Had a moment to think about Benghazi today. To believe the FOX narrative, Obama lied about the cause of the attacks, and left 4 men on a rooftop to die. Furthermore, he was responsible for the reduced number of security officers in the first place.
Yeah, no.
Factcheck.org sheds some light on the situation.
Lets start with the supposed lie. The mystery surrounding the case is about a video that was initially blamed for the incident. Now partisans claim this was done for election purposes and to mislead the people. They cite hacked emails from Clinton to her daughter wherein she suggests an Al-Queda like group was responsible. Ansar al-Sharia took immediate responsibility, a fact that was not published till a month later. Now, why would that happen?
For starters, the Ansar al-Sharia claim was completely unverified. Early reports suggested the activity was in fact crowd sourced. The truth is likely somewhere in between as reports suggested that there were shooters in a largely disorganized crowd–some of which who later joined in. To get a sense of what that might look like, picture the scene in Blackhawk Down when a city bands together to attack American troops. They weren’t organized troops, but there were troops operating in that mass. So, the truth was in question and the Obama administration tried to wait before confirming anything. Typical government. Typical bureaucracy–don’t give a real answer until one is defensible.
Bear in mind that the government is a complex system filled with duplicity and above all else, bureaucracy. The one thing I know about bureaucrats is they don’t appreciate being questioned and find their leadership to be absolute. Now here is how that applies to this Benghazi issue: The primary argument is that the President ultimately should have provided more security, because the people on the ground asked for it and were denied. CNN discussed this issue during the hearings in depth, writing:
The request for 12 agents was rebuffed by the regional director of the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, Nordstrom testified.