There are two things which the Obama administration is being criticized for with respect to the Benghazi attack. The first, and the one about which the GOP focuses most of their outrage, regards the very first statement the government made to the media in the hours following the attack, which suggested that the attack was the result of a out-of-control popular demonstration over an anti-Islam YouTube video some American had made that had recently been publicized. A couple of days later, the government dropped that suggestion and openly stated that it had been a planned terrorist attack. However, the GOP considers that the fact the suggestion was ever made, even for a short time and regardless of the rapid correction, to be evidence of an intent to cover up rather than confront a terrorist act against the US.
The second thing, which is a genuine matter of concern but tends to play merely second fiddle to the outrage surrounding the above issue, is that there was evidence of an escalating threat against the consulate for some time prior to the attack, but the government did not allocate more security forces to that area in a timely fashion.
There are a lot of other matters of concern. To wit:
1) the military response, or lack thereof;
2) the lack of transparency concerning decisions the President and the Sec of State made or didn't make the evening of Sep 11, 2012;
3) the failure to hold anybody accountable for quite obvious (and admitted) errors in security planning;
4) the alleged punishment of whistleblowers;
5) the failure to cooperate meaningfully with a congressional investigation;
6) the unseemly pandering to the Muslim world about a stupid video, and the suspicious jailing of the video's producer;
7) the equivocation from the President and his top spokespeople about the whole matter in the lead up to an election;
8) the mainstream press, which appeared to many (me included) to have assumed the role of administration defender rather than antagonist.
That's just off the top of my head. I'll note that Watergate started out as a minor break-in by some low-level flunkies that President Nixon knew nothing about. The administration only committed serious crimes in trying to cover up the original embarrassment, and it was only by dint of dogged investigation by the press and aggressive, bipartisan oversight by Congress that those crimes were uncovered. I don't know if such crimes have been committed to hide the truth here, but I do know the probability of rooting out the truth is close to zero without the cooperation of the press and both parties in Congress.
Benghazi is a serious issue, and I believe it rises to the level of a scandal in a number of ways. Ultimately, though, I think the truth is it was simply an embarrassing episode of fecklessness, incompetence, and indifference, made more egregious by the administration's ruthless political calculation to stonewall. The lapdog press is in part to blame, since it has consistently acted as an enabler for this administration. There is little doubt in my mind that if Benghazi had happened under a Republican administration (which could easily have happened), there would have been far more serious repercussions, and the episode would more widely be viewed as a scandal.
