Another Misrepresentation: There's Actually No Evidence At All Suggesting That Gitmo Detainee Released By Bush in 2007 Had Anything To Do With Benghazi Attack

When I first heard this, I thought bullshit. And the reason was simple: The Obama Administration was lying left and right to cover up the fact that they had dropped the ball in Benghazi and this had resulted in the murders of four men.

Given the furious spinning, I found it very suspicious that yet another avenue of spin suddenly emerged -- Blame Bush.

Turns out, it was bullshit. From start to finish. But they got that meme out there, didn't they?

Don't expect the retraction to be reported.

At Foreign Policy’s The Cable, Josh Rogin provides an update on reports connecting a former Guantanamo detainee named Sufyan Ben Qumu to the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Rep. Adam Smith, the Democrats’ ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee, said today that there is “no evidence” that Qumu was “directly involved.” After a classified briefing on September 21, Smith labeled Qumu a “person of interest” in the consulate attack.

“All I meant was that the person I mentioned has known al Qaeda affiliations and was in Libya. And really, that's it,” Smith said during a conference call with the “left-leaning National Security Network,” according to Rogin. “Whether or not he was directly involved with the people engaged in the attack, there's no evidence of that.”

It's still possible that Qumu was somehow involved in the attack -- he is in Libya, he is a bad actor, and he does lead one of the several groups called "Ansar al Sharia," one of which might be responsible for the attack.

Nevertheless: Without any evidence except for a Democratic Representative telling a left-leaning group on a conference call that This Guy Lives In Libya, we got several days' worth of "Blame Bush" from the press.

Blame the video, blame Bush. Anything it takes to provide a Narrative different from the obvious one, to wit: Why did a consulate in an Al Qaeda town have absolutely no security whatsoever?

posted by Ace at 01:55 PM

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