Benghazi: The Unanswered Question

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Last week, American Spectator editor R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. called and asked me to take a look at a Wall Street Journal op-ed column by Kevin G. Norton, “Benghazi’s Record of Broken Trust.”

Tyrrell asked me to contact Norton, which I did.  Tyrrell explained he was curious about a question: Where was Obama? You may remember Chris Wallace asked this last month on Fox News:

Strange to say, we still have no answer to that question:

Unlike Chris Wallace, most in the press corps have been willing to accept the administration’s non-answers, so that we are left with what Rich Lowry has called “a blank spot” in Obama’s presidency. And to invoke the famous words of the former Secretary of State, what difference at this point does it make? Perhaps not much to civilians stateside, who might be tempted to dismiss the whole affair as another political kerfuffle in Washington, but it means a great deal to those who devote themselves to serving their nation overseas. Just ask Kevin Norton.
“It’s bothered me ever since it happened,” the 36-year-old former Army captain says of the administration’s response to the Benghazi attack. “It makes no sense at all.”
Norton served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Third Infantry Division in 2005, and was reactivated for deployment to Afghanistan as a combat adviser in 2009. Like every other American soldier, Norton was trained to “leave no man behind.” He summarizes the common understanding of troops under fire: “Everybody knows that if the s—t hits the fan, they’re going to do whatever it takes to get you out of there.”
What happened in Benghazi, Norton said in a brief telephone interview, was an “egregious violation” of that basic promise our nation makes to its courageous men and women who put their lives at risk to serve America in potentially hostile foreign countries. Although it appears Ambassador Stevens and State Department aide Sean Smith were both killed before any U.S. forces could have rescued them, the same is not true of two former Navy SEALS, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. Both of them were part of a security detail that tried to save Stevens and Smith at the consulate, and were tasked with evacuating other Americans after the initial attack. Woods and Doherty were killed in a subsequent assault on the CIA annex in Benghazi. More than six hours elapsed between the first alarm from the consulate — “We’re under attack, we need help, please send help now” — and the attack on the annex in which mortar shells killed Woods and Doherty. By 4:30 p.m. Eastern time, Secretary Panetta was told of the desperate crisis in Benghazi and, about an hour later, Secretary Clinton called CIA Director David Petraeus to coordinate a response. Exactly why that response was insufficient to save the lives of Woods and Doherty remains hotly disputed. . . .

Please read the whole thing at The American Spectator.

 


59 comments

  2. As long as there is silence from the White house on this, my default assumption is that he was “hiking the Appalachian Trail” IYKWIMAITTYD

  3. Remember back in the day when big time, real, serious journalists would ask a question like that until they got the real answer?

  4. We know that Obama learned of the attack while he was meeting with Panetta on unrelated matters about 5 p.m.. We know that, according to Hillary Clinton, she called him about 10 p.m. The mystery involves where the president was and what he was doing during those five hours between those two events. Pfeiffer says the president was kept up-to-date on developments, but we know nothing beyond this rather vague description. Were there meetings with staffers? Did the president make phone calls or send e-mails to anyone?

    There is no need for conspiracy theories here. It just seems that the White House doesn’t want Americans to know what the president was doing during those five hours, and the fact that they don’t want it known arouses curiosity. Journalists are supposed to be curious by nature. So why is no one else asking these questions?

  8. […] Doing research on Benghazi, and writing about it makes me sick. It makes me sick that our country, for whatever reason left Americans to die in Benghazi. No doubt there is plenty of blame to go around and no doubt we all want to know the “why” in Benghazi. I could accept if we had sent help, and it did not arrive in time. I can accept failure, what I cannot accept is failure to try. Again, we can point fingers at the CIA, the State Department, the White House, but that “why” keeps showing its ugly face. Then there is the “where” question, as in where was our president? No matter who you blame, CIA, State, whoever, the ultimate blame lies higher. Stacy McCain is also troubled by the matter of “Where” […]

  9. Maybe he was asked not to be disturbed because he has to go to a fundraising event the next day? A very implausible explanation but might be nearer reality given Obama’s narcissictic personality. He wants the whole world to know that he has the power to tell people such things and nobody would have the power to change that.

    Or he might just be doing some hanky-panky..

  10. Early last Tuesday, Breitbart.com posted a brief article
    with a video of Pres. Obama’s interview with Charlie Rose of PBS, with the headline, “Obama: Syria Rebels ‘Carpenters, Blacksmiths, and Dentists’”.

    In the video, Pres. Obama talks of being “…in the Situation Room, pawing through intelligence and meeting directly with our military folks and asking “What are all our options?’ And examining what are all the
    consequences…”.

    From that statement I believe that one can reasonably assume that Pres. Obama was in the Situation Room during the Benghazi attack and that while he and his counselors decided that the action(s) they took, (or maybe that should be didn’t take), were the right one(s), they realized how the truth of the situation would damage, if not destroy, the current administration, so they concocted the “its the fault of this video” excuse.

  15. The thing is, if the answer were not embarrassing to Obama, we would already have it, wouldn’t we? What would be the point of holding back innocuous details?

    If he were “spending time with the family” or “resting for the day ahead,” that is simple enough, why not just say so?

    The White House Logs have not been kept complete under Obama, but one place to start might be who had entered that day but not yet signed out.

  16. I think hanky-panky. He’s been taking a lot of “separate vacations” from Michelle lately . . .

  19. I’m surprised that a member of his merry-band-of-marxists hasn’t simply invoked the canned response to anything and everything that plagues this regime: “I don’t know.”

    And, all the while, the low/no-info voters continue to ask, “Ben Ghazi, who?!” *smdh*

  20. As I’ve said many times before, Americans must be vigilant in insisting that the Benghazi investigations continue. We owe it to the four dead Americans that were abandoned there. We owe it to our current and future military forces. We must ensure this does not happen again.

  23. I have come to the conclusion that Barry-O and Hillary were actually furious at the men in Benghazi who rushed to aid those at the consulate. Those brave men didn’t play it according to the script. How could they? They never even knew the script existed.

    I believe they were left to die as an example to anyone who would dare place the lives of Americans above the political ambitions of bureaucrats.

  27. We know from Colonel Paterson’s book about the Clinton WH that Hillary actively and openly despised the military. Other accounts confirm that. Not surprising she wouldn’t give a shit if they lived or died; probably pissed her off they were doing their duty.

  28. Remember how large and in charge he looked the last time he was in there, sitting in the corner?

  29. According the muslims, Ambassador Stevens was supposed to be taken captive and traded for the Blind Sheik and other in Gitmo, which Obama would ‘with great reluctance’ agree to make the trade.
    Obama went to rehearse his speech for Las Vegas and get his rest before the flight. Why stay awake when the outcome was forgone? Except Stevens was killed, which necessitated the phone call from Hillary after 10pm. Quick delete on the speech and back to sleep.

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