Benghazigate
May 22, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
We’ve always viewed the Benghazi scandal in terms of (1) the Obama administration’s failure to provide requested security before the attack, (2) its conduct, or lack thereof, during the attack, and (3) its cover-up after the attack (along with, as we recently learned, its retaliation against those who didn’t feel comfortable about the cover-up). But there’s always been a fourth element — the administration’s failure to bring the attackers to
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May 20, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
A few days ago, we posted a poem written by Raymond Maxwell, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Maghreb (North Africa) Affairs at the State Department’s Bureau of Near East Affairs, whom Hillary Clinton placed on “administrative leave” (months of it, with no end in sight) in response to the Benghazi attack. Maxwell has now written a second poem which I will print below. Maxwell has also responded to his removal
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May 20, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
As Scott discussed earlier today, the absence of any reference in the Benghazi talking points to the Muhammad video has raised a new set of questions about the scandal. Among the questions are: (1) why isn’t the video mentioned in the talking points and (2) how, given the video’s absence therein, did it become the centerpiece of subsequent explanations of the attack, including Susan Rice’s. As to the first question,
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May 20, 2013 — Scott Johnson
What is the provenance of the Muhammad video in the Benghazi talking points? Our inability to answer the question is in itself a clue. Steve Hayes follows the paper trail and reconstructs what his reporting has revealed to date in the Weekly Standard article “What about the video?” Steve characterizes the attribution of causal effect to the video a “quadruple bank shot,” but leaves open the question of who was
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May 19, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Mitt Romney says that the Benghazi talking points had no bearing on the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. He made this remark in response to a question by an inquisitive Jay Leno. Romney added that he doesn’t spend a lot of time reflecting on what could have been done differently during his campaign. “I don’t go back and look at: ‘Gee, if this would have happened differently, could I
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May 19, 2013 — Scott Johnson
What did President Obama do on the evening of 9/11/12 when our men were under attack in Benghazi? The invaluable Andrew McCarthy reminds us that Obama and Secretary Clinton had a 10:00 p.m. phone call of which many (including, I think, Chris Wallace) have lost sight. This morning when Wallace asked Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer what Obama was up to that evening, Pfeiffer declared the line of inquiry “offensive.” Translation:
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May 18, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
In the days after the Benhazi attack, the State Department scurried to cover up its failure to heed warnings of such attacks while the White House scurried to cover up the fact that that attacks were the work of al Qaeda-linked terrorists of the sort President Obama supposedly had largely vanquished. The final Benghazi “talking points” and Susan Rice’s talk show appearances represent the product of this scurrying. To help
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May 15, 2013 — John Hinderaker
This afternoon the White House released 100 pages of emails that trace the development of the talking points about Benghazi that Susan Rice eventually used on her notorious tour of the Sunday morning news shows, and that formed the basis for much of what the Obama administration said about the attacks for weeks afterward. This is the original version of the talking points that came out of the CIA, with
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May 14, 2013 — Scott Johnson
President Obama put on a good show on the subject of Benghazi in his joint press conference with David Cameron yesterday. He expressed something like righteous indignation regarding coverage of the story and his alleged his lack of candor regarding the attack. Employing the famous Gertrude Stein quotation, he alleged that there is no there there. Maybe. As Bill Clinton might explain, it depends on the meaning of “there.” It
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May 13, 2013 — John Hinderaker
President Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron held a brief joint press conference this morning. After the introductory comments, the first questions related to Benghazi and the IRS. Here is some of what Obama had to say about Benghazi: With respect to Benghazi, we’ve now seen this argument that’s been made by some folks primarily up on Capitol Hill for months now. And I’ve just got to say — here’s
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May 13, 2013 — Scott Johnson
It’s difficult to find humor in anything related to the murder of our ambassador to Libya and his colleagues in Benghazi, but the Accountability Review Board convened by Hillary Clinton has seeds of of comedy in it. As scandal management, the Accountability Review Board (report here) amounted to something like performance art. Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing represented two of the three whistleblower witnesses who testified before the House committee
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May 13, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Victor Davis Hanson makes a point that I forgot to include in my most recent post about Hillary Clinton’s “what difference does it make” rant. Clinton testified: With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it
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May 12, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
At a Senate hearing in January, Hillary Clinton responded to questioning from Sen. Ron Johnson about the nature of the Benghazi attack with this rant: With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? Given
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May 11, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Team Obama has come up with its excuse for converting the Benghazi talking points into a false narrative. It was a purely bureaucratic matter, you see. The CIA and the State Department disagreed about what happened, and the White House simply wanted to make sure the talking points represented all viewpoints. The White House has been suggesting this excuse for a few days. Today, the Washington Post’s “fact-checker,” Glenn Kessler,
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May 11, 2013 — John Hinderaker
If you want to see just how befuddled the Obama administration is by the Benghazi scandal, watch Jay Carney twist in the wind when asked the simplest of questions about his previous misrepresentations: I offer three conclusions: 1) Carney, apart from the fact that he looks like a teenager who has been summoned to the principal’s office, is utterly inept. 2) The Obama administration is unused to being questioned by
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May 11, 2013 — Scott Johnson
John has undertaken a series comparing Benghazigate to Watergate. Benghazigate is still unraveling, so the comparison presents certain difficulties, but we are still in the dark concerning some of the most basic facts regarding the Watergate scandal as well. Nixon spokesman Ron Ziegler characterized Watergate as a “third-rate burglary.” The Democrats, by contrast, characterized Watergate as something vastly greater than the crime on the surface. According to Senator Ervin, this
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May 10, 2013 — Scott Johnson
David Gelernter is professor of computer science at Yale and the author, most recently, of America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered in the Obamacrats). He wrote “Why do we live in America-Lite?” for us, briefly summarizing the themes of the book. Professor Gelernter returned to expand on the themes of his book in “What keeps this failed president above water?” and in “Don’t say we didn’t warn
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