There should be a special place in hell for the scores of insiders from the White House, the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department who knew all along that the administration screwed up, that there never was an anti-video demonstration and that four Americans had been sacrificed on the career altars of Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Obama’s protectors cry politics over Benghazi fiasco

Michael Goodwin, NYPost.com

Politics! Politics! They’re playing politics in Washington!
Pretending to be modern Paul Reveres, Democrats and their media handmaidens are doing their damnedest to diminish the Benghazi revelations with the cheapest trick in town. While there is always pungent hypocrisy when one gang of politicians accuses another gang of playing politics, the current phony outrage from the Obama Protection Society is exceptionally putrid.
After all, the whole saga of Benghazi — before, during and after the terror attack — reflects nothing so much as the ultimate expression of Barack Obama’s politics. His preference for showing weakness abroad and contempt at home reached its full flowering in the massacre and its aftermath.

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Benghazi is the Obama presidency in a nutshell.
Start with the months-long refusal to protect Ambassador Chris Stevens, a sop to Islamist sensitivities opposed to a strong American presence. The resulting “soft footprint” served as an invitation to those who lust for murder, an invitation accepted with impunity on the 11th anniversary of 9/11.
Then came the callous refusal to send help during the seven hours of battle, a decision that offers its own insights into the peculiar Obama way. A field commander who takes himself out of the loop during a terrorist attack, and presumably goes to sleep, would face a court-martial.
How, then, to excuse such reprehensible conduct when it comes from the commander-in-chief? You can’t, especially when the absence was followed the next day by a campaign trip to Vegas before the evacuation from Libya was complete.
Step 3 was the coverup, a phase that continues even now. Some who are participating, such as the Democrats in Congress who tried to spin the hearing as “old news,” are partisan hacks who long ago checked their brains and integrity at the party door.
More galling are the craven functionaries at the White House who belittled the whistleblowers as “emotional,” a double euphemism for not tough and not rational. The character attacks involve reporters being offered “scoops” to tarnish those who courageously testified, so don’t be surprised when left-wing journos run with smear stories. It’s their nature.
But there should be a special place in hell for the scores of insiders from the White House, the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department who knew all along that the administration screwed up, that there never was an anti-video demonstration and that four Americans had been sacrificed on the career altars of Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Silence would have been sin enough. But many members of the team soiled themselves further by taking an active role, such as deleting the truth about a terror attack in the talking points and concocting the fiction about a demonstration.
Others, like James Clapper, pathetically defended the whole snafu, thereby giving his title — director of national intelligence — a ring of parody. And let’s never forget the five performances of Ambassador Susan Rice on the Sunday talk-show circuit. Her casual indifference to honesty makes her the perfect Obama Cabinet member.
Unhappily for all of them, the facts refuse to stay buried. The revival took too long and is far from complete, but last week’s hearing was a turning point. Calmly and firmly, Republicans should not stop digging until they unearth the whole truth.
A common trick of the liberal media is to use the word “politics” in two ways. When Democrats play politics, they are portrayed as doing so for virtuous ends. When Republicans do it, the ends are invariably described as narrow and selfish.
Benghazi makes that double standard impossible to sustain. Virtue is with those wanting the truth. Of course, the Republicans are playing politics, and there was gambling at Rick’s Café in “Casablanca,” too.
The larger question, as always, is whether the politics benefits the public. And all the huffing and puffing by Democrats about whether the Benghazi whistleblowers had anything new to say reveals how little interest they have in getting to the bottom of the death of four Americans at the hands of terrorists. They are putting party before duty, plain and simple.
Worse, the attempt to silence the whistleblowers by Hillary’s henchmen, and the demotion of one in a way that looks to be a clear case of retaliation, demolishes any pretense that the White House wants the truth. Instead, it will fight like hell to keep the public ignorant.
That’s politics, too. The lowest, most despicable kind.