Why did the White House lie?

In the matter of the death of our ambassador, an embassy official
and two U.S. Navy veterans.

Why did the administration lie?

Why did it, from the first hours of the attack on our consulate in Libya, purposely and persistently misstate what had happened and the motives and identity of the people involved?

For more than a week, the president, secretary of state, UN ambassador and White House press spokesman all insisted that the murderous attack had been the organic outgrowth of a protest over an anti-Muslim YouTube video. It was, as they described it, a protest gone bad, an essentially innocent escalation of emotions sparked by an obscure video’s disrespectful treatment of the prophet Mohammed.

They were insistent that the matter had not been premeditated, that it had not been terrorism, that it was not truly an attack against the United States.

Even though every bit of evidence, and any number of on-the-scene press accounts, told a different story.

A story that has subsequently been verified in very large part.

Also troubling is the administration’s lackadaisical approach to investigating the incident.

The FBI – charged with determining what happened – has only this weekend gotten to Libya. Our ambassador was killed, and we can’t put investigators on the ground for almost two weeks? Several news organizations were on the scene the next day, most interviewed witnesses and participants, video of the entire complex was available, newscasts featured maps and diagrams, and the federal government hadn’t even gotten there yet?

The consulate and safe house were unsecured crime scenes where curious onlookers rooted through the debris from the first hours after the attack.

And maybe that’s a good thing. Had they not, our ambassador would have received no medical care, and who knows what effort would or would not have eventually been taken to recover his remains.

It actually seems that the administration took pains not to investigate the attack, and to so delay its investigation that no evidence or suspects would remain.

It seems fairly clear that the White House didn’t want to discover whatever an investigation might discover.

Which is curious.

And worthy of scrutiny.

Some say that the White House was quick to blame the video for the violence because that shifted scrutiny away from failures of its own foreign policy in regard to the Muslim nations, and to be consistent with its blame-America-first policy.

Both those theories may be correct.

But neither of them, honestly, seems to provide sufficient motivation to push the Obama Administration into such a broad-based and insistent public distortion.

So it makes you think there might be something more.

And this is a speculation about what that something more might be.

Is it possible that there was some gun walking involved in this matter? Was this a Fast and Furious of Mediterranean Africa?

Here’s what I mean.

Until we decided to destabilize, topple and kill Khadafy, the Libyan central government ruled the nation, and had for decades. It was a fairly stable society.

But that was then, and this is now. And getting from the one to the other required more than just a few NATO jets flying Mach 3 over the desert.

It required boots on the ground.

Militia boots.

It required groups of locals who could raise up an iron fist and smash their dictator’s head.

And that took munitions.

Lots of them.

Guns and rockets and mortars and RPGs.

Just like the ones that were used to attack our consulate.

Which raises the question: What is the history of the militias in Libya? Which ones received what sort of military and financial aid from the United States and NATO when Khadafy was being toppled?

And, more to the point, did we arm the militants who have now turned and struck us? Did our own weapons take down our ambassador and his three brave compatriots?

That’s the question.

That’s what should be asked, and that’s what should be answered.

That would be big.

That would be big enough to explain a White House whitewash.