PolitiFact declared the 2012 Lie of the Year to be a campaign ad by Mitt Romney stating Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China.” The ad ran several times in Ohio during the presidential campaign. (The 2013 Lie of the Year was “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it . . .”)

In the wake of Obama’s 60 Minutes interview in which he threw James Clapper and the intelligence community under the bus, numerous reports have emerged that since fall of 2012 Obama received numerous detailed intelligence briefings about the true status of al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, and several other al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist organizations. It appears the briefings did not support Obama’s claims that al-Qaeda has been “decimated” and is “on the path to defeat” — claims Obama made dozens of times during the 2012 campaign (and since).

Furthermore, as Stephen Hayes has noted, the massive volume of intelligence retrieved during the bin Laden raid did not support the claim that al-Qaeda was decimated. Indeed, the Defense Intelligence Agency was telling the administration that al-Qaeda “was expanding and growing.” Moreover, Andy McCarthy makes clear that the Khorosan Group is al-Qaeda.

Misleading the American people — both during the 2012 presidential campaign and after — about the true scale of the threat posed by the terrorist organization responsible for the most devastating terrorist attack in American history arguably is a bit more consequential than whether Jeeps will be built in China. Accordingly, I hereby nominate ”al-Qaeda has been decimated/is on the path to defeat” as the Revised 2012 Lie of the Year. The Benghazi consulate attack being “caused by a hateful video disseminated on the Internet” is first runner-up.