The New York Times, NYT, issued a new report published Saturday that concludes that there was no evidence that al-Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, on September 11, 2012.
The NYT report continues, it appeared that the attack was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made anti-Islamic video, as the Obama administration first claimed. While I’ll hold comment on the author of the article, I hope he had a good nap during all the testimony and evidence from numerous sources strongly indicates that exactly the opposite is the truth. The report is so full of contradictions within itself, it is difficult to really understand what the reports real purpose is in the first place.
New York Representative Peter King, member and former chairman of the House’s Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence states the argument that the most overtly anti-Western militia, Ansar al-Shariah – not al-Qaeda – led the attack is an academic argument over semantics, considering Ansar al-Shariah is widely believed to be an affiliate terror group of al-Qaeda. “It’s misleading,” King said. “It’s a distinction without a difference.” The claims by the New York Times also conflicts with other evidence, including the testimony of Greg Hicks, the deputy of Ambassador Christopher Stevens who was killed in the attack. Hicks described the video as “a non-event in Libya” at that time, and consequently not a significant trigger for the attack. It would also contradict a separate report by a leading social media firm that found that the first reference to the anti-Islam film that was initially blamed for sparking the attack was not detected on social media until a day later.
Representative Mike Rogers, in an interview with the Fox News in November, said, “I will tell you this, by witness testimony and a year and a half of interviewing everyone that was on the ground by the way, either by an FBI investigator or the committee: It was very clear to the individuals on the ground that this was an al-Qaeda-led event. And they had pretty fairly descriptive events early on that lead those folks on the ground, doing the fighting, to the conclusion that this was a pre-planned, organized terrorist event.”
“Not a video, that whole part was debunked time and time again,” Rogers added of the attack which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens, Foreign Service officer Sean Smith and former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, “which just leads to questions of why the administration hung with that narrative for so long when all the folks who participated on the ground saw something different.”
Almost right in line with the now infamous claim – “What Difference Does It Make”! – one, such as myself, has to wonder the purpose of such an outright erroneous report considering the timing of upcoming elections in 2016 as presidential contenders start lining up and jockeying around for position.
