Benghazi: Did Clinton and Obama hide the truth?

New information shows that the White House and/or the State Department withheld facts about the attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility.

Until this week, the Republican obsession with Benghazi seemed to be nothing more than a partisan witch hunt, said Alex Koppelman in NewYorker.com. “But now there is something to it.” New information emerged last week that shows that the White House and/or the State Department deliberately withheld facts about the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic facility in Libya for political reasons. In testimony before a House committee, State Department “whistle-blowers” said they’d told higher-ups right after the Sept. 11 assault that it was planned and led by Islamic terrorists. But for days, White House spokespeople described the attack as an outgrowth of a supposedly “spontaneous” demonstration over a YouTube video that was insulting to Muslims. ABC News revealed last week that the talking points used by the White House to explain the attack to the American public went through 12 tortured iterations, with the State Department and the CIA fighting over the wording. References to a specific Islamic extremist group taking part in the attacks were cut out. It’s now clear why, said Ron Fournier in NationalJournal.com. The leaked documents show that State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said her “building’s leadership” was not happy with the talking points, and the reference to a specific Libyan terrorist group. Why? They would enable Congress to, in her words, “beat up the State Department for not paying attention to warnings.”

This is a major scandal, said Deroy Murdock in NationalReview.com, and it points directly at President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Four Americans died in Benghazi, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. But with November’s election looming, the White House talking points were edited to fit Obama’s “campaign theme” that he’d destroyed al Qaida by killing Osama bin Laden. That’s why Obama and Hillary Clinton piled up “lies and obstruction” to prevent the truth about Benghazi from coming out. Indeed, one State Department whistle-blower, Gregory Hicks, testified last week that he was strongly chastised for talking to congressional investigators about the attacks, and then demoted. Now it’s time for Congress to launch a select committee to investigate further, and fully expose what “may be the biggest federal cover-up since Watergate.”

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