As Senator McCain himself repeated relentlessly, American lives were lost at Benghazi and given the obvious lapses in security measures, that is simply unacceptable.  Instead of insisting the focus remain on an examination of those security measures in an effort to ensure that any mistakes made were never repeated, McCain nearly singlehandedly created a political sideshow of questionable value that only distracted attention away from the real and important issues.  If this distraction in any way detracts from identifying and correcting the mistakes made, then another tragedy could possibly occur, one, like that which occurred at Benghazi, could have been prevented if the right people had been paying attention to the right issues.

Dr. Tawfik Hamid, author of the book Inside Jihad: Understanding and Confronting Radical Islam, had once experienced a sinister type of religious and political conversion. Fortunately, he was able to escape that life and has since spoken frequently of his time as a former member of Jamaa Islamiya (an Islamic terrorist organization led by a member of Al Qaeda, Dr. Aiman Al-Zawahiri).  He recently spoke with contributing writer Snapper Ploen.