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Obama, Benghazi, and the Blame Game

Scandals bring out the worst in politicians, and politicians engage in scandalous behavior on a regular basis. Of course the people only end up hearing about the latter when said politicians get caught. Normally, this would happen as the result of members of the traditional media uncovering their dastardly deeds, but the age of investigative journalism in the mainstream media is drawing to a close. Now, it is in the hands of new media, and sometimes, other politicians.

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In the case of the Benghazi scandal, it is a little of each. Now, anyone that believes that the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was the result of protest against an anti-Islam film is either delusional, or has been living under a rock for the past couple weeks. In the interest of being thorough, if anyone lost track, they can consult the timeline here. As for the Congressional Hearings, if nothing else, it can be called a “who’s who of the administration that will be thrown under the bus, if they haven’t been already.” Obviously, the lowest on the totem pole are likely to take the worst. But, as we saw in the Vice Presidential debate, someone obviously forgot to get Joe Biden on board with the administration’s official story on the matter. His statement that he didn’t know the Consulate needed more security came off as though the administration as a whole was unaware. The current message is (maybe?) that Biden and Obama didn’t know, implying some sort of disconnect between the Oval Office and the State Department.

Well, maybe that’s more than just implied, since it’s obvious that there is now a rift between Clinton(s) and Obama. That begs the question why Obama would now trust Bill to hit the campaign trail on his behalf – but, who wants to warn him that could blow up in his face? No one? Figured that.

Otherwise, in the endless effort to blame anyone but themselves, the Obama administration is at least attempting to stick with the “evil Republicans cut the State Department budget, so we couldn’t afford more forces there” argument. They shouldn’t expect that to work very well for two reasons. First, it doesn’t fly when one considers the “greening of Europe” initiative pointed out by Congressman Mike Kelly. As was pointed out in the hearings, obviously the State Department has their priorities a little out of order, since they’re spending huge sums of money on electric cars in Europe, while neglecting to provide needed security personnel in the Middle East and North Africa. But apparently the State Department can afford to send an attorney to babysit Congressman Jason Chaffetz on his trip to Libya to investigate the situation. Perhaps that was why Congress cut the budget in the first place? Second, there’s the problem with communication on National Security matters in the White House. We’ve been told for ages now that Obama rarely bothers with National Security briefings. Now, apparently he’s also not interested in hearing requests for increased security at Embassies. That is a rather odd decision under the circumstances, but who are we to question his choices.

And none of this could possibly be connected to the general state of denial within this administration when it comes to terrorism. We are no longer at war with terrorism. Osama bin Laden is dead. That fixed everything. There couldn’t be an increased threat from al Qaeda. The message is clear – the State Department is right to avoid calling those that attacked the Benghazi Consulate terrorists. And there wasn’t any real danger in Libya, so it was right to scale back security there. Stephanie Cutter is right – it is all Mitt Romney’s fault, and he’s politicizing the situation. Don’t believe her? Just ask Alec Baldwin.

Move along folks, nothing to see here!

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Liz Harrison (twitter: @GoldwaterGal)

Liz is a mostly-retired veteran political campaign worker, wife, mom, opinionated gal, fiscal conservative, anti-social-conservative, atheist, and foreign affairs/Mid-East politics junkie.

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