O’Reilly Factors In Another Missed Opportunity
Super Bowl Sunday, Bill O’Reilly once again scores a face-to-face interview with President Obama. When the questioning turned to the armed assault on the Benghazi diplomatic compound, at one point Obama’s reaction to it was disconcerting; he chose to laugh. Apparently he still sees the four lives lost as “bumps in the road” as he described them the morning after, as he addressed a crowd at a fund-raiser in Las Vegas. Yesterday, Obama did his best to obfuscate, deflect, then out-and-out blame the Fox News Channel’s “folks” for the fact that the issue will not go away. But O’Reilly not much better, he pressed the terrorist-angle but allowed Obama to rewrite history, no follow-up to correct this false and misleading statement:
We – we revealed to the American people exactly what we understood at the time. The notion we would hide the ball for political purposes when, a week later, we all said, in fact, there was a terrorist attack taking place the day after, I said it was as act of terror, that wouldn’t be a very good cover-up…
The follow-up should have gone something like this:
With all due respect sir, you did not reveal to the American people immediately what you knew. Declassified testimony reveals you were immediately informed the assault was a terrorist attack, yet in your first address to the nation, your comments at the ceremony at Andrews Air Force base in front of the flag-draped caskets, in your address to the world at the United Nations, instead you blamed the You Tube video that had no views until after the assault took place. Why did you do so, whose idea was it to even mention that obscure video? Why was it inserted into the information Susan Rice passed on to the American people the Sunday after the assault? Why did you and then- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton participate in the making of a commercial advertisement to air in Pakistan, at the cost of $70,000, which apologizes for the video, insists the American government had nothing to do with it if indeed you say now that you called it a terrorist attack all along?
O’Reilly did not take the opportunity presented to ask what I consider the most significant questions necessary to pose to the Commander-in-Chief: When notified sovereign U.S. soil was under armed assault, your personal representative missing, why did you not order nearby military to assist in defense, get American personnel out, but instead order the military to stand down?
When told your personal representative to the area was missing, whereabouts unknown, why did you leave the Oval Office and not remain in the Situation Room to monitor the events? Where did you go, what were you doing those hours instead?
Is it any wonder the Administration, Democrats in Congress, the more leftist members of the punditry all claim the issue has been gone over enough times when this kind of performance is presented to the American people? The president is being allowed to avoid consequences for the political shenanigans and suffer no penalties for the wrongdoing that has occurred under his watch, but what happened in Benghazi was not politics. It is long past time to have it characterized that way.
