BENGHAZI BULLROAR: With friends like Chris Hayes!

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2012

The children have left Rice for dead: Right from the start, the attacks on Susan Rice have depended on those cherry-picked quotations.

Tomorrow, we’ll show you the way John King cherry-picked Rice last Friday night as he sat in for Anderson Cooper. Spoiler alert:

King performed the standard cherry-pick—the cherry-pick which has been mandated since this assault began.

Tomorrow, we’ll show you King’s cherry-pick—and we’ll show you the way this cherry-pick got its start on Fox. For today, let’s consider the way the children have dealt with Ambassador Rice.

Rice has been mercilessly attacked on Fox, with those cherry-picks leading the way. CNN has compliantly followed suit, pretty much from Day One.

On the One True Liberal Channel, the darling children have gamboled and played. Lawrence and Krystal have clowned and joked.

Rice has been thrown to the dogs.

It’s hard to believe, but Susan Rice hadn’t been mentioned on MSNBC’s nightly programs until this past Friday night. On that occasion, Chris Matthews did a short, clownish segment about this five-week assault.

The IQ of Matthews’ program is somewhere in the mid-double digits. To see the liberal world embarrass itself, just click this. Mercifully, the nonsense takes less than five minutes.

Good God! Aside from that embarrassing segment, the children on The One True Channel have completely ignored the assault on Rice. Her name still hasn’t been mentioned on Maddow’s show. So too with Lawrence and Al.

(Her name was mentioned once, in passing, on Eddie’s show. It happened last Thursday night.)

Rice has been eaten alive on Fox and CNN. As this assault has transpired, the darling children have joked and played. All except Christopher Hayes, who has mentioned Rice on three of his weekend shows—adopting the Fox line on this matter!

Good God. In this segment from last weekend, you see Hayes cherry-picking what Rice said on those Sunday shows, just as they do it on Fox:

HAYES (10/13/12): It’s been over a month since the attack in Benghazi and the details of what happened there are still trickling out day by day.

Let’s start from the beginning, because it can be a little confusing.

[...]

HAYES: On September 14, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney attributed all of the unrest throughout the region to the YouTube video:

CARNEY (videotape): The unrest we’ve seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that Muslims—many Muslims find offensive, and while the violence is reprehensible and unjustified, it is not a reaction to the 9/11 anniversary that we know of, or to a U.S. policy.

HAYES: Five days after the attack in Libya, it happened on September 16, Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, went on five Sunday talk shows, not this one, and reaffirmed this position:

RICE (videotape): Our current assessment is that what happened in Benghazi was, in fact, initially a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo, almost a copycat of the demonstrations against our facility in Cairo, which were prompted, of course, by the video.

Good God. Among Hayes’ other errors this day, he offered the standard cherry-pick of what Rice said on the Sunday programs! In this standard cherry-pick, viewers are shown Rice’s statement about the way the alleged demonstration began. They aren’t shown the rest of what she said on those programs—that “extremists armed with heavy weapons” then came to the scene and “hijacked” events, producing the deadly violence.

Fox has cherry-picked Rice that way from Day One. On this god-awful program, Hayes did the same darn thing!

Soon, he was making these statements:

HAYES (continuing directly): Three days later, on September 19, a number of administration officials began to describe the attack on Benghazi as a terrorist attack. By September 27, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said it had become clear the attack was “planned.”

And on Tuesday of this week, the State Department explicitly contradicted the story told by the administration, saying there had been no protests outside the consulate in Benghazi on the day of the attack.

The attack continues to be a political issue because it is now clear to just about everyone that the story that we heard, the American people, in wake of the attack, was simply not accurate.

[...]

HAYES: We were told, we all read the reports and the government was saying this was in response to the video and now, it’s just clear that it wasn’t in response to the video. In fact, it was a pretty well premeditated plan. I’ve read some reports, that say 100 men overran the embassy with guns. I mean, this was a militarized attack.

The question is, why the gap? Why did the people who should have known not know?

Rice discussed those extremists with those heavy weapons back on September 16. Sadly, Hayes didn't show the part of tape where she made those statements.

Does Hayes sit around watching Fox all day? He seemed to be very sure of himself, just like many Fox viewers.

In our view, this self-admittedly brilliant fellow should be a bit more careful. Last week, the New York Times reported that the Benghazi attack was a reaction to the video. And we have now seen many reports denying the claim that the attack was “a pretty well premeditated plan.”

And we’re sorry, but it just isn’t clear—unless you watch Fox—that “the story that we heard, the American people, in wake of the attack was simply not accurate.” That isn’t clear unless you watch Fox—or Hayes' show on The One True Liberal Channel!

What actually happened in Benghazi? Like Hayes, we simply don’t know. But given the way Hayes has gone after Rice, he may as well go work for Fox.

With puppies like this on MSNBC, who needs the wolves on Fox? Who needs the cowardly lions who recite for the right on CNN?

Among all the children on The True Channel, Hayes is the only one who had ever discussed Susan Rice before that embarrassing Hardball segment.

The attack machine has gone after Rice (with Obama as the real target, of course). Laughing and playing and singing their songs, the children have left Rice for dead.