Hillary Clinton dismissed the information in the newly released emails which show that the State Department and the NSC were aware that Ansar Al-Sharia was behind the Benghazi consulate attack.
Clinton sneeringly dismisses it as “Posting something on Facebook is not in and of itself evidence.” That might be true for the average person, but when an Islamist terrorist militia linked to Al Qaeda that plays a major role in Benghazi posts something on Facebook while an attack is taking place and appears to know more about it than the State Department does, that is evidence.
But Hillary Clinton’s point might still be legitimate if Obama and Rice had asked everyone to refrain from jumping to any conclusions until the full investigation was complete. They did not do that. Instead they decided to go on claiming that the attack was due to a YouTube video.
So a YouTube video is evidence, but a Facebook and Twitter statement of responsibility isn’t. Why?
Obama and Rice decided to reject an assertion of responsibility from Ansar Al-Sharia, evidence from eyewitnesses that Ansar Al-Sharia had stolen armored vehicles from the consulate and their own background on Ansar Al-Sharia contained in cables and bulletins from their own diplomats in Libya.
Instead they chose to go with an assertion by some Salafist groups that they were carrying out their attacks because America had insulted their prophet.
Obama and Rice didn’t wait until the evidence was in. They picked and chose from among the statements made by Islamist groups and created a selective narrative that suited their agenda.
The question isn’t why didn’t Obama and Co. immediately call this a terrorist attack by Al Qaeda. The question is why they insisted on falsely claiming that this was a protest over a movie, when there were no protesters and their own intel said that it was an organized assault by an Al Qaeda group?
Hillary Clinton can claim that we need to wait for the investigation to be completed, but this entire debate is happening because Obama and Rice didn’t wait for the investigation. Instead they blamed the Constitution and clapped a filmmaker into irons to appease the Islamist terrorists. Now that the evidence is coming out Hillary Clinton would like us to wait, but where were her calls to wait when Ambassador Rice was trolling the morning show circuit blaming Freedom of Speech for the Benghazi attack, while denying that inadequate security and reliance on Islamists had anything to do with the attack?