Maureen Dowd, "Complicity in Duplicity?": The Queen of Snark Wakes Up to a Cover Up

On September 12, shortly after the deadly attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, I wrote in no uncertain words (http://jgcaesarea.blogspot.co.il/2012/09/gail-collins-mitts-major-meltdown.html):

"Make no mistake about it: The movie 'Innocence of Muslims' was a disinformation exercise, timed around 9/11, intended to exacerbate Arab rioting that had been scheduled in advance. Worse still, the global media, hungry for a story, quickly cooperated by publicizing all of the story's false threads."

Nevertheless, the Obama administration chose to pretend that the attacks had been "spontaneous" in respose to this silly excuse for a film.

Initially oblivious to the Obama administration's snow job, Maureen Dowd stated in her September 25th New York Times op-ed entitled "Why Not Debtors’ Prison?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/opinion/dowd-why-not-debtors-prison.html):

"At least the president has a foreign policy."

Well, Dowd has now woken up to the effort to disguise a foreign policy and national security disgrace. In her latest Times op-ed entitled "Complicity in Duplicity?" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/opinion/dowd-complicity-in-duplicity.html), Dowd tells us:

"It’s remarkable that President Obama, who came to power abhorring the manipulative and duplicitous tactics of the Bush crowd, should now be vulnerable to similar charges.

. . . .

Just so, in an overzealous effort to burnish a president who did not need burnishing — especially against foreign policy bumbler Mitt Romney and foreign policy novice Paul Ryan — they have gotten tangled in contradictory accounts about Benghazi. The administration had benefited from the impression that it had diminished Al Qaeda, even though the public no doubt appreciates that it was never going to be so simple."

Dowd unreasonably blames only Susan Rice for "rushing to pump up the president on national security." Yet in this instance, culpability extends far beyond America's ambitious Ambassador to the United Nations. White House press secretary Jay Carney declared on September 14:

"We have no information to suggest that it was a pre-planned attack. The unrest we’ve seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that Muslims, many Muslims find offensive."

However, as reported by Fox News (http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/09/27/us-officials-knew-libya-attack-was-terrorism-within-24-hours-sources-confirm/):

"U.S. intelligence officials knew within 24 hours of the assault on the U.S. Consulate in Libya that it was a terrorist attack and suspected Al Qaeda-tied elements were involved, sources told Fox News -- though it took the administration a week to acknowledge it."

Make no mistake about it: The breakdown of security in Benghazi and the subsequent attempt to bamboozle the American public should be the subject of a congressional investigation.