By Derek Hunter
Sunday, May 12, 2013
Elizabeth Taylor reportedly said, “You find out who your
real friends are when you're involved in a scandal.” Of course, she was in
Hollywood, perhaps the only place where loyalty means less than it does in
Washington, D.C.
But some people in the Obama administration are about to
find out what she meant.
The Congressional hearing this week on the Benghazi
cover-up was important not only for the information we heard from the
witnesses, but also because, for the first time, it piqued the interest of the
mainstream media. Perhaps it’s genuine concern over having been lied to, or
maybe the MSM has realized its credibility is on the line. Whatever the reason,
the testimony of whistleblower Gregory Hicks has progressive defenders of the
president nervous.
So worried were these Progressive Swiss Guards that the
activist charity The Center for American Progress took to its “Think Progress”
blog to denounce him through an “anonymous source” who claims to have been in
Benghazi with him. Miraculously, a “Think Progress” blogger was able to find
someone who not only worked with Hicks in Libya, but also didn’t like his work.
Not bad for a D.C.-based blog considering this appeared just two days after
Hicks testified and major news outlets haven’t been able to find a detractor in
the eight months since the attack. The miracle of Soros money, I guess.
I’d never say the “Think Progress” blog post is bogus.
I’m sure every blog could just happen upon some random Libyan embassy worker
who thinks a man who just convincingly accused the White House of fecklessness
and lying through measured, fact-based testimony is incompetent. Nor would I
ever say whether this person is real, “Think Progress” probably was handed a
phone number by someone in the White House. And I never would suggest this
“anonymous source” seems to have been coached in this story by someone looking
to protect the president. What I would say is that to believe in this story is
to believe in a level of coincidence not seen outside of a bad sitcom.
Activist charities the IRS is strangely disinterested in
investigating aside, a few things about the Benghazi terrorist attack still
remain curiously uninvestigated.
One – We’ve heard a lot about how the military could not
have acted in time to save any lives, including Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty,
who were killed in the 7th hour of the attack. First off, if that’s true how
weak or disorganized is our military? We had just helped overthrow the Libyan
government with air power, have the fastest planes on the planet and have bases
throughout the region. If we can’t get support to Americans under attack
anywhere in the world in seven hours someone needs to be fired.
Also, since this “We couldn’t have gotten there in time
anyway” mantra was the most frequently said statement from Democrats at the
hearing; I’d like to ask any of them for next week’s lottery numbers. They
seemed to know how long an ongoing attack will last and precise point at which
even trying to save lives would be fruitless, so they must be able to see the
future. Unless, that is, they’re only using this weak talking point to distract
from the very real impotence that allowed people to die.
The fact is we don’t know if lives could have been saved
because the Obama administration did not try. And we have no idea why.
Two – President Obama easily could put this whole thing
to bed if he simply came out and said what he was doing the night of Sept. 11.
The only thing we know for sure is the president was on Earth during the
attack. Where on Earth and how involved or interested in the fate of the lives
of people protecting us remains a mystery.
The White House never has been shy about releasing
pictures of the president reacting to emergencies or events of significance.
We’ve seen pictures of him learning of the shooting in Newtown and watching the
raid that killed bin Laden and holding a “beer summit” on his porch. But on the
night of the terrorist attack in Benghazi, we know nothing. No 8 x 10 glossy of
him in in action. No garbled phone or radio voice. If he were asleep, in the
midst of a campaign cram session or doing something else embarrassing, you’d
get, well, the nothing we’ve gotten. The White House knows the truth. That it
hasn’t even tried to share it clearly says it considers this PR gut-punch less
damaging.
Three – In October 2012, President Obama was asked the
only serious questions he’s ever faced about the Benghazi attack. It wasn’t by
some big-time network anchor or major newspaper Woodward and Bernstein wannabe,
it was by Kyle Clark, a reporter from a local TV station in Colorado. The only
thing worse than national media is local media, but Kyle is an exception. He
asked the president, “Were the Americans under attack at the consulate in
Benghazi, Libya, denied requests for help during that attack? And is it fair to
tell Americans that what happened is under investigation and we'll all find out
after the election?”
President Obama did what he always does … he spoke a lot
of words that add up to nothing. But Kyle wasn’t having any of it. When the
president didn’t answer his first question, Kyle repeated it. “Were they denied
requests for help during the attack?”
Here, in my opinion, is where President Obama opened
himself up to trouble.
His answer was, “Well, we are finding out exactly what
happened. I can tell you, as I've said over the last couple of months since
this happened, the minute I found out what was happening, I gave three very
clear directives. No. 1, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing
whatever we need to. No.2, we're going to investigate exactly what happened so
that it doesn't happen again. No.3, find out who did this so we can bring them
to justice. And I guarantee you that everyone in the State Department, our
military, the CIA, you name it, had [as their] No.1 priority making sure that
people were safe. These were our folks and we're going to find out exactly what
happened, but what we're also going to do it make sure that we are identifying
those who carried out these terrible attacks.”
His second point was interesting since he was
(presumably) told of the attack while it was happening. So ordering an
investigation into something ongoing seems odd. Then again, he did use the past
tense “happened,” so maybe he wasn’t aware of it until after the seven- to
eight-hour attack was over. We don’t know.
His third point also is odd because, if he were really
interested in bringing the perpetrators to “justice,” and he’d found out while
it was happening, he could have ordered justice be brought to them in real time
since they were there for hours attacking Americans.
But the real problem for the president is his first
point, “…make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we
need to.”
He said these were his “directives” the minute he “found
out what was happening.” Assuming he found out it was happening within the
first hour of the seven-plus-hour attack and given nothing was done to aid
those in Benghazi, that means either he gave a direct order that was directly
disobeyed by people in his chain of command … or he never gave that order.
Since no one has been fired, court-martialed or even
reprimanded for disobeying a direct order from the president that led to the
deaths of four Americans, that tips the scales toward the lying option. Again,
this easily could be cleared up by the president at a press conference or by
the White House releasing his whereabouts during the attack, but…
There is much we don’t know about the events of Sept. 11,
2012, and that’s not by accident. I don’t know the answers to the questions
I’ve posed here, but I do know there are people in the White House who don’t
want them – and many other questions – answered ever.
Stonewalling and lying made political sense before the
election, but why they’ve allowed these questions to remain unanswered and to
grow and distract is the real mystery. The media seemed interested this week in
finding out why and what the White House is hiding. We’ll see how long this
interest lasts. Hopefully it’s long enough for the American people to find out the
truth and the families of four American heroes killed in the line of duty to
get the closure they deserve.
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