The NY Times published a lengthy account of the Benghazi attack that is being hyped as exonerating the Obama administration (and of course, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton), but in fact the report does nothing of the sort.
The main thrust of the spin is that it was the video after all, a claim long since abandoned by almost everyone. There never was a doubt that the video inspired a generalize hostility, but that is a far cry from saying that the actual attackers who executed by contemporaneous internal administration accounts were motivated by the video.
The reporting does not support that the video was what motivated the “several dozen” armed attackers, even if it created a general atmosphere of hostility.
The NYT also plays a linguistic slight of hand, distinguishing between international al-Qaeda (NYT says no connection) and local al-Qaeda wannabees to try to prove that this was not an “al-Qaeda” attack. But local, independently operation al-Qaeda groups have been the motus operandi for years.
That there was no phone call from Pakistan to the local group in Benghazi does not mean that this was not a planned Islamic extremist attack and instead some spontaneous reaction to a video:
This is how an otherwise interesting series of interviews gets spun but is not supported by the actual details of the reporting.
For a more detailed analysis, for which I don’t have time, see these posts:
The wagons to defend the NY Times from criticism are officially being circled — by other media:
Update: Is this a case of confirmation bias?
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