The truth is not a surprise to me: the bigoted anti-Muslim film had nothing to do with the attacks on the American Consulate in Libya. Glenn Greenwald explains why so many high-ranking U.S. officials lied:

For one, the claim that this attack was just about anger over an anti-Muhammad video completely absolves the US government of any responsibility or even role in provoking the anti-American rage driving it. After all, if the violence that erupted in that region is driven only by anger over some independent film about Muhammad, then no rational person would blame the US government for it, and there could be no suggestion that its actions in the region – things like this, and this, and this, and this – had any role to play.

The White House capitalized on the strong desire to believe this falsehood: it’s deeply satisfying to point over there at those Muslims and scorn their primitive religious violence, while ignoring the massive amounts of violence to which one’s own country continuously subjects them. It’s much more fun and self-affirming to scoff: “can you believe those Muslims are so primitive that they killed our ambassador over a film?” than it is to acknowledge: “our country and its allies have continually bombed, killed, invaded, and occupied their countries and supported their tyrants.”

It is always more enjoyable to scorn the acts of the Other Side than it is to acknowledge the bad acts of one’s own. That’s the self-loving mindset that enables the New York Times to write an entire editorial today purporting to analyze Muslim rage without once mentioning the numerous acts of American violence aimed at them (much of which the Times editorial page supports). Falsely claiming that the Benghazi attacks were about this film perfectly flattered those jingoistic prejudices.

Greenwald also explains that the version of the U.S. killing of Osama Bin Laden we heard from high-ranking U.S. officials was false in numerous stunning ways. The official version was designed to make the killing seem justifiable.

None of those claims, central to the story the White House told the world, turned out to be true. Bin Laden was unarmed and nobody in the house where Bin Laden was found ever fired a single shot (a courier in an adjacent guest house was the only one to shoot, at the very beginning of the operation). Bin Laden never used his wife or anyone else as a shield. And the house was dilapidated, showed little sign of luxury, and was worth one-quarter of what it was claimed. Numerous other claims made by the administration about the raid remain unanswered because of its steadfast insistence on secrecy and non-disclosure (except when it concerns Hollywood filmmakers).

So once again, our government officials have almost no regard for the truth and our corporate media shows that its main job is to serve as stenographer for the U.S. government.