Obama pays price for back pedaling on Libya attack

October 25, 2012

Obama pays price for back pedaling on Libya attack
Posted by Staff

 

If Barack Obama fails in his bid for a second term as president, historians and political analysts will spend years trying to answer why and how he and his administration so badly mishandled the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
The question will linger for many years: Since it was clear that he and his team knew that Islamist militants were to blame, why did the president move off of his initial response and try to minimize the role of al Qaeda?
Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney felt the need to stay statesmanlike and focus on his own credentials as commander-in-chief more than prosecuting Obama’s ongoing struggle in their final debate. But as the clock ticks toward Election Day, the debacle in Benghazi and the botched public response to it have proven to be one of the embattled incumbent’s greatest liabilities anyway.
A president who had hoped to make foreign policy a central point in his re-election case instead is confronted with a stream of evidence that the raid might have been foiled with adequate security and that the story Obama and his team told the public about the attack being a spontaneous event was at odds with lots of evidence to the contrary.