Real Warnings and Revelations on Obama's "Phony" Scandal

On Thursday, CNN reported that nearly three dozen CIA agents were on the ground during the attacks at the Benghazi consulate on September 11, 2012. Additionally, the Obama administration is subjecting many of these individuals to very frequent polygraph tests (and changing Benghazi survivors' names). These revelations beg two questions. One--why is the Obama administration subjecting agents to what Jake Tapper's source is calling an "unprecedented attempt to keep the spy agency's Benghazi secrets from ever leaking out" if this is simply a phony scandal? Of course, that is a rhetorical question. Second--why were so many CIA agents in Benghazi at the time?

On Thursday night, Virginia Congressman Frank Wolf indicated that the CIA was moving guns in Benghazi, per Breitbart News:

 “We’re getting calls from people who are close to people who were [in Benghazi at the time] that they were moving guns. So where are the guns?” asked Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), a sub-committee chairman of the Appropriations Committee. Wolf also wonders what Ambassador Chris Stevens was actually doing in Benghazi on that night. Stevens and three others were killed over the course of the attacks. 

“Are they in a warehouse somewhere? Some people say they moved on to Turkey and then from Turkey to Syria," Wolf told Breitbart News on Thursday. "Did they fall into the hands of some of the Jihadis?" 

"Nobody knows, so I think there are so many questions from the failure to respond to where the guns went,” he stated. 

Wolf is currently attempting to create a Select Committee to investigate the Benghazi attack by launching a discharge petition from committee. He needs 218 signatures to take the issue to a vote on the floor.

In January, Senator Rand Paul asked then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton if guns were being run to Turkey from Libya, which she did not answer, but deferred to the CIA (see the 2:17 mark):

 

 About that same time, the CIA denied that guns were being run from Libya through Turkey to Syria.

To look at this more completely, we must take a step back. It was an absolute failure of security to not have more protection at a consulate in an Islamist country on a date with such significance as September 11th, especially with the threats and violence that had already occurred in Libya in the previous months. Remember too that in August 2011, Gaddafi was overthrown. A dictator was defeated, and a country in a volatile region of the world was even more unstable. When that happened, Governor Palin warned (emphasis added):

Finally, we must make sure that terrorist groups don’t try to co-opt the revolution, as Al Qaeda is trying to do in Syria. We should continue to use our intelligence assets to monitor the situation in Libya to ensure that potentially dangerous weapons are secured, and that terrorist organizations such as Al Qaeda don’t gain a foothold in Libya.

What ultimately has happened? Essentially the very thing Governor Palin warned against. While Governor Palin was likely referring to securing Gaddafi's stockpiles of weapons, arms still ultimately transferred to dangerous hands.  Al Qaeda was responsible for the attacks on Benghazi consulate, and weapons were being run (and continue to be transferred through other countries), likely to Syria, to arm Al Qaeda linked rebels.

The President has often touted that bin Laden is dead and that al Qaeda is decimated.  He has cheered the death of Gaddafi. While these three things help rid the world of evil, only two of them are true. Al Qaeda seems to still be very much active. On Friday, the State Department issued worldwide travel warnings for the entire month of August because of al Qaeda threats. US Embassies are closed this Sunday (President Obama's birthday) throughout the world including places like Iraq and Egypt.If a terror network was truly decimated, there would be no need to take caution over their threats.

It is phony reasoning to suggest that the death of two evil men means the death of an entire network of evil. It is phony leadership to not heed real warnings of the potential for evil and to intimidate those who were survivors of such evil by subjecting them to polygraph tests in an attempt to silence them. The only ones who should be subjected to such tests are those who claim the death of four brave Americans is solely a "phony scandal".

 Crossposted here and here.