GOP lawmaker asks how Obama could sleep during Benghazi attack

Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) on Friday questioned how President Obama was able to sleep on the night of Sept. 11, 2012, knowing that a U.S. Consulate was under attack and the lives of U.S. officials were at risk.

"I have no idea if the president required a sleep aid that night, but if he did, anybody else in America has trouble sleeping, you better get what he had, because it works well," Gohmert said on the House floor.

"How the president of the United States can sleep that night, as the ambassador that he put in place, that he put in harm's way, was either under attack, already been kidnapped, being brutalized, unspeakable things being done to his person, his body."

Gohmert said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has testified that he and President Obama spoke at about 5 p.m. but that there were no other conversations with Obama that day.

"We now know the president did nothing else," Gohmert said. "He said, 'Do what you can,' in essence, and went home. Or maybe he was home when he talked to them, and did nothing else."

The attacks on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, resulted in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other U.S. citizens. Gohmert said that because the attacks lasted seven hours, the administration should have had plenty of time to orchestrate some response, but it did not.

Gohmert also chided Obama for failing to live up to a promise that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made while she was running for president in 2008.

"I remember Sen. Clinton running a commercial back in 2008 that asked the question, who do you what to take that phone call at 3 a.m.," Gohmert said.

"This would have been exactly the kind of situation, except there was no phone call at 3 a.m. The phone call had been at 5 or so in the afternoon, and there was no effort to find out 'what happened to Ambassador Stevens that I put in harm's way?' "

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