Topic: Accuracy in Media
Roger Aronoff devotes a Sept. 19 Accuracy in Media column to complaining about how the Washington Post's Dana Milbank mocked AIM's "Citizens' Commission on Benghazi." Aronoff does his best to bolster the panel's alleged credibility:
Now take a look at the biographies of the people on the Citizens’ Commission on Benghazi, people who Milbank delights in belittling: people like Clare Lopez, a long-time CIA officer. The commission also includes people like Admiral James Lyons (Ret.) and Retired Generals Tom McInerney and Paul Vallely. There are 13 of us altogether, including 12 who were either top CIA agents, or high-ranking military officers, collectively with hundreds of years of service to the security of this country.
And as we've documented, McInerney and Vallely are birthers, two of at least four birthers on AIM's panel. Lyons, meanwhile, is a conspiracy-monger who claims that the scandal involving an extramarital affair by David Petraeus was a cover for Benghazi. Most of the rest are either anti-Muslim, anti-Obama or both.
In short, hardly an objective panel. But Aronoff desperately wants you to believe otherwise.
And so does Cliff Kincaid, who uses his Sept. 20 AIM column to highlight how "speakers" at the "Citizens' Commission" kickoff "said that the scandal could implicate the President in illegal operations that are international in scope." That's a statement show that the panel expects to put partisan attacks on Obama ahead of any actual fact-finding.
