Benghazi

WASHINGTON - At a news conference in a rainy Rose Garden on Thursday, President Obama and the Turkish prime minister had weighty matters to discuss - the bloody civil war in Syria, a disastrous Syrian refugee crisis and Turkey's strained relationship with Israel. But before they got too far into that, Obama had something else to say. "With the prime minister's permission, I want to make one other point," Obama said, launching into an appeal for Congress to support more money for embassy security - a not-so-subtle reply to Republicans who've pounced on the president's handling of last year's attack on the diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya.

WASHINGTON - President Obama on Thursday called on Congress to beef up security at U.S. diplomatic facilities, saying the country owes it to the four Americans who died at the Benghazi, Libya, mission last year to protect other personnel serving around the world. Speaking to reporters in the White House Rose Garden, Obama said he has ordered a review of security at high-threat posts, as well as improvements in training for those headed to dangerous jobs. But Obama said he can't “do this alone” and argued that Congress should fully fund his budget request to improve embassy security.

The furor over the Benghazi talking points continues. Republicans still see them as the main event in a campaign to embarrass President Obama. The president, for his part, calls them a "sideshow. " Finally, on Wednesday, the White House released more than 100 pages of internal emails that showed, in excruciating detail, exactly how the talking points were edited - and the emails, at least to our reading, supported the president's characterization. Prepared by intelligence officials and revised in interagency discussions, the now-famous talking points were the basis for U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's comments five days after the 2012 attack on the diplomatic compound in Libya that the siege had grown out of a spontaneous reaction to protests in Cairo over an anti-Muslim video.

WASHINGTON - Career CIA officers were responsible for administration claims that the armed attack in Benghazi, Libya, that left four Americans dead last fall grew out of a protest of an anti-Islamic video, an incorrect assertion that became a flash point for critics who say the Obama administration deliberately misled the public for political reasons, according to emails released by the White House on Wednesday. The 99 pages of emails from the two days after the Sept. 11, 2012, attack reveal confused and occasionally sharp negotiations among officials at the CIA, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI, the White House and the State Department as they scrambled to craft so-called talking points about a nightlong assault that was still little understood.

President Obama was asked about the metastasizing Benghazi scandal in a joint news conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday. Referring to the Americans who died in Benghazi, the president said, "We dishonor them when we turn things like this into a political circus. " He added that "the whole issue of talking points, throughout this process, frankly, has been a sideshow.… There's no there there. " He's half right. The talking points drafted by the State Department, the CIA and the White House and given to congressional Republicans and, most famously, to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice are not the center of this story.

How you feel about Benghazi very likely has everything to do with your political leanings. If you think the Obama administration is covering up a scandal bigger than Watergate, you are almost certainly a Republican. If you think Republicans in Congress are simply trying to gain political advantage by exploiting the terrorist attack against the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, last Sept. 11, you are very likely a Democrat. A Pew Research Center poll found that 70% of Republicans believe the administration has been “dishonest” about what happened at Benghazi.

WASHINGTON - President Obama tried to dismiss a brewing controversy over the White House handling of the terrorist attack on Benghazi as a “sideshow” and accused critics of using an attack that killed four Americans for political gain. “We dishonor them when we turn things like this into a political circus,” Obama said Monday at a brief news conference. “What happened was tragic. It was carried out by extremists inside of Libya. We are out there trying to hunt down the folks who carried this out, and we're trying to make sure that we fix the system so that it doesn't happen again.” Obama's remarks came as the White House tried to contain fallout from the disclosure of internal emails discussing what to tell the public in the days after the attack.

WASHINGTON - Public interest in the investigation of the killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya last fall has dropped sharply from its high point in October and has taken on a strongly partisan cast, polling data released Monday shows. Just over four in 10 American adults say they are closely following news about the investigations, down from nearly two-thirds in October, according to the poll from the Pew Research Center. Among self-identified Republicans in the survey, 70% say the Obama administration has been “dishonest” in its handling of the killings, which took place in the Libyan city of Benghazi last Sept.

WASHINGTON - A defiant President Obama dismissed as a "sideshow" the controversy over his administration's handling of last year's armed assault in Benghazi, Libya, accusing critics of trying to make political hay from the deaths of four Americans. "We dishonor them when we turn things like this into a political circus," Obama told reporters Monday. Obama's angry remarks were his first since House hearings last week about the September 2012 attack on the U.S. facility in Benghazi, and his first public reaction to fresh evidence indicating the White House weighed political calculations as it released information in the days that followed.

WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) pressed Sunday for a special congressional committee to investigate the deadly attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, last year, insisting that questions about former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's role remain unanswered. “I don't know what level of scandal, unquote, this rises to, but I know it rises to the level where it requires a full and complete ventilation of these facts,” McCain said on ABC's “This Week.” “We're still uncovering information which frankly contradicts the original line that the administration took.” His comments came after the disclosure that administration emails on talking points about the deadly attack showed that the original CIA document underwent several revisions, including one pushed by the State Department to delete a reference to warnings about the terrorist threat around the facility.