Benghazi Special Investigation

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It looks like we might have another special committee to investigate Benghazi. Here are a couple of points that concern me:

Democrats ... urged time and cost constraints for a forum they likened to a "kangaroo court" designed only to drum up GOP support ahead of the November elections.

Under Boehner's legislation, the select panel "can go on forever," Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., told reporters. "The amount of money they can spend is undefined and can be unlimited."

...

The National Republican Congressional Committee's pitch said the GOP was "moving fast" to hold Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton "accountable for their actions" on the night of the Benghazi attack. It vowed that "no one will get away" from the select committee and asked people to become a "Benghazi Watchdog" by donating money. Suggested contributions started at $25.

While we've already had several investigations into what happened at Benghazi, this go-around just strikes me as being guided by a mission statement of "we don't know what we're looking for but we're going to turn over everything we can in the hopes that we'll find something we can use." What's the ultimate goal here? I know the current theory I'm hearing is that the White House engaged in a massive coverup but nobody has said what it is they're covering up. They keep pointing to the line where the White House didn't label this a terrorist attack until a day or two after the fact. I'm still trying to see how this justifies multiple special investigations over the last few years.

Worst. Law & Order spinoff. Ever.

The justification is the presidential election of 2016

to hold Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton "accountable for their actions" on the night of the Benghazi attack.

I think your quote pretty much makes it clear.

Kehama wrote:

What's the ultimate goal here?

Whip up the GOP base into a frenzy for the 2014 mid-terms and politically damage Clinton for her expected 2016 presidential run.

Demosthenes wrote:

Except the only one covering this is Fox News, and who is watching that channel that was likely to vote for Hillary anyway?

To me, I think the investigation is great because if they have an unlimited budget with no timeframe or stated goal other than to find undefined things, that gives great ammunition to use against the GOP's attempted image of fiscal responsibility.

But see: Starr, Kenneth; also McCarthy, Joseph.

Demosthenes wrote:

Except the only one covering this is Fox News, and who is watching that channel that was likely to vote for Hillary anyway?

To me, I think the investigation is great because if they have an unlimited budget with no timeframe or stated goal other than to find undefined things, that gives great ammunition to use against the GOP's attempted image of fiscal responsibility.

No one but Democrats will care about that anyway and none of them would vote for Republicans.

Except the only one covering this is Fox News, and who is watching that channel that was likely to vote for Hillary anyway?

To me, I think the investigation is great because if they have an unlimited budget with no timeframe or stated goal other than to find undefined things, that gives great ammunition to use against the GOP's attempted image of fiscal responsibility.

EDIT: Based on the Fox News clips I've seen, it sounds like Republicans believe Obama was playing incident off as not terror to avoid it looking like we needed "more military able" Republicans to be voted in during the election cycle. In other words, Fox News doesn't like that a Democratic politician did something political.

Meanwhile, when the former head of Homeland Security suggested he was forced to raise the terror alert levels by the Bush Administration during election season to make people have the same reaction... Fox News basically made it out like that guy was some crazy idiot (why the story didn't become how did Bush then select a crazy idiot for a department responsible for national security is something I still wonder about occasionally) and surely Bush would NEVER do that.

Geebus, did we time warp back to the 105th Congress somehow?

someone posted some asinine Benghazi crap on my facebook page and before taking it down, I responded to him with the statement....

"Even if I accept your premise that the President lied about this (and that is one huge mfing if), 4 Americans died for it and that is a tragedy. But the fact that you and your ilk seem to have no problem at all with the fact that the president you worship lied to get us in an elective war that resulted in the senseless deaths of 4400 Americans tells me that you have nothing productive to say to me. Ever. Again."

Even my conservative father in law was laughing at their stupidity and he hates Hillary. "This is all they have on her." Funny, that's exactly what I was thinking. Tell a lie enough times, amiright?

It's not to change minds, it's to ensure more republicans vote this election season.

As far as I know it was a CIA hit. Was already called out before it happened by the NoAgenda Podcast.

And now Monica is back in the press... hmmmmm...

Sparhawk wrote:

As far as I know it was a CIA hit. Was already called out before it happened by the NoAgenda Podcast.

You need to cite that as "No Agenda Global Radio", as opposed to John Dvorak and Adam Curry's "No Agenda" podcast, which reaches exactly the opposite conclusion.

I haven't seen any evidence that convinces me that this stuff is anything more than conspiracy theories.

Republicans say the White House, concerned primarily with protecting President Barack Obama in the final weeks of his re-election campaign, misled the nation by playing down intelligence suggesting Benghazi was a major, al-Qaida-linked terrorist attack. They accuse the administration of stonewalling congressional investigators ever since, pointing specifically to emails written by U.S. officials in the days after the attack but only released last week.

...

The Obama administration says officials tried to provide the public with the best information available after the attack at a time when U.S. embassies, consulates and other facilities were facing angry demonstrations across the Muslim world over a YouTube video mocking Islam's Prophet Muhammad. It originally attributed Benghazi to a similar protest that extremists hijacked, but retracted that account amid severe criticism. It says Republicans are persisting with Benghazi questions in the hopes of generating a scandal to gain political support.

Oh nooooo, the horrible crime of misleading. Better spend billions to get to the bottom of this.

The day after the attack, US sources were already telling CNN that it was not protesters, but a pre-planned attack.

Only the initial public statements by Obama and Clinton were based on the idea that it was the protesters that attacked.

The biggest aspect seems to be Susan Rice's comments about the attacks. That she deliberately "downplayed" the link between the attack and an actual terrorist groups.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...

Host Bob Schieffer: "But you do not agree with (Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.) that this was something that had been plotted out several months ago?"

Rice: "We do not have information at present that leads us to conclude that this was premeditated or preplanned."

Schieffer: "Do you agree or disagree with him that al-Qaida had some part in this?"

Rice: "Well, we'll have to find out that out. I mean I think it's clear that there were extremist elements that joined in and escalated the violence. Whether they were al-Qaida affiliates, whether they were Libyan-based extremists or al-Qaida itself I think is one of the things we'll have to determine."

"What we think then transpired in Benghazi is that opportunistic extremist elements came to the consulate as this was unfolding. They came with heavy weapons, which, unfortunately, are readily available in post-revolutionary Libya, and that escalated into a much more violent episode. Obviously, that's our best judgment now. We'll await the results of the investigation."

To Republicans, it's apparently misleading to say that you don't have evidence yet to support the conclusion.

Republicans were soooo concerned about Benghazi when it happened that they skipped the intelligence briefing 5 days after the event.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

To Republicans, it's apparently misleading to say that you don't have evidence yet to support the conclusion.

That's the part that's confusing me. The way the investigation is being phrased it makes it sound like they're sure there's evidence out there of some big cover-up by the White House but all I've seen is that at first they said it was probably rioters and then a couple days later they said nope, we were wrong, it was a terrorist attack. And those "smoking gun" memos telling people to downplay the possibility of a terrorist attack and instead focus on the protests? Again, that's spin, they were still investigating.

I really think some of the people pushing for this investigation think they're going to find evidence that Obama personally knew that an attack was coming and did nothing to protect the people at the embassy. I think that's the pot of political gold they're searching for at the end of this rainbow.

Kehama wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

To Republicans, it's apparently misleading to say that you don't have evidence yet to support the conclusion.

That's the part that's confusing me. The way the investigation is being phrased it makes it sound like they're sure there's evidence out there of some big cover-up by the White House but all I've seen is that at first they said it was probably rioters and then a couple days later they said nope, we were wrong, it was a terrorist attack. And those "smoking gun" memos telling people to downplay the possibility of a terrorist attack and instead focus on the protests? Again, that's spin, they were still investigating.

I really think some of the people pushing for this investigation think they're going to find evidence that Obama personally knew that an attack was coming and did nothing to protect the people at the embassy. I think that's the pot of political gold they're searching for at the end of this rainbow.

And even if this were entirely true (a GINORMOUS stretch), the net result is that 4 Americans died. And though tragic, it doesn't begin to compare with the 4400 Americans killed and several tens of thousands horribly maimed by the documented, repeated lies of their boy George W Bush.

When you increase the scale of an issue by 100 times, it isn't the same issue anymore. When you increase it by 1100 times, it doesn't even belong in the same dimensional plane.

Jean Rostand wrote:

Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.

Tanglebones wrote:
Jean Rostand wrote:

Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMMH...

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Oh nooooo, the horrible crime of misleading.

It was the horrible crime of injecting politics into the situation by downplaying the attack to help Obama's re-election. Or at least that's what the Republican fundraiser email I got said.

OG_slinger wrote:
Quintin_Stone wrote:

Oh nooooo, the horrible crime of misleading.

It was the horrible crime of injecting politics into the situation by downplaying the attack to help Obama's re-election. Or at least that's what the Republican fundraiser email I got said.

But when Tom Ridge says he was pressured to do the same thing, he's just some whackadoodle who's trying to sell books.

Said it before, I'll say it again... SURPRISE! Politicians do political things! Who knew?

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Blah blah blah.

Please stop clouding the carefully constructed and targeted narrative with facts.

Tanglebones wrote:
Jean Rostand wrote:

Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.

And, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say "yes".

iaintgotnopants wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:
Jean Rostand wrote:

Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.

And, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say "yes".

Then aim for the flattop.

iaintgotnopants wrote:
Tanglebones wrote:
Jean Rostand wrote:

Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.

And, when someone asks you if you're a god, you say "yes".

Sadly, there will be no one left to ask, according to Jean.

Edit:unless them all is referring only to males, then I guess there would be plenty of women around to ask.

I honestly didn't know there had been this many investigations.

Benghazi has produced 13 public hearings, the release of 25,000 pages of documents and 50 separate briefings. The select committee won't be the only inquiry, as other GOP-led congressional panels continue their investigations, including a House Oversight probe which just last week took the extraordinary step of subpoenaing a Cabinet member, Secretary of State John Kerry.

So we've actually got inquiries on top of inquiries going on at the moment.

In the 20 months since the attack, multiple independent, bipartisan and GOP-led probes already have faulted the State Department for inadequate security at the outpost, leading to four demotions. No attacker has yet been brought to justice.

Republicans say they're unsatisfied with explanations so far, and they have leveled a range of accusations against President Barack Obama, Clinton and other senior administration officials. Chief among them is that the administration misled the American people about the nature of the attack during a presidential election campaign and stonewalled congressional investigators.

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla., criticized the "song and dance" she said came from Clinton when House members wanted to question her about Benghazi a few months after the attack. Clinton's testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee was delayed when she missed a month of work toward the end of her tenure after suffering a virus, then a fall and a concussion, and then brief hospitalization for a blood clot near her brain.

So we've already gotten answers and blame has been placed. At this point it's looking more and more like a case of investigations not returning the conclusions they want so they're just going to keep doing them over and over again until they get the "right" results. I think if 1 out of 100 investigations determined Obama was directly involved in some huge coverup then that would be the one they decided was right.

The next time Republicans have the White House I'm going to have to pay more attention to what Democrats are doing. I remember a few inquiries into Bush's role in the wars and what he knew about 9/11 as well as filibusters and things like that but it just didn't seem to go on and on like it is now with Benghazi and the ACA. There's something to be said for determination but there comes a point when you just need to stop. At least take a different approach rather than just constantly holding identical votes and inquiries on the same thing hoping that this time it'll end differently.

I am convinced that a shockingly large number of people believe that the only reason the Obama administration isn't openly evil is because of the senators and congressmen constantly vigilant for his sneaky acts of evil.

Rezzy wrote:

I am convinced that a shockingly large number of people believe that the only reason the Obama administration isn't openly evil is because of the senators and congressmen constantly vigilant for his sneaky acts of evil.

You always count the silver after a darky has been over at the big house.

Rezzy wrote:

I am convinced that a shockingly large number of people believe that the only reason the Obama administration isn't openly evil is because of the senators and congressmen constantly vigilant for his sneaky acts of evil.

I dunno, he's done pretty good for himself even with their vigilance. Bombing countries we're not at war with, assassinating American citizens, continuing pointless wars, wiretapping on the citizenry... If he can still get away with all that stuff in spite of their vigilance then maybe they're on to something.

Basically, I find it odd that they're not focused more on the actual bad stuff that we know has been done but instead keep poking away at the imaginary boogeyman under the bed hoping we can prove he exists. The main reason I think the real atrocities aren't being investigated is because any true investigation would show that most of the people in both parties were a-okay with that stuff as it accomplished their goals and they only want to find something that makes one party look bad, not both.

Kehama wrote:

Basically, I find it odd that they're not focused more on the actual bad stuff that we know has been done but instead keep poking away at the imaginary boogeyman under the bed hoping we can prove he exists. The main reason I think the real atrocities aren't being investigated is because any true investigation would show that most of the people in both parties were a-okay with that stuff as it accomplished their goals and they only want to find something that makes one party look bad, not both.

Republicans can't very well complain about policies they introduced.

Quintin_Stone wrote:

Republicans can't very well complain about policies they introduced.

Pshaw! Let me introduce you to the outrage over mandatory private insurance, my good sir.

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