The second presidential debate provided more heat than light regarding explanations for false White House and State Department claims that the 9/11 anniversary attack which killed U.S. Libyan Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi was a spontaneous mob-driven event …not a carefully planned and coordinated terrorist action. Secretary of State Clinton’s statement one day before the debate accepting responsibility for an obvious failure to provide preemptive embassy protection added no new information. It certainly didn’t clarify why the Obama administration had immediately blamed the tragedy on an obscure anti-Muslim YouTube video released months before the assault. Now, more than a month later, the president and some of his top surrogates and spokespeople have yet to account for serious problems with that cover story.
When challenger Mitt Romney called Obama to task for dodging references to the Benghazi tragedy as a terrorist action, the president, inappropriately supported by CNN moderator Candy Crowley, countered that he had done so in a White House Rose Garden speech on the day following the attack. However, what Obama had really said on that occasion was that “…no acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation”, a generic reference to “terror”, not one directly linked to the Benghazi murders. Taken in full context, he had, in fact, attributed causation to the anti-Muslim video, stating, “We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others.” Following the debate, Crowley publicly admitted that Romney was “right in the main”.
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The president repeated this theme six times during his address at the 67th session of the U.N. General Assembly, and also when he appeared on the CBSlate night Letterman show and other media programs. More pointedly, his administration dispatched U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to actively and unambiguously pitch the video-blaming message on several popular television talk shows. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney repeatedly followed the same script.
Romney’s incredulous observation that it took the president 14 days before he called the Benghazi assault “an act of terror” drew an angry response. Obama accused his nemesis of exploiting a sensitive national security issue for political gain. He indignantly added: “The suggestion that anybody on my team, whether the secretary of state, our U.N. ambassador, anybody on my team would play politics or mislead when we’ve lost four of our own, is offensive. That’s not what we do.”
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