After having given up on Benghazi, Charles Krauthammer now decides the country deserves to know the truth

Charles Krauthammer, who had previously decided that the Obama Administration had successfully stonewalled inquiries into Benghazi, now writes:

These hearings are a big political risk for Republicans. Going into the 2014 election, they stand to benefit from the major issues — Obamacare, the economy, chronic unemployment — from which Benghazi hearings can only distract. Worse, if botched like previous hearings on the matter, these hearings could backfire against the GOP, as did the 1998 Clinton impeachment proceedings. On purely partisan considerations, the hearings are not worth the political risk.

But the country deserves the truth. They’ll get it if the GOP can keep the proceedings clean, factual, and dispassionate. No speeches. No grandstanding. Gowdy has got to be a tough disciplinarian — especially toward his own side of the aisle.

He notes that the inquiry should focus on three areas of inquiry: before, during, and after.

Before:

Where and to what extent was there dereliction of duty as memos, urgent pleas, and mounting evidence of danger were ignored and the U.S. ambassador allowed to enter a deathtrap?

During:

The White House acts as if these are, alternatively, either state secrets or of no importance.

For President Obama, we have three data points. At 5 p.m. EDT, he is briefed on the attack by the secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

At around 8 p.m., Obama spends an hour on the phone with Benjamin Netanyahu to tamp down a breaking, politically injurious story that Obama had snubbed the Israeli prime minister. The White House then issues a readout saying the two leaders had agreed there had been no snub.

So the White House is engaged in campaign damage control quite literally in the middle of the Benghazi events — at a time when Ambassador Chris Stevens is still missing and the final firefight that killed two other Americans is still three hours away. We’ve just learned that Obama was not in the Situation Room that night. Then where, doing what?

We know, finally, that at 10 p.m. Obama called Clinton to get an update. What did they discuss, decide, order?

As former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has pointed out, a half-hour later, State issued a statement deploring the video, setting the premise for the video excuse. Were Obama and Clinton working on a cover story — even before Glen Doherty had joined Tyrone Woods on the roof of the CIA annex where they were to die minutes later?

Yes, that’s speculation. Well, then, give us facts. After all, the White House provided a cascade of hagiographic facts about Obama’s involvement in the Osama bin Laden raid. Yet regarding Benghazi — the most serious operational challenge of his presidency — he is nowhere to be seen.

After:

We now know the White House was pushing the “video made them do it” cover-up, lest the blame be placed on administration policy. Who was involved in that decision, obviously designed to protect a president campaigning that al-Qaeda was “on the run”?