Mar 24

UN studies ‘status of women’

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That requires a qualifier, depending on what constitutes the UN, and which group there is being cited. 

Who is best looking out for the rights of women judging from, say, the the recently held United Nations’ Commission on the Status of Women? Especially given this year’s theme of ‘violence against women,’ which is a huge concern around the world, with ongoing gendercide against baby girls and murder attempts on girls who publicly speak out on education for girls?

The Permanent Observer to the Holy See, for one.

In this connection, the Holy See has urged nations around the world to recognize women’s inalienable right “to life” and to “security,” rights articulated in the justly admired Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Isn’t it amazing that it takes a Vatican representative to call nations of the world to recognize women’s inalienable right to life? And security? Both of which are covered in the now much overlooked UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights? It’s not surprising that the Catholic Church would be taking such a prominent stance for human dignity and rights for women as well as men and children. No exceptions.

What might be surprising to most Americans are some of the additional and genuinely bold human rights positions staked out by the Holy See at this conference. These are positions likely to make more than a few developed nations more than a little uncomfortable.

“Developed” is a relative term here.

Take, for example, the Holy See’s position on health care and medicine. The Church is arguing for a “right” to basic health care in situations involving violence against women and men. Not to mention a “right” to medicines for populations which are either in danger, or unable to afford a medicine they desperately require for their health. These of course are not new positions, as Catholic institutions have been at the forefront of providing health care for victims of violence in all corners of the globe for centuries, but they are consistent positions which put people in need ahead of interests in profit.

The Holy See is also requesting global agreement to oppose forced sterilization and forced abortions.

Does this not just make every sense in the world? Can we not agree, for crying out loud, to oppose forced sterilization and forced abortion?

Apparently not, judging from the aggressive efforts of certain forces at the UN.

Over 20 groups are asking U.S. Secretary of State to end the U.S. obstruction over abortion at the UN Commission on the Status of Women. Here is the letter sent today…

And it’s embarrassing and shameful that a US Secretary of State had to be presented this letter by over 20 groups. Seriously.

Dear Secretary Kerry,

This week the United States has an opportunity to advance international efforts to prevent violence against women and girls through the UN Commission on the Status of Women. We are disturbed to learn that the U.S. delegation is, instead, exploiting this effort to insist on language that the former Secretary of State and others say includes abortion. The delegation is also not supporting language that upholds national sovereignty.

That is unacceptable.

It is especially shocking that the U.S. called for deleting a reaffirmation that every human being has the “inherent right to life, liberty and security of persons.” This contradicts a foundational principle of citizens and civilizations worldwide.

This contradicts civility, reason and basic human rights. Read that again, though it makes my country look very bad. Or the delegation representing the official US power elite at the UN.

Last year, negotiations at this same Commission failed to reach agreement because the U.S. insisted on language that has been defined as abortion without limits. The U.S. also required that the agreement not recognize that countries have a say in how policies are implemented. This principle of national sovereignty is fundamental to U.S. independence and a necessary standard for other countries as well.

This position contradicts current U.S. laws, which allow limits on abortion and bans funding abortions internationally. The U.S. delegation’s work will lead people to believe that the Administration is attempting to undermine U.S. laws through little-noticed agreements at the U.N.

Because that is what the US delegation is doing, on behalf of the Administration.

The delegations at the Commission are under exceptional pressure to reach agreement this year. It appears the U.S. is holding the agreement hostage to impose policies that violate America’s own standards. The U.S. delegation’s position risks our country’s reputation of helping women victims of violence worldwide, to replace it with abortion as the ultimate priority.

We respectfully ask that you direct the U.S. delegation to end its demand for controversial abortion-related language, and support language upholding national sovereignty.

And in the end, the protection of women’s rights and human life only won the day by joint force with developing nations that refused to be bullied.

A last ditch effort by ambassadors and top UN officials failed last night to reach agreement on policies to end violence against women because powerful western developed countries want to scrap previous agreements that do not recognize abortion as a right.

After four weeks of intense negotiations, ambassadors were brought in to negotiate the late night session. The United States and European countries raised the stakes at this year’s Commission on the Status of Women, a UN body of 45 UN member states that formulates policies for women, making agreement more elusive.

By Friday morning, the last day of the meeting, the Commission had agreed to exclude “sexual and reproductive health services” from the final agreement. The term is associated with abortion-causing drugs.

I would call this a silly game if it were only that. But it involves so much more, and worse. You won’t hear that from major ‘elite’ media.

Contrary to reports by Reuters, the Associated Press, and an unsigned New York Times editorial, no delegation participating at the commission proposed that cultural, religious, or traditional values should be used to excuse violence against women. During the week over 400 organizations wrote in support of the Holy See and nations that protect life, the family, and acknowledge the important role of cultures and religions in ending violence against women…

The agreed conclusions, which have no binding effect, are a testing ground for future UN conferences on the subject of abortion, population control, and homosexual rights. Wealthy countries want to commit African leaders to spending billions of dollars on family planning programs. Efforts are underway to influence Islamic groups on gender issues and reproductive rights. But abortion and homosexual rights’ policies have not been welcome in traditional countries.

Hold firm to your principles and values, people of goodwill and advocates of true human rights.

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Mar 21

Advancing radical agenda

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Sometimes, it seems like we’re dwelling in Wonderland. But some of us who are aware are doing a lot of wondering. Especially about headlines and stories that are too bizarre to make up, but too extreme to be true. Except…they are.

Like this one. The United Nations Commission on the Status of Women just wrapped up over last weekend, and it was quite a fiasco, as usual.

“The sexual behavior of men can be a form of violence against women because it can result in pregnancy,” stated an official of the U.N. Secretariat earlier this week during negotiations at the annual U.N. Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), at which the U.N.’s typical loopiness has abounded.

The New York Times got into the game this week with an unsigned editorial claiming the Holy See, Iran and Russia are “trying to eliminate language in a draft communiqué asserting that the familiar excuses—religion, custom, tradition—cannot be used by governments to duck their obligations to eliminate violence.”

The Times accuses this “Unholy Alliance” of being indifferent to violence against women and of using religion to protect wife-beaters, reminding us that, “The efforts by the Vatican and Iran to control women are well known.”

Yet the claim that these groups are seeking to strip protections from women “is a flat-out lie,” as one person close to the negotiations told me. In fact what is happening is the Holy See and her allies are blocking proposals by the U.S. and E.U. that would be used to promote a right to abortion.

Just look at the disconnect right there. The theme of this year’s CSW was ‘violence against women,’ and yet the radical abortion lobbyists don’t see, understand or consider what abortion is and does. Putting aside for now the trauma to women who have abortions, the procedure itself terminates the life of millions of human beings, roughly half of whom are females. All the worse, they should think – if they thought – when the abortion is procured because the baby is a girl. Gendercide is not just happening in China, bad enough as it is there. It’s happening in the US and other places. Where’s the outrage?

I’ve got a little bit here…

The U.S. and E.U. also are pushing language calling for comprehensive sexuality education covering the farthest frontiers of sexuality.

Austin Ruse, who wrote this piece, was my guest on radio this week. I was ashamed to learn what a leading role the US played, together with the EU, in pushing this radical agenda.

But admittedly glad when they failed.

Failure to deliver agreed conclusions was never an option at this year’s UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW). But the two week session was fraught with worries about negotiations collapsing, as happened in 2003 when violence against women was last taken up by the UN commission, or last year, when bullying by the US delegation derailed consensus. But the fears never materialized. By Friday afternoon only seven paragraphs remained to be decided, and agreed conclusions were adopted Friday evening.

Abortion advocates, in and outside governments, wanted to move the ball forward for abortion rights. The United States and Nordic countries pressed pro-life nations to scrap previous agreements that place abortion in a bad light. To argue their case activists and the media reported falsely that pro-life countries wanted to use religion to excuse violence.

The United States brought in veteran activist Adrienne Germain to direct their negotiators. She was instrumental for the Clinton administration at the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) where “safe abortion” first became a rallying cry for the global abortion lobby. At this year’s CSW abortion groups found themselves stymied by that very landmark conference. ICPD does not recognize abortion as a right and says it should never be used as a backup to contraception.

Ambiguous terms sometimes used to disguise abortion, like reproductive rights or sexual and reproductive health, were included in the policies adopted by CSW. But they were  included “in accordance with ICPD.” The 1994 agreement also respects the sovereignty of UN member states to legislate according to custom, religion and tradition. Abortion groups are claiming this last point was conceded, even though the agreed conclusions include a paragraph that recognizes the “significance of national and regional particularities” as well as “historical, cultural and religious backgrounds” in legislation that implements UN policies.

The global abortion lobby has waited for years for the right moment to go beyond ICPD. Some Latin American states have signaled they are willing, but UN member states overall are not comfortable moving away from ICPD, at least on abortion, population control and other controversial policies like special new rights for homosexuals.

Last week’s agreement not only reaffirms the ICPD standard for abortion, but extends it to the morning-after pill. Deceptively called “emergency contraception,” the controversial pill can destroy nascent human life.

Follow the arguments and connect the dots. Because the radical agenda lobbyists thrive on distortion, confusion and lack of awareness.

And here’s a very important point, one I made on a riff on radio, when we have a young Pakistani girl shot in the head because she advocates the right for girls to have an education.

The myopic focus of some delegations on abortion and homosexual rights tragically prevented the commission from addressing other widespread forms of violence against women. The commission failed to denounce sex-selective abortion, as well as the thousands of women that die each year because of religious persecution.

Thankfully, Helen Alvare was there, with her eloquent address and elegant reasoning.

Helen Alvaré, a professor at George Mason School of Law, delivered an official statement on behalf of the Holy See. “Respect for human life is the starting point to confront a culture of violence,” she stated. Abortion is a form of violence and the “only proper response (to a woman in need) is radical solidarity.” The Holy See also decried the commodification of women that has resulted from the spread of a “sexual ideology” that sees women as objects.

“The cause of women’s freedom is unfinished,” she concluded, quoting John Paul II.

Indeed. Watch this space.

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Feb 14

Dear media covering Pope Benedict:

Church, Culture, Geopolitics, Media, Politics, Society No Comments »

Do your homework.

At the beginning of the week when the world was thunderstruck with the announcement that Pope Benedict XVI had submitted his ‘Declaratio‘ announcing his resignation, and therby vacating the Seat of Peter on February 28, 2013, there was so much breath-catching and jaw dropping and scrambling to get something out in the press…that I decided to focus on the good, right and true and leave the bad reporting alone. Some of my friends and colleagues in the Catholic media world were blogging and tweeting about the outburst of nastiness and venom aimed at the Pontiff and the Catholic Church in general, but I was all the more resolute not to pay attention to that because…sigh…there’s only so much time and space to devote to coverage and I wanted mine well spent.

That lasted a day.

By Tuesday, I couldn’t let nonsense pass without remark or challenge. Or, with fraternal charity, the exhortation to try harder to do better the task we journalists have to seek and report the truth. And seeking is easier these days with global digital access to archives and every thought and utterance expressed in some detectable form. So it’s just lazy journalism and tendentious reporting to let things like…say…the Tuesday, February 12 front page top of the fold headline news get reported as the New York Times did that day.

In the paper edition, the Times headline ‘Pope Resigns, With Church At Crossroads’ had a sub-head ‘Scandals and a Shift Away From Europe Pose Challenges’ sets you, the reader, up for plenty of loaded reporting. Take the lede:

Pope Benedict XVI’s surprise announcement on Monday that he will resign on Feb. 28 sets the stage for a succession battle that is likely to determine the future course of a church troubled by scandal and declining faith in its traditional strongholds around the world.

No, it’s not a “succession battle,” and to put it in such terms is shaping the news purposely. It is a process by which the college of cardinals goes into seclusion, and whether or not this is comprehensible in today’s world, devote themselves to prayer that the Holy Spirit guides their process of discernment. There are politics involved in anything human, but it’s not a “battle.”

So the third paragraph opens with this sentence:

Saying he had examined his conscience “before God,” Benedict said he felt that he was not up to the challenge of guiding the world’s one billion Catholics.

Why the set-apart citation “before God”? To distance the reporting from actually acknowledging through an otherwise paraphrased summary that Benedict prayed about this before God? And, as he stated it in his Declaratio, “repeatedly.”

After listing the sins and struggles of the Church in the modern world, right up front, the piece says the pope’s resignation “sets up a struggle between the staunchest conservatives, in Benedict’s mold, who advocated a smaller church of more fervent believers, and those who feel the church can broaden its appeal in small but significant ways, like…loosening restrictions on condom use to prevent AIDS,” as if Church teaching were a matter of papal opinion than Church ethics and moral handed down from age to age.

It’s no surprise the Times sees these matters in political terms because everything is political these days. But this reaches:

Many Vatican watchers suspect the cardinals will choose…someome who can extend the church’s reach to new constituencies.

New constituencies? This is not politics.

Someone who will be “the church’s missionary in chief, a showman and salesman for the Catholic faith…”

The ‘missionary in chief’ is the only part of that statement that resembles a respectable description of the role the Catholic Church needs to fill when Benedict vacates the Chair of Peter.

Next to that piece, center of the front page under the large photo of Pope Benedict, was this ‘news analysis’ piece by Laurie Goodstien. For some reason, these news outlets change their headlines from print version to online, but it was titled ‘For Benedict, Clear Teachings and Many Crises.” She focuses on crises, starting with this for some inexplicable reason:

He inadvertently insulted Muslims on an early trip to Germany, which resulted in riots across the Islamic world…

That is a misrepresentation of the facts, a short and snappy summary of a deeper and intellectually challenging episode in Benedict’s pontificate. He did not ‘inadvertently insult Muslims.’ His deeply theological and scholarly address at Regensburg was treated by the media as most things are, when they plucked one line out of a longer engagement of ideas.

The scholar-pope himself stands as much an exponent of the German intellectual tradition as a critic. In the final analysis, it was not Christianity or the Church really that was harmed by the edgy, skeptical, and even – at times – hostile German guild. Rather, it was reason itself that suffered when scholarship excluded from its purview the investigation of the highest order truth claims about God.

Benedict did not echo the well-worn traditionalist critique by arguing that Christian scholarship had failed because the scholars slew too many sacred cows or had the wrong attitude when slaying them. On the contrary, the scholars stopped asking questions at all concerning the rationality of faith – relegating it to the realm of subjective opinion. This was paradoxically subversive of the central conceit of the Enlightenment itself, to say nothing of faith, which is intrinsically joined to reason.

But what has all this to do with Islam? His point was this: Though Christian scholars might have taken a long sabbatical from fundamental questions of truth, Christianity has always opened its sources and truth claims to friendly criticism from within and even to hostile criticism from without. Unfriendly external criticism is one of Providence’s main tools to help the Church forge more precise understandings of revealed things. But there is no tradition of either kind of criticism in Islam, and indeed no basic recognition among Muslims that Islam and its sacred text are suitable objects for such rational analysis. Such recognition is the sine qua non of real dialogue with Islam.

Top Vatican watcher and journalist Sandro Magister was one of the few who pointed out the fruit of the Regensburg experience, the scholars who did engage.

One month after his lecture at the University of Regensburg, Benedict XVI received an “open letter” signed by 38 Muslim personalities from various countries and of different outlooks, which discusses point by point the views on Islam expressed by the pope in that lecture.

The authors of the letter welcome and appreciate without reservation the clarifications made by Benedict XVI after the wave of protests that issued from the Muslim world a few days after the lecture in Regensburg, and in particular the speech that the pope addressed to ambassadors from Muslim countries on September 25, and also the reference made by cardinal secretary of state Tarcisio Bertone, in a note issued on September 16, to the conciliar document “Nostra Aetate.”…

The authors of the letter appreciate Benedict XVI’s desire for dialogue and take very seriously his theses. “Applaud” pope’s “efforts to oppose the dominance of positivism and materialism in human life,” while contest him on other points, adding their reasons for their opposition.

In this sense, the letter signed by the 38…goes towards what the pope meant to accomplish with his audacious lecture in Regensburg: to encourage, within the Muslim world as well, public reflection that would separate faith from violence and link it to reason instead. Because, in the pope’s view, it is precisely the “reasonableness” of the faith that is the natural terrain of encounter between Christianity and the various other religions and cultures.

And on it goes, well worth reading. It’s worth bringing up again with more time and reflection, but seeing that snip on the front page of the New York Times irresponsibly thrown in there without context or apparent background knowledge required some attention.

On that same day, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed Opinion piece by Andrew Nagorski opens with a rather stunning statement from the former rome bureau chief for Newsweek:

Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy has not been known for stellar moments, yet he is ending it with a stellar action.

This would be a startling opening statement from anyone penning an analysis on Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy who garnered space on the WSJ op-ed page. But a former Rome bureau chief for Newsweek? I read that opening sentence to a highly-respected American priest theologian whose opinion is often sought in media, and his response was respectful amazement. ‘Whoever wrote that obviously didn’t know or pay attention to Pope Benedict,’ he said.

Not known for stellar moments?

How about releasing his firs encyclical Deus Caritas Est? Or Spe Salvi? Any thoughts about the exquisite trilogy on Jesus of Nazareth, finishing with the ‘Infant Narratives,’ a treasure in three volumes?

Anybody in the media remember Benedict’s Apostolic Journey to America in April 2008 and his addresses at every venue here? The address to the United Nations General Assembly alone is an elegant reminder of what that body’s original purpose was in drafting and serving the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The visit and prayer at Ground Zero. And what really threw the press was his unannounced and private meeting – which Benedict called – with victims of clergy abuse. The meeting out of which victims tearfully spoke of the healing they felt after meeting with the profoundly apologetic and pastoral pontiff.

His Apostolic visit to Britain, an open hostile landscape if press coverage covered it all  in advance, yet one that wound up as a highly successful and joyful occasion. His Apostolic journey to Australia, World Youth Days, the tremendous outpouring of zeal and outburts of joy at seeing and hearing him and the love fest that greeted him.

Remember any of that, anyone assigned to cover him while those stellar moments were taking place in real time?

Enough. For now. I’m not even going to get into CNN and HuffPo and all the other outlets who have been hammering His Holiness. They don’t deserve the attention.

But he does. And in the coming weeks, I’ll be among those who work to bring it, as fully and truthfully as possible. I know those media outlets are struggling with diminished resources and manpower. But they’re also struggling with diminished journalistic values and powers of reason. I’m just one person. But I’m on it.

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Jan 31

Benghazi Inquiry: Defiance as a tactic

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Congressional investigators finally got Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before their panel to ask for answers they long wanted to hear. What did you know? When did you know it? Who did what and when? She turned the tables on them.

In fact, from that table out in front of the high panel of senators, the singular table behind which she faced a group of senators, she dominated them. It was quite a spectacle.

Here’s how Thomas Sowell saw it.

An old-time trial lawyer once said, “When your case is weak, shout louder!”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shouted louder when asked about the Obama administration’s story last fall that the September 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. ambassador’s quarters in Benghazi was due to an anti-Islamic video that someone in the United States had put on the Internet, and thereby provoked a protest that escalated into violence.

She shouted: “We had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make?”

Students of propaganda may admire the skill with which she misdirected people’s attention. But those of us who are still old-fashioned enough to think that the truth matters cannot applaud her success.

Let’s go back to square one.

After the attack on the American ambassador’s quarters in Benghazi that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans, the Obama administration immediately blamed it on the anti-Islamic video.

Moreover, this version of what happened was not just a passing remark. It was a story that the administration kept repeating insistently. U.N. ambassador Susan Rice repeated that story on five different television talk shows on the same Sunday. President Obama himself repeated the same story at the United Nations. The man who put the anti-Islamic video on the Internet was arrested for a parole violation, and this created more media coverage to keep attention on this theme.

“What difference, at this point, does it make?” Secretary Clinton now asks. What difference did it make at the time?

Obviously the Obama administration thought it made a difference, with an election coming up. Prior to the attack, the administration’s political theme was that Barack Obama had killed Osama bin Laden (with an assist from the Navy SEALs) and vanquished al-Qaeda, and was now in the process of putting the terrorist threat behind us.

To have the attack in Benghazi be seen as a terrorist attack — and a devastating one — would have ruined this picture, with an election coming up.

The key question that remains unanswered to this day is: What speck of evidence is there that the attack in Benghazi was due to the much-discussed video or that there was ever any protest demonstration outside the ambassador’s quarters?

If there is no evidence whatever, then the whole attempt to say that a protest over a video escalated into an attack was a deliberate hoax by people who knew better.

The senators, or some of them anyway, tried to ferret this out. But some didn’t, and even those who did were shut down by Sec. Clinton’s manipulation of the hearing.

Robert George picks up on Sowell’s comments. And asks his own good questions.

Thomas Sowell tells it like it is on Benghazi-gate. But Professor Sowell is a conservative and a Republican. Where are the voices of our liberal and Democratic friends and fellow citizens? Why the lack of curiosity about critical questions of governmental responsibility and accountability? Why the silence?

For heaven’s sake, an American ambassador and three other Americans were brutally murdered by terrorists (terrorists who appear to have links to Al Qaeda). This is a serious business, not a minor political dust up in which partisans can be excused for circling the wagons.

Why have so many on the liberal side of the political spectrum praised Secretary of State Clinton’s theatrical performance before the Senate committee, rather than damning her appalling evasions of the central questions? Why are so few–indeed, none, so far as I am aware (but someone please correct me if I am wrong)–demanding that President Obama tell the public when he became aware of the fact that the murders of Ambassador Stevens and the others were premeditated attacks by a terrorist unit, not (as he and others in the administration stated or implied for nearly a month) acts of spontaneous violence by a mob enflamed by an anti-Islamic film. Where is the Democratic “Howard Baker”?

Is there no one left in the party of Franklin Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson, the party of my grandparents and parents—the party to which I myself once gave allegiance—with the integrity and courage to demand answers to the key questions: What did the President know and when he know it?

If it is only conservatives and Republicans demanding answers, they will be dismissed as partisans simply trying to harm their political opponents—and the questions will go unanswered. No one will be held accountable for the falsifications and deceptions that went on for weeks in the run up to a national election. If the public good is to be served—and if we are to deter government misconduct of this nature in the future—it is critical that demands for accountability be bipartisan. Someone must be willing to break the (in this case blue) wall of silence. Someone on the Democratic side must speak.

As Sowell concludes:

Once the September 11, 2012, attack in Benghazi is seen for what it was — a highly coordinated and highly successful operation by terrorists who were said to have been vanquished — that calls into question the Obama administration’s Middle East foreign policy.

That is why it still matters.

Besides the fact that truth always does.

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Dec 10

Human Rights Day

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Did you know that December 10th is International Human Rights Day?

What’s that?

The United Nations’ (UN) Human Rights Day is annually observed December 10 to mark the anniversary of the presentation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The one continually being relativized and corrupted by agencies within the UN, as they export abortion and contraception across the globe, and under the cause of ‘reproductive rights’ push the sexualization of young girls. Like this USAid effort.

The US Agency for International Development announced on World Contraception Day a partnership with international donors to distribute Jadelle, a second-generation of Norplant, to poor women in developing countries. The contraceptive is not distributed for use in more affluent countries.

Jadelle was developed by the Population Council, a group known for its eugenics roots. “Eugenic goals are most likely to be achieved under another name than eugenics,” wrote Frederick Osborn, the first president of Population Council, founded by John D. Rockefeller III in the 1950’s.

Jadelle, a trade name for Norplant II, prevents pregnancies by slowly releasing levonorgestrel (a known abortifacient) through two tube-like rods that are inserted under the skin of the upper arm, thus inhibiting ovulation, thickening cervical mucus, and altering the lining of the uterus.

The WHO-approved implant lasts up to 5 years and is said to be reversible. Promoters of Jadelle compare its efficacy to that of surgical sterilization.

Studies found about 19 out of every 100 women discontinued use of Jadelle because of bleeding problems. About 65% of users reported bleeding irregularities, and 6.2% reported problems when having the rods removed. 
Distributing long-term contraceptives to poor women in developing countries was a goal of the recent London Family Planning Summit sponsored by the Gates Foundation and the UK government and held on the 100th anniversary of the first international eugenics conference in London. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) renewed its commitment to family planning at the Summit, specifically to long-term contraceptive methods.

This new initiative is a joint effort with the Clinton Health Access Initiative, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, and the governments of Norway, UK, Sweden, and the U.S.

Bayer HealthCare, the German pharmaceutical company that produces the contraceptive, agreed to reduce the cost of Jadelle by fifty percent – to $18 dollars – in exchange for a guaranteed six-year contract that includes “funding for at least 27 million contraceptive devices.”

The FDA approved use of Norplant I in the U.S. in 1990 but distribution ceased in 2002 due to widespread complaints of side effects and lawsuits filed by over 50,000 women. USAID’s contract with the manufacturer of Norplant, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, continued until 2006.

While the FDA approved Jadelle in 1996 it has yet to be distributed in the United States, implying a different standard for women in developing countries. A closer look at the Population Council website discloses potential risks in using Jadelle and the lack of significant studies with research limited to just 5 years post use.

Known side effects are irregular bleeding, ovarian cysts, blood clots, possible increased risk of gall bladder disease and an increased risk of cancer at the implant site from having a “foreign-body intrusion[s].”

That’s only one story from one agency within the UN, and there are many.

So it’s a good time to go back to two addresses to the UN General Assembly by two popes profoundly concerned about humanism that reflect on what that original Declaration proclaimed. Most recently, Pope Benedict.

The New York Times reported that the pope “presented the idea that there are universal values that transcend the diversity – cultural, ethnic or ideological – embodied in an institution like the United Nations…Those values are at the base of human rights, he said, as they are for religion.”

The Times and others also noted Benedict’s message that religion can’t be excluded from a body that exists for “a social order respectful of the dignity and rights of the person” and that a “vision of life firmly anchored in the religious dimension can help achieve this.” Furthermore: “Recognition of the transcendent value of every man and woman favors conversion of heart, which then leads to a commitment to resist violence, terrorism, war, and to promote justice and peace.” This snip made it into most major media, many of which carried the Pope’s full transcript.

What most of them missed was the deeper message of the Pope’s elegant words. His opening remarks were in French, the language of the United Nations. By the second paragraph, he made an affirmation: “The United Nations embodies the aspiration for a ‘greater degree of international ordering’…inspired and governed by the principle of subsidiarity, and therefore capable of responding to the demands of the human family through binding international rules…” And then he made a challenge: “This is all the more necessary at a time when we experience the obvious paradox of a multilateral consensus that continues to be in crisis because it is still subordinated to the decisions of a few, whereas the world’s problems call for interventions in the form of collective action by the international community.” The phrase “decisions of a few” is key to that thought, and he returns to it later…

“Recognition of the unity of the human family, and attention to the innate dignity of every man and woman, today find renewed emphasis in the principle of the responsibility to protect.”

That phrase grabbed the media spotlight as well, because of the pope’s attention to violations of rights and humanitarian crises. What they missed was the wider application to all humans and the sanctity of life. About the UN’s “responsibility to protect”, Benedict said “this principle has to invoke the idea of the person as image of the Creator, the desire for the absolute and the essence of freedom.”

The UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights “was the outcome of a convergence of different religious and cultural traditions, all of them motivated by the common desire to place the human person at the heart of institutions, laws and the workings of society, and to consider the human person essential for the world of culture, religion and science.”

However: “Human rights are increasingly being presented as the common language and the ethical substratum of international relations.” That key line was lost on the mainstream media, especially since this was still the opening remarks in French. It was followed by this: “It is evident, though, that the rights recognized and expounded in the Declaration apply to everyone by virtue of the common origin of the person, who remains the high-point of God’s creative design for the world and for history. They are based on the natural law inscribed on human hearts and present in different cultures and civilizations.”

And this eloquent address, to this point, was all still in the introductory remarks in French.

Benedict would only then begin the remainder of his address, in English. And he was only warming up to his challenge to protect the human family by promoting the sanctity of all life and the rights of every person. He referred to “competing rights” and the need to redouble efforts today “in the face of pressure to reinterpret the foundations of the Declaration” that compromise its intent and move it “away from the protection of human dignity towards the satisfaction of simple interests, often particular interests.” The UN Declaration of Human Rights, said Benedict, cannot be applied piecemeal “according to trends or selective choices” that actually compromise universal human rights.

Timeless truths need advocates and people need to hear them. Do something to support and promote the cause of true human rights.

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Nov 03

‘The fog of Benghazi’

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This is getting more attention, finally. Warranted attention.

The president’s apologists are doing their best to shut down any conversation and all investigation about what happened on 9/11 in Benghazi, Libya. Or to discount it when it comes out. That doesn’t change the facts.

Speaking of facts, the Wall Street Journal editors devoted their entire editorial column to this on Saturday.

The White House says Republicans are “politicizing” a tragedy. Politicians politicize, yes, but part of their job is to hold other politicians accountable. The Administration has made that difficult by offering evasive, inconsistent and conflicting accounts about one of the most serious American overseas defeats in recent years. Unresolved questions about Benghazi loom over this election because the White House has failed to resolve them.

• Why did the U.S. not heed warnings about a growing Islamist presence in Benghazi and better protect the diplomatic mission and CIA annex?

From the start of the Libyan uprising in early 2011, the Central Intelligence Agency built up an unusually large presence in Benghazi. By this September, two dozen or so operatives and contractors monitored Ansar al-Shariah and other militant groups. Deteriorating security after the war was no secret. U.S. intelligence noted militant camps in the mountains near Benghazi, including “al Qaeda leaning” fighters, according to Tuesday’s New York Times.

Over the summer, the Red Cross and the U.K. closed their offices in Benghazi after attempted terrorist attacks and assassinations. A bomb went off outside the U.S. mission on June 6 but hurt no one. Ambassador Chris Stevens told his superiors in an August cable about a “security vacuum” in Benghazi. A different classified State cable sent in August, and obtained by Fox News this week, noted the growth of al Qaeda training camps and expressed concern about the Benghazi mission’s ability to defend against a coordinated attack. It said it would ask for “additional physical security upgrades and staffing.”

In a House hearing last month, career State Department officials said various requests for security reinforcements to Libya were turned down. A 16-member special security team in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, was pulled out in August. The inability of Libya’s weak central government to protect American diplomats was overlooked.These revelations came from the career staff at State.

Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have claimed “responsibility” for Benghazi, without saying precisely for what. During the second Presidential debate on October 16, Mr. Obama was asked: “Who was it that denied enhanced security and why?” He changed the subject.

Next question…

• What exactly happened on the day of 9/11? During the over six hours that the compounds in Benghazi were under siege, could the U.S. have done more to save lives? What was President Obama doing and ordering his subordinates to do in those fateful hours?

An October 9 State Department briefing offered the first precise timeline, nearly a month later. There was no demonstration outside the consulate the evening of the 11th—”nothing unusual during the day at all outside,” a State official said.

That may not be right. Early that morning, Embassy guards noticed a Libyan police officer in a building across the street “photographing the inside of the U.S. special mission,” according to a letter dated September 11 from the Embassy to the Libyan government, calling it “troubling.” The letter was discovered last week at the still unsecured compound by two journalists and published on Foreign Policy’s website Thursday.

Why is this so sloppy? Why so much chaos and confusion? Keep asking the questions and the answers will come out.

Some details:

At 9:40 p.m. local time (3:40 p.m. EST), a security officer at the Benghazi consulate heard “loud noises” outside the gate and “the camera on the main gate reveals a large number of people—a large number of men, armed men, flowing into the compound,” according to the State Department timeline.

Within half an hour, the consulate was on fire. At about 10:45 p.m., help arrived from the CIA annex about a mile away. The CIA offered its first account of that evening this Thursday night, nearly two months after the fact.

Why? Why nearly two months after the fact? Where’s the communication and coordination among our services and the administration?

A snip:

The CIA briefers said the agency did not deny aid to the consulate. But the Journal reported on Friday that the CIA and State “weren’t on the same page about their respective roles on security” in Benghazi.

So they’re all winding up on the same page in the WSJ because of this serious disconnect revealed only because of dogged pursuit by dedicated journalists other media and Obama apologists have tried to discount and demean and ridicule, to no avail.

Mr. Obama was informed of the attacks at around 5 p.m.—11 p.m. in Libya—during a previously scheduled meeting with his military advisers, and he ordered military assets moved to the area, according to ABC News. During the attacks, however, the Administration didn’t convene the Counterterrorism Security Group, which was created to coordinate a response to a terrorist attack, according to a CBS News report.

Late last week, Mr. Obama was twice asked by a local Denver television anchor whether Americans who asked for help in Benghazi were turned down by the chain of command. He didn’t answer.

Why not? What is he dodging?  The Journal editorial board considers the facts.

Yet it’s still reasonable to ask why the U.S. wasn’t prepared for such a contingency. Since 9/11 (of 2001) the U.S. has been at war with the people who attacked in Benghazi, even though many liberals don’t like to say so. One of them is the current Commander in Chief, who still refuses to talk about his Administration’s response to his 9/11.

Exactly. And it was jaw-dropping to hear him say, in a stump speech in Las Vegas this week after stopping by the storm-ravaged northeast, that “Al-Qaeda has been decimated.”

What?

Mr. Obama has made the defeat of al Qaeda a core part of his case for re-election. Yet in Benghazi an al Qaeda affiliate killed four U.S. officials in U.S. buildings, contradicting that political narrative.

The President may succeed in stonewalling Congress and the media past Election Day. But the issue will return, perhaps with a vengeance, in an Obama second term. The episode reflects directly on his competence and honesty as Commander in Chief. If his Administration is found to have dissembled, careers will be ended and his Presidency will be severely damaged—all the more so because he refused to deal candidly with the issue before the election.

America has since closed the Libya diplomatic outpost and pulled a critical intelligence unit out of a hotbed of Islamism, conceding a defeat. U.S. standing in the region and ability to fight terrorist groups were undermined, with worrying repercussions for a turbulent Middle East and America’s security. This is why it’s so important to learn what happened in Benghazi.

Thanks to journalists who are asking the important questions, and those who know the answers speaking out, like Lara Logan, we may learn sooner rather than later.

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Nov 01

‘Graveyard of integrity’ at highest level of leadership

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Benghazi is in a few more headlines today, like it or not.

The Daily Beast:

In its seventh week, discussion about what happened in Benghazi has begun to focus on why military teams in the region did not respond to the assault on the U.S. mission and the nearby CIA annex.

This is pretty thorough, and it tries to piece together what happened, when, and who tried to do what.

But military backup may have made a difference at around five the following morning, when a second wave of attackers assaulted the CIA annex where embassy personnel had taken refuge. It was during this second wave of attacks that two ex-SEALs working for the CIA’s security teams—Glenn Dougherty and Tyrone Woods—were killed in a mortar strike.

About those former SEALs, this commentary from The Blaze speaks more clearly than most anything else.

All political drama aside, the piece of this story I choose to hang onto has nothing to do with the finger pointing or political side stepping aimed at preserving the integrity of the current administration long enough to get reelected. Men sacrificed themselves for one another and for their country. What kind of a man, in the face of overwhelming odds, knowingly and freely lays down his life for the man next to him? Glen Doherty and Ty Woods did just that. At that moment it didn’t matter that they had been Navy SEALs or that they were now contractors operating under different laws and rules of engagement. History doesn’t remember “Golgatha Gate” and the political fallout of crucifying Jesus. An entire religion was born from that simple act of suffering and sacrifice, not the reelection of Pontius Pilate…

What I’m saying is that politics and bureaucracy trend towards failure, and that individuals have the capacity to instantaneously realize divine greatness despite being captives of a flawed and broken system led by individuals who do not possess comparable character.

Take their past and future out of the convoluted story and focus on the cold hard truths people face when in combat. You either fight or you run. What makes a person stand and fight to the death? Is it an oath to a piece of paper or a paycheck? No. People fight to the death for the respect and love of the individuals next to them. It’s their common lives, shared suffering, and love for one another’s unlimited futures that keeps them in the fight.

The actions of two Americans in battle and the character they displayed in the face of overwhelming odds should be what guilts this administration into letting the truth be told…

Could this have happened under anybody’s watch? Of course. What is telling is how the administration handled the incident. There was a blatant failure in leadership somewhere in the chain and instead of admitting it, identifying it, and taking steps toward fixing it, they instantaneously moved to deflect the entire event. Since that didn’t work , they are attempting to use any and all events as a platform to move past the event.

It is not the failure and the loss of life that bothers me. That’s a cold thing to say, but anyone who has spent time working within our Government bureaucracy understands how poorly it operates and that these events will happen regardless of who is at the helm. What’s extremely troublesome is that the character and valor being displayed at the lowest levels consistantly and without exception outshines the “leaders” at the top of the chain. This is not a recipe for success. Transparency is what we need as a nation right now and we need to face some painful truths. Glen and Ty were just two Americans trying to do the right thing and in the pursuit of what they believed to be right they sacrificed their lives without concern for their own fate. Isn’t that the kind of character we should demand of our elected leaders?

Yes.

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Oct 31

Benghazi coverup

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The Obama administration and a complicit batch of media have stonewalled on this as long as they could. It’s been over seven weeks now of a handful of journalists and former military and diplomats asking questions about what happened in Benghazi, Libya on September 11. Americans deserve answers now, before the election.

They’ve been trickling out for weeks, and more are coming out now.

WaPo on the recent reports and conflicting reactions to them:

So what did happen on the night of Sept.?11, when Woods, Ambassador Christopher Stevens and two others were killed? The best way to establish the facts would be a detailed, unclassified timeline of events; officials say that they are preparing one and that it may be released this week. That’s a must, even in the campaign’s volatile final week.

The piece goes into claims and counter-claims, facts as they’re known and reactions from different players, Defense and CIA and “administration officials” among them, using info on where drones and gunships were at that time as a partial excuse.

If these rebuttals are accurate, that raises another troubling question: At a time when al-Qaeda was strengthening its presence in Libya and across North Africa, why didn’t the United States have more military hardware nearby?

Looking back, it may indeed have been wise not to bomb targets in Libya that night. Given the uproar in the Arab world, this might have been the equivalent of pouring gasoline on a burning fire. But the anguish of Woods’s father is understandable: His son’s life might have been saved by a more aggressive response, had one been possible. The Obama administration needs to level with the country about why it made its decisions.

Columnist Jonah Goldberg in the Chicago Tribune:

Last week, Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin reported that sources on the ground in Libya say they pleaded for support during the attack on the Benghazi consulate that led to the deaths of four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. They were allegedly told twice to “stand down.” Worse, there are suggestions that there were significant military resources available to counterattack, but requests for help were denied.

If true, the White House’s concerted effort to blame the attack on a video crumbles, as do several other fraudulent claims. Yet, last Friday, the president boasted that “the minute I found out what was happening” in Benghazi, he ordered that everything possible be done to protect our personnel. That is either untrue, or he’s being disobeyed on grave matters.

Important point.

This isn’t an “October surprise” foisted on the media by opposition research; it’s news.

This story raises precisely the sort of “big issues” the media routinely claim elections should be about. For instance, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last week that the “basic principle is that you don’t deploy forces into harm’s way without knowing what’s going on, without having some real-time information about what’s taking place.” If real-time video of the attack and communications with Americans on the ground begging for assistance doesn’t constitute “real-time information,” what does?

Real Clear Politics picks it up:

The ride on the Obama bus gets bumpier as more bodies are thrown under it…

The journalists went under the bus because the Foreign Service and career intelligence officers the administration tried to scapegoat refused to go there. They’ve leaked emails that reveal the White House was informed while it was still going on that the attack was the work of terrorists affiliated with al-Qaida.

To put this in the context of the Mother of All Scandals, these emails are the equivalent of a transcript of what was on the 181/2 minutes of the secret White House tapes President Nixon’s secretary erased.

“What did the president know, and when did he know it?” Sen. Howard Baker, R-Tenn, asked during the Watergate hearings. The answer in the leaked emails is that the president knew everything, all along.

They were sent by the Regional Security Officer in Libya to the State Department in Washington, the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon, the FBI and thedirector of National Intelligence.

The first said the consulate was being attacked by “about 20″ armed men.

The third, sent two hours later, reported that Ansar al Sharia, an Islamist militia, was claiming credit for the attack.

A fourth, sent at 11:57 p.m. EDT, described a mortar attack on the consulate annex, where the Americans were killed.

About 300 watch officers at the NSC, State, Defense, the FBI and other agencies would have read these emails as soon as they were received, and informed their superiors right away. This was a crisis. Men armed with mortars, machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades were attacking a U.S. consulate. The ambassador was missing. The secretary of state, the DNI and the president would have been briefed within hours.

When the “three a.m. phone call” came (at 6:07 p.m. EDT), the president ignored it. The day after learning Ambassador Stevens had been murdered and sensitive intelligence documents were missing, he jetted off to a fundraiser in Las Vegas.

And for nearly two weeks afterward, Mr. Obama and his senior aides blamed the attack on the Youtube video — even though they knew that wasn’t true.

His interview with Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes, taped the day after the attack, indicates that Mr. Obama has been lying from the get-go.

“My suspicion is, is that there are folks involved in [the attack on the consulate] who were looking to target Americans from the start,” the president told Mr. Kroft.

The fact that CBS cut this from the broadcast — airing instead Mr. Obama’s attack on Mitt Romney for criticizing his Middle East policy — indicates why the White House remains confident the “mainstream” media will continue to downplay the scandal.

This cover-up, like that in Watergate, goes right to the top. What’s being covered up is much worse than a “third rate burglary.” Why was security so lax? Why were the ambassador’s pleas for more turned down? Why did the president lie? Americans have a right to know. Few in the media have tried to find out.

 

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Oct 25

Unraveling political lies

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There’s a lot of dishonesty inherent in politics, sorry truth be told. It’s always there and especially in campaign season, every campaign season. But this time, distortions and twists of fact have ramped up to lying and accusing of lying.

Even while the first presidential debate was still underway and President Obama was clearly losing, his team got busy deciding how to recover. From the New York Times:

On the conference call convened by aides in Denver and Chicago even as the candidates were still on stage, there was no debate in the Obama campaign about the debate. None of the advisers fooled themselves into thinking it was anything but a disaster. Instead, they scrambled for ways to recover. They resolved to go after Mr. Romney with a post-debate assault on his truthfulness. Ad makers were ordered to work all night to produce an attack ad.

Then the vice-presidential debate aired and there was Vice President Biden boldly stating something that was demonstrably untrue.

With regard to the assault on the Catholic church, let me make it absolutely clear, no religious institution, Catholic or otherwise, including Catholic Social Services, Georgetown Hospital, Mercy Hospital, any hospital, none has to either refer contraception, none has to pay for contraception, none has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact.

That is a fact.

No it isn’t. And it took the US bishops no time in issuing a correction.

 Then the second presidential election, and President Obama’s insistence that he called the Benghazi a terrorist attack the day after the attack. Though he had not called it a terrorist attack. But got away with the claim anyway.

He also claimed that Planned Parenthood does mammograms, which was the second time during that debate that I talked back to the television. ‘No, they don’t.’ Even they admit that.

And then there was the third and final debate. CBS headlines that ‘Obama’s Rhetoric Shifts from Hope to Snark.’

If you’re President Obama, you know you pushed the sarcasm envelope at Monday night’s debate when even Rachel Maddow describes the way you spoke to Mitt Romney as being in “very, very overtly patronizing terms.”

Maddow probably meant it as a compliment, but there have been plenty of other observers who were critical of the president’s use of Seinfeldian set-ups and snarky punch lines  to score points about military spending and the state of U.S.-Russia relations.

Time’s Mark Halperin described the president’s style as “belittling.”  Mike Allen at Politico called it “snide derision.”

NRO’s Stanley Kurtz posted this on the president’s angry challenge to prove he’s ever undertaken an ‘apology tour.’ The key to the piece is in the second graf on the “handy list” link. Check it out.

And even comedian David Letterman expressed chagrin over the president’s performance.

Noel Sheppard picks up David Letterman’s belated realization that Barack Obama — one of his favorite guests — has misrepresented Mitt Romney’s position on GM and the auto bailout for months. 

Letterman tells MSNBCs Rachel Maddow that he finds it disappointing when a challenger proves to be more honest than an incumbent President:

DAVID LETTERMAN, HOST: Here’s what upset me last night, this playing fast and loose with facts. And the President Obama cites the op-ed piece that Romney wrote about Detroit, “Let them go bankrupt, let them go bankrupt,” and last night he brings it up again. “Oh, no, Governor, you said let them go bankrupt, blah blah blah, let them go bankrupt.” And Mitt said, “No, no, check the thing, check the thing, check the thing.”

Now, I don’t care whether you’re Republican or Democrat, you want your president to be telling the truth; you want the contender to be lying. And so what we found out today or soon thereafter that, in fact, the President Obama was not telling the truth about what was excerpted from that op-ed piece. I felt discouraged.

RACHEL MADDOW: Because the “Let Detroit go bankrupt” headline you feel like was inappropriate?

LETTERMAN: Well, the fact the President is invoking it and swearing that he was right and that Romney was wrong and I thought, well, he’s the president of course he’s right. Well, it turned out no, he was taking liberties with that.

Then, though Gov. Mitt Romney held back on the Libya questions of what the administration knew and when they knew it, some media didn’t. Like this Reuters revelation.

Officials at the White House and State Department were advised two hours after attackers assaulted the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, on September 11 that an Islamic militant group had claimed credit for the attack, official emails show.

The emails, obtained by Reuters from government sources not connected with U.S. spy agencies or the State Department and who requested anonymity, specifically mention that the Libyan group called Ansar al-Sharia had asserted responsibility for the attacks.

The brief emails also show how U.S. diplomats described the attack, even as it was still under way, to Washington.

Exceot for some key members of the intelligence community.

If the scoop from Reuters last night surprised Americans with the knowledge that the intel community knew that the Benghazi attack was not a spontaneous demonstration that spun out of control, no one was more surprised than Senate Intelligence Committee vice chair Saxby Chambliss.  His committee has been requesting those e-mails for weeks, and Chambliss to Fox and Friends that the information in them shows why they demanded them in the first place.

“At the very least,” Brian Kilmeade asks, “this shows a massive disconnect [between the intel community and the administration], doesn’t it?”  “No question,” Chambliss answers, but he’s more concerned about how the White House handled the issue.  “We got pushback, both  from the White House and the intelligence community, early on.  We couldn’t figure it out.  I mean, that was really strange — because they never do that.”  Chambliss now wants hearings in the Senate to pursue why these e-mails, and perhaps other intel, have been held back from Congress:

This points to a few possible conclusions.  Either the White House and the intel community kept Congress out of the loop because they didn’t want to admit that terrorists had successfully attacked an American diplomatic mission for the first time in fourteen years, or because they didn’t know themselves what the data meant.  Neither is particularly commendatory, although the latter looks a lot less dishonest.  Nevertheless, despite having this detailed description of the attack and the fairly credible claim of credit for the attack from a leading terrorist network in the immediate area within two hours of the start of the attack, the White House chose to repeatedly claim that they had “no evidence” that the sacking was a planned terrorist attack for most of the next two weeks.  That looks a lot more dishonest with every revelation that comes out in this issue.

And more are unraveling every day.

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Oct 21

The town beyond the presidential debate hall

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Analysis of almost every angle and moment in the townhall debate can be found just about everywhere online at any site remotely related to news and politics. I have my own moments of talking back to the television screen. And it has taken me days to get it posted because of so many intervening demands. But that hasn’t diminished one bit what happened in that debate.

I started writing this post right after the townhall debate at Hofstra University last week ‘moderated’ by CNN’s Candy Crowley. It’s remarkable that it not only remains relevant, it’s grown in depth of gravity since then. Investigations are ongoing. The terror attack was the incident. The handling of it afterward, even and especially in the presidential debate, have elevated the tension over it.

The day after the debate, comedian Jon Stewart cracked on the Daily Show that when the moment came for Gov. Mitt Romney to challenge President Obama about his response to the Benghazi consulate attack, the president at first protested, and then smugly said, ‘proceed, Governor’ welcoming him to plunge headlong into a faux painted boulder just as Wiley Cayote does to Road Runner. Implying that the president knew he was sending Gov. Romney into a stonewall.

How did that get set up ahead of time so that Obama would have such assurance? Someone on a news show said that though there were suspicions that ‘plants’ were among the townhall participants, the real plant was Candy Crowley.

The moderator in Tuesday night’s presidential debate, after appearing to side with President Obama on the question of whether he called the Libya strike a terror attack from the start, conceded afterward that Mitt Romney was “right” on the broader point — that the administration for days insisted it was a spontaneous act.

“He was right in the main. I just think he picked the wrong word,” Candy Crowley said of Romney on CNN shortly after the debate ended.

Crowley was referring to the tense exchange in the final half-hour of the debate, when Romney questioned whether Obama had called the attack an “act of terror” rather than “spontaneous” violence that grew out of a protest against an anti-Islam video.

Crowley then intervened. Here’s the exchange:

ROMNEY: I think (it’s) interesting the president just said something which — which is that on the day after the attack he went into the Rose Garden and said that this was an act of terror.

OBAMA: That’s what I said.

ROMNEY: You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack, it was an act of terror. It was not a spontaneous demonstration, is that what you’re saying?

OBAMA: Please proceed governor.

ROMNEY: I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror.

OBAMA: Get the transcript.

CROWLEY: It — it — it — he did in fact, sir … call it an act of terror.

At which point I was talking back to my TV ‘Not true!’

However, it was an emboldening moment for the president, depicted by Stewart as Wiley Cayote.

Obama, indicating he thought he had just gotten a boost from the moderator, then chimed in: “Can you say that a little louder, Candy?”

However, Obama didn’t explicitly label the Benghazi strike terrorism in those Sept. 12 remarks. What he did say is: “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation.”

The general reference to “no acts of terror” instead of the specific one that hit Benghazi was the president’s cover for the plausible deniability he’s crafted into an art.

Crowley, during and following the debate, pointed out that despite Obama’s Sept. 12 remarks his administration was peddling a different story to the public. She said it took two weeks for officials to say more definitively that the attack was more than an out-of-control protest.

But this was a late correction.

And she continued to clarify on CNN that Romney was making a legitimate point.

“Right after that I did turn around and say, ‘but you are totally correct that they spent two weeks telling us that this was about a tape’,” she said.

Not true. Here’s a fack-check:

The infamous incident when she interrupted Romney’s claim about Obama’s refusal to call the Benghazi murders a terror attack:

“It – it – it – he did in fact, sir. So let me – let me call it an act of terror…

Prompted by Obama to say it a little louder, Crowley obliged:

“He – he did call it an act of terror. It did as well take – it did as well take two weeks or so for the whole idea there being a riot out there about this tape to come out. You are correct about that.”

“It did take…two weeks or so for the whole idea there being a riot out there about this tape to come out”? What does that mean, in its awkward statement? It’s swiftness in moving on meant it was intended to move on.

CBS is apparently one of the remaining media outlets with fact-checkers, and they produced this.

ROMNEY: “You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack, it was an act of terror. It was not a spontaneous demonstration, is that what you’re saying?… I want to make sure we get that for the record because it took the president 14 days before he called the attack in Benghazi an act of terror… The administration indicated this was a reaction to a video and was a spontaneous reaction…”

In Sept. 12 remarks in the White House Rose Garden reacting to the Libya attack, Mr. Obama did refer generally to “acts of terror,” though he didn’t specifically call the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi an act of terrorism.

Just be honest.

It’s true that the administration, including U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, maintained for several days that the attack was spontaneous and the result of protests over an inflammatory anti-Muslim video. Meanwhile, CBS News reported on Sept. 12 that the assault appeared to be a planned terrorist attack.

In his speech to the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 25, Mr. Obama did not give any indication that the attack was an act of terrorism, instead repeatedly referencing the anti-Muslim YouTube video that allegedly spurred spontaneous protests.

 There’s no spinning the increasingly obvious, and the more he does, or his administration does or his surrogates do, the worse it gets. Even Saturday Night Live got it.

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