In the “credit where credit is due” department, one thing you can say for Lindsey Graham is that he clearly doesn’t care all that much about politics or future elections. The Senator was trotted out on CNN this morning for a chat with Candy Crowley where they discussed the current terror threat and embassy closings. An important topic to be sure, but Graham couldn’t help himself, it seems, and had to weave some comments on sequestration into the larger story with a side helping of praise for the NSA and the White House. (Hat tip to Andrew Johnson at The Corner.)

CROWLEY: As you watch this unfold, what is your general impression? If you’re an ordinary American it looks pretty scary.

GRAHAM: Well, I had a briefing with the Vice President and it is scary. Al Qaeda is on the rise in this part of the world, and the NSA program is proving its worth yet again. But we need to reevaluate where we are on a lot of these threats. Sequestration has to be fixed. If this happens a year from now our intelligence community and the military will be less capable. AFRICOM needs to be beefed up, that’s where the war is going.

We’re about to withdraw from Afghanistan. I don’t want Afghanistan to become Iraq where we withdraw all our troops and terrorism comes back. You know, western Afghanistan is a haven for al Qaeda. So I appreciate what the Administration is doing, they’re taking the right approach to this. Benghazi was a complete failure, the threats were real, the reporting was real and we basically dropped the ball. We learned from Benghazi, thank God, and the Administration is doing this right.

Well, that was certainly… even handed of him. Nothing like spreading around both the praise and the blame equally. Could he have strung any more disparate policy items on that Christmas tree of a response? All that was missing was a reference to comprehensive immigration reform and how it would result in more workers to act as intelligence agents.

Enjoy.