Steyn: The Benghazi Lie

This is a must read column from Mark Steyn for National Review:

Shortly before last November’s election I took part in a Fox News documentary on Benghazi, whose other participants included the former governor of New Hampshire John Sununu. Making chit-chat while the camera crew were setting up, Governor Sununu said to me that in his view Benghazi mattered because it was “a question of character.” That’s correct. On a question of foreign policy or counterterrorism strategy, men of good faith can make the wrong decisions. But a failure of character corrodes the integrity of the state.

That’s why career diplomat Gregory Hicks’s testimony was so damning — not so much for the new facts as for what those facts revealed about the leaders of this republic. In this space in January, I noted that Hillary Clinton had denied ever seeing Ambassador Stevens’s warnings about deteriorating security in Libya on the grounds that “1.43 million cables come to my office” — and she can’t be expected to see all of them, or any. Once Ambassador Stevens was in his flag-draped coffin listening to her eulogy for him at Andrews Air Force Base, he was her bestest friend in the world — it was all “Chris this” and “Chris that,” as if they’d known each other since third grade. But up till that point he was just one of 1.43 million close personal friends of Hillary trying in vain to get her ear.

Now we know that at 8 p.m. Eastern time on the last night of Stevens’s life, his deputy in Libya spoke to Secretary Clinton and informed her of the attack in Benghazi and the fact that the ambassador was now missing. An hour later, Gregory Hicks received a call from the then–Libyan prime minister, Abdurrahim el-Keib, informing him that Stevens was dead. Hicks immediately called Washington. It was 9 p.m. Eastern time, or 3 a.m. in Libya. Remember the Clinton presidential team’s most famous campaign ad? About how Hillary would be ready to take that 3 a.m. call? Four years later, the phone rings, and Secretary Clinton’s not there. She doesn’t call Hicks back that evening. Or the following day.

Read the entire column here.

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Gun Control Ad From 1981; They Never Quit

By Steve Parkhurst

It was interesting recently to happen upon this anti-gun/pro-gun control ad in an issue of Time Magazine from 1981. This ad took up about half of a page in Time magazine, I’m sure that cost a pretty penny at the time. Plenty of shoddy, nonsensical “facts” were used here to attempt to state their case for gun confiscation.

This ad just goes to show that some phony arguments never go away. The gun is not the issue, the person in control of the gun is the issue. Timothy McVeigh…did he have a gun? Did the 9-11 hijackers have guns 1) to take over the airplanes, or 2) to use the airplanes themselves as weapons? There are numerous other examples of mass murders being committed, yet the pathological Leftist politicians, with the help of the media and their friends in Hollywood, never get around to the facts.

Remember Benghazi, and how the media did not want to report on anything related to Benghazi until they knew all the facts? If only such high standards were in place after Newtown. Apparently three months is all it takes to abandon media integrity.

The argument is not really about guns, is it? It is about control. It is about the limits to which the government can take away more freedom in the name of safety. Like the boiling frog, they’ll keep trying until we’re cooked. A little at a time, inch by inch, they’ll keep trying. They’ve waged this phony war for nearly 32 years and then some.

American Crossroads Ad: Intelligence

American Crossroads is out with this new ad which absolutely destroys the White House and their subsequent stories about what really happened on September 11, 2012 when Ambassador Stevens was murdered in Benghazi. This two minutes is as important as any in this election cycle.