Issa has caused plenty of heartburn for Republicans. (photo: M. Scott Mahaskey/Politico)
03 May 14
f
you ignored the headline and are reading this anyway, you are part of
the problem. Despite the fact that the last several resurgences have
produced nothing that verifies the claims of the right wing, we’re once
again forced to wade into the matter and endure at least the fifth round
of grandstanding in a cycle that leads us no closer to actually solving
the problems that Benghazi revealed.
The latest return of the assault that killed four
Americans in a diplomatic outpost in the eastern Libya city to the
public consciousnesses comes from conservative group Judicial Watch
obtaining on Tuesday a copy of White House emails
from the days after the attack through a FOIA request to the State
Deparment. Now Republicans and conservative media have narrowed in on
one in particular from Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes as
the latest in a string of smoking guns
that proves malfeasance on the part of the administration. So now,
after 11 open hearings in the House of Representatives alone, scores of
witnesses called for testimony, millions of dollars
spent, and thousands of documents from the administration, we’re at the
point where the Republicans are generally scraping the bottom of the
barrel in formulating their reasons to keep the investigation alive.
The new email may have been the tipping point in
Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) finally yielding to the demands
of the most conservative members of his caucus and launching a “special
committee” to investigate Benghazi. For months Boehner had resisted,
saying that the four committees that have spent the last year and a
half looking into the tragedy were doing a good enough job and drawing fire
from the far-right in the process. According to early reports, the
committee will be headed by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC), one of the chief
proponents of the idea that the Obama administration is hiding something
about Benghazi that is just waiting to be revealed.
In the email, which went to Press Secretary Jay
Carney, Communications Director Jen Palmieri, and other communications
officials in the administration, Rhodes laid out the goals of the
administration in preparing then-U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
Susan Rice to appear on the Sunday morning talk shows just days after
the attack. Conservatives have taken the bullet point stating that one
of the goals of Rice’s appearance is to “underscore that these protests
are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broader failure of policy” as
the smoking gun they needed to finally prove that the administration
has been politically manipulating the response from the very beginning.
As everyone knows, Rice went on to do all five Sunday shows
and was subsequently pilloried by Republicans and members of the
right-wing media for placing such a strong emphasis on the role of the
anti-Islamic video in prompting the attack. Such an interpretation of
both Rice’s comments and Rhodes’ email, however, ignores the fact that
when Rhodes’ email was sent, the Central Intelligence Agency had hours
beforehand already drafted
a set of talking points that placed the blame on the video.
We learned
that fact from the emails the White House released over a year ago. And
it wasn’t until just prior
to Rice’s appearance that intelligence agencies began to come to a
consensus that the attack was less spontaneous and more planned that
previously determined. That bit of information we learned all the way
back in Nov. 2012.
That hasn’t stopped the right wing from unleashing a
cascade of rage and scorn against the White House in the ensuing days.
On Friday, Rep. Darrel Issa (R-CA) announced that he’d subpoenaed
Secretary of State John Kerry to testify before the House Oversight
Committee about the latest round of emails. Kerry, as many have already
pointed out, was not in the administration on the night of the attack —
instead, he was on the Hill as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee. But Issa is demanding Kerry appear anyway. “The fact that
these documents were withheld from Congress for more than 19 months is
alarming,” he wrote, referring to the recently released email from
Rhodes.
Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD), ranking member of the
Oversight committee, slammed Issa’s move in a statement, noting that
Issa did not first send a letter making his request, he did not call to
determine if the Secretary would be in the country, and he did not hold a
Committee vote on his subpoena. “These actions are not a responsible
approach to congressional oversight, they continue a trend of generating
unnecessary conflict for the sake of publicity, and they are shockingly
disrespectful to the Secretary of State,” Cummings said.
The Rhodes email is also giving conservatives the
chance to find any reason they can to trump up their charges that the
Obama administration was willfully negligent the night of the assault.
On Thursday night, former National Security Council spokesman Tommy
Vietor appeared on Fox News to discuss Benghazi. While there, host Bret
Baier confronted Vietor about his role in crafting Rice’s infamous
talking points, asking such detailed questions
as “According to the e-mails and the time line, the CIA circulates new
talking points after they’ve removed the mention of al Qaeda, and then
at 6:21 the White House – you – add a line about the administration
warning of September 10th of social media reports calling for
demonstrations. True?”
Vietor responded that he didn’t remember exactly what
words he changed where in the talking points before finally snapping at
Baier. “Dude, this was like two years ago,” the frustrated Vietor said.
“We’re still talking about the most mundane process,” he said, adding
“We’re talking about the process of editing talking points. That’s what
bureaucrats do all day long. Your producers edit scripts multiple
times.” The conservative media immediately pounced on Vietor, hammering him for being overly dismissive of the Benghazi tragedy.
“As I said on the show, what happened is a tragedy and
our focus should be on taking steps to ensure that never happens
again,” Vietor told ThinkProgress. “We have spent almost two years
talking about the talking points and it is long past the point of being
absurd.”
“The reality is that lots of people just hate Obama
and will attack him about any issue they can find,” Vietor continued.
“But with Benghazi, Fox News and talk radio have constructed this
alternate reality where Obama watched drone feeds of the attack and the
CIA was given orders to stand down and not launch a rescue mission. All
of that is false but that doesn’t seem to matter. And that’s been the
frustration of everybody.”
Democrats have for months now pleaded with their counterparts to drop the cover-up issue
and instead focus on the actual policy concerns that Benghazi has
raised, such as embassy security funding and the recommendations of the
State Department’s Accountability Review Board. The ridiculous nature of
the obsession the Republicans in the House has taken its toll among
even the GOP caucus. Yesterday, following another Issa hearing, Rep.
Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-CA), chair of the powerful Armed Services
committee, soundly dismissed
the testimony of Issa’s star witness. In a statement issued soon after
the hearing’s conclusion, McKeon said testimony from Brigadier General
Robert Lovell (ret.) was not particularly helpful, given his own committee’s report finding that the military could not have changed the outcome of the attack.
Neither McKeon’s snub nor the Democrats pleas appear
to have swayed the GOP leadership. And so as we move further away from
that night in 2012, the story continues to drift from one honoring Amb.
J. Chris Stevens when he gave his life in service of his country and
seeking how to prevent others
from reaching a similar fate. Instead, we get this: a seemingly
perpetual cycle of accusations and finger-pointing, followed by
denunciations and debunking. It’s getting tiring but until the day comes
that Republican leaders take heed from their own standard-bearers
and let the issue go, or listen to the Democrats and work together on
actually preventing the next Benghazi, it’s one we’re going to have to
continue to live with.
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