2016 Postmortem

Bill USA

(6,436 posts) Sat May 7, 2016, 04:17 PM May 2016

Benghazi Biopsy: A Comprehensive Guide to One of America’s Worst Political Outrages

http://www.newsweek.com/benghazi-biopsy-comprehensive-guide-one-americas-worst-political-outrages-385853

Moussa Koussa.

That is the name of the “classified source” in an old email from Hillary Clinton released last week by Republicans purportedly investigating the 2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Under the instructions of the Benghazi committee’s chairman, Republican Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, Koussa’s name was blacked-out on the publicly issued email, as Republicans proclaimed revealing his identity would compromise national security. The media ran with it, saying Clinton had sent classified information through her personal email account.

[font size="3"]But the CIA never said the name was secret. Nor did the Defense Intelligence Agency or the FBI. No, Koussa’s role as an intelligence source is about as classified as this column.[/font] He is the former intelligence chief and foreign minister of Libya. In 2011, he fled that country for Great Britain, where he provided boodles of information to MI6 and the CIA. Documents released long ago show Koussa’s cooperation. Government officials have openly discussed it. His name appears in newspapers with casual discussions about his assistance. Sanctions by the British and the Americans against Koussa were lifted because of his help, and he moved to Qatar. All of that is publicly known.

[font size="3"]But, as they have time and again, the Republicans on the Benghazi committee released deceitful information for what was undoubtedly part of a campaign—as Kevin McCarthy of the House Republican leadership has admitted—to drive down Clinton’s poll numbers. Republicans have implied—and some journalists have flatly stated—that Clinton was reckless and may have broken the law by sending an email that included thirdhand hearsay mentioning Koussa’s name. [font color="red"]The reality is that the Republicans continue to be reckless with the truth.[/font][/font]

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In fact, no previous assault on a diplomatic outpost has received this kind of relentless expression of congressional outrage. There weren’t investigations that were anything on this scale about the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut in 1983 (63 killed), on the U.S. Embassy annex northeast of Beirut in 1984 (24 killed) or on the U.S. Embassy in Sanaa, Yemen, in 2008 (18 killed). Republicans didn’t believe these exact same scenarios that took place under Republican presidents merited similar zeal to dig down to some unexposed, imaginary “truth.”

In fact, Benghazi was just one of 21 major assaults on an American diplomatic facility in the last 20 years; the personnel murdered there were among about 90 other Americans hired by the government to work in diplomatic outposts who were killed in terrorist attacks from 1998 through 2012, according to a State Department report. Apparently, their killings—like the deaths of thousands of Americans at Pearl Harbor and in the World Trade Center—were seen as less important than murder of four people in a North African country in the midst of a government overthrow.

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But to fully understand how political this latest Benghazi investigation has become, look at the records. Since March, the committee has issued almost 30 press releases related to Clinton; only five have been put out on every other topic combined. Then there is the committee’s interim report from this past May. The word Obama—who cannot run for commander-in-chief again—is not mentioned. Neither is the word president. Or Ansar al-Sharia, the group suspected of engineering the attack. White House makes only 13 appearances. Imagine an investigation on 9/11 that did not mention Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or President Bush; that is what has been done with the Benghazi committee’s first public report.

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Nothing like this happened after 9/11. Yes, there were scores of buttons and bumper stickers with words on them like “We Will Never Forget” and “America Salutes Its Fallen Heroes.” These were intended to unify the country and honor those who had died; in a widespread search, I could find none showing the blood of the murdered splattered on anyone in the Bush administration.

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GOP-Commissioned Benghazi Report Debunks GOP Conspiracy Theories About Benghazi

But the latest report, released Friday, does little to back up Republicans’ suspicion of negligence, and it finds no intelligence failure on the part of the CIA.

The investigative report is authored on the right by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and the left by Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD). Rogers previewed the report during a Fox News this September when he smacked down one of the leading right-wing theories, that the State Department issued a stand-down order before the attack. “It was the commander on the ground making the decision,” Rogers explained at the time. “I think it took 23 minutes before they all, including that commander, by the way, got in a car and went over and rescued those individuals.”

The report also disproves other conspiracy theories about that tragic night, including the idea that officials rejected a proposal to rescue the Americans trapped in the under-attack consulate, and that those in the consulate were covertly dealing arms to Syrians from Libya.

This investigation is one of eight total into the attack. Collectively, the investigations have been panned on the left as “partisan” and “an embarrassment,” particularly because of the amount of money spent on them — more than what’s allotted for standing Congressional issues like the budget or ethics — and because Republicans have raised money off of the tragedy and subsequent investigation. Even family of one of those killed in the attacks came forward to denounce the repeated Benghazi investigations.
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