Why benghazi is a big deal

The Pentagon has insisted that there was not enough time to deploy armed aircraft to Libya during the attacks in Benghazi. The Alleged Cover-Up: The main problem conservatives have with Benghazi is not so much that it happened, but that they believe the Obama administration willfully tried to mislead the American public about it in the aftermath.

The focus here has been on U. Ambassador Susan Rice's appearance on Sunday talk shows just days after the attacks. Rice, working off the administration's unclassified talking points, characterized the attacks as a spontaneous demonstration over a video that disparaged Islam.

Even at the time, Rice's statements seemed to contradict the publicly available information about the attacks. Now, it is pretty clear that U. Administration emails provided to House Republicans and further reported on by the Weekly Standard reveal that the initial unclassified talking points provided by the CIA did in fact include references to Al Qaeda, and noted that the agency had previously warned about the threat of Islamic extremists in Egypt and Libya. But senior State Department officials expressed concerns about those talking points, arguing that they made it seem like the State Department had ignored CIA warnings.

A senior White House official agreed that these concerns should be addressed, and the talking points that emerged from an interagency briefing were scrubbed of all references to terrorist attacks. Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler notes that a lot of this debate appears to be interagency squabbling. The CIA's initial draft was apparently designed to downplay the agency's substantial presence in Benghazi, and the State Department was likely reluctant to take all the blame.

Still, the question remains whether the Obama administration scrubbed the talking points and used the video red herring in order to cover up the fact that they failed to prevent a planned terrorist attack that killed four Americans on the anniversary of September Obama: The initial target of the Republican Benghazi probe was Obama, who was in the middle of a heated re-election campaign at the time of the attacks.

Conservatives note, correctly, that the administration had a powerful incentive to cover up their failings in Libya, as it would have undercut the media narrative about Obama's record on diminishing the Al Qaeda threat. Conservatives have also raised questions about what Obama was doing during the eight hours that the Benghazi compound was under siege. Republicans note that then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey have both said that they did not speak to Obama after an initial meeting when the attacks began.

As Ted Cruz put it in a National Review op-ed Wednesday, " neither the secretary nor the chairman knows if the president slept while our people were under attack. We use cookies and other tracking technologies to improve your browsing experience on our site, show personalized content and targeted ads, analyze site traffic, and understand where our audiences come from.

To learn more or opt-out, read our Cookie Policy. The attack in the US diplomatic mission in Benghazi on September 11, was a national tragedy. Four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed by militants in an attack that arguably could have been prevented if the US government had taken more precautions.

But afterwards, the attack turned from a disaster into a political football. House Republicans from the Select Committee released an page report covering a two-year investigation of the Benghazi attacks Tuesday. Republicans say that the latest investigation has yielded new witnesses and new revelations. House Democrats, however, put out their own report Monday accusing the GOP of wasting taxpayer money on a political exercise whose goal was to tarnish Clinton.

Two members of the committee, Republicans Mike Pompeo and Jim Jordan, released their own account of the events taking a much harsher line against the administration, accusing Clinton and President Barack Obama of a "tragic failure of leadership.

What does the report say? The report contains no bombshell revelations, nor any new evidence of wrongdoing by Clinton, but it does fault the Obama administration for security lapses. The dossier paints a picture of bureaucratic ineptitude, a rapidly worsening security in Libya and inadequate resources in the months that led up to the killing of Stevens and his three colleagues.

The report details numerous requests the embassy made to bolster the security presence in Benghazi but finds that those requests were either ignored or rejected by officials in Washington. The report does not lay the blame for these failures on Clinton but on lower-level officials. Photos: Photos: Attack on U. Attack on U. The Obama administration initially thought the attack was carried out by an angry mob responding to a video, made in the United States, that mocked Islam and the Prophet Mohammed.

But the storming of the mission was later determined to have been a terrorist attack. Hide Caption. It also highlights the military's inability to react quickly to the events on the ground, noting that it took over six hours for military assets to deploy after then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta had ordered a military response.

However, it appears that the infamous "stand down" order was never given, though some of the CIA security contractors who were the first to respond to the attacks said that their station chief had told them to wait while additional resources could be marshaled.

The report provides testimony that State Department officials knew that the protests had been overly emphasized in administration messaging but the responsibility for the talking points was placed with the CIA.

What about Clinton's role? The report says that Clinton and a top aide, Patrick Kennedy, should have realized the risks posed to the Benghazi mission by extremist groups given that available intelligence indicated Libya was a terrorist "safe haven" and suggested an attack was possible. The report also says that one of the reasons Stevens was at the mission in Benghazi was to help prepare for a trip that Clinton was planning to Libya in October, suggesting that could have contributed to keeping an unsecure facility active.