NY Times still selling lie that Benghazi attack was due to video, ignores its own reporting to the contrary. Since NY Times altered evidence to make Zimmerman look racist and suffered no consequences for doing so, it’s clear the Times is allowed to operate outside the law

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The NY Times’ own reporting on 9/16/12 about Benghazi describes longterm US negligence if not malfeasance well before 9/11/12. The Times described Benghazi as a place with

• no government, no police, and no military 

 but with competing, autonomous Islamic militias. Making it obvious 

• the US should never have had unarmed diplomats there.

By 10/24/12 the Times seems to have forgotten its own witness accounts that Al Qaeda attacked the consulate. In an article ostensibly not even about Libya, the Times manages to work in that the Benghazi attack was about a video:

10/24/12, ”Editing Bolsters Obama’s Role in SEALs Film,” NY Times, Michael Cieply, Brian Stelter

(3rd parag. from end): “Beyond the political issues, the film may carry the risk of associating Mr. Obama with any backlash in a Muslim world already inflamed by the YouTube trailer for an insulting film portrayal of its prophet. In September riots erupted in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere as Muslim crowds reacted violently to what they perceived as the unforgivable insults of a scratch production, “The Innocence of Muslims,” some of which was posted on YouTube.”… via Jammie Wearing Fool, via Free Republic

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Earlier this year the Times selectively edited George Zimmerman’s 911 call to make him look racist:

4/3/12, “NYT Zimmerman Edit Even Worse in Print Edition,” Breitbart, Big Journalism, Joel B. Pollak “

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Back to NY Times and Benghazi, on Sept. 16, 2012 the NY Times reported that witnesses said Al Qaeda group Ansar al-Shariah led the attack on US Benghazi consulate.  

No mention of witnesses seeing or participating in a “video” protest. The Times' couldn't refrain from at least mentioning the video within the article. In deceptive if not deliberately misleading terminology (since the video was not made by the US government or a US institution) the Times referenced it as, "an American made video." ....

The Times reports that the Chief of the brigade “guarding” the US Benghazi consulate had been known as a member of  

• the Libyan branch of Muslim Brotherhood.

When the US consulate was attacked, it didn’t call Libyan authorities or military because “there is none to speak of,” “Libyan government was absent.“ The US consulate called an “autonomous militia with its own Islamist ties:”

9/16/12, “Attack by Fringe Group Highlights the Problem of Libya’s Militias,” NY Times, Kirkpatrick, Alizway, Fahim

“Ansar al-Shariah, the brigade of rebel fighters that witnesses say led the attack on the United States diplomatic mission in Benghazi, holds that democracy is incompatible with Islam. It has paraded the streets with weapons calling for an Islamic state, and a few months ago its leader boasted publicly that its fighters could flatten a foreign consulate.

But if the group’s ideology may put it on the fringe of Libyan society, its day-to-day presence in society does not. It is just one of many autonomous battalions of heavily armed men formed during and after the uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi who have filled the void in public security left by his fall, resisting calls to disarm by saying that the weak transitional government is not up to the job.

Ansar al-Shariah’s fighters have given conflicting stories about their role in the attack. Said to number fewer than 200, they can usually be found at Al Jala Hospital in Benghazi, where they act as its guards and protectors. And when instead they turned their guns on the United States mission,
American security officers and the Libyan authorities did not call for help from any formal military or police force — there is none to speak of —but turned to the leader of another autonomous militia with its own Islamist ties.

“We had to coordinate everything,” said that militia leader, Fawzi Bukatef, recalling the first phone call about the attack that he received from the mission’s security team.

• The Libyan government, he said, “was absent.”

The organization and firepower used in the assault, which killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, has raised alarm in Washington about the possibility of links to Al Qaeda and a premeditated conspiracy that found a pretext in anger over an American-made video mocking the Prophet Muhammad. But to Libyans, the battle for the mission has underscored how easy it is for a spark like the earlier protest in Cairo to set off such an attack in post-Qaddafi Libya, when major cities are still controlled by a patchwork of independent militias and all keep their weapons at the ready.

The battle over the mission has also became the latest skirmish in a larger struggle unfolding across the region between hard-line and moderate Islamists seeking to determine the fate of the Arab Spring. …

But since the militiamen, who still call themselves “revolutionaries,” remain the power on the streets, there is an open question who will disarm or control them. “The government is required to do so,” said Mr. Bukatef, leader of eastern Libya’s most potent armed force, the February 17 Brigade. “But the government can’t do it without the revolutionaries,” he said, noting that many brigades continued to operate independently even though they now nominally report to the defense minister. “It takes a delicate approach.”…

The (February 17) brigade in Benghazi, whose name means Supporter of Islamic Law, came together during the fight against Colonel Qaddafi….

Many more-secular politicians in Libya are suspicious of Mr. Bukatef and his brigade because of their own Islamist reputation. He has been a member of Libya’s branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, and one of his group’s commanders reporting to him is Ismail al-Salabi, who leads a group of Islamist fighters and is the brother of Libya’s most prominent Islamist thinker, Ali al-Salabi. But unlike Ansar al-Shariah, both Mr. Bukatef and the Salabi brothers have emphasized their conviction that Islam requires a democratic, constitutional government. …
 
Witnesses at the scene of the assault on the mission said they saw pickup trucks labeled with the group’s (Ansar al-Shariah) logo, which is well known in Benghazi. Fighters attacking the embassy acknowledged then that they belonged to Ansar al-Shariah.”…

Ansar al-Shariah has never been shy about its beliefs. In June the group led a parade of pickup trucks loaded with weapons through the streets of Benghazi to call for an Islamic government….
They (Ansar al-Shariah) gave the BBC a statement of their philosophy on paper bearing the symbols of the Koran and a Kalashnikov. “Democracy is a human condition where laws are made by people,” it said. “Only God has the authority to make law and that is why Islam and Shariah are incompatible with democracy.”

The Libyan guards who were outside the United States mission during the assault said the attackers, whoever they were, made their militant ideology clear, charging that any Muslim who defended Americans had effectively disavowed the faith.”…

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10/24/12, “Obama Knew Benghazi Was Terrorism And Did Nothing,” IBD Editorial

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10/24/12, “Disgraceful: NY Times Still Blames YouTube Video for “Riots” in Libya,” JWF


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