{"id":20564,"date":"2014-09-17T16:33:52","date_gmt":"2014-09-17T23:33:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=20564"},"modified":"2014-09-17T16:33:52","modified_gmt":"2014-09-17T23:33:52","slug":"benghazi-a-mini-irancontra-fox-news-should-ask-their-own-in-house-felon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=20564","title":{"rendered":"Benghazi A Mini Iran\/Contra? Fox News Should Ask Their Own In-House Felon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week Fox News helped to promote a shoddily constructed story<\/a> by a discredited reporter about an alleged effort by the State Department to dispose of documents that might be harmful to then-Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. The story, that they laughably called a “bombshell,”<\/em> did not provide a single bit of evidence and relied entirely on allegations by a former State Department official who had been reprimanded for being “grossly inadequate”<\/em> and who clearly had an ax to grind.<\/p>\n

\"Fox<\/p>\n

Today Fox News upped the ante by adding new scenarios with even less connection to reality. On Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade introduced a segment with retired Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer saying that…<\/p>\n

“Anything that could have got them into trouble, Colonel, was grinded up, was shredded, and the review board never got all the documents.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, none of that was ever verified, and the allegations were merely speculation by someone who the reporter admits never witnessed any such thing. So in order to take the focus off of how thin this whole fictional account is, Kilmeade allowed his guest to offer up a complete fantasy that neither of them bothered to support with any facts.<\/p>\n

Shaffer:<\/strong> Some of these documents we’re talking about were probably the direct link to some of the bad incidents, to include the holy grail here that nobody wants to talk about, is the obtaining of weapons from the Libyan rebels, moving them out of the country, to the Turks, through Turkey to the Syrian rebels. Some of those rebels ended up being the ISIS threat we’re now facing.<\/p>\n

Kilmeade:<\/strong> So you mean this is almost like a mini Iran\/Contra thing?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shaffer responded “Absolutely,”<\/em> to this question, apparently ignorant of what the Iran\/Contra scandal<\/a> was all about. Shaffer’s invention of a plot to transfer weapons that were lawfully provided to Qaddafi foes in Libya, to dubious characters in Syria, is nothing like Iran\/Contra, and there is no evidence that it even happened. In the Reagan era scandal weapons were illegally sold to Iran while the nation was under an international arms embargo. The proceeds were then used to illegally fund the Nicaraguan Contras, which was explicitly prohibited by federal law.<\/p>\n

The funny thing about this is that Fox News could have gotten all of this straight if they had instead interviewed their own employee, Oliver North. It was North who ran the Iran\/Contra affair and was convicted by a jury for his felonious behavior. However, he is now a Fox News anchor and military commentator for the network. You have to wonder whether it was his violations of federal and international arms trading laws, or his perjury conviction for lying under oath to Congress, that made him such an attractive candidate for employment at Fox.<\/p>\n

Actually, it may be overly optimistic to suggest that North would have straightened anybody out, since he has been lying about the scandal for more than two decades. But it’s interesting that Fox is now using Iran\/Contra as an example of grossly unlawful practices with their comparison to the fiction they are hyping about the Clinton State Department purging documents. If this “holy grail”<\/em> that they are now trying to smear Clinton with is so bad that they are calling it a “mini Iran\/Contra,”<\/em> then how can they ethically employ the leader of the actual, full-sized Iran\/Contra?<\/p>\n

Of course, the answer to that question is that Fox News has never considered it within their charter to act ethically. That makes their job of lying and distorting the news a lot easier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this week Fox News helped to promote a shoddily constructed story by a discredited reporter about an alleged effort by the State Department to dispose of documents that might be harmful to then-Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. The story, that they laughably called a “bombshell,” did not provide a single bit of evidence and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20566,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Benghazi A Mini Iran\/Contra? Fox News Should Ask Their Own In-House Felon","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1,8,13],"tags":[1091,870,33,1064],"class_list":["post-20564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","category-propaganda","category-scandalous","tag-benghazi","tag-brian-kilmeade","tag-fox-news","tag-oliver-north"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/..\/Pix\/Trump\/foxnews-north-benghazi.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Ijg-5lG","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":40042,"url":"https:\/\/www.newscorpse.com\/ncWP\/?p=40042","url_meta":{"origin":20564,"position":0},"title":"Fox & Friends Co-Host Brian Kilmeade Leaps Off the Trump Train, Says He ‘Refounded ISIS’","author":"Mark NC","date":"12\/21\/2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Things are getting really bad for Donald Trump. 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