OPINION:
“The big lie” has been a staple of governments since a cartel of cave men organized the official denial that the bigger cavemen were taking the choicest cuts of the wild razorbacks for themselves. The elites of the cave establishment had rules for themselves and different rules for everybody else.
Making an excuse for the blunders of the men in the ruling cave was the first order of survival in the caveman government, and that first rule survives today, operating on steroids.
Government emails of transcripts of interviews with officials familiar with the Obama administration response to the attack on the U.S. legation in Benghazi, in which four Americans, including the American ambassador, died painful deaths, reveals what the administration actually thought about its big lie that an obscure video critical of the Prophet Muhammad set off the attack on the legation.
The account is in the batch of emails released Monday by Democrats on the House Select Committee on Benghazi. The interviews with a variety of government security officials were conducted after Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, was dispatched by the White House to spread the Obama tall tale on five Sunday-morning network talk shows.
Miss Rice, who is now the national security adviser to President Obama, told interviewers on that Sunday morning that the video mocking their prophet so enraged Muslims in the streets of the Middle East that some of them in Libya stormed the American legation in Benghazi to take revenge. Mr. Obama clearly hoped that his tall tale, fanciful as it was, would divert attention from the work of the radical Islamic mobs. The interviews of selected government officials, conducted by the government’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, showed exactly how Mr. Obama’s false picture was regarded by some of his most important appointees.
A senior officer on the State Department’s Libyan desk scoffed at the White House talking points. “I really hope [the list of talking points] was revised,” he said. “I don’t think we should go on record on this.” Another official warned that Susan Rice had gone “off the reservation.” Another official said bluntly: “The horse has left the barn on this, don’t you think? [Miss] Rice was on FIVE Sunday morning talk shows saying this. Tough to walk back.” Said still another: “Luckily, there’s enough in her language to fudge exactly what she said/meant.” The senior adviser for strategic communications faulted the White House for the false talking points: “[White House] is very worried about the politics. This was all their doing.”
Indeed it was, during the hours when Hillary Clinton told her daughter Chelsea not to worry about what she was reading and hearing, because the story was false and only intended for the unsuspecting public.
Those were innocent times, when many Americans believed what they were told by the government and by the man at the top of the government. Now almost nobody does. It’s a sadder, wiser and not-so-gullible public now.
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