Contempt for the proletariat is nothing new among imperious politicians. But President Obama must think we are dumber than all get-out, when he haughtily proclaimed, as he did Tuesday: “It’s important for us to send a message to the world that when Americans are attacked, no matter how long it takes, we will find those responsible, and we will bring them to justice.” While it was good to see Ahmed Abu Khattala taken into custody, the timing of the arrest was politically auspicious.
Mr. Abu Khattala had given interviews to the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, CBS, Reuters and the Times of London. His first interviews were conducted within days of the attack – the first apparently with Elizabeth Palmer of CBS. All of these interviews were conducted in public places, with the exception of the one with Anthony Lloyd of the Times of London. That interview took place in his home over “tea and biscuits.” This is a man who, if he had been hiding, was doing so in plain sight. Despite his known leadership of the Benghazi branch of the terrorist group Ansar al-Sharia, the United States only charged Mr. Abu Khattala with having played a “significant” role in the attack on the Consulate last August 6th.
In response to a question as to why it took the military so long to get a man that the media had found quite easily, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby responded: “Terrorists go to great lengths to evade capture. It can be a complicated process trying to get at them.” Really? More complicated than the job the media had of setting up cameras (even if they were not used) and microphones? To claim that Mr. Abu Khattala could not have been taken at almost any time assumes one has the naïveté of a buyer of the Brooklyn Bridge. Mr. Lloyd’s interview, keep in mind, took place last October – two months after the man had been publically charged.
Playing the poodle to President Obama, the sycophantic New York Times, in a front page article on Wednesday explained that the announcement on Tuesday ended “…a manhunt that had dragged on for nearly two years.” They went on to add that the “capture was a breakthrough.” It was only on page 11 that they reminded readers that Ahmed Abu Khattala had given an interview to Times reporter, David Kirkpatrick, a report that was in the October 18, 2012 issue of the New York Times. That interview, like many of the others, was conducted over two hours on a Thursday evening “at a crowded luxury hotel, sipping a strawberry frappe on a patio and scoffing at the threats coming from the American and Libyan governments,” is the way Mr. Kirkpatrick put it.