With its funding from liberal VC backers and renown journalist/thinkfluencer Ashton Kutcher (of Dude Where’s My Car fame) on its Board Of Advisors, Vox.com launched their website this week touting “explanatory” journalism. Its founder Ezra Klein found himself on the receiving end of some mockery last night when he tweeted that Sec. Sebelius was resigning because Obamacare is a success. Err.
So today we took a look at the site’s new explanation of what happened in Benghazi and found it was much more in line with liberal spin than encyclopedic facts.
First – to their credit – even Vox’s examination of Benghazi did recognize significant fault at the hands of the State Department. There were “hundreds” of general intelligence reports “warning that Islamist groups in Libya were ready and willing to hit US targets.” Vox explains that Ambassador Stevens “wrote several notes to higher-ups at the State Department to ask for more security which he never got” because the State Department didn’t view his requests “as urgent enough to overcome the bureaucratic muddle standing in their way.” While Vox was able to recognize these facts, other parts of their explanation weren’t quite as accurate.
Here are the top four examples of Vox.com repeating debunked liberal talking points about Benghazi:
1. The CIA Blamed The Attack On A You Tube Video – Vox asserts “the CIA initially believed that the attack was inspired by The Innocence of Muslims, a very cheap YouTube movie…” However, it was only last week that former acting Director of the CIA Mike Morell testified that he believed “it was a terrorist attack” from the beginning. He also testified that the CIA analysts did not believe the protests spontaneously turned into an attack. One news report noted that CIA personnel “were seething with anger” at the notion that the attack was from a demonstration in response to an anti-Islamic video.
2. Acting CIA Director Mike Morell Removed Al-Qaeda From The Talking Points – Vox stated that “CIA Deputy Director Mike Morrell — and not any White House official — had removed references to al-Qaeda from an early draft of the talking points.” In fact, Morell also debunked this one last week. Morel testified “I did not take it out. Some people have alleged that I personally took out Al-Qaeda from the talking points. That is not true.”
3. Republican Budget Cuts Are Responsible For Poor Security In Benghazi – Discussing the State Department’s poor security posture in Benghazi, Vox wrote that “House Republicans repeatedly cut hundreds of millions of dollars in funding for diplomatic security in the two years before the attack.” The Washington Post’s Fact Checker awarded this argument “Three Pinocchios” and concluded that “the reality is that funding for embassy security has increased significantly in recent years.” Even the State Department’s own Chief Financial Officer for Diplomatic Security has said “I do not feel that we have ever been at a point where we have sacrificed security due to lack of funding.”
4. The Military Could Not Have Intervened In Benghazi – Vox asked “Could the U.S military have stopped the Benghazi attack?” Vox then answered its own question with a “no.” However, as the House Committee On Armed Services noted in a report, the State Department is responsible for notifying the Defense Department of “diplomatic posts that require additional measures or a prospective emergency response.” So while Hillary Clinton may have testified that military assets “were too far away to make much difference in any timely fashion,” what Clinton and Vox forgot to mention is that it was Clinton’s responsibility to make sure there were military assets available. In the lead-up to the attack, it was well known that the Benghazi outpost was vulnerable – it was incumbent on the State Department to prepare for that.