Crosstalk: Why Benghazi matters, or does it?

During the summer months, attacks are mounted on at least eight high-profile targets by Islamic extremists but your loved one’s repeated requests for more security are denied.

Then the unthinkable happens. Armed militants storm U.S. facilities and your loved one, as well as three other Americans, die in terror. They are hopelessly outnumbered and waiting for a rescue that, unbeknownst to them, is not coming.

Drones are flying overhead to watch the violence unfold and both President Barack Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton can see these images in real-time.

They, too, begin to panic — not over having four Americans being slaughtered by militants, but the fact that a tragedy 56 days before the 2012 presidential election could derail his chances of re-election and hers to succeed him in 2016.

After all, Clinton was the chief proponent of Libya policy and pushed for the U.S. to join the NATO coalition to topple Muammar Qhaddafi. She touted the coup as her shining example of what could be done in foreign policy.

The lies of Obama and Clinton began immediately, to the media as well as the families of the murdered men.

For more than two weeks, Clinton and Obama — and their minions —blamed the violence on a spontaneous protest sparked by a YouTube video that was offensive to Islam.

Not only did they blame the video, the administration and state department purchased $80,000 of air time in Pakistan to apologize for the video. And the man who made the video was hauled off for questioning in the middle of the night.

However, as the final Benghazi report shows, Clinton was emailing her family, the Libyan government and the Egyptian government about a terror attack the same night it occurred.

“We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack, not a protest,” Clinton wrote the Egyptian prime minister the night it happened.

But then who wouldn’t expect lies from her? Remember when Clinton fabricated landing “under sniper fire” during a trip to Bosnia in 1996? Seems to be a pattern….

What if one of the men who died in Libya had been your son? Your husband?

There is a sacred trust in America that we leave no one on the front lines behind when there is trouble. It should matter to all families that this pledge was grossly violated.

Put your loved one in the place of the men who died. How would you have wanted their security handled?

Democrats almost yawn when you mention Benghazi now — they seem to have adopted Hillary’s “What does it matter?” mantra. By obstructing the special GOP-led committee that was appointed to search out the truth after all of Clinton and Obama’s lies, millions in taxpayer dollars were wasted so politicians could buy time for voters to forget the tragedy.

One thing Democrats didn’t bet on was the fact that the Benghazi investigation would lead into another Clinton scandal: her use of a private email server to receive and send confidential information while she was secretary of state.

What kind of a craven society have we become that someone so calculating and deceitful could even be considered for the position of commander in chief? How do you lead a nation and the world’s greatest military when your own political goals supersede your concern for those you protect?

by Mark Gibson

On Sept. 11, 2012, a force of heavily-armed terrorists attacked the Benghazi Mission Complex, Libya, killing Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and Information Officer Sean P. Smith. A security team from the nearby CIA Annex evacuated survivors to their more secure facility, avoiding an ambush en route, where Tyrone S. Woods and Glen A. Doherty, former Navy SEALS, were killed in a second major attack hours later.

Prior to the attack, on the evening of Sept. 11, Ambassador Smith wrote, in his personal journal, “Never ending security threats...”

The congressional report released last week details how the above attack occurred, the U.S. military response both in Libya and in the U.S., and the information provided by intelligence agencies and the White House.

It is a harrowing read, and although the political “spin” of the report is evident, Americans of all political persuasions should be concerned at the abject failure of the United States to guard its diplomatic staff in Benghazi or respond in an effective way to the terrorist attack.

Also of concern, in the aftermath of the attack, is the way the administration held buckle-and-thong to a narrative — that the attack was part of a protest outside the complex –— with no basis in reality.

I recall being puzzled, when evidence that there was no protest prior to the attack first surfaced in the media, as to why the protest narrative was held to so strongly. That became clear when I read the “talking points” distributed behind the scenes in the days following the attack, one of which read the spokesman was “to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy.”

It doesn't take long, reading the report, to recognize that the attack was, in truth, a “broader failure of policy.”

In August, the report notes, the total number of State Department security agents assigned to the Embassy in Tripoli dropped from 34 individuals to six, despite increased security threats and incidents during that timeframe.

“Losing 28 security agents reduced not only the security resources available to the Embassy, but also those available to the Benghazi Mission compound,” the report states.

There were only five armed diplomatic security agents in Benghazi with Ambassador Stevens. Two days prior to his arrival on Sept. 10, the quick reaction force, the Martyrs Brigade militia, which provided interior armed security at the compound, said it would no longer provide off-compound security. Perimeter security was promised by the Libyan government, and was never delivered or proved ineffective. The Pentagon response is best described anecdotally: Picture a FAST attack force, armed to the teeth, sitting in a transport plane changing from fatigues to civilian clothes. To fatigues. To civilian clothes. To fatigues... Needless to say, none of the resources “deployed” stateside actually reached Benghazi.

The first word given the American people was that the attack sprang “spontaneously” from a “protest” over an Internet video, a narrative that continued for some time despite evidence to the contrary.

On Sept. 14, Embassy personnel in Tripoli wrote “our view at Embassy Tripoli [is] that we must be cautious in our local messaging with regard to the inflammatory film trailer, adapting it to Libyan conditions.

The message noted the video was “not as explosive of an issue here” as elsewhere, and expressed concern that tying the attack to the video would increase awareness of the video in Libya.

The political messaging, while saving face for the administration, added insult to injury in Libya: A failure in policy indeed.