Forbes on Benghazi - Printable Version

And here comes Hurricane Sandy, maybe just in time to knock Lybia cover-up off the front pages. Won't Axlerod be happy.

Busting myths about Benghazi

Hear ye, hear ye! Sarah Palin hereby accuses President Barack Obama of the high crime of shucking and jiving or, more precisely, a "shuck and jive shtick" with "Benghazi lies."

In the art of paranoid politics, one needs only to raise questions — and suspicions.

"Why the lies?" she wrote on her Facebook page about the aftermath of the tragic Sept. 11 attack on our consulate in Benghazi. "Why the cover up? Why the dissembling about the cause of the murder of our ambassador on the anniversary of the worst terrorist attacks on American soil? We deserve answers to this. President Obama's shuck and jive shtick with these Benghazi lies must end."

Predictably, some sensitive souls charged that the former Alaska governor's use of "shuck and jive" smacks of racism. But quite frankly, if all racism were this mild, I think we'd have a much happier world.

I am much more concerned about Palin's central charge. "Benghazi lies" has become like "Obama's phony birth certificate," a bundle of allegations based less on a desire to find the truth than to feather one's nest as a five-star foe of the president.

Republicans and other conservatives have alleged that Team Obama tried to protect the president's re-election chances by blaming the attack on a spontaneous reaction to an anti-Muslim YouTube video, made in the USA, that touched off violent protests in Cairo that day.

Palin's outrage was set off by a newly reported State Department email that indicates the Obama administration knew while the consulate was under siege that an al-Qaida affiliate, not a spontaneous uprising, claimed responsibility.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and two other Senate Republicans also wrote this past Wednesday to Obama, saying: "These emails make clear that your administration knew within two hours of the attack that it was a terrorist act and that Ansar al-Sharia, a Libyan militant group with links to al-Qaida, had claimed responsibility for it."

But not quite. Closer examination reveals that the email may only have been one of several inaccurate spot reports on a chaotic, confusing and rapidly changing situation.

And Ansar al-Sharia, for what it's worth, denied responsibility for the attack, although it praised the attackers. Modesty is not an attribute for which terrorist groups are widely known, unless they really didn't do what other people might say they did.

In the meantime, political partisans back here at home have the luxury of cherry-picking information that raises suspicions about the administration, even when they sometimes trip over the facts.

That's what happened to Obama's Republican challenger Mitt Romney in the second presidential debate when he claimed, "It took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror."

No, as the president corrected him, by simply citing the transcript, available on the White House website, of his speech in the Rose Garden on Sept. 12.

Obama also could have cited the transcript of his campaign speech the next day in Golden, Colo., where he was even more specific about the "act of terror" that "killed our fellow Americans."

Or he could have cited a CBS "60 Minutes" interview he recorded just before he stepped into the Rose Garden on Sept. 12, in which he discounted the video and instead suspected "folks involved in this who were looking to target Americans from the start."

United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice aroused the political right the following Sunday by mentioning the anti-Muslim video on TV talk shows. But she also added that "soon after that spontaneous protest," the best information indicated "extremist elements" joined the mob "with heavy weapons."

U.S. intelligence had uncovered evidence that same weekend that discredited earlier reports of a video-inspired protest, but the new information did not get to Rice before her talk show appearances, CBS News and Washington Post columnist David Ignatius reported Oct. 19.

All of this needs to be investigated, but investigations take time, especially when even the FBI has had trouble getting in and out of the crime scene.

Unfortunately, the worst time for a slow-moving investigation is during a tight presidential race, but it's a great time for paranoid politics.

Clarence Page is a member of the Tribune's editorial board and blogs at chicagotribune.com/pagespage.

STP, have you noticed that only FOX is covering Benghazi? Why is that? Is it a non-starter because the NY Times is barely covering the story, let alone aggressively acting like reporters feretting out the truth? Or for that matter CNN, CNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS. I suspect you lean on the US media masses for your info. Ever heard of Pat Cadell? Political analyst, democrat pollster, a call it like it is old school guy. I guess I'm in pretty good non-partisan company for being outraged by "Partisan spin articles from editorial board members of large liberal US newspapers" regarding the lack of Benghazi reporting. I should have included the broader main stream US media. I stand corrected. It's no wonder Obama leads Romney 5 to 1 in 'the world poll'. I wonder where foreign media outlets get most of their US news? You may at least consider to start considering some alternative sources.

Having said this, I have to say I've got a couple further points which make me pause a bit:

Tree, I doesn't bother me that you (and others) have made up your mind about it, good for you. But when I'm called intellectually lazy for not immediately following your conclusions I get a little annoyed, to be honest. You might ultimately be proven right on this Tree, but for me it's a little early to jump to all too firm conclusions.

Re point 4) That seems rather far-fetched to me. Anyone with an internet connection or half an eye on any TV journal will instantly realize that:

Like I said before, Obama doesn't strike me as someone who isn't afraid to use violence against enemies at all. In a MUCH more dangerous Pakistan (a rather precariously unstable country with 100+ nuclear warheads and its own Al-Queda offsprings), the Administration routinely kills with drones and treats critics rather unfriendly:

US detention of Imran Khan part of trend to harass anti-drone advocates

The vindictive humiliation of Pakistan's most popular politician shows the US government's intolerance for dissent

Glenn Greenwald
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 28 October 2012 14.06 GMT

Imran Khan is, according to numerous polls, the most popular politician in Pakistan and may very well be that country's next Prime Minister. He is also a vehement critic of US drone attacks on his country, vowing to order them shot down if he is Prime Minister and leading an anti-drone protest march last month.

On Saturday, Khan boarded a flight from Canada to New York in order to appear at a fundraising lunch and other events. But before the flight could take off, US immigration officials removed him from the plane and detained him for two hours, causing him to miss the flight. On Twitter, Khan reported that he was "interrogated on [his] views on drones" and then added: "My stance is known. Drone attacks must stop." He then defiantly noted: "Missed flight and sad to miss the Fundraising lunch in NY but nothing will change my stance."

The State Department acknowledged Khan's detention and said: "The issue was resolved. Mr Khan is welcome in the United States." Customs and immigration officials refused to comment except to note that "our dual mission is to facilitate travel in the United States while we secure our borders, our people, and our visitors from those that would do us harm like terrorists and terrorist weapons, criminals, and contraband," and added that the burden is on the visitor "to demonstrate that they are admissible" and "the applicant must overcome all grounds of inadmissibility."

There are several obvious points raised by this episode. Strictly on pragmatic grounds, it seems quite ill-advised to subject the most popular leader in Pakistan - the potential next Prime Minister - to trivial, vindictive humiliations of this sort. It is also a breach of the most basic diplomatic protocol: just imagine the outrage if a US politician were removed from a plane by Pakistani officials in order to be questioned about their publicly expressed political views. And harassing prominent critics of US policy is hardly likely to dilute anti-US animosity; the exact opposite is far more likely to occur.

But the most important point here is that Khan's detention is part of a clear trend by the Obama administration to harass and intimidate critics of its drone attacks. As Marcy Wheeler notes, "this is at least the third time this year that the US has delayed or denied entry to the US for Pakistani drone critics."

Last May, I wrote about the amazing case of Muhammad Danish Qasim, a Pakistani student who produced a short film entitled "The Other Side", which "revolves around the idea of assessing social, psychological and economical effects of drones on the people in tribal areas of Pakistan." As he put it, "the film takes the audience very close to the damage caused by drone attacks" by humanizing the tragedy of civilian deaths and also documenting how those deaths are exploited by actual terrorists for recruitment purposes.

Qasim and his co-producers were chosen as the winner of the Audience Award for Best International Film at the 2012 National Film Festival For Talented Youth, held annually in Seattle, Washington. He intended to travel to the US to accept his award and discuss his film, but was twice denied a visa to enter the US, and thus was barred from making any appearances in the US.

The month prior, Shahzad Akbar - a Pakistani lawyer who represents drone victims in lawsuits against the US and the co-founder of the Pakistani human rights organization, Foundation for Fundamental Rights - was scheduled to speak at a conference on drones in Washington. He, too, was denied a visa, and the Obama administration relented only once an international outcry erupted.

There are two clear dynamics driving this. First, the US is eager to impose a price for effectively challenging its policies and to prevent the public - the domestic public, that is - from hearing critics with first-hand knowledge of the impact of those policies. As Wheeler asks, "Why is the government so afraid of Pakistanis explaining to Americans what the drone attacks look like from a Pakistani perspective?"

This form of intimidation is not confined to drone critics. Last April, I reported on the serial harassment of Laura Poitras, the Oscar-nominated documentarian who produced two films - one from Iraq and the other from Yemen - that showed the views and perspectives of America's adversaries in those countries. For four years, she was detained every single time she reentered the US, often having her reporters' notebook and laptop copied and even seized. Although this all stopped once that article was published - demonstrating that there was never any legitimate purpose to it - that intimidation campaign against her imposed real limits on her work.

That is what this serial harassment of drone critics is intended to achieve. That is why a refusal to grant visas to prominent critics of US foreign policy was also a favorite tactic of the Bush administration.

Second, and probably even more insidious, this reflects the Obama administration's view that critics of its drone policies are either terrorists or, at best, sympathetic to terrorists. Recall how the New York Times earlier this year - in an article describing a new report from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism documenting the targeting of Pakistani rescuers and funerals with US drones - granted anonymity to a "senior American counterterrorism official" to smear the Bureau's journalists and its sources as wanting to "help al-Qaida succeed".

For years, Bush officials and their supporters equated opposition to their foreign policies with support for the terrorists and a general hatred of and desire to harm the US. During the Obama presidency, many Democratic partisans have adopted the same lowly tactic with vigor.

That mindset is a major factor in this series of harassment of drone critics: namely, those who oppose the Obama administration's use of drones are helping the terrorists and may even be terrorist sympathizers. It is that logic which would lead US officials to view Khan as some sort of national security threat by virtue of his political beliefs and perceive a need to drag him off a plane in order to detain and interrogate him about those views before allowing him entrance to the US.

What makes this most ironic is that the US loves to sermonize to the world about the need for open ideas and political debate. In April, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lectured the planet on how "those societies that believe they can be closed to change, to ideas, cultures, and beliefs that are different from theirs, will find quickly that in our internet world they will be left behind,"

That she is part of the same government that seeks to punish and exclude filmmakers, students, lawyers, activists and politicians for the crime of opposing US policy is noticed and remarked upon everywhere in the world other than in the US. That demonstrates the success of these efforts: they are designed, above all else, to ensure that the American citizenry does not become exposed to effective critics of what the US is doing in the world.