The Same Boring Questions

Things have quieted down on the Benghazi front somewhat, which is fortuitous for the administration going into the Thanksgiving week. Obama and Hillary have been gallivanting across Southeast Asia (their mission is important there) along with their press flacks, which tends to stifle any coverage.  December will be dominated by fiscal cliffs so the week after Thanksgiving is probably the only time Congress has to make any headway towards sorting out the truth before this story evaporates into the dust (along with the investigation into administration leaking).

Despite the lull some questions remain unanswered, seemingly clouded by the administration's fear of sunshine. A good summary was posted in comments at Maguire's blog, reposted here:

• Why was there substandard 9/11 security in the Benghazi consulate to begin with?
• Why were repeated requests by Ambassador Stevens for increased security disregarded?
• What is being done by the State Dept. so this doesn't happen again?
• Were Navy SEALS/CIA contractors Woods and Doherty definitively told to stand down?
• If Woods and Doherty were told to stand down...why?
• Was anyone else at the CIA annex told to stand down?
• If stand down decisions were made... who made the stand down decisions?
• Why did they get no backup support despite repeated requests?
• Were air assets really too far away to respond?
• If they were to far to respond...why were they so far away?

There are actually 21 more at the site. Included therein are some of the promises made by the president, who summarized them for a local Denver reporter on October 26--specifically, a vow to find out what happened, make sure it never happens again and to bring the people who did it to justice (he still wasn't calling them terrorists even at that late date).

It's unclear how we're going to make sure a terrorist attack never happens again against a lightly defended diplomatic mission but this blog is written by one of those inferior types who is out of touch with America and won't be leading us into any futures. Even still, the superior types should want the truth just the same.

So let's add a few more.  What's the status of Egypt's (specifically president Morsi's) request to trade the Blind Sheikh Abdel-Rahman for a player to be named later?  What about Ayman al-Zawahiri, are we any closer to rounding him up?  Do we have any idea where he might be?  It's not as if he's harmless.  And what if some of the fighters participating in Benghazi were from AQ in Iraq?   Will part of bringing them to justice involve penetrations of that group in Iraq?  Does the Baghdad government support us this?  Do they even have any comment?