Add former Attorney General Mike Mukasey to the ranks of those who want some answers from Obama about the Benghazi outrage:
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Mukasey runs through the forest of red flags surrounding the Benghazi consulate prior to September 11, and discusses the “stand down” orders emanating from yet-mysterious sources somewhere within… well, somewhere, because everyplace they could be within has denied they are within there.
He also discusses the inability of American intelligence teams to interrogate the captured Tunisian linked to the attacks. “This is a case of people who are blinded by ideology,” says Mukasey, “looking through an ideological lens, and seeing a ‘crime’ where everyone else sees an act of terrorism.”
Mukasey is advising the Romney campaign on law enforcement, so this is just partisan sniping, right? Well, the column host Megyn Kelly alludes to at the beginning of the Mukasey interview, “Lingering questions about Benghazi,” is by David Ignatius of the Washington Post, and you won’t catch anyone urinating on the “Romney For President” signs in his front lawn.
“The attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi has become a political football in the presidential campaign, with all the grandstanding and misinformation that entails,” Ignatius writes. “But Fox News has raised some questions about the attack that deserve a clearer answer from the Obama administration.” Feel the burn, Fox haters!
Ignatius has the same questions as everyone who has seriously studied the bombshell Fox report: Was it a good idea to rely upon Libyan contractors and militia forces so heavily for security? Why didn’t American forces intervene more quickly and effectively? What’s the story behind those “stand down” orders?
He’s both extremely charitable and touchingly naive about getting answers from the Obama Administration, where the “fog of war” looks a lot like reinforced concrete:
The Fox “stand down” story prompted a strong rebuttal from the CIA: “We can say with confidence that the agency reacted quickly to aid our colleagues during that terrible evening in Benghazi. Moreover, no one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate.”
So what did happen in Benghazi on the night of Sept. 11, when Woods, Ambassador Christopher Stevens and two others Americans were killed? The best way to establish the facts would be a detailed, unclassified timeline of events; officials say they are preparing one, and that it may be released later this week. That’s a must, even in the volatile final week of the campaign. In the meantime, here’s a summary of some of the basic issues that need to be clarified.
(Emphasis mine.) That would be the best way to establish the facts. But that’s not what we’ve gotten, and it’s not what we’re going to get, unless Fox News leads the rest of the media into making demands the Administration doesn’t think it can afford to refuse for seven more days.
