FINAL BUNGLES ON BENGHAZI: John King deceives the world!

MONDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2012

CNN’s Smithsonian-ready 20-minute disgrace: Last Friday night, John King presented a 20-minute disgrace on little-watched CNN.

He was guest-hosting for Anderson Cooper. For our initial report on this absolute garbage, click here. To peruse the full transcript, click this.

Today, we want to show you the key part of King’s deception—the grossly misleading quotation he cherry-picked from Susan Rice.

But first, let’s list the four major ways a scam like this can occur. This scam has been conducted all over the press.

Four factors allow this to happen:

Death by lack of certainty: When Rice appeared on those Sunday shows, she stressed a key fact again and again. She was offering a preliminary assessment, she said. She didn’t yet know all the facts. This was just the “best assessment” available.

You simply can’t make a statement like that to the harlequins who pose as our journalists. These life-forms insist on a simple story—and they want their story right now!

If you say that the evidence isn’t all in, they simply aren’t able to process your statement. They’ll simply pretend that you said something different. We’ll offer some gruesome examples of this conduct in the next few days.

Death by complexity: When Rice went on the Sunday shows, she told a preliminary story—and her story had two parts.

But uh-oh! Two parts is one too many for the life-forms found in our press corps!

We know, we know—it’s hard to believe. But these life-forms simply can’t process that degree of complexity! If you tell them a story which has two parts, they’ll simply repeat the part they prefer. The other part gets thrown away.

Two parts is one part too many!

Death by submission to power: In this case, powerful elements quickly appeared insisting on a bogus account of what Rice actually said. The press corps quickly submitted to this assertion of power, just as they did all through the Clinton-Gore years.

Life is easier for these life-forms when they don’t resist or complain. As Grover Norquist correctly explained: “Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are very unpleasant. But when they've been ‘fixed,’ then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful.”

Death by liberal silence: All through the Clinton-Gore years, death occurred in those three major ways—and liberals sat and watched. The same thing has happened in this case. This silence also brings death.

With those principles established, let’s watch King make his central move in last Friday’s segment.

In fairness, this entire segment was pure perfect crap, and it ran a full twenty minutes. But let’s watch King as he cherry-picks Rice, the key move in his maneuver.

Without a hint of irony, King told us at the start of the show that he would be “Keeping Them Honest!” Within a few minutes, he ran tape of Ambassador Rice on September 16—and he cherry-picked what she said:
KING (10/19/12): We begin tonight "Keeping Them Honest" with breaking news about who knew what and when they knew it. All that in connection with the attack that killed four Americans in Benghazi, including America's ambassador to Libya.

The time line is crucial, both as a simple matter of fact and because it's become a political bone of contention.

Tonight, there are key new pieces of it. [CNN] has learned that even as the country was waking up to the fact that four Americans were dead, including U.S. ambassador Christopher Stevens, top White House officials were in frequent contact with senior intelligence officials, multiple conversations and possibly, we are told tonight, at least one secure video conference involving the CIA director, David Petraeus, the White House national security advisor Thomas Donilon and perhaps the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton.

Now, we don't know yet what was said or whether those discussions covered raw intelligence from Libya pointing to terrorist involvement. We have been reporting such early indications existed. And tonight, the Associated Press says some of it was coming from the CIA station chief on the ground. Whether or how it was distributed, we just don't know yet.

Late today, though, Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, had this to say to CNN's Wolf Blitzer:

(Begin videotape)
ROGERS: I want to say we, the committee, were in possession of information that provided by the intelligence community that pretty much said this was a military-style attack within less than 24 hours.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you sure—
(End videotape)

KING: Presumably, the White House also had that information. So why then on September 15th [sic] did the United Nations ambassador Susan Rice describe the attack this way?

RICE (videotape): It's important to know that there's an FBI investigation that has begun and will take some time to be completed. That will tell us with certainty what transpired. But, our current best assessment based on the information that we have at present is that in fact, what this began as was a spontaneous, not a premeditated response to what had transpired in Cairo. In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated.

KING: The “spontaneous and not premeditated” is the important part. That was four days after raw intelligence was available contradicting that. And three days after the intelligence community may have apprised both lawmakers and the White House that such intelligence, preliminary though it may have been, in fact existed.

So why then did Susan Rice say that?
There you see it—the classic cherry-pick! It’s the cherry-pick which has defined this event right from the start.

In this excited report, King offered tape of Rice’s appearance on ABC’s This Week. He presented the first part of what she said—and he disappeared the second!

Excitedly, King wondered why Rice didn’t say the sorts of things to which Mike Rogers alluded. But as we showed you in our last post, this is what Rice went on to say on This Week.

King left the highlighted part of this statement on the cutting-room floor:
RICE (9/16/12): Well, Jake, first of all, it's important to know that there's an FBI investigation that has begun and will take some time to be completed. That will tell us with certainty what transpired.

But our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as was a spontaneous, not a premeditated, response to what happened transpired in Cairo. In Cairo, as you know, a few hours earlier, there was a violent protest that was undertaken in reaction to this very offensive video that was disseminated.

We believe that folks in Benghazi, a small number of people, came to the embassy to—or to the consulate rather—to replicate the sort of challenge that was posed in Cairo. And then, as that unfolded, it seems to have been hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons, weapons that, as you know, in the wake of the revolution in Libya, are quite common and accessible. And it then evolved from there.
King played the first part of that tape, dumped the part we highlight. “Keeping them Honest,” he then wondered why Susan Rice didn’t say the very things Susan Rice actually said!

We have some questions to ask ourselves today:

Do you really think King has never gone back to review the actual transcripts and tapes? If so, why is he paid seven figures to strut and fret on the air?

Do you really think that King’s producers—and the pitiful Cooper himself—don’t know what Rice actually said? Do you really think they’ve never looked? Do you think they don’t understand?

King’s entire twenty-minute segment was a disgrace. It ended with that astonishing statement by the burned-out old hack, Paul Begala. (With “liberals” like that...)

But King created a classic moment at the start of that segment. It ought to go to the Smithsonian, so future scholars can study the work of modern life-forms like King.

That was a classic cherry-picked quote! But tonight, as you watch The One True Channel, none of the children will say a thing. The clown Chris Matthews won’t say boo.

Lawrence certainly won't say a word. People! King is from Dorchester too!

Darlings, it simply isn’t done! Susan Rice can go hang in the yard! The children aren’t paid to care.

A requisite part of the cherry-pick: Please note the way the cherry-pick works:

King played tape of the first part of Rice’s statement—the first part of her two-part story. He introduced the tape like this:

“So why then on September 16th did the United Nations ambassador Susan Rice describe the attack this way?”

But that isn’t the way she described the attack! That’s the way she described what was happening before the heavily-armed extremists arrived and the attack began.

Do you really think King doesn’t know that? Do you think our adorable children should complain tonight about what this "journalist" did?

17 comments:

  1. Neither James Carville nor Paul Begala have ever been liberals.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks for the boilerplate reply, Anonymous Idiot.

      Meanwhile, in the world of reality, Begala was a chief Clinton-Gore campaign strategist. He is indeed emblematic of a certain sort of establishment "liberal."

      It's really almost incredible to believe, but you must imagine your comment is a rebuttal of some sort to this:

      "King’s entire twenty-minute segment was a disgrace. It ended with that astonishing statement by the burned-out old hack, Paul Begala. (With “liberals” like that...)"

      What a weak, sad mind you exhibit Anonymous Idiot.

      Delete
    2. "in the world of reality..."

      Perhaps the far side of Neptune is your world of reality, but not here on the planet Earth. Begala and Carville are as liberal is the DLC is a progressive organization and CNN is a neutral cable news station. At best, they are "centrists" and at worse (and more likely) they are corporate shills pretending to be "from the left."

      Finally, my comment was not what you claim it to be. It is called setting the record straight, something Bob used to do.

      Have a nice nap.

      Delete
    3. No, you're not setting the record straight.

      You're just making assertions -- unfounded assertions that you are pulling directly from your ample Cheeto-stuffed ass.

      When confronted with facts you can't contradict [e.g. Begala was a chief Clinton-Gore campaign strategist. He is indeed emblematic of a certain sort of establishment "liberal."], you apparently just wipe some of that sickly orange dust from your hands onto your soiled underpants, reach up into your sphincter for another useless artifact of sh!t, which you then slowly tap into your basement PC. "Mom! When are you gonna go get some more Diet Pepsi -- today????"

      Delete
  2. Conservatives have another problem with the "spontaneous demonstration" theory: even the demonstrations that were provoked by that notorious movie trailer weren't truly "spontaneous". Nobody would have heard of that trailer if someone used it for the purpose of rabble-rousing.

    Furthermore, Mr. Obama railed against the video at the UN. The LA Times reported:
    Obama condemned the American-made anti-Islamic video that ostensibly sparked the protests, calling the video "crude and disgusting." The film, he said, "is an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well" because it embodies intolerance.

    Conservatives think it was inappropriate for the President to even discuss the video. The violent demonstrations and attacks were unjustified, period.

    Another point that Jews are beginning to notice is that Muslims routinely say disgusting things about Jews, but the White House didn't mention those insults at the UN.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Not really sure what the above comment has to do with the post above...

      Delete
    2. Speak of the Devil and you hear the rustle of his wings.

      "Conservatives think it was inappropriate for the President to even discuss the video."

      As I said in an earlier post, the official right wing position is that the movie trailer had nothing to do with the attack, and we now have confirmation from our "house Republican."

      We can't even discuss the possibility without offending those who REALLY know what happened.

      Spontaneous does not have to mean leaderless. It can also mean spur-of the-moment.

      There are plenty of people able to get in front of a mob and lead it in a particular direction. And some of them are trained terrorists.

      As far as assault rifles and RPG's, they DID happen to be readily available, and they were in the hands of men that were NOT members of a terrorist organization.

      After all, there had been an armed insurrection in Benghazi not long before.

      Delete
    3. David, unfortunately, it can be both spontaneous and pre-planned, even months in advance, but we don't know yet.

      For instance, this particular band of militants could have been planning and practicing their attack on the Benghazi compound for months.

      And when they saw the protests breaking out in the region, they said, "Now is the time to attack."

      That would make it pre-planned, spontaneous and opportunistic, all at the same time.

      Delete
    4. David's comment when it was revealed, to many's non-surprise, that the reasons for invading Iraq were bogus, was probably, " Oops. Everyone makes mistakes, I guess."

      How the worm has turned.

      Delete
  3. somerby says:

    “ *That* is exactly what the scam has been about all along.
    There are many agendas within the organs of our “mainstream press corps.” That said, everyone has agreed to this scam, including the children who serve us our comfort food each night on The One True Liberal Channel.”


    >>> the 'that” somerby refers to is the following, which he put in bold letters:

    somerby: “Monday night’s debate doesn't look like a mismatch anymore.
    Instead, when President Obama meets Republican challenger Mitt Romney in Boca Raton, Fla., he will face an opponent who has already made up tremendous ground on the subject...”

    >>> that is ridiculous. you cant in your right mind equate cnn and msnbc. this is obvious (probably paid for) anti-msnbc propaganda and therefore indirectly against the dem party done under cover of being for rice and therefore for obama.

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    Replies
    1. Well, at least you've chose a good moniker this time!

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  4. This, of course is exactly correct and shows the journalistic malpractice at the heart of this "story:"

    --“So why then on September 16th did the United Nations ambassador Susan Rice describe the attack this way?”

    --But that isn’t the way she described the attack! That’s the way she described what was happening before the heavily-armed extremists arrived and the attack began.

    But, Somerby should shut up about it!

    Why, he's a paid agent working against MSNBC (probably, anyway)... And therefore(!) working against Obama.

    You just can't make this stuff up!

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  5. anon 1:37,

    forget the specifics, the rice case, for a monment. somerby made a general statement equating msnbc with the rest of the main stream media. he is saying that msnbc is interested in tighening up the race to romneys favor. totally nuts.

    ReplyDelete
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    1. "msnbc is interested in tighening [sic] up the race"

      Not what I got from this.

      "Afraid to step on certain toes" -- that's how I read this.

      Makes perfect sense, too.

      Delete
  6. whoops, my comments above are misplaced.

    they are intended for the next column -- "FINAL BUNGLES ON BENGHAZI: The Washington Post explains the scam!"

    http://dailyhowler.blogspot.com/2012/10/final-bungles-on-benghazi-washington.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Dude, they're misplaced no matter where you put them!

      Delete