There is clearly no embarrassment threshold at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press.
In a dispatch today, an unbylined AP report headlined "Romney: Benghazi a 'Terrorist Attack'" seems to act as if this is some kind of revelation to the GOP nominee even though everyone except Obama administration insiders desperately trying to bring life to the corpse formerly known as the Arab Spring have been saying that for well over a week. It gets much worse than that in the report's third paragraph:
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and President Barack Obama's top spokesman each have said the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was a terrorist attack. Obama himself has not used that language.
Clearly, readers are supposed to believe that Mrs. Clinton, U.S. officials, and Obama spokespersons have been saying that all along. Of course they haven't been saying that at all until very, very recently.
On September 14, administration officials characterized a report in the UK Independent as "absolutely wrong." It was mostly if not absolutely right.
On September 16, five days after the Benghazi attack and several days after those with open eyes pretty much had it pegged as a terrorist attack ("current and former U.S. lawmakers, and others, claimed Wednesday that the attack looked like a coordinated strike"), UN Ambassador Susan Rice insisted to Fox News's Chris Wallace and Jake Tapper at ABC (HT Hot Air) that:
(to Wallace) “This was not a pre-planned, pre-meditated attack,” she said on Fox News Sunday. “What happened initially was a spontaneous reaction to what had just transpired in Cairo as a consequence of the video.
(to Tapper) “Our current best assessment, based on the information that we have at present, is that, in fact, what this began as, it was a spontaneous – not a premeditated – response to what had transpired in Cairo,” Rice told me this morning on “This Week.”
The AP is clearly trying to flush all of the administration's embarrassing and disgraceful behavior last week down the memory hole. In the process, though the self-described Essential Global News Network thoroughly embarrasses itself with anyone who's closely following the news, it must think it's worth it to keep relatively disengaged readers uninformed and less inclined to abandon Dear Leader at the polling booth.
There is no way this kind of gloss-over would be happening if the presidential incumbent were a Republican or conservative.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
