How Qaddafi loyalist's Fake Rape Story became RW dogma on Facebook [View all]

[cthulu2016]

Last edited Fri Sep 14, 2012, 06:35 PM - Edit history (9)

American RW conspiracists on Facebook and pro-Romney hate sites are all ablaze with the "news" that Ambassador Stevens was repeatedly raped by his assailants before they killed him.

This is obviously dubious since his assailants did not kill him face-to-face. He was murdered, of course, but he is reported to have died from asphyxiation by smoke inhalation in a burning building. (And the photos of his body being carried are of Libyans trying to help get him to the hospital.)

But, as with Jessica Lynch in the Iraq War, the claim of anal rape by Muslims, no matter how dubious the source, is always eagerly taken up by the RW.

So what is the source for this latest outrage story?

Well, we have tayyar.org, which, as Jeff Foxworthy would say, "Just may be a Qaddafi loyalist site," since the story claims to be reporting an AFP story (more on that later) that Stevens was raped by his assailants but then, in the first paragraph, equates that to what was done to Qaddafi.

http://www.tayyar.org/Tayyar/News/PoliticalNews/ar-LB/usa-killed-lybia-zek-970.htm

And we have a website on wordpress that appears to call itself "Libyan Free Press"... but that is a self-description, not the name of the news organization. Look closer. The news organization is Jamahiriya News... the official state news organ under Qaddafi.

http://libyanfreepress.wordpress.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamahiriya_News_Agency

What they say is:

"Libya - USA Ambassador in Bengazi sodomized and killed by his own al-Qaeda puppets."

(Fair and balanced! The Qaddafi diehards have to present the overthrow of Qaddafi as a joint USA/al-Qaida operation to make their overall theory of "no domestic revolt" work.)

And the fact this is a remnant Qaddafi loyalist website is hardly disguised. For instance:

Happy Birthday Brother Leader!

So then THE WASHINGTON TIMES (America's most doctrinaire RW daily paper) runs with the Lebanese website claiming to be passing along an AFP story. And facially fake Qaddafi propaganda is thus bootstrapped into news.

The WT said:

According to the Lebanese news organization Tayyar.org, citing AFP news sources...
http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/sep/13/picket-report-murdered-us-ambassador-libya-reporte/

Okay, so AFP reported this and it was merely picked up by a pro-Qaddafi site, right? Except the claim of attribution is as bogus as the claim of news!

As the Washington Times puts it:

UPDATE 3:35 AM EST. - The Lebanon report on the murdered U.S. ambassador, Christopher Stevens, in Libya remains unconfirmed by the AFP.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/watercooler/2012/sep/13/picket-report-murdered-us-ambassador-libya-reporte/#ixzz26SJmNRay

"Unconfirmed" by the AFP? The Lebanese website claims their story came from AFP, so it isn't that AFP doesn't confirm another news organization's story, it is that AFP doesn't confirm that AFP reported it in the first place!

But many RWers will "know" this story is true to their dying day.