Investigate Benghazigate

After Iraq was liberated from Saddam Hussein’s despotic misrule, critics denounced the then-incumbent president with the charge that “Bush lied, people died.”  It never ceases to amaze that among the most prominent of those making this slanderous accusation were past and present Democratic legislators who had publicly pronounced exactly what George W. Bush did:  Saddam possessed – and used – weapons of mass destruction (WMD).  And they, like Mr. Bush, had every reason to believe and did believe that such weapons, or worse, might be used again unless his regime were overthrown.

Put simply, there never had been any conscious or deliberate effort to deceive the American people.  Neither did the President seek to deflect responsibility for his actions.  To the contrary, his top political advisor, Karl Rove, subsequently acknowledged that his greatest mistake – at least until he made a centi-million-dollar hash-up of Campaign 2012 – was preventing any official effort from being mounted to counter the calumny about Mr. Bush lying about Iraqi WMD, with the predictable effect of allowing the credibility of the Bush 43 presidency to be destroyed.

By contrast, people did die in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 due to Barack Obama’s policies and he lied about it, repeatedly and knowingly.  This scandalous reality has come to be popularly known as “Benghazigate.”

If we don’t find out what led up to, occurred during and happened afterwards –and the role played by the President and his senior subordinates throughout – there will certainly be more lies and may be more American deaths.

Despite several hearings held by assorted congressional committees, we are today no closer than before to knowing the answers to myriad questions that require urgent and authoritative answers.  Among them are the following:

• What role did the Obama administration’s assiduous cultivation of relations with Islamists play in the creation of the State Department’s so-called “special mission facility” in Benghazi?  What was the true purpose of that facility and who was assigned to staff it, with what roles?
• Where are those people now and why have they not been made available to date to congressional investigators of the Benghazigate affair?  How many of them were injured in the Benghazi attack and what is their current status?
• What caused U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens to consider it necessary to be at that facility, which he had formally complained was dangerously insecure, especially on September 11^th, a day that al Qaeda has long sought to make open-season on Americans?
• Specifically, what was the urgency of Chris Stevens’ last official act – an evening meeting with the Turkish consul general?
• Were the special mission facility and the nearby CIA “annex,” Amb. Stevens or any other personnel that were stationed in or operating from Benghazi involved in a covert operation to collect small arms, surface-to-air missiles and/or other weapons?  Were any of those weapons being secretly made available – directly or indirectly – to the Syrian “opposition,” a group known to include al Qaeda elements?
• If weapons secured in Libya for this purpose were transferred to the so-called Syrian rebels, was there a presidential finding authorizing such activities?  In that case, had any congressional leaders been duly notified?
• The public record suggests that President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton were inexplicably disengaged from the time they learned of the attack until their joint appearance the next morning in the Rose Garden.  Where were they and what were they doing during that period?
• What orders were given and by whom with respect to the organization and execution of a rescue operation or other assistance to the Americans under attack?  If no such orders were issued, was there direction given to do nothing and on what authority?
• Precisely who was involved in the so-called “Deputies Committee” efforts to rework the CIA talking points that were used to brief lawmakers and the public a false narrative that an offensive video, rather than an act of terroristic jihad, was the catalyst for the attack?  In particular, what role did John Brennan play in that disinformation?
• Why did the President insist for as long as two weeks after the episode that the video was involved, prompting him to declare – among other troubling statements – at the UN on September 25^th that, “The future must not belong to those who slander the Prophet of Islam”?
• Is such presidential guidance why the Obama administration appears to have followed through on the stated intention of Secretary Clinton to prosecute and jail the maker of that video – with ominous implications for freedom of expression in America?

Unfortunately, even now – six-months after the murderous attack in Benghazi, these and many other aspects of this scandal that are so redolent of the Obama administration’s penchant for putting politics before public safety still cry out for proper investigation.

The current congressional committee structure has proven unable to undertake the necessary accounting, which cuts across various command structures, operational responsibilities and the conduct of numerous agencies, both civilian and military.  If anything, the multiple standing House and Senate committees, with their stove-piped jurisdictions, have actually impeded the required, comprehensive determination of the facts.

Consequently, fifteen prominent conservatives – many with long experience in national security policy-making and practice – recently called for (/2013/02/27/conservative-leaders-launch-bicameral-congressional-investigation-into-benghazi-debacle/) the creation of a new select committee – at a minimum in the House, but ideally a bicameral one – to get to the bottom of the Benghazigate scandal.  It is the only hope for establishing why we were lied to and minimizing the chances that it will happen again, possibly at the cost of far greater loss of American lives.