Annals of Derp: Depravity, Germanity, and Wikipedia

Freestyle Bowling often borrows elements from other sports. Via Stupidedia.

Andrew C. McCarthy of the National Review wrote in reference to the tragic or comic demise of the Special Select Committee on Benghazi:

‘We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful Internet video that we had nothing to do with.”

Those words, depraved words, were spoken by then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton, with President Obama by her side, on September 14, 2012. This was at Joint Base Andrews, during the most sacred of rites: the return of the remains of Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, Tyrone Woods, and Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, all slain in the line of duty in Benghazi.

Nice en-dash, Andrew! (No snark, a mere hyphen in "then–secretary of state" wouldn't have been right, as Wikipedia clarifies.) But, uh, depraved?

So I went and commented.

Yastreblyansky • 2 hours ago On the "depraved words", you know there's an entire Wikipedia article on the "rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing to do with" from September 11 to September 29 2012. It really happened at eight different embassies among a lot of other places, it's not a secret, and it was indeed one of the factors in the September 11 violence at the Benghazi consulate, as we know from David Kirkpatrick's reporting for the Times:

Anger at the video motivated the initial attack. Dozens of people joined in, some of them provoked by the video and others responding to fast-spreading false rumors that guards inside the American compound had shot Libyan protesters. Looters and arsonists, without any sign of a plan, were the ones who ravaged the compound after the initial attack, according to more than a dozen Libyan witnesses as well as many American officials who have viewed the footage from security cameras.

It's not that important at this date, except to those of you who keep trying to make it into a story about Clinton, but it just isn't and never was. You will continue to fail. That horse is dead, and beating it is not going to change that.

[Of course the reference to Wikipedia called out a quick exploratory sally.]

LastSonOfGallifrey ➙Yastreblyansky • 2 hours ago I could log onto Wikipedia right now and write an article blaming YOU for Custer's defeat at Little Big Horn...

Yastreblyansky ➙LastSonOfGallifrey • 2 hours ago Bet it wouldn't have 251 linkable footnotes to reputable sources mostly checkable online. And bet I could get the editors to pull it down within 12 hours, if by some weird chance it lasted that long.

LastSonOfGallifrey ➙Yastreblyansky • 2 hours ago My point is, political hacks set these things up on Wikipedia-which is why I only use it as a reference when I collect my new music. If someone inserted a paragraph into the article about the 9/11 attacks blaming GWB and calling it an inside job, it would likely be up for weeks.

[Not without a verifiable source reference it wouldn't. But why insult him when I have a chance to propagandize for collectivism?]

Yastreblyansky ➙LastSonOfGallifrey • 31 minutes ago If you see an error you should fix it. That's what makes it work.

[Meanwhile other volunteers got onto the main content with heavier weapons, in the distinctly dignified, gentlemanly, Burkean conservative style.]

rusure ➙ Yastreblyansky • 25 minutes ago You are so correct. It was and always been about protecting Obama's re=election bid. You wouldn't make a decent pimple on a Marxist's @zz. •

notnuvolari ➙ Yastreblyansky • 33 minutes ago You people are liars.

Harrison Leventhal ➙ Yastreblyansky • an hour ago Then why did Clinton e-mail her daughter two hours after the Benghazi attack saying it was a terrorist attack? Why did she tell the then-Egyptian president the next day that it was a terrorist attack? 

[First you spend three years complaining that she didn't call it a terrorist attack, then you notice she did and start complaining about that. You need to make up your minds. Probably it's because she thought it was a terrorist attack, which occurred in the middle of a riot over a video. It's not like you lose your terrorist license for coopting an anti-video riot that you weren't invited to. People like Clinton are often alive to the possibility that more than one thing can happen at a given instant, perhaps from years of practicing simultaneous walking and gum-chewing. Just saying.]

Floyd R Turbot ➙ Yastreblyansky • an hour ago Well, the fact that it was published by the NY Times settles the issue. No doubt Kirkpatrick inherited the coveted Walter Duranty chair for propaganda. 

MartinMcPhillips ➙ Floyd R Turbot • an hour ago That report by Kirkpatrick (from 2013) was overridden by subsequent reporting by...Kirkpatrick (in 2014). What happened in the meantime, probably, was that signals intel was presented that showed who led the attack and that Kirkpatrick's original report (2013) was essentially worthless. Noah Rothman summed it up at Hot Air, focusing on a Steve Hayes report at Weekly Standard sourced by Adam Schiff (a Democrat on the House Intel Committee) and then on Kirkpatrick's 2014 almost honest retraction. http://hotair.com/archives/2014/11/21/nyt-despite-our-assurances-it-turns-out-benghazi-was-an-al-qaeda-linked-attack/ 

[Signals intel! Like maybe there's an email from the Imprisoned Omar Abdul Rahman Brigades to Ahmed Abu Khattala saying, "Okay, we're running this attack, buddies, get out of the way." As opposed to the boring old humint of the Times reporter running around and asking people what happened, so unreliable. There must be tons of such emails, right? But at this point I'm like, here's somebody I can work with, even knows how to insert a link and understands there's a value to doing that. But looking at the material he cites, I see it has no relevance to the depravity of Clinton's words, since it's all about that other thing. I don't want to say he didn't read my comment, since he worked so hard on responding to it, but it seems as if he would have strongly preferred me to be discussing a different issue and proceeded accordingly.]

Yastreblyansky ➙ MartinMcPhillips • an hour ago The 2014 Times piece adds previously unavailable information on the exact nature of the relationship between Ansar al-Sharia, which was mainly responsible for the deaths in Benghazi, with the Qa'eda organization, which was not. Neither that nor Rothman's commmentary on it impinges in any way on Kirkpatrick's reporting of what happened on September 11 2012 or what Hillary Clinton or Susan Rice or Barack Obama knew or said about it. Clinton's remarks about the eight US embassies that were attacked because people in those places believed the US government had manufactured the video were not "depraved", and all this very interesting discussion about the relationship between Ansar and Qa'eda has no relation to that.

notnuvolari ➙ Yastreblyansky • 36 minutes ago You're lying, and the New York Times isn't any more credible. Why don't you people just give it up, unless, perhaps, you enjoy taking part in mendacity for political advantage? •

[Surely that's reason enough?]

MartinMcPhillips ➙ Yastreblyansky • 43 minutes ago There's plenty of reporting that the video had nothing to do with the attacks in Libya, and that includes Hillary's own emails and phone calls in the immediate aftermath.

Yastreblyansky ➙ MartinMcPhillips • 37 minutes ago But the remarks McCarthy is so bent about were about all the embassy attacks, not the Benghazi consulate. She specifically referred in the same speech to Benghazi as *not* that kind of attack but "an act of ugly terror" and "heavy assault on our post in Benghazi"

MartinMcPhillips ➙Yastreblyansky Go beta-test that at Daily Kos. They'll love it over there.

[And that's that.]

Yastreblyansky ➙MartinMcPhillips • Aw, Marty, you disappoint me. I was convinced you were one of the smart ones worth arguing with and here you are with the standard-issue tribal insults. Anyway I'm doing my beta-testing here, obviously.

MartinMcPhillips ➙ Yastreblyansky • 26 minutes ago I just corrected your comment, showing the quote you used was refuted by the very reporter who wrote it. Other than that, I have no desire to argue anything with you. You're a blabberer. Go blabber at someone else. And don't try to pass off unlinked quotes that are no longer germane -- and never were. 

[The last bit was funny. Unlinked quotes? Not germane?]

Yastreblyansky ➙ MartinMcPhillips • 15 minutes ago The unlinked quote is linked and quoted from the Hillary speech in the first paragraph of McCarthy's OP on which we are all commenting. I got it from him.

[Really. Reproduced, with link, at the top of the present post. I think that ought to be germane enough.]