We knew from the beginning that Benghazi was a terror attack notwithstanding the initial administration attempts to portray some obscure film maker as the cause of the event:
According to the now-available congressional transcripts, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Martin Dempsey (after speaking with AFRICOM commander General Carter Ham) informed President Barack Obama that the consulate had suffered a terror attack. Panetta and Dempsey told the president within an hour after the first assault began.
Yet Obama Administration officials continued to peddle the "video did it" canard for almost two weeks after the assault. Why peddle a blatant falsehood? Because "the video did it" narrative advanced a propaganda campaign supporting central Obama re-election political themes.
Yet even if some obscure video caused the attack, it doesn't explain why outnumbered Americans were left on their own to die without sending military help.
Remember, the State Department knew it was a terror attack:
Senior State Department officials who were in direct, real-time contact with the Americans under assault in Benghazi have also made clear they, too, knew immediately -- from surveillance video and eyewitness accounts -- that the incident was a terrorist attack.
And contrary to their former boss's calculated outrage, that did indeed make a difference, at that point. The State Department sent their tiny local civilian reaction force which reached the Benghazi Annex in time to hold out until morning.
Their bravery resulted in their escape that next morning and limited the death count to 4, but we had no way of knowing those Americans holding out at the annex would escape.
Remember that simple fact. Our government apparently wrote off three dozen Americans as acceptable casualties rather than risk sending something from our sizable military presence in Europe to Libya to see if we could influence the outcome--or even just make the attackers pay a price for the attack. And all to maintain a campaign bullet point that al Qaeda was on its heels.
Responsibly ending the war? Irresponsibly ignoring the war that still rages, is more like it.
