Does President Obama not realize that the person who turned down the requests for extra security in Benghazi testified about her decision before Congress? Or does he just like to impress average Americans with guarded allusions to security and danger?

Obama was asked yesterday who made the decision to deny a request for more security for the U.S. diplomats in Libya. The president did not answer this question during the debate, but he followed up with the questioner (Kerry Ladka), after the debate and said something absurd.

“As to Ladka’s question about who turned down the Benghazi security requests and why, Obama reportedly told him that ‘releasing the individual names of anyone in the State Department would really put them at risk,’ Ladka says,” per The Washington Post (my emphasis).

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How’s this for an individual name: Charlene Lamb, who testified about her decision to deny the diplomats’ request. “We had the correct number of assets in Benghazi on the night of 9/11,” Lamb testified, adding that the security that was requested ”would not have made any difference in Benghazi.”

The Cable also noted that Eric Nordstrom, who ran diplomatic security over the summer in Libya, blamed Lamb.

“All of us at post were in sync that we wanted these resources,” Nordstrom said in the public hearing. “In those conversations, I was specifically told [by Lamb] ‘You cannot request an SST extension.’ I determined I was told that because there would be too much political cost. We went ahead and requested it anyway.”