Oh, Bob:
If you read through all these emails, you see that everyone in the government is saying "Oh, let's not tell the public that terrorists were involved, people connected to al Qaeda. Let's not tell the public that there were warnings." And I hate to show [holds up document] — this is one of the documents with the editing that one of the people in the State Department said oh let's not let these things out — and I have to go back 40 years to Watergate when Nixon put out his edited transcripts of the conversations. And he personally went through them and said "Let's not tell this, let's not show this." I would not dismiss Benghazi. It's a very serious issue.
When I saw
the headline, I thought maybe Woodward was making an interesting point about how Republicans planting stories based on false email quotes shows that the era of GOP dirty tricks isn't over. But then I watched the video and realized he was actually talking about the emails that had been released in full by the Obama administration.
To compare transcripts of secret tape recordings personally edited by the president in middle of a scandal to the editing process for talking points being written for a Democratic congressman and a cabinet official about to go on a Sunday talk show is just completely insane. There is no comparison. It's not even close.
Woodward's comparison is even loopier when you consider the fact that his whole argument depends on the claim that the government was trying to hide the potential involvement of al Qaeda or terrorists from the public. Remember, these talking points weren't what went those Sunday talk shows—Susan Rice was. And while Rice did inaccurately repeat the claim that the attack began as a spontaneous reaction to the video, she also said extremists—potentially including al Qaeda militants—were responsible for escalating the violence.
I think it's clear that there were extremist elements that joined in and escalated the violence. Whether they were al Qaeda affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremists or al Qaeda itself I think is one of the things we'll have to determine.
If you want to criticize Rice—and the administration—for incorrectly linking the video that had sparked protests in Egypt to Benghazi, that's fair. If you're upset she called the attackers "extremists" instead of "terrorists," then have a blast. But if you say the Benghazi talking points are like Watergate because it proved the government was trying to cover up the involvement of terrorists or al Qaeda in the attack, you're living in a fantasy and ignoring the facts sitting right under your nose.