BANANA REPUBLIC BENGHAZI: Any complaint will do!

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 29, 2012

Concerning the Libyan president: Do you live in a banana republic?

We think you do. Consider this:

Susan Collins thinks that Ambassador Rice should have agreed, right there on the spot, with the Libyan president. And Maureen Dowd thinks that makes sense! (See our previous post.)

Sadly, that doesn’t make sense. Just to refresh you, here is the passage from yesterday’s column in which Dowd transmitted this nonsense:

DOWD (11/28/12): When Rice heard the president of the Libyan National Congress tell Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation,” right before her appearance, that 50 people had been arrested who were either foreign or affiliated with or sympathized with Al Qaeda, why did she push back with the video story? “Why wouldn’t she think what the Libyan president said mattered?” Collins wondered.

Should Rice have agreed with the Libyan president? Obviously, no. Just ask yourself this: What ever happened to the fifty people who “had been arrested?”

Uh-oh! By September 26, the number of miscreants had been bumped back. On that date, Magariaf told the Today show that “at least forty people” had been “interrogated.”

Is it possible that Magariaf had rounded up the usual suspects? We have heard little follow-up about what happened to all those people who got arrested—and as you’ll recall, the criticism quickly turned to the claim that no one had been apprehended for the Benghazi attack.

None of that matters to Maureen Dowd. Inside a banana republic press corps, any complaint will do!

Meanwhile, this was Magariaf on the Today show on September 26. Do you think Ambassador Rice should have rushed to agree with him ten days earlier, right there on the spot?

ANN CURRY (9/26/12): Would you call the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi an act of terrorism?

MAGARIAF: I have no doubt about that, and that it's a pre-planned act of terrorism directed against American citizens.

CURRY: What is your evidence that it was a pre-planned act of terrorism?

MAGARIAF: Number one is choosing the date, 11th of September. It has all the significance. If we take the facts about the, the way it was executed, we can see that there's enough proof that it is a pre-planned act of terrorism.

CURRY: Describe the attack based on your investigation.

MAGARIAF: It’s too early for me to give the details, I have minor details about this. But it was launched in—with a high degree of accuracy, which means that the perpetrators must have some kind of exercise on how to hit and how to launch these rockets.

[...]

CURRY: So do you know then who is behind this attack and what the motive was?

MAGARIAF: I think it’s—it's al Qaeda elements who are hiding in, in Libya.

CURRY: Is there any direct evidence that it is al Qaeda behind this attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi?

MAGARIAF: No, so far not—so far not. As the investigation progresses, there is the, there is the likelihood that we’ll—we’ll reach that. The attack on the consulate was, was pre-planned. Whether with the intention of killing Ambassador Stevens or not, that’s—it’s too early to say.

Ten days later, Magariaf still had no direct evidence that al Qaeda was behind the attack! But ten days earlier, Rice was supposed to agree with him, right on the spot, when he said it did!

His evidence that the attack was preplanned seemed to consist in the date.

Susan Rice would have been out of her mind to agree with Magariaf on the spot. But so what? Almost eleven weeks later, Maureen Dowd shows no sign of grasping this fact.

Banana republics are like that. You live in such a republic.