Fox News has aired a riveting “timeline” program, showing in
painful detail the unfolding of the terror attack in Benghazi. It
was a deadly firestorm of a planned assault aimed at the United
States consulate, at American sovereign soil. What’s now crystal
clear is that the administration had real time information on what
was happening, knew that our ambassador and other Americans were in
mortal peril, and nonetheless directed response teams to “stand
down.” An American ambassador and others defending American soil
died horribly. And the President, then leading in the polls, well,
he skipped town for a fund raiser in Las Vegas. One would be hard
pressed to make up a story more shameful.
The mainstream media have played an almost equally shameful role
in the cover up. Even after the latest revelations have been
leading the news on Fox and other media, Sunday’s Washington
Post had no front page article. What’s more, a search of the
entire first section of Sunday’s Post found no article on
the Benghazi cover up. There was simply no report whatever on the
information, now emerging from many quarters, that contradicts the
administration’s (many, and false) statements to the public.
Of course, no one paying attention is surprised by this, for the
Post has long been a very partisan supporter of the
President in news coverage as well as editorial policy. But many of
us who recall the more principled Post of a few decades
back continue to be disappointed, not to mention very troubled,
that this leading newspaper, and others like it, have so
transparently abandoned any “watchdog” role during the reign of an
administration much in need of monitoring by an aggressive and
objective press.
This point is underscored when one considers the stories now
circulating, and which a responsible press would be pursuing in
order to fulfill its responsibility to keep citizens informed. For
example, the reports that General Carter Ham, who was commander of
the U.S. Africa Command, was summarily relieved (i.e., fired)
because he made clear he would send special forces teams in
response to the calls for help from our embattled countrymen in
Benghazi. Within moments the General’s second in command told him
that he was taking over, that the General was relieved. This is
scandalous, but apparently not news “fit to print” for our
mainstream press.
For comparison, consider the administration’s response to
Hurricane Sandy’s approaching landfall. As with the firestorm in
Libya, the “perfect storm” now off the east coast is hard to
assess, its future path difficult to predict. Yet our President was
all over the national news shows today, pledging to be there and to
deploy all sorts of people and equipment to assist even before the
event. The President said that Americans “pull together” and “help
one another” in times like this, and he professed that supervising
reaction to the hurricane is more important than mere
campaigning.
How nice it would have been if he had felt the same way on
September 11, when Americans were being murdered in Benghazi. But
he was ahead in the polls, and Las Vegas beckoned.
