Suddenly discovering something that anyone with eyes could see before the election, Josh Gerstein at Politico tells us that "Obama's foreign policy team hits turbulence."
Please. For over a week after September 11, the administration was pretending that a video which wasn't relevant at all caused protests which never occurred were what supposedly led to the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya which killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. We had different people in the administration taking blame (but not really), and learned that but for the heroics of two of the men who died, dozens of others might have perished. But only now is Gerstein discovering "turbulence." Read on for a narrative which would be funny if it were not so sadly symptomatic of a see-no-evil press corps:
President Barack Obama and his aides touted his strengths on foreign policy and national security during the campaign, arguing his accomplishments are so significant that they buttress his case for a second term.
Now, just days after his reelection, Obama’s national security team is facing the most dramatic upheaval of his presidency.
CIA Director David Petraeus is out because of a sex scandal. The commanding general in Afghanistan, Gen. John Allen, finds himself ensnared in the same flap. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton plans to call it quits. Administration officials are dropping hints about replacing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta with Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) once Panetta departs. And Obama’s top adviser on terrorism, John Brennan, also may be heading out.
The tumult in Obama’s national security apparatus comes as he faces a daunting series of potentially crucial decisions: deciding how to use diplomacy and maybe force to rein in Iran’s nuclear program, setting the pace of the pullout of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and seeking to derail efforts by extremists to hijack the Arab Spring democracy movement.
The personnel turnover occurs as Congress is pressing hard for answers on the Sept. 11 attack that killed four Americans at the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. And the probe into that issue threatens to scuttle the hopes of Obama’s favored candidate to replace Clinton, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice.
Seriously, Obama wants Susan Rice, who spent an entire Sunday lying on the morning network news interview shows about the irrelevant video and the "spontaneous" protest as our next Secretary of State.
As Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds is sadly fond of saying (sarcastically of course), "The country is in the best of hands." And Politico, which fiddled as the truth about Benghazi burned through the administration's firewall, continues to give them a pass.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
