The Benghazi cover up

Michael Goodwin:

Until Friday, there were two possible explanations for why the White House failed to immediately call the Benghazi attack an act of terrorism. One was incompetence, the other was worse.

Now there is only one, and it is the worse one. Based on the persuasive testimony of ex-CIA boss David Petraeus, it is clear the Obama administration made a deliberate decision to mislead Congress and the American people.

The repeated claim that the attack was spontaneous and grew out of a demonstration against an anti-Islam video — a claim made by the president and secretary of State as they stood next to the bodies of four dead Americans — was a monstrous lie. It was vile and done for the basest of reasons.

Because we now know the truth of what happened — CIA reports were edited to remove the names of al Qaeda groups involved in the attack, Petraeus said under oath — we also know the motive. It was political self-preservation, meaning the president and his team put politics first.

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While Goodwin focuses on the contradictions in the narrative Obama spun at his nominating convention, that was only one element of the cover up.  The bigger one, I think, is the refusal to provide adequate security despite repeated request.  That goes beyond incompetence.  It was a monumental failure of leadership that was compounded by the false narrative used to cover it up.