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National Security: Turns out al-Qaida hit not just one, but four U.S.  embassies last month. These coordinated acts of terror are not the first that  the president, who blamed the violence on a video, has downplayed.

The Weekly Standard reports that in addition to the deadly attack on the  American Consulate in Libya, al-Qaida terrorists were behind the U.S. Embassy  sieges in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen. All were timed around the 11th anniversary  of 9/11 and carried out by terrorists tied to the same group that attacked our  homeland on 9/11.

A congressional probe reveals President Obama knew on Day One that al-Qaida  terrorists were behind the murder of the U.S. ambassador and three of his aides  in Benghazi. But he spun it as a “spontaneous” outbreak of violence, claiming  local Muslims were reacting to a “hateful” American-made movie on the Muslim  prophet Muhammad.

The initial knee-jerk denial of Islamic terrorism fits a pattern with this  presidency. Since 2009, Obama has insisted acts of terror are not terror, or  terrorists have acted alone when in fact they’ve acted in concert with al-Qaida  or the Taliban. Here’s a rundown of the other cases:

•  Fort Hood massacre: Despite reports Maj. Nidal Hasan screamed “Allahu  Akbar!” before opening fire on a roomful of fellow Army soldiers in Texas on  Nov. 5, 2009, Obama dismissed an otherwise obvious act of terrorism as the  random act of “one individual.”

Even after evidence showed Hasan was in contact with al-Qaida leader Anwar  Awlaki and had religiously justified his attack in an elaborate PowerPoint  presentation, the administration still classified his jihadi rampage as  “workplace violence.”

•  Christmas Day bomber: Within days of the Dec. 25, 2009, attack on a U.S.  airliner, Obama assured the nation that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was “an  isolated extremist.”

In fact, the so-called underwear bomber had been trained by al-Qaida in  Yemen. Obama and his national security team knew this within the first hours of  the investigation because Abdulmutallab had told the FBI as much during his  interrogation.

•  Times Square bomber: Two days after Faisal Shahzad tried on May 1, 2010,  to detonate his explosives-packed SUV in downtown New York, the White House  misled the public into thinking there was no larger terrorist conspiracy behind  the attempt.

It described it as as a “one-off” incident — a British term meaning it wasn’t  part of a series. In fact, intelligence clearly showed that the Pakistani  Taliban were behind the attack. Shahzad had been trained at a Taliban terror  camp inside Pakistan and had been funded by the terrorist group.

The president covered up what really happened in all these terror cases,  because they were embarrassing failures of security and intelligence.

Al-Qaida’s coordinated and heavily armed strike in Libya — the worst on U.S.  soil since 9/11 — also jeopardizes Obama’s carefully crafted narrative that he’s  decapitated al-Qaida and is generally tough on terrorists. Neither is true. And  judging from recent polls, voters are starting to see through the smoke  screen.

Mitt Romney now commands a 48%-42% advantage over Obama on the question of  which candidate would be tougher on terrorism, a new Bloomberg National Poll  finds. We suspect this gap will grow as more details leak out about al-Qaida’s  unfortunate — and unnecessary — resurgence on Obama’s watch.