Aw Bull..This is a manufactured outrage in the first place....
"The story of Netanyahu’s perfidy grew to the extent that the New York Times reported, incorrectly, that Netanyahu accepted the invitation before the White House had been informed of it. The Times then issue the following correction. “An earlier version of this article misstated when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel accepted Speaker John A. Boehner’s invitation to address Congress. He accepted after the administration had been informed of the invitation, not before.”
This correction has circulated in conservative and pro-Israel circles, but doesn’t seem to have led to any followup, or any investigation by those who initially reported the opposite. Were senior White House aides exaggerating the story, or did the Times get caught up in its own anti-Netanyahu narrative? Or perhaps the Times was failing to distinguish between Netanyahu’s formal acceptance after the White House had been notified, and White House anger that the details of the visit had been worked out before notification to the White House, meaning that Netanyahu was planning to accept the invitation before the White House knew about it.
All this raises the issue of why the Obama Administration chose to turn this incident into a diplomatic brouhaha. On the one hand, a foreign leader planning a visit without prior coordination with the State Department is surely unusual. On the other hand, over at American Thinker, Ed Lasky notes that a visit like this is not exactly unprecedented: “In 2011, Boehner sent a notice to the WH stating his intention to invite Netanyahu to speak before a joint session of Congress. The White House never responded (spite? incompetence?) and Boehner proceeded to extend the invitation to Netanyahu. Netanyahu accepted the invitation and spoke. The White House did not express any outrage in 2011.” The invitation letter, meanwhile, said the invitation was “on behalf of the the bipartisan leadership of the US House and US Senate”, suggesting that the Israelis may have been misinformed regarding the extent to which the Democratic Congressional leadership was on board (and if they were on board, surely the White House would have known about it).
When informed of Boehner’s invitation, the White House publicly took a “wait and see” attitude, rather than announcing its opposition. According to Israeli Ambassador Ron Dermer, once the White House knew about the invitation, the Israeli government (contra Cohen and others) was in contact with U.S. government officials, in both Washington and Jerusalem. It doesn’t appear that the White House conveyed to Netanyahu that the president expected him to decline the invitation.
So we have two different narratives here. The Israeli narrative is that Boehner, on behalf of a bipartisan Congress (as the Israelis claim they sincerely believed), invited Netanyahu
to address a joint session of Congress. Netanyahu had done so before under similar circumstances, without White House objection. The invitation had been conveyed informally to Netanyahu weeks before it was publicly announced, and the Israelis figured, based on what Boehner himself told them, that it was Boehner’s job to decide when and how inform the White House that a formal invitation was pending. Once Boehner did so, Netanyahu having heard no objection from the White House beyond concern that the invitation had breached diplomatic protocol (which would seem to be primarily Boehner’s sin), went ahead and accepted it."
Did the Obama Administration lie about Netanyahu? (Updated and revised) - The Washington Post
It's a non story, one that the WH manufactured, and you fell right in line with the faux outrage....Congrats.
