From today’s Morning Jolt:
A Damnable Lie, One Year Later
One year ago today:
President Obama, at a campaign rally in Las Vegas, Nevada, September 12, 2012:
“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. . . . It is so good to see all of you. I love you back. I do. I want to begin tonight — (chant of ‘Four more years!’) Thank you. So . . . I — I wanted to begin tonight by saying a few words about the tough day we’ve had today.” (cheers) “Don’t be, uh . . . We lost four Americans last night who were killed when they were attacked in a diplomatic post in Libya.”
Earlier in the day, at the White House, Obama said, “We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.”
One year later, we’re still waiting for justice.
In the United States, the families of those killed a year ago at the consulate says the Obama administration has yet to tell them what really happened, and why it is that none of the killers have been captured or killed.
“It’s hard, I never expected this from my government,” Patricia Smith, mother of Sean Smith, told Fox News. “All they have to do is tell me the truth.”
Sean Smith was an information officer at the consulate who was among four people killed in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack by al-Qaeda-linked terrorists.
President Obama and then–secretary of state Hillary Clinton initially blamed the attacks on a spontaneous protest against a U.S.-made anti-Islam video despite a CIA report saying otherwise. Smith and other family members say the State Department and the White House have rebuffed their attempts to find out why security was so lax under Clinton, and why Obama did not order military assistance to the embattled officials that night.
Benghazi is one of those issues where we on the Right look at Americans on the other side of the partisan divide and wonder whether we’re from the same planet.
Don’t they care that our ambassador and his team were sent to a facility with ludicrously insufficient security?
Don’t they care to know whether something could have been done that night to save those men, and if so, why a rescue mission wasn’t launched? Look at a map. This is a Libyan city on a coast, facing the Mediterranean, south of Europe and all of our NATO allies. Less than a year earlier, we had been running a major multinational combat operation right there:
Don’t they care that the explanation offered by our government was false? These folks who screamed “Bush Lied, People Died” from 2003 to 2008 now shrug about lies about how and why Americans were killed.
Don’t they care that despite Obama’s pledge that “justice will be done,” no one has been caught, jailed, or executed for their role in the attack?
U.S. counterterrorism officials have determined that several extremist groups, including Ansar al-Sharia, took part in last year’s attack. . . . But on the first anniversary of the attack, there is not “anyone in custody who can tell us” specifics, including when, where and by whom the plot was hatched, and whether the Sept. 11 date was selected in advance or was a last-minute choice of opportunity, a counterterrorism official said. “That is a huge gap,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation. “What we lack is a source of information that puts us where we need to be.”
The Justice Department has indicted suspects. Intelligence officials have a general idea of where they are hiding. And the military has a contingency plan to snatch them if that becomes necessary. But the fledgling Libyan government, which has little to no control over significant parts of the country, like Benghazi and eastern Libya, has rebuffed the Obama administration’s efforts to arrest the suspects.
One year later, we have our answer. They don’t care.