Two editorials regarding Benghazi

Ouch - Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post are both asking some hard-hitting questions about just went down in Benghazi, what were we doing there and how much did Obama know about the attacks. From the Wall Street Journal:

The Fog of Benghazi
The Ambassador to Libya and three other Americans were murdered September 11 in Benghazi. That we know. But too little else about what took place before, during and after the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission is clear.

The White House says Republicans are "politicizing" a tragedy. Politicians politicize, yes, but part of their job is to hold other politicians accountable. The Administration has made that difficult by offering evasive, inconsistent and conflicting accounts about one of the most serious American overseas defeats in recent years. Unresolved questions about Benghazi loom over this election because the White House has failed to resolve them.

More:

It took eight days for the Administration to formally declare that the four Americans "were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy," in the words of Matt Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center. But six days later Mr. Obama was asked by Joy Behar on "The View" if "it was an act of terrorism"? He said the government didn't know. In his September 25 U.N. address, Mr. Obama made several general references to the YouTube video but made no mention of terrorism in the context of Benghazi.

His campaign stump speech to this day includes the lines that "al Qaeda has been decimated" and the U.S. is "finally turning the page on a decade of war to do some nation-building right here at home" (Thursday in Las Vegas).

He keeps using the word decimated wrong -- when something is decimated, it's strength is reduced by ten percent. More:

The President may succeed in stonewalling Congress and the media past Election Day. But the issue will return, perhaps with a vengeance, in an Obama second term. The episode reflects directly on his competence and honesty as Commander in Chief. If his Administration is found to have dissembled, careers will be ended and his Presidency will be severely damaged�all the more so because he refused to deal candidly with the issue before the election.

Regardless of whether or not he wins the second term, he and those under his command need to be prosecuted. This was a horrific lapse in judgment -- the truth will come out, it's just a matter of when. Next from The Washington Post:

A security breakdown in Benghazi
News reporting about the Sept. 11 assault on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, has moved from the political and mostly pointless issue of when the Obama administration had publicly acknowledged that a terrorist attack had taken place to more essential questions: Why was there a security failure at the consulate, and how did U.S. forces in Libya and outside the country respond to the emergency? The result is a host of unanswered questions.

Following a single background briefing, the State Department has mostly refused to respond to inquiries about Benghazi, citing an ongoing investigation by a review board. But considerable evidence has emerged that Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, who died in the attack, and his security staff were deeply concerned about what they considered to be inadequate security.

More:

While the agencies separately defend themselves � or not � the White House appears determined to put off any serious discussion of Benghazi until after the election. Sooner or later, however, the administration must answer questions about what increasingly looks like a major security failure � and about the policies that led to it.

It all boils down to the classic: "What did the President know and when did he know it?" (from here and here)