The White House and the Obama campaign are under fire for the administration's handling of the terrorist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the US ambassador and three other embassy personnel. The Romney campaign is attacking Obama on the issue.
Ambassador Patrick Kennedy, under secretary for management at the State Department, answers questions during the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing Wednesday regarding the terrorist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
J. Scott Applewhite/AP
EnlargeThe first question in the vice presidential debate this week ? the one that is becoming most troublesome for the Obama-Biden ticket ? was about Libya and the deadly attack on the US consulate in Benghazi.
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The essence of the query to Vice President Joe Biden was as old as Watergate: ?What did you know and when did you know it??
That is, shouldn?t you have anticipated the possibility of a terrorist attack, especially on the anniversary of 9/11 when US Ambassador Christopher Stevens made what turned out to be a fatal visit to Benghazi, an area known to include Al Qaeda sympathizers?
And why did the administration persist in describing the attack that killed Ambassador Stevens and three other embassy personnel as tied to protests across the region to a crude anti-Islam YouTube video ? protests, as UN Ambassador Susan Rice said some days later, that "seems to have been hijacked ? by some individual clusters of extremists who came with heavier weapons.?
IN PICTURES:?Libya's critical transition
As it turns out, there were no protests tied to the offensive video, and the attack by terrorists seems obviously to have been pre-planned and well-executed against a lightly-defended facility. What?s more, according to congressional testimony this past week, requests for beefed-up security had been made to the State Department.
Mr. Biden?s answer to debate moderator Martha Raddatz: ?We weren?t told they wanted more security there. We did not know they wanted more security.?
But as Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler reported Friday, ?Biden?s bold statement was directly contradicted by State Department officials just this week, in testimony before a congressional panel and in?unclassified cables released by a congressional committee.?
?All of us at post were in sync that we wanted these resources,? said Eric Nordstrom, the top regional security officer in Libya earlier this year. A Utah National Guardsman who led a security team, Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, said: ?We felt great frustration that those requests were ignored or just never met.?
The story changed, Biden tried to explain, as more information became available.
?We said exactly what the intelligence community told us that they knew,? Biden said. ?That was the assessment. And as the intelligence community changed their view, we made it clear they changed their view.?
That is probably true, and it?s no doubt true that security at diplomatic facilities around the world is handled by the State Department, not the White House.
Still, the buck stops with the president. And Obama no doubt will be faced with the same kind of questioning Biden was when he meets Mitt Romney for the second presidential debate ? to be held this coming Tuesday in town hall format and scheduled to include questions on foreign policy and national security.
Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/VGvgoM2emY0/Is-Libya-terrorist-attack-debacle-hurting-Obama
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