Loose Ended Issues ... ?
CNN defied presidential authority and White House exhortations not to reveal the substance contained in a diary brief discovered by one of its reporters relating to the untimely death by deliberate assassination of U.S. Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens. The death by vicious misadventure that occurred in Benghazi, the seat of the Libyan uprising against Moammar Ghadafi was the work of a radical militia group with ties to al-Qaeda.But the U.S. administration claimed on repeated occasion that it was a spontaneous demonstration by Libyans furious over the production of a film insulting to the Prophet Mohammed and its brief video excerpt placed on the Internet. Which just happened to go awry, get out of hand before the Benghazi consulate security was able to react effectively enough to prevent disaster.
The amazing thing was that all the while Libyan authorities were insisting that the demonstration that degenerated into a riot and from there a well-armed and -planned attack on the consulate represented the work of Ansar al-Shariah, an extremist Islamist militia, in contrast to the firmly stated beliefs of the U.S. State Department and Hillary Clinton that it was nothing of the sort.
Might it have been because its leader who is assumed to have carved out an influential niche for himself in the militia, plotted a revenge attack against a very visible and quite approachable symbol of U.S. presence, power and authority? Someone who had been incarcerated at Guantanamo and released, only to return to the jihadist activities that brought him to the prison to begin with.
And then came those revelations from CNN which American administration elite condemned as "disgusting" when CNN quoted entries written by Ambassador Stevens. CNN reported that Ambassador Stevens feared he had been placed on an al-Qaeda "hit list". That he was concerned about a rise in Islamic fanaticism in the city.
While it is true that Christopher Stevens's family asked CNN for the courtesy of first examining the diary entries before reporting on them, and the network chose to proceed with their reporting without the express permission of the family, they were in pursuit of informing the public of the truth as it occurred, not the truth that the U.S. administration insisted upon.
"CNN did not initially report on the existence of a journal out of respect for the family. But we felt there were issues raised in the journal which required full reporting, which we did."
CNN network spokesperson
Now that the public is aware of that information and the differences of opinion that resulted between the government of Libya and their own administration, perhaps a few pertinent questions could be raised with respect to clarification of the loose-ended issues...? Why that difference of opinion existed? How it was that the diary had been left on the floor of the looted consulate?
More to the point, that security wasn't increased on the anniversary of 9/11, all the more so given Ambassador Stevens's actual feelings of vulnerability. Ambassadors are known to relay their concerns to the State Department. And why the accusations against a news medium doing its avowed duty, advising its public of the truth of the matter.
Labels: Libya, Political Realities, Revolution, Terrorism, United States
posted by Pieface @ Tuesday, September 25, 2012
<< Home