Truth Search: Benghazi

I spent some hours over the weekend listening to Thursday’s Benghazi hearing testimony of Hillary Clinton. I’m just a curious American. I’ve been waiting for three years so far to find out what happened in Benghazi, why it happened, and why we got told things that weren’t true about what happened.

I’m not a prosecutor, but I have some confidence in Rep. Trey Gowdy’s abilities to get at the truth. At last. Yes, there have been multiple hearings. As the Democrats on the committee told us multiple times. In fact, in these hearings, the Democrat committee members refrained from asking questions to Hillary Clinton and instead directed attacks at the committee head, Trey Gowdy—reminding us how many previous investigations there have been, and that this one has spent millions of dollars, and so far has found nothing, they claim. Rep. Elijah Cummings, pointed out in his opening comments, before questions had been asked of Ms. Clinton, that the committee hadn’t learned anything. Not helpful.

Rep. Trey Gowdy during committee
hearing Oct. 22, 2015
image from C-SPAN

During the entire questioning, no Democrat asked Hillary Clinton a useful question, with the possible exception of one that allowed her to go through the timeline of what happened in Benghazi that fateful night. Not that the committee needed her testimony for that; she wasn’t there, and the timeline of what happened on the ground was fairly well established—there’s a movie on the subject about to come out. But at least it showed that she was aware of enough details at this point, three years after the fact, to relate them.

There are a few points I noticed, and I’m wondering about. Sometimes I wonder why the media took no notice. Sometimes I wonder what Trey Gowdy knows.

One thing Rep. Gowdy said in an interview afterward, which I didn’t realize, was that he hadn’t subpoenaed Hillary Clinton to testify. She had been asked, and was willing. But that may mean that Trey Gowdy didn’t need her testimony at all, but was willing to use the opportunity as backup to what he knows from other sources. And there's always the chance he can add a perjury charge or two.

He also said that he had given her the option to do the testimony in private or public. Since her testimony wasn’t essential, he could go either way. But he prefers private for several reasons. One is that the testimony can cover classified information safely—in fact, if such questions come up in a public hearing, they must be held and asked later in private. Another is that the person testifying is often more likely to be candid in private, so the committee gets better information. 

In addition, in private hearings, the Democrats do none of the pontificating they do in public; they ask questions. It may be that their questions are designed to allow the testifiers to show themselves in the best light, but at least they’re questioned. They don’t, at all, direct criticism at the committee chair. When they do that in public, therefore, it is merely Democrat theater, and in no way relates to an attempt to find the truth, which is pretty obvious if you’re watching for reasons like mine.

So, if you want to go through this (links below), or any future, public hearing more quickly, simply fast forward through any Democrat questioner; you will miss nothing germane.

I was surprised to see that Hillary Clinton still claims the anti-Muslim video, which was never relevant to Benghazi, a fact known the day of the attack, was a possible cause they were concerned about with good reason. She emailed her daughter, and she told the President of Libya and the Prime Minister of Egypt, indicating clearly within 24 hours that she knew the video had nothing to do with the attack. They knew the attack was planned ahead, by an al-Qaeda-like organization, with names (Ansar al-Sharia) that proved to be involved.

She carefully parsed her words, and made sure the committee understood how carefully she had parsed them, when she said, “Some say…” that the video was the cause. She didn’t say she said so, just that some straw man said so. She and the administration did lead Susan Rice to declare on five TV interviews that the video was the cause, and spokesman Jay Carney to say the video was the cause. And the President said it multiple times, and Clinton herself said it several times—including when she met with families of the deceased and assured them that the makers of the video would be prosecuted, but did not promise that the actual known attackers would be prosecuted. So, using the phrase “some say…” doesn’t exactly explain why this known falsehood kept getting repeated.

After three years, we still don't know
what happened at the Benghazi consulate compound
Map found here

She kept trying to make it sound like that possibility was worth pursuing.[i] The video was claimed to be the cause of a spontaneous demonstration in Egypt—that’s what we were told that day—by the administration in response to that event, prior to the Benghazi attack hours later. In fact, Clinton claimed in her testimony Thursday that the video had been shown on Egyptian television, and that is why they feared it had farther reach and might spread.

But, if I remember correctly, that obscure video wasn’t the cause of the riot in Egypt; that was a preplanned event, weeks ahead, and announced the day before in the Egyptian press, in an attempt to release the Blind Sheikh. That the administration went video shopping was revealed in emails obtained in 2014 through a FOIA request persisted by Judicial Watch.

So the planned riot in Egypt had nothing to do with a video. And therefore it was an absolute known fact that the video had nothing to do with the Benghazi attack. Hillary Clinton knew this without question, and she just lied about it under oath.

One of the questions is why the ambassador was in Benghazi, known to be unsafe, when he had repeatedly requested greater security, since his installation as Libyan ambassador in May 2012. If it wasn’t safe in Tripoli, and was much less safe in Benghazi, what was he doing there? Hillary Clinton claims it was his call, but he was looking into whether a consulate should be opened in Benghazi.

Since within a month after the attack I’ve heard speculation that the administration was involved in gun running, and that was the purpose for the ambassador and the CIA to be in Benghazi, to see to a deal. This was verified in testimony in June, with the speculation Clinton could be subject to treason charges. 

I was surprised when this came up in the hearing. It was a blip. Clinton claimed that of course the administration wanted to see that weapons got into the right hands; all administrations would do so. So, in essence, she admitted that what had until recently been called a bizarre “conspiracy theory” is true, but she said it with an “of course” that led the media to let it go, as if we all knew and accepted this detail all along.

I don’t know what to make of this. I don’t know what Trey Gowdy makes of it either. But gun running is not a normal duty of an ambassador, and is particularly unwise in a country without an established secure government.

Speaking of lack of secure government, she admitted that the security personnel at the consulate were unarmed. She claimed this was normal. It is practice for consulates to trust security of the perimeter to the host country. But why would this would be the practice in a country in which even the citizens wouldn’t trust a weak or non-recognized government to protect them?

She kept saying that it was never recommended that the Libyan embassy be closed. She was sure if Ambassador Stevens had thought it necessary, he would have said so. But she fails to take responsibility for the ignored requests for increased security. 

In an uncomfortable moment, she laughed at the enterprising spirit of the ambassador for “fire sale” shopping—collecting barricades and other safety equipment from nearby closing embassies, since he wasn’t getting anything in response to his requests. (I think there were around 800 requests.) Despite her opening statement that she took responsibility, she said handling security requests was below her pay grade; underlings were tasked with handling security, and they never saw it necessary to bother her about the ambassador’s requests. We do not yet know why these people over security failed to answer the calls. Clinton tried blaming Congress for failing to provide funding, but that seems pretty empty. I'm assuming the committee is following up with the security division she referred to. There's may be among the subpoenaed materials the State Department has yet to provide.

She claims that Ambassador Stevens was a personal friend of hers. But there were zero emails between him and Clinton. She answered that by saying that she didn’t provide him an email address. And she didn’t do much business by email; she didn’t even have a computer in her office. The line of questioning about emails to her from Sidney Blumenthal (which were her emails, only recently revealed, and all related to Benghazi and Libya) showed that he had full and complete access to the Secretary of State, even though he had been refused any official status by the White House. But her “friend,” Chris Stevens, got no access.

She said she used phonecalls and other communications. So she was asked whether she had talked with Chris Stevens by phone after he was made ambassador to Libya. She answered that she was sure she had. On what occasion? When? She couldn’t recall. She was reminded that her phone logs show no calls between her and the ambassador. She shrugged that off as meaningless. He had a direct line to the State Department and could have called at any time. Again, ignoring the 800 or so requests for increased security.

It might be that acquiescing to increased security in Libya would have shown Obama's claim that al-Qaeda was weakened and nearly dissolved to be a lie. That’s an alternative to believing in the gun running scheme. I suppose both could be true simultaneously.

The reason she used a private email server is that private communications (i.e., unrelated to State Department work) are not subject to FOIA requests. She does not choose transparency, even when required by law. But what has been obtained is evidence that she did official work on that server, including classified work.

So she is known to have broken the law concerning making her State Department actions public. And she is known to have allowed multiple examples of classified information outside of a secure government location—a serious law every person with a security clearance understands. She is subject to jail time. 

She didn’t have to testify for this to be known. If there were an explanation that would have exonerated her, she would have provided it. That she did nothing but pretend it was all legitimate may play well in the press, but it will not convince a thorough prosecutor.

We know that many of the emails and resources subpoenaed have yet to be provided. The failure to provide requested information is the main reason the investigation continues. It may also continue because, if she were indicted and convicted in the near future, the president would pardon her, and there would hardly be an inconvenience in her campaign for president. She must be indicted, with rock solid evidence to convict. And it must come before she has any chance of becoming president but close enough to the end of the Obama reign to prevent him from pardoning. Otherwise she gets away scot-free. And the blood of those who lost their lives continues to cry out for justice.

If you want to experience the testimony yourself, C-Span has provided the entire day in four parts:

Part 1: http://www.c-span.org/video/?328699-1/hillary-clinton-testimony-house-select-committee-benghazi-part-1

Part 2: http://www.c-span.org/video/?328699-2/hillary-clinton-testimony-house-select-committee-benghazi-part-2

Part 3: http://www.c-span.org/video/?328699-3/hillary-clinton-testimony-house-select-committee-benghazi-part-3

Part 4: http://www.c-span.org/video/?328699-4/hillary-clinton-testimony-house-select-committee-benghazi-part-4

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[i] Note Hillary Clinton’s testimony at 27:50 minutes in Part 3 of C-Span’s recording. 

Lying Liars That Lie

Some additional information came out this week about Benghazi. What we thought we knew, there is now evidence to show, with some more who and why questions still unanswered.

The new piece of information was a memo, received through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Judicial Watch. The memo shows talking points given to Ambassador Susan Rice for five days after the Benghazi attack. And we now know the White House was the source for the suggestion that she emphasize that the attack was in response to a specific anti-Muslim video.

This is from the memo (emphasis mine):

Goals:

To convey that the United States is doing everything that we can to protect our people and facilities abroad.

To underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not in a broader policy failure.

To show that we will be resolute in bringing people who harm Americans to justice and standing steadfast through these protests.

To reinforce the Presidents and Administration’s strength and steadfastness in dealing with difficult challenges.

We’ve talked about that piece of information, about the video, since right after the event—how puzzling it was, because everyone knew it wasn’t true. It was clearly known in real time, during the attack, that it was a terrorist attack, probably from Al-Qaeda-related sources. Military and Intelligence sources knew it was a terrorist attack, and said so. Nothing in any of their correspondence brought up the possibility of this obscure video being involved at all.

There was no spontaneous uprising to begin with. That had to be made up. And somebody who thought it was necessary to make that up also saw the need for an impetus for such a fictional spontaneous uprising—which was the service this video served.

We know the White House mentioned the video the first time the day before the September 11 attack, when there was a demonstration in Egypt, which had been announced ahead of time, declared as an attempt to get the release of the Blind Sheik. Up to that point, this video had been viewed only 17 times; actors in the video hadn’t all bothered to see it. That video would still be obscure without the White House’s advertisement. Had anyone at that Egyptian protest seen the video? With so few views online up to that point, certainly not enough to cause an uprising.

An additional detail in the timeline to come out this week is that, sometime after a 10:00 PM phonecall between Secretary of State Clinton and the president, Clinton began mentioning the video as a cause—even though the State Department had, again, real time information to the contrary. We don’t know where Hillary was the rest of that night. And we don’t know where the president was the rest of that night—although we do now know for certain he was not in the situation room carefully following events as they unfolded.

The president mentioned the video in his first speech after the attack, the Rose Garden speech. Susan Rice mentioned it the following Sunday, September 16, in no less than five talk shows. Hillary Clinton referred to the video as the reason for the Benghazi protest uprising on September 13 and 14, 2012. Jay Carney made the claim in a press briefing September 14. Some two weeks later, at a memorial service for the Marines who were killed in Benghazi, separately the president, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice “consoled” the parents by saying they were sorry about that video that caused all the trouble, and they were seeing to it that the perpetrator was put to justice.

One might think that, during the 24 hours surrounding the attack, there might be some wild speculation about other possible causes. But by 48 hours after, it stretches credulity to believe anyone involved had any reason to believe the attack was other than the terrorist attack that it was. To repeat the video lie can only be purposeful. But to what purpose?

We know placement of the idea of the video as cause was a lie invented by someone. We now know, as a result of the memo, the source of that someone was a White House source. We don’t know yet the individual—but we do know that one of the White House employees involved in the constructing of the talking points for Susan Rice was Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser. He also happens to be the brother of David Rhodes, President of CBS News, which news source has been notably silent on this rather large piece of news. Coincidence?

Anyway, we don’t know whether Ben Rhodes was the original source of the video lie, but we do know that he knew it was purposely emphasized in the talking points to Susan Rice, and that emphasis came from nowhere but the White House.

Additional questions continue to swirl around the reasons for 1) failure to respond ahead to requests for additional security, 2) failure during the attack to provide rescue, and 3) failure afterward to state clearly what was known—that it was a terrorist attack by Al Qaeda-related sources.

Jay Carney is an interesting piece of work. It’s hard to wrap my head around someone wishing to take on the job of being the official liar for the White House. Carney simply lies in the face of all evidence to the contrary—and he does it with condescension, just like the president would if he were doing it himself. There was an eight-minute exchange the other day, with Carney trying to claim that the reason the memo wasn’t released a year ago, with 140 other pages, was that it didn’t seem relevant, since it was about—not Benghazi—but about general unrest in the Middle East.

White House Press Spokesperson Jay Carney
image from here

Guy Benson of Townhall takes relish in dissecting the slimy lies Carney was forced to tell in his briefing, under questioning by ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl. The memo, which came out of a FOIA request specifically for Benghazi related talking points, wasn’t handed over last year, according to Carney, because the memo wasn’t related to Benghazi. It was talking points for Susan Rice to use in response to questions she would be asked five days after the Benghazi attacks, and a portion of the memo was subheaded Benghazi, in bold type. Carney clearly has his job because lying is his preferred form of communication.

We still don’t know who, specifically, invented the video lie. As for the reasons for that lie and others, and the failures to respond, the best source this week was from The Blaze TV news program For the Record, 4-30-2014. It requires subscription, but you can use your free two-week trial to see it. I hope more details come out in the future, but there is evidence (as was speculated that first month in 2012) that it was about arming Al-Qaeda-related rebels, and Ambassador Stevens was used in those negotiations. There’s a name, now, for the operation: “Zero Footprint.”

One more question: what would our country, and the world, look like today if truth had been known prior to the November 2012 election?

You Might Be Living Under Tyranny If...

Comedian Jeff Foxworthy makes lists, mostly about being a redneck, but sometimes also about the culture and inside jokes about various locations. I thought we’d do a similar list (less funny) today, about living under tyranny. Because this has been quite a week for news.

We’ll take them individually.

Benghazi

You might be living under tyranny if your government scours the internet to find an American citizen to serve as scapegoat, to cover up its relationship with Islamist terrorists. We covered this in more detail Monday, specifically about that search for a scapegoat and the continued lying about it—with the hint that the purpose must be to cover up something much worse, which we don’t know about yet. I did link speculation by Glenn Beck from last October. Here’s a second, shorter clip (5th one down in this collection) from that same week in October 2012. In addition, Geraldo Rivera let slip that his sources currently corroborate what Beck has been saying (to the sound of crickets) for half a year.

I don’t know what Benghazi was really about. I do know that the tyrannists we are currently subject to went to great lengths to lie about what they were doing, about what happened, and why. They use obfuscation, repeated lies, and eventually claim, “That happened so long ago; what difference does it make now?”—a pattern we can count on. And there’s not much from these tyrants that one can count on. 

IRS Thuggery

You might be living under tyranny if the most powerful collection agency in the world creates an enemies list—and if you love your country, you’re on it.

I’ve been aware of the IRS enemies list for some time. I couldn’t locate the date in my notes, but it seems like within the last year that King Street Patriots let us know, at one of the Monday meetings, what was happening to them, which sounds very much like other stories this week. (King Street Patriots was mentioned on Rush Limbaugh’s Tuesday show; they’re definitely on this list of targets.) The amount of information required by the IRS was impossible to obtain, and ridiculously short-time-limited. They were getting the help of lawyers to help with the effort, in addition to the various other lawsuits they suffer pretty continually.

King Street and other groups were given impossible requirements, including having to provide copies of every email, text, tweet, or post given out or received, since inception of the organization; list of speakers, detailed subjects (including transcripts of what was spoken  in some cases, as if anyone hoping to become qualified for tax exempt status already has transcribing technology at the ready), and lists of participants, and in some cases the affiliations of family members of participants. It was horrendously intrusive, impossible to provide, and intended (I believe, as do many others) to intimidate and extinguish voices at odds with this administration.

What we know is that high level officials in the IRS, which is the collection arm of the executive branch (the Obama administration), sent the directive to flag for extra scrutiny any organization applying for tax exempt status if they had certain characteristics: the words tea party, patriot, or had as a purpose educating about the Constitution, or showing disagreement with the current government. Hmmm.

And that is not all. Oh, no, that is not all. Besides harassment based on patriotism and good citizenship, the IRS also provided the application materials—private documents—to enemy organizations.

The president is shocked, SHOCKED! After leadership in his executive branch has come out and apologized (claiming it was rogue underlings, which they’ve since had to walk back), so the actual deed is known and admitted to, the president says, if the allegations turn out to be true, that would be outrageous. But let’s be cautious and not assume they’re true just because the executive branch has already come out and said so (possibly to do damage control for what would be worse revelations if they waited?)

And Jim Carney, his spokesperson, also claimed the president was unaware and therefore guilt-free. But he was certain, if it turns out to be true, the president will be appropriately outraged. So the president, while cautiously not outraged yet, is preparing to be so if the need arises. And then appropriate action will be taken. Rest assured. (For some reason, I’m not resting well on that assurance.)

If you think targeting political enemies is unconscionable, if might not be comforting to learn your political enemies have a totally different moral take on it: Former NAACP chair, for example.

Media Control

You might be living under tyranny if the government has an unusual number of incestuous relationships with members of the media, but feels the need to place secret wiretaps on wide swaths of major media organizations, in case something is said they don’t like.

These relationships were pointed out as reasons the mediahas hesitated to cover Benghazi:

·         CNN president is married to Hillary Clinton’s deputy secretary.

·         CBS president is the brother of Obama adviser on Benghazi.

·         ABC president is the brother of a top Obama adviser/speech writer.

·         Senior ABC correspondent Claire Shipman is married to WH Press Secretary Jay Carney. (She also happens to substitute anchor on Good Morning America and World News Tonight, and shows up on ABC News’ This Week with Christiane Amanpour, and previous worked as a White House correspondent for NBC News.)

But the administration didn’t think it had enough control, so it claimed, supposedly, that in order to find a leak of some possibly classified information (you know, like the New York Times used to print regularly to endanger our troops during the Bush administration), they needed all correspondence for two months of some 20 AP reporters and editors, not just anyone related to actually leaked material, and not just office phones, but private cell phones, emails, texts—you know, just in case.

Carl Bernstein, who helped take down Nixon, wasn’t moved by Benghazi, or the IRS scandal. But this! This is outrageous!

National Journal’s Ron Fournier, once the AP Washington bureau chief, finally sees the situation with clarity, not that it has hit home:

One common thing with Benghazi and the IRS scandal, is were being misled every day. We were lied to on Benghazi, on the talking points behind Benghazi, for months. We were lied to by the IRS for months. And now they’re sending a clear message to our sources: Don’t embarrass the administration, or we’re coming after you. 

The president’s response is, “Don’t ask me; that’s up to the Department of Justice” (which is particularly ill-named right now).  

The list isn’t complete. Scandals are coming fast and furious (yes, pun intended). The question is, now that we know we’re living under tyranny, is recognition the first step toward changing course? Will the tyrants be held accountable? We’ll see. 

I came across this list of 100 reasons the president could be impeached. I haven’t been through them all, but you might want to take a look for yourself anyway. Personally, I don’t see impeachment as a likely outcome.  

I’m thinking of The Princess Bride, near the end, where Westley decides to leave Prince Humperdinck intact but alone his cowardice (instead of wallowing in freakish misery as previously threatened). Self-disgust with no more power over the people—that would be a just end to the long list of injustices perpetrated against a Constitutionally free people.

Benghazi Boondoggle

I’m trying to make sense of this chain of confusion surrounding the attack on our ambassador in Libya on September 11, 2012. You’d think after more than a month we could get a basic story. Instead we get obfuscation.

The President's Rose Garden Speech 9-12-2012
photo found here

In the debate on Tuesday, Romney got the President to go on record as saying he knew within 24 hours of the event that it was a terrorist attack—the President even claimed he had said so at the time in his speech in the White House Rose Garden and suggested checking the transcript. As if moderator Candy Crowley was keeping a spare copy in a capacious handbag (she did step in and incorrectly support the President, which she had to walk back later).

Finding both a transcript and the 5-minute speech on video of the Rose Garden speech was no problem. I missed the word “terror” the first two times I listened. Finally I found it with a careful reading. It is, as the conservatives have been pointing out since, in reference to the original 9/11 attack and terror attacks in general, which he brings up in the previous paragraph, near the end of the speech, not, by my reading, in reference to the Benghazi attack. What a silly thing to be arguing about. Even when he calls something terrorism, he talks of it as simply a more heinous crime than most crimes, and refers to bringing the specific perpetrators to justice; he doesn’t recognize terrorism as an act of war perpetrated by our nation’s enemies. So, even if he called it terrorism, which he didn’t, he didn’t use the term the way the rest of us use it. But there’s still the obfuscation.

Throughout the Rose Garden speech he talks about the anti-Muslim video that supposedly set off the spontaneous protest, a video that logged only 17 YouTube views between being uploaded July 2^nd and September 10^th, the day before the attack. Except—now we know there was no spontaneous protest. We also know that Charlene Lamb, National Security agent under Hillary Clinton, was able to see video surveillance of the attack in real time, so it was instantly known that there was no protest springing up from a video. Unlike the same day in Egypt, there was only a pre-planned thoroughly executed targeted attack—on the anniversary of 9/11. There are reports that the administration had been warned of a possible attack 2-3 days ahead. And there are arguments about who had failed to provide additional security, which may have been directly requested. So, no video-related protest. Nor did intel ever suggest the obscure video was related in any way; someone in the administration put that out without any supporting evidence.

Hillary Clinton denounces the video on September 13^th, and repeats the claim September 14^th. White House Spokesman Jay Carney puts forward the video-protest story in a press briefing also on September 14^th. UN Ambassador Susan Rice (an odd choice of spokesperson, since she wasn’t in any chain of command in intelligence or national security) is sent out to do the rounds of Sunday talk shows on September 16^th, with the instruction that she should insist the Benghazi attack was the result of this obscure video. September 18^th the President repeats the claim on David Letterman’s show.

On September 19^th, finally someone in the administration admits they know it was an act of terrorism: National Counterterrorism Director Matthew Olsen, to the Senate Homeland Security Committee, says, “I would say yes, they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy.”

But then, on September 25^th, yet another six days later, a full two weeks after the event, Obama makes the claim six times in his speech to the UN.

If he knew it was a planned terrorist attack (as we all knew within 24 hours, so presumably the President was aware as well), why did he insist on bringing up the irrelevant video at all, and why cling to that story so relentlessly for so long?

More speculation and stories come out daily, so we don’t really know the answer yet, but here are some of the speculations I’ve seen:

·         The President has a stake in putting forth the idea that Islam ought to be protected (with many sub-speculations on why he would take it upon himself to do that).

·         “Being hit with the worst terror attack since 9/11—in a city we saved—would have exposed Obama's boasting about his Libya triumph and al-Qaida being "on the run" and "on the path to defeat" as absurd propaganda.  Al-Qaida is now in Libya, Mali, Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Pakistan….But we can't let folks find that out until after Nov. 6.” (Pat Buchanan’s theory)

·         There was no security leak about Ambassador Stevens’s location, his travel to Benghazi and a safe house; President Obama himself had arranged for Stevens to meet with Libyan rebels to negotiate for the recovery of weapons the US had provided to them (during the Arab Spring uprising?), and these rebels turned out to be his attackers.

·         Obama arranged with the Muslim Brotherhood to kidnap Ambassador Stevens, with the idea that, because of Obama’s warm relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, he would save the day by arranging for the Ambassador’s release—in exchange for secretly releasing the Blind Sheik. But the Muslim Brotherhood didn’t go along with the original plan.

Some of these seem more suited for action-thriller fiction than news. We don’t yet know the background of what happened. But I can guarantee that there is no non-nefarious reason for the President of the United States to make up as scapegoat an irrelevant video, telling and re-telling this falsehood to the American people, and failing even yet to explain why.

I would like this question to come up at Monday’s foreign policy debate:

Mr. President, since it is now known that the Benghazi attack was a planned terrorist attack, and that this fact was known by the State Department even as the attack was underway, why did the White House assert and persist in the fiction that this was a spontaneous protest reacting to an obscure, almost unviewed amateur video? It appears there was purposeful disinformation given to the American people. Where did the claim of the video as cause come from (the agency, position or rank, if you’d rather not reveal a name), and why was this claim continued against all evidence for so long?

I would accept this alternative question (inspired by BryanPreston in reference to Obama’s book):

Mr. President, on page 261 of your book The Audacity of Hope, you declare that if the post-9/11 political winds were to shift in an ugly direction against Muslims, you would stand with them. In the Middle East on September 11, 2012, following a terrorist attack in which our Ambassador was murdered along with three other American defenders, you stepped forward to defend the Muslim World against an obscure anti-Muslim video. How do we interpret your allegiance to America based on your words and actions?