“Wag the Dog” was a popular film of the late 90s in which corrupt politicians invented a phony war and manipulated the media to boost a President’s reelection bid.
Thus far the Obama administration has successfully pulled off a similar feat with the cooperation of a supine mainstream media that’s virtually indistinguishable from the campaign’s own PR flacks.
The “Wag the Dog” diversion in this case concerns the September 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya. That attack resulted in the death of our U.S. ambassador and three others—Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods, and Sean Smith—all of whom had ties to the San Diego area.
For days after the attack the Obama administration pushed the idea that the Benghazi raid was a spontaneous uprising caused by a short YouTube trailer of a cheap anti-Muslim movie filmed in Southern California. The notion that the assault was an act of terrorism was repeatedly avoided—despite the fact that Libya’s president quickly concluded that the coordinated attack with heavy weapons was carried out by terrorists.
Indeed, five days after the September 11 attack, U. N. Ambassador Susan Rice (not Secretary of State Clinton) went on five Sunday TV news shows to reiterate the fiction that the Benghazi attack was a spontaneous response to this Internet clip.
Adding to the dramatic distraction was fervid media focus on the producers and promoters of the film—including a faux perp-walk of the so-called “Coptic Christian” who probably violated his felony-based probation terms by putting the movie on the Internet.
Wagging along with the Obama media were local religious leaders who uncritically swallowed the administration’s spontaneous-demonstration script in a statement deploring the movie and, secondarily, the violence it supposedly spawned. I had to endure a reading of this “useful idiot” missive during a Sunday service in Menifee.
It’s now obvious (though inadequately publicized) that the September 11 attack on the Libyan consulate was a coordinated terrorist plot on a facility that was inadequately protected despite numerous attacks in the region—including an assassination attempt against the British ambassador in June.
The Brits closed their diplomatic office as a result of the June attack. By contrast, the Obama Administration devised a massive “Wag-the-Dog” diversion after four Americans were killed thanks to its negligence. Now it pretends that relevant information can’t be released because of a bogus FBI “crime scene” investigation.
I’d love to hear a pastoral letter condemning a government that repeatedly spiked the “bin-Laden is dead” football at its political convention and then repeatedly lied to the American people to cover its own “bumps in the road” negligence. Fat chance.
Culture Criticism with a Philosophical and Literary Flair. Diagnosing Moral Malpractice since 1989.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Tuesday, October 09, 2012
LIBYA: DEATH AND DELUSION
The September 11 attack on the American consulate in Libya resulted in the death of our American ambassador and “three others.” Two of those “others” were former Navy SEALs, Glen Doherty of Encinitas and Tyrone Woods of Imperial Beach. The third, Sean Smith, was a San Diego native.
According to the Obama White House—which for days refused to call the violent murder of an American ambassador an act of terrorism—other individuals residing in Southern California were, at least indirectly, culpable for these deaths.
These “co-conspirators” had produced a low-budget movie that intentionally insulted Muhammad and Islam. The film was reportedly screened in a Hollywood theater to an audience that didn’t include a single paid admission.
The prime mover of this project, an Egyptian émigré named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, was quickly tagged by the mainstream media as a “Coptic Christian.” This moniker was ill-suited to a felon who recently spent time in prison for bank fraud, previously pled guilty to drug charges and had tenuous ties to Coptic congregations in the Los Angeles area.
(No wonder some speculated that Nakoula might be a naïve publicity hound or a radical double-agent—not someone motivated by concern for Coptic Christians who would surely be targeted for even more persecution if the film were disseminated in Egypt.)
Subsequently a 14-minute trailer of the film was placed on the Internet, and Arabic dialog was dubbed in. This virtually unknown clip was eagerly employed by Islamic radicals to incite crowds in Egypt and has since become the pretext for dozens of violent demonstrations.
The American “spokesman” for the film, Steve Klein, is an ex-Marine who served honorably in Vietnam and whose insurance agency is based in Hemet. Klein says he had limited contact with or knowledge about Nakoula, aka Sam Bacile.
Klein’s anti-Islamic sentiments have been publicly aired on previous occasions but doubtless intensified after his son, an army medic in Iraq, was seriously injured by a suicide-bomber in 2007.
As more information becomes available, it seems the amateurish video had little to do with the apparently preplanned attack in Benghazi. Instead, the trailer was used as a convenient scapegoat for a politically-craven administration that on September 11 didn’t provide adequate consulate security in a highly unstable country loaded with terrorists.
Obama’s blame-the-video narrative did, however, divert attention from the failure of his apology-rich foreign policy and from the fact that al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri had previously called for revenge for the drone-killing of a senior Libyan terrorist.
I’d wager that deadly drone attacks provided more incentive for committed Islamic terrorists to kill Americans than an insulting Internet video.
According to the Obama White House—which for days refused to call the violent murder of an American ambassador an act of terrorism—other individuals residing in Southern California were, at least indirectly, culpable for these deaths.
These “co-conspirators” had produced a low-budget movie that intentionally insulted Muhammad and Islam. The film was reportedly screened in a Hollywood theater to an audience that didn’t include a single paid admission.
The prime mover of this project, an Egyptian émigré named Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, was quickly tagged by the mainstream media as a “Coptic Christian.” This moniker was ill-suited to a felon who recently spent time in prison for bank fraud, previously pled guilty to drug charges and had tenuous ties to Coptic congregations in the Los Angeles area.
(No wonder some speculated that Nakoula might be a naïve publicity hound or a radical double-agent—not someone motivated by concern for Coptic Christians who would surely be targeted for even more persecution if the film were disseminated in Egypt.)
Subsequently a 14-minute trailer of the film was placed on the Internet, and Arabic dialog was dubbed in. This virtually unknown clip was eagerly employed by Islamic radicals to incite crowds in Egypt and has since become the pretext for dozens of violent demonstrations.
The American “spokesman” for the film, Steve Klein, is an ex-Marine who served honorably in Vietnam and whose insurance agency is based in Hemet. Klein says he had limited contact with or knowledge about Nakoula, aka Sam Bacile.
Klein’s anti-Islamic sentiments have been publicly aired on previous occasions but doubtless intensified after his son, an army medic in Iraq, was seriously injured by a suicide-bomber in 2007.
As more information becomes available, it seems the amateurish video had little to do with the apparently preplanned attack in Benghazi. Instead, the trailer was used as a convenient scapegoat for a politically-craven administration that on September 11 didn’t provide adequate consulate security in a highly unstable country loaded with terrorists.
Obama’s blame-the-video narrative did, however, divert attention from the failure of his apology-rich foreign policy and from the fact that al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri had previously called for revenge for the drone-killing of a senior Libyan terrorist.
I’d wager that deadly drone attacks provided more incentive for committed Islamic terrorists to kill Americans than an insulting Internet video.
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