Ken Burns recites on Meet the Press!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2012

Film-maker stands against Krugman: Paul Krugman starts his new column in hopeful fashion.

We assume that Krugman is right on the substance all through today’s column. But in our view, he is dreaming a dream in this opening passage—or perhaps he’s simply making a category error:

KRUGMAN (11/26/12): These are difficult times for the deficit scolds who have dominated policy discussion for almost three years. One could almost feel sorry for them, if it weren’t for their role in diverting attention from the ongoing problem of inadequate recovery, and thereby helping to perpetuate catastrophically high unemployment.

What has changed? For one thing, the crisis they predicted keeps not happening. Far from fleeing U.S. debt, investors have continued to pile in, driving interest rates to historical lows. Beyond that, suddenly the clear and present danger to the American economy isn’t that we’ll fail to reduce the deficit enough; it is, instead, that we’ll reduce the deficit too much. For that’s what the “fiscal cliff” — better described as the austerity bomb — is all about: the tax hikes and spending cuts scheduled to kick in at the end of this year are precisely not what we want to see happen in a still-depressed economy.

Given these realities, the deficit-scold movement has lost some of its clout...

We assume Krugman is right on the substance—and he discusses a fair amount of substance in today’s column. But good God! If he thinks the deficit-scold movement is losing its political clout, he should probably watch the tape of yesterday’s Meet the Press.

David Gregory had assembled a six-member pundit panel. All six seemed to be spouting the talking-points of the deficit-scold movement. To our ear, this included Al Sharpton—and for unknown reasons, it even included film-maker Ken Burns.

Why was Burns part of a panel about the fiscal cliff? We have no idea. To our ear, he seemed to have no idea what he was talking about when budget issues were discussed.

But Burns did seem to know all the scripts which drive the fiscal-scold movement. Just so you’ll know, the “Carly” to whom he swears allegiance in this first Q-and-A is Fiorina, not Simon.

Are the deficit scolds losing steam? Someone forgot to tell Burns:

GREGORY (11/25/12): Ken Burns, David [Brooks]’s colleague, Tom Friedman, wrote a column recently and I put a portion of it on the screen because I think it gets to the leadership challenge for Obama, what he’s got to do to really apply leverage on Capitol Hill. Tom Friedman writes this: "I get why the president needs to stress that the wealthy will have to pay higher taxes before he can go to the base for spending cuts to restore long-term fiscal balance, but here’s what I hope we’ll see more from the president. A sense of excitement, a sense that if we can just get this grand bargain done, we can really unlock roads again. If everyone has to take their castor oil, the rich more, the middle class some, make them feel that it will enable us to all get stronger, make them feel that we are embarking on a new journey not to punish but to solve. Not to sock it to the successful but to create more abundance for all." A sense of some civic duty.

BURNS: That’s right. Not kicking the can down the road which is very easy. You can see all the ways that can happen. I agree with Carly. As someone who just came out of witness protection along with Big Bird since the first debate, breathing a sigh of relief, but we know the pain is going to be distributed. And I think that’s the important part and what he has to do is lead in that regard.

You have to insist on keeping the campaign promises but you also have to figure out where you’re going to make the revenue [sic] cuts. And that’s going to be really painful, but it’s true. There is some clear sailing on the other side of that that permits us to have some flexibility, kind of flexibility we have not had in an awfully long time.

Presumably, Burns meant to say that the spending cuts were going to be really painful. But there he was, the inventor of twee, stressing agreement with Fiorina and repeating the standard points about the need to stop kicking the can down the road and the need for Obama to lead us toward spending cuts which were going to be really painful.

Did Burns know what he was talking about? To our ear, he showed no sign of having a clue about the budget issues under discussion—but he did seem to know all the scripts.

Eventually, Burns engaged in a second Q-and-A concerning the fiscal cliff. In this exchange, he states solidarity with David Cote, the Honeywell CEO who served on the Bowles-Simpson commission:

GREGORY: Ken, I want to get you in on this in this way, which is how does Speaker Boehner`s threat this week to bring health care into all of this affect it all? This is what he wrote in an op-ed on Wednesday about putting health care on the table. They still want to repeal it. As was the case before the election, he writes: "Obamacare has to go. We can’t afford it. We can’t afford to leave it intact. That’s why I’ve been clear that the law has to stay on the table as both parties discuss ways to solve our nation's massive debt challenge. Congress has a constitutional responsibility to conduct thorough oversight of the executive branch, and congressional oversight will play a critical role in repealing Obamacare going forward."

They didn’t defeat it legislatively. They haven’t defeated it in the court. This is going to be their last chance, presumably.

BURNS: This is a little bit of red meat, still, back to the constituency, but I think the deal has to get done. The demographics are there from the last election. They have to make the point. I think what Cote was saying, too, about you’ve got all these independent free agents. We’re—we’re a culture now that’s so indulgent. You know, we fantasize about apocalyptic things. We’re—we have secession movements, fads coming up. We’ve got all this stuff going on.

And what I think this is about is about process. It’s getting down to the deal. You have to give a clear path for the Republicans to say yes, as you’ve suggested, David [Brooks], and you have to get it done.

Now, he’s going to posture every once in a while. The president has to posture to his base. But in the end, you’re going to have to sit down and make a deal. That's how this government works. Anything else short of it is not the way this government works. And we've spent too long frozen in some other kind of independent free agency where everybody gets to be their own talking head.

We're all just so self-indulgent!

Clearly, Burns had nothing whatever to say about the fiscal cliff. But he seemed to agree with everyone else: We absolutely must make a deal. And the pain must be shared.

Why was the mop-top on this show discussing fiscal issues? Why did he agree to take part, since it’s obvious he had nothing to say about these matters?

We can’t answer those questions. But while we assume that Krugman is right on the substance, we’ll guess he’s totally wrong on the politics. The fiscal scolds are still ruling the world, as Burns’ empty-headed script-reading seemed to show.

Gregory had six different panelists in this discussion. To our ear, all six were reciting a uniform set of scripts.

Later, Burns threw in a few race plays. This might have given us liberals the sense that our interests were being represented on yesterday’s panel.

Sorry. Liberal interests were not represented by this know-nothing seeker of corporate funds, who should have been dragged off by the lobe of his ear and made to stand in a corner. Race complaints are the (very) small price that is paid to keep us rubes on board.

Burns played that role on yesterday’s show—but he agreed with “Carly” on the obvious need for shared pain. Obama needs to lead us to a deal! He needs to do so right now!

Carly said it—and Ken agreed! In our view, the deficit scolds were in firm control as consent was manufactured on yesterday’s Meet the Press.

Greg Sargent watched the same program: Greg Sargent also saw the gang in rapt agreement, especially when they all agreed about the obvious meaning of "Lincoln."

Wealth and power were in control on yesterday morning's Meet the Press. Dearest darlings, it takes big (corporate) bucks to make those PBS films!

At long last, readers push back against Dowd!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2012

Dumbest known life-form on earth: Yesterday morning, Maureen Dowd’s column was very dumb—dumb even by her own standards.

As usual, Dowd was banging on “Barry.” Here’s how the nonsense began:

DOWD (11/25/12): The two electrifying rookies exploded onto the scene with killer smiles, undeniable gifts, an affinity for superheroes, poise beyond their years and the ability to play at top form when it’s all on the line. Both stay so calm under pressure that they have evoked comparisons to Cool Hand Luke.

The capital of winning and losing now revolves around two natural-born world shakers: the president of the United States and the quarterback of the Washington Redskins. Only one of them, however, is old enough to appreciate the compliment of being compared to Paul Newman’s character in the 1967 classic prison drama “Cool Hand Luke.”

Since the two rookies are both black, it seemed only natural to compare them. But yes—in yesterday’s column, Dowd compared “Barry,” the sitting president, to a 22-year-old NFL rookie.

Inevitably, the comparison favored the NFL rookie. Before long, Dowd was saying this:

“The Bears fan in the White House has talked about inviting RGIII (who got his degree in political science) over for a basketball game, as long as they are on the same team. The president should take the opportunity to absorb some leadership lessons from the new wunderkind.”

How dumb was this column? Very, very, very dumb, even by Dowd's own standards.

That said, there was one happy outcome to yesterday’s mess. Readers began fighting back!

The Sunday before, Dowd wrote a moronic column attacking Susan Rice. For reasons which seem fairly obvious, the Times permitted no comments.

In the case of yesterday’s column, the Times did permit comments—at first.

By 7 o’clock Sunday morning, comments had been cut off. But by that time, readers had buried Dowd beneath a blizzard of negative remarks, with hundreds of readers signing their agreement.

Readers marveled at the dumbness of Dowd. Given the history of this sad life-form, we thought these comments were most insightful:

COMMENTER FROM MASSACHUSETTS: Note to Obama: Please call Maureen Dowd. She needs to hear from you.

COMMENTER FROM WISCONSIN: Maureen Dowd is obsessed with President Obama. He won't call you. Not maybe. Your persistent attempt to psychoanalyze the president will not earn your work even an honorable mention. And just in case you've forgotten what you did to Bill Clinton, here is his memorable conclusion about you:

"[Maureen Dowd] must live in mortal fear that there's somebody in the world living a healthy and productive life.” —Bill Clinton, 1997.

COMMENTER FROM NEW YORK: Wow. Would a phone call from Michelle be enough for you?

Let's look at that quote from Clinton again: "Maureen Dowd must live in mortal fear that there's somebody in the world living a healthy and productive life!”

Quite a few commenters complained about the disdain displayed by persistently calling the president “Barry.” But Lady Dowd lives on disdain. It’s the fuel driving such life-forms.

Comments were posted through 10 AM, but submissions had already been cut off when we read the piece around 6:45. For the second straight week, the Times seemed to know it had to protect its star baboon against its unhappy readers.

Dowd has been an embarrassment for a very long time. Only Clark Hoyt has been willing to say so.

At the Times, career guild members will never see this. At long last, it seems that Times readers are starting to notice.

MANUFACTURED CONSENT: Manufacturing Susan Rice!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2012

What David Gregory said: What is “manufactured consent?”

The term originated with Walter Lippmann, then ran through a 1988 book by Noam Chomsky and Ed Herman. To see the way the practice works, consider what David Gregory said on yesterday’s Meet the Press.

This is the last morning on which we plan to feature the attacks on Susan Rice. But below, you can see what Gregory said about Rice on yesterday morning’s program.

Last Wednesday, Rice made a public statement defending the way she described the attacks on the Benghazi consulate. On yesterday’s program, Gregory asked Republican attack dog Peter King to comment on Rice’s remarks.

Obviously, Gregory’s highlighted comment wasn’t made in good faith. Obviously, David Gregory doesn’t believe the representation which follows. In what follows, he was taking part in the process called the manufacturing of consent:

GREGORY (11/26/12): So you mentioned the volatility in the world. Let's talk about the volatility in Libya that has led to a lot of political questions at home over the fate of Susan Rice.

The U.N. ambassador was on this program and others talking about the fact that it seemed to be more spontaneous—the attack on the consulate at Benghazi, and this has been thoroughly litigated.

She responded to those who said that she willfully misled the public by saying it was a spontaneous incident rather than what we know it was now, and that was an attack on our consulate. These were her comments on Wednesday. I'll play them and get your reaction:

RICE (videotape): As a senior U.S. diplomat, I agreed to a White House request to appear on the Sunday shows to talk about the full range of national security issues of the day, which, at that time, were primarily and particularly the protests that were enveloping and threatening many diplomatic facilities. When discussing the attacks against our facilities in Benghazi, I relied solely and squarely on the information provided to me by the intelligence community. I made clear that the information was preliminary and that our investigations would give us the definitive answers.

GREGORY: Do you accept that, Congressman?

Obviously, Gregory’s highlighted comment wasn’t made in good faith. Gregory doesn’t believe the highlighted account of Rice’s comments.

Just look at what Gregory said! Speaking with the attack dog King, Gregory gave a very strange account of Rice’s remarks from September 16.

According to Gregory, Rice came on Meet the Press and said the attack on the consulate “was a spontaneous incident rather than what we know it was now, and that was an attack on our consulate.”

Obviously, Gregory doesn’t believe that. Judging from what Gregory said, you would think that Rice had somehow denied that the events in question were “an attack on our consulate.” You would think that we have only learned that fact in the months since Rice appeared, but that she had somehow denied that claim on those Sunday programs.

According to Gregory, we now know that the September 11 attack was an attack on the consulate. But Rice said something different back then—she said it was “a spontaneous incident.”

None of that makes any sense. Obviously, Rice never denied that the attack was an attack on the consulate. Just as obviously, an attack on a consulate could be some sort of “spontaneous incident.” If that’s what Rice actually said, no contradiction was involved in what she said.

Gregory’s logic doesn’t make sense—and his facts are basically wrong. Why then did he make this peculiar statement?

A naive observer might assume that Gregory simply misspoke. Almost surely, that observer would be wrong.

Why did Gregory make this peculiar statement? Through the process known as manufactured consent, your press corps elites have all agreed to tell a very shaky story about Rice’s conduct that day. Your elites have greed that it must be said:

It must be said that Susan Rice misspoke on those Sunday programs.

Why have press corps elites agreed to advance this claim? Crackpots led by John McCain have pushed and pushed on this matter. In the face of this hurly-burly, press elites have agreed to pretend that the GOP’s claim makes some sort of sense.

In fact, the GOP’s claim doesn’t seem to make much sense; it’s very hard to explain what Rice did wrong on those Sunday programs. But when the press corps agrees to advance a claim, all major players know the rules—the narrative must be advanced.

Almost surely, Gregory offered that strange account because it was the best he could manage. It’s hard to produce a coherent account of what Rice did wrong on those Sunday programs. But Gregory has agreed that he must pretend.

Hence, that peculiar account.

Obviously, Rice didn’t deny that the attack was an attack on our consulate. But how about this? Did she even “say it was a spontaneous incident?”

Actually, no, she didn’t say that—not if you know how to read. David Gregory does know how to read—but he also knows what he must do when his guild manufactures consent.

Below, you see what Rice said on Meet the Press on September 16. We will highlight one key word, although there are several others:

GREGORY (9/16/12): Can you say definitively that the attacks on our consulate in Libya that killed Ambassador Stevens and others there, security personnel—that was spontaneous? Was it a planned attack? Was there a terrorist element to it?

RICE: Well, let me tell you the best information we have at present. First of all, there is an FBI investigation, which is ongoing, and we look to that investigation to give us the definitive word as to what transpired.

But putting together the best information that we have available to us today, 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.

What we think then transpired in Benghazi is that opportunistic extremist elements came to the consulate as this was unfolding. They came with heavy weapons, which, unfortunately, are readily available in post-revolutionary Libya, and that escalated into a much more violent episode.

Obviously, that's our best judgment now. We'll await the results of the investigation, and the president has been very clear—we'll work with the Libyan authorities to bring those responsible to justice.

Over and over, in various ways, Rice told Gregory that this was a preliminary assessment. But please note: She only said that, according to the current assessment, the events at the consulate began as “a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired hours before in Cairo.”

(That’s what “initially” means.)

She said the events began in a spontaneous way—but as she continued, she said that something else happened after that. After that, she said “extremist elements” armed with “heavy weapons” came to the consulate and produced “a much more violent episode.” On two other programs, she said that these extremists “hijacked” ongoing events.

How “spontaneous” was the conduct of these “extremists?” Gregory didn’t ask, and Rice didn’t say, as you can see from that transcript—if you know how to read.

Were those extremists motivated by the video? Was their violent conduct a spontaneous, same-day reaction to the anti-Muslim video? Or was their attack preplanned in some major way? For example, was it designed to coincide with September 11?

Concerning all these points, Rice wasn’t asked, and Rice didn’t say. And she kept reminding Gregory that she was only giving him “our best judgment now.”

It’s hard to build a rational case against those statements by Rice. But by now, everyone has agreed that the press will pretend that Rice said something wrong that day.

It’s hard to form a coherent account of what was wrong with Rice's statements. So Gregory did the best he could. He lobbed an incoherent softball, and King went on the attack.

This is manufactured consent—a process by which career pseudo-journalists agree to tell a certain tale, no matter how far they must stretch facts and logic to do so. Gregory’s account of Rice’s alleged mistake was especially incoherent. But others have helped manufacture consent about Rice in the past week.

This blog post by Ta-Nehisi Coates make remarkably little sense. But at one point, Coates says Rice’s statement on September 16 was “deceptive.” We’ll look at this post tomorrow.

In this segment from yesterday’s program, Chris Hayes defers to Eli Lake’s claim that Rice “contradicted” the state of intelligence on September 16. Rice’s presentations didn’t contradict the intelligence—but The Puppy agreed not to say so.

(Why was the hapless Lake even allowed on this program? To review Hayes’ earlier groaners concerning Rice, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 10/21/12.)

Last Wednesday, the Washington Post ran this strange news report about an attack on Rice mounted by ninety-seven GOP solons. In his report, Ed O’Keefe couldn’t come up with a coherent account of Rice’s alleged misstatement. But so what! He offered a fleeting puddle of piddle, pretending that things were in order.

One day later, the New York Times published this Reuters account of Rice’s statement in her own defense. Its account of Rice’s statement on September 16 is basically incoherent.

This is the look of manufactured consent. This is what news reporting looks like when professional journalists agree as a group that they must advance, or defer to, a plainly bogus story.

By now, all news orgs have agreed to pretend that Rice said something wrong that day. It’s hard to say what she said that was wrong—but that doesn’t slow the process.

When consent is manufactured, even defenders of Rice, like Coates and Hayes, will seem to act as part of the process. Chomsky explained this general process way back in 1988. That’s why Chomsky has been banished from the major mass media.

Tomorrow, we’re moving on to a new central topic. But we'll look at that post by Coates, and at that segment by Hayes.

In the end, Coates and Hayes each defended Rice. But oh, what kind of defense is this, which goes from bad to worse?

DOWD AND DOWDINPANTZ: This too was bogus!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 2012

Part 4—The way the news looked in real time: Once again, this is the analysis to which we were treated on Sunday:

When Susan Rice appeared on those Sunday shows, she should have used her security clearance to obtain, and then release, classified information!

And not only that:

She should have agreed with the rather wild statement made by that Libyan pol!

U.S. intelligence hadn’t established the claim the Libyan pol was making; as far we know, they still haven't. But so what? Rice should have agreed with him anyway!

On their face, these judgments are bizarre, absurd—but three major journalists stated them this Sunday. Maureen Dowd offered this silly advice in her New York Times column; Bob Schieffer soon said much the same thing a bit later on Face the Nation.

Completing the trio, Lord Dowdinpantz essentially wrote the same column as Lady Dowd. Like Dowd, he told us what a big-mouth Rice is. He then said she should have agreed, right there on TV, with what the Libyan said.

No one really believes such stupid ideas. Presumably, the trio were driving somebody’s script.

Whose water were these people carrying? We don’t know. You can decide!

That said, we thought you might want to check one last part of Lady Dowd’s column. With apologies for reprinting this crap, let’s check out the highlighted claim:

DOWD (11/18/12): Rice was given the toned-down talking points, but she has access to classified information. Though she told Bob Schieffer on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the extremist elements could have included Qaeda affiliates or Al Qaeda itself, she mostly used her appearances to emphasize the story line of the spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Muslim video. She disputed the contention of the president of Libya’s General National Congress, who called the attack “preplanned” when he talked to Schieffer just before Rice.

Some have wondered if Rice, who has a bull-in-a-china-shop reputation, is diplomatic enough for the top diplomatic job. But she would have been wise to be more bull-in-a-china-shop and vet her talking points, given that members of the intelligence and diplomatic communities and sources in news accounts considered it a terrorist attack days before Rice went on the shows. (The president and his spokesman also clung to the video story for too long.)

That entire passage is blindingly stupid, right down to the brainless statement about “the video story.” But in the highlighted claim, Dowd says Rice should have gone beyond the account she was given by U.S. intelligence, “given that members of the intelligence and diplomatic communities and sources in news accounts considered it a terrorist attack days before Rice went on the shows.”

You can probably see how foolish that is. In our modern press scrum, all sorts of people say all sorts of things “in news accounts.” It’s absurd to think that Rice should have called it “a terrorist attack” just because someone else had already done so.

This idea is especially silly now that officials have explained why they didn’t include this claim in the official assessment from which Rice was working.

As usual, Dowd’s assessment was monumentally silly. But was her factual statement accurate? Were members of the intelligence community calling Benghazi a terrorist attack “days before Rice went on the shows?”

We’d have to say that wasn’t true in Dowd’s own paper, the New York Times. Nor was it true in another well-known paper, the Washington Post.

Of course, it’s stupid to say that Rice should have said X because somebody else had already said it. But as a measure of Dowd's awful work, we thought you might want to be refreshed about what was actually being said in the Post and the Times at that point.

Rice appeared on the Sunday shows on Sunday, September 16. Two days earlier, the New York Times had given a detailed account of what had happened at the consulate.

Suliman Ali Zway reported from Benghazi. Here’s what Dowd’s own paper was saying two days before Rice appeared:

ZWAY (9/14/12): The mayhem here that killed four United States diplomatic personnel, including the ambassador, was actually two attacks—the first one spontaneous and the second highly organized and possibly aided by anti-American infiltrators of Libya's young government, a top Libyan security official said Thursday.

The account by the official, Wanis el-Sharif, given to a few reporters here, was the most detailed yet of the chaotic events on Tuesday in this eastern Libyan city that killed J. Christopher Stevens, the first United States ambassador to be killed on duty in more than 30 years.

The deaths occurred amid a wave of anti-American protests convulsing the Middle East, inspired by an inflammatory anti-Islamic video, ''The Innocence of Muslims,'' that has spread on the Internet in recent days since it was publicized in Egypt. Protests expanded on Thursday to at least a half-dozen other countries, including Iran.

Mr. Sharif, a deputy interior minister, said Mr. Stevens and a second American diplomat, Sean Smith, were killed in the initial attack, which began as a disorganized but angry demonstration by civilians and militants outside the American Consulate on Tuesday, the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The protest escalated into an assault by as many as 200 people, some armed with grenades, who set the building on fire.

The second wave, Mr. Sharif said, was hours later, when the consulate staff was being spirited to a safe house a mile away. At that point, a team of Libyan security officials was evacuating them in a convoy guarded by Marines and Libyan security officials who had been flown from Tripoli to retrieve them.

Mr. Sharif said the second attack was a premeditated ambush on the convoy by assailants who were armed with rocket-propelled grenades and apparently knew the route the vehicles were taking. The other two Americans—identified on Thursday as Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty, both former members of the Navy SEALs—were killed in that assault. At least 12 Americans and 18 Libyan security officials were wounded, Mr. Sharif said.

''The first part was chaotic and disorganized. The second part was organized and planned,'' he said. The ambushers in the second assault, he said, apparently ''had infiltrators who were feeding them the information.''

How accurate was that account? Like Dowd, we still don’t know. But that account appeared in the Times two days before Rice appeared on TV.

No one called the killing a terrorist attack in this detailed news report. The next day, the Washington Post’s Sari Horwitz offered this updated account of what had happened:

HORWITZ (9/15/12): U.S. intelligence officials said that, despite the delay in getting into Benghazi, agencies have been able to draw intelligence from an array of sources, including news footage of the attack, intercepted phone calls and e-mails, and information from human sources recruited by the CIA.

The officials said they have reached a tentative conclusion that the assault was carried out by a group aligned with al-Qaeda but not directed by the terrorist network's core leadership. The officials stressed the preliminary nature of the assessments, noting that a massive analytic effort involving every agency in the intelligence community is still in its early stages.

"We still don't assess that this is core al-Qaeda," said a senior U.S. intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. "We assess that this is most likely a group best described as al-Qaeda sympathizers."

As Rice would do the next morning, “the officials stressed the preliminary nature of the assessments”—though Dowd wanted Rice to jump up and blab a finished account of what had occurred.

"We still don't assess that this is core al-Qaeda," a senior official told Horwitz. He said the killers were most likely sympathizers, not al Qaeda itself.

According to Dowd’s column, members of the intelligence and diplomatic communities were calling this a terrorist attack “days before Rice went on the shows.” In all honesty, that wasn’t happening in the Post and the Times.

These papers showed appropriate restraint as they tried to sort out what had happened. The same was true of these papers’ sources, though things may have been more wild and woolly in the newspapers with which Dowd self-excites.

On Sunday morning, September 16, the Times offered another long account in which David Kirkpatrick tried to assess who had been behind the killings. In his report, that anti-Muslim video was still presumed to the source of the anger and violence, despite Dowd’s sniffing dismissal of this as a possible motive.

To help you see how major newspapers actually sounded on the day Rice appeared, we offer this lengthy clip from Kirkpatrick’s report:

KIRKPATRICK (9/16/12): Ansar al-Sharia, the brigade of rebel fighters that witnesses say led the attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Benghazi, holds that democracy is incompatible with Islam. It has paraded the streets with weapons calling for an Islamic state, and a few months ago its leader boasted publicly that its fighters could flatten a foreign consulate.

But if the group's ideology may put it on the fringe of Libyan society, its day-to-day presence in society does not. It is just one of many autonomous battalions of heavily armed men formed during and after the uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi who have filled the void in public security left by his fall, resisting calls to disarm by saying that the weak transitional government is not up to the job.

Ansar al-Sharia's fighters have given conflicting stories about their role in the attack. Said to number fewer than 200, they can usually be found at Al Jala Hospital in Benghazi, where they act as its guards and protectors. And when instead they turned their guns on the United States mission, American security officers and the Libyan authorities did not call for help from any formal military or police force—there is none to speak of—but turned to the leader of another autonomous militia with its own Islamist ties.

''We had to coordinate everything,'' said that militia leader, Fawzi Bukatef, recalling the first phone call about the attack that he received from the mission's security team. The Libyan government, he said, ''was absent.''

The organization and firepower used in the assault, which killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, has raised alarm in Washington about the possibility of links to Al Qaeda and a premeditated conspiracy that found a pretext in anger over an American-made video mocking the Prophet Muhammad. But to Libyans, the battle for the mission has underscored how easy it is for a spark like the earlier protest in Cairo to set off such an attack in post-Qaddafi Libya, when major cities are still controlled by a patchwork of independent militias and all keep their weapons at the ready.

The battle over the mission has also became the latest skirmish in a larger struggle unfolding across the region between hard-line and moderate Islamists seeking to determine the fate of the Arab Spring.

The leaders of Libya's interim government say they hope public dismay at the attack on the mission will be the catalyst they need to finally disarm and control the militias. Mr. Stevens, the United States ambassador, was a widely admired figure for his support during the revolt against Colonel Qaddafi, and in the days after the attack far larger crowds than the one that attacked the mission turned out in both Tripoli and Benghazi to demonstrate their sadness at his death and their support for the United States.

But since the militiamen, who still call themselves ''revolutionaries,'' remain the power on the streets, there is an open question who will disarm or control them.

''The government is required to do so,'' said Mr. Bukatef, leader of eastern Libya's most potent armed force, the February 17 Brigade. ''But the government can't do it without the revolutionaries,'' he said, noting that many brigades continued to operate independently even though they now nominally report to the defense minister. ''It takes a delicate approach.''

Ansar al-Sharia declined to be interviewed for this article. The brigade in Benghazi, whose name means Supporter of Islamic Law, came together during the fight against Colonel Qaddafi.

Mr. Bukatef said that its numbers had seemed to range from 50 to about 200. He claimed that some of its members were responsible for the assassination during the uprising of the rebel commander Abdul Fattah Younes, in revenge for his previous role as a minister in the Qaddafi government who led a crackdown on Islamists. The transitional government, Mr. Bukatef said, was too weak to confront such a brigade, and so no one has been charged with the crime.

Many more-secular politicians in Libya are suspicious of Mr. Bukatef and his brigade because of their own Islamist reputation. He has been a member of Libya's branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and one of his group's commanders reporting to him is Ismail al-Salabi, who leads a group of Islamist fighters and is the brother of Libya's most prominent Islamist thinker, Ali al-Salabi. But unlike Ansar al-Sharia, both Mr. Bukatef and the Salabi brothers have emphasized their conviction that Islam requires a democratic, constitutional government.

Ansar al-Sharia, Mr. Bukatef said, was excluded from meetings of a larger eastern Libyan militia alliance that he oversees. ''Some of their members were with us at the beginning,'' he said, but ''we do not believe people who do not believe in the government are entitled to be with us.''

Mr. Bukatef dismissed suggestions by some in the West that Ansar al-Sharia might have ties to Al Qaeda or other international militants. ''They're Libyans. They're extremists. They are outlaws,'' he said, noting that some had served time in Colonel Qaddafi's jails—a radicalizing experience for many Libyan Islamists.

Witnesses at the scene of the assault on the mission said they saw pickup trucks labeled with the group's logo, which is well known in Benghazi. Fighters attacking the embassy acknowledged then that they belonged to Ansar al-Sharia, although they said there were other unarmed protesters joining them.

But amid the backlash against the attack—and the news that the beloved United States ambassador was killed—the group's leaders have tried to distance themselves from the assault, often in muddled or contradictory ways. On the morning after the attack, a spokesman for the group made a statement to local television from the hospital saluting the assault, approvingly recalling a similar mob attack on the Italian consulate in Benghazi six years ago after an Italian minister wore a T-shirt mocking the Prophet Muhammad.

But the spokesman, Hani al-Mansouri, denied that the Ansar al-Sharia brigade had participated as ''an independent entity following orders.'' He said, ''It was doing its work in Jala hospital and other places where it has assigned roles.'' And at a news conference on Thursday night, amid growing threats of retaliation against the perpetrators of the attack, Mr. Mansouri denied that any of the group's fighters had participated, pleading with the news media to accept his denial.

In the Times, Bukatef said the presumed killers were “extremists.” That’s the word Ambassador Rice used on TV that morning.

To its credit, the New York Times was trying to puzzle out the facts about who had staged the attacks, and why. Two months later, its most famous and most ridiculous columnist created her latest inane concoction. Among many offenses, she painted a rather inaccurate portrait of the news coverage in the days before Rice’s TV appearance.

Dowd has been like this for some time. She’s never been dumber than she was on Sunday, when she offered various inane pronouncements and reinvented a whole bunch of facts.

Twenty years back—in 1992!—Katherine Boo presciently warned about the press corps’ “creeping Dowdism.”

Boo knew what she was talking about. This past week, Boo won the National Book Award for a deeply serious book on a deeply serious topic. Dowd was presenting her latest pile of major crap.

Dowd clucked about cat fights, cavorted and played. She offered the world’s most absurd pseudo-advice. She invented facts; she hissed and hiss-spat.

By now, this ugly nonsense is the norm in the world of our broken-souled “press corps.” The big stars took it in stride—and they endlessly will.

DOWD AND DOWNINPANTZ: Milbank makes three!

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 2012

Part 3—Dumber than any fifth grader: If our most famous journalists were fifth graders, we’d probably fire their teachers.

“Why has been teaching Bobby Schieffer?” That’s what we’d probably say, after watching him offer this sad account of What Susan Rice Said:

SCHIEFFER (11/19/12): A lot of people in the administration say [Rice] is the odds-on favorite to replace Hillary Clinton. Because of her performance on television after it the Benghazi attacks when she said it was the result of spontaneous demonstrations in Egypt, and not, and was not a terrorist attack, are you standing fast on that?

According to Schieffer, Rice went on TV and said the Benghazi attack “was not a terrorist attack.”

If a fifth grader couldn’t do better than that, we’d probably fire his teacher. But as you may know, this particular Bobby Schieffer isn’t a struggling grade school student. He’s a multimillionaire TV broadcaster—one of the people to whom Rice spoke on September 16, the Sunday morning in question.

Schieffer hosts the CBS show, Face the Nation. If he's acting in good faith, he’s dumber than a fifth grader.

This past Sunday morning, Schieffer told the world that Rice said the Benghazi assault wasn’t a terrorist attack. But this is part of what Rice told Schieffer when she spoke with him on September 16, the morning in question:

SCHIEFFER (9/16/12): Do you agree or disagree with him that al Qaeda had some part in this?

RICE: Well, we’ll have to find out that out. I mean, I think it’s clear that there were extremist elements that joined in and escalated the violence. Whether they were al Qaeda affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremists or al Qaeda itself, I think is one of the things we’ll have to determine.

It’s clear that “extremist elements” escalated the violence, Rice told Schieffer that morning. She said it might turn out that these extremists were “al Qaeda itself.”

Does it sound to you like Rice told Schieffer that the attackers weren’t terrorists? Two months later, that’s what Schieffer told Saint John McCain and his CBS audience!

If a fifth grader couldn’t do better than that, we’d wonder about his teacher. We’d wonder why a bright fifth grader couldn’t read better than that.

Can we discuss this conduct by Schieffer? In a rational world, citizens would be shocked—and upset—to see their society’s biggest broadcasters misbehaving this way. But gross misstatement is now an expected part of mainstream press corps culture.

According to Nexis, Bob Schieffer’s groaning misstatement wasn’t mentioned on cable last night. Such misstatements are now the expected norm all through the broadcasting world.

Big career liberals accept such misconduct as they accept the turn of the seasons. Trust us: You will never see your favorite TV-star liberals complain about conduct like this.

They will complain about Sheriff Joe. They will never complain about people like Schieffer. Darlings, it just isn't done!

Quite routinely, our major journalists seem to lack the intellectual skill of the average fifth grader. Consider what Lord Dowdinpantz wrote in the Washington Post.

Dowdinpantz comes from a long line of barons—and it seems to show in his work. He was Skull and Bones at Yale. Perhaps his brothers call the Post to bail him out when he writes manifest nonsense.

Whatever! In Sunday morning’s Washington Post, Dowdinpantz went on at length, saying Rice “is ill-equipped to be the next secretary of state.”

Concerning Rice’s equipment, we have no view. We do have a view about the type of work which follows.

What would we say about a fifth grader who crayoned pensees like these? From this point on, we will use the pen name (the "nom de plume") of this Dowdinpantz:

MILBANK (11/18/12): It was Rice’s own shoot-first tendency that caused her to be benched as a spokesman for the Obama campaign for a time in 2008. She unnerved European allies when she denounced as “counterproductive” and “self-defeating” the U.N. policy that Iran suspend its nuclear program before talks can begin. She criticized President George W. Bush and McCain because they “insisted” on it. But, as The Post’s Glenn Kessler pointed out at the time, European diplomats were rattled by such remarks because the precondition was their idea.

Rice’s pugilism provoked the Russians to weigh in this week in opposition to her nomination as secretary of state. The Russian business daily Kommersant quoted an anonymous Russian foreign ministry official as saying that Rice, who quarreled with Russia over Syria, is “too ambitious and aggressive,” and her appointment would make it “more difficult for Moscow to work with Washington.”

Compared with this, the flap over Libya is relatively minor—but revealing. It’s true that, in her much-criticized TV performance, she was reciting talking points given to her by the intelligence agencies. But that’s the trouble. Rice stuck with her points even though they had been contradicted by the president of the Libyan National Assembly, who, on CBS’s “Face the Nation” just before Rice, said there was “no doubt” that the attack on Americans in Benghazi “was preplanned.” Rice rebutted the Libyan official, arguing—falsely, it turned out—that there was no evidence of such planning.

Good lord! What sorts of tutors served the prince, that he could turn out so poorly?

How ridiculous is this work? Let’s review this sad effort in steps:

Using Nexis, we find no sign in the Washington Post or the New York Times that Rice “was benched as a spokesman for the Obama campaign for a time in 2008,” although we’ll assume that some such trivial event may possibly have happened. (May have happened. Also, quite possibly not.)

Regarding Rice’s statements about Iran, you can read Glenn Kessler’s report for yourself. If you do, you’ll see that Milbank grossly misrepresented this matter. Quite plainly, the European officials about whom Kessler reported were criticizing Obama’s policy, not some “shoot-first tendency” on the part of his spokesperson.

A fifth grader could have spotted this fact. Trained as a courtier to Europe's royals, Dowdinpantz-Milbank could not.

The second paragraph we have posted is a simple embarrassment. To Milbank, if an anonymous Russian says Rice is too aggressive, that means she shouldn’t serve.

Would a fifth grader ever be willing to look this dumb in public?

Milbank even defers to Russian officials in his assault on Rice! But for full embarrassment, look what this pitiful fellow says in the last paragraph we’ve posted.

Like his patroness Lady Dowd, Milbank seems to say that Rice should have moved beyond her “talking points” on September 16—should have revealed classified information on those TV programs. Like Dowd and Schieffer both, he says Rice should have deferred to the judgment of the Libyan official who appeared on Face the Nation before her.

One weeps for children this slow. This is what that Libyan official told Schieffer that Sunday:

SCHIEFFER (9/16/12): Was this a long-planned attack, as far as you know? Or what do you know about that?

EL-MAGARIAF: The way these perpetrators acted and moved, I think we—and their choosing the specific date for this so-called demonstration, I think we have no—this leaves us with no doubt that this was preplanned, predetermined.

SCHIEFFER: And you believe that this was the work of al Qaeda, and you believe that it was led by foreigners. Is that what you're telling us?

EL-MAGARIAF: It was planned—definitely, it was planned by foreigners, by people who entered the country a few months ago, and they were planning this criminal act since their arrival.

That’s what El-Magariaf said. Who knows? It could even be right!

But to this very day, has it been determined by U.S. intelligence that the Benghazi attack had been preplanned for several months? That is was timed to coincide with September 11? As far as we know, it has not been so determined. Indeed, the Washington Post seemed to report a contradictory assessment from U.S. intelligence in a news report just this Saturday.

Had the attack been planned for months? This Sunday, neither Schieffer nor Dowd nor Dowdinpantz asserted that such a finding has been reached. And yet, all three criticized Rice because she didn’t accept this assessment two months ago, right there on the spot!

This wasn’t part of the assessment Rice had received from U.S. intelligence. There's a strong chance that it isn't true. And yet, according to three major players, she simply should have agreed with this claim, right there on network TV, on the spot!

Where does such manifest lunacy come from? And what explains the fact that conduct like this is accepted by one and all?

We’ve tried to answer that question for years. By now, though, one fact is clear: The career liberal world will never complain about work like this from people with the clout of Schieffer and Dowd.

No matter how foolish their conduct may be, Joan and Chris and Rachel won’t speak. Schieffer, Dowd and Milbank can adopt ludicrous right-wing attack lines as much as they like.

Liberal “leaders” will go after Sheriff Joe. Schieffer, Dowd and Dowdinpantz will escape any comment.

Milbank performed like a failing fifth grader in this ridiculous column. But how odd! All three of these major journalists pushed the same line this Sunday! All three advanced the ridiculous claim that Rice should have simply blurted agreement with that Libyan official.

Where did they get this ridiculous claim? How did it happen that all three of these major journalists advanced the same ridiculous thought?

Rachel and Chris and Joan won’t ask. We’ll state one obvious point:

You’d have to be dumber than any fifth grader to say that Rice should have blabbed agreement with that Libyan official. When you see three major “journalists” advance this same claim, this hasn’t happened by accident.

A group dynamic is surely involved. By whatever means, these three subhumans are almost surely reciting somebody’s line.

They did this all through the Clinton-Gore years, with results that changed world history. During that era, liberal heroes like Joan and David sat there and watched as Chris performed this function.

This Sunday, Schieffer and Dowd and Milbank were plainly reciting somebody’s line, just as they did in the bad old days. All three recited a point so inane, so plupotently stupid, that it had to come from some source.

In a rational world, this kind of Scripted Group Inanity would be seen as a firing offense. If a journalist seemed to be dumber than a fifth grader, he or she would be fired.

In our world, such conduct isn’t seen that way. In our world, this conduct is seen as The Way The Millionaires Work.

Final point, offered largely in jest: Rice’s rival for the big job is Senator John Kerry.

Kerry was Skull and Bones at Yale. So was the silly Lord Dowdinpantz, who has just invented a big pile of crap about a brother Bonesman’s opponent!

That said, Schieffer, Dowd and Milbank all advanced manifest nonsense this Sunday. But this is par for the course in our world.

Rachel Maddow will never discuss this. Neither will the bright young puppy who goes by the stage name Chris Hayes.

News you can use: Your guide to tonight’s TV watching!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012

A famous name you won’t hear: Maureen Dowd’s column in Sunday’s Times was truly a piece for the ages.

In our earlier post, we forgot to mention one point. Perhaps because the piece was so bad, the New York Times extended a favor to its brilliant star columnist:

No comments were allowed with Dowd’s column! When’s the last time you saw that practice adopted with a New York Times op-ed column?

By dint of its world-class illogic, Dowd’s column ought to go straight to the Smithsonian.

(Shorter Dowd: Susan Rice should have revealed classified information when she went on those Sunday shows! And she should have agreed with that Libyan pol! Libyan pols can't be wrong!)

Beyond that, the column extended Dowd’s decade of misogyny—a decade of misogyny directed at Democrats only. (Only Clark Hoyt dares tell.)

You’d think the liberal world would put up its dukes when a columnist behaves the way Dowd does. But you won’t hear Maureen Dowd’s name tonight on The One True Liberal Channel.

People, it just isn't done.

Lawrence O’Donnell won’t mention her column. Neither will Rachel or Chris or Big Ed—no, not even Al! The channel’s new group of Kool Kidz won’t mention Dowd’s name either.

Krystal and Joy-Ann will keep their traps shut. Joan Walsh will have seen no evil. If Ezra and Chris Hayes are on, they’ll make it a silent night too. David will have no idea.

Go ahead—reread Dowd’s nasty, ridiculous column. (Warning: Moronic word-play ahead!) Ask yourself what kind of political movement simply accepts such calumnies when they are aimed, in a nasty way, at its biggest female stars.

The answer is simple: The career liberal world accepts such conduct! The Times provides good jobs at good pay, and Dowd is a very powerful player within its broken-souled firmament.

Career liberals simply accept this crap, hoping we liberal rubes won’t notice. They accepted this all through the Clinton-Gore years. They are happy to lap it up now.

Go ahead! Reread that ridiculous column, then watch your favorite TV stars. Sheriff Joe may get mentioned tonight.

Broken-souled Dowd never will.

Smile-a-while: Is Karen DeYoung an actual human?

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012

Puzzling life-form types it up for the Post: Yesterday morning, Lindsey Graham made an odd statement on Meet the Press.

Basically, it was a minor point. We assumed it was just a misstatement—but it did seem rather odd:

GREGORY (11/18/12): Why did the office of the Director of National Intelligence on September 28 issue a statement in which they—effectively bolstering the very remarks that Susan Rice made on this program and others, that there was a spontaneous element to this and there was contradictory information? Was she not working off the same talking points that the intelligence community was working off of and that were changed, or were not said publicly, as Senator Feinstein said, for some reason to—to cover up or to not tip their hand that they were investigating these terror groups?

GRAHAM: Isn’t it kind of odd, if the reason is to take al Qaeda out of the equation, to make sure that al Qaeda doesn’t know that we are onto them, that the story they told helps the president enormously three weeks before the election because I don’t buy that for one bit. That makes no sense to me. Al Qaeda knew we knew about them. We had people in Germany that survived the attack that could be interviewed. We had drones overhead. I think it’s very odd that the storyline they chose omitted al Qaeda which would help the president enormously, and I don’t buy it.

Graham really brought the thunder on yesterday morning’s program. He kept raising his voice and emoting. In this way, he let us see he was very upset that the administration had “taken al Qaeda out of the equation” when they gave their initial account of the Benghazi attack.

Graham was really bringing the thunder. Inside our plush viewing chamber, we made one of the analysts keep turning the volume down. But why did the overwrought senator say that the administration’s story helped the president so enormously “three weeks before the election?”

Susan Rice appeared on the Sunday shows on September 16. Presumably, that’s when they took al Qaeda out of the equation as they told their disturbingly bogus tale.

Susan Rice appeared on September 16.But that was a bit more than seven weeks before the election. It’s a minor point, but we were puzzled by Graham’s remark. Surely, he doesn’t think this outrageous story appeared three weeks before the election?

We could see that Graham was very upset. But why the heck did he say that?

We wouldn’t have wondered about it again. But just now, we looked at Karen DeYoung’s news report about Graham’s overwrought appearance.

Is Karen DeYoung an actual human? Here's how she started her report in this morning’s Washington Post:

DEYOUNG (11/19/12): Republican and Democratic lawmakers sharply disagreed Sunday over whether and to what extent the Obama administration soft-pedaled its initial public explanation of the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.

“I think it’s very odd that the story line they chose omitted al-Qaeda, which would help the president enormously” three weeks before a hotly contested election in which President Obama claimed to have vanquished the terrorist group, said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.).

The White House, Graham suggested on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” “would withhold information to prevent [Obama] from looking bad.”

Presumably, DeYoung watched Graham on Meet the Press. Almost a full day later, her report appeared in the Washington Post, with Graham’s counterfactual comment faithfully included just as if it made perfect sense.

It doesn’t exactly make a big difference. But is Karen DeYoung an actual human? Surely, an actual human would work around this slightly peculiar but obvious misstatement by the overwrought Republican solon.

Unless she’s so used to typing up crap that it’s become second nature by now. From Graham's mouth right straight to your ear!

It's obviously wrong, and it does tilt the tale. But so what? All circuits whirring, "Karen DeYoung" just typed the misstatement on up!

A horrible performance by Schieffer!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012

He just can’t quit John McCain: Yesterday morning, Bob Schieffer’s performance on Face the Nation was just this side of insane.

It’s been a long time since the mainstream press signed up for a GOP lynch mob this way. (It was quite routine in the Clinton-Gore years.) But good God!

Schieffer just can’t quit John McCain! Yesterday, this was his first question to the GOP’s angriest man:

SCHIEFFER (11/19/12): Let’s talk a little bit about Libya. You were talking a lot about that. You and the president really kind of had a little set-to last week over the situation in Libya because you said once again that you would oppose the nomination of Susan Rice to be secretary of state.

A lot of people in the administration say she is the odds-on favorite to replace Hillary Clinton. Because of her performance on television after it the Benghazi attacks when she said it was the result of spontaneous demonstrations in Egypt, and not, and was not a terrorist attack, are you standing fast on that?

On September 16, Rice appeared with Schieffer himself on Face the Nation. But uh-oh! She didn’t say that the deadly attack “was the result of spontaneous demonstrations in Egypt.” And she didn’t say that the deadly attack “was not a terrorist attack.”

Here’s what she actually said. Can you tell the difference between Rice’s statements and Schieffer’s scripted paraphrase? Please note a key word—“began:”

RICE (9/16/12): Well, Bob, let me tell you what we understand to be the assessment at present. First of all, very importantly, as you discussed with the president, there is an investigation that the United States government will launch, led by the FBI that has begun.

[...]

So we’ll want to see the results of that investigation to draw any definitive conclusions. But based on the best information we have to date, what our assessment is as of the present is in fact what— It began spontaneously in Benghazi as a reaction to what had transpired some hours earlier in Cairo, where, of course, as you know, there was a violent protest outside of our embassy sparked by this hateful video.

But soon after that spontaneous protest began outside of our consulate in Benghazi, we believe that it looks like extremist elements, individuals, joined in that effort with heavy weapons of the sort that are, unfortunately, readily now available in Libya post- revolution. And that it spun from there into something much, much more violent.

[...]

SCHIEFFER: Do you agree or disagree with him that al Qaeda had some part in this?

RICE: Well, we’ll have to find out that out. I mean, I think it’s clear that there were extremist elements that joined in and escalated the violence. Whether they were al Qaeda affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremists or al Qaeda itself, I think is one of the things we’ll have to determine.

Quite plainly, she didn’t say the deadly attack “was not a terrorist attack.” In response to Schieffer's question, she explicitly said that it might have been the work of “al Qaeda itself!”

She didn’t say the deadly attack was the result of spontaneous demonstrations in Egypt (although it may have been, in some sense). She said the evening’s events began as a reaction to Cairo, after which the extremist elements joined in with their heavy weapons. On two other programs, she said they "hijacked" ongoing events.

Can you tell the difference between those accounts? As a citizen, are you required to try?

From that point on, Schieffer lobbed an astounding assortment of softballs at McCain, while accepting gross misstatements from his treasured guest. Before the tired old fellows were done, Schieffer offered this unfortunate presentation:

SCHIEFFER: I would point out just one thing. She came on this broadcast immediately after the president of Libya, who said flatly this was the work of terrorists, some of them from Mali, others outside the country. And Secretary Rice stuck to her—stuck to her story, as it were, and said, “No, our best information is, it was a result, a reaction of those demonstrations that were happening in Egypt.”

I guess what I would ask you, Senator, do you honestly believe as an ambassador, one of our key ambassadors, to the United Nations, that all Secretary Rice would have known about this was what somebody gave her in a set of talking points to be on television?

Like Maureen Dowd before him, Schieffer slimed Rice for “sticking to her story”—for refusing to agree with the claim of that Libyan pol. He plainly suggested, in the crudest ways, that Rice was sticking to a story she probably knew to be false.

But that Libyan pol had explicitly said that the attack had been preplanned for months. Does U.S. intelligence believe that even today?

As far as we know, it does not. Does Schieffer know or care?

Schieffer’s session with McCain was just extremely bad. His insinuations and bungled claims continued all through the program. An exchange with CBS reporter Bob Orr was especially bad.

But uh-oh! Finally, someone introduced contrary information! During Schieffer's panel discussion, David Ignatius said this:

IGNATIUS (11/18/12): I would just make one point. The dirty little secret here is that our intelligence analysts don’t know, even now, how all these factors came together outside the consulate on the night of September 11 so that the consulate was overrun. And that was the, one of the problems in the days immediately after.

They did have intelligence that people linked with al Qaeda were in that crowd. But in terms of pre-planning, of directives from al Qaeda in the Maghreb, or other senior al Qaeda leadership to those people to do something, they don’t have that.

They had, very quickly, intelligence that people in that group that attacked the consulate were watching what happened in Cairo live on TV. And they had surveillance of them talking about it, and then they go to the consulate to attack.

So they were trying to figure out what’s the mix of that spontaneous driver and the fact that we know there’s part of organized terrorist groups. And you know, there is a fog of intelligence analysis and that’s a part of what you’re seeing here.

Ignatius was light-years off-message! After all the scripted bullroar, Ignatius said the intelligence community still doesn’t know much, even today, about the basic questions on which the Dowds and the Schieffers opine so freely, hewing to Crazy John’s line.

Beyond that, Ignatius said the intelligence community did have information suggesting that the attack was linked to events in Cairo, to the roiling protests about the video. Yesterday, Dowd and Schieffer both seemed to say that this was always a crazy idea.

Why is this a crazy idea? Dowd forgot to say. Why should Rice have agreed with that Libyan pol? Schieffer skipped that question too.

At any rate, David Ignatius went way off-script. Schieffer’s reaction was preordained. He knew what a newsman had to do!

At this point, he changed the subject.

DOWD AND DOWDINPANTZ: Misogynistic illogic gone wild!

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2012

Part 2—What Maureen Dowd said: What’s the word for Bob Schieffer’s performance on yesterday’s Face the Nation?

Speaking with his beloved Saint McCain, Schieffer may have set a world record for servile distortion of fact. But first, let’s consider the column by Maureen Dowd which appeared in yesterday’s New York Times.

Dowd’s column helped set the horizon within which Schieffer worked. For decades, her work has helped define the boundaries of mainstream mandarin chic.

Yesterday, Dowd reeked of her famous old loathing of liberal women. Her column spilled with relentless illogic.

But then, Dowd was writing about Susan Rice. Could the outcome have been in doubt?

Dowd has conducted a terror campaign against liberal/Democratic women for the past several decades. For our money, her most heinous columns remain the ones she wrote about Judith Steinberg Dean, Howard Dean’s doctor-lady wife, whose mousy clothing infuriated Dowd during Campaign 2004.

But Dowd has trashed Democratic women, large and small, in hiss-spitting columns for many years. Has she treated any Republican woman that way? We’re not sure. See our appendix.

But in all those years, through all those assaults, only one major figure in the big mainstream press has called Dowd out for this disturbed conduct. At the end of this post, we’ll remind you who that lone wolf was.

Back to yesterday’s column:

In typical fashion, Dowd let readers enjoy some cat fights involving Rice and the other women Dowd loathes. Darlings, it was delish!

At one point, Dowd hiss-spat at Rice’s “pal Valerie Jarrett.” A bit later, she let us enjoy a remark Samantha Power made in 2002 about a remark Rice allegedly made in 1994!

We were taken back eighteen years for one alleged statement which helps us to hate! We even got to enjoy a suggestion that Rice had been set up by “the wily Hillary.” And needless to say, Rice is too ambitious, with her “bull in a china shop reputation.”

Breaking! It may well be that Rice is ambitious; many people in Washington are. But this is a very familiar theme when Dowd starts trashing Democratic women—a point which has been mentioned once within our top-end “press corps.”

Dowd’s loathing of Democratic women—and of the men who foolishly marry them—has been relentless down through the years. It leads her to the lapses of logic which littered yesterday’s column.

Could a major newspaper column possibly get any dumber? In the following passage, Dowd explains what Rice should have done when she appeared on the September 16 Sunday programs.

Yes, Dowd actually wrote this:

DOWD (11/18/12): Intelligence officials suspected affiliates of Al Qaeda and named them in their original talking points for Rice, but that information was deemed classified and was softened to “extremists” as the talking points were cycled past Justice, State, the National Security Council and other intelligence analysts.

As The Times’s Eric Schmitt wrote, some analysts worried that identifying the groups “could reveal that American spy services were eavesdropping on the militants—a fact most insurgents are already aware of.”

Rice was given the toned-down talking points, but she has access to classified information. Though she told Bob Schieffer on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that the extremist elements could have included Qaeda affiliates or Al Qaeda itself, she mostly used her appearances to emphasize the story line of the spontaneous demonstration over an anti-Muslim video. She disputed the contention of the president of Libya’s General National Congress, who called the attack “preplanned” when he talked to Schieffer just before Rice.

Some have wondered if Rice, who has a bull-in-a-china-shop reputation, is diplomatic enough for the top diplomatic job. But she would have been wise to be more bull-in-a-china-shop and vet her talking points, given that members of the intelligence and diplomatic communities and sources in news accounts considered it a terrorist attack days before Rice went on the shows. (The president and his spokesman also clung to the video story for too long.)

Rather clearly, this is what Dowd is saying in that passage:

Rice had access to classified information. She should have gone on the Sunday shows and released some of that classified information! In particular, she should have told the helpless old Schieffer that intelligence officials suspected affiliates of Al Qaeda of being involved in the deadly attacks.

According to Dowd’s own account, that information was classified. But so what? Rice should have gone on TV and blabbed it all around!

That argument is astonishing enough. But look at the various factual claims with which Dowd toys in that passage:

Concerning the role of Al Qaeda: Could Dowd get dumber and live? According to Dowd, intelligence sources only "suspected" that "affiliates of" Al Qaeda had been involved in the attack. And she notes that Rice directly told Schieffer that the attack may have been staged by "al Qaeda itself." But so what? She still seems to say that Rice was somehow holding back from the tired old fellow.

Concerning the issue of preplanning/premeditation: Dowd complains that Rice didn’t agree with the president of Libya’s General National Congress, who called the attack “preplanned” when he spoke to Schieffer. But that man said the attack had been preplanned for several months. Acording to Saturday’s Washington Post, that still isn't the view of the intelligence community, even now, even today.

Concerning the role of the anti-Islamic video: At the end of that pssage, Dowd snarks at Obama as well as Rice for “clinging to the video story for too long.” But according to Saturday’s Post, intelligence sources still believe that the attack was propelled by anger at the video, or at least in reaction to protests against the video in Cairo that day.

Is that true? Did anger about the video lead to this deadly assault? We have no idea—and neither does Dowd. She only knows the current scripts she hears at the cocktail parties where mandarin chic gets devised.

Astonishing, isn’t it? According to Dowd, Rice should have released classified information—and she should have agreed with a Libyan pol when he said something which disagreed with U.S. intelligence! How foolish is Dowd when it comes to such matters? Here's one more part of her column, paired with a piece of reporting from Saturday’s Washington Post:

DOWD (11/18/12): An Africa expert, Rice should have realized that when a gang showed up with R.P.G.’s and mortars in a place known as a hotbed of Qaeda sympathizers and Islamic extremist training camps, it was not anger over a movie.

DEYOUNG (11/17/12): [T]he CIA and other intelligence analysts have settled on what amounts to a hybrid view, suggesting that the Cairo protest sparked militants in Libya, who quickly mobilized an assault on U.S. facilities in Benghazi.

Why can't it be anger over a movie? Dowd forgets to explain. But according to Saturday’s Washington Post, the CIA currently thinks that the militants in Libya were reacting to the protests against the video—and that the deadly attack was “quickly mobilized” in response to those protests.

In fact, Rice didn’t express a view on those points on the September 16 shows. But Dowd seems to think these facts have been settled in a GOP-scripted way.

As far was we know, they haven’t. It doesn’t seem to occur to Dowd that Rice, “as an Africa expert,” might know more about these matters than she and the punch-drunk friends from whom she has gotten her conception of what must have happened that day.

The bizarre illogic of Dowd’s piece is matched only by its cavalier treatment of unresolved facts. And by her loathing of Democratic women, a loathing which rages on.

Only once has a major figure denounced that loathing in the big mainstream press. That boom was lowered by Clark Hoyt, public editor of the Times in 2008.

In a scathing denunciation, Hoyt savaged Dowd for “the relentless nature of her gender-laden assault on [Hillary] Clinton.” This is the way his column began:

HOYT (6/22/08): Some supporters of Hillary Clinton believe that sexism colored news coverage of her presidential campaign. The Times reported in a front-page article on June 13 that many are proposing boycotts of cable news networks and that a “Media Hall of Shame” has been created by the National Organization for Women.

The Times itself, however, was barely mentioned, even though two of its Op-Ed columnists, Maureen Dowd and William Kristol, were named in the Hall of Shame.

Peggy Aulisio of South Dartmouth, Mass., said, “A real review of your own stories and columns is warranted.” I think so too. And I think a fair reading suggests that The Times did a reasonably good job in its news articles. But Dowd’s columns about Clinton’s campaign were so loaded with language painting her as a 50-foot woman with a suffocating embrace, a conniving film noir dame and a victim dependent on her husband that they could easily have been listed in that Times article on sexism, right along with the comments of Chris Matthews, Mike Barnicle, Tucker Carlson or, for that matter, Kristol, who made the Hall of Shame for a comment on Fox News, not for his Times work.

That column was long overdue when Hoyt wrote it. He wrote it because, as the Times public editor, he wasn’t standing in line, hoping for future employment at the great newspaper.

His distinguished career was largely behind him. He could write things which were true.

In our final post today, we will list some of the names who won’t criticize Dowd's conduct tonight. In the meantime, yesterday's column is really one for the ages! The loathing of major Dem women returned, as Dowd helped readers enjoy some good cat fights.

But good God! The logic of that piece! If the New York Times was a real newspaper, it would be greatly ashamed.

According to Dowd, Rice should have gone on network TV and released classified information. And not only that! When a Libyan pol made a wild statement, she should have agreed on the spot!

How dare our United Nations ambassador disagree with a Libyan pol?

Who except the world’s craziest people reason the way Dowd did in this piece? Dowd has long been one of those people—although you won’t hrear that obvious judgment on your TV machine tonight.

Tomorrow: Dowdinpantz writes the same column!

Two categories of women: Early in yesterday’s piece, Dowd passed judgment on the state of Susan Rice’s soul:

DOWD: Our Rice is better than your Rice.

That’s the argument Democrats are aggressively making against Republicans.

And it’s true. Condi Rice sold her soul. Susan Rice merely rented hers on the talk shows one Sunday in September.

Did Susan Rice “rent her soul” on those talk shows? As we’ve noted, Dowd employs some very strange logic in support of that claim.

But how about Condoleezza Rice (no relation to Susan)? Dowd was even tougher on Condi, saying she sold her soul during her service to Bush.

Question: Did Dowd ever say such a thing in real time? Or does she only write columns like this about Democratic women?

We don’t know the answer to that. In a quick search, we couldn’t find anything resembling that statement in the years when Condoleezza Rice was warning us about mushroom clouds. Again and again and again and again, Dowd's judgments were massively muted.

Yesterday, Dowd said Condi sold her soul—but she only said it as a route to the soul of Susan Rice. Your Thanksgiving assignment, should you choose to accept it:

Has Dowd ever attacked a Republican woman in the highly personal ways she routinely does with Democrats? You’ll have to research this for yourself:

As you know, your darling friends on The One True Channel will never help you with this topic. Dearest darlings, it just isn't done! Ginormous careers are at stake!

DOWD AND DOWDINPANTZ: Pundits’ delight!

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 2012

Part 1—The pleasures of Rice and Petraeus: In this morning’s Washington Post, two tired old kill-joys have come to the fore.

The kill-joys appear, side by side, right at the top of the Post’s op-ed page. In our hard-copy paper, these are the headlines which sit atop their pitiful buzz-killing columns:

Headlines atop the Post’s op-ed page:
Stop scapegoating Susan Rice
A modern witch hunt

The first kill-joy is Robert Kagan, no liberal. He wants the scapegoating of Rice to stop.

The second kill-joy is David Ignatius. He challenges the sexual witch hunt aimed at David Petraeus and at General John Allen.

Might we state an obvious point? Ignatius and Kagan don’t understand the shape of modern pundit culture! If we didn’t have scapegoats and sexual witch hunts, what would our big pundits discuss?

They might be forced to discuss the budget! They might be forced to discuss tax rates—or even our spreading income inequality!

No scapegoats and no sexual witch hunts? What could Kagan/Ignatius be thinking in making this crackpot request?

Ignatius and Kagan don’t seem to grasp the shape of modern pundit culture. Long ago, a major pundit displayed her superior grasp of this subject.

We’ve often cited Joe Klein’s anecdote about the brilliant Maureen Dowd. Today, as Ignatius and Kagan rant, we cite his story again.

Dowd had just won the Pulitzer Prize for her year-long obsession with Miss Lewinksy. Klein offered his anecdote to Gay Jervey, who profiled Dowd for Brill’s Content and has never been heard from again:

JERVEY (6/99): Among Washington columnists, there is no keener observer of Bill Clinton than Maureen Dowd...[S]he seems obsessed with his personality, always looking for the key to his character—or rather, his utter lack thereof. In the summer of 1997, for example, when President Clinton installed a hot tub at the White House, Dowd traveled to Santa Monica to visit the showroom of the manufacturer who had made the President’s new toy. She wanted to test the waters.

[...]

"Maureen is very talented," observes Joe Klein of The New Yorker. "But she is ground zero of what the press has come to be about in the nineties...I remember having a discussion with her in which I said, 'Maureen, why don't you go out and report about something significant, go out and see poor people, do something real?' And she said, ‘You mean I should write about welfare reform?’”

Darlings! If it weren’t for scapegoats, sex scandals and hot tubs, Americans pundits might have to think about topics like welfare reform!

Dowd was already quite savvy back then—and she’s every bit as savvy today. In this morning’s New York Times, she isn’t falling for Kagan/Ignatius’ silly old goo-goo trick.

Neither is Lord Dowdinpantz, her male counterpart, who writes in this morning’s Post.

In her new column, Dowd extends the scapegoating of Rice is her usual inane and ugly way. Essentially, Dowdinpantz writes the same column in the Washington Post.

According to Klein, Dowd was “ground zero of what the press has come to be about in the nineties.” And sure enough! She and Milbank are still ground zero today, a point we will be exploring over the next several days.

Their logic is often quite weak today—but their scapegoating skills are quite strong. These are very stupid columns—but they do define the shape of the modern pundit world.

Long ago—in 1992!—Katherine Boo presciently warned about the press corps’ “creeping Dowdism.” Just this past week, Boo won the National Book Award for a book about something significant.

That said, Boo and her book will be widely ignored. Maureen Dowd’s values still rule the press world, even if mossbacks like Kagan/Ignatius refuse to get the word.

Dowd is especially worthless today. Much of her column makes no sense at all. But on the bright side, she isn’t discussing welfare reform—and she won’t be criticized for her conduct in the career liberal world.

Just watch! Joan Walsh and Rachel won’t say boo. Lawrence won’t challenge this trend-setter either.

Dearest darlings! It just isn’t done! Scapegoats and sexual witch hunts are fun! So is that dog on the roof of that car, the iconic Irish setterwho led Lady Collins’ last column.

This piddle is never going to stop. Kagan/Ignatius need to grow up, need to grasp the true shape of the world.

Tomorrow—part 2: Lady Dowd’s relentless loathing

Tuesday: The logic of Lord Dowdinpantz

RICE WATCH: The Post keeps Susan Rice under the bus!

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2012

Front-page report serves McCain: Was Susan Rice vindicated by David Petraeus’ closed-door testimony before the House and Senate Intelligence Committees?

Not at the Washington Post, where confusion reigned—and John McCain’s interests were served—in this gruesome front page news report by Karen DeYoung.

DeYoung’s report is awful from its fatuous headline on down. (Hard copy headline: "Libya attack was terrorism, Petraeus testifies on Hill.")

This report is dreck, starting in paragraph 2. But here are a few basic points:

Keeping Rice under the bus: Here is DeYoung’s account of Susan Rice’s now-famous TV appearances on September 16:

DEYOUNG (11/17/12): The timing of the CIA’s conclusion has become a contentious issue in Congress, where some prominent Republicans have charged that Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and President Obama’s leading candidate to become secretary of state, knowingly presented a whitewashed account in television appearances on Sept. 16.

Reading from administration talking points, Rice hewed to the “spontaneous” theory, saying that the attack began as a protest against an anti-Islamic video that was privately produced in the United States and was hijacked by “opportunistic extremist elements.” In the television interviews, she said this was the “best information” available, but stressed that the matter was under investigation.

According to DeYoung, Rice was “reading from administration talking points” when she appeared on those programs. That’s an uglier way of saying this:

Rice was presenting the intelligence community’s best assessment of what had occurred.

Essentially, DeYoung reports that Rice was reading Obama’s script. That is a very ugly way of describing what happened. Beyond that, it leaves Post readers barefoot and clueless about where the intelligence assessment came from.

Post readers were very poorly served by this ugly report.

A striking claim which gets pushed to the curb: Later in her report, DeYoung describes the process which produced the early assessment of what had occurred at the consulate.

As she does, she rushes by several significant facts. We'll highlight just one passage:

DEYOUNG: In the swirl of initial reporting about the attack, which killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, two accounts made their way into the first round of analysis, the officials said. Reports from the ground in Libya described a demonstration at the Benghazi mission, similar to a large anti-U.S. protest the same day outside the U.S. Embassy in Egypt.

At the same time, intelligence quickly uncovered links to militant groups, including associates of al-Qaeda. The administration did not make the terrorist links public until the Sept. 19 congressional testimony by Matthew G. Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Since then, the CIA and other intelligence analysts have settled on what amounts to a hybrid view, suggesting that the Cairo protest sparked militants in Libya, who quickly mobilized an assault on U.S. facilities in Benghazi.

The details about possible al-Qaeda involvement were not included in talking points initially used by both Petraeus and Rice because they were preliminary and were based on classified sources, intelligence officials said.

Check out that highlighted passage.

According to DeYoung, the current CIA assessment holds that the militants who staged the deadly attack were reacting to the Cairo protests that day—that they “quickly mobilized an assault” on the Benghazi compound.

This contradicts a claim which is still being made against Rice—the claim that she refused to acknowledge the obvious fact that the attack was preplanned, perhaps for months.

From the beginning, Fox World has insisted that the Benghazi attack just must have been preplanned to coincide with September 11. Just this Thursday, the New York Times described the ongoing complaint about Rice in this way:

“Ms. Rice...has come under withering attack from Senator John McCain and other Republicans for suggesting that the siege in Benghazi that killed four Americans was a spontaneous protest rather than a premeditated terrorist attack.” (Our emphasis.)

Right from the start, crackpot Republicans have insisted that the assault was surely “premeditated”—preplanned to coincide with the anniversary of September 11. Rice has been called every name in the book for failing to state this obvious fact on those TV news shows.

This morning, DeYoung reports that the intelligence community doesn’t believe the attack was preplanned! She says the CIA thinks the assault was “quickly mobilized” in reaction to the events in Cairo.

But so what! DeYoung fails to note that this contradicts a basic claim which is still being made against Rice—a claim McCain has been making. Rice remains under the bus in this piece.

McCain is untouched, serene. DeYoung works hard to keep you from knowing how crazy his conduct has been.

This is a horrible news report, in quite a few different ways. DeYoung is reinventing basic facts as early as paragraph 2, ginning up conflict and contradiction as she goes.

But more than anything else, this report protects the craziness of McCain and fails to provide basic fairness to Rice. On the bright side:

In 2006, DeYoung got to write the authorized biography of the sainted Colin Powell. In the book, she served as “sock puppet” to the great man, according to one New York Times review.

Her report today is misleading and confusing. It jumbles its basic information. It’s very unfair to Rice. It serves Post readers very badly.

But on the bright side, DeYoung may get to write McCain’s official biography too! And isn’t that what this big crazy world of pseudo-journalism is really all about?

Extra credit/A magical word: Note the way a magical word is tossed around in this piece. For one example, revisit this horrible passage:

DEYOUNG: Reading from administration talking points, Rice hewed to the “spontaneous” theory...

Rice hewed to the “spontaneous” theory? Is that even written in English?

By now, the world “spontaneous” serves as a talisman is the reporting of the assault against Rice. You write it to signal GOP hacks that you are helping advance their claims—claims which are so incoherent that they can’t be conveyed in any conventional way.

Rice hewed to the “spontaneous” theory! DeYoung slimes Rice for this misconduct, then notes, much later in the piece, that the CIA now believes that the deadly assault was "quickly mobilized" in reaction to the events in Cairo.

DeYoung hurries you past that contradiction. This is a terribly fake news report, a terrible sign of the times.

Smile-a-while: CNN previews hero Petraeus!

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2012

Well-known genius prepared to “acknowledge” that he knew all along: No one who watches the press corps closely can escape the sneaking suspicion that they can’t be human life-forms.

Case in point: Barbara Starr’s report to Anderson Cooper about what Petraeus was going to testify today. Starr appeared with Cooper last night, Thursday night, in the 8 o’clock hour.

What follows was Starr's sneak preview of Petraeus’ upcoming testimony before the Senate and House Intelligence Committees concerning the Benghazi attack.

She said the following with a straight face, confusing heretical Cooper:

STARR (11/15/12): Well, good evening, Anderson. That's right, I've spoken to a source who is directly familiar with Petraeus' thinking, what he's planning to try and say on Capitol Hill tomorrow. He wants to testify. He wants to clear up any, what he believes are misrepresentations of what he has said in the past and what he thinks really happened in Benghazi.

First up, this source says that Petraeus will acknowledge that he knew quite quickly, immediately afterwards, that it was Ansar al-Sharia, that Libyan al Qaeda sympathizer group, that was responsible for it. But they had some conflicting information. He also had some 20 reports that it might have been related to that riot that broke out in Cairo just before the attack regarding that anti-Islamic film.

There had been rioting in Egypt and of course this is the contradictory thread of the narrative here, that it was riots that, in Egypt, that led to the attack on the embassy in Libya, on the consulate in Libya. So he's going to talk about having these two threads of information, but his sense right from the start that it was a terrorist attack by Ansar al-Sharia. A pretty murky group, a pretty loose collection of characters.

Anderson?

Could any human make that up? According to Starr, the great Petraeus wanted to “acknowledge” that he knew quite quickly, immediately afterwards, that Ansar al-Sharia was responsible for the Benghazi attack.

According to Starr, Petraeus was willing to “acknowledge” this fact. To his credit, Cooper was puzzled by the great man’s greatness:

COOPER (continuing directly): So—this is really interesting to me. So just to be clear, your source is saying General Petraeus knew almost immediately or felt that it was a terrorist attack, knew the group involved, even though he told members of Congress three days after the attack that it could have been spontaneous and there's also this—the statement made by the director of National Intelligence, on the DNI, the end of October, who put out a statement saying—you know, in the wake of criticism of Ambassador Rice—saying that early reports, you know, indicated it might have been linked to—you know, might have been a spontaneous demonstration and Ambassador Rice went out on Sunday saying—you know, five days after, saying it was possibly—early reports were spontaneous demonstration had been hijacked then by other groups.

So if he had a gut feeling or knew— I don't get why the DNI would have put out that statement if Petraeus was saying it was a terror attack or felt it was.

Cooper still didn't quite "get it." Almost immediately, Petraeus knew it was Ansar al-Sharia—but that sort of isn’t what he said in real time! And it sort of isn’t what he briefed Susan Rice to say.

Don’t worry! In the case of greatness like this, the life-forms can always explain. Starr helped Cooper understand.

Finally, Cooper surrendered:

STARR (continuing directly): Well, here's what we're looking at. We're looking at two threads of intelligence. One is, who was responsible? The second one, what was their motivation? And the sense is that these two threads of intelligence began to cross. You could have had these Ansar al-Sharia people start this trouble and they could have supposedly been motivated by the riots and the video but what we know now is Petraeus feels at some point the CIA was able to largely disprove that the video played a central role.

The problem is the timing. They didn't disprove those 20 reports until after he briefed Congress.

COOPER: OK. Barbara Starr reporting at the Pentagon, appreciate that. Fascinating stuff tonight. We'll see what he says exactly tomorrow.

Starr’s explanation was clear as mud. But of one thing, there could be no real doubt:

Petraeus had understood all along! He would even “acknowledge” that fact when he testified, she explained to the floundering Cooper.

Greatness like this can be hard to fathom. We cheered Starr for the patience she showed, giving Cooper two bites at the apple.

Breaking! For Kevin Drum's report on what Petraeus said, you know what to do: Just click here.