Benghazi Without the Shame This time, they don’t even bother lying.By James Taranto
http://www.wsj.com/articles/benghazi-without-the-shame-1466441599
It’s a leap year, which means it’s even more important than usual for the Obama administration to deny the threat of Islamic terrorism. In September 2012, it fell to Susan Rice, then ambassador to the U.N., to make the rounds on the Sunday-morning talk shows and peddle the falsehood that the attack at Benghazi, Libya, was just a high-spirited reaction to an amateur video.
Yesterday—a week after the biggest terror attack on American soil since 9/11—the Rice role fell to Attorney General Loretta Lynch. This time, the administration didn’t even bother pretending it was going to tell the truth.
Here’s the transcript, from NBC’s “Meet the Press”:
Lynch: What we’re announcing tomorrow is that the FBI is releasing a partial transcript of the killer’s calls with law enforcement, from inside the club. These are the calls with the Orlando PD negotiating team, who he was, where he was . . . that will be coming out tomorrow and I’ll be headed to Orlando on Tuesday.
Host Chuck Todd: Including the hostage negotiation part of this?
Lynch: Yes, it will be primarily a partial transcript of his calls with the hostage negotiators.
Todd: You say partial, what’s being left out?
Lynch: What we’re not going to do is further proclaim this man’s pledges of allegiance to terrorist groups, and further his propaganda.
Todd: We’re not going to hear him talk about those things?
Lynch: We will hear him talk about some of those things, but we are not going to hear him make his assertions of allegiance and that. It will not be audio, it will be a printed transcript. But it will begin to capture the back and forth between him and the negotiators, we’re trying to get as much information about this investigation out as possible. As you know, because the killer is dead, we have a bit more leeway there and we will be producing that information tomorrow.
Michael Del Moro, who worked alternately at the Obama White House and ABC News (and is currently with the latter), tweeted the transcript as released this morning by authorities (which we are quoting verbatim, including the bracketed portions):
Orlando Police Dispatcher (OD)
Shooter (OM)
OD: Emergency 911, this is being recorded.
OM: In the name of God the Merciful, the beneficial [in Arabic]
OD: What?
OM: Praise be to God, and prayers as well as peace be upon the prophet of God [in Arabic]. I let you know, I’m in Orlando and I did the shootings.
OD: What’s your name?
OM: My name is I pledge allegiance to [omitted].
OD Ok, what’s your name?
OM: I pledge allegiance to [omitted] may God protect him [in Arabic] on behalf of [omitted].
OD: Alright, where are you at?
OM: In Orlando.
OD: Where in Orlando?
[End of call.]
There’s no mystery here; it’s been widely reported (including by the Washington Post) that the attacker pledged allegiance to the Islamic State—though the second “pledge” in this transcript appears to refer to a man, perhaps the one known as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
So why the censorship? We can understand withholding the audio, lest ISIS incorporate it into its own audiovisual propaganda. But the Mad Libs blanks are easy enough to fill in. Indeed, the transcript as released is an invitation to any terrorist group to insert its name and take “credit” for the attack. (Update: Within hours after this column’s publication, the FBI and DOJ reversed course and released the full transcript.)
It seems clear the administration’s purpose here is not to frustrate terrorist propaganda but to further its own propaganda. As with Benghazi, a terror attack on President Obama’s watch could imperil Democratic prospects in November. Thus the administration has been at pains to pin the Orlando attack on armed Americans, not Islamic terrorism. CONTINUE AT SITE
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