Dana Milbank: Heritage's ugly Benghazi panel
Updated Analysis: The Tulsa World today prominently published Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank's piece that attacks a Benghazi panel in an apparent attempt to deflect criticisms of advance policy, actionable failures during the attack, and later public disinformation efforts by the Obama Administration. Milbank writes the forum "deteriorated into the ugly taunting of a woman in the room who wore an Islamic head covering." Not by our review of the video which you can also view. Was Milbank attending the same event or is he deliberately distorting truth? Thanks to Mediate.com a video is available online so you may decide the facts and draw your own conclusions. Is this a frank discussion or a "ugly taunting?"
Was Dana Milbank deliberately misrepresenting the exchange? Why is the local daily paper so eager to feature scurrilous Leftist attacks on all things Conservative? Why does the Left continue to twist truth in every exploration of fact and analysis on Benghazi? Well, to quote an attorney friend, "If you have the facts - argue the facts. If you have the law then argue the law. If you have neither the facts or the law then demonize your opponent and hope the jury is stupid." Click here to see the video on Mediate.com. You view - you decide.
Update: Under the headline "Milbank Exposed: Media Lapdog Slimes Benghazi Coalition to Protect Obama" one panel participant, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. who also writes for Breitbart News Network is brutal in his review of Milbank's reporting:
To be precise, Milbank failed accurately to report and in some cases outright mischaracterized several exchanges prompted by an intervention from the audience in the form of a statement/question by a self-described “law student at American University.” The hijab-wearing young woman warned that the West was failing to understand that we are confronting a hostile ideology.
In Milbank’s rendering, the program “deteriorated into the ugly taunting of a woman in the room who wore an Islamic head covering.”
After examining a videotape of the program, however, Dylan Byers of Politico responded that “Milbank grossly misrepresented the nature of that exchange.” He added, “I do believe that the video disproves or casts doubt on several of Milbank’s assertions.”
That is putting it charitably. Milbank, like the Obama administration, wants to shoot the messengers on Benghazi. The immediate object is to obscure the message, but if in the process the messengers are taken down, so much the better.
Perhaps Milbank was made even more aggressively hostile to the conservative presenters and their coalition by the fact that a recovering member of the mainstream media, popular Washington talk show host Chris Plante, took him on straight out of the box.
Plante was the moderator of the first panel and unburdened himself at the outset of sharply worded complaints about the implications for the Republic if the “mainstream media” persists in its studied disinterest about – and, thereby, its enabling of – conduct that might put the Obama administration in a bad light. Describing such journalists as “lapdogs” for this presidency, Plante specifically called out the Washington Post for not pursuing assiduously the myriad questions about each of the three phases of the Benghazigate scandal that cry out for answers.