A terrorist group claimed responsibility for the 9/11/12 attack on the Benghazi consulate, and Washington was immediately notified of the claim, just after midnight in Benghazi, 6.35 pm in Washington. The attack had started at 9.40 pm local time. That means that officials of the Obama administration knew about the claim two and a half hours into the incident which lasted about seven hours. It needs to be emphasized: the White House Situation Room and high officials in the State Department, the Pentagon and the Intelligence Services all knew the consulate was under attack by an identified terrorist group, Ansar al-Sharia, while it was happening. (Ansar al-Sharia is a sub-group of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, AQIM. It is also affiliated with the February 17th Martyrs Brigade, which was hired by the State Department to provide stand-ins for the missing protection force of the US legation. See our post, State Department employed terrorists as guards in Libya, October 14, 2012.)

The Commander-in-Chief himself must have made the decision to allow nothing to be attempted to save the ambassador and the other Americans in the compound. Instead, it seems, he decided to cover up the terrorist onslaught by inventing a lie that it was something else. It was, he and his coven fictionized, a peaceful protest demonstration in the streets outside the consulate which suddenly turned violent. Yeah, that was all it was to start with. And then the demonstrators being suddenly unable to contain a moment longer their extreme indignation over some video made in America that was unkind about Muhammad, they seized handy mortars and AK-47s which were lying about in the vicinity as such things do, and guns ablaze they poured into the compound to wreak vengeance.

This is from Fox News:

A series of internal State Department emails obtained by Fox News shows that officials reported within hours of last month’s deadly consulate attack in Libya that Al Qaeda-tied group Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility.

The emails provide some of the most detailed information yet about what officials knew in the initial hours after the attack. And it again raises questions about why U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice, apparently based on intelligence assessments, would claim five days after the attack that it was a “spontaneous” reaction to protests over an anti-Islam film.

Ansar al-Sharia has been declared by the State Department to be an Al Qaeda-affiliated group. …

The emails obtained by Fox News were sent by the State Department to a variety of national security platforms, whose addresses have been redacted, including the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon, the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence.

Fox News was told that an estimated 300 to 400 national security figures received these emails in real time almost as the raid was playing out and concluding. …

The timestamps on the emails are all Eastern Time and often include the subheading SBU, which is shorthand for “Sensitive But Unclassified.”

The third email came at 6:07 p.m. ET and was sent to a different email list but still includes the White House Situation Room address and a subject line of “Update 2: Ansar al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack (SBU).”

“Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli,” the email reads….

The emails on the day of the attack … challenge [ie. show to be lies – JB] not only the initial statements made by administration officials like Rice about the strike, but also recent claims that they were only basing those statements on the intelligence they had at the time. …

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney backed up Rice on Sept. 18. He said: “Based on information that we – our initial information … we saw no evidence to back up claims by others that this was a preplanned or premeditated attack; that we saw evidence that it was sparked by the reaction to this video.” Carney went on to say “that is what we know” based on “concrete evidence, not supposition”.

Blatant shameless liars all! What a squalid bunch!

An imam of the “religion of peace” (President Bush’s and President Obama’s ridiculous description of Islam) preaches violence against Christians and Jews and action to damage the US economy, on the Friday following the attack by Muslims on the US consulate in Benghazi and the murder of the ambassador and three other Americans.

Last night, in the final presidential candidates’ debate before the election, President Obama said patronizingly and insultingly – as if Mitt Romney were an ignorant moron:

You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.

Part of the audience laughed.

But which of the two debaters was displaying ignorance?

This is from Commentary, by Jonathan S. Tobin:

Contrary to the president’s assertion, the creation of aircraft carriers and submarines did not mean that we needed fewer ships. Quite the contrary. Aircraft carriers need just as many if not more supporting vessels than the obsolete battleships that are no longer under commission. So do subs.The decline in naval strength compromises America’s ability to project power abroad.

And there is danger of war right now in the Persian Gulf and the South China Sea.

Furthermore, US soldiers still use bayonets. And though warhorses may be fewer now, they too are still used – have been used with devastating effect in Afghanistan.

Here’s a video about that:

And here’s a picture of US soldiers battle-ready with fixed bayonets in Iraq:

Come let us mock at the great

That had such burdens on the mind

And toiled so hard and late

To leave some monument behind,

Nor thought of the levelling wind. …

Mock mockers after that

That would not lift a hand maybe

To help good, wise or great

To bar that foul storm out, for we

Traffic in mockery.

-W.B.Yeats

It seems that the murderers of Ambassador Stevens and four of his staff are protected from retribution by the lies the Obama administration has told about the tragic event.

How this is possible emerges from a round-up of reports in GlobalPost on the leader of a terrorist organization that attacked the US consulate in Benghazi:

Ahmed Abu Khattala, who was identified by a witness and officials as one of the Islamist militia commanders leading the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, has denied being involved.

Khattala told Reuters in an interview that he was present during the incident but wasn’t one of the ringleaders.

Present while his militiamen were violently attacking the consulate, but not “involved”? Just a bystander looking on, bemused – or amused – by the antics of the killers?

According to the Associated Press, Khattala describes himself as a founder and commander of the Abu Obaida Bin Jarrah.

He told the AP in a separate interview that he went to the site of the attack to rescue men he had been informed were trapped inside.

Ah, he was there to rescue the US ambassador, was he?

The New York Times noted that “just days after President Obama reasserted his vow to bring those responsible to justice, Mr. Abu Khattala spent two leisurely hours on Thursday evening at a crowded luxury hotel, sipping a strawberry frappe on a patio and scoffing at the threats coming from the American and Libyan governments.”

So that’s what America has been reduced to by Obama’s policy towards the Arab revolutionary states: a toothless old blusterer, like the Libyan “government”, whose threats need not be taken seriously. And are obviously not being carried out, or not with great dispatch anyway. Maybe sometime, one day, someone will be sent by the State Department to take some action against Khattala.

Indeed, Khattala said, “These reports say that no one knows where I am and that I am hiding,” according to Reuters. “But here I am in the open, sitting in a hotel with you. I’m even going to pick up my sister’s kids from school soon.” …

The Times classified Khattala’s manner as defiant. No authority has questioned him on the attack, he told The Times, and he has no plans to go into hiding.

Taunt, taunt the USA.

“All this talk is baseless,” Khattala told the AP. “I am in Benghazi, have a job and live my life normally. I have not been accused by any party with any allegations … I am not a fugitive or in hiding.”

Meanwhile, US government sources told Reuters that Khattala is being probed as a suspect in the attacks, though investigators are not clear what role he played.

Isn’t the – totally invisible – probing meant to find out what role he played?

A Libyan interior ministry official with knowledge of the investigation told Reuters that Khattala was photographed at the consulate on Sept. 11, but there was not enough evidence for an arrest. The official said, “Just because someone is there doesn’t mean they were behind it.”

But they were there. They were in it – a massive armed attack in which four Americans, including the representative of the United States, were murdered. Every one of the participants should be targeted for punishment.

Khattala’s account of the attack … alleged that the assault grew out of a spontaneous protest when Libyan or American guards inside the consulate’s compound fired on the protesters, provoking them.

Only there was no protest. Khattala is seizing on the lie that the Obama administration has been telling. If they now call him a liar, they accuse themselves.

Mock, mock the USA.

The lying, the  evasions, the excuses, the ducking and dodging in the accounts of what the administration allowed to happen in Benghazi last month – the murder of the US ambassador and three other Americans – go on and on.

How’s this for spin?

AP reports:

The CIA station chief in Libya reported to Washington within 24 hours of last month’s deadly attack on the U.S. Consulate that there was evidence it was carried out by militants, not a spontaneous mob upset about an American-made video ridiculing Islam’s Prophet Muhammad …

Yet, on Saturday of that week, briefing points sent by the CIA to Congress said “demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault.”

The briefing points, obtained by the AP, added: “There are indications that extremists participated in the violent demonstrations” but did not mention eyewitness accounts that blamed militants alone.

Such raw intelligence reports by the CIA on the ground would normally be sent first to analysts at the headquarters in Langley, Va., for vetting and comparing against other intelligence derived from eavesdropping drones and satellite images. Only then would such intelligence generally be shared with the White House and later, Congress, a process that can take hours, or days if the intelligence is coming only from one or two sources who may or may not be trusted.

U.S. intelligence officials say in this case the delay was due in part to the time it took to analyze various conflicting accounts.

Was there even one eye-witness account that there had been a protest demonstration which “evolved” into spontaneous violence? How could there be? There was no such protest demonstration.

 One official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the incident publicly, explained that “it was clear a group of people gathered that evening” in Benghazi, but that the early question was “whether extremists took over a crowd or they were the crowd.” …

There could be no such question. The entire crowd, when it appeared, was fully armed. All witnesses testified to that. Every single one.

Beyond the question of what was known immediately after the attack, it’s also proving difficult to pinpoint those who set the fire that apparently killed Stevens and his communications aide or launched the mortars that killed two ex-Navy SEALs who were working as contract security guards at a fallback location. That delay is prompting lawmakers to question whether the intelligence community has the resources it needs to investigate this attack in particular or to wage the larger fight against al-Qaida in Libya or across Africa.

Intelligence officials say the leading suspected culprit is a local Benghazi militia, Ansar al-Shariah. The group denies responsibility for the attack but is known to have ties to a leading African terror group, al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. Some of its leaders and fighters were spotted by Libyan locals at the consulate during the violence, and intelligence intercepts show the militants were in contact with AQIM militants before and after the attack, one U.S. intelligence official said.

But U.S. intelligence has not been able to match those reported sightings with the faces of attackers caught on security camera recordings during the attack since many U.S. intelligence agents were pulled out of Benghazi in the aftermath of the violence, the two U.S. intelligence officials said.

Nor have they found proof to back up their suspicion that the attack was preplanned, as indicated by the military-style tactics the attackers used, setting up a perimeter of roadblocks around the consulate and the backup compounds, then attacking the main entrance to distract, while sending a larger force to assault the rear.

Is there any way, conceivable, imaginable, by which roadblocks are  set up and simultaneous attacks launched at two points by sheer happenstance? Here and there round the consulate men idly, at the same time, without any pre-planning, just decide off their own bat to set up road-blocks? And on the same night, at the same hour, heavily armed forces approach the compound front and rear by amazing coincidence?

Who d’you think you’re fooling, Mr President?

Has Obama’s presidency been a success or a failure?

This is how we assess it:

From the point of view of Obama himself and his backers, it has been a success.

He was promoted to power by the revolutionary Left to impoverish and weaken America, and in this he has obviously succeeded. The measures he took to do this have been open: running up colossal debt, keeping the country from becoming energy-independent, and severely cutting military expenditure.

He was also tasked, by both the revolutionary Left and Islam, with the destruction of the State of Israel. This had to be done covertly, while seeming to maintain the US-Israel alliance.

How best then could this aim by achieved? Obama had to make it possible for Iran to become a nuclear-armed power, and he has done just that.

A shocking thing to say? Yes, but a far more shocking thing to do. And now, to judge by this report – which seems to us entirely plausible in the light of what we already know – Obama is close to success in his unstoppable drive to have Iran achieve nuclear attack capability.

Barack Obama this week clued Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in on the latest US intelligence input confirming that Iran will have enough enriched uranium for 4-6 bombs by March 2013 … His update, which took place in the framework of quiet US-Israeli intelligence-sharing on the state of Iran’s nuclear program, was Obama’s first acknowledgment that sanctions and diplomatic pressure are not having any effect on that program.

It is now clear to his administration that Iran’s leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will press on toward a nuclear weapon capacity at any price – even if faced with a military threat. No pause is to be expected in Iran’s drive to accumulate enough enriched uranium to fuel a nuclear bomb arsenal, while advancing at the same time along a second track toward a plutonium bomb.

This updated US intelligence included three more data:

1. Most of the enriched uranium for the 4-6 nuclear bombs is scattered in 20-percent grade form among different caches. When vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan revealed Iran’s possession of enough fissile material for five nuclear bombs during his debate with VP Joe Biden on Oct. 10, Biden waved the revelation away with contempt. It is now confirmed by his boss, the president.

2. After completing the transfer of advanced centrifuges to the fortified underground site at Fordo, Iran is now ready to expand uranium enrichment at Natanz by doubling the number of centrifuges working there to 6,000. The new annex to house them, on which building began in March 2011, is almost finished.

3. The technological infrastructure for the rapid conversion of 20-percent enriched uranium to the 90-percent weapons grade is now in place. It is estimated in Washington that no more than two to three weeks will elapse between a Khamenei order for the conversion to begin, to the production of enough weapons-grade material for Iran to build its first nuclear bombs. …

Notwithstanding all the facts and figures from his own intelligence experts on the imminence of a nuclear Iran, President Obama is still leaning hard on Netanyahu to hold off a preemptive strike until after the Nov. 6 presidential election. He promises that, shortly after the vote, if he is reelected, he will put before Tehran the endgame document prepared by a White House team in the form of an ultimatum with a deadline for response.

But Obama is still not saying how he will respond to an Iranian rejection of the document’s main points, or whether he will again agree to return to the negotiating table while Iran is allowed to forge ahead on its bomb program. This had been the standard diplomatic format under his watch. …

A large group of former high-placed US diplomats, ex-officials and elder statesmen – Democrats and Republicans alike – has come forward to warn the Israeli prime minister to give up any expectation, ever, of Barack Obama’s cooperation on the Iranian nuclear issue. These former top Washingtonians all harbor strong reservations about the president’s foreign policy, especially on Iran.

Some have called Netanyahu in person and warned him that the White House instituted an intelligence-sharing dialogue with Israel only as a device for delaying an Israeli attack on Iran. If reelected, they say, he will weasel out of his repeated pledges to prevent Iran attaining a nuclear weapon and certainly not countenance preventive military action by Israel.

This is no secret to Tehran. Counting on Obama maintaining this posture and Israel’s compliance, the Iranians are certain they can go full speed ahead toward their nuclear goal without fear of interference.

The mother of Sean Smith, one of the four Americans murdered by Arab Muslim terrorists in their attack on the US consulate in Benghazi on 9/11/12, pleads for the truth about the death of her son.

Did someone inside the Obama Administration send Ambassador Stevens to his death at the hands of Arab Muslim terrorists? 

Was he lured to Benghazi to be captured or killed?

Why might the possibility that that is what happened be more than a conspiracy theory?

Michael Walsh, in his PJ Media column, surmises that “someone in State, or its Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or in the IC (and most likely the CIA) very likely burned Chris Stevens and sent him to his death.”

He writes:

Last month’s Benghazi fiasco saw four Americans — including our ambassador to Libya — murdered by elements of al Qaeda in a military-style assault timed to coincide with the 11th anniversary of 9/11.

The weeks afterward saw the administration blaming a video that, even the White House now admits, had nothing to do with it. And the months before the attack saw Washington adamantly reducing security in Benghazi — despite pleas for reinforcements from the folks on the ground.

Yet President Obama’s top spokesman — and Vice President Joe Biden, in last week’s debate — have been busy pointing fingers of blame at State and the Intelligence Community.

It won’t work. Neither Foggy Bottom nor the intel community’s legion of spooks, analysts and secret-keepers is likely to go quietly.

And that’s an understatement. Behind the scenes — in Langley, Fort Meade, Anacostia, and elsewhere in the Intelligence Community — spooks and analysts are sharpening their knives for the Obama administration, which, having chosen to pick a fight both with the IC and the Clintons, apparently has some sort of death wish.

The national media’s still doing its level best to keep Benghazi off the front pages, but its effort is doomed to failure.

It’s worth repeating: our ambassador to Libya was (it now seems) lured to Benghazi and assassinated.

[And] that night, Barack Hussein Obama, evincing not the slightest interest in or sympathy for Chris Stevens’ fate, flew off to Las Vegas for a fundraiser. Instead, his increasingly desperate administration issued a squid-ink fog of confusion, blaming an obscure YouTube video for what the IC knew almost immediately was a terrorist assault on American soil. And then, when that legend collapsed, blamed the State Department and the IC for letting it down.

They knew it because … there may have been double agents within State or the IC itself who lured Stevens back to Benghazi with a false sense of security, and thus to his death.

This shouldn’t surprise anybody; after all, in Afghanistan, trusted locals shoot our troops in the back on a near-weekly basis. And it certainly explains the comment, which went largely unremarked by incurious newspaper stenographers and DNC media flunkies, by a State Department regional security officer, Eric Nordstrom, that “the Taliban is on the inside of the building” — by which he meant Foggy Bottom. …

The real question is not political — what did the president know and when did he know it? — but geo-political. Someone in State, or its Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or in the IC (and most likely the CIA) very likely burned Chris Stevens and sent him to his death.

Considering that the Obama administration, including the State Department and the IC, are now thoroughly infiltrated by jihadists, his conjectures don’t seem to us to be too far-fetched or merely paranoid. (See our posts: Can it be treason, October 5, 2010; A man with a mission, February 9, 2011; National insecurity, November 16, 2011; Spreading darkness, November 19, 2011; Obama gang submits to America’s enemy, October 5, 2010; The State-whisperer, August 16, 2012; Whom the president praises, August 16, 2012; How Obama enormously assists the jihad, August 20, 2012.)

But even if there was no actual plot within the administration against Ambassador Stevens, it can be reasonably asserted that the story of his murder begins in Washington.

Robert Spencer explains how. He writes at PJ Media:

The Obama administration is approaching full meltdown over the steady stream of revelations concerning its inaction and lies over the massacre of Ambassador Chris Stevens and other U.S. personnel in Libya. Obama and Biden are lining up against Hillary Clinton and the State Department, claiming that they weren’t told about Stevens’ requests for additional security.

Meanwhile, administration officials are denying that they ever linked the attack on the consulate to the Muhammad video that has been blamed for worldwide Muslim riots, despite abundant evidence to the contrary. One fact, however, is as clear as it is little noted: the entire incident demonstrates the abject failure of the Obama administration’s Middle East policy, and its analysis of the jihad threat in general.

Speaking about the Libyan revolution in March 2011, Obama warmly praised the dawning in Libya of “the rights of peaceful assembly, free speech, and the ability of the Libyan people to determine their own destiny.” After providing military aid to the anti-Gaddafi rebels despite evidence of their al-Qaeda links, the administration – whether the call really came from the White House or the State Department or both –had every reason to ignore the request from Benghazi for more security, and to pretend that the whole thing was just a spontaneous uprising over a video, not the carefully planned September 11 jihad attack that it proved to be.

To have acknowledged what was really happening would have been to admit that the Allahu-akbaring mob besieging the Benghazi consulate was nothing remotely close to a responsible citizenry enjoying their rights of peaceful assembly, free speech, and self-determination. It would have been to admit that the jihad against the United States would not be turned away from its goal by hearts-and-minds gestures, even if those gestures included the removal of a brutal dictator. The people of Benghazi were no more inclined to welcome the Americans as liberators – and Ambassador Stevens had attempted to play exactly that role, sneaking into Libya during the most difficult days of the uprising and doing everything he could to aid the rebels – than were the people of Iraq when Saddam Hussein was toppled.

The reason in both cases was the same: the rebels against both Saddam and Gaddafi were largely Islamic supremacists who wanted a Sharia state, disdained democracy, and considered the United States to be their enemy not primarily because of various aspects of its foreign policy, but because it is the world’s foremost infidel polity, against whom the mujahedin believe they have a sacred duty to wage war  …

But the White House and State Department not only do not acknowledge this fact – they have done all they can to deny and obfuscate it. The one cardinal proposition that accepted analysts must repeat is that the present conflicts between Muslims and non-Muslims have absolutely nothing to do with Islam; indeed, Obama administration officials are expressly forbidden to link Islam with terrorism, as if Islamic terrorists weren’t busy linking the two on a daily basis.

The errors of analysis and wrong decisions that cost lives all follow from this initial false premise. …

This was the willful blindness that killed Chris Stevens, and is the real scandal of Benghazi.

The politically correct fantasies that characterize the Washington establishment’s views on Islam and jihad not only make for bad policy; they also kill.

Members of a terrorist organization called the February 17 Martyrs Brigade were employed by the State Department to guard its legation in Libya.

Who are they ? What happened to make martyrs on some February 17?

Following Friday prayers on Feb. 17, 2006, thousands of Benghazians attacked the Italian Consulate to punish the temerity of an Italian minister, Roberto Calderoli, who several days earlier had publicly defended free speech in the West. The world was then experiencing another cycle of Islamic violence, this one orchestrated to punish a tiny Danish newspaper for publishing a sheet of Muhammad cartoons and, in turn, Denmark itself for refusing to punish the journalist-transgressors of Islamic law, which outlaws any critiques and all depictions of Muhammad.

Calderoli didn’t merely defend free speech. During his TV interview, he dramatically unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a T-shirt featuring a cartoon of Muhammad. Referring to Islamic rioters worldwide, he added: “When they recognize our rights, I’ll take off this shirt.”

He was forced to resign from his post the next day, a sacrifice on the altar of Shariah (Islamic law) by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. It wasn’t enough.

“We feared for our lives,” the wife of the Italian consul later told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, describing the attack in which the consulate was set on fire. All personnel were safely evacuated. Libyan police used tear gas to try to disperse the rioters, later opening fire and killing 11 attackers.

Those are the “martyrs” for whom the February 17 Martyrs Brigade named themselves. When Arab brigades name themselves in honor of dead terrorists, they are announcing that they are sworn to avenge their heroes. They are terrorist groups, every one of them.

So the State Department, under the inspired leadership of Hillary Clinton, employed vengeance-thirsty members of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade to guard its legation in Libya.  

We found that information in a column by Diana West at Townhall. (She also tells us in passing that Benghazi literally means “city of holy warriors“.)

Next we learn from Mark Steyn that the terrorists paid for by the State Department were acquired through the agency of a British company based in Wales:

The State Department outsourced security for the Benghazi consulate to Blue Mountain, a Welsh firm that hires ex-British and Commonwealth Special Forces, among the toughest hombres on the planet. …

That should be okay then: tough hombres defending US representatives in foreign lands.

But –

The one-year contract for consulate security was only $387,413 – or less than the cost of deploying a single U.S. soldier overseas. On that budget, you can’t really afford to fly in a lot of crack SAS killing machines, and have to make do with the neighborhood talent pool. So who’s available? Blue Mountain hired five members of the Benghazi branch of the February 17th Martyrs’ Brigade and equipped them with handcuffs and batons. A baton is very useful when someone is firing an RPG at you, at least if you play a little baseball. There were supposed to be four men heavily armed with handcuffs on duty that night, but, the date of Sept. 11 having no particular significance in the Muslim world, only two guards were actually on shift.

Let’s pause right there … Liberals are always going on about the evils of “outsourcing” and “offshoring” – selfish vulture capitalists like Mitt Romney shipping jobs to cheap labor overseas just to save a few bucks. How unpatriotic can you get! So now the United States government is outsourcing embassy security to cheap Welshmen who, in turn, outsource it to cheaper Libyans. Diplomatic facilities are U.S. sovereign territory – no different de jure from Fifth Avenue or Mount Rushmore. So defending them is one of the core responsibilities of the state. But that’s the funny thing about Big Government: the bigger it gets, the more of life it swallows up, the worse it gets at those very few things it’s supposed to be doing. So, on the first anniversary of 9/11 in a post-revolutionary city in which Western diplomats had been steadily targeted over the previous six months, the government of the supposedly most powerful nation on Earth entrusted its security to Abdulaziz Majbari, 29, and his pal, who report to some bloke back in Carmarthen, Wales.

Was there a connection between the guards and the attackers? Yes. A very close one according to Diana West:

Ansar al Sharia (“Supporters of Islamic Law”), the al-Qaida-linked militia believed to have led the consulate assault in September, is a spinoff of the February 17 Martyrs Brigade.

Which explains how the attackers knew where Ambassador Stevens would be on the night of 9/11/12,  the lay-out of the campus, and the location of the “safe-house”.

What says the State Department to that?

Diana West tells us:

The State Department reminds us not to forget the service of two brigade members who were beaten and two who were shot defending the compound. “But there were some bad apples in there as well” …

Was the whole tragedy a result of the State Department being granted too little money to pay for  proper security ? Joe “the Clown” Biden alleged as much in his “debate” with Paul Ryan recently.

According to this article by Daniel Greenfield, there was no shortage of money, but Obama and Hillary Clinton had what they considered better uses for it than squandering it on protecting US personnel and property:

The last, generally disavowed, excuse is that the Benghazi consulate lacked proper security because of budget cuts. This has already been disproven, but let’s take that excuse at face value. The State Department has a 50 billion dollar budget. Within that 50 billion dollar budget there was no money for reasonable consulate security in a city rife with Islamist militias who had already attacked the consulate and other diplomats in the city. But here’s what there was money for…

The 770 million dollar Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund for the Arab Spring.

7.9 billion dollars for Obama’s Global Health Initiative.

2.9 billion for international debt relief.

2.2 billion to strengthen democratic institutions in Pakistan.

469 million for global climate change.

587 million for student exchange programs.

And of course there is the always popular Mosque renovation program …

Which raises questions connected with the First Amendment, as this report in the Washington Times points out:

The mosques being rebuilt by the United States are used for religious worship, which raises important First Amendment questions. U.S. taxpayer money should not be used to preserve and promote Islam, even abroad. …

Section 205.1(d) of title 22 of the Code of Federal Regulations prohibits USAID funds from being used for the rehabilitation of structures to the extent that those structures are used for “inherently religious activities.” It is impossible to separate religion from a mosque; any such projects will necessarily support Islam.

So would not Obama be shocked, shocked to learn that his State Department is supporting Islam?

Stephen Hayes writes that the murder of US Ambassador Stevens and three of his staff in Benghazi, Libya, on the anniversary of 9/11 is a “scandal of the first order”:

Either the intelligence community had a detailed picture of what happened in Benghazi that night and failed to share it with other administration officials and the White House. Or the intelligence community provided that detailed intelligence picture to others in the administration, and Obama, Biden, Clinton, Susan Rice, and others ignored and manipulated the intelligence to tell a politically convenient — but highly inaccurate — story.

If it’s the former, DNI [Director of National Intelligence] James Clapper should be fired. If it’s the latter, what happened in Benghazi — and what happened afterwards — will go down as one of the worst scandals in recent memory.

It seems far more likely that it’s the latter. After all, is it conceivable that White House officials at the highest levels were not actively engaged in interagency meetings to determine what happened in Benghazi? Is it conceivable that intelligence officials, knowing there was no evidence at all of a link between the film and Benghazi, would fail to tell the president and his colleagues that their claims were unfounded? Is it conceivable that somehow the latest intelligence on the 9/11 attacks was left out of Obama’s intelligence briefings in the days after 9/11? It would have been a priority for every professional at the CIA, the State Department, and the National Security Council to discover exactly what happened in Benghazi as soon as possible. Is it conceivable that the information wasn’t passed to the most senior figures in the administration?

No, it’s really not. And therefore, the fact that these senior figures misled us — and still mislead us — is a scandal of the first order.

We agree. We think it is more shameful than Watergate, or the disgracing of the office of president by Bill Clinton.

Mark Steyn writes with his usual wit and acerbity that the events in Libya annoyingly distract the Obama administration from its self-assigned most vital duty of keeping some TV puppets in existence at public expense.

“The entire reason that this has become the political topic it is, is because of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.” Thus, Stephanie Cutter, President Obama’s deputy campaign manager, speaking on CNN about an armed attack on the 9/11 anniversary that left a U.S. consulate a smoking ruin and killed four diplomatic staff, including the first American ambassador to be murdered in a third of a century. To discuss this event is apparently to “politicize” it and to distract from the real issues the American people are concerned about. For example, Obama spokesperson Jen Psaki, speaking on board Air Force One on Thursday: “There’s only one candidate in this race who is going to continue to fight for Big Bird and Elmo, and he is riding on this plane.” She’s right! The United States is the first nation in history whose democracy has evolved to the point where its leader is provided with a wide-body transatlantic jet in order to campaign on the vital issue of public funding for sock puppets. Sure, Caligula put his horse in the Senate, but it was a real horse. At Ohio State University, the rapper will.i.am introduced the President by playing the Sesame Street theme tune, which, oddly enough, seems more apt presidential walk-on music for the Obama era than “Hail To The Chief.”

Obviously, Miss Cutter is right: A healthy mature democracy should spend its quadrennial election on critical issues like the Republican Party’s war on puppets rather than attempting to “politicize” the debate by dragging in stuff like foreign policy, national security, the economy and other obscure peripheral subjects. But, alas, it was her boss who chose to “politicize” a security fiasco and national humiliation in Benghazi. At 8.30 p.m., when Ambassador Stevens strolled outside the gate and bid his Turkish guest good night, the streets were calm and quiet. At 9.40 p.m., an armed assault on the compound began, well-planned and executed by men not only armed with mortars but capable of firing them to lethal purpose – a rare combination among the excitable mobs of the Middle East. There was no demonstration against an Islamophobic movie that just got a little out of hand. Indeed, there was no movie protest at all. Instead, a U.S. consulate was destroyed and four of its personnel were murdered in one of the most sophisticated military attacks ever launched at a diplomatic facility.

This was confirmed by testimony to Congress a few days ago … [Yet] for four weeks, the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and others have persistently attributed the Benghazi debacle to an obscure YouTube video – even though they knew that the two events had nothing to do with each other by no later than the crack of dawn Eastern time on Sept. 12 …

Given that Obama and Secretary Clinton refer to Stevens pneumatically as “Chris,” as if they’ve known him since third grade, why would they dishonor the sacrifice of their close personal friend by peddling an utterly false narrative as to why he died? You want “politicization”? Secretary Clinton linked the YouTube video to the murder of her colleagues even as the four caskets lay alongside her at Andrews Air Force Base – even though she had known for days that it had nothing to do with it. It’s weird enough that politicians now give campaign speeches to returning coffins. But to conscript your “friend’s” corpse as a straight man for some third-rate electoral opportunism is surely as shriveled and worthless as “politicization” gets. …

“Greater love hath no man than this,” quoth the President at Chris Stevens’ coffin, “that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Smaller love hath no man than Obama’s, than to lay down his “friend” for a couple of points in Ohio.

The Democrats have lost the plot. Even their own plot. They desperately want to stay in power in order to … stay in power. Give them the bird.