I do find it reprehensible that Moderator Candy Crowley intervened to confirm the misrepresentation of President's Obama's statement on Benghazi the day after the killing of the American ambassador. If you look at the context, it is clear that President Obama certainly did not call it a terrorist act. At the end of the press conference that day, President Obama said:
"No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for,"The statement was made at the end of a press conference in which President Obama talked about investigating what happened in Benghazi It's a statement about terrorism in general, not a conclusory statement about what happened in Benghazi. The fact that it was a general statement is proved by the conduct of the administration for the following two weeks in which officials disavowed that it was a terrorist act and suggested the killing was the result of a poorly-made YouTube video. In interviews afterward, President Obama himself placed the blame on what happened in Benghazi on the YouTube video, not on terrorism.
It's hard to believe Candy Crowley would not have understood this. Instead of being honest about the statement, she decided to misrepresent the facts during the debate.
14 comments:
Both Biden and Obama completely botched their Libya related questions, jam packed with lies and distortions. The downside is Romney didn't make the proper connection and didn't prepare. All he needed to do was mention that Susan Rice and various other administration officials blamed a video and spontaneous protests. He tried catching Obama on blaming a video, and I'm not entirely sure Obama in his own words did. Various others who speak for him, though, certainly did.
That's funny. ABC pronounced immediately after the debate that Obama absolutely won.
I got to hand it to them. They do a great job making a fake fight look real.
Obama was making a general statement about terrorism at the end of his press conference. I think what happened is that they looked back at the video and decided that's how they could get the President off the hook...claiming that general statement was specifically related to what happened in Benghazi. It's very dishonest but apparently Crowley fell for it.
Paul,
It was not made at a Press Conference. It was made in the Rose Garden on September 12, 2012. Here's the video. See 4:19.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3A7UpPvAu8
Romney got clobbered.
"No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation."
President Obama, the day after the attack.
Does the Romney Campaign want us to believe he's talking about the Sinking of the Maine?
Romney got walloped.
Romney, some Republicans and Neo-Cons are all in lather about the Benghazi killings. I do not recall a single senior official after 9-11 being sacked by GWB.
I do not recall a single senior official being sacked after the invasion on Iraq, when no Weapons of Mass Destruction were found.
Because those WMD were moved to Syria, where Bashar al-Assad is threatening to use them.
The Onion nails it:
Nation Tunes In To See Which Sociopath More Likable This Time
http://goo.gl/Jsk73
Jeff is such a profound source of inside information on Muslim terror that one begins to wonder if he isn't Indiana's representative for the Muslim Brotherhood.
Jon, you're right that it's better described as a statement rather than a press conference, though there were reporters there The fact remains is that President Obama certainly did not call what happened in Benghazi a terrorist act that day. He was making a general statement about terrorism. It is very dishonest for him to now claim, in light of the two weeks that followed that he was, on that day, calling what happened in Benghazi a terrorist action.
Cato,
Look at the context of that statement. Look at what the administration said for two weeks afterward. Trying to suggest that statement on that day was condeming what happened in Benghazi as an act of teror is not even remotely credible. It obviously was a general statement.
This is so lame. Did Obama also make "general statements" about his baseball card collection, the Keystone Pipeline or national parks during this conference?
Cato: Agreed. If "acts of terror" wasn't referring to what Obama was talking about 2 seconds ago, then what then?
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