A Tale of Two Scandals

            We are witnessing two enormous scandals that should be having a direct bearing on the outcome of this election but are not.

            The first scandal is the Benghazi cover-up. The facts are in. Our Libyan ambassador was denied the adequate protection that he asked for repeatedly before the anniversary of 9/11. Then, when the attack on our consulate came and our personnel on the ground pleaded for help, it was denied three times. Consequently, our ambassador and three other brave Americans died.
            The decision to deny additional security forces before 9/11 was made by the State Department.  Secretary Clinton has accepted responsibility. But the denial of assistance during the attack had to have been made by the President. He and his security advisors knew in real time what was happening on the ground; they also had the military forces ready to intervene. But the President said no. Yet, when asked directly whether he had made that call, he refused to answer.
            As Senator McCain has said, this was either a case of incompetence or a cover-up for political purposes. I think it was both. Worse, it was a gross dereliction of duty by the President of the United States whose first obligation is the protection of American citizens. Muslim terrorists murdered four Americans in Benghazi, but blood in on the hands of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Leon Panetta, and our military and intelligence people as well. This is a scandal of unparalleled dimensions.
            The second scandal is the refusal of mainstream media to cover this story. Fox News sits virtually alone in doggedly pursuing the facts and exposing the culpability of the White House. Unsurprisingly, all attempts by Fox News to interview  key players in this affair have been denied. As an example close to home, The Virginian-Pilot, southeastern Virginia's major newspaper, has not printed a single word on this scandal since Fox News broke the story. Nothing. Not one word.
            There is no denying that major newspaper and television outlets are in the tank for Barack Obama. This is not surprising, since some 85% of their so-called journalists admit to favoring liberal candidates. But is there no limit to liberal bias? What ever happened to journalism's integrity, its fairness, its search for the truth? When media's principles are corrupted for political gain, whom can we turn to for honest reporting?
            Who is more culpable? The one with blood on his hands? Or the one who witnesses the crime and says nothing?

Lies and Deceit

            Hypocrisy, duplicity, deceit, fraud, spin, lies. I cannot pick out a single word that fully describes the Obama administration's behavior over the Benghazi incident. I would only add the word chutzpah after listening to President Obama take offense at any suggestion that his administration was playing politics.

            Here's how I see it. The President was so busy campaigning that he never took an interest in the signs of a surging Al-Qaida in Libya. He may have been told of security issues at the embassy and the consulate, but he wasn't listening. When his neglect blew up in his face on 9/11, his first instinct was to insulate himself from political fallout. Let the cover-up begin.
            It is now clear that the President, by his own admission in the second debate, knew that  the killings in Benghazi were the result of a planned  terrorist attack. Yet, he permitted, and may personally have directed, Ambassador Rice and Jay Carney to lie about it. For weeks he himself failed to acknowledge the truth by suggesting on The View and David Letterman as well as to the United Nations that anger over a video was the cause of spontaneous uprisings all over the world as well as the murders in Benghazi. This was deceit on an international scale.
            Why would the President promote such falsehoods? Let's look at the circumstances. The President for months had been bragging that Osama was dead and Al-Qaida  was on the run. Spiking the football so often on bin-Laden is much more likely to have enraged Muslims than a video that nobody had seen or known about until our embassy in Cairo apologized for it. Blaming the video was a deceitful ploy to distract us from the fact that Al-Qaida was resurgent all over the world and especially in Libya. This truth, if admitted by Obama, would have been damaging to his re-election. Hence, the full-blown campaign of spin and lies by Obama's team.
            Blame the intelligence community for incomplete reporting; blame the State Department for refusing to increase security; blame Romney for politicizing the issue; blame the video; blame freedom of speech. But note that in the second debate the President did not identify the terrorists as Muslim extremists. And note that he no longer mentions in his stump speeches that Al-Qaida is on the run. Why? Because he would have to admit that his policies on the Middle East have been an abject failure. He would have to admit that Al-Qaida is stronger than ever, that his Arab Spring has been a capitulation to the Muslim Brotherhood, that any hopes for democracy in the area are fading in the face of an inexorably ascendant Sharia rule.
            In short, our president, a man who has publicly professed his Islamic faith, cannot bring himself to believe that real power in the Muslim world is gradually being ceded to extremists who want to kill us. Thus, he cannot take responsibility for what happened in Benghazi. And he lacks the moral fiber to tell the truth to an enlightened electorate ready to pull the voting booth lever on his failed presidency.

Shamful

            Benghazi has dominated the news over the last few weeks and is likely to continue to grab headlines until the elections. It is clear that the administration has not been honest with the American people and is hoping that the whole story will not get out before voters go to the polls.

            While Obama's campaign was quick to accuse Romney of politicizing the issue, it has been shameless in spinning, obfuscating, and flat-out lying to protect the President. But it is the president himself who has been the worst offender.
            On the day after the 9/11 attack on our consulate in Benghazi, an attack that took the lives of four Americans, including our Ambassador,  top members of the intelligence community came together at the White House to present a brief on the previous day's tragedy. President Obama did not even bother to attend. Instead, he boarded Air Force One to fly to Las Vegas for a fund-raiser.
            This, to me, is the most egregious dereliction of duty by a president in my lifetime. It is the first duty of a president to protect the country and its citizens. Obama has piously asserted that United States ambassadors are his people: as he has said, he appoints them, he knows them, he knows their families. Yet, Ambassador Stevens's body wasn't even cold when Obama disdained to question his intelligence experts about what happened. His priority was to win the election, and nothing could get in the way of a fund-raiser.
            President Obama has spent the last six months flying all over the country to make campaign speeches and collect money for his election coffers. He has made over 200 of these trips, more than any other president in history. All the while, he has missed almost all of his intelligence briefings and been mostly absent from the White House. How can he claim to have been working for the American people when his all-consuming priority has clearly been his re-election?
            Some things can be forgiven. President Obama's shameful choice on 9/12 is not one of them.