John MaverickMcCain
... the Senator-for-Life from Arizona, former presidential candidate and even more former
foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution...
calling the president "inept" and "ignorant" in his handling of the episode.
The Arizona Republican said the administration's initial claim that an anti-Moslem video incited the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was political spin that "doesn't pass the smell test."
"It was either willful ignorance or dismal intelligence to think that people come to spontaneous demonstrations with heavy weapons, mortars, and the attack goes on for hours," McCain said Sunday on CNN's "State of the Union" program.
"To blame it on the video ... shows the absolute ineptitude and ignorance of the realities," McCain added. "It's not the videos, it's the radical Islamists [who] are pushing the videos."
McCain said the White House was initially reluctant to label the attack a planned act of terrorism for fear of exposing the level of turmoil in the Middle East, a region he characterized as "unraveling" under Obama's watch.
"It interferes with the depiction that the administration is trying to convey that Al Qaeda is on the wane [and] that everything's fine in the Middle East," said McCain, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
"This president doesn't believe in American exceptionalism and he keeps telling people we're leaving. Have you ever heard him say victory?"
McCain also hammered Obama's response to the Syrian civil war, arguing that the United States "should be arming" the rebels who are struggling against the military regime of
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Horror of Homs...
"The role of America is to lead, not to follow," McCain said.
Appearing on the same program, David Axelrod
...a Chicago-based political hack, political adviser to Barack
B.O.Obama since 2004. Following the 2008 election, he was appointed as Senior Advisor to Obama and we all see how well that worked out....
, a senior Obama campaign advisor, defended the administration's response to the Benghazi attack, arguing that the White House was simply reacting to what was known at the time.
"When you're the responsible party, when you're the administration, then you have a responsibility to act on what you know and what the intelligence community believes," Axelrod said. "What we don't need is a president or an administration that shoots first and asks questions later."