Obama...AWOL from America in Benghazi

Various media outlets, including The Weekly Standard and Newsmax, reported last night that when retiring Defense Secretary Leon Panetta was interviewed by US Senators at a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, he told them that that President Barack Obama was absent the night US Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in Benghazi, Libya, last September 11. It was questions from Republican Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire that led Panetta to explain the following time line : (1) Panetta met with Obama at a pre-scheduled 30-minute meeting at 5 pm. He and Obama spent about 20 minutes discussing the American Embassy that was surrounded in Cairo, Egypt, as well as discussing the situation that was just unfolding in Benghazi. (2) President Obama left operational details, including knowledge of what resources were available to help the Americans under attack in Benghazi, “up to us” - meaning Panetta and General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. (3) President Obama did not call Panetta or Dempsey after the 5 pm meeting to check on the status of events in Benghazi. And Panetta said, “no, but we got information that the ambassador, his life had been lost, it went to the White House.” (4) The Defense Secretary said that he did not communicate with anyone at the White House on the night of September 11. When an incredulous Senator Ayotte asked, “There was no follow-up from the White House?” Panetta answered, “No.” Obama had never called to check in, Panetta testified. When Ayotte asked whether the President had checked on what resources were available and how fast they could have been sent to the consulate, Panetta said, “The biggest problem that night was that nobody knew what was going on there.” Last September, after the assassination of Ambassador Stevens, Governor Romney commented that it seemed the administration was soft on the attackers. President Obama, while in Richmond, Virginia, harshly criticized Romney for his response to the crisis. "He [Romney] certainly understood that...if you aspire to be commander in chief you don't release a political press release.," Obama said. Obama should have criticized himself -- for being "Absent Without Leave" during the distruction of a US diplomatic compound and the assassination of the US Ambassador and three other diplomats in a mob-attack situation on the anniversary of 9/11. I cannot remember when I have been so shaken by a Washington revelation. Indeed, I thought myself long since immune from anything that might come out of Washington. But, Obama's indifference to his own diplomats in harm's way, his nonchalance in turning his duties over to others, however competent, his lack of interest or even curiosity to know what was happening or what his subordinates were doing or planning to save the situation and the Americans caught up in it, his lack of acknowledgement that his Anbassador had been killed -- has made me realize just how weak and venal a president America has in Barak Obama. He should, instead of touting his commander-in-chief successes, ask for forgiveness -- from the US diplomatic corps, from the families of those slain, and from the American people whom he so badly serves and so often treats with utter contempt.