"Rand Paul Explains His Surprise Vote For Chuck Hagel."

"The president gets to choose political appointees."

Yes. Exactly. Torment them. And then give the President what he wants.

And hold him accountable for the consequences.

Why did the White House deceive us after the Benghazi attack?

Ask Bill Kristol and Peter Wehner in The Wall Street Journal:

Presumably for two reasons. The first is that the true account of events undercut the president's claim during the campaign that al Qaeda was severely weakened in the aftermath of the killing of Osama bin Laden. The second is that a true account of what happened in Benghazi that night would have revealed that the president and his top national-security advisers did not treat a lethal attack by Islamic terrorists on Americans as a crisis. The commander in chief not only didn't convene a meeting in the Situation Room; he didn't even bother to call his Defense secretary or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Not a single presidential finger was lifted to help Americans under attack.

This is an embarrassment and a disgrace. Is it too much to hope that President Obama is privately ashamed of his inattention and passivity that night?  

I think he is ashamed. Here's what I've been assuming happened: It looked like our people were overwhelmed and doomed, so there was shock, sadness, and acceptance. But then the fight went on for 7 or 8 hours. The White House folk decided there was nothing to do but accept the inevitable, and then they witnessed a valiant fight which they had done nothing to support. It was always too late to help. It was too late after one hour, then too late after 2 hours, then too late after 3 hours.... When were these people going to die already? After that was all over, how do you explain what you did?

IN THE COMMENTS: CWJ said:

Althouse's surmised timeline if true is the ultimate in —

"What difference, at this point, would it make?"

Perhaps Hillary was telling us more than met the eye. 

Congressman Cotton was excellent on drones and Benghazi on "Fox News Sunday."

(Transcript. Video.) I had never heard of the guy, but he impressed the hell out of me, in part because the host Chris Wallace, introduced Cotton — a Republican from Arkansas — this way:

Congressman Cotton, for people who don't know you, you are kind of an interesting figure. You went to Harvard, you went to Harvard Law School, and then you spent five years on active duty, on the front lines, in Iraq and Afghanistan, so you have got a lot of credibility on this issue on both sides of the equation.

I'm not a complete pushover for credentials, but this made me want to pay attention when Wallace invited him to respond to Senator Dianne Feinstein's idea that we need, as Wallace put it, "a secret drone court, where the president would have to go to get approval before putting terror suspects on his kill list.... How do you feel about this idea? Before the president could target someone for assassination, especially an American citizen, he'd have to go get approval from a judge?"

COTTON: We don't need federal judges involved in sensitive and urgent national security matters, and it would be an unconstitutional infringement on the president's rights to keep America safe. So, if you take up arms against America and you fight in a terrorist training camp or on the front lines in Pakistan or Afghanistan or Yemen, you shouldn't be surprised if America reaches out and exacts justice against you.

A while later, there was a discussion of Leon Panetta's testimony about Benghazi. Co-panelist Bill Kristol went first and laid out the criticism of Obama pithily:

KRISTOL: I think it is genuinely shocking. The president -- Leon Panetta walked out of the Oval Office at 5:30 that night, after a previously scheduled meeting. The president never called -- he knew -- he briefed the president on what was happening in Benghazi and that the American ambassador was missing, and it was clear there could well be sustained and ongoing attacks, and the president never spoke to the secretary of defense or the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff the rest of that night, and, interestingly, Secretary Panetta said he never spoke to the White House later this night. So it's not as if he spoke to the national security adviser, Tom Donilon, or the chief of staff, Jack Lew, and said, and conveyed a message to or from the president.

So basically, the president seems to have checked out. He spent an hour that evening on the phone with the Israeli prime minister, Bibi Netanyahu, because there has been that flap about Israel at the Democratic Convention the week before, and I think he wanted for political reasons to show that he was in touch with the Israelis. They did a readout of that call, the National Security Council spokesman did. So they're busy talking to the Israeli prime minister, doing the readout of the call for the press, and he is not talking to Panetta and, insofar as we -- and Donilon, apparently, is not talking to Panetta. And it is really, I think, a dereliction of duty on the part of the president and his senior staff, and I think they should be asked about it. I think Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, and Jack Lew, the White House chief of staff, should -- the president did not talk to anyone. Did they even talk to the secretary of defense, or did they just say, do what you can and then totally checked out for that evening, and then the next morning the president goes off to Las Vegas for a fund-raiser?

Cotton followed on, bringing in his military expertise:

COTTON: It is not just shocking, I would say it is outrageous as well, and it shows he has lack of preparation to be the commander in chief and lead troops when they are in combat. You know, you mentioned I was in the Army. At Fort Benning, where I spent a year, you learn the eight-step troop leading procedures. Step eight, the final step, is not issue an order. Step seven is issue the order. Step eight, which is the most important step, is supervise. He said in September that I issued a directive to take whatever steps are necessary to protect our troops and our assets. And then as Bill said, he never again followed up, he never asked, is my directive being executed? That is the essence of leadership, and this is a complete failure of leadership.

WALLACE: What about the argument, Congressman, and I don't know, and Bill raises a legitimate question, maybe he was doing this through his national security adviser.

COTTON: What General Dempsey and Secretary Panetta said, indicates there was no further contact from the White House, and the president showed no curiosity at all. He had a conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu that was in the middle of [the] political season when he was receiving criticism for not being engaged with the prime minister, and then probably preparing to fly off to Las Vegas the next day for a fundraiser.

When you have troops in contact -- when I was in Afghanistan, we had troops in contact. I was right next to the radio, monitoring that at all times. When the president has troops in contact in an embassy that he knows is insecure, that has to be the very first priority.

Cotton also got my attention earlier in the show when Wallace asked whether the decision to have Marco Rubio deliver the GOP response to the SOTU makes him "the new face of the Republican Party on Capitol Hill."

COTTON: I wouldn't say that decision makes him. I think he has been an emerging leader on Capitol Hill for Republicans, and across the country for two years now. He's a generation of new leaders, not just Marco, but Paul Ryan and Scott Walker and so forth, who are emerging and who I think are going to be the leaders of our party going forward.

So, wanting to portray Rubio as not The One but part of "a generation of new leaders" and needing to name some names, Cotton comes up with Paul Ryan — the erstwhile VP nominee — and — of all the others — Scott Walker. I read that out loud and Meade deemed it time to play the Governor Walker anthem one more time:

"Is Obama's drone war giving us..."

"... exactly what we want?"

ADDED: CIA nominee John O. Brennan defends the drones.

"We must, however, use these technologies carefully and responsibly.... Consequently, we apply rigorous standards and a rigorous process of review." He added that "we are working to refine, clarify and strengthen this process and our standards." But the government currently has the authority to conduct drone strikes "against al-Qaeda and associated forces" without "geographical limitation," he said.

The Justice Department memo detailing when the U.S. can use drones to kill Americans.

The leaked document asserts that it's legal when:

• An informed, high-level official of the US government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the US

• Capture is infeasible and the US continues to monitor whether capture becomes feasible

• The operation would be conducted in a manner consistent with applicable law of war principles

"The U.S. military will end its policy of excluding women from combat, officials said."

"Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will announce Thursday plans to open combat jobs and direct combat units to female troops, multiple officials confirmed to CNN."

Email, just now, from CNN.

"Unlike so many of the lemmings and partisans of Washington DC, Hagel actually called out the catastrophe of the Iraq War as it happened."

"The neocons cannot forgive him for exposing what they wrought on the nation and the world. For good measure, he has a Purple Heart and has served in combat. Not easy to say about most of the Iraq War armchair warriors and war criminals."

ADDED: That link goes to Andrew Sullivan (discussing Peter Beinart), but if you want your choice of links to uproar over Hagel, there are plenty at Memeorandum.

Fearing election loss, the Obama administration rushed to "develop explicit rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by unmanned drones."

The NYT reported the other day. Its sources say they wanted "a new president [to] inherit clear standards and procedures."

That means that the President was fine with the lack of rules/standards/procedures to confine his own power.

Mr. Obama and his advisers are still debating whether remote-control killing should be a measure of last resort against imminent threats to the United States, or a more flexible tool, available to help allied governments attack their enemies or to prevent militants from controlling territory.

Why are they still working on it? I imagine that every attempt to put the rules in writing and to cover everything they've already done (and want to keep doing) ends up with something they can't justify explicitly saying.

In an interview with Mark Bowden for a new book on the killing of Osama bin Laden, “The Finish,” Mr. Obama said that “creating a legal structure, processes, with oversight checks on how we use unmanned weapons, is going to be a challenge for me and my successors for some time to come.”

The president expressed wariness of the powerful temptation drones pose to policy makers. “There’s a remoteness to it that makes it tempting to think that somehow we can, without any mess on our hands, solve vexing security problems,” he said.

Tempting no-mess remoteness. That sounds like a much bigger theme... like the overarching theme of the Obama administration.

Cliff jumpers.

"A growing bloc of emboldened liberals say they’re not afraid to watch defense spending get gouged and taxes go up on every American if a budget deal doesn’t satisfy their priorities."

Here’s what these progressives fear: an agreement that keeps lower tax rates for the wealthy, hits the social safety net with unpalatable cuts and leaves Pentagon spending unscathed. In other words, they’d rather walk the country off the cliff than watch President Barack Obama cave on long-held liberal priorities.

"If someone decided that potential repercussions in the Arab world outweighed the need to do 'whatever we need to do' to 'secure our personnel,' who made that decision?"

"Did the Secretary of Defense countermand the President’s directive? Did the President rescind his own directive? Or — and I hate to ask such a distrustful question regarding the man who is our Commander in Chief — was such a directive ever actually given?"

"[A]t least two networks have emails from the National Security Adviser’s office telling a counterterrorism group to stand down."

Says Newt Gingrich, reporting what he emphasizes is "a rumor."

"But they were a group in real-time trying to mobilize marines and C-130s and the fighter aircraft, and they were told explicitly by the White House stand down and do nothing. This is not a terrorist action. If that is true, and I’ve been told this by a fairly reliable U.S. senator, if that is true and comes out, I think it raises enormous questions about the president’s role, and Tom Donilon, the National Security Adviser’s role, the Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, who has taken it on his own shoulders, that he said don’t go. And that is, I think, very dubious, given that the president said he had instructions they are supposed to do everything they could to secure American personnel."

"Not knowing exactly what was taking place, the two SEALs set up a defensive perimeter."

"Unfortunately Ambassador Stevens was already gravely injured, and Foreign Service officer, Sean Smith, was dead. However, due to their quick action and suppressive fire, twenty administrative personnel in the embassy were able to escape to safety. Eventually, these two courageous men were overwhelmed by the sheer numbers brought against them, an enemy force numbering between 100 to 200 attackers which came in two waves. But the stunning part of the story is that Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty killed 60 of the attacking force. Once the compound was overrun, the attackers were incensed to discover that just two men had inflicted so much death and destruction."

ScottOnCapeCod, via Instapundit.

Petraeus: "No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not to help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply inaccurate."

William Kristol: "So who in the government did tell 'anybody' not to help those in need? Someone decided not to send in military assets to help those Agency operators. Would the secretary of defense make such a decision on his own? No. It would have been a presidential decision. There was presumably a rationale for such a decision. What was it? When and why—and based on whose counsel obtained in what meetings or conversations—did President Obama decide against sending in military assets to help the Americans in need?"

Draw the necessary inferences. This is important.

Biden said "Did your son always have balls the size of cue balls?”

... to the father of one of the former Navy SEALs killed in Benghazi.

Charles Woods, father of Tyrone Woods... recounted his interactions with the president, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Biden at the ceremony for the Libya victims at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland...

“When [President Obama] finally came over to where we were, I could tell that he was rather conflicted, a person who was not at peace with himself,” Woods said. “Shaking hands with him, quite frankly, was like shaking hands with a dead fish. His face was pointed towards me but he would not look me in the eye, his eyes were over my shoulder.”

“I could tell that he was not sorry,” he added. “He had no remorse.”

Beck said he wanted to give the president “the benefit of the doubt,” and asked Woods how he could be sure that Obama wasn’t just uncomfortable or nervous during their conversation. Woods said it was Obama’s “demeanor.”

Hillary Clinton’s comments to Woods raise even more questions about the White House’s official story on the Benghazi attack, which has already been extremely inconsistent.

After apologizing for his loss, Woods said Clinton told him that the U.S. would “make sure that the person who made that film is arrested and prosecuted.”

Charles Woods also read this statement:

“I want to honor my son, Ty Woods, who responded to the cries for help and voluntarily sacrificed his life to protect the lives of other Americans. In the last few days it has become public knowledge that within minutes of the first bullet being fired the White House knew these heroes would be slaughtered if immediate air support was denied. Apparently, C-130s were ready to respond immediately. In less than an hour, the perimeters could have been secured and American lives could have been saved. After seven hours fighting numerically superior forces, my son’s life was sacrificed because of the White House’s decision. This has nothing to do with politics, this has to do with integrity and honor. My son was a true American hero. We need more heroes today. My son showed moral courage. This is an opportunity for the person or persons who made the decision to sacrifice my son’s life to stand up.”

Camille Paglia, who voted for Obama in '08, delivers a fine rant about why she's not voting for him this time.

She's interviewed on video here, by Glenn Reynolds. Most of the interview is about art in America and her new book "Glittering Images" (which I just bought, in Kindle). But in the end, she's asked why she's not voting for Obama — she's voting for Jill Stein — and out flow the words, which I started transcribing without knowing how long she'd go on. I kept transcribing, because it was all such great material, so here it is (with a few screen grabs, taken from the art section of the interview):

I was very excited about him. I thought he was a moderate. I thought that his election would promote racial healing in the country. 

This is the point at which I started transcribing, thinking: This is how I felt, when I voted for Obama in 2008. Except I wouldn't say I was "very excited." I wasn't caught up in the ecstasy. I thought it was the better bet, compared to the GOP alternative, and I hoped for the moderation and advancement in attitudes about race.

It would be a tremendous transformation of attitudes. And instead: one thing after another. Not least: I consider him, now, one of the most racially divisive and polarizing figures ever. I think it's going to take years to undo the damage to relationships between the races. 

Yes, this hope for racial transformation got squandered early, over that awful Henry Louis Gates incident. Back to Paglia:

But beyond that, I am just sick and tired of endless war. I was in favor of bombing the hell out of the Afghanistan mountains after 9/11, but I would have never agreed to this land war in Afghanistan, this endless land war, as well as things like this Libyan incursion that Obama appears to have been pushed into by these women, like Hillary Clinton and Samantha Power, the chaos in foreign policy, the bowing to foreign leaders.

Also the Obamacare: of course, we need health care reform in this country. What a mess! Everyone agrees about that. But the Obamacare is, to me, a Stalinist intrusion — okay? — into American culture.

The creation of this culture of surveillance, from these bureaucracies, which is also carried over into Obama's endorsement of drones on the military level as well as for police control of the population. I mean, I don't understand how any... veteran of the 1960s who's a Democrat could not see the dangers here, that Obama is a statist. It's exactly what Bob Dylan was warning about in "Subterranean Homesick Blues," okay?

I paused the video at "It's exactly what Bob Dylan was warning about" and asked Meade what song she's about to name, and he said "Masters of War," and I said "That's what I thought." But it's "Subterranean Homesick Blues," and as soon as she says it, we know why. (Look out kid/They keep it all hid/Better jump down a manhole/Light yourself a candle...)

You don't want government agencies being empowered to intrude into people's lives like this. The controlling force in Obamacare is the IRS! Okay? This flies in the face of what the Free Speech Movement was about at Berkeley or about any of the values, I feel, of my generation.

Yes. Exactly. This is how the Democratic Party lost me — by trading freedom for statism.

So I feel the Democratic Party needs to be shattered and remade to recover its true progressive roots. I don't see progressives. All I see is white upper-middle-class liberals who speak in this unctuous way about the needs of the poor.

Unctuous. Yes. White upper-middle-class liberals lubricating themselves.

They have no connection whatever with the working class. Okay? It's the professional class gone amok. And that's why they don't notice what a bureaucratic nightmare Obamacare is.

Is "horses and bayonets" Obama's new thing — after Big Bird and Binders Full of Women?

Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams says these things aren't working:

Where are those glorious debate memes of times gone by?...

There was Battleship. And there was the night’s biggest winner, Obama’s smooth dis to Romney, “You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military’s changed.” Faster than you could tweet “Oh, snap!,” the inevitable Tumblr was born.

Yet the whole thing felt less fun this time around, and a lot more forced. 

Big Bird and Binders Full of Women were words that came out of Romney's mouth. "Horses and bayonets" was inserted by Obama. It's one thing to have fun with Romneyisms, quite another to accept a faux-Romneyism cooked up by Obama... especially when Obama is making fun of the military and what comes out of his head is an old children's game — suggesting that he thinks this real-life killing and dying is some kind of game — and an image of the historical military — which seems to be about the movies he's watched, not anything that about Romney.

Bob Schieffer was a little doddering, but couldn’t match Jim Lehrer for FAIL worthiness. Josh Romney did not make with the crazy eyes. In short, as we all learned long ago from “Mean Girls,” you can’t make a thing a thing any more than you can plan for spontaneity.

Speaking of movies, I've never seen "Mean Girls." I don't get the reference. I'm not in your "we all." Is it the making a thing a thing thing or the plan for spontaneity thing?

But back to the landscape of Obama's mind — where kids fiddle with plastic Hasbro toys and old war movies play, from which he concocted a Romney gaffe that Romney never gaffed — why is there no picture there of the horse soldiers of the Afghanistan War?

The U.S. special operations teams that led the American invasion in Afghanistan a decade ago did something that no American military had done since the last century: ride horses into combat.

"It was like out of the Old Testament," says Lt. Col. Max Bowers, retired Green Beret, who commanded the three horseback teams.

"You expected Cecil B. DeMille to be filming and Charlton Heston to walk out."

It was like a movie, but it really happened, and those men were heroes. Is it so hard to call them to mind, now — in these days of unmanned drones, who kill when you point at a name on a card, or hover overhead and watch as — it can't be real — our ambassador fights for his life for 7 hours?

"The White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, and numerous military headquarters monitored the entire battle in real time via the phone calls from Benghazi and video from a drone overhead."

"Our diplomats fought for seven hours without any aid from outside the country."

Four Americans died while the Obama national-security team and our military passively watched and listened. The administration is being criticized for ignoring security needs before the attack and for falsely attributing the assault to a mob. But the most severe failure has gone unnoticed: namely, a failure to aid the living.

VP debate substance: "Biden contradicts State Department on Benghazi security."

Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy:

"We weren't told they wanted more security. We did not know they wanted more security there," Biden said.

In fact, two security officials who worked for the State Department in Libya at the time testified Thursday that they repeatedly requested more security and two State Department officials admitted they had denied those requests.

"All of us at post were in sync that we wanted these resources," the top regional security officer in Libya over the summer, Eric Nordstrom, testified. "In those conversations, I was specifically told [by Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Charlene Lamb] ‘You cannot request an SST extension.' I determined I was told that because there would be too much political cost. We went ahead and requested it anyway."

Nordstrom was so critical of the State Department's reluctance to respond to his calls for more security that he said, "For me, the Taliban is on the inside of the building."

"We felt great frustration that those requests were ignored or just never met," testified Lt. Col. Andrew Wood, a Utah National Guardsman who was leading a security team in Libya until August.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) released the unclassified cables containing those requests.

Was Biden ignorant of all this, was he lying at the debate, or did he mean to assert that the State Department officials were lying?

The Libya question opened the debate. Let's look at the transcript:

RADDATZ: I would like to begin with Libya. On a rather somber note, one month ago tonight, on the anniversary of 9/11, Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other brave Americans were killed in a terrorist attack in Benghazi. The State Department has now made clear, there were no protesters there. It was a pre-planned assault by heavily armed men. Wasn't this a massive intelligence failure, Vice President Biden?

BIDEN: What is was, it was a tragedy, Martha. It -- Chris Stevens was one of our best. We lost three other brave Americans. I can make absolutely two commitments to you and all the American people tonight. One, we will find and bring to justice the men who did this. And secondly, we will get to the bottom of it, and whatever — wherever the facts lead us, wherever they lead us, we will make clear to the American public, because whatever mistakes were made will not be made again....

Biden avoids the question. On a question that he could have predicted and should have prepared for, he makes the lame move of labeling what happened "a tragedy," which really translates to: We don't want any responsibility. Something just happened. Who could have predicted? But we'll investigate and "get to the bottom" of it. If there were any mistakes — whatever mistakes — we won't make them again. I guess there's an implicit denial that there was an "intelligence failure," which is what Raddatz asked about. If his point was it was all a big surprise — who could have known?/next time we'll do better — then what explains all the talk about the video and the (nonexistent) protests, about which Obama, et al. talked as if they had information. It's not enough to say we will get to the bottom of it when you were acting — as long as you could get away with it — as if you had gotten to the bottom of it.

Biden proceeds to run out his 2 minute clock by talking generically about national security — did you know it's the President's "most important responsibility"? — and specifically — though it's beyond the scope of the question — about Iraq and Afghanistan, about the killing of bin Laden, and the President's "steady hand and clear vision."

It's Ryan's turn, and after "We mourn the loss of these four Americans who were murdered," he focuses on the video-protests story that — based on the State Department reports — we now know is completely wrong:

RYAN: When you take a look at what has happened just in the last few weeks, they sent the U.N. ambassador out to say that this was because of a protest and a YouTube video. It took the president two weeks to acknowledge that this was a terrorist attack.

He went to the U.N. and in his speech at the U.N. he said six times — he talked about the YouTube video.

Look, if we’re hit by terrorists we’re going to call it for what it is, a terrorist attack. Our ambassador in Paris has a Marine detachment guarding him. Shouldn’t we have a Marine detachment guarding our ambassador in Benghazi, a place where we knew that there was an Al Qaida cell with arms?

This is becoming more troubling by the day. They first blamed the YouTube video. Now they’re trying to blame the Romney-Ryan ticket for making this an issue.

He then uses some of his time to respond to the nonresponsive material Biden threw in (about Iraq and Afghanistan), but he ties it back to Libya by ending with:

RYAN: This Benghazi issue would be a tragedy in and of itself, but unfortunately it’s indicative of a broader problem. And that is what we are watching on our TV screens is the unraveling of the Obama foreign policy, which is making the (inaudible) more chaotic us less safe.

Raddatz follows up with Ryan, prodding him with what was the Obama administration's main talking point immediately after the attack:

RADDATZ: I just want to you about right in the middle of the crisis [sic]. Governor Romney, and you’re talking about this again tonight, talked about the weakness; talked about apologies from the Obama administration. Was that really appropriate right in the middle of the crisis?

RYAN: On that same day, the Obama administration had the exact same position. Let’s recall that they disavowed their own statement that they had put out earlier in the day in Cairo. So we had the same position, but we will — it’s never too early to speak out for our values.

"Our values" seems to be one of his planned big themes, and he shifts away from that one thing Romney said to broader issues:

We should have spoken out right away when the green revolution was up and starting; when the mullahs in Iran were attacking their people. We should not have called Bashar Assad a reformer when he was turning his Russian-provided guns on his own people. We should always stand up for peace, for democracy, for individual rights.

And we should not be imposing these devastating defense cuts, because what that does when we equivocate on our values, when we show that we’re cutting down on defense, it makes us more weak. It projects weakness. And when we look weak, our adversaries are much more willing to test us. They’re more brazen in their attacks, and are allies are less willing to…

(CROSSTALK)

BIDEN: With all due respect, that’s a bunch of malarkey.

That was Biden's first interruption (and first euphemism for "bullshit"). Raddatz rewards the interruption, presumably started to do what she said at the outset she'd do: "encourage a discussion between the candidates with follow-up questions." Better to encourage the crosstalk then to let the candidates get by plugging in prepared speeches.

RADDATZ: And why is that so?

BIDEN: Because not a single thing he said is accurate. First of all…

Not a single thing? Even the part where he accused you guys of lying about the video?

RADDATZ: Be specific.

BIDEN: I will be very specific. Number one, the — this lecture on embassy security — the congressman here cut embassy security in his budget by $300 million below what we asked for, number one. So much for the embassy security piece.

No, not "so much." All you've done is accuse Ryan of hypocrisy, for budget cutting. That does not address the failure to provide more security in Libya where it was most needed.

Number two, Governor Romney, before he knew the facts, before he even knew that our ambassador was killed, he was out making a political statement which was panned by the media around the world. And this talk about this — this weakness. I — I don’t understand what my friend’s talking about here.

Ryan defended Romney's making the statement, and Biden responds that it wasn't a good idea. That doesn't establish that something's "inaccurate." The factual deficiency is Biden's, and Biden is trying to distract us from that by disagreeing with opinions of Ryan's and portraying those differences of opinion as lies.

BIDEN: We — this is a president who’s gone out and done everything he has said he was going to do. This is a guy who’s repaired our alliances so the rest of the world follows us again. This is the guy who brought the entire world, including Russia and China, to bring about the most devastating — most devastating — the most devastating efforts on Iran to make sure that they in fact stop (inaudible). Look, I — I just — I mean, these guys bet against America all the time.

Raddatz directs the conversation "back to Libya" and the issue she raised at the outset that Biden has been avoiding:

RADDATZ: What were you first told about the attack? Why — why were people talking about protests? When people in the consulate first saw armed men attacking with guns, there were no protesters. Why did that go on (inaudible)?

Great intervention by Raddatz!

BIDEN: Because that was exactly what we were told by the intelligence community. The intelligence community told us that. 

That is, he denies that the administration made up the video story. He blames the intelligence community. How did the intelligence community make up something so bizarre? Public protests that didn't take place?

BIDEN: As they learned more facts about exactly what happened, they changed their assessment. 

But why would they make an assessment that included the report of vivid public events that didn't happen? That's unbelievable on its face. Malarkey!

BIDEN:  That’s why there’s also an investigation headed by Tom Pickering, a leading diplomat from the Reagan years, who is doing an investigation as to whether or not there are any lapses, what the lapses were, so that they will never happen again.

RADDATZ: And they wanted more security there.

Another great Raddatz intervention, this one calling attention to the very point highlighted by Foreign Policy.

BIDEN: Well, we weren’t told they wanted more security there. We did not know they wanted more security again. And by the way, at the time we were told exactly — we said exactly what the intelligence community told us that they knew. That was the assessment. And as the intelligence community changed their view, we made it clear they changed their view.

And that is the lie of the evening! How can that not be a lie?

BIDEN: That’s why I said we will get to the bottom of this. You know, usually when there’s a crisis, we pull together. We pull together as a nation. 

He's begging us not to look any further into the lie he just told. Don't fault us for the egregious fault we just committed.

BIDEN: But as I said, even before we knew what happened to the ambassador, the governor was holding a press conference — was holding a press conference. That’s not presidential leadership.

Please, he's begging us, look at that one thing Romney said. He criticized us, at a time when there should be no criticizing. Raddatz — really nicely! — picks up the theme of Romney's remark, which was about how the United States should not apologize:

RADDATZ: Mr. Ryan, I want to ask you about — the Romney campaign talks a lot about no apologies. He has a book called called “No Apologies.” Should the U.S. have apologized for Americans burning Korans in Afghanistan? Should the U.S. apologize for U.S. Marines urinating on Taliban corpses?

RYAN: Oh, gosh, yes. Urinating on Taliban corpses? What we should not apologize for…

RADDATZ: Burning Korans, immediately?

RYAN: What — what we should not be apologizing for are standing up for our values. 

See? "Our values" — that's a planned theme.

RYAN: What we should not be doing is saying to the Egyptian people, while Mubarak is cracking down on them, that he’s a good guy and, in the next week, say he ought to go.

What we should not be doing is rejecting claims for — for calls for more security in our barracks, in our Marine — we need Marines in Benghazi when the commander on the ground says we need more forces for security. There were requests for extra security; those requests were not honored.

Ryan should have hit Biden hard on his denial that there were requests for more security. Biden just lied, and he's already accused you of lying. 

RYAN: Look, this was the anniversary of 9/11. It was Libya, a country we knew we had Al Qaida cells there, as we know Al Qaida and its affiliates are on the rise in Northern Africa. And we did not give our ambassador in Benghazi a Marine detachment?

Of course there’s an investigation, so we can make sure that this never happens again, but when it comes to speaking up for our values, we should not apologize for those.

"Our values...." I think he's made a strategic decision to be positive, to resonate with the people's desire for optimism. He's not going to stoop to you're a liar/no, you're a liar ugliness. He'll keep calling us to a higher ground.

Here’s the problem. Look at all the various issues out there, and it’s unraveling before our eyes. The vice president talks about sanctions on Iran. They got — we’ve had four…

At that, Raddatz declares an end to the Libya segment. Ryan didn't take advantage of many openings he had. Biden provided the material Ryan could have used to crush him. He chose not to. And Biden, who was thrown horribly off balance by a very damaging opening question by the moderator, stayed on his feet to fight the next round. And boy, was he itching to fight.

UPDATE: A White House spokesman attempts to clear things up.

"When it comes to racial demagoguery, the right has become everything it says it hates about the left."

Says Conor Friedersdorf:

If the New York Times was constantly searching for archival footage to prove that Mitt Romney doesn't like black people, or that he is "whipping up race hatred," the conservative media would accuse them of frivolously ignoring the actual issues that this election ought to turn on. It would say that they were exploiting the racial anxieties of Americans to tarnish the character of a man whose long record of public policy-making shows no evidence of racial animosity or radicalism.

Before you reflexively reject Friedersdorf's opinion — which I share —  know that he recently wrote "Why I Refuse to Vote for Barack Obama."

The whole liberal conceit that Obama is a good, enlightened man, while his opponent is a malign, hard-hearted cretin, depends on constructing a reality where the lives of non-Americans -- along with the lives of some American Muslims and whistleblowers -- just aren't valued. Alternatively, the less savory parts of Obama's tenure can just be repeatedly disappeared from the narrative of his first term, as so many left-leaning journalists, uncomfortable confronting the depths of the man's transgressions, have done over and over again.   

He's positioning himself to the left of Obama, but the point is, he's not an Obamaphile, unless he's performing the ministrations of Obamaphilia in a rather subtle fashion.

ADDED: I didn't mean to suggest that I share every detail of Friedersdorf's opinion, only opposition to the exploitation of the old video of him pandering to an audience of black churchgoers. I don't, in fact, agree that Obama has a "long record of public policy-making" that's entirely devoid of "evidence of racial animosity or radicalism." There's some racial animosity and radicalism here and there. He's too far to the left for my taste on many issues (and Romney is too far to the right). He hasn't repressed every shred of racial critique that's ever crossed his mind. That's not a big deal to me. What does bother me is that he hasn't fulfilled the dream that many white people projected onto him — with his fully willing encouragement — that he would take us to a higher ground, racially. But we, the voters, need to take responsibility for our own vulnerability to the idealistic rhetoric that flows so freely from political candidates.

"Pity the poor Obama administration leakers. They impart their much-cherished secrets to make their man look good..."

"... and then, at the first chirp of criticism, are ordered to confess their (possible) crimes by the very same president they were seeking to please. In this, they are a bit like the male praying mantis. He does as asked, and then the female bites his head off."