Even David Gregory Isn't Buying Jay Carney's Preposterous Lies

Even David Gregory understands the emails scotch the White House lies, and he's no Rhodes Scholar.

Speaking of Rhodes Scholars, Sharyl Atkkisson, before she was forced out of CBS, thought it would be a good idea to disclose that CBS News President David Rhodes is the brother of Obama Equities Balancer Ben Rhodes. Her superiors told her not to make this very basic routine bit of journalistic hygiene, because it wasn't "relevant."

Note that David Rhodes was not the source of this decision; it was some unnamed manager.

[I]n a couple of stories when Ben Rhodes’ name appeared or began to surface a long time ago, I argued that we needed to disclose the relationship because that’s what we should to do. Not because there’s any guilt or guilt by association or that we had done anything wrong, but disclosure is your friend. It protects you. And as journalists, if we disclose that off the top of a story then people won’t look back later and say that we hid it. So I did argue the case and was told by a manager it was not necessary because it wasn’t relevant. Which I disagreed with. In another case I wrote a story on the web and I did make the disclosure and Rhodes had no problem with it as far as I know, I didn’t hear from him.

Retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Lovell, who served as (and this is a mouthful) "Deputy Director for Intelligence and Knowledge Development Directorate for AFRICOM" at the time of the Benghazi attack, testified that the government knew almost immediately that there were no "spontaneously evolving protest/highly coordinated attacks," just hours after the attack.

W]hat we did know quite early on was that this was a hostile action,” he said in his prepared remarks. “This was no demonstration gone terribly awry.”

He was pressed on this point by Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who asked how quickly it became clear that Al Qaeda was involved.

“Very, very soon,” Lovell said. “When we were still in the very early, early hours of this activity.”

“Was it a video?” Chaffetz asked?

“No sir.”

Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) also asked Lovell when he heard of the notion that the attack was a response to a video. Lovell said he heard it only briefly, but not as a serious theory.

When Issa asked if he had heard of this idea before 3:15 a.m. on September 12, 2012, Lovell said it was well before that time, and that the theory was quickly debunked.

“I would have to say [we] probably dismissed that notion by then, by working with other sources,” Lovell said.

“As the highest ranking person working that moment, you dismissed the idea that this attack was in fact a demonstration that had went awry and it was based on a YouTube video out of Los Angeles,” Issa then stated.

“Yessir, short answer,” Lovell responded.

While the responsible intelligence and military officials (some of them on-the-ground in Benghazi) all said this was a coordinated military attack likely conducted by an Al Qaeda affiliate, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and their various partisan Advertising Executives 2500 miles away in Washington, DC, settled on the more politically convenient "YouTube Video Theory of the Crime," and overruled the people who actually knew what the hell they were talking about.

And then, for eighteen months, they lied about this, and claimed the YouTube Video Theory of the Crime actually came from intelligence and military analysts, rather than their own MiniTruth chop-shop.

Lowell also says the United States should have ordered an action to save the lives of the the Benghazi operatives, rather than spending so much time saving the political futures of Obama and Hillary.

(My words, not his.)

posted by Ace at 04:53 PM

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