For all the furor that President Obama's defenders have generated saying that President Obama did immediately say that the Benghazi attack was a terror attack, note that in the debate that when Governor Romney repeatedly asked President Obama to confirm that the president was claiming he immediately called the attack a terror incident, President Obama replied, "Please proceed, governor."
He would not confirm what he had just said. After all these years, voting "present" is in his DNA.
Of the people on that stage last night, only the moderator was willing to go out on a limb and confirm what the president claimed moments earlier.
The president's defenders are twisting themselves into pretzels on this. They are pulling out the word "terror"--and the president did utter that word in the Rose Garden when he called the incident an "attack"--and building a story of resolve and perception in isolation from the actions of his administration over the next two weeks, as if those actions didn't happen.
If the president knew immediately that this was a deliberate act of terror, why did he then jet off to a fundraising event? Why did he then spend two weeks claiming that the terror attack was a protest against a video gone bad?
Why was the arrest in California of one of the makers of the video on the pretense of parole violations the only real response?
Doesn't defending the president's integrity require you to at least say that the president's actions only make sense if he really believed Benghazi was not a terror attack?
UPDATE: That was fast. For all that the left is defending the president's statement and citing Crowley's defense as the ultimate proof, Crowley clarifies that she believes Governor Romney was right and President Obama was wrong:
After the debate, debate moderator Candy Crowley said Republican nominee Mitt Romney was “right in the main” but “picked the wrong word” on the Obama administration’s immediate response to the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead.
Could you say that a little louder, Candy? The reality-based community is having difficulty hearing with their humming and holding their hands over their ears.
Listen to the Rose Garden speech again. At that point when he used the word "terror" the president was commenting on the original September 11th attack, very clearly.
UPDATE: More on the Benghazi issue here and here. Oh, and some lessons in civility, while I'm at it.
UPDATE: A correction on the timeline I linked above. While it took 2 weeks for the administration to abandon the video motive (anger got out of hand spontaneously) and embrace the deliberate terrorism motive, there was at least a hint from Carney a week later of the shifting explanation yet to be embraced.
