Nero fiddled while Rome burned -
this guy slept while Americans were slaughtered!
Nobody wake Barack
- February 9, 2013
Michael
Goodwin
The Benghazi terrorist attack was a
debacle in three distinct stages. The fatal mistakes occurred in the first two —
the failure to provide adequate security before the attack and the failure to
provide help once it started. Those mistakes were tragic, but the Obama
administration’s explanations are coherent, though hardly
defensible.
The mystery always has been the third
stage — the aftermath, or more accurately, the coverup. Even before the bodies
of the four Americans came home, the White House was eager to tell any story
except the real one.
Aides twisted and turned to create the
false narrative that a protest over an anti-Muslim video was spontaneously
hijacked by radicals. But two problems quickly emerged: There was no video
protest in Benghazi, and the attack, which used heavy weaponry, was well
planned.
So, why did the White House spin the
web of deceit? Don’t they know the coverup is worse than the
crime?
Finally, we have the answer, thanks to
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. In his reluctant Senate testimony, he provided
the missing piece of the puzzle: The commander in chief was MIA. The coverup was
created to protect his absence.
According to Panetta, President Obama
checked in with his military team early on during the attack, then checked out
for the rest of the night. The next day, we already knew, he blamed the video
maker and flew to Las Vegas for a campaign event.
Meanwhile, half a world away,
Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans had been slaughtered by
Islamists. Their murders on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 gave the incident extra
gravity and led the White House to conceal the facts. An honest chronology would
have revealed the president’s shocking behavior during the most successful
attack against Americans by foreigners since 9/11.
Imagine the questions that would have
come: What did Obama do through the long, bloody night? Whom did he talk to?
When did he learn that Stevens was dead?
There is still much we don’t know, but
Panetta, under persistent Senate probing, revealed that Obama simply wasn’t
involved. Did he just go to sleep?
That question, like other good ones,
was asked by Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. Panetta and the
chairman of the joint chiefs, Martin Dempsey, told Graham they didn’t sleep, but
said they didn’t know if Obama did.
You would think a presidential
conscience would keep him awake and engaged until he knew what had happened in
Benghazi. You would be wrong.
Instead, the two officials said they
had only one, 30-minute conversation with Obama. It began at around 5 p.m.
Washington time, 90 minutes after the first attack started, and
they never spoke to him again that
night.
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