Liar, Liar Embassy on Fire

In the last debate, Mitt Romney gambled that he could avoid a messy confrontation with Obama over the Libya scandal because it had developed legs of its own. That wager now seems to be paying off: as new and damning evidence of Obama’s intentional misdirection continues to slowly leak out like sap from a tree, the voting public is taking notice, forcing a willfully obtuse press to ink a story or two.

So somehow finding time between coverage of the war on women and Romney’s tax burden, Reuters has reported that officials at the White House and the State Department were informed, within two hours of the attacks on the embassy in Benghazi, that an Islamic militant group with ties to Al Qaeda was claiming responsibility on Facebook and Twitter.

This directly contradicts the Obama administration’s repeated, even indignant insistence that they had no evidence at all that the offensive was perpetrated by terrorists. As Press Secretary Jay Carney points out as late as September 14th: “We have no evidence at this time to suggest otherwise, that there was a pre-planned or ulterior instigation behind that unrest.” And in case there was any confusion, he weighed in again with similar assertiveness on September 18th: “Based on information that we — our initial information … we saw no evidence to back up claims by others that this was a preplanned or premeditated attack; that we saw evidence that it was sparked by the reaction to this video.”

And just to make unambiguously clear that no available intelligence even hinted at the possibility of terrorism he affirmed “that is what we know” and it is a judgement based on “concrete evidence, not supposition”. Mr. Carney visibly bristled at the apparent recklessness of such unfounded conjectures.

Of course, it now turns out they were neither unfounded nor conjectural but strongly supported by evidence almost immediately in their possession. The third email dispatched to the White House with the subject line “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack” communicated the following pithy observation: “Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.”

In fact, there was such a impressive pile of prima facie signposts that the attack was, in fact, premeditated and tactically coordinated that Reuters was reporting precisely this the following morning. Ostensibly better embedded than the totality of American intelligence services, they quickly discovered that Ansar al-Sharia was potentially involved, a militia based in the Benghazi area, possibly in concert with al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, the North African affiliate of al Qaeda’s central command. Even the Library of Congress reported on the ties Ansar al-Sharia has to al Qaeda-last summer! This a case that could be cracked with a little social media and an old fashioned library card.

Here’s a notable omission in the emails: any mention of an incendiary Youtube video so offensive it eventually left an entire region of the world riven by paroxysms of mob violence. To hear Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice tell it: never has comically bad acting produced such momentous geopolitical consequences. For the safety of the world, we must immediately get Two and a Half Men off the air.

And so now it is beyond all reasonable dispute that the movie had nothing to do with the attacks, that the administration never had any substantiation of that transparent pretense, that they did in fact have powerful reasons to believe it was a well-designed terrorist offensive, and that they lied to the American people about it.

In a spirit of generosity (I’m inspired by the premature Christmas decorations in a Starbucks), let’s offer this sympathetic interpretation: either because the information regarding terrorist involvement was not yet fully confirmable or because it was strategically imprudent to quickly show their hand, they decided not to disclose what they initially, almost immediately knew about the attacks. Their judgement could have been polluted by the hazy fog of emergency or maybe they needed to preserve a tactical advantage by keeping mum. Still, this does not explain (or hardly justify) why they would confect, out of nothing more than their own wishful thinking, a patently ridiculous counter theory centering around a internet movie. It also does not explain why, long after any strategic circumstance demanded it, they continued to circulate these falsehoods, let them mate and multiply, buried Americans under them like so much confetti.

And here is an even more discomfiting query: if the Administration was aware that the embassy was the target of a terrorist attack within two hours, and the attack purportedly lasted seven hours, why did they not intercede? Why didn’t Obama immediately order a special operations team to rescue Americans under siege? As unseemly as the lying is, nothing is as chilling as the thought that the President left Americans in harms’ way to die unassisted as he coordinated a premeditated press release rife with untruths.

This has all snowballed into something much greater than an issue of either credibility or competence. If President Obama neglected his sacred oath to defend those murdered Americans, serving in a tinderbox of danger at his pleasure, then the issue becomes one of character or, to be blunt, cowardice. These are questions that should be answered soon, especially as we barrel towards his potential reelection. Obama now solicits daily the American public for their support and it is worth asking if, when it counts most, they can rely upon his.

Category: Election 2012, Featured