The recently released email from White House adviser Ben Rhodes on Benghazi really only serves to prove what anyone interested in finding out already knew. That so many didn't want to know, or at least face the consequences of such knowledge, has always been the real scandal.

So what, then, is the extent of our knowledge at this point, with the partisan bias and spin set aside?

First, that a well-planned terrorist attack by an al-Qaida "affiliate" hit the U.S. consulate in Benghazi on Sept. 11, 2012, the 11th anniversary of 9/11, and that four Americans ultimately died, including U.S. ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens.

Second, that high-level officials within the Obama administration, including President Barack Obama himself, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, spent roughly the next week blaming the attack on a "spontaneous demonstration" that got out of hand in response to an obscure YouTube video slandering Islam.

Third, that the same officials who peddled that story apparently knew that it wasn't true even as they were peddling it, that there had been no spontaneous demonstration in response to any YouTube video and that what happened had been a terrorist attack all along.

Fourth (and this is where the Rhodes memo and other recently released memos come in handy), that Obama and his advisers appear to have concocted the YouTube/spontaneous demonstration story because admitting the truth--that four Americans, including a U.S. ambassador, had just died in a terrorist attack--might have undermined their re-election campaign theme that Osama bin Laden was dead and the terrorists beaten.

Fifth, that after their expedient Benghazi fabrication began to spring leaks, it seems an effort was made to stonewall and obfuscate until safely past Election Day, and that this project was largely assisted by a mainstream media reluctant to pursue the story for fear of jeopardizing Obama's prospects. In that sense, much of the media appears to have abandoned its historic "watchdog" role out of ideological bias and become complicit in the cover-up that the Obama team was conducting.

There are, of course, plenty of other unanswered questions, including why the requests for enhanced security at the Benghazi facility were turned down before the attacks and why the requests for help once the firefight was under way were refused.

Perhaps most important of all, we have yet to receive much information as to our commander in chief's role during those crucial eight hours (although we at least now know from the latest memo release that he wasn't in the "situation room," as he had been during the killing of bin Laden). Ultimately, that last unanswered question might be the most damning of all because it highlights both the reluctance of the White House to release information about Benghazi and the media's bizarre lack of curiosity in acquiring it.

As Andrew McCarthy noted in a recent piece on National Review Online, "... we are still waiting, ever waiting, for an account of where the president was, what he was doing, and what if any directives he gave during the hours and hours during which Americans were being tormented and killed. If the president's name were Bush or Reagan, we would long ago have had a minute-by-minute accounting of his every move."

But this president's name isn't Bush or Reagan, and in many respects the media's lack of interest in a story otherwise as juicy as Benghazi--in which a phony tale is concocted after the death of four Americans in a terrorist attack in order to deflect criticism during a difficult re-election campaign--encapsulates the manner in which President Obama has been cossetted and protected from the beginning by a praetorian palace guard disguised as a White House press corps.

What else, in the end, could possibly explain why Obama, Clinton and the rest haven't been asked the kinds of routine questions that even a reporter for a high school newspaper would think to immediately ask? That Republicans and Fox News have been the only parties (with a nod to former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson) interested in following the trail of fibs and distortions appears to have actually provided further incentive for the rest of the media to not do so.

The sad, increasingly unavoidable truth is that even while Americans were fighting and dying in the firefight in Benghazi, Obama and Clinton appear to have been thinking first and foremost about how to cover their political rear ends; of what election-year "spin" could be put on the tragedy that was then still occurring. That such political creatures would reflexively say and do whatever necessary to protect their political viability is hardly surprising; that the media would let them so easily get away with it is.

After all, if democratic governance requires for its sustenance the vigilance of the people, and if the media allows ideology to trump the search for the truth, how effective will such vigilance be?

In short, what happens when the watchdogs decide to become lapdogs? Perhaps something along the lines of what we have seen on Benghazi for 20 months now?

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Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.

Editorial on 05/19/2014