Obama's Libya Cover-up Worse Than Watergate, Says Former Governor

Scene outside the United States Consulate in Benghazi, Libya after the building was bombed. The U.S. ambassador and three other personnel were killed in the attacks., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Huckabee: Obama's Libya cover-up worse than Watergate

By MACKENZIE WEINGER
9/28/12 12:17 PM EDT
politico.com

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee on Friday said the American people “have flat-out been lied to” by President Barack Obama and his administration about the violence in Libya — and this cover-up is worse than Richard Nixon’s scandal because “nobody died in Watergate.”

“Let’s just get blunt. No way to sugar coat this — We’ve been lied to. We have flat-out been lied to. They know they’ve lied,” Huckabee told Fox News’s “America’s Newsroom.” “It’s as if airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center and somebody says, ‘those were just accidents. The planes veered off course.’ Everybody with two eyes and IQ above plant life understands that what happened in Egypt and what happened in Libya was not some spontaneous reaction to a stupid 13-minute video on YouTube. It was a planned, coordinated, orchestrated attack led by terrorists.”

Huckabee, who hosts “Huckabee” on Fox and the radio program “The Mike Huckabee Show,” then likened the Libya situation to Watergate.

“Richard Nixon was forced out of office because he lied and because he covered some stuff up. I’m going to be blunt and tell you this — nobody died in Watergate,” Huckabee said. “We have some people who are dead because of this. There are some questions to be answered and Americans ought to demand to get answers and it doesn’t matter what the politics are.”

Co-host Bill Hemmer later followed-up, asking, “You’re comparing the events of today to Watergate?

“I sure am,” Huckabee said.

“This White House has been discredited and its credibility, certainly the promises of transparency have been completely decimated by their actions,” Huckabee added.

“It’s very strong language, but I know you’ve thought about this,” Hemmer replied.

Huckabee stood by his comments later Friday, telling listeners of his radio show that he gave a “very honest answer.” He also brought up Bill Clinton’s Monica Lewinsky scandal and his denial of the affair to Americans.

“Yes, those were serious breaches of trust, but it did not result in the deaths of anyone in either case,” Huckabee said.

Huckabee added, however, that he was “not suggesting” Obama be impeached. “What I am suggesting is the American people demand accountability,” he said.

And earlier Friday morning, Fox News host Geraldo Rivera stopped by “Fox & Friends” and called what happened in Libya and its aftermath “the one cancer on the presidency.” He dubbed the situation “Benghazi-gate” because “it contains the grim prospect that the administration knew or should have known the true nature.”

“It is the biggest foreign policy blunder — it is the only chink in the armor of the Obama administration. As they surge in these polls, this is the one cancer on the presidency,” Rivera said.

UPDATE (4:25 p.m.): Huckabee again doubled-down the Watergate comparison on Fox News’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto.”

“If Watergate was about a president lying and covering up, if Bill Clinton got impeached because he lie and covered up, if this president and his administration has lied and covered up, are we going to hold him accountable in the same way that we have others? It cost Nixon his job. It almost cost Clinton his White House. Are we going to re-elect a president who wasn’t being honest with us?” Huckabee said Friday.