The Benghazi attack story blew up over the last two days. This blow-up could not come at a worse time for Democrats. It shows why the American people should never entrust any branch of government to them. It shows why Barack Obama should not be President today. And it shows why Hillary Clinton should not become President in 2017. Barack Obama stole the Election of 2012 with a narrative he knew was false. We now know his White House specifically pressed that narrative. And did so at the cost of a man’s liberty, after four other men lost their lives.

Benghazi: the smoking-gun e-mail

Yesterday Judicial Watch proved ordinary citizens can do what Congress can’t or won’t do. They sued the State Department under the Freedom of Information Act. Yesterday they got 112 pages of documents. They include this e-mail from Ben Rhodes to Ambassador Susan Rice. In that e-mail, Rhodes tells Rice to tell the press the lie we all heard: everything that happened in Benghazi was in response to a 15-minute trailer for an anti-Muslim film that the filmmaker never finished. Rhodes goes further than that. His e-mail to Rice reads like a script! It even tells her to speak such gems as “I’m not here to get into a long exchange about diplomatic terminology.” In plain, simple English, that means “I don’t have time to tell you what all those big words I use mean.” Well, ex-cu-u-use us!

Rhodes told Rice to say the movie could never excuse such a violent response. Why, then, did someone have the filmmaker arrested, for a probation violation that normally does not rate an arrest? Why did authorities treat that man like the defendant in Franz Kafka’s eponymous Trial? (The estates of Anthony Perkins and Orson Welles, and maybe of Franz Kafka, too, should sue this White House for plagiarism.)

Of all the mainstream media outlets, only USA Today covered the story properly. The Washington Post put it on page 17. The New York Times put it on the spike. For a more comprehensive take on the story, see this piece in Newsmax.

That tells you where the story stood this morning. Then Jay Carney did something CNAV still cannot believe.

The White House lies again

De Facto President Obama and then-SecState Clinton receive the bodies of Ambassador Stevens and three others from Benghazi. Photo: State Department

This afternoon, at 2:00 p.m. EDT, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney held a news conference. ABC-TV reporter Jonathan Karl did the unthinkable. He called Jay Carney out on how Ambassador Rice lied to the American public a year and a half ago, before the Election of 2012:

Ambassador Rice went on those shows, and she said that the attack in Benghazi was rooted in protests over an Internet video.  We now know that that was not true…

Karl went on in that vein. First Jay Carney insisted on the White House line about “protests in the region.” Karl was having none of that. Then Carney started to patronize him: “Jon, you’re wrong…” Then he said,

I know that you and I are both in a different time zone right now, but we’re still in April of 2014, and this is a discussion about what she said and what turned out to be the case that we have had dozens of time in this room.

“A different time zone”? Jay Carney and Jonathan Karl were in the same room. How could they be in different time zones? Unless Jay Carney meant to confess he was in the Twilight Zone. (Apologies here to Rod Serling.)

And then Jay Carney said:

And if you look at the document in question here, it is not about Benghazi; it is about the protests around the Muslim world outside of U.S. embassies, and what we know about them and what we should say about them based on our policies.

Thaumadzo! (Wow!) as Paul of Tarsus might have said. (See Galatians 1:6) Josef Goebbels could take lessons from Jay Carney.

Readers of CNAV need not merely take our word, or Jonathan Karl’s word, for this. You have the link to the document; you can read it for yourselves. And here’s the transcript of that exchange.

And tonight, Martha McCallum, on the Fox News Channel, reported that Fox got more e-mails showing an active interest in the spin about a video provoking the Benghazi attack.

What this means

At least three groups of people deserve apologies:

1. Ambassador Stevens, three dead Special Forces soldiers, and their families. Because the White House was too cowardly to tell the truth about the Benghazi attack late in election season.
2. The maker of the video. Because the White House blamed him and his never-finished project for the Benghazi attack. Not only that, but they treated him in a way that would make Franz Kafka blush.
3. The American people. Because many of them voted for a Barack Obama who decimated Al-Qaeda and kept the world safe. They did not know they were voting for an entity whose shape Obama stole.

Incredibly, the White House lies again. “The document wasn’t about Benghazi.” Let the reader follow the link to the document and judge that.

But this also suggests Jay Carney works in a time warp. He must think he’s in the era when the Big Three Networks (including ABC News, who employs Jonathan Karl) took Democratic (but never Republican) White House talking points at face value, and never questioned them. Or maybe the latest rumors are true and the White House plans to shut down all alternative media by executive order. They must think they can return us to the days when their only opposition comes from “editorial replies” that play like Nights at the Improv.

Sorry, Jay. That ship sailed long ago. In case you didn’t notice, Jonathan Karl works for ABC News. Do you think you can now pick up the telephone and order someone to fire him? CNAV will be watching.

But Jonathan Karl is an exception that proves another rule: the White House Press Corps are a litter of puppies. If they were the pack of adult wolves they pretended to be, all Jonathan Karl would have had to do was stand where he was and say, “Mister Carney, you’re a liar,” pull out a cigarette lighter, and start the flame. And every other reporter would have stood up and done the same.

Why didn’t that happen? Because aside from Jonathan Karl (who may or may not have a job tomorrow morning), the media want Barack Obama to succeed. They might even think they have their offices all laid out in what will become the Telegraph Agency of the United Soviet States of America. When Jonathan Karl “spoke truth to power” on the Benghazi attack today, they all sat on their hands. And maybe ground their teeth.

This White House is beyond redemption. But the White House Press Corps have exactly twenty-four hours to redeem themselves. If the Benghazi story appears on more outlets than USA Today, Fox, Newsmax, WND, and other alternative outlets, they will have begun to redeem themselves. If not, not.

Benghazi is more than a desert city. Benghazi is a test of the media community. Benghazi is now a vital sign, like a pulse, a pair of blood pressure readings, a breathing rate, and a body temperature. Benghazi will show whether an independent press now lives or dies.

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