Benghazi & Barack’s Broken Promises
What do we call someone who makes a promise, takes a vow yet fails to fulfill it, worse yet, denigrates the subject of said vow? On the morning of September 12, 2012, after three Americans were murdered and an ambassador assassinated in an armed assault on sovereign U.S. soil at the diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya had occurred the day before, Barack Obama said these words from the Rose Garden of the White House:
“And make no mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people.”
Later during the ceremony honoring the return of the bodies of these Americans, their coffins draped in the flag of our nation, Obama again reiterated: “To you – their families and colleagues – to all Americans, know this: Their sacrifice will never be forgotten. We will bring to justice those who took them from us.”
So it was understandably curious and outrageous at the same time that last week, in a campaign-style speech before college students at Knox College in Illinois, Obama included the investigation of the terrorist attack in Benghazi along with the other oversight investigations being conducted by Congress in this manner: “With an endless parade of distractions, political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball.”
Phony scandals? I suppose the families ought to be grateful the deaths of their sons have been upgraded from “bumps in the road” as Obama referred to them in his campaign event in Las Vegas that he managed to make time for no matter he never once called to see what was happening in Benghazi after he left the Situation Room while the assault was underway. It is bad enough that Congress has made little headway on the matter; this can be blamed upon the White House dragging its feet in turning over documents and making personnel available to committee staff for inquiry but a good bit of the onus must be placed squarely at the feet of the Speaker of the House, John Boehner (R – OH) who continues to refuse to appoint a special select committee to investigate rather than having the several separate committees of jurisdiction look into their individual piece of the whole. I have yet to hear a reasonable explanation for why from the Speaker.
The families of Ambassador Christopher Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and the two men who had been SEALS and were attached to the CIA Annex at the time of the assault, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty, they all were promised at that service by Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Leon Panetta a full accounting of how and why their sons lost their lives but still they all wait, as do we Americans. Waiting to know the true details of the horrible event, waiting to know why no military assistance was ordered to be sent to help defend the Americans and the compound itself. Waiting to know why Obama couldn’t be bothered to stay until word came of the demise of the ambassador, his personal representative to Libya. Waiting to know why the Speaker seems not to take a serious interest in the answers either. Yes, we all wait.
