How low can David Barton go? Lower than any responsible American could have imagined, apparently.
On his WallBuilders Live radio/Internet program today, Barton suggested that President Obama allowed last month’s attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, to happen so that it would be easier to pass an international “anti-blasphemy” ban protecting Islam from criticism. U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the September 11 attack.
Providing a partial transcript and audio clip from Barton’s repulsive broadcast, RightWingWatch.org reports that Barton told listeners that the United States had “signed on” to a United Nations resolution “to criminalize criticism of Islam, anti-blasphemy codes.” He also repeated charges promoted in right-wing media that the Obama administration had ordered American security forces to “stand down” rather than try to defend the Americans trapped in the Benghazi consulate during the attack. Then this:
“So we’re watching this thing develop, we watched four lives get lost and then what happens is we’re told ‘oh, it’s this video, we can’t be criticizing Islam, this video that criticized Islam, it cost four people [their lives.]’ This is the perfect set-up for the anti-blasphemy resolution that we joined on to and said we’re going to be a part of. I think it backfired; I really think that’s where they were headed.”
So Barton — former vice chair of the Texas Republican Party, a key national GOP figure and a member of the committee that drafted the party platform at the Republican National Convention this past summer — is suggesting that the president of the United States deliberately allowed an attack that led to the murder of four Americans, including our ambassador to Libya. And, Barton claims, President Obama did so because he was more interested in protecting Islam from criticism.
In making this monstrously vile charge, Barton repeats things that are simply not true. First, the New York Times just today published a lengthy piece debunking the claim that the Obama administration kept American help from reaching the consulate during the attack. Intelligence officials said C.I.A. officers raced to the consulate within minutes of being alerted to the attack, and other security personnel followed:
“The officers on the ground in Benghazi responded to the situation on the night of 11 and 12 September as quickly and as effectively as possible,” one of the senior intelligence officials told reporters.
Thursday’s briefing for reporters was intended to refute reports, including one by Fox News last Friday, that the C.I.A.’s chain of command had blocked the officers on the ground from responding to the mission’s calls for help.
“There were no orders to anybody to stand down in providing support,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of continuing investigations by the State Department and the F.B.I.
Two of the Americans killed in the attack were among those who had rushed to defend the consulate.
Second, the United States didn’t “sign on” to a proposed “anti-blasphemy” ban. In fact, the United States and European nations have blocked such a ban, arguing that “religious dignity is best protected where there is free speech.” Just two weeks ago Reuters reported that a top Islamic diplomat said U.S. and European opposition had made passage of the anti-blasphemy ban impossible.
But none of that stops Barton from launching such a disgraceful attack against the president of the United States.
Barton owes President Obama, the families of those murdered in Benghazi and all Americans an apology for his despicable rant today.
Nice to know he’s consistent. He lies about the present, as well as the past.
A turd with legs that knucklehead Barton is. No shame.
It’s a pity his grandmother isn’t alive to bitchslap him.
This fool is grappling at straws, he doesn’t know what he is talking about like a number of other teabaggers.
Too bad it’s not against the law to be stupid!
David Barton is one of the most obvious frauds and charlatans I’ve ever come across. He gets away with it because he claims to be a Christian. Why do Americans respect such obvious religious bigots and phonies?
He’s a snake. It apparently helps sell books.
How low can you go?
But folks, this is not a sign or a happening This is a symptom. In the past 48 hours, we have seen a lot of utterly ridiculous trash like this coming out of the Romney campaign—like that lie about Obama shipping Chrysler jobs to China—a lie that has be disapproved and exposed by Republican newspaper editors across the country. These are the desperate last minute death throes of a Republican campaign that realizes it has already lost the Presidential election. All these ridiculous things are the smoke from burning…well…I’ll let Neil Young tell you what is burning, what Barton’s message really is, and what the dying Romney campaign really is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7letrMf_nE&feature=related
Y’all listen up.
Fox “News” and the rabid radio right continue to stoke the flames of the Libya tragedy, in part to try and influence voters next week. However they’re preaching to the choir; a bunch of old white Southeners with very limited education. Nobody is going to change their vote next week based on anything Hannity or Limbaugh say.
Not to minimize the tragic deaths of the Americans in Libya but I’d like to hear an O’Reilly or Coulter stand up and denounce the dishonesty that led to the senseless and needless deaths of 4,000+ Americans in Iraq. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, as well as their neoconservative henchmen Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer et. al., should be arrested for crimes against humanity, tried, convicted and executed.
I’d like to see a couple of really large Federal Agents visit him, just to clear up a few things.
I just heard on the news that Romney is now calling his campaign a “movement.” I would like to remind him that bowels have movements too. You have to be careful when trying to define yourself.
Barton needs help…FAST! If he does not volunteer himself for psychiatric, he should be forced. His imbecilic statements go way beyond anyone’s imagination other than a very, very sick individual.
Like Romney, he has no concept that he is not being lucid. He speaks lies beyond anything that nobody but a mentally ill person would say. Romney lies because he cannot help himself; he thinks that people are so stupid that they will not remember what he says when he reverses himself. He is pathological, Barton is dangerous.
How people like him can be believed by anyone just show how mentally ill his followers may be.
Obama is a Marxist