#Benghazi: Obama knew that night that it was a terrorist strike

**Posted by Phineas

American Blood, US Consulate, Benghazi
American Blood, US Consulate, Benghazi

And not some lousy video made by a two-bit crook.

Minutes after the American consulate in Benghazi came under assault on Sept. 11, 2012, the nation’s top civilian and uniformed defense officials — headed for a previously scheduled Oval Office session with President Obama — were informed that the event was a “terrorist attack,” declassified documents show. The new evidence raises the question of why the top military men, one of whom was a member of the president’s Cabinet, allowed him and other senior Obama administration officials to press a false narrative of the Benghazi attacks for two weeks afterward.

Gen. Carter Ham, who at the time was head of AFRICOM, the Defense Department combatant command with jurisdiction over Libya, told the House in classified testimony last year that it was him who broke the news about the unfolding situation in Benghazi to then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The tense briefing — in which it was already known that U.S. Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens had been targeted and had gone missing — occurred just before the two senior officials departed the Pentagon for their session with the commander in chief.

According to declassified testimony obtained by Fox News, Ham — who was working out of his Pentagon office on the afternoon of Sept. 11 — said he learned about the assault on the consulate compound within 15 minutes of its commencement, at 9:42 p.m. Libya time, through a call he received from the AFRICOM Command Center.

And on the question of whether the attack was t he result of a demonstration caused by a video, General Ham had this to say:

“In your discussions with General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta,” [Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA)] asked, “was there any mention of a demonstration or was all discussion about an attack?” Ham initially testified that there was some “peripheral” discussion of this subject, but added “at that initial meeting, we knew that a U.S. facility had been attacked and was under attack, and we knew at that point that we had two individuals, Ambassador Stevens and Mr. [Sean] Smith, unaccounted for.”

Rep. Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, a first-term lawmaker with experience as an Iraq war veteran and Army reserve officer, pressed Ham further on the point, prodding the 29-year Army veteran to admit that “the nature of the conversation” he had with Panetta and Dempsey was that “this was a terrorist attack.”

So. There you go. We on the Right always knew Obama was lying about Benghazi, but apologists on the Left and in the media (but I repeat myself) kept dismissing the allegations as a witch hunt, a fishing expedition, partisan politics, and even, naturally, “racism.”

But now we have the testimony of the general in charge of the combat command responsible for Benghazi that he, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff regarded this as a terrorist attack — within minutes of the attack beginning!Β Panetta and Dempsey then went to a previously scheduled meeting with Obama at which, we’re supposed to believe, they didn’t give their boss their considered opinion? They just let him believe the massacre happened because of some video few ever saw? That they let him and his advisers go on for weeks like this, when they knew the truth?

Garbage. It is inconceivable that Obama did not know that night that our consulate had come under terrorist attack. He then lied about it repeatedly to protect his reelection campaign, pushing the lie about a video both to the nation and before the United Nations. He sent his then UN Ambassador to lie about it on no less than five Sunday talk shows. His Secretary of State, whose incompetence left those men to die in Benghazi, lied before Congress, lied to the American people, and lied to the faces of the families of the victims in order to protect her own chances at the presidency. And the video-maker they turned into a scapegoat for their own failings was rousted out of his home on a petty parole violation and tossed into jail, his constitutional rights gut-shot, a move worthy of the best Third World police states. And the whole object of the lying was to fool us, the American people.

No one else.

By all rights, news like this should destroy Obama’s presidency, leading to his resignation in disgrace. It won’t, though. Barring a truly shocking revelation, its time as a scandal has passed. The press will stay focused like a laser on traffic jams in New Jersey. But, when we weigh both this and the serial lies told to sell Obamacare, there is one lesson anyone with a still-functioning brain should draw:

Anyone who takes at face value anything said by Barack Obama or his staff is a fool.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

Comments are closed.