Benghazi Injured Being Silenced?

Of all the new acronyms and abbreviations we use now in everyday communication by email, texting or twittering, like LOL or OMG.

But one of my favorites is “OBE,” meaning “overcome by events.”

If something is OBE, it is just no longer necessary, or other things have taken a higher priority, or it just wasn’t wanting to happen.

Or – in the case of the Benghazi murder of four Americans serving their country – if we stall long enough, people will just forget about it.

Indeed, the Obama administration’s failure, after six months now, to establish any shred responsibility for the debacle is a perfect example of OBE. Indeed, increasing evidence tends to explain why our president should hope that we all simply forget.

According to testimony by both then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, they both had a 5 p.m. meeting with the president the evening of the Benghazi attack, during which time it commenced. After monitoring the situation by radio and video for a brief time, the president left to return to the White House about 5:30 p.m., ordering his two top warriors to do “whatever was necessary” to address the situation.

Further testimony indicated the president made no further contact or inquiries by telephone as to how the situation was progressing.

The picture that emerged revealed a president alarmingly uncurious about various options available to get help to the consul staff, or about other simultaneous Middle Eastern events that could have revealed the Benghazi situation as only one of many coordinated attacks on other U.S. diplomatic facilities.

Given the timing, It is reasonable to postulate that the president had campaigning on his mind, as well as the details of his campaign trip to Las Vegas the following day.

Equally distressing from the testimony is that no one in the Department of Defense heard from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that entire day. It was her consul and people under attack, yet she made no requests or inquiries about possibilities to protect them. The events during this debacle reveal once again that we have a commander-in-chief who loves being commander-in-chief, but who hates doing commander-in-chiefly things … assuming he has ever known how.

But I save the worst for last. Now we are learning the 30 or so survivors of the attack – seven of whom were seriously wounded – have been held incommunicado at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington for the past six months, for the most part unavailable to any media or congressional inquiry.

The administration has justified this unprecedented isolation as necessary to keep the ongoing investigation from being tainted by outside contact. Really?

The logical question to ask is: What is the Obama administration – the one, ahem, touted to be the most transparent White House ever – trying to hide from the American people now?

That the attack was not precipitated spontaneously by the infamous anti-Muslim video as Susan Rice, Obama’s UN ambassador had insisted for more than a week?

That the consul really was as vulnerable as the ambassador had been trying to tell the secretary of state – and, by extension, the president – for months?

That there really would have been time to deploy military assets from nearby bases to protect the ambassador and his staff?

In a Fox News interview, Sen. Lindsey Graham is quoted as having “had contact” with one the survivors, who have been “told to be quiet” and are afraid to come forward.

But Graham pledges to get to the bottom of the coverup.

How embarrassing – if not criminal – when the inevitable testimony of the Benghazi survivors shows the blood of the four dead Americans is directly on the hands of a disengaged president and his Secretary of State Hillary “What difference at this point does it make?” Clinton.

As responsible citizens, we must ensure the answers to all these questions never become OBE.