Obama Tells Jon Stewart the Response to Benghazi’s Four Deaths “Not Optimal”

Obama made an admission, which has been misunderstood by some conservatives, of the government’s mistake in handling the recent 9-11 attack. Obama was interviewed by liberal comedian Jon Stewart on the Daily Show, Thursday, and Jon asked a question about the attach: “I would say and 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 and staff had criticized the anti-Islamic video which was erroneously believed to be the inspiration for the attack on Americans in Libya.

“Here is what I will say,” responded Obama. “If four Americans get killed it is not optimal. And we are going to fix it, all of it. And what happens during the course of a presidency, you know the government is a big operation at any given time, something screws up and you make sure you find out what’s broken and you fix it.”

Apparently Obama meant that “If four Americans got killed, then our response at the time was not optimal,” and not how it has been taken by a few critics, that the death of the four Americans was not optimal enough to justify a counterattack.

Ben Shapiro wrote in response to this, “To reiterate: deaths of Americans are ‘not optimal,’ and ‘bumps in the road.’ A YouTube video is ‘bigotry,’ ‘blasphemy.’ ‘crude and disgusting,’ an ‘insult,’ and ‘inhuman.'”

He was quoting some of Obama’s responses to the video that initially was believed to have incited the 9-11 attack on the American embassy. Critics of Obama were appalled that after Americans were attacked and killed, he was apologizing for an act of Free speech on American soil.

Obama continued on to say, “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 first, and the America 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.”

Regarding the mistake of Susan Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations who misattributed the anti-Islam video to the attack, Stewart said there was “the perception that State was on a different page than you.”

Obama interrupted, saying, “Jon, the truth is that information comes in, folks put it out throughout the process, people say it is still incomplete. What I was clear about was were were going to do an investigation and figure out what happened.”

A fairly self-evident thing to be clear about; it also fully ducks any responsibility for the misinformation.