There are plenty of people who don’t see the Benghazi story as being a big scandal–Barack Obama, for one, but also various writers and pundits like the New York Times‘ David Brooks (5/14/13) and Richard Cohen of the Washington Post (5/14/13).
But one of Cohen’s Post colleagues doesn’t think it’s a scandal either–just like Bush’s Iraq lies weren’t much of a scandal either.
Come again?
Yes, that seems to be what Jackson Diehl is saying in his May 13 column. Benghazi isn’t the scandal that Obama’s critics make it out to be, he writes, because the “talking points” that are the center of so much of the controversy were an attempt to explain, in close to real time, what various government officials knew about the attacks. They may have been incomplete, or inaccurate, but there is no sense that there was an effort to twist intelligence or conceal some wrongdoing.
Fine. But the real point of Diehl’s column is to protect the legacy of the Bush White House’s Iraq claims. He zeroes in on the controversy over George W. Bush’s famous claim, in his 2003 State of the Union address, that Iraq was attempting to revive its nuclear weapons program by importing uranium from Africa. If you recall this “16 words” scandal, Diehl writes, “you’ve probably been inside the Beltway too long, literally or figuratively.”
That Bush claim was challenged publicly by former U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson (New York Times, 7/6/03), who had actually been involved in investigating these claims about uranium from Niger, and found nothing to the story. He came out and said so; the White House seemed to agree right after Wilson went public (New York Times, 7/8/03). As FAIR pointed out (7/18/03), this was the tip of the iceberg, one of many White House lies and exaggerations that should have been investigated.
Jackson Diehl
So how is manipulating intelligence to invade another country just like Benghazi? I have no idea, but Diehl sees some kind of parallel: “A decade later, we have the right’s answer to Joe Wilson: Benghazi.”
The ensuing scandal that so troubled Diehl had to do with the White House efforts to push back against Wilson, which included outing his wife Valerie Plame, who was working undercover for the CIA. So to Diehl, the real problem in all of this was Joe Wilson: “Most of what Wilson said was later proved to be grossly exaggerated, or simply false.”
This has actually be the line on Wilson from the Post editorial page all along–that somehow Wilson was wrong to suggest that Bush was misreading the uranium intelligence, since, as the Post editorial page (4/9/06) argued, Wilson’s “report supported the conclusion that Iraq had sought uranium.” So for the Post, and Diehl, what Wilson reported actually boosted Bush’s claims about Iraq–claims that even the Bush administration admitted were wrong.
This sounds nonsensical because it is. Wilson’s public assessment of the Niger intelligence was totally in line with what he reported back from his own investigation, and only underscored the fact that many intelligence analysts believed that there was no evidence for Bush to make these uranium claims (Extra!, 5/06). All these years later, Diehl still seems to want to argue that the Bush White House was right.
To Diehl, the reaction to Bush’s lies from “Democrats and partisan media” was the real problem, which led to “years to conspiracy-spinning.” Diehl writes:
The common thread here is not just the climate of intense partisanship in which media and politicians from the left dismiss what the right insists is a scandal of historic proportions–or vice-versa. It is the diversion of what should be serious, bipartisan discussion about government failings.
And he adds:
Wilson did not prompt a serious discussion of why U.S. intelligence about Iraq was wrong; instead, the debate was about those 16 words, whether Wilson was truthful in saying he had debunked them before they were spoken, and whether he and his wife were the victims of a vendetta.
The fact that the Wilson story did not prompt more serious investigation into the array of misjudgments, exaggerations and lies about Iraq is the media’s fault–and one can point a finger directly at Diehl’s paper, which spent so much time arguing that the real liar in all of this was Joe Wilson.
And if you protect the source of lies
You protect the echo chamber in which they reverberated.
But heaven forfend that we should presume that has diddley to do with Diehl’s defense of Dear Leader.
When you have a cause, like invading Iraq, truth will not deter you.
The corporate newsmedia never reported on the Downing Street memos which said that Bush was going to fix the intelligence.
The corporate newsmedia is complicit in this illegal war.
Man that is weak.Dragging Bush in yet again to somehow save Obamas hash.Look people died because Obama had political considerations.He lied about what happened for the same reason.These lies are piling up, not diminishing.We need a special investigator with powers of the subpoena.And yes that includes der president and his secretary of state.Then we can get to the bottom of why security was pulled.Why our ambassador was even there.Why no relief came.Where the hell was the president.And if Hilary and Obama did not tell leveryone to stand down….who did?The cover up afterward was for political reasons.We know that already.He is exactly the disgrace we told you he was all along.Get used to admitting that.It is cathartic.
Jackson Diehl would have made a fine propaganda writer for Hitler and Goebells.