The events surrounding Benghazi on September 11th 2012 which saw our embassy burned to the ground and four Americans killed are eerily like July 17, 1996. It was just three months before the presidential election between President Bill Clinton and Bob Dole. Clinton led in the polls by 20 points. On that evening, at 8:30 pm, TWA Flight 800 departed from JFK Airport enroute to Paris. The captain of the flight, Ralph Kevorkian, had an impeccable safety record.

As Flight 800 rose slowly in an ascending arc along the Long Island coast, Mike Wire saw a streak of light rise up and head out toward the ascending plane. Lisa Perry on her Fire Island deck saw the same object shoot up toward the aircraft. Paul Angelideds saw the same object streaking up into the clear summer evening sky. Jack Cashill, author of First Strike – TWA Flight 800 and the Attack on America writes, “At 8:31, FAA radar operators at Islip saw an object appear on-screen and head straight toward Flight 800. At exactly the same time, FAA radar picked up an unidentified small ship right under Flight 800’s airborne position.” In the next instant, the plane exploded, broke apart and fell into the Atlantic, killing all on board, without a word of distress from the pilots, and in plain sight of 700 people who would give sworn testimony to the FBI as to what they saw. The eye witness accounts combined with the FAA records of the crash not only prove that the plane was shot out of the sky, more than likely by Islamic terrorists, but that the following cover-up by the Clinton Administration, headed up by Richard Clarke, was quite possibly, the most criminal act by any administration in US history. It also set the stage for 9/11.

Why would the Clinton Administration seek to cover up the attack of Flight 800? For the same reason that the Obama Administration tried to blame the Benghazi attack on an American-made video. In the last few months before the presidential election of 1996, the Clinton campaign cynically judged that if the downing of flight 800 was seen as an act of war, this would redone to the benefit of the war hero, Bob Dole. Given the American left’s long history of peace through appeasement, the Clinton campaign feared that their countrymen would vote in the Republican, if they believed that the downing of Flight 800 meant war.  So Clinton and his advisors chose to build the case that the crash of Flight 800 was a mechanical failure.

Just last week, on October 19, Egyptian state television aired a video showing Egyptian President Morsi, attending services in a mosque. It showed him in fervent prayer as a Muslim cleric declared, “Oh Allah, absolve us of our sins, strengthen us, and grant us victory over the infidels. Oh Allah, destroy the Jews and their supporters. Oh Allah, disperse them, rend them asunder. Oh Allah, demonstrate your might and greatness upon them.” Morsi could be seen on tape mouthing “amen” to these calls. The word “amen,” used by both Hebrew and Arabic speakers, is translated as “so be it.”

The specter of the new Egyptian president praying for the destruction of Israel and it supporters (that would be us) should not have been possible in the fictitious world of Barack Obama. After all, it was candidate Obama that convinced slightly over 50% of the American voting electorate that he would reverse the ‘unilateralist’ Bush Doctrine and build harmony with Muslim world where there had been such division and antagonism sewn by his predecessor. As president of the most populous Muslim nation, Morsi’s prayer, explodes the Obama doctrine and sends it crashing into the ocean.

For nearly the exact same reasons Clinton felt that he must cover up the real cause of the downing of Flight 800, Obama is now attempting to lie about the events of Benghazi. In my book, Lessons from Fallen Civilizations – Can a bankrupt America Survive the Current Islamic Threat?, I develop a list of ten “immutables” which govern the fall of great civilizations. Number three reads – “Appeasement of a ruthless outside power always invites its aggression. Treaties made with ruthless despots are always fruitless and dangerous.” Both Clinton and Obama violated this timeless principle. Both are presidents who represent American constituencies which believe that there are no such things as ruthless despots, only leaders of the aggrieved. Both represent those that reflexively believe that America’s wars are to be ended, not won.

As we head into the final days before the election, the good news is that the ramifications of Obama’s duplicity are multiplying and are not fading away. Last Friday on a campaign stop in Denver, a local reporter, Kyle Clark, asked Obama if the cries for help from our embassy were ignored and who gave the orders to “stand down.” Obama refused to answer the question, saying only, “The election has nothing to with four brave Americans getting killed and us wanting to find out exactly what happened.” Such a shameless dodge will likely be remembered in the week before the election.

Other good news is the fact that the CIA is not going to take the fall for whoever gave the order to “stand down” and not come to the aid of those heroes fighting to save lives at our embassy. Presumably, at the direction of a great patriot, David Patraeus, Director of the CIA, the agency put out the following unequivocal statement, “No one at any level in the CIA told anybody not help those in need; claims to the contrary are simply not accurate.”

The bad news is that the Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta, has stated publicly that those viewing the attacks in the White House situation room, transmitted in real time by drones overhead, did not have real-time intelligence of the attacks on our consulate in Benghazi. As is the case with all modern presidential cover-ups, many formerly honorable men will lose their honor. This makes a cover-up so damaging because it discourages good men and women from seeking higher office. And without men and women of honor holding the reigns of American power, we will be doomed to permanent decline.

Larry Kelley earned his BA in English Literature from UC Santa Barbara. Since 9/11 he’s written 100+ articles on western complacency and published a book: http://larrykelley.com/book/