Obama spokeswoman Stephanie Cutter appeared on the Today show this morning, and downplayed both the Benghazi attack and the cover-up that followed it.
“The president has been clear it was a terrible tragedy that took place in Benghazi; we lost four American lives. He initiated an investigation to get to the bottom of it, of what happened and how we can keep our embassies safe all over the country,” said Cutter in an interview on NBC’s “Today.”
“Every step of the way, information is learned, as intelligence is approved, of what happened on the ground that night — the president makes it available to members of Congress and the public. It’s been a very transparent process and he’s determined to bring whoever perpetrated this against our four Americans to justice.”
Do you see what she did there? Benghazi was not merely an attack “against our four Americans.” It was a successful attack against the representative of the American government and people. It was probably part of a campaign to drive the United States from eastern Libya, where the revolution began and Islamist has turned out to be quite strong. By characterizing the attack the way she did, Cutter works into the Obama narrative that terrorism still really isn’t much of a threat. She downplayed the attack and the sacrifices of the Americans killed. Not for the first time, Cutter is proving herself either to be a slippery and disingenuous character, or out of her depth when discussing anything more pressing than Big Bird and binders.
As for the “transparency” Cutter describes, the administration is now on its third iteration of what happened. The latest version is designed entirely to confuse the issue just enough to get Obama past the election (but may also be enough to get him tossed out of office later).
She may call that transparency, but just about anyone outside the administration is more likely to call the administration’s handling of Benghazi either incompetence or dishonesty. Or both.
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