There's a bit of a problem with this position: under US law, terrorism requires premeditation. If it's not premeditated, it cannot be terrorism.
So if the investigation revealed that the Benghazi incident was a spontaneous protest that ended up resulting in the violent deaths of four American citizens, is there a special distinction for that? AlBell claimed that the President was trying to include events taking place in Cairo and elsewhere.
In Cairo, protestors scaled a wall and tore down a flag. Would
that qualify -- legally -- as an "act of terrorism" if it had been planned? Let's look at some code:
Title 18 of the United States Code (regarding criminal acts and criminal procedure) defines international terrorism as:
"[T]he term 'international terrorism' means activities that . . . involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State; [and] appear to be intended . . . to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; . . . to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or . . . to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and [which] occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum."
I don't see anything about premeditation in there (might be hiding in the elipses, I guess). And going by that, it looks to me like we'd have to call the tearing down of that flag in Cairo (which clearly
was a spontaneous reaction to that video trailer) a "terrorist act". Title 22 does mention "premeditation". Does Title 22 supercede Title 18? I mean, if we're going to be pedantic, let's also make sure we're
right.
He spoke generically about terrorism, but did not actually label the attack itself as a terrorist attack.
And you've said that you don't have a problem with what he said at that point in time, presumably because you agree that
at that point in time the degree to which it was planned versus spontaneous was not clear.
The administration's response was a train wreck of conflicting accounts and buck passing for a security failure of monumental proportions.
The
incident itself was a train wreck of conflicting accounts. To the extent that there was a security failure, it was in fact a failure by the State Department, because it is that agency, and not the White House, that handles diplomatic security in foreign nations. That buck
was passed to the President, and, in no uncertain terms,
he accepted it.
