Brian Gallimore's Blog

Blowback + Cover Up
One week before the big finish to the horse race we call presidential elections and the big story that is not being reported by the mainstream media (except maybe Fox News) is BangahaziGate. At the core of the story is the question: “what was Chris Stevens doing at the time of the attack?” Well, it looks like he was making a deal to put guns in the hands of Syrian and Libyan rebels / jihadists.
It is our (as in the Republican and Democrat leadership of the USA) foreign policy to arm and support folks like Osama Bin Laden. (which is precisely what we did years ago)
The neocon Republicans are focused on the part of the story that shows how incompetent  the Democrats are. (or how evil they are, depending on what actually happened inside the White House).  Highlights of this storyline:

• BO’s failure to call this a terrorist attack; trying to paint it as a protest spurred by a youtube video
• Failure to provide security resources in areas where needed, failure to support American government employees oversees in danger
• The two former SEALs were told not to help, but disobeyed orders and helped anyway, and eventually lost their lives
• The SEALs had enemy mortar launchers painted with laser designators, with gun ships flying in the area that could have taken them out, but were denied assistance (by the BO administration)
• Probable cover-up, as BO likely knew exactly what was happening when it happened, and choose to try to keep from looking bad.

As if that part of the story wasn’t interesting enough, the more important part is to back up a little bit and figure out why the attack occurred in the first place.  This line of questioning gets into the subject of  ‘actions have consequences’.  Neocons hate to admit that arming, funding, and training militant groups to overthrow governments oversees might have some unintended consequences.  So while the ‘right-wingers’ are criticizing BO (rightfully so), we won’t hear this part of the story.  And while BO is filling the position of president, we don’t seem to hear any of the ‘left-wingers’ criticizing these Bush/Cheney policies they hated so much just a few years ago.

Read more: Benghazi Backfire: Was Obama Arming Jihadists?