The United States has some "very good leads" about who carried out the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans including the U.S. ambassador in September, President Barack Obama said in an interview broadcast on Sunday.
Yes, he's put his best investigator on the case. A French-trained law enforcement expert, no less.
While part of a humorous year-end review, this pretty much sums it up:
Abroad, the big story is a deadly 9/11 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. It soon becomes apparent that the attack either was or was not a spontaneous protest to a movie that either does or does not actually exist, or possibly it was an organized terrorist attack that either did or did not involve al Qaeda and either could or could not have been prevented if there had been better intelligence, which maybe there was, or maybe there was not, although if there was, it was not acted on, possibly for political reasons. Or, not. But beyond these basic facts, little is clear. The White House issues a strong statement assuring the nation that President Obama was not in any way involved in this, “or anything else that may or may not become known.”
The administration pretends it is looking into what went wrong.
But they aren't answering the questions I want answered. Pre-attack questions about security decisions are surely important to prevent the next attack, but there are questions about our reaction to the attack.
One, I want to know why our military didn't try to save the annex. Yes, the consulate was destroyed and ambassador and another staffer killed too fast to rescue. But not the annex, where two more died--and where more could have died if the non-military assets sent hadn't gotten a couple dozen people out safely.
And two, I want to know why we haven't retaliated against al Qaeda, which was involved in this attack. We have freaking "leads" that might pan out one day. Soon after the attack we learned that al Qaeda in Mali had a link to the attack. And even if they didn't, we are at war with al Qaeda and other jihadis. We don't need to identify exactly who pulled triggers to kill four Americans in Benghazi any more than we needed to find out exactly which Japanese pilots bombed Pearl Harbor before we could strike back. We had a window of opportunity after Benghazi to strike al Qaeda in places we can't get away with striking otherwise.
We should have very quickly launched missile strikes on targets in Mali to retaliate against al Qaeda and worried about getting those friggin' leads later. Left alone, northern Mali is developing into quite the problem:
Deep inside caves, in remote desert bases, in the escarpments and cliff faces of northern Mali, Islamic fighters are burrowing into the earth, erecting a formidable set of defenses to protect what has essentially become al-Qaida's new country. ...
Northern Mali is now the biggest territory held by al-Qaida and its allies. And as the world hesitates, delaying a military intervention, the extremists who seized control of the area earlier this year are preparing for a war they boast will be worse than the decade-old struggle in Afghanistan.
"Al-Qaida never owned Afghanistan," said former United Nations diplomat Robert Fowler, a Canadian kidnapped and held for 130 days by al-Qaida's local chapter, whose fighters now control the main cities in the north. "They do own northern Mali."
Isn't that great? Maybe by next fall the international community will deal with this threat. That gives our future Secretary of State plenty of time to study for that global test, I suppose. Unless something higher priority hits the fan before then.
Yeah, before the Benghazi attack, our president told us the tide of war was receding. An attack on 9/11 hasn't changed his mind. He still doesn't seem to know we are at war with jihadis bent on killing us. But perhaps I'm just expressing exaggerated hysteria over a simple blemish on our diplomatic outpost.
Somebody in this story knows more about the attack than he's telling. Or maybe not.
Yeah, have a super sparkly day.
