

+

Pucker your butt for the Apocalypse!

Johnny Asia, Asshole from the Future

http://johnnyasia.com/