Mr Obama, Mrs Clinton, when were you planning on telling the American public about your actual policies on MENA? Or have you redefined "policy" to mean "It's all secrets"?

October 19, Foreign Policy magazine: "House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA) compromised the identities of several Libyans working with the U.S. government and placed their lives in danger when he released reams of State Department communications Friday, according to Obama administration officials."

Whether or not any Libyans were placed in danger by the release of the documents (read the rest of the FP piece for both sides of the argument), my concern at this moment is that the American people have been placed in danger by the Obama administration's actions in Libya and God Knows where else.

Even the America-friendly government in Tripoli, to the extent it can be called a government, was surprised, nay shocked, when a bunch of fleeing Americans it didn't even know were in the country, much less running a covert operation in Benghazi, showed up at the international airport on September 12 seeking a speedy exit.

I hasten to add that I have nothing against pussyfooting in the name of U.S. national security; I've made that clear more than once. But you see -- and at the risk of sounding like Dr Seuss -- when it's all pussyfooting, this tends to negate the concept of pussyfooting.

To put this another way:  it shouldn't have taken the death of four Americans in Libya for the American Congress and public to start feeling their way to an idea of what the U.S. Department of State and the White House were actually up to in Libya.

I know, I know; this is the way they do things in Brussels but when last I checked the United States of America was not yet a member of the European Union.

Mr President, Madam Secretary:  pardon my being instructive but the general idea of defense policy is that first you have a policy -- by its very nature something clearly communicated to others -- then you have tactics for implementing the policy, which can include covert actions.