1)
It's Halloween! What better time for three scary facts that should freak you out.
1. Long-term unemployment could last a generation
The median duration of unemployment is now 18.5 weeks, compared with a 50-year average of 8.2 weeks. The unemployment rate for those aged 16 to 24 is nearly 16%. According to a Rutgers survey based on a nationwide sampling, 12% of those who have graduated college since 2006 are either unemployed or can't find full-time work -- and they're the ones with college degrees.
It's hard to exaggerate how dangerous this is -- and how dangerous it can remain.
In a study of men graduating from college between 1979 and 1989, Yale economist Lisa Kahn found that those entering the labor market during poor economic times earned about 7% less than those who graduated when the economy was strong. And the gap persisted for years: 17 years after graduation, Kahn found that those who began their careers when the economy was in recession were still earning less than those who started their careers when the economy was strong, adjusted for inflation and age. Those who stepped into a world of high unemployment were never able to shake it off.
Testifying before Congress in 2010, Til von Wachter of Columbia University offered another startling stat: "The average mature worker losing a stable job at a good employer will see earnings reductions of 20% lasting over 15 to 20 years" when laid off during a recession.
The longer unemployment lasts, the harder it is to recover from. Here's how economist Justin Wolfers put it last year:
Typically in the United Sates, if you're unemployed you're unemployed for three months. You get back to work. You didn't lose many skills. In Europe, folks are unemployed for a year, two years.
Today in the United States, people are starting to get unemployed six months and twelve months. They're losing contact with the world of work. And so the problem is that, even when the economy comes back, it's not clear that these folks are necessarily going to be in contact with the labor market, able to pick up jobs even when the economy generates them. ...
I'm terrified that if we leave millions of people out there decreasingly engaged with the world of work, structural unemployment may become an American problem in ways it has been a European problem.
2. Rising interest rates could be devastating
The federal government has $16 trillion of debt, $11 trillion of which is owned by the public (the rest is held by government entities like Social Security). Last year we paid $230 billion in interest on that debt, so the average interest rate is a little over 2%.
That's incredibly low, and returning to more average interest rates could balloon the deficit. Since 1970, the average interest rate paid on debt held by the public is 5.9%. If interest rates returned to that average, our annual interest tab would rise by $400 billion. That's about four times what the federal government currently spends on education and training. The average interest rate on federal debt was highest in 1982, at 9.3%. Returning to that level would add $800 billion to our annual interest bill, which is more than we currently spend on Social Security.
Households aren't in much better shape. Since 2009, investors have pumped nearly $1 trillion into bond mutual funds, $400 billion into Treasuries, and more still into bond ETFs. If interest rates rise, the value of these investments could fall sharply. The last time interest rates were near current levels, in the 1950s, Treasury bonds lost 40% of their inflation-adjusted value over the following three decades.
3. Most Americans are utterly unprepared for retirement
This stat, from a recent report by ConvergEx Group, should make you cringe:
Only 58% of us are even saving for retirement in the first place. Of that group, 60% have less than $25,000 put away. ... Almost half (48%) of workers ages 45 and up have less than $25,000 saved.
For perspective, Fidelity Investments estimates that a couple retiring this year will need $240,000just to cover medical bills during retirement.
The ConvergEx report also found that "22% of retirees claim they're taking more than they thought they would out of their accounts, depleting their savings even faster than they anticipated."
The degree to which most Americans are unprepared for retirement is absolutely staggering. Some have accumulated pension benefits, but that's hardly reassuring. Pew Charitable Trusts estimates public pensions are underfunded by $1.38 trillion. Standard & Poor's estimates that S&P 500 companies are $355 billion short of what's needed to cover pension obligations. "Of the 500 companies, 338 have defined-benefit pension plans, and only 18 are fully funded," writes The New York Times.
A typical response when discussing these numbers is, "Well, many people will have to work their entire lives." But that's assuming they'll be able to. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink recently pointed out that a healthy 25-year-old female can now expect to live to near 100 years old. There are few jobs, and even fewer companies, that will accommodate an 85-year-old employee when a stronger, faster, and more eager 25-year-old is the competition.
For many, a fairly meager Social Security check will be the only retirement vehicle to fall back on. And it, too, has its own funding problems.
Scary times.
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2) Why I’m voting for Romney
By Michael Goodwin
Each time I mention that I voted for Barack Obama in 2008, I get a blast from some who didn’t. “How could you be so dumb?” is a typical response to my confession.
It is certainly a confession — of error. Obama fooled me once, but not twice. I’m voting forMitt Romney Nov. 6th.
To understand why I’m switching, it helps to understand why I backed Obama four years ago. I am a Democrat, but vote as an independent. I see people, not parties, so Obama’s label played no role.
My choice involved a simple calculation. Would John McCain or Obama be more likely to forge a consensus on big issues? America was dangerously polarized, and unable to act in ways that even 60 percent of the public could support. History shows that paralysis leads to disaster.
The war on terror was falling out of favor, despite the continuing threat. Good ideas were getting thrown out with the bad and Republicans had squandered the chance to govern.
When the financial crisis hit, McCain stumbled. He wanted to postpone a debate and rushed back to Washington — but had nothing to say or do. Obama kept silent and followed the lead of congressional Democrats. While not exactly great statesmanship, he at least looked steady.
McCain, a genuine American hero, often revealed his maverick streak, his choice of Sarah Palin being Exhibit A. Despite doubts about her readiness, I found myself defending her against the vicious attacks from the left, especially by women.
McCain was my real problem. Mavericks make good whistleblowers and lousy CEOs. Upsetting the apple cart is not a qualification for the Oval Office.
Obama’s soaring rhetoric enticed me at first, and I agreed that a restoration of the Clinton presidency would be a bad idea. Still, I got a jolt of Messiah Alert when he said his rise marked the moment “when the planet began to heal.”
Where he totally fooled me was his claim to be a pragmatist, not an ideologue. He spoke of uniting the country and I believed he was capable and sincere. That he won 70 million votes and more than two-thirds of the Electoral College spoke to his appeal.
He failed as president because he is incompetent, dishonest and not interested in the actual work of governing. His statist policies helped consign millions of Americans to a lower standard of living and his odious class warfare further divided the nation. He had no intention of uniting the country — it was his Big Lie.
I don’t hate him. But I sure as hell don’t trust him.
As for the desperate charge that opposition to Obama makes me a racist, let me note that he was black when I voted for him.
Which brings us to Romney. A year ago, I thought he might be acceptable, maybe the only one in the GOP field. Now I see him as much more than acceptable.
During the long slog, Romney revealed qualities that could make him a very good president. There is not a hint of scandal in his life or career, and his economic policies could spark real growth in jobs, not in food stamps.
He keenly recognizes the danger of the growing debt. With Paul Ryan, he chose a youthful, smart No. 2 who possesses deep knowledge of the budget mess and yet an optimistic view of America’s future.
On the foreign stage, Romney is a novice, but his instincts about American power are right and his remarks in the last debate about Obama’s apology tour were a defining difference. It is impossible to imagine Romney going abroad to criticize his country, or lying about the murder of an ambassador. The challenger is right when he says Obama has made the nation less safe.
Romney is no “movement conservative,” but is moderate and prudent in the everyday ways of most Americans. As he proved in Massachusetts, he can work with Democrats to get things done.
As for being a Mormon, to hold that against Romney is pure bigotry. His election would knock down one more barrier to equality of opportunity.
Finally, there is temperament. Romney’s firm, steady demeanor during Obama’s rancid attempts at character assassination demonstrates the presidential character lacking in the incumbent. That’s the change I want for my country.
2a) The choice
“Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that Richard Nixon did not and in a way that Bill Clinton did not.” That was Barack Obama in 2008. And he was right. Reagan was an ideological inflection point, ending a 50-year liberal ascendancy and beginning a 30-year conservative ascendancy.
It is common for one party to take control and enact its ideological agenda. Ascendancy, however, occurs only when the opposition inevitably regains power and then proceeds to accept the basic premises of the preceding revolution.
Thus, Republicans railed for 20 years against the New Deal. Yet when they regained the White House in 1953, they kept the New Deal intact.
And when Nixon followed LBJ’s Great Society — liberalism’s second wave — he didn’t repeal it. He actually expanded it. Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency(EPA), gave teeth to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and institutionalized affirmative action — major adornments of contemporary liberalism.
Until Reagan. Ten minutes into his presidency, Reagan declares that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem.” Having thus rhetorically rejected the very premise of the New Deal/Great Society, he sets about attacking its foundations — with radical tax reduction, major deregulation, a frontal challenge to unionism (breaking the air traffic controllers for striking illegally) and an (only partially successful) attempt at restraining government growth.
Reaganism’s ascendancy was confirmed when the other guys came to power and their leader, Bill Clinton, declared (in his 1996 State of the Union address) that “the era of big government is over” — and then abolished welfare, the centerpiece “relief” program of modern liberalism.
In Britain, the same phenomenon: Tony Blair did to Thatcherism what Clinton did to Reaganism. He made it the norm.
Obama’s intention has always been to re-normalize, to reverse ideological course, to be the anti-Reagan — the author of a new liberal ascendancy. Nor did he hide his ambition. In his February 2009 address to Congress he declared his intention to transform America. This was no abstraction. He would do it in three areas: health care, education and energy.
Think about that. Health care is one-sixth of the economy. Education is the future. And energy is the lifeblood of any advanced country — control pricing and production, and you’ve controlled the industrial economy.
And it wasn’t just rhetoric. He enacted liberalism’s holy grail: the nationalization of health care. His $830 billion stimulus, by far the largest spending bill in U.S. history, massively injected government into the free market — lavishing immense amounts of tax dollars on favored companies and industries in a naked display of industrial policy.
And what Obama failed to pass through Congress, he enacted unilaterally by executive action. He could not pass cap-and-trade, but his EPA is killing coal. (No new coal-fired power plant would ever be built.) In 2006, liberals failed legislatively to gut welfare’s work requirement. Obama’s new Health and Human Services rule does that by fiat. Continued in a second term, it would abolish welfare reform as we know it — just as in a second term, natural gas will follow coal, as Obama’s EPA regulates fracking into noncompetitiveness.
Government grows in size and power as the individual shrinks into dependency. Until the tipping point where dependency becomes the new norm — as it is in Europe, where even minor retrenchment of the entitlement state has led to despair and, for the more energetic, rioting.
An Obama second term means that the movement toward European-style social democracy continues, in part by legislation, in part by executive decree. The American experiment — the more individualistic, energetic, innovative, risk-taking model of democratic governance — continues to recede, yielding to the supervised life of the entitlement state.
If Obama loses, however, his presidency becomes a historical parenthesis, a passing interlude of overreaching hyper-liberalism, rejected by a center-right country that is 80 percent nonliberal.
Should they summon the skill and dexterity, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan could guide the country to the restoration of a more austere and modest government with more restrained entitlements and a more equitable and efficient tax code. Those achievements alone would mark a new trajectory — a return to what Reagan started three decades ago.
Every four years we are told that the coming election is the most important of one’s life. This time it might actually be true. At stake is the relation between citizen and state, the very nature of the American social contract.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------3)‘Revenge?!’ Obama’s Sick Closing Argument
President Obama coined a new campaign catchphrase while speaking in Ohio today.
The crowd started booing at the mention of Mitt Romney, to which the President responded, “Don’t boo, vote. Voting is the best revenge!”
Read more: http://patriotupdate.com/32008/revenge-obamas-sick-closing-argument#ixzz2BB6sINVJ
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------3a)The uncool president
By Victor Davis Hanson
In 2008, Barack "No Drama" Obama was the coolest presidential candidate America had ever seen -- young, hip, Ivy League, mellifluous and black, with a melodic and exotic name. Rock stars vied to perform at his massive rallies, where Obama often began his hope-and-change sermons by reminding the teary-eyed audience what to do in case of mass fainting.
Money, like manna from heaven, seemed to drop spontaneously into his $1 billion campaign coffers. Ecstatic Hollywood stars were rendered near speechless at the thought of Obama's promised Big Rock Candy Mountain to come -- peace, harmony, prosperity and "5 million new jobs" in renewable energy alone.
Even the cynical Europeans went crazy over his anti-George W. Bush candidacy, one gussied up with faux-Greek columns and Latin presidential mottoes. Huge rainbow-colored Obama signs sprouted like weeds on America's upscale suburban lawns, and hip-hoppers rapped out Obama themes. All of America, it seemed, wanted to believe in this largely unknown newcomer.
The giddy media declared Obama a "sort of god," and "the smartest man with the highest IQ" ever to assume the presidency.
Somehow, even legs got into the hero worship, as pundits praised the sight of Obama's "perfectly creased pant," and one commentator felt "this thrill going up my leg" when Obama spoke.
And why not, when the soft-spoken, adaptable African-American candidate preached civility and visions of a post racial America -- changing his speech from a white suburban patois to Southern black evangelical cadences as needed to woo widely diverse audiences.
Obama, the most partisan member of the U.S. Senate, promised a new post-political non-partisanship. Almost by fiat, he declared an end to big debts, corruption, lobbyists, wars, unpopular American foreign policies and unlawful anti-terrorism protocols -- almost everything that had predated the presidency of Barack Hussein Obama.
Four years of governance later, the huge crowds have mostly melted away. Those still left do not faint. The columns are in storage. The Latinate "Vero Possumus" is not even voiced in English.
Instead of "no red states or blue states" healing rhetoric, Obama has sown all sorts of needless divisions in hopes of cobbling together a thin us-versus-them coalition, as independents flee.
The 99 percent claim oppression by the 1 percent. Young single female professionals are supposedly at war with Republican Neanderthals.
Beleaguered gays apparently must fight the bigotry of the homophobic right wing. Greens should go on the offensive against conservative polluters who are OK with dirty air and water.
Latinos must "punish our enemies" at the polls, and Attorney General Eric Holder's "my people" are to be set against "a nation of cowards."
With all the advantages of incumbency and an obsequious media, why is Barack Obama reduced to stooping to save his campaign?
A dismal economy, of course, explains voter discontent. So do the contradictory and illogical explanations about the recent killing of a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans in Libya.
Mitt Romney is also proving a far better campaigner than were prior so-so Obama opponents like Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Obama's first debate was a disaster.
A more worldly Obama no longer talks of cooling the planet or lowering the rising seas. Barely even with challenger Mitt Romney in the polls, he now alternates between the crude and the trivial in a campaign that in its shrillness on the stump evokes the last desperate days of failed incumbents like Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush.
Obama blasts Romney as a "bullsh--ter," and releases an ad in which a starlet compares voting for him to her first sexual experience.
When Obama is not crude, he is adolescent -- as he references Big Bird, plays word games like "Romnesia" and ridicules Romney for his "binders" debate remark.
The greatest problem facing Obama, however, is not just his mediocre record of governance, but the growing public perception that he is as uncool in 2012 as he was cool in 2008. Voters no longer feel they're square for voting against Obama. Instead, it's becoming the "in" thing to shrug that enough is enough.
A common theme of classic American tales such as "The Rainmaker," "Elmer Gantry," "The Music Man" and "The Wizard of Oz" is popular anger unleashed at Pied Piper-like messiahs who once hypnotized the masses with promises of grandeur.
The bamboozled people rarely fault their own gullibility for swooning over hope-and-change banalities, but rather, once sober, turn with fury on the itinerant messiahs who made them look so foolish.
In other words, it is not just the economy, foreign policy, poor debating skills or a so-so campaign that now plagues Obama, but the growing public perception that voters were had in 2008, and that it now is OK -- even cool -- to no longer believe in him.
-------------------------------------------4)General Ham Is Still Commander of U.S. Africa Command
By Mike Johnson
So did General Ham, the commander of U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), really get fired? In fact, the answer to that question is no. General Ham is still the active commander of AFRICOM.
Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) appeared on the Howie Carr radio talk show on 31 October. Mr. Carr asked Representative Chaffetz about the rumors that General Ham had been forced out. Representative Chaffetz answered to the effect that he had visited General Ham in Stuttgart (headquarters for the Africa Command) on about 1 October; the two of them traveled to Libya, where General Ham was very much in command. (Audio of the interview is here.)
The Washington Times had previously reported (29 October) that Representative Chaffetz "said that General Ham told him during a visit to Libya that he had never been asked to provide military support for the Americans under attack in Benghazi." Representative Chaffetz reiterated this during the interview with Mr. Carr.
As of this writing, General Ham is still in command of the U.S. Africa Command. This is a definitive answer -- one of the few definitive answers available to us about the Benghazi scandal.
The Benghazi situation is, per the liberal press, obscured by the "fog of war." (See, for example, this Huffington Post piece.) I think a more apt description is obscured by the fog of politics -- the politics of the most transparent administration of all time.
Consider General Ham's assertion that he had not been asked to support the Americans being attacked in Benghazi. This tells us very little, if anything. We know there was no support rendered, and we suspect that the administration never intended to offer support. More appropriate questions for General Ham would have been:
- Did you have available assets and resources to mount a supporting mission?
- Were you preparing to engage?
- Were you asked (ordered) to stand down?
General Ham might not be permitted to answer these questions. I call it the General Officer's Dilemma, but more on that later.
General Ham is retiring sometime in the spring of 2013. There are puzzling aspects to the various reports of his pending retirement. In a 30 October comment to a press release, the public affairs officer (PAO) of AFRICOM quoted General Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as saying:
General Ham's departure is part of routine succession planning that has been on going since July. He continues to serve in AFRICOM with my complete confidence.
General Dempsey, like several others in recent releases, speaks of a long-term plan for retirement but makes no mention of why retirement would be necessary. There are several mandatory retirement markers such as age, length of service, and length of time in grade. As far as I know, none of these apply to General Ham, and even if one did, it could be easily waived.
The Washington Times, in an article dated 28 October, addressed the typical length of a tour as AFRICOM commander. They referenced a document titled "Manpower and Personnel Actions Involving General and Flag Officers" that states that "the tour length for combatant commanders and Defense agency directors is three years." I am told (see the comments to my original article) that had there been a known retirement date that precluded his serving three years, he would not have been appointed to the slot. General Ham has less than two years in the assignment and will have just two years when he retires. Why is his term so short?
So far, we have been discussing mandatory or pre-planned retirement. The previously linked 29 October Washington Times article included the following:
[O]n Monday October 29 a defense official told the Washington Times that "the decision [to leave AFRICOM] was made by General Ham. He ably served the nation for nearly forty years and retires after a distinguished career."
This sounds like General Ham made the personal decision to retire early. If so, why? And if he had so decided in July as implied by General Dempsey, why was the announcement delayed until this time, given the brouhaha over Benghazi?
Let me return to the General Officer's Dilemma. A combatant commander such as General Ham commands enough firepower to stop Genghis Khan and his entire Golden Hoard dead in their tracks. One does not reach General Ham's level of responsibility without talent, luck, and political acumen. But when all is said and done, General Ham and others at that level are simply soldiers, subordinate to civilian authority. God bless them, this is a large part of American exceptionalism.
Even so, there will be occasions where the combatant commander disagrees with the civilian authority. Secretary of Defense Panetta reported that he had met with Generals Dempsey and Ham and that the three of them "felt very strongly that we could not put forces at risk in that situation." (See the New York Times article of 25 October.) The impression being given by Mr. Panetta is that the three of them agreed upon the course of action. This is not necessarily true. Mr. Panetta is in charge. Behind closed doors there may have been vehement disagreement, allowable to the extent permitted by the management style of the senior person. Once the senior person makes his decision, his subordinates are expected to show unanimity in public. This is the General Officer's Dilemma. What if he cannot accept the superior's decision? He must, in good conscience, resign (assuming he has not been fired beforehand).
If the superior's decision is illegal, the officer must disobey. Often, legality is not clear. Take the Benghazi situation. Was it illegal to withhold support from our people on the ground? Distasteful, certainly. Despicable? I would say so. Illegal? Probably not.
There is an additional dimension to this discussion. In the private sector, long-term employees become vested in their retirement rights. It is not exactly the same for a military officer. Typically, a military officer with a clean slate retires at the highest rank held. If there is a cloud, such as the potential of going public with a disagreement, the officer's retirement can be based on a lower rank, typically one grade down. There are other means of coercion; security matters comes to mind.
One wonders that we get such good, dedicated people to serve in our military. Thank you all for your service.
Mike Johnson is a concerned citizen, a small-government conservative, and a live-free-or-die resident of New Hampshire. E-mail mnosnhoj@comcast.net.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------4)The Fog of Benghazi
What we now know—and still don't—about President Obama's 9/11.
The Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were murdered September 11 in Benghazi. That we know. But too little else about what took place before, during and after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission is clear.
The White House says Republicans are "politicizing" a tragedy. Politicians politicize, yes, but part of their job is to hold other politicians accountable. The Administration has made that difficult by offering evasive, inconsistent and conflicting accounts about one of the most serious American overseas defeats in recent years. Unresolved questions about Benghazi loom over this election because the White House has failed to resolve them.
• Why did the U.S. not heed warnings about a growing Islamist presence in Benghazi and better protect the diplomatic mission and CIA annex?
From the start of the Libyan uprising in early 2011, the Central Intelligence Agency built up an unusually large presence in Benghazi. By this September, two dozen or so operatives and contractors monitored Ansar al-Shariah and other militant groups. Deteriorating security after the war was no secret. U.S. intelligence noted militant camps in the mountains near Benghazi, including "al Qaeda leaning" fighters, according to Tuesday's New York Times.
Over the summer, the Red Cross and the U.K. closed their offices in Benghazi after attempted terrorist attacks and assassinations. A bomb went off outside the U.S. mission on June 6 but hurt no one. Ambassador Chris Stevens told his superiors in an August cable about a "security vacuum" in Benghazi. A different classified State cable sent in August, and obtained by Fox News this week, noted the growth of al Qaeda training camps and expressed concern about the Benghazi mission's ability to defend against a coordinated attack. It said it would ask for "additional physical security upgrades and staffing."
In a House hearing last month, career State Department officials said various requests for security reinforcements to Libya were turned down. A 16-member special security team in Tripoli, the Libyan capital, was pulled out in August. The inability of Libya's weak central government to protect American diplomats was overlooked.These revelations came from the career staff at State.
Mr. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have claimed "responsibility" for Benghazi, without saying precisely for what. During the second Presidential debate on October 16, Mr. Obama was asked: "Who was it that denied enhanced security and why?" He changed the subject.
• What exactly happened on the day of 9/11? During the over six hours that the compounds in Benghazi were under siege, could the U.S. have done more to save lives? What was President Obama doing and ordering his subordinates to do in those fateful hours?
An October 9 State Department briefing offered the first precise timeline, nearly a month later. There was no demonstration outside the consulate the evening of the 11th—"nothing unusual during the day at all outside," a State official said.
That may not be right. Early that morning, Embassy guards noticed a Libyan police officer in a building across the street "photographing the inside of the U.S. special mission," according to a letter dated September 11 from the Embassy to the Libyan government, calling it "troubling." The letter was discovered last week at the still unsecured compound by two journalists and published on Foreign Policy's website Thursday.
At 9:40 p.m. local time (3:40 p.m. EST), a security officer at the Benghazi consulate heard "loud noises" outside the gate and "the camera on the main gate reveals a large number of people—a large number of men, armed men, flowing into the compound," according to the State Department timeline.
Within half an hour, the consulate was on fire. At about 10:45 p.m., help arrived from the CIA annex about a mile away. The CIA offered its first account of that evening this Thursday night, nearly two months after the fact. Agency personnel were dispatched within 25 minutes of the initial attack on the consulate. By 11:20, they evacuated the consulate. Stevens and Sean Smith, a State employee, were dead.
The fortified annex then came under steady small-arms fire for 90 minutes starting around midnight, according to the CIA timeline, but it was never breached. The fighting lulled for four hours. Before dawn, a sudden mortar attack killed two CIA security officers on a rooftop, according to CIA officials. By then, a Quick Reaction Force had arrived from Tripoli to evacuate the annex. The CIA briefers said the agency did not deny aid to the consulate. But the Journal reported on Friday that the CIA and State "weren't on the same page about their respective roles on security" in Benghazi.
The latest account also leaves unanswered what other options Mr. Obama and his security team considered. The U.S. failed to bring armed drones, gunships or other close air support to defend the annex from the militias who were outside its gates for over four hours. The fighting at the consulate may have taken place too quickly to bring in outside military support. According to officials who spoke this week, fighter jets in Italy would have created too much collateral damage in a civilian neighborhood.
An unarmed U.S. drone was diverted to Benghazi but had trouble distinguishing between the terrorists and U.S. allies who came to the compounds' aid. An armed drone wasn't in the area. A large special operations force from Fort Bragg arrived in Sicily too late to help, according to a National Public Radio report Thursday.
Mr. Obama was informed of the attacks at around 5 p.m.—11 p.m. in Libya—during a previously scheduled meeting with his military advisers, and he ordered military assets moved to the area, according to ABC News. During the attacks, however, the Administration didn't convene the Counterterrorism Security Group, which was created to coordinate a response to a terrorist attack, according to a CBS News report.
Late last week, Mr. Obama was twice asked by a local Denver television anchor whether Americans who asked for help in Benghazi were turned down by the chain of command. He didn't answer.
Lacking "real-time information," Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last week, "you don't deploy forces into harm's way without knowing what's going on." Officials this week insisted military intervention was either too risky or impossible to organize in time.
Yet it's still reasonable to ask why the U.S. wasn't prepared for such a contingency. Since 9/11 (of 2001) the U.S. has been at war with the people who attacked in Benghazi, even though many liberals don't like to say so. One of them is the current Commander in Chief, who still refuses to talk about his Administration's response to his 9/11.
• Why has the Administration's story about what took place in Benghazi been so haphazard and unclear?
In his September 12 Rose Garden statement, Mr. Obama said "no acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for." He said this at the end of his remarks, well after his specific comments about Benghazi.
Unnamed Administration officials that same day told Reuters that an al Qaeda regional offshoot and members of Ansar al-Shariah were probably involved. "It bears the hallmarks of an organized attack," one U.S. official said. Intelligence officials briefed Members of Congress later that week that terrorism was the likeliest culprit.
Yet by the end of that week, the White House offered a different account: That the Benghazi attack grew out of a spontaneous demonstration against an anti-Islam video on YouTube. On September 14, Obama spokesman Jay Carney said, "We don't have and did not have concrete evidence to suggest that this was not in reaction to the film."
Two days later, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went on a tour of the Sunday talk shows to repeat the video-caused-the-protest story. On CBS's "Face the Nation," she contradicted Libya's President Mohamed Magarief, who on the same show blamed a "preplanned" attack by "foreign" terrorists. The White House and Ms. Rice have since claimed they were merely following talking points provided by the "intelligence community."
Yet Reuters revealed last week that government officials saw a possible al Qaeda connection even as the attacks were taking place. Emails from State's regional security officer to the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon, the FBI and others noted that Ansar al-Shariah had taken responsibility. The Daily Beast's Eli Lake reported that FBI officers who interviewed security officers who worked at the consulate knew as early as September 14 that the attack was no protest.
It took eight days for the Administration to formally declare that the four Americans "were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy," in the words of Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center. But six days later Mr. Obama was asked by Joy Behar on "The View" if "it was an act of terrorism"? He said the government didn't know. In his September 25 U.N. address, Mr. Obama made several general references to the YouTube video but made no mention of terrorism in the context of Benghazi.
His campaign stump speech to this day includes the lines that "al Qaeda has been decimated" and the U.S. is "finally turning the page on a decade of war to do some nation-building right here at home" (Thursday in Las Vegas).
***
Mr. Obama has made the defeat of al Qaeda a core part of his case for re-election. Yet in Benghazi an al Qaeda affiliate killed four U.S. officials in U.S. buildings, contradicting that political narrative.
The President may succeed in stonewalling Congress and the media past Election Day. But the issue will return, perhaps with a vengeance, in an Obama second term. The episode reflects directly on his competence and honesty as Commander in Chief. If his Administration is found to have dissembled, careers will be ended and his Presidency will be severely damaged—all the more so because he refused to deal candidly with the issue before the election.
America has since closed the Libya diplomatic outpost and pulled a critical intelligence unit out of a hotbed of Islamism, conceding a defeat. U.S. standing in the region and ability to fight terrorist groups were undermined, with worrying repercussions for a turbulent Middle East and America's security. This is why it's so important to learn what happened in Benghazi.
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