By
Igor Volsky on Oct 22,
2012 at 11:42 am
Republicans blamed President Obama for the killing of four
Americans in Libya within hours of the September 11 attack, attributing the
violence to the administration’s supposed penchant for “apologizing” and
failing to lead in the region. Within days, Republicans charged that Democrats,
by arguing that the deaths were caused by a YouTube video disparaging the
Prophet Muhammed, were covering up and misleading al Qaeda’s involvement in the
deaths and called for U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice’s resignation. During a series
of Sunday show appearances on September 16th, she pointedly argued that the
attackers took advantage of a protest against the video to carry out the
killings.
But now, a growing drumbeat of evidence has found that the
administration’s claims were substantiated by the the intelligence community.
Eyewitnesses in Benghazi initially told officials and reporters that
“members of the group that raided the U.S. mission specifically mentioned the
video, which denigrated the prophet Muhammad” and “found no evidence that it
was ordered by Al Qaeda.” The CIA also believed that the clip acted as an
accelerant for the killings, instructing both Obama and Rice that “The currently
available information suggests that the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by the protests at the
U.S. Embassy in Cairo and evolved into a direct assault against the U.S.
Consulate and subsequently its annex.” The agency did not change its assessment
until September 22.
The new evidence undermines the GOP’s accusations. But rather than
back away from the blame game, they’re doubling down on their attacks against
the administration. During an appearance on Fox News on Monday, House Homeland
Security Committee Chairman Peter King (R-NY) — who led the Republican effort
to use the Libya incident as a way to weaken Obama’s foreign policy credentials
— insisted that Obama should have questioned the intelligence community’s
conclusions and suggested that he pressured the CIA to doctor its findings to
fit his re-election narrative:
KING: I want to find out why
the president didn’t ask questions….Did they ask the State Department if they
had any videos what occurred at the consulate that night? Why with all these
threats leading up to September 11th and talking about terror attacks and how
could they now be saying it was not a terror attack. I think they’re hiding
behind the term intelligence community. To
me shows the president did not look into what happened, did not inquire what
happened, was willing to look at something face value. Why was the report at
face value whether there was so much evidence in there showing it was terrorist
attack. It cries out for explanation and investigation. [...]
Who are the individuals or the
ones the president claim gave him this information? And did the president steer them in
that direction? Was this is mind set by the administration that said Libya was
great victory and Al Qaeda was on the ropes and no longer a threat to us?
During an earlier appearance on Laura Ingraham’s radio show, King
also suggested that Rice should have known that the intelligence presented to
her was false and interrogated the assessments before appearing on that series
of Sunday political talk shows. “She’s in the chain of command at the State
Department,” he said. “Did she just take that information or did she go to the
Secretary of State?”
Reports have indicated that
despite the intelligence community’s growing uncertainty about the impetus for
the attacks, “intelligence officials didn’t feel they had enough conclusive,
new information to revise their assessment” and did not communicate their
doubts to Rice before her Sunday show appearances. This assessment was also
reflected in Obama’s Presidential Daily Briefings.
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