The GOP Screws It Up Again: Makes Big Omission From Benghazi Report
In the 800 or so pages of the draft House Select Committee on Benghazi report, there is no mention of the reasons for the attack, save a critique of falsely blaming it on a video. Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-SC, (B,87%) responded to a question about whether or not the Benghazi compound was being used for covert weapon sales by stating he asked the president but had not gotten an answer as of yet.
We asked questions about covert weapons operations. We made some progress. The lawyers intervened when we were beginning to make a lot of progress. And among the questions I asked the president included that one specifically. I have not heard back from him yet. I have heard from his lawyer and am not holding my breath that I’m going to get an answer to that.
Gowdy continued:
I think it was important because the House asked us to examine policies that lead to the attack. But that is not the focus of our committee.
Gowdy should be given credit for asking the president the question, but he contradicts himself in the reasoning for not digging further. Gowdy said the committee was charged with examining “policies that lead to the attack.” In the next breath he said it was “not the focus of our committee.” In light of the Obama administration blaming the attack on a video, the American people deserve to know the real reason for the attack. The report does not delve into this, only the aftermath.
Back in 2013, Jim Gehraty, writing at National Review, went through what Reuters reported about Benghazi and weapons being supplied to possible jihadists.
Remember my story about the smuggling of shoulder-mounted anti-aircraft missiles in and out of Libya during that country’s civil war? Public reports indicate U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens was working on tracking those missiles when he was attacked and murdered in Benghazi. While the most lurid allegations of U.S. arms smuggling to Libya are not yet proven, the Obama administration did give its blessing to Qatar’s smuggling of arms to the Libyan rebels in 2011 — and later realized that the weapons were ending up in the hands of Islamist militants. The quiet approval of the arms smuggling violated a United Nations arms embargo — and probably ended up exacerbating a problem that would eventually require Stevens to be in that city at that time — when the danger was so considerable.
Andrew McCarthy, also writing at National Review, connected the dots later in August of 2015.
As Obama next called for the ouster of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and reports surfaced of covert American support for the Syrian “rebels,” arms used by jihadists in Libya were shipped to jihadists in Syria by way of Turkey. Was that why we needed a “diplomatic facility” with a CIA annex in Benghazi, which was a transit point for some of these weapons? Was that why Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi meeting with Turkey’s ambassador on September 11 despite the obvious peril? The Obama administration refuses to say.
Chairman Gowdy tried to get answers and was stonewalled by the president himself. Americans deserve to know why “4 brave Americans”—as Gowdy called them—died. We now know it wasn’t over a video. Why is the Obama administration not revealing the why, even as they obfuscate the how? (For more from the author of “The One Big Thing Missing From the Benghazi Report” please click HERE)
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