Benghazi Debacle

Joe Klein from Time Magazine has a new piece just posted titled Benghazi: The October Mirage. Here’s the link

http://swampland.time.com/2012/10/12/benghazi-the-october-mirage/?iid=sl-main-arenapage

He starts out “For the life of me, I can’t understand why the Republicans are harping so hard on the Benghazi security debacle–except, maybe, you know…politics.”

I looked up the meaning of debacle just to make sure that it hasn’t changed. According to Miriam Webster it is:  a complete failure – fiasco.

Why should we treat a complete failure – fiasco as a mirage? When is a complete failure or fiasco when it relates to the security of Americans not a problem for the President? Election year or not, why is Joe Klein and Time Magazine giving our current Commander-in-Chief a pass on the complete failure?

He even goes so far as to blame the lack of security at the Benghazi U.S. Consulate on Paul Ryan’s budget. Guess what, Paul Ryan is not the Commander-in-Chief and his budget has not been passed by Congress so how could anything in his proposed budget affect the current security of U.S. citizens in Benghazi?

Opinion pieces are fine and we all agree that politicians bend the truth, especially when trying to get elected. But, wouldn’t it be nice for a change if major media outlets like Time Magazine hold some standard of truth-telling for their own editors, journalists and commentators.

More from Klein: The deaths of Chris Stephens and the others was a preventable tragedy. That it happened is outrageous. But these sort of incidents have been exceedingly rare since 2001, and the Obama Administration has attacked and decimated Al Qaeda in a more efficient and effective way than either of its predecessors, Bush or Clinton. (To be fair, Clinton didn’t have the drone technology–but he did have special forces who might have taken out Bin Laden after the two attacks on US Embassies in 1997 and the USS Cole in 2000.)

This was a preventable tragedy. That it happened is outrageous! But let’s not harp on that. This was a debacle and a preventable tragedy but it is the Republicans fault for “harping” on it? President Obama is not subject to scrutiny for any failures or tragedies on his watch because he ordered Navy Seals to go get Bin Laden?

Klein: The Benghazi incident was a failure that blemishes, but does not diminish the Obama Administration’s tremendous success in the war against Al Qaeda.
So Klein has toned down this ‘failure’ for Obama from a debacle and preventable tragedy to a blemish. Obama himself toned it down to “bumps in the road.”

Klein says that this criticism of this debacle and preventable tragedy is “foolish and insulting to the American people.” What really is foolish and insulting is when a respected journalist, who should be appalled at administration debacles and preventable tragedies which result in the loss of American lives, gives no more weight to their deaths than calling them mere blemishes on Obama’s record.

In his last paragraph Klein goes so far as to categorize the “harping” of Romney and Ryan on this preventable debacle as unpatriotic. Who is being unpatriotic here? Is it not unpatriotic to relegate four dead Americans whose deaths were preventable by this administration to the lowly standard of blemishes or bumps in the road?

Klein wants Romney to come out publicly and agree with Obama on this. “… it would be nice, and even patriotic, if Romney would support the President …” Why would any American want to support the President on this?

This was a preventable tragedy on Obama’s watch. President Obama has succeeded in turning a preventable tragedy into a full scale debacle by lying about it and blaming his failure on everyone but himself.

By Klein’s own standard this is 1) a debacle, 2) a preventable tragedy, and 3) a failure. Yet, Joe Klein and Time Magazine continue to blame Romney, Ryan and the Republicans for harping on it. Time Magazine and Joe Klein, why can’t you and your media cohorts raise this issue to the level of scrutiny it deserves? It would be nice and even patriotic to properly report the failures of President Obama to your readership.

Those four brave Americans are not mere blemishes. Those four coffins were no mirage.