Round Up the Usual Suspects

Where, oh where to begin on Benghazi?  Let’s start with Jay Carney.  During his recent performances at White House press briefings he appears to be doing the political version of Stop, Drop and Roll.  I used to think Jay Carney was a reasonably intelligent man.  Not that I ever much agreed with him, but I didn’t picture him as a dunce.  Now it’s hard to consider him as much else.  Why do I say this?  Just ask him.  Nearly every question posed to him by the White House press corps (alternatively known as the White House “steno pool”) are met with responses like “I dunno”, I have no knowledge”, “We’ll look into that”, and, of course, “Huh?”

One thing Carney and the White House have been clear about concerns the Benghazi talking points following the attack on the Libyan consulate.  From the beginning Carney has said that we should wait (it was the video) for all of the facts (it was the video) before passing judgment (it was really, really the video).  As we now know, it wasn’t the video.  The talking points that United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice trotted out for all of the Sunday talk shows following the Benghazi attack had as much to do with reality as Michael Bloomberg has to do with individual liberty.  What started out in the talking points (as well as in, coincidently, real life) as a coordinated attack carried out by al Qaeda-linked terrorists turned into an out of control protest over a You Tube video that was so bad Jim Carrey was looking at starring in the remake.

Yet, through the whole talking points metamorphosis, Carney claimed only one “stylistic” change was made. Really?   That’s like John Lennon telling Paul McCartney he was going to make one stylistic change to Hey Jude and the result turned into four and a half minutes of Yoko Ono warbling.  Stylistic, indeed.

With the recent congressional testimony from three Benghazi survivors, even the Obama compliant media had to pay at least some attention to the Benghazi story.  As a matter of fact, just this week many news outlets learned that Benghazi was not the name of the actor that played Jackie Treehorn in The Big Lebowski.* Sensing the awaking of the news media, the left went into full discredit mode, looking to link the Benghazi whistle blowers to everything from the Kennedy assassination to fluoridated tap water to the Manti Te’o fake girlfriend scandal.

Why, the press wondered, would the Obama administration want to mislead the American public by pushing the video generated a protest which led to a riot story?  Well, there was that matter of the 2012 presidential election, just weeks after the Benghazi attack.  You may have heard something about it – it was in some of the papers.  Certainly blaming the whole thing on that lousy film maker for a while helped the administration’s narrative that al Qaeda was a shell of its former self.  And there was also the matter of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential aspirations.  The Democratic alternative to Hillary in 2016 is Joe Biden. (I know, it makes me giggle too.) Besides, Hillary has her campaign slogan for 2016 already prepared: Hillary 2016 – Because, well, what difference does it make? She couldn’t let that gem go to waste.

Many questions still remain unanswered, including this one: Where was Barack Obama (remember him?) during the attack on the Libyan consulate?  Perhaps he just doesn’t understand his role as president.  I wonder if he thinks he is Commander in Chef – and if he had a soufflé in the oven at the time, well, those things just can’t be rushed. Fortunately, of Benghazi President Obama has said, “I am ultimately responsible.”  Of course, by that he didn’t mean “responsible, responsible.”  He meant the kind of Washington responsible whereby it’s clearly somebody else’s fault.

Round up the usual suspects.

*For those unfamiliar with The Big Lebowski; A) How could that be?, and; B) The actor was Ben Gazarra.

Curtice Mang is the author of the new book, The Constitution – I’m Not Kidding and Other Tales of Liberal Folly. He can be contacted at www.mangwrites.com, where one can also purchase his book; or contact Curtice at mangwrites at cox.net.