Terrorism

Senate hawk Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is doubling down on his theory that the Obama administration deliberately hid the truth about the attack in Libya that left four Americans dead even as the accuracy of that assertion is increasingly in doubt.

Graham, a longtime critic of Obama's foreign policy, has become the most vocal proponent of the theory that Obama tied the attack to anger over an anti-Islam video so he could look strong on national security. The issue of who knew what when has become an issue in the presidential race, with the Obama campaign now saying the president called the Sept. 11 attack on the consulate in Benghazi an “act of terror” from the beginning but continued to tie it to the video based on his intelligence team's initial assessment.

“The video had nothing to do with this because there was never a mob,” Graham told Fox News on Wednesday night. “If it's a riot based on a video that's spontaneous, they have a lot less blame. And I'd be the first to say that if this was a mob generated by video, that's a different national security threat, harder to plan for. So they wanted us to believe that.”

Reporters on the ground in Libya paint a more nuanced picture, however. Both The New York Times and Bloomberg reported this week that numerous witnesses to the attacks — and the attackers themselves — similarly describe a hastily organized strike, without any warning or protest, by well-known local Islamic militants infuriated by a U.S.-made anti-Islam video that had sparked violent protests in neighboring Egypt hours earlier.

She said administration officials were given "speaking points" by intelligence adviser James Clapper in the immediate aftermath.

Next week's debate on foreign policy will give each candidate a final chance to shape opinion on the Benghazi attack.

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Mitt Romney temporarily lost the debate on the Obama administration's handling of last month's attack in Libya during Tuesday's town hall meeting, as even many conservatives have acknowledged. By focusing narrowly on what the administration said and when — and suggesting, without proof, that the president was seeking to cover up the facts about the attack rather than simply responding to incomplete intelligence — Romney painted himself into a corner and allowed Obama to come out ahead.

Numerous questions remain, however, notably regarding lax security in Benghazi and the slow pace of the investigation into the deaths of four Americans, and Romney will be primed to pounce during Monday's debate on foreign policy. He'll also be ready to point out the obvious inconsistency in Obama's insistence that he called the attack an “act of terror” from the get-go: why, then, did his administration continue to point to an anti-Islam video as a “proximate cause” of the violence for several weeks?

As both sides duke it out for political gain, one loser is already emerging: the truth. As Bloomberg argues in a deeply reported piece from Libya, “there is ample evidence neither the Obama administration’s initial accounts nor Republican portrayals of the incident are accurate.”

"It was a passing comment about acts of terror in general," said Ryan of Obama's Sept. 12 comments.

Biden said Romney's strategy was to "make it appear that the president didn’t know or didn’t care or was lying."

Conservatives on television and Twitter say their candidate flubbed what should have been an easy attack on the President Obama's handling of the terrorist attack in Libya last month during his second faceoff with President Obama on Tuesday night.

The first death of an American ambassador since 1979, the administration's shifting explanation of the events of the attack, and the revelation that requests for more security had been turned down were seen as easy ways to cut into the president's lead on national security. 

Instead, Mitt Romney got into an argument over whether Obama called the attack an “act of terror” the very next day – an argument he lost on the debate stage.

“Romney had a huge opening that he missed” on Libya, conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer said on Fox.

Syndicated columnist Ben Shapiro, editor-at-large at Breitbart.com, said Romney “botched the Libya issue royally.”

Obama said he called the consulate attack an "act of terror" the next morning, and Crowley vouched for him.

Conservative writer and activist Brent Bozell on Tuesday launched a petition asking for President Obama to fire Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the security lapses in Benghazi, Libya.

Bozell, best known for launching the conservative Media Research Center and the Cybercast News Service, sought to pit Clinton against the rest of the administration by arguing that Vice President Biden's remarks at last week's vice presidential debate disqualified Clinton for service. The petition is being distributed by Bozell's ForAmerica nonprofit organization.

“Thursday night, Vice President Biden shocked the nation when he asserted that Secretary of State Clinton, for weeks, failed to inform the White House of the serious security deficiencies in Benghazi,” Bozell said in a statement. “Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden and the White House continue to lay this mess at the feet of Hillary Clinton.

Graham's letter to Obama and top intelligence officials is the first to publicly mention specific attacks before the 9/11 assault.