Who’s the Liar, Lara Logan or Obama?

In separate but virtually identical letters to Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, and CIA Director John Brennan, the chairmen of the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs committees, cited an excerpt from a recent 60 Minutes report on Benghazi. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA) quoted one sentence from Lara Logan that seems to be at odds with the claim that no one was told to stand down in Benghazi.

Lara Logan or Barack Obama: Who do YOU trust?

Lara Logan or Barack Obama: Who do YOU trust?

Here is the quote cited by Issa and Royce, via Oversight.house.gov:

“About 30 minutes into the attack, a quick reaction force from the CIA Annex ignored orders to wait and raced to the compound, at times running and shooting their way through the streets just to get there.” {emphasis ours}

The logical, next question is simple. Assuming Logan’s sources are credible, who ordered the men from the Annex to wait? Here is a short clip that includes the quote above but also State Department whistleblower Gregory Hicks, who attempted several times to get additional security before the attack occurred. A portion of Logan’s quote that wasn’t included in the letters but is also telling comes shortly thereafter, when she reports that the men who “ignored orders to wait” actually saved five people by disobeying those orders:

Did you catch the looped part? With that fresh in your mind, we take you to page 23 of the Accountability Review Board’s UNCLASSIFIED Report:

“The departure of the Annex team was not delayed by orders from superiors; the team leader decided on his own to depart the Annex compound once it was apparent, despite a brief delay to permit their continuing efforts…” {emphasis ours}

So, who is lying, Lara Logan or the ARB Chairmen, Thomas Pickering and Adm. Mike Mullen? One must be because these assertions are at direct odds with one another.

The Obama administration would have you believe that the ARB was completely independent and had no outside interference from the administration itself. If that is true, why is it that everything the ARB concluded found no fault with top figures within the Obama administration? Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wasn’t interviewed, no one was found more accountable for Christopher Stevens’ death than Stevens himself, and no one has paid any real price for the deaths of four Americans.

The Obama administration – to include Press Secretary Jay Carney – has touted the ARB’s findings whenever tough questions are asked. This must necessarily mean that the administration is satisfied with those findings and views them as safe harbor. If it were truly an independent investigation, would that be the case? In fact, if the Obama administration is made up of demonstrable liars who tout the ARB, this is only a further indictment of the ARB’s credibility.

In order to establish the notion that Carney and the administration is lying about the ARB’s independence, we must establish that the leader of this administration – Barack Obama himself – has a history of lying. This leads us to a montage of quantifiable lies from Obama:

When individuals are proven to be liars, especially when the President of the United States is proven to be one on a matter of his signature piece of legislation (Obamacare), credibility is torpedoed. This necessarily boosts the credibility of Lara Logan and decreases the credibility of the Obama administration and – by extension – the ARB.

So, based on the numerous examples of quantifiable Obama lies, let us consider Logan’s assertion as being far more credible than the opposite assertion, put forth by both the ARB and the Obama administration.

If the CIA Annex personnel were told to wait, such an order likely would have led to the death of five additional people but a larger question remains: Why would the Annex be told to wait?

Again, if the Obama administration is willing to lie, it implicates the ARB’s independence by citing it so much. In turn, this damages the credibility of the ARB itself, which leads to the testimony of ARB Chairman Thomas Pickering on September 19, 2013. In response to questions by Oversight Committee member, Rep. Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Pickering said the idea of a kidnapping operation “seemed far-fetched”. Here is that exchange:

If the credibility of the ARB is so impugned that it can be determined that one of its primary objectives is to defend the Obama administration, the likelihood that Pickering’s claim is diametrically opposed to reality, must necessarily increase.

Logan would be right while Obama and the ARB would be liars.

print

, , ,