Charles Krauthammer: I think this is a scandal at many levels. Obviously, the level of on the ground what happened in Libya. The lack of warning, the lack of intelligence, the lack of communication, the lack of response in and of itself is going to be a scandal as the details are coming out. The second level was already mentioned, [unintelligible] in effect of the administration went out and ridiculously sends out a U.S. ambassador to the U.N., probably the next Secretary of State if Obama is re-elected, and is telling the nation with a straight face that it was a spontaneous demonstration and it wasn’t a terrorist attack, which a 9-year-old could tell was not so.
They stuck with the story. Day after day, the president himself today refuses to say the obvious. On the same day his Secretary of State says of course it’s a terrorist attack.
Carney today, I think, said of course it’s a terrorist attack. It looks like incompetence. But actually, I think there’s a method here and the idea is you want to pretend it’s something else, hope it goes away. And the reason that the administration understands but it won’t say that this really is a symbol of the collapse of the policy that Obama initiated of accommodation and apology in the Muslim world. He had attributed all the ills, all the anti-Americanism to the Bush invasion, to the torture and the degradation of the previous administration. All of that is over and yet we have the worst explosion of anti-Americanism in memory.
And this is a collapse of the policy they can’t admit, they have to pretend isn’t having and the press is collaborating and suppressing. Either it doesn’t understand or it doesn’t want to harm Obama.
Read more at realclearpolitics.com
