UPDATE: 5/7/2014:
The Ben Rhodes and other emails released during the past week now specifically prove that The White House not only played a direct role in attempting to blame the violence in Benghazi on an Internet video, but gave Susan Rice her talking points for all the weekend shows, all the while knowing it was a lie. From there, it was a purposeful cover up to hide the truth until a Federal Judge actually had to order the release of the emails that the Administration had previously refused to give up. All during the past year and a half they have ginned up the idea that Benghazi and the deaths of these four people was nothing more than an intelligence failure, and the lap dog media has been more than happy to go along. Although critics of the handling of the Benghazi affair have always agreed that there was an intelligence failure, that has never been the focus of their attempts to get to the bottom of the story. The problem has been the lies, cover up and indifference to American lives as the President himself said nothing while preparing for a campaign event in Las Vegas. Here's a roll-up of the latest information as Jay Carney, the White House spokesperson continues to insult the intelligence of Americans everywhere:
Jay Carney <-----------
UPDATE 2/14/2013:
President Obama didn’t make any phone calls the night of the Sept. 11 attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, the White House said in a letter to Congress released Thursday.
“During the entire attack, the president of the United States never picked up the phone to put the weight of his office in the mix,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, who had held up Mr. Obama’s defense secretary nominee to force the information to be released.
Mr. Graham said that if Mr. Obama had picked up the phone, at least two of the Americans killed in the attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Behghazi, Libya, might still be alive because he might have been able to push U.S. aid to get to the scene faster.
UPDATE: 3/7/2013:
As of this date the government has *still* refused to allow any of the survivors of the attack to be interviewed. Newly confirmed Secretary of State John Kerry had this to say on 5 March 2013 when asked why this was the case. KERRY: [Pause] "Well, I – I mean, I can’t tell you the answer to that. I can tell you that I have visited with one of the survivors at Bethesda hospital, who is a remarkably courageous person, who is doing very, very well. And I’ve called his wife and talked to her."
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Original Article Text:
Without boring the reader with excessive detail, here is a very quick capsuled primer on the events of Benghazi and the Obama Administration handling of it as it unfolded. These are the facts so far as they have been brought to light, testified to or more accurately.....squeezed out of the Administration.
1. The attacks by fully armed terrorists took place over a period of more than 7 hours. Four Americans were killed, our Ambassador was dragged through the streets.
2. Defense Secretary Panetta went to the White House at 5:00 PM on the eve of the attacks. He was fully briefed on what was happening. Although he went to the White House during the attack, the Benghazi events were not the purpose of his visit. He had been scheduled to be there anyway to meet with Obama. During the visit, he brought Obama up to speed on what was happening right then....as they were speaking. Obama did NOTHING. He ordered no rescue, or boots on the ground, or air support.
*This is important:* ONLY THE PRESIDENT can order a cross border operation. In other words, Panetta could order help to be sent in country from Tripoli to Benghazi, for instance, but he cannot and could not order a U.S. operation to take place over the border of another country. ONLY THE PRESIDENT can do this. The President did nothing. Panetta left, Obama went to bed, and apparently slept like a baby because the next day he had nothing on his schedule but a brief meeting with Lunchbucket Joe Biden.
3. During the assault, an American aircraft carrier was 300 miles offshore of Libya. Attack planes could have been there in an hour. No order was given by Obama for them to aid those under attack. Four Americans were left to die with no order given to help them.
4. During the assault, just across the way in Italy, a strike force was available for assistance. They were no further away from Benghazi than Tripoli is, and could have been there in about 2 hours. No order was given by Obama for them to support the Americans under attack. Four Americans were left to die with no order given to help them.
5. Hillary Clinton has testified that she knew nothing of the situation, high military officials and others find that very difficult to believe. As do a lot of other people. In addition she says she knew nothing of a cable sent by the Ambassador to her State Department a month before the attack in which he warned that they were unable to defend themselves.
6. Between the 5:00 PM meeting on the evening of the attack that he had with Panetta, and two days later when he got on a plane and went to a campaign rally in Las Vegas, Obama never once called Panetta for any updates. Panetta has testified to this. At the campaign rally Obama finally said something publicly and lamely about the attack.
It goes without saying that had this been a Republican President, the media and the politicians in Washington would have had that President pilloried.
This incident would have (justifiably, I might add) become a major scandal and foreign policy disaster with people losing their jobs so quickly that they'd hardly have time to pack their bags. But it didn't happen that way because Obama was soon up for re-election. It was swept under the rug, where it remains today. And the media protects the Dear Leader above all else, even the tragic and unnecessary loss of American lives while their so-called "Commander-in-Chief" stood by doing nothing to offend his friends in the Muslim Brotherhood. And it will continue to happen that way for the same reasons. The American public is woefully uninformed on what occured in Benghazi, and the press will do absolutely nothing to correct that. The Administration contnues to stonewall and withhold information, and not a single member of the press (with extremely few exceptions) will ask Obama a single question about it.
This is an American tragedy, most disturbing for the fact that a cover up of these monumental proportions is allowed to stand at all. Richard Nixon ended up resigning over a break-in to a file cabinet. Obama goes his merry way while four people are dead. They should all be ashamed of themselves, but they aren't. It's business as usual for the Obama Administration.