Lying about Benghazi

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

What Clinton was really doing there was deflecting attention away from the fact that she lied. We now know, thanks to Wednesday's congressional hearings and reporting by The Weekly Standard's Steve Hayes, that administration officials knew from the outset the video had nothing to do with it. Intelligence sources on the ground in Libya and officials in Washington knew that it was a terrorist attack from the beginning. The video was a "nonevent in Libya" according to Gregory Hicks, the man who inherited Stevens' duties after the ambassador was killed by al-Qaida-linked militants. The false video story was simply imposed from above by Clinton, President Barack Obama and their subalterns.

Let's return to that lie in a moment.

The hearings exposed another lie. Obama and Clinton have insisted they did everything they could to help the Americans besieged in Libya; they just couldn't get help to them in time.

That's simply untrue.

...What motivated the White House and the State Department to deceive the public about what they did is unknown. Maybe it was incompetence or politics or simply understandable bureaucratic confusion.

But we do know they deceived the public. Which brings us back to the lies over the video. In the wake of Benghazi, the country endured an intense debate over how much free speech we could afford because of the savage intolerance of rioters half a world away. Obama and Clinton fueled this debate by incessantly blaming the video — as if the First Amendment was the problem.

Clinton and Obama swore oaths to support and defend the Constitution. But after failing to support and defend Americans left to die, they blamed the Constitution for their failure. That's what difference it makes.