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.