Questions at tonight’s presidential debate will surely touch on several topics, but one in particular deserves special attention: the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi — and Team Obama’s handling of it.
Because a number of pressing mysteries need urgent clearing up. Starting with:
* Who’s really to blame for refusing requests to boost security in Libya? Yesterday, Secretary Hillary Clinton (from Peru, no less) took one for the team by accepting “responsibility” for that foul-up. But the buck must stop in the Oval Office. So do you, Mr. President, accept ultimate responsibility for the debacle — or do you intend to hide behind Hillary’s skirts?
Followed by:
* Where did the supposed intelligence reports, saying the attack was a spontaneous protest over an anti-Muslim video, come from — since it’s now clear that no protests even took place in Benghazi?
* Why is the White House throwing the State Department under the bus in claiming the agency is to blame for refusing requests to boost security in Libya?
* Just how much of a threat to America do al Qaeda and associated jihadist groups actually represent today?
Alas, the town hall format of tonight’s debate at Hofstra isn’t likely to produce satisfying answers. (Don’t count on the pro-Obama media to do so, either.)
But this issue shouldn’t be allowed to fade away — no matter how hard Obama & Co. try to dismiss criticism of the administration handling of it as “political.”
For starters, the State Department is now saying it never thought the attack began as a spontaneous protest.
And despite National Intelligence Director James Clapper’s efforts to take the heat for wrongly linking the attack to demonstrations, intel officials were saying within 24 hours that it was a well-planned terrorist job. And again, how could any officials cite protests when none actually took place?
And yet, even after Clapper’s deputy publicly labeled the murder of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans a terrorist attack, Obama went on David Letterman and again blamed the video.
Let’s cut to the chase: The best explanation for all the double-talk is that the president wants desperately to salvage a key campaign boast — that “al Qaeda has been weakened, and Osama bin Laden is no more.”
As Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) put it: “They’re trying to sell a narrative, quite frankly, that the Mideast, the wars are receding, and al Qaeda has been dismantled.”
And anything that suggests a resurgent al Qaeda — like a pre-planned, well-orchestrated murderous attack on a US consulate — “undercuts that narrative.”
Indeed, reports yesterday said the White House has put special operations forces on standby and sent drones into the region, in advance of a possible hit on the Benghazi perpetrators, should they be found.
Obviously, taking out the murderers would be a good start. But again, you’ve got to question Team Obama’s motives.
“They are aiming for a small pop, a flash in the pan, so as to be able to say, ‘Hey, we’re doing something about it,’ ” said retired Air Force Lt. Col. Rudy Attalah, a former Africa counterterrorism director for the Defense Department.
Meanwhile, Obama has not yet been fully pressed to produce a coherent story.
But voters will be going to the polls in three weeks; they deserve to know what happened — and whether the Obama folks have truly degraded the jihadis sufficiently.
Tonight would sure be a fine time to begin figuring that out.