Jennifer Rubin interviews Sen. Bob Corker. Corker may be the straightest shooter on Capitol Hill.
This morning, I spoke with Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), who had just
returned from Libya, about the Benghazi debacle. He was animated and
clearly flabbergasted at the administration’s reaction. “It baffles me
that the vice president of the United States would continue to say
things that don’t square with the facts on the ground, “ he said in
reference to VP Joe Biden’s remarks in the debate
Thursday night. He reiterated, “There was no protest. There was no
reaction to the [anti-Muslim video], and they knew it in 24 hours. I
don’t understand what they are doing.”
This week he had extensive meetings with the FBI and intelligence
officials on the ground in Benghazi as well as officials from the Libyan
government. He was emphatic: “What I know is our intelligence officials
on the ground in real time and also in Washington within 24 hours knew
what had happened.”
...
In this case, he was both irate and insistent: “When four Americans
are killed, it’s just not possible that the president didn’t know [it
was a terrorist assault].. . . There is not a cell in my body that
doesn’t earnestly believe that the administration didn’t know within 24
or 48 hours.”
Biden’s effort in the debate to lay this off on the intelligence
community isn’t winning over national security experts either. The
Romney campaign put out a statement by former CIA director Michael
Hayden and former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff that
read: “During the Vice Presidential debate, we were disappointed to see
Vice President Biden blame the intelligence community for the
inconsistent and shifting response of the Obama Administration to the
terrorist attacks in Benghazi. Given what has emerged publicly about the
intelligence available before, during, and after the September 11
attack, it is clear that any failure was not on the part of the
intelligence community, but on the part of White House decision-makers
who should have listened to, and acted on, available intelligence.
Blaming those who put their lives on the line is not the kind of
leadership this country needs.”
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