Benghazi scandal won't go away; Sen. Graham says 'the president misled the nation'

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- President Obama continues to take hits from political opponents and talking heads over the Benghazi scandal that won't go away.

"I'm telling the public the president misled the nation about what happened in Benghazi," Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., told Fox News host Neil Cavuto on Your World Monday.

It seemed the Benghazi scandal was beginning to move to the back pages of newspapers, overshadowed by the drama of the bungled Obamacare rollout, Chris Christie headlines, and other political news. But the topic was reignited Sunday as Fox News host Bill O'Reilly grilled the president on the incident during a pre-Super Bowl interview.

Now Republicans are once again upbraiding Obama and his administration for what they allege was a purposeful mischaracterization of the attack -- an attack that inconveniently happened in the midst of the president's reelection campaign.

Attempting to quash the notion that Republicans were belaboring an old story, Graham told Cavuto that: "the reason Benghazi doesn't go away, it's not a Fox News story. It's not a Republican story. It's an American story. And people want to know more because of four dead Americans."

Initially explained as a mob attack fueled by a leaked anti-Muslim video, it later came to light that the attacks on U.S. diplomatic compounds in Libya were more deliberate and less spontaneous, orchestrated by armed Islamic militants. The FBI has vowed to continue hunting for those responsible for the attacks, which left four Americans dead, including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

Renewed interest in the scandal also inspired the Senate’s top Republican on the Armed Services Committee, Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., to weigh in on the subject Monday.

“That’s going to go down in history as the greatest cover-up," Inhofe told Oklahoma radio station KFAQ. "And I’m talking about compared to the Pentagon Papers, Iran-Contra, Watergate and the rest of them."

For his part, the president continues to dismiss the idea that he or his administration deliberately misled the media or the American public about the nature of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi for political purposes.

“We revealed to the American people exactly what we understood at the time," Obama told O'Reilly on Sunday. Pointing to the fact that he called the attack an "act of terror" the day after the violence, and confirmed it as a terrorist attack a week later, Obama claimed "that wouldn’t be a very good cover-up.”

[ Fox News] [ KFAQ]