Beghazigate

The scandal that will become known as "Benghazigate" is the single most important untold news story of this waning election season. The pro-Obama main stream media (with the possible late defection of CBS) has decided that the murder of a U.S. ambassador and four other Americans at a consulate in Benghazi, Libya, aren't worthy of detailed coverage. That the subsequent misrepresentation (lies?) that suggested that a coordinated terrorist attack by an al Qaeda affiliate terror group was really a movie review gone bad aren't worthy of any coverage whatsoever. We are asked to believe that the misrepresentations and stonewalling by the Obama administration, including attempts to first throw Hilary Clinton (DoS) and then David Patraeus (CIA) under the bus, were nothing more than an attempt to be "measured" in drawing any conclusions about the attack. For more than 50 days, the Obama administration has conducted a "study," but no results will be offered until after the election. Hmmm.

Mark Steyn (certainly no friend of Barack Obama) comments:

Back in Benghazi, the president who looks so cool in a bomber jacket [Obama appeared in a bomber jacket as he toured the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy] declined to answer his beleaguered diplomats’ calls for help — even though he had aircraft and special forces in the region. Too bad. He’s all jacket and no bombers. This, too, is an example of America’s uniquely profligate impotence. When something goes screwy at a ramshackle consulate halfway round the globe, very few governments have the technological capacity to watch it unfold in real time. Even fewer have deployable military assets only a couple of hours away. What is the point of unmanned drones, of military bases around the planet, of elite special forces trained to the peak of perfection if the president and the vast bloated federal bureaucracy cannot rouse themselves to action? What is the point of outspending Russia, Britain, France, China, Germany, and every middle-rank military power combined if, when it matters, America cannot urge into the air one plane with a couple of dozen commandos? In Iraq, al-Qaeda is running training camps in the western desert. In Afghanistan, the Taliban are all but certain to return most of the country to its pre-9/11 glories. But in Washington the head of the world’s biggest “counterterrorism” bureaucracy briefs the president on flood damage and downed trees.

I don’t know whether Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan can fix things, but I do know that Barack Obama and Joe Biden won’t even try — and that therefore a vote for Obama is a vote for the certainty of national collapse. Look at Lower Manhattan in the dark, and try to imagine what America might look like after the rest of the planet decides it no longer needs the dollar as global reserve currency. For four years, we have had a president who can spend everything but build nothing. Nothing but debt, dependency, and decay. As I said at the beginning, in different ways the response to Hurricane Sandy and Benghazi exemplify the fundamental unseriousness of the superpower at twilight. Whether or not to get serious is the choice facing the electorate on Tuesday.

Harsh? Possibly, but the story of Benghazi and the subsequent cover-up is indicative of an administration that is at the very least incompetent, and if one is to examine the purposely misleading statements immediately after the Benghazi incident, consciously dishonest. Even worse, the dishonesty appears to be driven by political motives, not national security concerns.

Barack Obama couldn't run for President on his abysmal domestic and foreign policy record, exemplified by the incompetent and dishonest management of Benghazi and its aftermath. Therefore, Obama's most ardent campaign managers recognized early-on that the President is actually running against his own record. So for the past four months, the Obama campaign and the big money PACs that support it have tried to change the subject, by savaging his opponent. That's politics, and Mitt Romney is a big boy, he took the punches, punched back, and will likely win the election on Tuesday. If that happens, "national collapse" will hopefully have been averted and we can begin the slow and painful process of undoing the severe damage that the 44th President of the United States has left behind.