Andrew McCarthy keeps the focus on what really matters about Benghazi while reminding us of the manipulative purpose of the New York Times.I liked this quote:

What, to repeat, was Barack Obama doing on September 11, 2012, in the hours before he blithely hopped aboard Air Force One — not to be deterred from a Vegas fundraiser — while anti-American jihadists invaded our soil to war against our country? While those jihadists murdered four American officials and severely wounded others? And speaking of those others, why have they been kept under wraps by the Obama administration for the ensuing 15 months — with nary a peep from the press? Why have they been prevented from speaking publicly about what happened in Benghazi that night?

After being informed about the siege in the late afternoon, did President Obama have personal or telephone contact with any top military brass or any members of his cabinet that night? Any engaged commander-in-chief would have been burning up the phone lines, but the White House initially represented to Congress that Obama made no calls. That astounding version of events was soon contradicted by Secretary Clinton. In January 2013 congressional testimony, she claimed to have had a phone conversation with the president at around 10 p.m. Washington time. That was shortly after she had been fully briefed by Gregory Hicks, the highest ranking State Department official then on the ground in Libya — another official the administration subsequently tried to keep under wraps, and an official who was adamant in his riveting congressional testimony that an obscure anti-Mohammed video had absolutely nothing to do with the terrorist attack in Benghazi.

Did Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton really speak with each other? If they did not, as the White House initially maintained, why did she testify that they did? If they did — as claimed in the amended version of events offered by presidential spokesman Jay Carney only after Clinton’s testimony — then why did the White House originally tell Congress a different story? If Obama and Clinton did speak, moreover, what are we to make of the fact that the purported 10 p.m. call — which would have occurred while Americans, including Doherty and Woods, were still fighting for their lives — happened only minutes before the State Department put out a statement from Secretary Clinton blaming the attack on the video?

Why were there American diplomatic and intelligence facilities in Benghazi in the first place? It is not only one of the most dangerous places in the world for Americans; it is a place where Western installations — including the very State Department facility attacked on September 11, 2012 — had been subjected to serial terrorist strikes. Why, when the British government had the good sense to pull their people out of Benghazi, did Hillary Clinton deny her beleaguered State Department officials there the increased security they repeatedly requested? Indeed, why was security, in a place where Americans were in constant peril from jihadists, contracted out to local Muslim militias? What arrangements were made to ensure that American military assets were on alert to respond in the all too likely event that our facilities were overrun by Islamic supremacists? And what steps did President Obama take — or fail to take — to make sure American military assets responded to the attack?