Sen. Cruz: Chilling SSCI Report Concludes Benghazi Attacks Preventable; Families of Victims Deserve the Truth

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, released the following on yesterday’s Senate Select Committee’s Review of the Terrorist Attacks on U.S. Facilities in Benghazi, Libya:

"The majority views of the SSCI report confirm a number of things long suspected about the Benghazi attacks. Our government was warned, and there were steps that could have been taken to protect Americans,” Sen. Cruz said. “But our people were left at significant risk against a known terrorist threat, and when the attack came, there was no help to send. After the attack, the Obama administration tried to mask its failure with false claims of a protest over an Internet video. All the while, the terrorists who carried out this attack are still at large. Most chilling, however, is the conclusion that the attacks were preventable in the first place.”

On the first anniversary of the attacks, Sen. Cruz filed a resolution (S. Res. 225 with 24 Republican co-sponsors) calling for a joint select committee that would put all the resources of both Houses of Congress behind a thorough investigation that could answer the basic questions that remain. For instance:

• Why did any of this happen in the first place?
• Why was there no appreciation for the repeated intelligence warnings about the security situation in Libya?
• Why were the repeated requests for more protection refused?
• Why were no military assets made ready near this acknowledged terrorist hot spot on the anniversary of September 11, 2001?
• Why did the Obama administration falsely insist the attacks were the result of a spontaneous protest over an Internet video?
• Why has no one in our government been held accountable for these failures?
• Why has no terrorist been punished for this outrage?

“This most recent committee report is a valuable bi-partisan effort that demonstrates how reasonable people on both sides of the political aisle are inching closer to consensus on what happened before, during, and after the attacks on our facilities in Benghazi,” Cruz continued. “But it also starkly demonstrates that we are still far from getting clarity on why any of this happened. Unfortunately, this report thus raises more questions than answers. Until we can answer the basic questions that remain, we cannot in any way be confident that history, like the al Qaida terrorists who have attacked us so often, is not preparing to repeat itself. As the minority additional views conclude, the American people and, most importantly, the families of the victims deserve the truth."

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