BALTIMORE, Maryland May 4. 2014 - Whither Benghazi? Dare to dream of a day when something like Benghazi cannot happen to my country. I still just shake my head at the very mention of the word. It still beads up sweat on my brow. It still makes my jaw clench. It still makes me angry. People who hold themselves out to be just and decent and worthy of high office should never ever sink as low as they have sunk in this case.
Let me begin by stating what I believe are the facts. I might be wrong about these facts. I have gathered these facts by reading, listening, watching. Sometimes, if there are gaps in what I know, I fill in the gaps based on what I know about the characters involved.
Benghazi is a city in Libya. It is more important than I realized to the country of Libya, and formerly served as a kind of "co-capitol" along with Tripoli. According to what I have read over the last year, there was a very real power vacuum in Benghazi and the land around it in the wake of the Libyan Civil War and the Death of its long-time ruler and dictator, Mohammar Qadaffi. The power vacuum in Benghazi was at its most acute after the allies left the Libyan theatre after Qadaffi was deposed and subsequently killed. Into that power vacuum - and they didn't wait for an invitation - came a loose amalgamation of Islamic Fundamentalists, many claiming some sort of ties with Al Qaeda.
These groups apparently were aware of the virtually complete lack of firepower and personnel at the American Consulate in Benghazi, and so they planned an attack there on the anniversary of The September 11, 2001 Massacres in the United States by Al Qaeda.
The Anerican Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, became aware of an increase in the number of Islamic Radical Operatives on the streets of Benghazi during late July and August, 2012. He and other Americans began to systematically request increased security for the American Consulate there. It wasn't one fleeting request. It wasn't an afterthought. It was repeated, often. And the later requests took on an air of desperation.
And this is where the story gets, well, disgusting. This is where the American people - the ones that know about the case in detail - start to question what kind of people were and are running the State Department and the White House. Libya was one tough assignment. The people we had there were, generally, career foreign service people, out very best in this area. Barack Obama had picked Stevens himself. Stevens knew Obama was running for re-election and he also knew Obama was running on a claim that by killing Osame bin Laden he had gutted Al Qaeda and left them a shadow of what the group was on September 11, 2001. And despite knowing this, Stevens was begging for firepower, repeatedly.
Repeatedly. Asking for help.
Repeatedly, he was denied. Repeatedly.
And then it was September 11, the Anniversary celebrated all over the Middle East as the time the little guys took down the Great Satan. Actually, that is a figment of some Mullah's imagination. Killing civilians - defenseless, peace-loving, decent - killed by pure evil. Nonetheless, Obama and Ms. Clinton either intentionally or negligently missed the significance. How detached and incompetent is that? Even if there is some lame reason why you would deny requests for help, anybody halfway tuned in would have pulled our people out of there for the week. One week.
On September 11, the first attack started sometime, I believe, around 8 Pm. It doesn't end until near dawn. In fact, information released last week showed that the two former Navy Seals, Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, were killed sometime around 5 am. Throughout the attack Americans at the consulate and then the annex, where survivors took cover from the continuing attacks, only to have it also attacked, called desperately for help. Yet the military never dispatched help. No fighter jets, no military helicopters, no paratroopers. Nobody came. In fact, nobody was really even dispatched. A few preliminary steps were taken by a couple of elite units, but they were called off long before they were ever close to being deployed. And we're told that nobody was available. And we're told that as if that somehow makes the fact that no help came as if that makes everything alright. We're told that as if it somehow vindicates the President and Clinton. Anyone with even a tidbit of common sense understands that this might be the biggest indictment of the two of them and their basic competence that comes out of Benghazi. You are on notice from your own people that trouble, very bad trouble, is imminent. It is so very dangerous that they are asking, over and over, for military help, protection, enough to disuade an attack. You say no, and then don't even have the military on full alert on September 11 in the event that trouble comes? It is asinine.
And then, it is September 11 and trouble comes. Big trouble. Trouble in the form of a well-armed mob with mortars and other heavy weapons. Trouble in the form of snipers covering the attackers from buildings in the area. Trouble in the form of laser guided weapons. Trouble in the form of three coordinated attacks lasting over nine hours.
We did not provide our own people with the protection they begged for. We were not even ready with off-site responders when trouble does come? Do not tell me the people in charge are even slightly competent.
The right says the reason for all of this is the line taken in the Obama Campaign that Al Qaeda cannot mount these kind of attacks. If we start beefing up security because our own people see Al Qaeda mounting an attack, we look like incompetents. I want to scream. We can't be that shallow. We cannot be that completely incompetent. Obama, on the campaign trail, armed with common sense, real compassion, and acting like a leader when a leader is most needed: "I have argued that our decision to take out the evil person most responsible for September 11, 2001 was not only a just decision, but had benefits in the long run, because it hit the organization he ran as hard as we have ever hit them. We were correct. It hit them hard. But we have evidence now, these many months later, that they have begun to recover. They have mounted an attack in Benghazi against our consulate there. We were ready for it. We had intelligence that it was coming and we rushed defenders to the scene. We also had other assets on high alert, so that if trouble started we would be able to promptly respond. I stand here today and tell you that I am glad we did. We saved lives. We hit Al Qaeda hard and I would do it again. They have not gone away."
Would that have lost Obama the election? Being Honest, in the face of impending evil? I believe it would have built support for him in an area he was perceived as being weak. Instead, he proved the idea that he was weak.
The far left has this active paranoia about them. They can't say what they are doing because everyday people will abhor it. When the far left, like fascists, take over some place they immediately try to suppress other voices. This is why being far far leftists makes you almost by definition anti-American. American politics have always, always, been built on the premise that in a free marketplace of ideas, the truth emerges. That is the idea that carried the day in Watergate. Nixon acted the same way Obama and Ms. Clinton are acting now. The key to the premise, of course, is "in a free marketplace of ideas." When the far left suppresses information, suppresses opposition opinion, redacts emails to the point of absurdity, they rob the public of the free market of ideas, where all ideas are welcome. We saw a bit of it in recent days when a few uber leftists at Rutgers kept the former Secretary of State from giving a speech. Why? As liberals, are we afraid of conservative ideas? We have had the ball for four years with the graduates. If they can't survive one speech by a conservative leader who isn't all that conservative, who held a high position of authority for many years, wwe are incompetent. In Benghazi, it is hard to stomach the pure nonsense that Carney babbles day after day. Who's idea was it to have him say, with a straight face, that the Rhodes email wasn't connected to Benghazi? It had everything to do with Benghazi. When we say stuff like that we are boobs. Were I Carney, I would quit before I said something that obscene.
Back to the Benghazi narrative. Within two hours of the START OF THE ATTACK, Ms. Clinton puts out a press release that mentions the bloody video. This, even as phone calls from the scene beg her to send help. At 10 pm, there were still seven more hours of violent attack yet to go. And she is already babbling about something that has nothing to do with nothing. Sometime around this hour she also supposedly talks to Obama. Do you think we will ever get even a close approximation of what was discussed in that conversation? I believe that conversation sealed the decision to blame everything on the video. After this hour, neither Obama or Ms. Clinton make a public statement without talking about the video, even though they knew at once that the video had nothing to do with anything. A violent planned attack was identified from the outset as what was happening at Benghazi. We know that now because of the testimony last week of Retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Lovell. He was "in the room" that night, in Stuttgart, Germany, with other officers, monitoring the attack in real time. He heard the talk from all sites; the conclusion of everyone in Benghazi and in Washington was that a group connected to Al Qaeda was staging the attack. There had been no demonstration that spun out of control.
Clinton and Obama need to tell the American people why they were so hell bent on making the whole affair the fault of a video, which they knew from the outset was false. The Rhodes email lets the cat out of the bag - the video allowed them to absolve themselves of blame in the attack - but the two of them need to make a mea culpa speech. Otherwise, they give the American People the unmistakable idea that they will not speak the truth about Benghazi. The American People pretty much know the truth by now. They need their leaders to come clean about it.
And yet I believe they will not do it. Ms. Clinton has this idea that if she tells the truth about her incompetence, she will not be elected President. I hope that is true. I hope at this point it is clear to all sane Americans that she cannot be President. If you aren't there yet, if you still cling to the idea that she would be a good President, I believe, humbly, that you need to revisit Andrews Air Force Base, a couple of days after the Benghazi killings. The bodies of the four massacred Americans, ensconced in flag-draped coffins, sit on the tarmac at Andrews, just outside of Washington D.C., having just been flown home. The families of the dead are there, as are Obama and Ms. Clinton. For a few minutes they intermingle. We are told by the families that Obama is standoffish, acting as if he doesn't want to be there. Hilary, however, moves through the group. She tells one bereaved person after another that she promises them that America, "we," as she puts it, will "get" the man who made the video.
That is what she said. She did not say that America would do everything humanly possible to bring the guilty parties to justice. She did not say that there is hard work still to do to gut Al Qaeda. Instead, she had the mendacity, the gall, to lie to these innocent, crushed souls, even as the bodies of their loved ones lay just a few feet away. Tell me how doing what she did at Andrews doesn't eliminate her from being President. Tell me, please.
I expect leftists to say some nonsense about Hilary actually believing that the video was to blame. That is false. Her top assistant had already written a memo to the Libya's leadership pinning the entire blame for the attack on Al Qaeda-related groups. This wasn't a CIA person or a military person, it was one of Hilary's top assistants. Hilary lied, again. I don't know why she lied. Was she not strong enough to tell Obama that she would not lie for him?
And this is why the Select Committee has just and important work to do. John Beehner promised today that there will be no sideshow. He said our system of government depends on transperancy and candor. I don't usually agree with Mr. Boehner. In this case, he is at least 100% correct.
And then the attack was over and four were dead.
AFTER-THE-SACT CLASSIFICATION AS TOP SECRET
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