President Obama relates his very appropriate and decisive reaction to the attack on our Libyan embassy as follows: “Now, with respect to Libya, as I indicated in the last debate, when we received that phone call, I immediately made sure that, number one, we did everything we could to secure those Americans who were still in harm’s way; number two, that we would investigate exactly what happened; and number three, most importantly, that we would go after those who killed Americans, and we would bring them to justice, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
A growing body of evidence disputes claim number one.
What more could the President possibly do or have done? Points number two and three cannot yet be properly evaluated. But “…I immediately made sure that, number one, we did everything we could to secure those American’s who were still in harm’s way”. This statement was delivered with the same unflinching absolute assurance as President Clinton’s “I did not have sex with that woman”, and increasingly appears to have about the same veracity. Apparently the statement depends upon the meaning of “immediately” and “everything”, perhaps even on the meanings of “secure” and “harm’s way”. Evidence continues to accumulate that the President’s interpretation of those words is truly unique. Indeed, his statement was so inconsistent with the growing evidence of what actually happened that a former assistant secretary of defense, Bing West, published a timeline of the attack as well as of the President’s known response: http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/331125/first-aid-living-bing-west# He also discusses known assets that were not used. This article is entitled “First, Aid the Living” and is likely to receive scant attention in the mainstream press. It is a reasoned and reasonable account of what could have and what should have happened, in marked contrast to what did happen. According to the above article
“On September 11, at about 10 p.m. Libyan time (4 p.m. in Washington), Ambassador Chris Stevens and a small staff were inside our consulate in Benghazi when terrorists attacked. The consulate staff immediately contacted Washington and our embassy in Tripoli. The White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and numerous military headquarters monitored the entire battle in real time via the phone calls from Benghazi and video from a drone overhead.”
“Our diplomats fought for seven hours without any aid from outside the country. Four Americans died while the Obama national-security team and our military passively watched and listened. The administration is being criticized for ignoring security needs before the attack and for falsely attributing the assault to a mob. But the most severe failure has gone unnoticed: namely, a failure to aid the living.”
Four lives hung in the balance. Unlike President Reagan’s 90 minute response to interdict airborne terrorists, President Obama literally had hours to interdict earthbound terrorists. He didn’t. The President’s “failure to aid the living”, documented in Assistant Secretary West’s presentation, is in stark contrast to the claim on national television of immediately doing everything possible to secure their safety. Please read West’s article to make your own independent assessment of the President’s response.
***Gary A. Howie MSc, PhD*** is a business owner/rancher and a Life & Liberty News contributor
