Obama knew.

Say again, Obama knew.

So. The question.

If what happened in Benghazi wasn’t incompetence — was it ideology?

Did Sharia kill Ambassador Chris Stevens, Foreign Service officer Sean Smith, and two Navy SEALs?

And is Hillary Clinton’s insistence yesterday that the leaked State Department e-mails were “not evidence” yet more evidence that indicates the Obama White House not only knew what was going on but deliberately turned a blind eye to Benghazi because of that ideology?

Specifically, did an ideological soft spot for Sharia — Obama’s name is being used by his step-grandmother to raise funds to educate kids in Sharia — blind the U.S. government to the threat posed by Ansar Al-Sharia? A group whose objective, says its Libyan leader, is to “impose Sharia” on Libya.

A group whose namesake in Yemen is a subsidiary of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (“AQAP” in State Department language). It was, recall, Obama himself who first dismissed the so-called “Underwear Bomber” as an “isolated extremist.” Finally the administration was forced to admit that AQAP was responsible for “the December 25, 2009 attempted attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan.”

First, the e-mails.

In a stunning leak (and as this is written the leaks discussed below are expanding, with more gushing forth), Fox News producer Chad Pergram has discovered one of the biggest stories of the fall campaign:

A series of internal State Department emails obtained by Fox News shows that officials reported within hours of last month’s deadly consulate attack in Libya that Al Qaeda-tied group Ansar al-Sharia had claimed responsibility.

Catch that phrase? The Obama Administration knew specifically “within hours” that the attack on the Libyan consulate was a terrorist attack and that, per one e-mail, “Ansar Al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack.” (Note: interestingly, both Reuters and CBS ran this story — standing out from their mainstream media fellows.)

The State Department through its Operations Center quickly copied the “White House Situation Room, the Pentagon, the FBI and the Director of National Intelligence.”

What specifically was said in the three e-mails, marked “SBU” for “Sensitive But Unclassified”?

Here’s the text of e-mail Number One:

Subject:U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi Under Attack (SBU).

The Regional Security Officer reports the diplomatic mission is under attack. Embassy Tripoli reports approximately 20 armed people fired shots; explosions have been heard as well. Ambassador Stevens, who is currently in Benghazi, and four COM personnel are in the compound safe haven. The 17th of February militia is providing security support.

The operations Center will provide updates as available.

And Number Two:

Subject: Update 1: U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi (SBU)

(SBU) Embassy Tripoli reports the firing at the U.S. Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi has stopped and the compound has been cleared. A response team is on site attempting to locate COM personnel.

And next and last:

Subject: Update 2: Ansar Al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack (SBU)

(SBU) Embassy Tripoli reports the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.

The e-mails are time and date stamped respectively at “4:05 PM” “4:54 PM” and “6:07 PM” on September 11, 2012, all Washington time.

For fourteen days after this the Obama Administration insisted this attack was all about an Internet video.

Fox producer Pergram correctly notes that on September 18 — seven days later — White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was saying :

“Based on information that we — our initial information … we saw no evidence to back up claims by others that this was a preplanned or premeditated attack; that we saw evidence that it was sparked by the reaction to this video.” Carney went on to say “that is what we know” based on “concrete evidence, not supposition.”

In short, these e-mails make Carney and UN Ambassador Susan Rice, whom Carney was vociferously defending, into bald-face (or is that red-faced?) liars.

Even more troubling, they make Vice President Joe Biden’s claim in his debate with Congressman Paul Ryan that “we said exactly what the intelligence community told us” to be another outright untruth. The e-mails from that very intelligence community show specifically that the White House was told almost immediately of Ansar Al-Sharia that “the group claimed responsibility on Facebook and Twitter and has called for an attack on Embassy Tripoli.”

The “initial information” (to use Jay Carney’s words) pouring into the State Department — which was then handed on to the White House itself — had no mention whatsoever of an Internet video and a quite specific reference to the Al-Qaeda terrorist group Ansar al-Sharia.

And Ansar al-Sharia in Libya? Who are they?

According to Mohammad Ali al-Zahawi, the self-styled “Commander of Ansar al-Sharia” his group — admirers of Al-Qaeda — is all about doing “battle with the liberals, the secularists and the remnants of Gaddafi.” The terms “liberals” and “secularists” of course mean Americans and Westerners. In June the British ambassador to Libya, Dominic Asquith, was attacked as his convoy moved through the city. The British Ambassador survived but two bodyguards were injured.

Why is Ansar al-Sharia fighting this battle? As its name indicates, and in the words of its leader: “Our brave youths will continue their struggle until they impose Sharia.”

Impose Sharia.

Now. Let’s connect some dots. Facts.

The first two facts:

• The Obama White House, through e-mails from its own State Department, knew for a fact that, in the words of the e-mail, “Ansar Al-Sharia Claims Responsibility for Benghazi Attack (SBU).”

• It knew what Ansar Al-Sharia was all about — to “impose Sharia,” in the words of Ansar Al-Sharia’s “Commander” Mohammad Ali al-Zahawi.

And then this third fact.

Remember the story about Obama’s Granny Sarah? This one? In which we told you about Walid and Theodore Shoebat’s discovery that Granny Sarah, Cousin Musa Obama, and their family were using Western contributions and soliciting others? Through a television interview on Al-Jazeera in which the President’s Cousin Musa happily discussed the ways the President’s name was being used to fund educations in Sharia for poor kids? Getting gobs of favorable publicity from groups as varied as the International Reporting Project (in which New York Times editor Jill Abramson plays a key role), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation, Greenpeace and even the Catholic Relief Services?

Remember this exchange between Cousin Musa and the Al Jazeera interviewer? 

Q. So then you open opportunities for other universities? Do all these scholarships involve studying Arabic and Sharia?

A. Uuu…hhh the majority of course is Sharia schools because I have strong connections and relationships with primarily Sharia institutions.

So the obvious question.

Let’s assume for a moment that the reason for this debacle in Benghazi was not incompetence.

For the “intelligence community” (to use Vice President Biden’s words from his debate) to be specifically monitoring Facebook and Twitter for Ansar Al-Sharia means the Obama Administration well knew Ansar Al-Sharia was out and about in Benghazi. Yet somehow it didn’t see a threat coming on, of all dates, September 11?

What other reason could possibly have caused the U.S. government to act the way it did? To be blind as a bat about the intentions of a radical Islamic group openly dedicated to doing “battle with the liberals, the secularists …” (i.e., Americans and Westerners), all in the cause to “impose Sharia.”

This is, after all, a president who has repeatedly gone out of his way to send a signal to Islamic radicals that he would, as he said in his Cairo University address, “consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”

This is a president who blithely said just the other week at the United Nations that Arab youths were “rejecting the lie that… some religions… do not desire democracy.” The lie, of course, is that Sharia — the very Sharia promoted by his own family with his silent acquiescence as well as by Ansar Al-Sharia in Libya (not to mention the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt) does in fact strenuously reject democracy other than as a means of getting power. Once that power is obtained, free elections vanish and, to borrow from Churchill, the Iron Veil descends.

This is the very same president who brushed off the idea that the Detroit Underwear Bomber was part of some Al Qaeda plot but rather was just an “isolated extremist.”

Not to mention that the Obama administration persists to this moment in saying the Fort Hood shootings were nothing more than “work place violence.”

With all of that — and more — characterizing Obama’s approach to Islamic terror, it’s no surprise the mainstream media would not report these e-mails.

With multiples of good reasons. Whether incompetence, simple lying, or ideology, none of this is helpful to a far-left hero struggling mightily to get re-elected. Not to mention that the ideology issue is beyond thorny.

Obama has never held a press conference to disavow Granny Sarah — as he did with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Nor has he publicly asked her to stop using the President of the United States as fund-raising bait to raise money for what is, in effect, the exact same objective as Ansar Al-Sharia as expressed by Mohammad Ali al-Zahawi.

That objective?

Creating more Sharia fanatics whose sole belief is about imposing Sharia — everywhere. For all we know some Granny Obama-funded Sharia acolyte could one day well turn up in yet another attack on Americans just like the attack in Benghazi.

Which is to say that in the world of leftist ideology that Barack Obama is using to run the White House, the State Department, and all the rest of the U.S. government, to consider Ansar Al-Sharia a threat of any kind would be an insult. Divisive. Deliberately egging on what the Obama administration likes to call a “man caused disaster” — formerly known as Islamic terrorism.

What these leaked State Department e-mails are doing is raising the obvious point about Obama and Benghazi.

If Benghazi is not about incompetence or lying — it’s worse.

It’s about a U.S. government that is at its highest levels in some fashion simpatico with a totalitarian ideology.

That ideology is Sharia.

And whether they wish to admit it or not — these e-mails show exactly what Obama is loath to admit.

Who killed Ambassador Chris Stevens?

Sharia killed Ambassador Chris Stevens.