Alex Koppelman at The New Yorker is usually a reliable apologist, if not cheerleader, for the Obama Administration. But even Koppelman seems to have had enough with spokesman Jay Carney’s transparently deceitful assertion that the White House was truthful when they maintained that only one word was changed in the talking points supplied to Amb. Susan Rice days after the Sept. 11th Benghazi attacks.
But the mere existence of the edits–whatever the motivation for them–seriously undermines the White House’s credibility on this issue. This past November (after Election Day), White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters that “The White House and the State Department have made clear that the single adjustment that was made to those talking points by either of those two institutions were changing the word ‘consulate’ to ‘diplomatic facility’ because ‘consulate’ was inaccurate.”
For the Obama Administration to effectively use the media to push their agenda, they need publications like The New Yorker to march along and repeat their spin without any concern that they might be caught in a big lie somewhere down the line. Unfortunately for them, the Benghazi debacle seriously undermines that effort.
As Koppelman writes:
The only edit made by the White House or the State Department to those talking points generated by the C.I.A. was a change from referring to the facility that was attacked in Benghazi from “consulate,” because it was not a consulate, to “diplomatic post”… it was a matter of non-substantive factual correction. But there was a process leading up to that that involved inputs from a lot of agencies, as is always the case in a situation like this and is always appropriate.
When you’ve lost The New Yorker…
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