White House blames Christian film maker, not Islamic politics, for embassy crisis

White House spokesman Jay Carney on Friday fended off critical questions about the spreading Arab crisis by blaming a little-seen Youtube video for the attacks, and by asking Americans to line up behind President Barack Obama in mourning the four Americans murdered in the Libya.

Obama attended the televised 2.15 p.m. fly-in of the four caskets atAndrews Air Force Base, amid growing reports about intelligenceand bureaucratic failures, and increasing GOP criticism of his high-risk support for Islamic parties.

Media outlets have reported that officials ignored or missed intelligence warnings about impending attacks, that the U.S. staff in Libya had little protection and few U.S. guards, and that the embassy in Cairo tried to protect itself from the Islamist rioters by labeling the satirical Youtube video as an “abuse” of free speech.

The criticism “has been both factually wrong and poorly timed,” Carney complained, adding that “now is time when Americans should be coming together.”

“There was no intelligence that in any way that could have been acted on to prevent these attacks,” he insisted.

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However, Carney on Friday tried to downplay the central role played by the Islamist parties who are vying for popularity in populations that support the establishment of Islamic laws — rather than human-made, secular laws — in their countries.

Instead, he repeatedly shifted the blame to the producer of the anti-Islam video in California, which is roughly 7,500 miles from Egypt.

The attacks are “a response to a video, a film, that we have judged to be reprehensible and disgusting — that in no way justified any violent reaction to it — but this is not a case of protests against the United States writ large or [against] U.S. policy,” he claimed.

When asked if the sophisticated Libya assault that killed the four officials was also a reaction to the video, Carney responded carefully, saying, “we have no information to suggest that it was a pre-planned attack.”