The Fox News malady OCBD (Obsessive Compulsive Benghazi Disorder) apparently has only one cure — the 2016 election. After November 8, 2016, it is widely believed the malady will miraculously vanish. But until that time, the “fair and balanced” fairly unbalanced network will continue to promote all the Benghazi conspiracy theories, including ones that prove their nonsense to be, for want of a better word, nonsense.
A new email has been released that has gotten Fox host Elisabeth Hasselbeck and Fox flunky Andrew Napolitano all worked up. Never mind that the email further confirms that one of the biggest right-wing talking points — the supposed “stand down order” — is totally false. In the upside down world of Fox “logic,” this email shows, according to Hasselbeck, that “the only thing standing between the terrorists who overran the compound and the four Americans who lost their lives was a green light from the State Department.” Actually, it proves that everything the Obama administration has said about the availability of military assets during the attack is accurate.
Hasselbeck and Napolitano talked about the email on the December 10 “Fox and Friends,” where the former judge had this to say:
This is huge. And it’s extremely troublesome for the Obama administration today and for Mrs. Clinton and her tenure as the secretary of state, because the Obama administration and Mrs. Clinton, when she was secretary of state and since she left, had been arguing and arguing consistently that there was no notice and no opportunity for military personnel to support and defend the consulate. Now, remember, there are three attacks. After the first attack is when this email is sent. There’s a five-hour gap between the first attack and the second and third. The third follows the second.
Napolitano, Hasselbeck, and a plethora of right-wing sites have all been trumpeting a redacted version of the email, obtained via a freedom of information request from the conservative group Judicial Watch. The email was sent by the Defense Department’s Chief Of Staff Jeremy Bash. The redacted version of that email reads as follows:
I just tried you on the phone but you were all in with (Secretary Clinton).
After consulting with General Dempsey, General Ham and the Joint Staff, we have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak. They include a (REDACTED).
Assuming Principals agree to deploy these elements, we will ask State to procure the approval from host nation. Please advise how you wish to convey that approval to us (REDACTED).
Despite the fact that Fox News reported in 2014 that no stand down order was given, the bits that were left out of the redacted email were enough to produce the claim of smoking gun. But Fox apparently was not counting on the top Democrat on the Benghazi committee, Elijah Cummings, releasing the unredacted email, which proves that then Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta was being truthful when he told congress that no military assets could have reached Benghazi in time. The forces that were identified as “spinning up” in the email were in Croatia and Spain, each close to 1,000 miles away.
Fox News is shocked, shocked that mainstream media outlets have not covered this story. Media Matters captured the graphic below from Fox:
Of course no mainstream media outlets are covering this story. To quote a former president, “there is no ‘there’ there.” But, because of their obsessive compulsive desire to bring down the candidacy of Hillary Clinton, we have about 11 more months of this nonsense to come.
Here’s the video of Hasselbeck and Napolitano, hyping an email that proves them wrong, via Media Matters:
Featured image via Media Matters/Fox News screen capture
