Obama missteps facilitated Libyan attack

After a week of President Barack Obama's typical lying fashion, his administration finally admitted that the terrorist assault on the American consulate in Benghazi and the assassination of Ambassador Chris Stevens was a preplanned operation by anti-American jihadists possibly linked to al-Qaida ("Libya assault 'terrorist act,'" Sept. 21). Presenting it as a random attack linked to the recent Islamic riots would absolve his administration of the guilt of failing to prevent what happened.

We must remember that while President Obama loves to take credit for the death of Osama bin Laden, it was our military that carried out the operation, and it was President George W. Bush who launched the war on terror after 9/11 and committed our armed forces to the goal of destroying al-Qaida. It was intelligence from captured terrorists that allowed us to home in on bin Laden and finally give him his just desserts. In contrast, President Obama has chosen to release rather than interrogate many of the terrorists held in Guantanamo Bay and at military bases in Afghanistan and Iraq.

If the Obama administration had continued some of President Bush's policies instead of tying the hands our soldiers and CIA agents behind their backs, perhaps we could have gotten the intelligence that could have prevented the Libya attack. Our military has never been defeated in battle, not even in Vietnam, which was another example of inept civilian leaders preventing our brave men and women in uniform from doing what they do best.

Christopher Tong, Sparrows Point