The Incredible Shrinking President [Mark Steyn]

National Review ^ | 10/26/2012 | Mark Steyn

[Servant of the Cross]

Two videos distill the meaning of a campaign, and a presidency.

‘We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video,” said Hillary Clinton. No, not the person who made the video saying that voting for Barack Obama is like losing your virginity to a really cool guy. I’ll get to that in a moment. But Secretary Clinton was talking about the fellow who made the supposedly Islamophobic video that supposedly set off the sacking of the Benghazi consulate. And, indeed, she did “have that person arrested.” By happy coincidence, his bail hearing has been set for three days after the election, by which time he will have served his purpose. These two videos — the Islamophobic one and the Obamosexual one — bookend the remarkable but wholly deserved collapse of the president’s reelection campaign.

You’ll recall that a near-month-long attempt to blame an obscure YouTube video for the murder of four Americans and the destruction of U.S. sovereign territory climaxed in the vice-presidential debate with Joe Biden’s bald assertion that the administration had been going on the best intelligence it had at the time. By then, it had been confirmed that there never had been any protest against the video, and that the Obama line that Benghazi had been a spontaneous movie review that just got a little out of hand was utterly false. The only remaining question was whether the administration had knowingly lied or was merely innocently stupid. The innocent-stupidity line became harder to maintain this week after Fox News obtained State Department e-mails revealing that shortly after 4 p.m. Eastern, less than a half hour after the assault in Benghazi began, the White House situation room knew the exact nature of it.

[Walmartian]

Great Video

“We’ve Heard It All Before”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fZgQhnNRSuw

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

Oh yes I just noticed that, Mooshell has her hair covered. What amazes me is people still think this guy is a Christian. Yes, I’m a Christian as well and every now and then I like to dress Islamic just for the fun of it. s/

[RetSignman]

I couldn't agree more, Mark and the title of your article is spot on.

[Ignatz]

Ping!

[Flag_This]

"Oh yes I just noticed that, Mooshell has her hair covered."

I'm sorry, but I meant the sharia-compliant woman in the center of the picture.

[JLS]

Mark Steyn ping.

Freep mail me, if you want on or off the Mark Steyn ping list.

Thanks for the ping Servant of the Cross

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

And so Ty Woods, Glen Doherty, Sean Smith, and Chris Stevens were left to die

Mr. Steyn,

ALL the members of the embassy were left to die. ALL OF THEM. That most survived is due to the amazing heroism of four good men who did die in the effort to save their fellow Americans.

**ALL** were abandoned! ALL OF THEM!!!!

Turns out, Ty Woods was at the “Consulate” (it apparently was not that, exactly) because he ignored orders to “stand down" and “rode to the sound of the guns.” And he wasn’t killed at the “consulate” but later, at the annex, by a shell from a mortar which he or (as I think) Glen Doherty was illuminating with a targeting laser at risk of being targeted in return. The laser would have allowed air support to efficiently destroy the mortar - if Obama had not forbidden it.

And Doherty was among eight (a whole 8!) CIA agents who were sent, with or without top-level approval we don’t yet know, to support the annex.

[Jack Black]

ping for later reading.

[TheOldLady]

...when the president and other prominent officials stand by as four Americans
die and then abuse their sacrifice as contemptuously as this administration did,
decency requires that they be voted out of office as an act of urgent political
hygiene.

Shout it from the rooftops!

[GrandJediMasterYoda]

LOL

[BCW]

You forgot the average US Citizen who voted for Obama - trying to make up and address our past from slavery to the Civil Rights Movement - those people over did it - and voted him in...they are to blame as well...

Yes agree with you - he should have never passed the test and background to hold the POTUS job - let alone a security officer over a vacant lot - but the day-to-day Citizen allowed him to get in - and are not pressuring those listed above - to do ANYTHING about it...

I hope we all learned something from this little experiment in Socialism and never let this train wreck every happen again...

[Ditter]

Excellent!

[Tunehead54]

My pull quote - a little long but powerful:

We also learned that, in those first moments of the attack, a request for military back-up was made by U.S. staff on the ground but was denied by Washington. It had planes and special forces less than 500 miles away in southern Italy — or about the same distance as Washington to Boston. They could have been there in less than two hours. Yet the commander-in-chief declined to give the order.

So Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods fought all night against overwhelming odds, and died on a rooftop in a benighted jihadist hellhole while Obama retired early to rest up before his big Vegas campaign stop.

“Within minutes of the first bullet being fired the White House knew these heroes would be slaughtered if immediate air support was denied,” said Ty Woods’s father, Charles. “In less than an hour, the perimeters could have been secured and American lives could have been saved. After seven hours fighting numerically superior forces, my son’s life was sacrificed because of the White House’s decision.”

(Bump!)

[neverdem]

Thanks for the ping.

[holly go-rightly]

Missed this, thanks for posting it!