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In tonight’s debate, Romney must go after Obama about the Benghazi cover-up

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Mitt Romney must go after Obama on the Benghazi cover-up in tonight’s foreign policy debate.

To prep you for the debate, here’s a review of what we know about the Benghazi cover-up from Investors Business Daily.

Excerpt:

America’s slain ambassador in Libya repeatedly sought security which went unheeded, new documents show. The CIA, meanwhile, told Washington within 24 hours that the Benghazi attack was terrorism. So where was our president?

The sorry answer is that it’s starting to look as though he and his team knew all along that the attack in Libya was a terrorism from the start.

That hasn’t been what he’s presented to the public. But instead of owning up to it, the White House has perpetrated the red herring that a old YouTube video depicting Islam in a bad light was the real reason, because calling terrorism terrorism would reveal their their Middle East policy failure.

Friday, the evidence piled up. The New York Times reported that 166 pages of internal State Department documents released by GOP congressmen showed that now-murdered Ambassador Christopher Stevens and other U.S. officials had repeatedly warned that security was deteriorating in Benghazi and they pleaded for additional protection. The Libyan government, he wrote on Sept. 11, was “too weak to keep the country secured.” Stevens’ alarms went ignored.

The Benghazi consulate was actually attacked a couple of times before the Sept. 11 attack. Security was not improved after the first two attacks.

More:

After Stevens’s brutal death that night, the CIA station chief in Libya reported to Washington within 24 hours that the attack was carried out by terrorists, not spontaneous protestors, according to U.S. officials who told the Associated Press.

That isn’t what the Obama administration spent five weeks telling the American people.

The White House attempted ferociously to convince U.S. voters that the lethal Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was nothing more than a spontaneous demonstration that got out of hand and as such, something the government could not control.

More details in this Wall Street Journal article, which discusses the conflicting timelines and the open questions.

It concludes with this:

In Tuesday night’s debate with Mitt Romney, President Obama claimed to have “told” the American people that Benghazi was a terror attack the very next day, Sept. 12, when speaking from the Rose Garden. The assertion was untrue, despite moderator Candy Crowley’s ruling to the contrary. The president had only spoken generally of terror attacks, and Benghazi would have been understood to fall under that umbrella only if it had been acknowledged as a terror attack.

On Sept. 12, that was not the administration’s line. Not until his afternoon appearance on “The View” on Sept. 25—the “two weeks” of delay that Mr. Romney alluded to in the debate—did the president offer Americans an explanation of Benghazi that made no reference to a protest over a video. The YouTube connection had figured prominently in his Benghazi pronouncements as late as Mr. Obama’s Sept. 20 appearance on Univision, and even in his address to the United Nations General Assembly on the morning of Sept. 25.

You can watch the video above, which features clips of Obama and his administration claiming that the the attack was caused by a protest over a Youtube video, despite the reports from the CIA and the State Department to the contrary. Perhaps Obama was not aware of the threat because he was not attending his Presidential Daily Briefings, but was instead out campaigning in Las Vegas?

It would be nice if Romney brought up questions about why America was involved in Egypt and Libya in tonight’s debate. I am more hawkish than most, and I would not have gone into Egypt and Libya at all. If we are going in anywhere, it should be Syria. Interfering in Egypt and Libya could only help our enemies in Al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. I would also like to see Romney attack Obama about his decisions to increase foreign aid to countries run by people who support us, as well as his weak response to previous terrorist attacks. I would just like Obama to explain what his foreign policy is, and explain his plan for dealing with Iran and China, in particular.

Unfortunately, it looks as though we will have an even more biased moderator than Martha Raddatz and Candy Crowley put together.

Here are the details of the debate tonight:

Third presidential candidates’ debate between Obama, Romney

  • Topic: Foreign policy
  • Date: Monday, Oct. 22
  • Time: 9 – 10:30 p.m. EDT
  • Location: Lynn University, Boca Raton, Fla.
  • Moderator: Bob Schieffer, chief Washington correspondent, CBS News, and moderator, “Face the Nation”
  • Format: “The format for the debate will be identical to the first presidential debate and will focus on foreign policy.”

Be sure and tune in, or watch it via streaming at Fox News Live.

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Unmanned drone observed Benghazi attack, no help sent for 7 hours

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From CBS News. (H/T Bad Blue)

Excerpt:

The closer we get to the election, the harder Republicans in Congress are pushing for answers to a big question: What really happened in the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya last month that killed the U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans?

Some lawmakers are asking why U.S. military help from outside Libya didn’t arrive as terrorists battered more than 30 Americans over the course of more than seven hours. The assault was launched by an armed mob of dozens that torched buildings and used rocket propelled grenades, mortars and AK-47 rifles.

CBS News has been told that, hours after the attack began, an unmanned Predator drone was sent over the U.S. mission in Benghazi, and that the drone and other reconnaissance aircraft apparently observed the final hours of the protracted battle.

The State Department, White House and Pentagon declined to say what military options were available. A White House official told CBS News that, at the start of the attack, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta “looked at available options, and the ones we exercised had our military forces arrive in less than 24 hours, well ahead of timelines laid out in established policies.”

But it was too late to help the Americans in Benghazi. The ambassador and three others were dead.

According to the CI operatives in the video above, including a former station chief, the Situation Room in the White House would have been immediately informed of the attack. They could have ordered an air strike to push the attack back. They could have ordered the drone to open fire. But they did nothing. This is not surprising given the other actions of the administration to undermine our national security.

But why did they do nothing? Could it be that the Obama administration was afraid of the backlash from the terrorists? Could it be that they were afraid of the perception that killing Bin Laden did nothing to stop Al Qaida? Could it be that they knew immediately that it was weakness and disarmament in Benghazi that had provoked the evil terrorists to attack? Could it be that this terrorist attack undermined their “Arab Spring”?

It will be interesting to see much of this comes up in the foreign policy debate tomorrow (Monday) night.

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CIA in Libya reported that Benghazi was a terrorist attack in first 24 hours

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From CNS News.

Excerpt:

Within 24 hours of the deadly attack, the CIA station chief in Libya reported to Washington that there were eyewitness reports that the attack was carried out by militants, officials told The Associated Press. But for days, the Obama administration blamed it on an out-of-control demonstration over an American-made video ridiculing Islam’s Prophet Muhammad.

[…][T]he issue has given Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney an opportunity to question Obama on foreign policy and national security, two areas that have received little attention in an election dominated by the U.S. economy. Obama’s signature national security accomplishment is the military’s killing of terrorist leader Osama bin Laden.

Ryan was teeing up the issue for Monday’s presidential debate on foreign policy.

“I’m excited we’re going to have a chance to talk about that on Monday,” Ryan said.

Obama, speaking Thursday on Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” insisted that information was shared with the American people as it came in. 

I am looking forward to that debate on foreign policy, this Monday night.

Previously, I blogged about how the State Department account of the events also contradicted the Obama administration’s account, which made Muslims look like innocent victims of offensive free speech by Americans. The Obama campaign is not doing too well in its fundraising, so they can ill afford to offend one of their most-favored constituencies by making them look like the bad guys.

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