Facebook censors Navy SEALs for claiming Obama denied them help

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Published time: October 31, 2012 20:13
Edited time: November 01, 2012 00:13

Social media giant Facebook has removed a message by the Special Operations Speaks PAC (SOS), which shed negative light on US President Obama for denying a request for military support in Benghazi before the deadly attack on the consulate.

The message came in the form of a meme, accompanied by an image of Obama, smiling while holding his ears, next to an image of former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

“Obama called the SEALs and THEY got bin Laden,” the meme states. “When the SEALs called Obama, THEY GOT DENIED.”

The message sheds light on Obama’s failure to provide backup when the SEALs called for it in Benghazi, shortly before four Americans were killed in an attack that killed the US Ambassador to Libya.

Sources who were present during the six-hour assault claim that military assistance, which was only two hours away, was requested and denied even when the CIA safe house was under attack. The assault has become a controversial topic, with the White House having been unclear about how much it actually knew about the attack and the motivations behind it.

SOS is an anti-Obama group consisting of “veterans, legatees, and supporters of the Special Operations communities of all the Armed Forces,” the Facebook page states. After the page garnered 30,000 shared and 24,000 likes for the meme in just 24 hours, it was deleted by Facebook.

(Image from facebook.com)

Larry Ward, the administrator of the SOS Facebook page, said he received a message that he had violated Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities with out meme.

“So I copied the warning, put it on the meme as a caption, and re-posted the meme to our Facebook page,” he told Breitbart News. But after reposting the image, it was removed again and the SOS account was frozen for 24 hours.

Ward believes the meme was removed because it offended Obama supporters – including, he believes, members of the Facebook staff. It was posted just days before the presidential election, and its high number of shares could have made it influential.

“It looks like Obama’s liberal followers in Facebook HQ are terrified of how damaging the Benghazi scandal is for the President,” said former Navy SEAL Larry Bailey in a press release by SOS. “We understand that Facebook can run their site however they’d like, but when they’re trying to quietly squelch opposition to what is a clear leadership failure that resulted in the tragic deaths of some of our nation’s heroes, they deserve the to be called out on it.”

But Facebook denies that it purposefully censored the message, claiming the two-time deletion was simply a mistake.

“A member of our team accidentally removed something you posted on Facebook,” an e-mail from the social media giant told SOS. “This was a mistake, and we sincerely apologize for this error. We’ve since restored the content, and you should now be able to see it.”

The restored image currently has about 11,000 shares and 7,000 likes.