It is September 18, 2012. Last week – on September 11 – a raid in Benghazi Libya killed US ambassador Chris Stevens and three others. Riots and demonstrations and embassy break-ins and US flag burnings broke out all across the Muslim world. Somehow word got out that the riots were a reaction to a vile video made in America by an Egyptian Coptic Christian that portrayed Mohammed as a child abuser and many other repugnant things. Yet the attack in Libya was not a demonstration, it was an attack on the embassy using rocket-propelled grenades and heavy weapons, it burned down the embassy, it targeted a safe house where others were killed. It was planned and it was effective.
Now the Obama administration has refused to talk about it because there is an investigation going on to answer all the questions that inevitably arise – how could this happen? – and Susan Rice, Obama’s ambassador to the UN, went to all the Sunday talk shows and claimed repeatedly that it was all spontaneous and all a response to the video – which was put up on You Tube months ago – despite the fact that rioters are chanting “Obama Obama we are all Osama” and he is being burned in effigy. And the US and 29 other nations are doing exercises in the Persian Gulf all of a sudden – and this is not covered either.
And so instead of the media asking these questions about how this could happen, or asking about how Ben Bernanke’s QE3 is going to help and was it the right thing to do and why is it another bank bailout, and hey how about this lousy economy – the media today is all over a story about something Mitt Romney said at a private fundraiser FOUR MONTHS AGO! This was indeed the lead story of the PBS Newshour tonight! MSNBC says that Romney wanted to make the election about Obama’s record, but it keeps coming back to him … yes, because that is all you folks will report about.
It is enough to make you wonder if there was this memo sent out from the White House to the media saying, “Lay off us for awhile”. And the media is so keen to see Obama re-elected, they are doing just that.
Matt Welch at Reason wonders the same thing I am glad to see: http://reason.com/blog/2012/09/18/secret-romney-tape-means-we-can-finally