Politics

The Fog of Benghazi

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial that takes into account all the latest reporting on Benghazi. Even with the detailed timeline released by the CIA on Thursday, troubling questions remain unanswered:

Why did the U.S. not heed warnings about a growing Islamist presence in Benghazi and better protect the diplomatic mission and CIA annex?

What exactly happened on the day of 9/11? During the over six hours that the compounds in Benghazi were under siege, could the U.S. have done more to save lives? What was President Obama doing and ordering his subordinates to do in those fateful hours?

Why has the Administration’s story about what took place in Benghazi been so haphazard and unclear?

The article concludes with this:

The President may succeed in stonewalling Congress and the media past Election Day. But the issue will return, perhaps with a vengeance, in an Obama second term. The episode reflects directly on his competence and honesty as Commander in Chief. If his Administration is found to have dissembled, careers will be ended and his Presidency will be severely damaged—all the more so because he refused to deal candidly with the issue before the election.

I think this analysis is correct. The President will succeed in running out the clock on this issue before the election. Apparently, folks in Ohio and the other swing states aren’t that concerned about getting to the bottom of this debacle before they cast their ballots. Benghazi is not even registering on the radar of the swing-state voters who are going to decide this election. But that doesn’t mean that there won’t be a reckoning after the election. This is not going away.

7 Comments

  • Tom Parker

    Denny:

    You want give this one up either will you?

    You said:”This is not going away.” Correct because people like you will hound on this until President Obama finishes his 2nd term in 2016.

    I’ll say it again I don’t think you and others would be reacting to this horrible situation the way you all are if a REPUBLICAN was currently in the White House.

    Politics and Religion–SBC=Republican Party sure make for strange bedfellows.

    • Ken Temple

      Tom wrote: “I’ll say it again I don’t think you and others would be reacting to this horrible situation the way you all are if a REPUBLICAN was currently in the White House.”

      The main stream media should be reacting the way they did with Nixon and Watergate and the way did against Bush/Iraq War.

      Journalism is suffering and at a new all time low.

  • Mark Nenadov

    “Apparently, folks in Ohio and the other swing states aren’t that concerned about getting to the bottom of this debacle before they cast their ballots.”

    Here might be a reason why people aren’t so concerned about this: As scandalous as this, Mitt Romney shows no signs of handling these sort of things better. Going around saying the mantra “America is the hope of the earth” and “let’s have a strong America” isn’t going to help much either. Obama dithers in areas that Romney would muddle.

      • Scott Burdett

        N.E Ohio. I think it could go either way in Ohio. A key county to watch is Stark County (City of Canton, Football Hall of Fame). This county is a good mix of every demographic in the state (black, white, conservative, liberal, independents, urban, rural, etc.) Independents are polling Romney. If Republican voters show up on Tuesday, it will lean Romney by a percent. If they stay home, it will be the President by a couple of points.

  • Dan Bruce

    It appears that the Benghazi mission was a CIA undercover operation, with a continuing need for secrecy to protect assets in Ligya, and that any failures in security can probably be laid at the feet of the CIA Director David Petraeus, if immediate blame must be assigned (as many Romney supporters seem to require), rather than with the State Department or White House. Time magazine has more on this in an article titled ” Why Romney’s Not Talking About Benghazi Anymore” (see http://swampland.time.com/2012/11/02/why-romneys-not-talking-benghazi-anymore/ ). The real “crime” in this matter is the politicizing of the event by the Romney campaign and his surrogates, especially the discredited John McCain (as a combat veteran myself, I continue to lose respect for McCain’s judgement, which has been too often wrong where national security matters are concerned in recent years).

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