OPINION:
ANALYSIS/OPINION
In a report about a Supreme Court ruling, the Associated Press on Monday continued with the ruse that an anti-Muslim film posted on YouTube caused violence in the Middle East, culminating in the murder of a U.S. ambassador on Sept. 11, 2012.
“In a victory for free speech advocates, a federal appeals court says YouTube should not have been forced to take down an anti-Muslim film that sparked violence in the Middle East and death threats to actors,” the AP wrote.
The White House and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blamed the obscure movie on YouTube — which at the time had only a few hundred viewings — with causing widespread violence that spread across the region. Hundreds of people stormed the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.
The “filmmaker” was jailed and remains behind bars, but the story that the movie caused violence started to unravel almost immediately.
On the day of the attack, Clinton said: “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.”
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Said Obama: “Extremists and terrorists used this as an excuse to attack a variety of our embassies, including the consulate in Libya.” He also said, “As offensive as this video was and, obviously, we’ve denounced it and the United States government had nothing to do with it. That’s never an excuse for violence.”
Both she and the president said the attack was “spontaneous” and involved protesters.
(Then-spokesman Jay Carney had the best line, though: “We don’t have and did not have concrete evidence to suggest that this was not in reaction to the film.”).
Rep. Steve King, Iowa Republican, said Hillary lied when she briefed lawmakers, saying the film prompted “spontaneous” violence. “We know that’s false. On top of that, we know they knew it was false. They knew within three hours that it was a calculated, strategized attack by an organized enemy on that compound and that annex in Benghazi.”
Then this happened: “Court documents filed by the U.S. Justice Department in the criminal case against Benghazi attack suspect Ahmed Abu Khatallah provide unprecedented details about the evolution of the assault and further shatter the Obama administration’s initial claim that it sprouted from protests over an anti-Islam film,” Fox News reported on July 6, 2014.
“The narrative that the video played a role continues to live on, with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton saying recently that some of the attackers may indeed have been influenced by the online video. But the Justice Department’s court filings make clear that at least those spearheading the attack were part of a ’conspiracy,’ one that involved several members of the Ansar al-Sharia ’Islamic extremist militia.’ Hillary Clinton, in her book “Hard Choices,” wrote it is “inaccurate” to say no one was influenced by the video.
“I was trying to make sense of it. I think that the investigations that have been carried out basically conclude we can’t say that everybody was influenced [by the video], and we can’t say everybody wasn’t,” she said in a Fox News interview.
And now, the AP has got her back with yet another lie.
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