Obama: I’m offended that people would accuse me of not being forthcoming about Benghazi

Via Breitbart.com, he’s pulling the same move here that he pulled on Romney at the second debate, deflecting criticism by suggesting that somehow he’s the victim because people found the White House’s “acts of terror”/Mohammed movie protest vacillations suspicious. But okay: If he’s as forthcoming as he says, he has two new chances to prove it. First, how about answering Bing West’s question? If, as he claimed on Friday, he really did issue an order to secure American personnel in Benghazi, show us the order.

The SecDef and the president have issued contradictory explanations. Either Mr. Obama ordered the Secretary of Defense to “do whatever we need to do,” or he didn’t. And either the secretary obeyed that order, or he didn’t. And he didn’t.

It is also not clear whether the SecDef countermanded the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, who is the direct military adviser to the president. Did the president as commander-in-chief issue an unequivocal order that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs received but chose not to execute? Or did the chairman reply that he would do nothing?…

Surely it is in the president’s best interests to release a copy of his order, which the military would have sent to hundreds in the chain of command. And if the president did not direct the NSC “to do whatever we need to do,” then who was in charge? When the American ambassador is attacked and remains out of American hands for over seven hours as a battle rages — and our military sends no aid — either the crisis-response system inside the White House is incompetent, or top officials are covering up.

Either way, someone needs to be fired. Tell us who, then do it. Or if it turns out O lied and didn’t issue any directive, tell us that and we’ll do it eight days from now. Second, since day one of this nightmare (actually, even before day one), there’s been circumstantial evidence that the jihadis who attacked the consulate might have have had help on the inside. I’ve never heard of it being addressed at length by the White House or State, maybe because they’re still in fact-gathering mode or maybe because they’d prefer not to gather certain facts about some of our friends in the new Libya we helped create conspiring in the murder of a U.S. ambassador. But let’s have the White House speak up about it either way, now that we have Newsweek raising the question too:

In the dimly-lit street, he told his men the Americans would sit inside the pick-ups and they would all have to climb up on the flatbeds. It was about 4 a.m. As they did so, a small-caliber single shot rang out. Febrayir froze; so did his men. Within seconds there was a whooshing sound of several rocket-propelled grenades being fired. Then a mortar hit the annex roof with startling accuracy, killing former Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods. The accuracy of the mortar round points to an experienced hand. “But then we have many fighters nowadays who fought in the rebellion and who are experienced with mortars,” Febrayir says.

“Before we even showed up they were there waiting,” Febrayir says. He remains convinced that the security for the rescue was compromised and that attackers were not only eavesdropping on radio chatter but were fed by someone from inside the operations room. He never found out who was exactly in the Chevys. They sped off—as did the two Libyan Shield cars. He never saw them again.

Go read Joel Pollak to find out which of our five top Sunday morning “news” shows pursued either of these questions yesterday.

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