Further Reflections on Benghazi

Write in haste, repent at leisure. The article that appeared in this weekend’s TAS under the title “Obama Fiddled While Benghazi burned… and an election approached” was one that I wrote racing against a deadline. While there is nothing I want to take back from this weekend’s article, there are many things I’d like to add… for the sake of readers who believe, as I do, that this story — this shameful but instructive story of dereliction of duty in the highest office of the land — should not be allowed to fade into the dimly remembered past like a bad dream that is soon forgot. For those who have paid close attention to the debate over Benghazi over the past five months (and it became a debate even before the clock struck midnight on Sept. 11, 2012), U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta's testimony before the Senate Armed Forces Committee on Thursday, Feb. 7, marked a real turning point. In answering “no” to a few simple questions, Panetta blew up the notion that the president and his team did the right thing on the night of Sept. 11 — that they stayed awake worrying about the fate of Ambassador Stevens and the others trapped at the consulate… and set about working on some kind of a rescue mission.

No, Panetta said, the president did not call to check on the status of events in Benghazi after being told at 5 p.m. EST of the outset of an all-out armed attack on the consulate; No, he said, there was no other follow-up from White House that night; And no, there was no meeting that night pulling together the president, the secretary of state, and other members of the much photographed group that assembled in the situation room on the night that Osama bin Laden was killed.

The president left Panetta and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey with the barest of instructions: It was “up to them” to decide the proper response. “You’d think” — as one reader of this weekend’s article commented — “this guy (Obama) was average Joe on his bowling night, not my probl...