House members call for Benghazi answers, Petraeus testimony

Members of the House on Tuesday reiterated their call for the Obama administration to answer their questions about the September attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead, and pressed for former CIA Director David Petraeus to testify on the matter.

"Congress still doesn't know why our people in Libya were left vulnerable," Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) said on the House floor. "We still don't know why the U.S. military was not sent to their defense.

"It is of the highest importance that General Petraeus, who led the CIA at the time, be brought before Congress to testify as to what really happened in Benghazi, whether there was a security lapse or whether the administration temporized on security and stood down to mollify violent, disparate groups which have nothing in common with our nation," he said.

The question of whether Petraeus will testify before Congress has been unclear since last week, when he resigned as the nation's top spy after admitting to having an extramarital affair with his biographer.

Regardless of whether Petraeus testifies, Kucinich and Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) said they are still not satisfied with the lack of information provided by the administration so far on the Libya attack, which claimed the life of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Burgess said his repeated requests for information from the State Department have been ignored so far.

"No one, not one person, is willing to talk about the details," he said on the floor. "Well, since they wouldn't talk to me in the privacy of my office, let me just ask them here in a public forum — why did our ambassador die? How did our ambassador die? It's been two months. You should know.

"Was it smoke inhalation, was it some other cause? Was there evidence of torture? Was there physical evidence of torture on the ambassador's body as it was returned?"

---