f'ing jackass
I thought I would share some Maddow today...
As of yesterday, the overarching
question from the right was reduced to this: the talking points made available
to U.S. officials four days after the attack were slightly edited, with the
word "extremists" replacing the word "terrorists." This, Republicans
have argued, is critically important because, well, just because. The
"scandal" conservatives are comparing to Watergate has narrowed to a
discussion over word choice.
On the Sunday shows, Republicans said
identifying who changed one word to another is a question that demands an
answer. As it turns out, the answer is now available.
The intelligence community
-- not the White House, State Department or Justice Department -- was
responsible for the substantive changes made to the talking points distributed
for government officials who spoke publicly about the attack on the U.S.
mission in Benghazi, the spokesman for the director of national intelligence
said Monday.
The unclassified talking
points on Libya, developed several days after the deadly attack on the U.S.
mission in Benghazi, were not substantively changed by any agency outside of
the intelligence community, according to the spokesman, Shawn Turner.
The talking point initially pointed to
al Qaeda involvement, but officials didn't want to divulge too much in
non-classified materials, especially in light of classified sourcing, so the
word "extremists" was used. Who made the change? The intelligence
community. Why did they make the change? For entirely legitimate reasons
related to intelligence and national security.
Why is this scandalous? It's not.
It's always something...
