Early this morning I wrote that “No doubt most, or even all, of the media coverage of the vice presidential debate (as well as the discussion in serious sources) will concern whether the benefit of Biden’s boorish behavior pumping up partisan Democrats will exceed the cost of his turning off independents and undecideds.”
That has turned out to be wrong (as long-time readers of DISCRIMINATIONS will know, this is not the first time). The take away from the debate has also concentrated on the White House’s circling the wagons around Obama and Biden — and, to stick with the transportation meme, throwing the intelligence community, Hillary Clinton, and the State Dept. under the bus — in response to Smokin Joe’s howler (admission? lie?) that “we weren’t told they wanted more security there [in Benghazi]. We did not know they wanted more security again.” (Again?)
That depends on the definition of “we,” doesn’t it? (Perhaps the White House is getting advice from the other Clinton, the former lexicographer-in-chief.) In any event the Vice President’s comment conflicted with sworn testimony just the day before from State Dept. officials that they had indeed received and denied requests from Benghazi for more security.
At the congressional hearing on Wednesday, two U.S. security officers described their frustration that their requests for more security resources in Libya were ignored in the weeks and months before the assault on the Benghazi mission.
An official from the State Department’s Bureau of Diplomatic Security acknowledged at the hearing that she had turned aside pleas for more security.
“I said personally I would not support it,” the official, Charlene Lamb, said when asked about one particular request to extend deployment of a 16-person U.S. military team that left Libya in August, a month before the bloodshed in Benghazi.
Actually, it’s quite easy to believe that the president and vice president didn’t know of these requests, since there appears to be quite a lot that they didn’t know about what was happening on the ground in Libya. Recall, as a column in the Washington Post two days after the attack pointed out, the president routinely skipped his daily intelligence briefings. “According to the public
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