Jack Kelly Sunday

In this week's column, P-G columnist Jack Kelly calls President Obama a liar, quotes breitbart.com as reliable information and said that CNN's Candy Crowley "intervened to rescue" Obama from another debate loss and "handed" him "the win."

And no, I am not kidding.  But if you read this blog and Jack's column, you'd already know that.

The bulk of the column is Jack's rightwing defense/ahistorical rewrite of the Administration's treatment of the Benghazi attacks.

Here's Jack:

State Department officials knew right away that this was a terrorist attack because they were watching it in "near real time" on a live feed from security cameras, they told journalists Oct. 9. So, Mr. Romney asked the president, why for more than a week afterwards did he and other senior administration officials claim that it appeared to be a "spontaneous" protest in response to a YouTube video?

"The day after the attack, governor, I stood in the Rose Garden and I told the American people and the world that we are going to find out exactly what happened," Mr. Obama responded. "That this was an act of terror, and I also said that we're going to hunt down those who committed this crime."

Mr. Romney was incredulous. He knew Mr. Obama was still blaming the video when he spoke to the United Nations nearly two weeks later. "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," he said.

Referring to the Rose Garden statement, Ms. Crowley interjected, "He did in fact, sir ... call it an act of terror ..."

The hand off and the win, in Jack's eyes.  And a few paragraphs later:

What she did was tackle Mr. Romney as he was about to score a touchdown. The president, in my view, was lying. He did not specifically call the attack on the consulate in Benghazi an act of terror during that Rose Garden press conference, as Ms. Crowley later acknowledged. What he said was, "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation ..."

As the President said, let's go to the transcripts.  From Whitehouse.gov.  In remarks regarding the attacks in Benghazi, he framed things this way:

Of course, yesterday was already a painful day for our nation as we marked the solemn memory of the 9/11 attacks. We mourned with the families who were lost on that day. I visited the graves of troops who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hallowed grounds of Arlington Cemetery, and had the opportunity to say thank you and visit some of our wounded warriors at Walter Reed. And then last night, we learned the news of this attack in Benghazi.

See that?  He grouped all those attacks together.  And then he said:

No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done. [Emphasis added.]

He even mentions the four who died in Benghazi in the very next sentence.

If there was any doubt, he reiterated the very next day in Las Vegas. In a speech where he begins by announcing the deaths in Benghazi, he said:

As for the ones we lost last night: I want to assure you, we will bring their killers to justice.  And we want to send a message all around the world -- anybody who would do us harm: No act of terror will dim the light of the values that we proudly shine on the rest of the world, and no act of violence will shake the resolve of the United States of America. [Emphasis added.]

And yet Jack Kelly said the president didn't call the attacks in Benghazi an act of terror.

Jack's the one who's lying.  Either that or he didn't bother doing the necessary research for the column.  Which is it?  Incompetence or dishonesty?  We've asked this before...

But then there's this:

He did not specifically call the attack on the consulate in Benghazi an act of terror during that Rose Garden press conference, as Ms. Crowley later acknowledged. [Emphasis added.]

The grammar is a bit confused here.  What, exactly, did Crowley acknowledge?  Looks to me like he was saying that Crowley backtracked her initial fact check.  Did she?

Breitbart certainly thinks so.

But Crowley says no.

Another mistake/bit of dishonesty on Jack's part, I guess.