Does the White House Really Think We Are Dumb Enough to Believe This?

Here's the video:

 

Here's a transcript:

"JAKE TAPPER: Wouldn't it seem logical that the anniversary of 9/11 would be a time that you would want to have extra security around diplomats and military posts?

JAY CARNEY: Well, as you know, we are very vigilant around anniversaries like 9/11. The president is always briefed and brought up to speed on all the precautions being taken. But, Jake, let's be clear. These protests were in reaction to a video that had spread to the region.

TAPPER: At Benghazi?

CARNEY: We certainly don't know. We don't know otherwise. We have no information to suggest that it was a pre-planned attack. The unrest we've seen around the region has been in reaction to a video that Muslims, many Muslims, find offensive. And while the violence is reprehensible and unjustified, it is not a reaction to the 9/11 anniversary, that we know of, or to U.S. policy." 

More (9/14/12 11:45 pm):  The title of this post asked: “Does the White House really think we are dumb enough to believe this?”, i.e., what Press Secretary Jay Carney is saying here.  Certainly, people in other countries don’t.  Spiegel Online, the on-line service of a German news magazine, publishes a daily news digest.  Sometimes they include commentary from German newspapers on events of the day.  Here are excerpts from two German newspapers on events in the Middle East (the descriptions of the papers is Spiegel Online’s, not mine):

“The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung writes:

"The attacks on US embassies and consulates in the Arab world can not be justified in any way. If it turns out that al-Qaida is behind the attacks, as some US officials suspect, then they are acts of terrorism committed under the guise of religion. If they turn out to be uncoordinated actions by angry believers, then they are an expression of a frightening ignorance. A crazy individual US citizen has uploaded a movie onto the Internet which denigrates the Prophet Muhammad. The US government can not be held responsible for that. But that clearly does not help US President Barack Obama very much. He has to bear the political consequences of the recent events by himself."

"Four years ago, Obama pledged to seek reconciliation with the Muslim world. Now, it is doubtful whether he has succeeded. The US and its European allies now have to ask themselves how much support they still enjoy in the countries of the Arab Spring."

The conservative Die Welt writes:

‘US President Barack Obama's Middle East policy is in ruins. Like no president before him, he tried to win over the Arab world. After some initial hesitation, he came out clearly on the side of the democratic revolutions. … And now parts of the freed societies are turning against the country which helped bring them into being. Anti-Americanism in the Arab world has even increased to levels greater than in the Bush era. …’

‘Obama was naive to believe that one only needed to adopt a new tone and show more respect in order to dispel deep-seated reservations about the free world. In practice, the policies of the Obama administration in the region were not as naive as they may have seemed at times …. But Washington has provided the image of a distracted superpower in the process of decline to the societies there. This image of weakness is being exploited by Salafists and al-Qaida, who are active in North Africa from Somalia to Mali.’

‘One thing is clear: If jihadists believe they can attack American installations and kill an ambassador on the anniversary of Sept. 11, then America's deterrent power has declined considerably. For a superpower, it is not enough just to want to be loved. You have to scare the bad guys to keep them in check.’”