Benghazi Consulate’s 3 AM Phone Call

It was one of the most memorable images from the 2008 presidential campaign. It was not a McCain ad or an Obama ad. It was, instead, a Hillary Clinton ad.

The ad featured a red telephone ringing urgently at 3 am in the White House. The voiceover for this political ad assured us that Hillary Clinton would be able to answer that telephone, that she was someone “tested and ready to lead in a dangerous world.”

The Red Telephone ad is almost unbearably painful to listen to today.

On September 11, 2012, that red telephone did ring. The world proved to be a very dangerous place for U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three of his American compatriots in Benghazi, Libya. The phone rang, and the response in the White House, in the State Department, was: “The number you have reached is not a working number…”

Is this too harsh? What else can be said of the two weeks of lies and obfuscations we have received since that night of fire and death? American sovereign territory was attacked that night. Our embassies and consulates abroad are as much U.S. territory as are our ships, our bases, or even the District of Columbia .