Remember Benghazi? Well, Somebody Still Does. Really!

As we drift into Obama's second term, and the mind of everyone in DC seems focused on piddling gun control measures and whatever the President, the Senate and the GOP are going to do  about spending, it's good to remember there are still some unanswered questions laying around from the past Obama term. Congressman Frank Wolf reminds us of questions still unanswered about Benghazi:

With the inexplicable release of suspect Ali Harzi by Tunisian authorities earlier this month, why are there no suspects in custody?

Secretary Clinton, Secretary Panetta, Attorney General Holder and DNI Clapper still haven't testified before Congress--what steps did they take during the attack and in the days that followed? 

What were the President's activities during the seven-hour period of attack?

Why wasn't the U.S. military deployed to assist? On the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in American history, after multiple attacks this year on U.S. and Western interests, why were U.S. military units and assets in the region not ready, alert and positioned to respond? After all, two of the four people were killed seven hours after fighting began.

Why do we still not have clear answers on the internal process that produced the inaccurate talking points on which Ambassador Rice relied several days after the attack?

Why were the testimonies of the U.S. personnel who were evacuated from Benghazi on September 12--eyewitnesses who knew there never was a demonstration outside the Consulate--not immediately factored in to the judgments of our intelligence community?

Why wasn't Secretary Clinton interviewed by the Pickering Commission?

Was the White House aware of the FBI investigation of Gen. Petraeus? If not, why not?
There are also serious questions about links of this terrorist attack to the protests at the U.S. embassies in Cairo, Egypt, Tunis, Tunisia and Sanaa, Yemen that same week--where each American compound was breached by individuals allegedly linked to al Qaeda-affiliated groups. What, if any, were the connections between these incidents and the attack in Benghazi?

All of these are good questions. Even if Benghazi was just one of those foul ups that was the result of silly mistakes made by underlings, they deserve official answers.

There is just one question I would add to this list, but it was one that has bothered me about the administration's response to Benghazi from the start. Why was the administration hell bent for leather on propounding the idea that it was the exercise of free speech rights in the USA that caused the death of our ambassador? The administration did not reluctantly concede this explanation might be the case. They embraced it with the ardor reserved for a long-absent hot girlfriend, and took steps (and publicized the taking those steps) to make sure that the guy who made the video was punished.

We'll see if this goes anywhere. But the media silence on Benghazi since Ambassador Rice pulled out of the running for Secretary of State has been striking -- and media silence usually means Congressional silence.