On Sunday's political talk shows, several Republicans criticized the Obama administration's response to the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. Here's Senator John McCain of Arizona on CBS's Face the Nation:
You know, this administration is very good at touting and giving all the details like when they got Bin Laden. But now, we know that there were tapes, recordings inside the consulate during this fight, and they've gotten—they came—the F.B.I. finally got in and took those, and now they're classified as "top secret." Why would they be top secret? So the president went on various shows, despite what he said he said in the Rose Garden, about terrorist acts, he went on several programs, including "The View" including "Letterman" including before the U.N., where he continued to refer, days later, many days later, to this as a spontaneous demonstration because of a hateful video. We know that is patently false. What did the president know? When did he know it? And what did he do about it?
McCain said for "literally days and days" the White House "told the American people something that had no basis in fact whatsoever."
Newt Gingrich, on ABC's This Week:
But the bigger issue is, whether it’s unemployment or it is what happened in Benghazi, where we’ve had this strange situation over the weekend that the Secretary of Defense apparently refused to obey the President’s order, if the president is telling the truth and he actually instructed his assistants to get aid to Benghazi, we're now being told that the Secretary of Defense canceled that. And I think these kinds of things all drag down the Obama campaign.
Ohio senator Rob Portman talked on Fox News Sunday about a "shocking breakdown" with regard to the Obama administration's response:
This is not about politics. This is about a huge national security issue that affects all of us and there was a shocking breakdown, operationally, not to have the security there in the first place. And then not to respond to these guys, in their pleas for help for 7 hours, during a firefight. It’s unbelievable and now, we are hearing that the president of the United States, based on his own words, issued a directive immediately after he found out about the firefight, saying that he wanted to be sure those people on the ground were safe and they were getting what they needed. It didn't happen. This means either that the president's order was not followed, which would be a breakdown in terms of the White House procedure, or, it means the order wasn’t issued. We need to find out about this, it is not about politics, it is a very serious situation. After the fact, of course, there’s also been a lot of confusion about what happened and why it happened.
