An "Act of Terror" on the Truth!

"I call on the Lord in my distress, and he answers me. Save me, O Lord, from lying lips and from deceitful tongues." Psalm 120:1-2

During the Presidential Debate on October 16, 2012, I posted the following comment on Facebook: "Please fact check these two candidates, especially the President. My goodness, this is hard to watch!!!" I normally try to stay away from direct, political commentary on my Facebook page, but my personality is one that finds it difficult to stay silent if I believe a lie is being told. My comment was specifically in response to President Barack Obama's statements that he called the recent embassy attack in Benghazi, Lybia, that killed four U.S.citizens, a terrorist attack from the outset. I probably wouldn't have said anything had it not been for some friends of mine, one in particular, that were "cheerleading" for the President during the debate. It is there perogative to support the President, but to me it just made it seem as though they were not interested in facts, but the aggressive nature in which the President was conducting himself. I posted a couple of other comments, but the one I mention here is the one that generated the most response.

A few people commented on my post, but one person, in particular, took issue with the idea that I believed the President was, at the very least, stretching the truth. She is a supporter of the President, but someone whom I have little to no contact with on a regular basis. I was not surprised that she weighed in given a brief conversation we had about "Obamacare" about a year ago. The conversation on my wall, although brief was interesting. Here is the entire thread. I will hightlight my friends comments and place a "96" next to all of mine.

"I am praying that God gives this country relief and that the incumbent loses. Everything he believes in is antithetical to our beliefs as Christians. Praying for him, too."

96 - "Yes, I agree. These debates don't really solve anything. The format doesn't allow for hashing out these issues to the degree they need to be. Therefore, it is just playing gotcha and then the talking heads will tell us who won. We have to do our homework."

"This is hard to watch but I don't think we think it's for the same reason :-). But...at least we are watching, as are a lot of people. However, as I posted last week - agree - somebody please check the facts because us regular folk don't have them handy."

96 -"You can't have a conversation about foreign policy, the 2nd Amendment, the economy, etc, when you only have a minute or so to respond and are getting talked over and cut off. Thus, it boils down to playing gotcha and supporters of the candidates cheering who throws the best zinger regardless of whether or not it is true. Then with set up questions like asking Romney why he is different than President Bush thrown in it is ridiculous. Where is the Obama/Jimmy Carter question? Oh well. LOL!"

"They will be fact checked. I have no doubt about who was lying. They were fact checked last time, and they havent changed positions since then."

"Yes, we need to fact check both candidates for ourselves and not rely on what they say or the folks in the media or what anyone else says. I agree with you that these debates do not allow for a true hashing out of the facts. Not enough time. I think both candidates need to be equally checked on the facts, not one more so than the other."

"I have checked the facts and the President lied straight out without blinking. How can he equate lower gas prices when he took office to the bad economy then when the economy is much worse now and gas prices are triple what they were then. This makes no sense. When you have a moderator that blatantly sides with the President and later admits she was wrong. I can't help saying WTF!"

96 -Absolutely...

"Wow, the moderator has not admitted she was wrong! If Romney was wrong on a point, but you still support him, concede the point and move on. Claiming that something is not so, when it is demonstrably so, makes no sense, and makes your candidate look weak. The president said what he said he said. Romney claimed he didn't say it. In being wrong, any legitimate point he might have been about to make got lost. That is his fault. Not Obama's, not the moderator's, his."

96 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c30iC39OBgY (Video of debate moderator, Candy Crawley admitting her error from the debate).

"I watched the video live, but thanks for re-posting. She stands by that Obama called it an act of terror, but that Romney was correct in the rest of what he said (how they publicly described the event for the next 2 weeks. Which was the responsible thing to do, when investigating actions in a volatile area of the world).  The fact is that Obama did call it an act of terror the next day. Romney said he didn't. Romney was incorrect. Obama was not. But, much as you are doing, he got hung up on whether or not the president called it an act of terror. So Romney damaged his own credibility. Whining about the moderator can't undo the damage."

96 - "The way I see it is like this, on September 12, The President said, " "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation." However, I don't believe he was saying it as it pertained specifically to the Benghazi attack, but terrorism, in general. Semantics? Perhaps. But, what convinces me is that if he believed the Benghazi attack to be an act of terror, why wouldn't he reiterate that point when on The View? Joy Behar says to the President: "I heard Hillary Clinton say it was an act of terrorism. Is it? What do you say?" The President responds: "Well, we're still doing an investigation. There's no doubt that the kind of weapons that were used, the ongoing assault...that it wasn't just a mob action. We don't have all the information yet, so we're still gathering it..." Why doesn't he just say "Yes, it was a terrorist attack"? Then there is all the mixed messages of the representatives of the Adminstration. You have Ambassador Rice, who consistently kept saying that it was a "spontaneous" attack as a result of a YouTube video. State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland who said authorities "are very cautious about drawing any conclusions with regard to who the perpetrators were, what their motivations were, (and) whether it was premeditated." Then you have Matthew Olsen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center who said that those killed in Benghazi, "were killed in the course of a terrorist attack on our embassy." So, to me, at worst, the President didn't specifically call the attack and act of terror and, at best, he and his staff were not, are not, unified on what it was. That is how I see it. Thanks for your comments."

"Well, the way I see this is that each side is going to cling to their biases. Good thing there is a forum for that."

This is where everything ended. My point in posting this is to hopefully show how when presented with evidence, most people don't want to deal with them because it seems to be more about loyalty to the President than it is being truly desiring the truth of a matter. When Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead, many Jews plotted to kill Jesus because "the Romans will come and take away both our place and our nation (John 11:48).” You see, they could care less about the fact that Jesus raised a man from the dead. They only cared about protecting their own positions. It wasn't about who is this that raises the dead? Could this Jesus be the Messiah? No, it was we need to kill him because my life will change if we don't. That is how I see this whole topic and politics, in general. The truth will be a casualty when a person is more interested in protecting their own position and loyalty to a certain politcal candidate rather than protecting themselves from lying lips and deceitful tongues of these politicians.