The Benghazi cover-up

I think that this post at Powerline has a lot of interesting analysis in it.

Benghazi: A Reader Assesses the Evidence [Updated]

This is very telling:

So what we have here is the first huge contradiction between Panetta and the military and the CIA. SOMEONE sent those guys from Tripoli, but it was not the military. Why was it ok to send 8 lightly armed American guys from Tripoli into harm’s way to rescue 30+ people in Benghazi, but not ok to send a heavily armed special forces contingent who have trained for just such a scenario?

Panetta’s excuses do seem nonsensical in light of what actions were taken to help the Benghazi personnel.

David Halberstam makes an important point about scandals and investigative reporting:

Time was on the side of Woodward and Bernstein. A story like Vietnam or Watergate has a balance of forces of its own. At first the charges are deniable, the existing structure holds, powerful men with powerful positions can keep their troops in line. All the weight is on one side, and reporters like Woodward and Bernstein are a tiny minority, seeming puny by comparison. But there is the momentum, The denials slowly weaken, events undermine the denials so there have to be more denials, and each denial is a little weaker than the previous one. … Slowly the people who are issuing denials lose credibility, and the reporters begin to gain credibility.

Of course, the pace of this process depends on having enough reporters ask enough questions to chip away at the cover stories and self-serving spin. On Benghazi, most of the press have been slavish lapdogs.

For example, take our local failing daily. On Sunday, they wrote this about Libya:

The president, however, has tough questions to answer. What the administration truly knew before the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, needs to be made clear and quickly.

The only problem is, the “demand” came in the editorial that endorsed Obama for re-election. That is all the evidence one needs to know that the White House does not need to answer any tough questions quickly. Running out the clock---- stalling until election day, is working just fine with the working press.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Any editorial board that takes JFK conspiracy loons seriously is the wrong place to look for hard-headed logic or intelligent analysis.