Susan Rice, Obama’s ambassador to the United Nations, appeared on several of the Sunday morning news shows and mislead the American people by claiming the vicious attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, was unplanned and provoked only by an anti-Islam video.
On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Libya’s head of state, Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf, president of Libya’s General National Congress, said that the attack on the U.S. Consulate was “preplanned, predetermined.” You can watch Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf’s comments here.
Shortly thereafter, on the same show, Rice disagreed with the Libyan leader
“Based on the best information we have to date … it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo, where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video. But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution. And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent…. We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned.”“Based on the best information we have to date … it began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo, where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video. But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post-revolution. And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent…. We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned.”
Rice’s comments were so misleading that even a member in good standing of the biased so-called fact-checking wing of the Democrats’ party, the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler, awarded Rice two Pinocchios.
Here are some of the facts relied upon by Kessler:
- The attack that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans took place on the 11th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks. That may simply be a coincidence, but if so, it would be a pretty big one.
- In his interview, Mohamed Yusuf al-Magariaf, the president of Libya’s National Congress, said Libya had arrested 50 people, many connected to al-Qaeda. That would certainly bolster the notion that the date — Sept. 11 — was not a coincidence.
- One media report claims that key documents, including one with the names of Libyans working with Americans, were taken from the consulate.
- That same report, in the Independent, quotes a Libyan military official as saying that a separate safe house also came under attack: “The building then came under fire from heavy weapons. ‘I don’t know how they found the place to carry out the attack. It was planned, the accuracy with which the mortars hit us was too good for any ordinary revolutionaries,’ said Captain Obeidi. ‘It began to rain down on us, about six mortars fell directly on the path to the villa.'”
- News services reported last week that Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, briefing lawmakers last week, said the attack appeared to be planned because it was so extensive and because of the “proliferation” of small and medium weapons at the scene. That also would seem to contradict Rice’s stance.
- ABC News reported that Glen Doherty, one of the former Navy SEALs who was killed, was not there to provide security but was on a mission to track down shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles and destroy them. “Doherty said that he traveled throughout Libya chasing reports of the weapons, and once they were found, his team would destroy them on the spot by bashing them with hammers or repeatedly running them over with their vehicles,”
- According to ABC, while Rice pointed to anger at an anti-Muslim film that appeared on YouTube as the spark for the demonstration, Doherty’s mission suggests that there were aspects of U.S. policy that may have directly affected militants in the country — and angered them. That also would strengthen the case that this was a planned attack.
What Kessler didn’t take for fact was the Independent’s report that the Obama administration was warned, but failed to act on the warning:
“According to senior diplomatic sources, the US State Department had credible information 48 hours before mobs charged the consulate in Benghazi, and the embassy in Cairo, that American missions may be targeted, but no warnings were given for diplomats to go on high alert and ‘lockdown’, under which movement is severely restricted.”
Nor did Kessler emphasize the CNN report that American intelligence warned the embassy in Egypt.
“A U.S. official told CNN’s Suzanne Kelly that American intelligence was sufficiently concerned about the attention the movie was receiving online to warn the embassy in Egypt in a bulletin a few days before protesters stormed that compound in Cairo on Tuesday, the same day the consulate in Libya was attacked by armed militants.”
Rice’s misleading Pinocchio statements are a sign that the Obama campaign is desperate to prevent American voters from learning that Obama failed to take proper and necessary measures to protect U.S. diplomats from a terrorist attack on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.