House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) sent a ten page letter on Friday to Barack Obama on Friday in which he asked for clarification of the White House’s role in the Benghazi attacks.
The letter to Obama was accompanied by the release of more than 100 pages that documented requests for more security at the embassy.
“Americans … deserve a complete explanation about your administration’s decision to accelerate a normalized presence in Libya at what now appears to be at the cost of endangering lives,” Issa wrote. “These critical foreign policy decisions are not made by low- or mid-level career officials — they are typically made through a structured and well-reasoned process that includes the National Security Council at the White House.
“The ultimate responsibility rests with you as the president of the United States,” he said.
The letter met with outrage, not from Obama, but from Democrat Representative Elijah Cummings (D-MD). Cummings blasted Issa in a response declaring:
“It seems obvious that your goal in sending a public letter at this time is to release the most negative and distorted view possible of the attack in Benghazi ahead of the Presidential debate on Monday evening. This is particularly disturbing given requests by Ambassador Stevens’ family not to politicize his death as part of the campaign.”
Issa asks Obama to specifically answer eleven questions about the decision to remove security personnel from Libya and how much the National Security Council was involved.
Issa’s letter didn’t pull any punches either as he declared the White House “has not been straightforward with the American people in the aftermath of the attack.”
According to The Hill, Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi should be a “bigger scandal than (former President) Nixon” because “no one died” at Watergate.
One could concur with that or apply it to something even more deadly: Operation Fast and Furious, where hundreds of people were murdered due to an operation that still has an ongoing investigation, in which even the Inspector General said it was impossible to get valuable information to determine the truth.
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