The depths of the scandalous Benghazi episode are becoming clear

The following timeline of events is what we know about the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya:

• April 5, 2011: Christopher Stevens arrives in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi to forge ties with the forces battling Moammar Gadhafi. President Obama appoints him as ambassador to Libya on May 22, 2012.

• February: The U.S. embassy requests and is granted a four-month extension, until August, of a Tripoli-based “site security team” composed of 16 special forces soldiers who provide security, medical and communications support to the embassy.

• March: State Department Regional Security Officer Eric Nordstrom sends a cable to Washington asking for additional diplomatic security agents for Benghazi, and later says he received no response. He repeats his request in July and again gets no response.

• April 6: Two fired Libyan security guards throw an IED over the consulate fence.

• May 22: An Islamist attack on the Red Cross office in Benghazi is followed by a Facebook post that warns “now we are preparing a message for the Americans,” and another a month later highlights Ambassador Stevens’ daily jogs in Tripoli in an apparent threat. The Red Cross closed the office.

• June 6: Unknown assailants blow a hole in the consulate’s north gate described by a witness as “big enough for 40 men to go through,” and four days later, the British ambassador’s car is ambushed by militants with a rocket-propelled grenade. The British close the consulate soon thereafter.

• July: The anti-Islam video “Innocence of Muslims” is posted on You Tube.

• Aug. 14: The US security team leaves Libya, despite Ambassador Steven’s desire that they remain, according to team leader Lt. Col. Andy Wood.

• In the weeks before Sept. 11, Libyan security guards are reportedly warned by family members of an impending attack. On Sept. 8, the Libyan militia tasked with protecting the consulate warns U.S. diplomats that the security situation is “frightening.”

•  Sept. 10: Al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri calls on Libyans to avenge the death of his Libyan deputy, Abu Yahya al Libi, killed in a June drone strike in Pakistan.

The next night, Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans, including two who disobeyed orders and came to help defend the consulate, are murdered in an attack that was unquestionably not the result of an obscure anti-Islam video.

Even dedicated Obama apologists cannot ignore the evident rising danger leading up to Sept. 11 that included violence serious enough to close the Red Cross office and the British consulate, and the direct violent attacks on the US consulate, and yet the needed and requested security enhancements were not provided.

It gets worse. From The Hill: "High-level staffers removed vital pieces of information tying terrorist organizations to attacks. They knew early on that radical Islamic terrorists participated in the attack. The former Deputy Chief of Mission to Libya, Gregory Hicks, said in the [Congressional] hearing, 'none of us should ever again experience what we went through in Tripoli and Benghazi on 9/11/2012.' He went on to say he had personally told former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton at 2 a.m. the night of the attack that it was a terrorist attack. Gregory Hicks also testified that Secretary Clinton's claiming the attack was incited by a YouTube video caused Libyan officials to hinder the FBI's arrival to the scene." For his forthrightness Mr. Hicks was demoted by the State Department.

Some question the veracity of the three witnesses who testified at the Oversight & Government Reform Committee. This is a predictable, if foolish, effort to discredit these witnesses. But these people are not bystanders; they are not people who are going to report on hearsay; they are not political operatives. In fact, Gregory Hicks is a registered Democrat who supported Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary. These people were directly involved in different capacities before, during and after the attack. They are totally credible, and deserve not only our respect and appreciation, but our attention to their message.

So what went wrong? There are three possibilities: massive bureaucratic incompetence; the administration was asleep at the wheel; or the administration put political considerations ahead of doing the right thing. Negative repercussions of an Islamist terrorist attack on a US facility on the iconic date of Sept. 11, right before a presidential election, drove the administration to concoct an implausible scenario to try to deflect attention from the reality that al-Qaeda had indeed not been vanquished, contrary to Barack Obama's boasting to the contrary.

In answer to Hillary Clinton's asinine question: "What difference ... does it make?" It makes a huge difference. Four people died as a result of your and/or the administration's mishandling of this event, Ms. Clinton, and the people you worked for deserve to know who screwed up, and why.

We hired Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and every other public servant to act in the best interest of the American people and the nation, and expect them to put their personal political considerations aside. That clearly did not happen in Benghazi. There is no greater disservice.

Obama plays both sides of the Benghazi issue, and loses

The terrorists in Benghazi, Libya who attacked our consulate last month on the anniversary of the September 11^th terrorist attacks and killed four American Foreign Service personnel have highlighted in tragic detail how deeply naïve President Barack Obama’s idea of foreign policy is.

His manic effort to deny the existence of Muslim terrorism to avoid offending Muslims confounds those of us grounded in reality. He put an end to the “war on terror,” and in its place we now have “Overseas Contingency Operations.” When a Muslim U.S. Army doctor screamed “Allahu Akbar” as he mowed down 13 of his fellow soldiers, Mr. Obama’s administration prefers to call it “workplace violence.”

With that background it is no wonder that Mr. Obama and his disciples inside and outside of the administration twisted themselves into illogical knots to avoid admitting what was obvious to most people: that it was a planned terrorist attack.

However, Mr. Obama tried desperately to claim the opposite during the second presidential debate, declaring that he identified the attack as a terrorist act the next day in a Rose Garden statement, and moderator Candy Crowley inappropriately backed him up on it. But the facts do not support Ms. Crowley or Mr. Obama.

The President made a five and one-half minute statement consisting of 801 words. Several times he used descriptive language, such as:

• “… four of these extraordinary Americans were killed in an attack on our diplomatic post in Benghazi.”
• “The United States condemns in the strongest terms this outrageous and shocking attack.”
• “ … we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people”
• “The world must stand together to unequivocally reject these brutal acts.”

 Notice that he did not say “terror,” “terrorism,” “terrorist” or “terrorist attack,” and he did not utter any such word in the first three-fourths of the statement.

 About three and one-half minutes into the statement Mr. Obama referenced the 9-11-2001 attacks: “Of course, yesterday was already a painful day for our nation as we marked the solemn memory of the 9/11 attacks.” Still, there was no reference to terrorism.

 And then, four minutes and 15 seconds into the five and one-half-minute statement, and 618 words into the 801 words of the text, he spoke the words “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation …” That oblique reference – plural, not singular – was the only time the concept of terrorism entered into Mr. Obama’s text. Right after that he said: “We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act.” “Terrible,” but not “terrorist." 

If he truly wanted the nation to understand that he thought terrorists killed those four Americans, he deftly disguised the message.

 As if to prove the assertion that he didn’t “really” call the attack an act of terror, for the next two weeks members of the administration – including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, Press Secretary Jay Carney and President Obama himself (who mentioned it again and again at a speech to the United Nations on September 25^th) – repeatedly blamed the attack on a violent protest in reaction to an anti-Islam video produced by an American. Yes, an American; that “shadowy character” who created a video about Islam was the cause of the Benghazi attack.

The administration offered the video as the only cause of the violence for days on end, despite the common sense reaction that people don’t show up with RPGs and mortars at a spontaneous protest, even in places occupied by radical Muslims.

Was there a protest prior to the terrorist attack, or wasn’t there? It really doesn’t matter. What matters is that the security provided to our people in Libya was dismally inadequate. There were eight attacks in Libya in a 6-month period, one on a British convoy and another on the Red Cross facility, causing both the Brits and the Red Cross to leave Libya because of the growing level of violence. And in June, there was an attack on the American Embassy in Tripoli.

U.S. personnel in Libya knew danger was mounting and practically begged for increased security measures. But Mr. Obama is fond of boasting that “Al Qaeda is on the run and Osama bin Laden is dead,” and mounting violence in Libya really doesn’t fit into that narrative. Al Qaeda is still alive and well, and Barack Obama’s dream of a “New Dawn in the Middle East” has proved to be a nightmare. Putting the “Dream” ahead of protecting Americans at home and abroad, the administration declined those requests for help, and now four brave Americans are dead.

Extremists in the Middle East may make it impossible for that long-troubled region to ever become a peaceful place, and perhaps no president can change that. But a position of strength on the part of the United States best serves the interests of peace and stability. We don’t have that in President Obama’s America, where foreign policy focuses on offering apology and appeasement. Leading from behind just doesn’t cut it.

Obama administration denies mother answers about her son’s murder

Why is my son dead?

That is all Pat Smith wants to know. Her son, computer specialist Sean Smith, was one of the four Americans killed on September 11th in the terror attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. A month after she buried her son, a month after everyone all the way up to the president of the United States promised her answers, she says she is still awaiting those answers.

“That's a funny subject,” Mrs. Smith said. “I begged them to tell me what was -- what happened. I said I want to know all the details, all of the details no matter what it is, and I'll make up my own mind on it. And every one of them, all the big shots over there told me that -- they promised me, they promised me that they would tell me what happened. As soon as they figure it out.”

“No one, not one person has ever, ever gotten back to me other than media people and the gaming people,” she said. “Hillary promised me. Joe Biden -- Joe Biden -- they all told me that -- they promised me. And I told them please, tell me what happened. Just tell me what happened.”

The attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was a made-in-Washington disaster, a result of naive foreign policy consisting of apology and appeasement – projecting weakness surpassing even that of Jimmy Carter.

Every other world leader defends and promotes his country, but Barack Obama agrees with our critics and apologizes for America. His pusillanimous posture sent a message to our enemies, and they have acted on our well-advertised weakness.

And now in the face of that inglorious policy failure in Libya, Mr. Obama has retreated to doing what he does best: passing the blame. “We didn’t do that; it was that video.”

Suggesting that an anti-Muslim video that hardly anyone on Earth had seen was responsible for that attack was ridiculous on its face, and was almost immediately discredited. Still, the administration continued to blame the video for about two weeks, before finally admitting what everybody else already knew: it was a planned terrorist attack. It then shifted blame to intelligence agencies for providing the administration bad information.

But, as time passed, the tawdry details emerged, showing that the State Department under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stubbornly refused to provide additional security forces for Libya as repeatedly requested.

The leader of the military security team in Tripoli, Lt. Col. Andrew Wood of the Utah National Guard, told various TV outlets that he and other embassy officials unsuccessfully attempted to extend his team’s tour of duty in Libya because of mounting security concerns. “The security in Benghazi was a struggle and remained a struggle throughout my time there,” Colonel Wood said. “Diplomatic security remained weak.”

A former security officer, Eric Nordstrom, said he was told in a phone call in July that the deployment of a 16-member American military site security team based in Tripoli could not be prolonged, according to a report by The New York Times. Although the Africa Command that oversaw the unit was willing to extend the deployment, the State Department said “no.”

Mr. Nordstrom told a Congressional committee recently he tried to improve security by asking for 12 agents, only to be told by a State Department official that he was asking for the “sun, moon and the stars.” “It was abundantly clear: we were not going to get resources until the aftermath of an incident,” Mr. Nordstrom said. “And the question that we would ask is, again, how thin does the ice have to get before someone falls through?” We now know the answer.

Although he is still a State Department employee, Mr. Nordstrom expressed strong frustration in trying to work with the Department. “It’s not the hardships,” he said. “It’s dealing and fighting against the people, programs and personnel who are supposed to be supporting me.” And he made this revealing comment: “For me, the Taliban is on the inside of the building.”

There is no way the administration can fix this colossal, deadly screw-up, but it could at least keep its word by honoring Mrs. Smith’s loss and help give her peace in her hour of grief.

Mr. Obama should drop the cover-up and come clean with the American people. That means admitting the dramatic failure of his foreign policy, and admitting to playing petty politics to distract the public. However, accepting responsibility isn’t in the Obama Playbook, especially this close to the election.