If you have followed the right wing’s assertions about the slayings of American diplomats in Benghazi four years ago, you’re familiar with the claim that higher ups told the small American security team on the scene to “stand down” rather than race to assist the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, and three others besieged in a walled compound serving as the U.S. consulate.
Two survivors of the Benghazi attack that left four Americans dead repeated the “stand-down” claim during the first night of a Republican National Convention brimful of exceptional America-don’t-take-no-shit-from-nobody talk by a string of speakers.
Just one problem: Like so much else heard and yet to be heard at the RNC, the claim is bogus.
The two members of the security team—Mark Geist and John Tiegen—wrote a contentious book, 13 Hours, that has been turned into a film by Michael Bay. Given their frequent public appearances and authorship, you would think that their nearly 30 minutes of spew, fabricated as it was, would at least have been more coherent.
Said Tiegen to the Republican delegates in Cleveland Monday: “We were ready to go. But on three separate occasions, we were told to wait, and the chief of base told us to stand down!” Geist said: “Opportunities taken when we defied stand down orders and opportunities squandered when Hillary Clinton failed to protect her people on the ground. Had she done her job, we would not have had to compromise the annex.”
The only fly in their ointment? Investigations by Republican-dominated committees have found no evidence that it’s true. This, of course, makes no difference at a get-together where what Stephen Colbert has labeled “Trumpiness” is center-stage.
Glenn Kessler and Michele Ye Hee Lee at The Washington Post’s Fact Checker cite the words of the House Intelligence Committee:
“The evidence from eyewitness testimony, ISR video footage, closed-circuit television recordings, and other sources provides no support for the allegation that there was any stand-down order. Rather, there were mere tactical disagreements about the speed with which the team should depart prior to securing additional security assets.” [...]
The Republican majority of the House Armed Services Committee also concluded: “There was no ‘stand down’ order issued to U.S. military personnel in Tripoli who sought to join the fight in Benghazi.”
The “stand down” claim wasn’t the only Benghazi-related assertion that failed the truth test Monday. Another came from Patricia Smith. Her son, Sean Smith, an information specialist, was killed in the Benghazi attack. In a ferocious, emotionally laden speech that drew tears from many of the assembled delegates, she said:
“I blame Hillary Clinton personally for the death of my son. Personally. In an email to her daughter shortly after the attack Hillary Clinton blamed it on terrorism. But when I saw Hillary Clinton … she lied to me and then called me a liar. When I saw Hillary Clinton … she looked me squarely in the eye and told me a video was responsible.”
Previously, Smith has said: “I believe that Obama murdered my son.”
Compassionate people are empathetic to any parent who has lost a child from any cause, and nobody wants to challenge a mother buried in grief—even when that grief is being manipulated for maximum political impact by sleazeballs. But, as Kessler and Lee point out, Smith’s story has “evolved over time:”
She originally said then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta blamed Muslim outrage over a YouTube video, which at time resulted in protests in 40 countries in the world. But then her account changed to include also Clinton, Obama and Vice President Biden making similar statements.
Accounts by family members of the other victims of the Benghazi attack do not mesh with Smith’s assertions.
There’s every reason to expect Tuesday’s RNC platter of Trumpiness will be spiced with more than a smidge of similar dishonesty about Benghazi and other subjects. Sadly, many Americans will swallow it whole and regurgitate it on Facebook and other social media for years to come.