Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Benghazi--Will Obama dodge this bullet? No.



Updates below.

It's now been seven weeks since the Benghazi attack and the murder of four Americans; the story is still in the news, thanks only to Fox News and the blogosphere. The alphabet news agencies are protecting Obama with their extreme incuriosity about the story. However, I don't think the story is going to go away. I also think that Obama had better pray that Romney wins this election, because otherwise he eventually will be frogmarched out the front door (or maybe the back door) of the White House.

Fox News has been doing some great work on this story, led by Brett Baier, the anchor for Special Report, (one of the best people working in journalism today, IMO), and including reporter Jennifer Griffin. Without Fox News pushing this story, likely we would still be blaming the video trailer. This report is from Jennifer Griffin on 26 October: "CIA operators were denied request for help during Benghazi attack, sources say."

David Ignatius, writing in The Washington Post on 30 October: "Lingering questions about Benghazi." "Fox News has raised some questions about the attack that deserve a clearer answer from the Obama administration."

Jennifer Rubin, also writing in the WP: "Obama needs to come clean on Benghazi." "So how about it, Mr. President--who called off a rescue and why? President Obama, a little more than a week before the election, won't tell Americans what happened. Well, why should he--the press doesn't hound him, the liberal elite still rushes to his defense, and his White House attack dogs bark 'Politics!' whenever legitimate questions are asked."

PJ Media has some excellent articles about Benghazi. More than one of their writers are saying, not just impeachment for Obama, but treason.

From Bob Owens, 29 October: "Questions for White House Over Benghazi Just Beginning." "Our consulate staff was abandoned and left to die." Owens links to another article he wrote on 26 October: "AC-130U Gunship was On-Scene in Benghazi, Obama Admin Refused to Let It Fire."

Bill Kristol at The Weekly Standard has "Ten Questions for the White House." "The president was, it appears, in the White House from the time the attack on the consulate in Benghazi began, at around 2:40 pm ET, until the end of combat at the annex, sometime after 9 p.m. ET. So it should be possible to answer these simple questions as to what the president did that afternoon and evening, and when he did it, simply by consulting White House meeting and phone records, and asking the president for his recollections."

Well, we assume Barry was where he was supposed to be--but maybe he wasn't? May be he was out somewhere with the choom gang? But of course that's only my own speculation.

Bob Owens continues: "These ten questions alone [from Bill Kristol] could end a presidency, but they are far from the only questions swirling around Benghazi. As noted earlier, we face the question of what Ambassador Stevens was doing in Benghazi without security."

Another writer at PJ Media, Roger L Simon, writes this: "Beyond Impeachment: Obama Treasonous over Benghazi." "Indeed, the discussion of Benghazi has just begun. And don’t be surprised if the conversation escalates from impeachment to treason very quickly. In fact, if Obama wins reelection you can bet on it. The cries of treason will be unstoppable. Not even if the mainstream media will be able to deny them." Simon wonders if Obama and others were covering up "more than their ineptitude?" What was Ambassador Stevens doing in Benghazi that day, the anniversary of September 11?

Then there's long time Democrat pollster Pat Caddell, who blasted the mainstream media suppression of the Benghazi story on the Jeanine Pirro show on Fox News Saturday night. Bad enough, he said, that this White House, this President, this Vice President, this Secretary of State, are apparently willing to dishonor themselves and this country for the "cheap prospect" of getting reelected--"willing to cover up and lie." But the worst thing--"the very people who are supposed to protect the American people and the truth, the leading mainstream media, and I said in a speech a week ago — because I’m stunned. I’ve never seen in an issue of national security like this, but I will tell you this, I said it then they have become a threat, a fundamental threat to American democracy and then enemies of the American people."

Obama's rebuttal was pathetically lame, as have been all of the fabulist stories about Benghazi coming from him and his administration. He had a 15-minute interview in the Oval Office (O is too much of a coward to have an actual press conference with the White House press corpse) with Michael Smerconish, an "MSNBC contributor," according to his biog. I wonder how many times in that interview O used the phrase, "What is true . . ."? Just like the Sec'y of State, Obama said that he takes "full responsibility" for the circumstances of the attack. And in his mind, what does that mean? Anything? I hope we the American people get a chance to show him what that means.

There was also an Obama sighting on MSNBC's Morning Joe show, where "a defensive and obviously irritated President Obama took on the demeanor of the offended party when he was questioned about his handling of the Benghazi debacle," writes Michael Patrick Leahy at Breitbart Big Government: "Obama to Morning Joe: 'I do take offense at critics of Benghazi." Well, Champ, "taking offense" and denying wrongdoing aren't the same thing,

Update: I was trying to think of the name of the other reporter at Fox who has been all over this story--it's Catherine Herridge. Wow, there's a post today at one of my favorite blog sites, Gateway Pundit by Jim Hoft: "Catherine Herridge: State Department Culpable in Death of Ambassador & Three Americans." Hoft reports that Herridge, a Fox News foreign policy analyst, told Greta Van Susteren on Wednesday: "From what I see the State Department has culpability in the death of the US Ambassador and three Americans."





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