Fox's Jarrett Hurls Kitchen Sink Of Benghazi Falsehoods

Swearing InFox News host Gregg Jarrett used the new round of Congressional hearings on the September 11, 2012, attacks on the US diplomatic facility in Benghazi to push some of the network's favorite Benghazi lies.

This week, Republican Rep. Darrell Issa (CA), Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led a new round of hearings into the Benghazi attacks. The committee heard testimony from Retired Admiral Mike Mullen and former Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who led the State Department Accountability Review Board (ARB) which issued an independent report in December about the attacks.

On the September 19 edition of Happening Now, host Gregg Jarrett and contributor Jonah Goldberg used the hearings to push some of Fox's favorite, long-debunked falsehoods about the attacks and the Obama administration's response.

Jarrett posited that US military forces could have arrived in time to rescue those under attack in Benghazi but had decided not to do so. Both he and Goldberg wondered why Mullen and Pickering had “dismissed” this idea, with Goldberg adding, “That's outrageous that no one was ready to have anybody come rescue any American on 9/11, which is sort of a famous terrorist holiday. And secondly, they didn't know how long this fight was going to take.”

But the theory that U.S. forces could have made it in time for a rescue or intervention has been repeatedly debunked. The ARB determined that all “interagency response was timely and appropriate” but there was not sufficient time for “armed U.S. military assets to have made a difference,” and the Pentagon has said that fighters could not have been sent to Benghazi because they lacked the refueling tankers that would have been needed to get them there. Additionally, the Pentagon said Special Operations Command Africa instructed a team of Special Forces not to leave for Benghazi because they would be needed to provide security in Tripoli. That second team would not have reached Benghazi before the attacks were concluded. Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called out those who claimed more could have been done to rescue those in Benghazi for having a “cartoonish impression of the military.”

Jarrett also pushed the myth that a stand down order was issued that night, saying, “The infamous stand down order, we still haven't gotten to the bottom of that, assuming that it even happened.”

Yet the head of Special Forces in Tripoli has testified that no such stand down order was ever given, no evidence has ever emerged suggesting such orders were given, and reinforcements actually arrived from Tripoli in time for the second attack on the facility. Even the Republican-led House Armed Services Committee has acknowledged no such order was given.

Jarrett concluded by claiming that “we still don't really know” where President Obama was during the attacks, adding, “presumably he went to bed while Americans were being slaughtered.”

This smear flies in the face of testimony from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who has stated that Obama was “well-informed” during the attack and that Obama ordered military leaders to do “whatever you need to do to be able to protect our people there.”

Jarrett's lies are only a drop in the ocean of the Benghazi falsehoods Fox has pushed for the last year.