Well, that's what UN Ambassador Susan Rice would like us all to believe. But that nonsense is even less believable than the story she peddled on the Sunday talk shows when she explained how the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya was really a protest over a YouTube video.
Under fire from congressional critics, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice stressed in a Tuesday statement that she did not intend to mislead the public about the September 11th attacks on the Benghazi consulate.
"Neither I nor anyone else in the administration intended to mislead the American people at any stage in this process, and the administration updated Congress and the American people as our assessments evolved," Rice said.
This exercise with Susan Rice has proven to be quite the useful little distraction for the Obama administration. It has given Democrats and their allies in the media yet another excuse to spew a lot of fake righteous indignation about Republicans being racist and sexist — they questioned Rice's wild fantasy about rioting over a YouTube video. Meanwhile, with the exception of Fox News, Democrats and the media ignore the really important questions.
Fox News has learned from sources who were on the ground in Benghazi that an urgent request from the CIA annex for military back-up during the attack on the U.S. consulate and subsequent attack several hours later on the annex itself was denied by the CIA chain of command -- who also told the CIA operators twice to "stand down" rather than help the ambassador's team when shots were heard at approximately 9:40 p.m. in Benghazi on Sept. 11.
Who told the CIA to stand down, and why? And why wasn't there any military presence near enough to make a rescue attempt? It's not as if the administration didn't know that the consulate could not be defended.
The U.S. Mission in Benghazi convened an “emergency meeting” less than a month before the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, because Al Qaeda had training camps in Benghazi and the consulate could not defend against a “coordinated attack,” according to a classified cable reviewed by Fox News.
Summarizing an Aug. 15 emergency meeting convened by the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Aug. 16 cable marked “SECRET” said that the State Department’s senior security officer, also known as the RSO, did not believe the consulate could be protected.
Security request were denied in spite of the Ambassador's fears. It seems the administration, the State Department in particular, was hot to "normalize operations and reduce security resources."
Eric Nordstrom, the former Regional Security Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Libya, told congressional investigators looking into the murder of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, that the State Department was eager for the American diplomatic presence in Libya to reduce its American security footprint and to rely more on locals, sources tell ABC News. A senior State Department official denies the charge.
In an email from Nordstrom from earlier this month obtained by ABC News, the former Regional Security Officer referred to a list of 230 security incidents in Libya that took place between June 2011 and July 2012, writing that “(t)hese incidents paint a clear picture that the environment in Libya was fragile at best and could degrade quickly. Certainly, not an environment where post should be directed to ‘normalize’ operations and reduce security resources in accordance with an artificial time table.”
A policy of normalizing operations would fit right in with Barack Obama's claims that al Qaeda was on the run, that the Muslim world now sees America in a new and attractive light. On the other hand, admitting what actually happened might damage that perception, and horror of horrors, damage it right before the election.
And then there's Hillary. How will it work for her 2016 presidential aspirations when it comes out that she and Obama refused requests for more security in Benghazi just so they can maintain this fairy tale story about how the Muslims really like us now?
Democrats are their liberal media allies are right when they complain that Susan Rice and her silly story aren't the issue. They keep saying it over and over again in hopes that we'll forget about the real problem. What we really need to know is by whose order were four Americans left unprotected in Libya, and why. And who made certain they remained unprotected?
Getting back to Susan Rice, by her participation in a diversion from those questions, she has proven herself unfit to be Secretary of State. Did she and the rest of the administration intend to mislead? You betcha!
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