Email Dumpty Dump

Tuesday CNN"s Jake Tapper received one email in a leak that seemed to undermine ABC's and the Weekly Standard's description of the talking points strategy session held on September 14 and 15, 2012;  later that day Jay Carney was grilled by a reputable White House reporter about the situation and she asked why they don't just release the emails so everyone can see them.  In telling her no, they would not release them, he used the ole ruse of the White House needing privacy for their internal deliberations, something last used by the hated Bushitler.   But the cacophony grew louder today.   So they threw deliberations to the wind and released them anyway.   Surely Obama will now take credit for all the sunshine.

Others will go over the trove with a fine toothed comb--on quick glance they seem to be in the same spirit of the earlier leaked reports, contrary to Carney and Democratic blogs/shills saying the GOP misrepresented them for politics.   Clearly Veitor and Rhodes are White House guys and they had a lot of input along with Nuland at State (speaking on behalf of 'building leadership').  Clearly DCIA Petraeus was not happy with the final product.  Clearly the only mention of 'movie protest/violence' in an email header was in the chain referencing the United States UN Ambassador.   Carney saying the WH only had a minor stylistic change is true, but only if one removes the input of Veitor and Rhodes. 

But one thing should not be lost in the process--the reason for the talking points in the first place--to allow Congressmen to go on TV and talk about the event.   Weirdly, Carney always says they can't discuss any damn thing because there's an ongoing investigation.  So why discuss Benghazi at all?
   

Probably the four deaths.  They couldn't not discuss it.  But they didn't have to be brutally honest! 

So they scrubbed the talking points down to almost nothing and sent them to the Hill.  Here's one of Congressman Rogers' appearances that Sunday:



As can be seen, he was rather circumspect of the notion of a violent protest spinning out of control.  Was that suspicion--and the expressed concerns about 'messaging and policy' from the White House regards the talking points--why Hillary somebody sent Ambassador Rice out on all five Sunday shows, perhaps in an effort to counter Rogers and suck all the oxygen out of any GOP counter analysis?  Seems possible.  

Perhaps they also knew that the president of Libya, Mr. Margariaf, was going to appear on Sunday TV shows as well.  Perhaps they knew he was unambiguous about who he thought pulled off the attack--the same people our own CIA said were involved in their early talking points drafts. For context here's an interview of Margariaf by NBC News on that same Saturday the talking points were being finalized:



Meanwhile the president of the United States and the Secretary of State were talking about extremists and protesters and a hateful video. It's hard to believe these efforts were not simply a political pushback on the idea that we were attacked by AQ on 9/11 and the government wasn't ready for it, and the effect this might have on a presidential election.   Sounds similar to the IRS efforts regarding the Tea Party.  

Also, don't forget that 60 Minutes recorded an interview with Obama on September 12th, which was shown on the 16th.  They clipped his comments referencing possible foreign intervention from the final broadcast.  Did the White House ask for that edit?   CBS finally released the unedited transcript two days before the election to almost zero fanfare.

It will be interesting to see if the non-Fox press, especially AP, keeps on this story or forgives their heroes and moves on.  It will also be interesting to see whether Jay Carney is around much longer.  After all, he's been dissembling a heckuva lot more than the interim IRS Director.  

MORE  5/16/13 

There's some verbiage in the emails about not going off the previous or current line of public discussion about the "incident", ie, they had ALREADY been talking about the video and protest mob because that same day--the 14th--Hillary and Obama mentioned the protest at the Dover AFB event and allegedly told the survivors of the fallen that they were going to find the filmmaker and put him in jail.   So it seems obvious that White House and administration flaks would react negatively to a set of talking points mentioning AQ, past attacks, and no mention of any video.