Consistency: Obama lied *before* #Benghazi, too

**Posted by Phineas

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

I know it will come to a shock to you –well, at least that portion of you that has been hiding under a rock for the last five years– but the man we chose twice to head our government lied through his teeth about taking steps to ensure our facilities in Libya were protected before September 11th, 2012.

That’s the latest revelation from newly declassified transcripts of House hearings held last spring on the circumstances surrounding the Benghazi massacre, in which four Americans died. FOX’s James Rosen reports:

On Sept. 10, 2012 — the day before Al Qaeda-linked terrorists carried out the bloody assault on the U.S. consulate and a related annex in Benghazi — the White House Press Office issued a press release entitled “Readout of the President’s Meeting with Senior Administration Officials on Our Preparedness and Security Posture on the Eleventh Anniversary of September 11th.”

A set of “Top Secret” documents obtained by Fox News reveals that the nation’s highest-ranking uniformed military officer, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified to Congress in executive session last year that the Sept. 10 meeting “was actually a conference call.” Moreover, Dempsey testified, Libya was never even discussed during the call, despite a persistent and increasingly worrisome stream of threat reporting from that country, and from Benghazi in particular.

The Sept. 10 press release stated that the session had covered the “specific measures we are taking” and “steps taken” to protect Americans and U.S. facilities abroad. It also related an order from President Obama for all agencies to “do everything possible to protect the American people, both at home and abroad.”

Yet the declassified documents show that Dempsey testified to the Congress last year that not a single directive had been issued by him or Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to adjust American military force posture anywhere in the world as the 9/11 anniversary loomed just hours away.

(Emphases added.)

In other words, this was all showboating to preserve the narrative that al Qaeda was on the run and to protect the President’s reelection campaign. That “order” quoted above is the kind of grandstanding one would expect from a cheap pol — which is what Obama is.The proof is in his administration’s deeds, not its words, and, in the run up to September 11th, 2012, with regard to Benghazi, his administration’s deeds show Barack Obama did nothing.

Except lie to the American people about it.

Just to draw a line under the point that the administration had ample warning that trouble was brewing in Benghazi, but chose to ignore their duty, let me quote another section that relates the testimony of Marine Colonel George Bristol (1):

Still another high-ranking military officer with relevant jurisdiction also told the House Armed Services subcommittee that his own expressions of concern about Libya were effectively ignored in that critical period. Marine Corps Col. George Bristol, commander of AFRICOM’s Joint Special Operations Task Force for the Trans Sahara region, testified before the panel in executive session on July 31 of last year that he warned State Department officials in Tripoli that “if [the terrorists] were going to try something … this would be a day.” Asked by Rep. Rob Wittman, R-Va., if he had seen “any intelligence” that led him to believe “there was an increased threat on 9/11,” Bristol replied, “Yes, sir.”

BRISTOL: “Did they take individual security measures inside of the Libyan embassy [sic]? Sir, that I do not know.”

WITTMAN: “But you did have conversations with folks there [at the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli]?”

BRISTOL: “Yes, sir.”

[…]

WITTMAN: “In your professional opinion, based on that, were you somewhat uncomfortable maybe, knowing about the threat, that that was the posture then that was going to be there within that theater?”

BRISTOL: “Sir, I — yes, and that wasn’t the only country that I was worried about that.”

This supportsΒ what we already knew, that the administration had ample warning. As I wrote late last November:

The central issue here, however, is the incompetence bordering on malfeasance on the part of both Hillary Clinton and President Obama. The State Department under Clinton was almost bloody-minded in its refusal to provide adequate security for a post that was effectively in daily contact with the enemy. And President Obama failed utterly in his duties to oversee our interests in a nation where he had overthrown the government and created a client state. Why wasn’t he verifying that Benghazi had sufficient protection? Why didn’t he make sure there was a sufficient force on standby to come to the aid of a station in hostile territory?

Wait. What am I saying? There wasΒ fundraisingΒ to be done!

And Rosen’s report confirms what the failure to act on these warnings implied: Barack Obama really couldn’t care less about doing his job.

Footnote:
(1) We’ve met the Colonel before. You might want toΒ review the post, since his declassified testimony shows why the DoD acted as if they couldn’t find him — his statement lays Panetta and Obama’s incompetence bare.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)

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