Oct 19, 2012 No Comments ›› Chuck Biscuits
Excerpted from The Daily Mail: The mother of an American diplomat killed during a terrorist raid on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi has hit out at Barack Obama for describing the attack as ‘not optimal’, saying: ‘My son is not very optimal – he is also very dead.’
During an interview shown on Comedy Central, Obama responded to a question about his administration’s confused communication after the assault by saying: ‘If four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal.’
Speaking exclusively to MailOnline today, Pat Smith, whose son Sean died in the raid, said: ‘It was a disrespectful thing to say and I don’t think it’s right.
‘How can you say somebody being killed is not very optimal? I don’t think the President has the right idea of the English language.’
Speaking from her home in San Diego, Mrs Smith, 72, continued: ‘It’s insensitive to say my son is not very optimal – he is also very dead. I’ve not been “optimal” since he died and the past few weeks have been pure hell.
‘I am still waiting for the truth to come out and I still want to know the truth. I’m finally starting to get some answers but I won’t give up.
‘There’s a lot of stupid things that have been said about my son and what happened and this is another one of them.’
Obama was speaking to Jon Stewart of The Daily Show for a programme that was broadcast last night. Stewart, a liberal whose young audience is full of potential voters prized by the Obama campaign, asked the president about his handling of the aftermath of the Benghazi attack.
But Obama’s response sparked outrage among Republican commentators including the website Breitbart and prompted a vicious backlash from the Twitter community.
Ambassador Chris Stevens, diplomat Sean Smith and security men and former U.S. Navy SEALs Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods were killed by terrorists on the 11th anniversary of 9/11 – an attack that the White House initially blamed on a spontaneous protest about an anti-Islam movie made in California.
Stewart asked: ‘Is part of the investigation helping the communication between these divisions? Not just what happened in Benghazi, but what happened within.
‘Because I would say, even you would admit, it was not the optimal response, at least to the American people, as far as all of us being on the same page.’
Obama responded: ‘Here’s what I’ll say. If four Americans get killed, it’s not optimal.’
He continued: ‘We’re going to fix it. All of it. And what happens, during the course of a presidency, is that the government is a big operation and any given time something screws up.
‘And you make sure that you find out what’s broken and you fix it.
‘Whatever else I have done throughout the course of my presidency the one thing that I’ve been absolutely clear about is that America’s security comes, and the American people need to know exactly how I make decisions when it comes to war, peace, security, and protecting Americans.
‘And they will continue to get that over the next four years of my presidency.’
The word ‘optimal’ was first used by Stewart in the question. But Obama’s use of it, in a sound bite that could be used to portray him as somewhat casual about the deaths, lit up conservatives on the internet after it was first reported in a White House pool report by Mike Memoli of the Los Angeles Times.
