-By Warner Todd Huston
In the days following the attacks on our embassy in Benghazi, Libya last year the Obama administration insisted the whole thing was a result of Muslim ire at an anti-Islam film posted to Youtube. Today, after Hillary testified in front of the Senate over her role in the debacle, White House spokesman Jay Carney is blasting Republicans for their “obsession” about the film.
During her testimony, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continued to blame the Benghazi attack on “militants” and got agitated over a question from Republican Senator Ron Johnson (WI) who asked about why the administration illegitimately focused on the video for so long.
As Sen. Johnson tried to pin Clinton down on the issue, the Secretary raised her voice saying, “The fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest? Or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?”
White House spokesman Jay Carney also got into the business of scoffing at any question over the video. When asked early on Wednesday afternoon about Clinton’s testimony, the White House spokesman was dismissive.
The Republican’s question about the video, Carney said, was “an obvious political obsession over a series of talking points that again bears no relevance on the central issues.”
No relevance?
In fact, Hillary Clinton herself appeared in a video–as did the President–apologizing to the Muslim world over the video and making sure that Muslims knew that the U.S. denounced it. The only reason this ad was created was because Obama et al maintained that the video was a main imputes for the violence during that period. The video ad ran in Pakistan in the days after the attacks in Benghazi.
So, it was the Obama administration that “obsessed” over this anti-Islam video. Republicans just want to know why the Obama administration purposefully lied about the attacks on Benghazi for so long.
That seems pretty relevant.
It all brings to mind Bill Clinton’s claim that it “depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is” when we have an administration basing a week of responses to Benghazi predicated on the claim that it was all over a Youtube video but then blasting Republicans for pointing out that the administration had said this.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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