Controversy grows over Benghazi attack

What happened

The Obama administration faced a barrage of criticism this week over its shifting account of the deadly assault on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. For more than a week after the Sept. 11 raid—which killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans—Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., and other administration officials characterized the attack as a “spontaneous” protest triggered by an obscure anti-Islam film. But U.S. intelligence agencies reportedly knew within 24 hours that the attack had been planned, and now acknowledge that it was a “deliberate and organized terrorist” operation by al Qaida–aligned militants. Republican Rep. Peter King said Rice should resign for “misinforming the American people.” Democratic Rep. Steny Hoyer accused Republicans of using the tragedy to score points in the presidential election, and said Rice had expressed “the intelligence community’s most current assessment at the time.”

Further damaging details emerged from the House Oversight Committee, which said administration officials had repeatedly turned down diplomats’ requests for extra security in Benghazi, even as anti-Western violence increased in the city. According to a personal diary found by CNN, Stevens was worried about his own safety. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had previously described security at the compound as “robust,” yet only four lightly armed Libyans and five American guards were on duty on Sept. 11.

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What the editorials said

It should have been clear right away that this was a terrorist attack, said The Wall Street Journal. The fighters stormed the buildings with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars—hardly the hallmarks of a spontaneous protest. So why did the White House lie? asked the Washington Examiner. Obviously, President Obama realized that telling the truth would shatter the “illusion that the Islamic world is newly friendly to U.S. interests thanks to his charm offensive in the Middle East.”

All sides need to stop playing politics, said The Washington Post. The administration was slow to attribute the attack to terrorists, but it’s still not clear whether this was the work of al Qaida or a local Libyan militia. So let’s refrain from loose talk and let the FBI and State Department investigate the raid. That might be a lot to ask this close to an election, “but given the tragic loss of U.S. life in this case, it ought to be possible.”

What the columnists said

Only one person has played politics here, said Mona Charen in NationalReview.com, and that’s Obama. The president’s re-election campaign is partly based on the fantasy that Obama ended the Islamist threat against America by killing Osama bin Laden. But this “brazen and successful attack against Americans in Libya” undercut that narrative, leaving the president no choice but to dissemble. Obama must be held responsible, said Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal. When the diplomatic mission came under assault, his administration refused to send in U.S. troops out of fear of violating Libya’s sovereignty. How pathetic. “Benghazi was Obama’s 3 a.m. call,” and he “flubbed it.”

Blaming Obama is simply unfair, said Aki Peritz in TheAtlantic.com. As a former CIA analyst during the Bush administration, I can tell you that confusion reigns in the first hours and days after an event like the embassy attack. The “intelligence (and the assumptions that flow from it) often is contradictory, fragmented, or flat-out erroneous.” The original White House statements are evidence not of a cover-up, but of “the mundane workings of the intelligence community as it is attempting, however imperfectly, to keep up with fast-moving events.”

Still, something clearly went very wrong in Benghazi, said Walter Russell Mead in TheAmericanInterest.com. While it’s true that we “send diplomats abroad to engage, not to hide behind concrete walls,” the surge in militant attacks in the city should have led the State Department to “connect the dots” and boost security. We’ll have to wait for the outcome of the investigations. “But this doesn’t look any prettier the more of it we see, and it doesn’t reinforce the image of calm competence that the administration was hoping to project as the election draws near.”