From Jeremy Stahl at Slate, “GOP-Controlled Intelligence Committee Debunks Benghazi Conspiracies“:
The Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has issued a report roundly rejecting a number of conspiracy theories about the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
The report, which was released on Friday after a two-year-long investigation, responded to a number of long running theories about the attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others.
The report found that there was no evidence of a “stand-down order” and that there was no advanced warning of the attack, two canards that have been reported by media outlets such as Fox News.
The report said that the process used to create a series of contested talking points by then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice was flawed, but the report did not say that Rice or the administration had intentionally misled the public with those talking points…
Looks like Issa and his GOP compeers didn’t even need the cover of a new Ferguson “outrage” to drop this sad little afterthought down the Media Village memory hole unnoticed.
ETA:
B is for Buffoons: The Benghazi "scandal" in crosticks
https://t.co/tSIt3LxGyE
— Billmon (@billmon1) November 22, 2014
srv
Who needs Benghazi when we have Uber?
Someone needs to Lyft the glibertarians investments.
Morzer
In the voice of Ted Cruz:
“So now we know that the RINOs were in on Benghazi!”
Mike G
Babbling
Empty
Nonsensical
Gibberish and
Heaving
Allegations with
Zero
Intelligence
sharl
Well sure, I guess Billmon did OK with his acrostics. But he’ll have to step up his game to even come close to islamophobic wingnut tweeter ‘SpreadButter’, whose BENGHAZI acrostic was truly remarkable, and probably earned her more retweets and replies from Weird and EmoProg Twitter than from her fellow wingnuts. It is now the stuff of legends (well, by twitter standards at least).
What’s that you say, she clearly doesn’t understand how acrostics work? Maybe so. Or maybe… she’s taken this whole acrostics thing to a new level, one that is beyond the capabilities of normal adult humans. I report, you decide.
agorabum
Well this can’t be, someone just told me the Obama administration is full of scandals just like Benghazi. Unpossible!
Villago Delenda Est
Not to worry. I’m sure that well before the Sunday morning idiotfests, we’ll have been reassured that every -R on the committee is actually a RINO.
On edit: /shakefist Morzer @2.
CarolDuhart2
I think the Friday document dump is now pretty much obsolete with the Internet. Now it’s the Holiday Eve Dump. The Days: Christmas Eve, New Years Eve and Day, Thanksgiving Eve and Day. And that’s it. This isn’t a Friday dump, but a Friday before the weeklong Holiday dump. Lots of people are going to celebrate a six-day weekend (Friday to Monday after Next), and won’t pay much attention to this news.
Remember when Benghazi was going to the the thing that sank Obama’s candidacy? Or his Presidency? With the luck and competence of the Republicans in their Wylie Coyote search for something that would allow them to impeach, or failing that, get people to really, really, hate him, Obama could well have a girlfriend and they not find out until he unpacks his luggage in Chicago.
Morzer
@Villago Delenda Est:
Strike me down and I shall only grow stronger!
In other news, Polish teabaggers have apparently decided that Winnie the Pooh is inappropriate for children:
http://theweek.com/speedreads/index/272462/speedreads-polish-council-bans-winnie-the-pooh-from-playground-for-being-a-pantsless-hermaphrodite
sharl
TBogg reminds us that this report won’t make any difference to people who wish to believe otherwise, and who are generally notorious for their ease with doublethink and massive capabilities for dissipating cognitive dissonance:
ETA: as proof of the latter, meet Dick Cheney fluffer Stephen Hayes:
sharl
@Morzer: Your Poland story triggered a faint memory, and on a hunch I googled {Poland + prudes}. It was the very first item in the search results:
The story goes on to say that “The four-legged fornicators soon garnered a wave of sympathy”, which led to the zoo officials reversing their decision.
So at least there are still some happy endings out there, so to speak.
sharl
@Morzer: My original reply was eaten, so I’ll just link to this somewhat recent story from Poland along the same lines, about two zoo donkeys in the western city of Posnan who offended a couple of local prudes by doing what comes naturally out in front of the viewing public.
Story ended happily though (for the donkeys).
sharl
Eh, I need to get going, but first this…from looking through a dozen or so twitter feeds from Ferguson – mostly protestors, but a couple local politicians too – the treatment they are getting from the major national media is awful. Big Media seems to be more interested in filming a riot – something the protestors (save for a handful of outside anarchist types) definitely DO NOT want – and despite their best efforts, the protestors aren’t getting much positive response from those network talking heads on coverage of substantial issues. That would make for boring visuals, dontcha know.
Even Villager-approved PBS host Gwen Ifill noted this:
So depressing; a number of those protestors have done an impressive job of organizing and coordinating support efforts – a newsletter, collection of emergency funds, bringing in volunteer lawyers, etc. – but Big Media just ain’t interested in that stuff, nor in reminding folks how things came to this point. So far, the only group to have done any rioting on a major scale are the cops, but you wouldn’t know it if broadcast media were your only source of news.
Morzer
@sharl:
Jay Nixon is going to be split in two:
1) Disappointment that his elaborate preparations were unnecessary and made him look like a patsy for the white panic brigade
2) Relief that he isn’t going to be remembered as the man who got American citizens shot by bringing the heavies into town unnecessarily.
JPL
For those who depend on Fox for their news, Benghazi will no longer be mentioned. Report? What report?
Mike J
@JPL:
After congress just released a report saying Obama personally flew to Benghazi on his way back from Mecca on a magic carpet and personally led the swarthy hordes in their attack against the US?
Fox will continue to do what Fox does. Have you ever seen them let facts get in the way?
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: Call it Issa’s revenge on Boehner for the knife in the back that was the Trey Gowdy appointment.
Hildebrand
The folks over at Free Republic have already swung around to the belief that Gowdy’s committee is the ‘real’ committee.
OzarkHillbilly
Just to keep your night time slumbers interesting:
Man’s headaches due to tapeworm living in his brain for four years
You’re welcome.
Iowa Old Lady
@OzarkHillbilly: Holy shit.
JPL
@Iowa Old Lady: I didn’t click to the article because ick!
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly: That would kind of suck. I don’t want to click the link either. Most stuff doesn’t gross me out, nothing really. Well other than other organisms living in a humans body and the thought of it happening to me. Were they able to get it out?
SRW1
Well, who needs Benghazi!! and Ebola!! when you have AMNESTY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You gotta focus your outrage, people.
mai naem
This is excellent news for John McCain.
OzarkHillbilly
@Tommy: Yeah, they got it out, but he still has headaches, smells strange odors, etc… So yeah, damage was done. Time will tell if his brain is able to repair itself to any extent.
I knew some would be so icked out by the very idea but I have always found such things fascinating. I even did a report on parasites in school. I guess a lifetime of pulling off ticks and leeches and dealing with chiggers burrowed into my skin did that for me.
Cckids
@OzarkHillbilly: ok, against my better judgement I went there. ICK, but interesting.
FYI, people, no gross pics. Greyscale brain scans, no “monsters inside me” stuff.
And even so, ick.
debbie
@sharl:
The flaw is that it wasn’t accompanied by Issa’s copious tears.
tybee
@Tommy:
yes. the procedure involves a lemon cookie and a hammer.
Morzer
@tybee:
I wonder if that would work on the Republican party.
Davis X. Machina
The troof is still out there!
The attack — or as I like to call it, the ‘attack’ — took place so that ‘terrorists’ — or as I like to call them, ‘rogue elements of the CIA operating at the behest of the Obama campaign’ — could seize US diplomatic personnel and hold them hostage — or as I like to call it, ‘hostage’ — in order to be the objects of a dramatic Navy SEAL rescue just before the election.
Because nothing less than pulling this sort of a rabbit out of a hat — or as I like to call it, an ‘October Surprise’ — could divert the growing Romney landslide and save the White House for the Islamofascist usurper and his socialist cabal.
But some damn Arabs didn’t stay bought. Or the CIA screwed things up, because Democrats can’t do covert operations right (see Operation Eagle Claw). Or because Hillary.
You guys need to spend more time in VFW halls…
OzarkHillbilly
@Morzer: No, some metal conditions are beyond repair.
Morzer
@Davis X. Machina:
I think I’d rather stay reasonably hygienic and without the urge to slaughter everything within 20 meters.
Davis X. Machina
@Morzer: There’s an alarming level of compromise to which I’ll stoop for cheap drink…
Amir Khalid
@mai naem:
Why does John McCain keep getting all this good news, when it can’t do his presidential campaign any good? Is God taunting him? Why is God so mean to a former POW?
Tommy
@OzarkHillbilly:
No I hear you. In high school for a project I got a water testing kit from my science teacher. Tested the water in the stream, most would call it a river, but when you are as close to the Mississippi as myself, it is a stream. I don’t recall the exact results, almost 30 years ago, but it was messed up water with so many parasites. Water I played in all the time.
In a somewhat long-winded way of saying, there is a lot of shit going on in your water. I’ll jump into or swim in almost anything to this day, but makes you think.
Update: Leeches. Oh leeches. Pulled off many myself and strangly they don’t creep me out much.
Botsplainer
Leaving my dive trip this morning. The diving has been phenomenal, did four one hour dives yesterday, the first at dawn, which was spectacular. I saw two octopi, each one out hunting – one was in sand flats at 25 feet and really unhappy to see me and my light, the other sliding around rocks and coral at 35-45 feet. Also saw a turtle a full five feet long from nose to tail tucked into its sleep hole at 40 feet. The parrotfish sleep protected in slots between corals and rocks, they all wake up at the same time, and there isn’t much interaction between night fish and day fish.
The other interesting thing was that I’d signed up for boat dives with the Europeans yesterday. The boat guys had been dealing with me all week, and just told me to hang with the group with no buddy, and had me bring up to the rear to help keep an eye out-European divers can be really reckless.
I am so getting my rescue diver card this coming year.
JPL
@Botsplainer: Sounds like a good trip, though. Please share the pics when you get them.
Tommy
@Botsplainer: So happy. So happy to hear you are continuing to have a good time.
I’ve only dived 12 times. I never thought I was an expert, not even in the ballpark. Felt if I gave the guide enough money they’d let me do things I shouldn’t.
Watch out for those folks …..
NotMax
@OzarkHillbilly
Thus the Speaker was hoist by his his own retard?
/politically incorrect pun
Amir Khalid
I’m well aware Vladimir Putin isn’t exactly Mr Popularity in the West, but for those of us who are not Bob in Portland, is there really any truth to this accusation?
Kay
I don’t think we can forget or omit the big driver behind Benghazi, because it wasn’t Right wing media or the GOP House.
It was Jake Tapper. He started it and flogged it for weeks.
This entire story came out of Jake Tapper’s interview with Susan Rice.
They took that transcript, those (few) words, hung a whole elaborate theory on what she actually said, a theory that is in no way justified by Rice’s words, and they did that in the mainstream press.
JPL
@Amir Khalid: Because of the sanctions, the economy of Russia is in turmoil. That much is true but the rest sounds like a rallying cry for the citizens of Russia. imo which is based on nothing really.
also, I blame Obama
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
As Michael Irvin once noted, the retraction is never pushed with the same intensity as the accusation.
Or the bullshit.
MomSense
@OzarkHillbilly:
Thanks for that. Having had a terrible headache all week that was keeping me up at night, this will a comfort for me.
@Kay:
Can’t forget the 60 minutes fiasco.
Mainstream media have been dreadful.
Botsplainer
@Tommy:
I carry advanced, nitrox and dry suit certifications. To become a dive professional, I’ll need a rescue card from either PADI or SSI; I intend to do that at some point.
Kay
Here’s more of Mr. Tapper flogging the story. The story is his interview with Susan Rice. It’s a story about an interview, really :)
I don’t even care that much, anyone who wanted to could have read the transcript of that interview and easily determined that it was in no way the “smoking gun” media figures pretended it was, for weeks, but that IS how Benghazi came to be. It was a story about an interview.
My sense was media felt there was more to it than they were told, and that’s legitimate, there’s nothing wrong with believing that and pursuing it, for all I know there WAS more to it.
But you have to FIND something, and they didn’t. So they just built a theory around the one interview because that’s all they had.
Morzer
‘@Amir Khalid:
Sanctions are generally aimed at making regimes change their behavior, with the implicit threat that if the behavior doesn’t change then things will start to get really uncomfortable. What Lavrov is saying is more for internal consumption by the junkies of Russian victimhood created by Putin than a serious contribution to international discussion. I’d take it as a sign that the sanctions are making Putin’s key supporters increasingly uneasy. it’s also worth recalling that Putin’s electoral “victories” are pretty heavily tainted with vote rigging, intimidation and outright banning of opposition parties and figures, plus a good deal of press censorship, so we aren’t talking about the world’s most legitimate regime here.
Kay
@MomSense:
It was amazing to watch, because it didn’t matter that they didn’t find anything.
That should matter. Their theory shouldn’t continue indefinitely. At some point they have to turn something up, or stop making vague accusations. They never did and it didn’t matter. They went with it anyway.
Tapper says in one of his 500 interviews about the interview that they didn’t want to interview Rice, they wanted to interview Clinton, so they didn’t even have the right PERSON to ask and that didn’t matter either!
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: I think Morzer has it right, that much of what Lavrov says is for internal consumption. But the sanctions have to be hurting, and with crude in the low $80’s Russia’s economy doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on.
Relatedly, this guy isn’t helping Russia much, either.
Kay
@MomSense:
What’s kind of amusing about it is, had they not jumped the gun and seized on Susan Rice’s 89 Words or whatever, they might have found something. She was just a dead end. They were getting nothing from her. Maybe if they hadn’t chased after Jake Tapper’s interview like a herd of sheep they would have turned something real up.
SFAW
@Morzer:
@OzarkHillbilly:
I OBJECT to youse guys implying that the Rethugs have more than two brains cells to rub together, between the lot of them.
@debbie:
Which is why Boehner shanked him in the first place. “This town ain’t big enough for two weepy WATBs, Mr. GTA V. Now sod off, asshole.”
SFAW
@Amir Khalid:
Bob in Portland? Why mention him?
(No, don’t answer. I’m just kidding.)
SFAW
@Kay:
Well, as Alex Jones, and any other highly trained investigative reporter (e.g., Jake Tapper) can tell you, absence of evidence does not translate to evidence of absence. The same people who covered up Whitewater – well, those who are still ALIVE, that is – and the people who covered up Vince Foster’s murder, must be on the job with BENGHAZI!!!!1!!2! All theh others were murdered by
the ClintonsObama.And I’m pretty sure, that when ALL the evidence is finally uncovered/revealed, we will learn that Obama also masterminded the disappearance of Judge Crater.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Didn’t he also have something to do with the Alamo?
SFAW
@Ruckus:
No, didn’t have to. (Although his magical time machine would have allowed him to do so.) He just waited until he could aid-and-abet La Reconquista, which is what he’s doing (in part) by helping all them Messcans cross the (soon-to-be-erased-completely) border.
Fortunately, newly-serious-and-credible-because-he-now-wears-glasses
EmperorGovernor Rick Perry, with the help of Mensa founder Rep. Louie Gohmert, will put a stop to His Uppitiness’s plans.SRW1
@Amir Khalid: I am pretty sure this ‘regime change’ stuff by Lavrov is aimed at domestic consumption in Russia.
D58826
@Ruckus: I suspect that it was Obama who didn’t see the iceberg in time. Just think of all those 1%er’s on the Titanic that he could get in one shot!!
Omnes Omnibus
@D58826: Oh, he saw it. He just kept his mouth shut.
Another_Bob
Well, anyway, Benghazi was just season 6 of Wingnut Outrage Theater. They’re already showing previews of season 7 featuring GruberGate and the immigrant zombie invasion. This season, Boehner and McConnell and their Army of God come to the rescue, but [spoiler alert] their clown cars drive off the road into a ditch and I’m not sure what happens after that.
way2blue
What are the odds that the House Intelligence Committee sat on their Benghazi report until after the election?
Mnemosyne
@Amir Khalid:
What everyone else said. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were loudmouths within the US bureaucracy who would love to get rid of Putin for a “friendly” regime, but I honestly doubt that Obama or any of his advisors would touch that notion with a 10-foot pole.
Unfortunately, thanks to Georgie’s Big Adventure in Iraq, the accusation does have enough surface plausibility to be embarrassing to the US. But anyone brighter than Doug Feith knows that there’s a huge difference between Iraq and Russia. If nothing else, none of our NATO allies would stand for it.
Mnemosyne
@way2blue:
Why give odds for something that’s a certainty?
Villago Delenda Est
@Kay: One of the many reasons why Jake Tapper needs to be boiled in oil, in front of a studio audience.
Villago Delenda Est
@SFAW: Please.
Obama planted the bomb in the hold of the Maine, precipitated the Civil War by being uppity to the SC legislature, did essential shovel work for Benedict Arnold’s setup for the surrender of West Point, personally incited BOTH Defenestrations of Prauge, and served as 30 pieces of silver bag carrier for Judas Iscariot.
He was also at the grassy knoll. Who would suspect a two year old of handing the CIA the bullets that killed Kennedy?
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
Thanks, Obama?
But thanks for edumacating me. I had no idea that the VOC (Vast Obama Conspiracy) was so all-encompassing. (Although, if it was only Obama, can it really be a conspiracy? Hmm.) I guess the wingers were right – he really is the anti-Christ.
D58826
@Villago Delenda Est:
Love that word!!!!!!
But the entire conspiracy can be explained in one sentence – Obama was the serpent in the Garden of Eden. Beginning of the story and end of the story!
SFAW
@Villago Delenda Est:
I originally entered a riff on your suggestion, then realized I don’t want his death, even in jest.
Banishment, on the other hand, I’m OK with.
D58826
@Villago Delenda Est: @SFAW: Well maybe just a light toasting on either side will suffice.
Villago Delenda Est
@D58826: If he actually learned something from the light toasting on both sides, I’d be amazed.
Like all Village vermin, he absolutely refuses to learn from errors.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another_Bob:
The jackals take one sniff of the wreckage, retch and run away, and then a cut to commercial.
SWMBO
@Villago Delenda Est: Nope. They hit a fracking site, stuff the clown car trunk with Koch cash and drive off to the next crisis that they need to keep everyone scared and lead us to the next crash site.
grandpa john
@Kay: Our MSM not the republican party, will be the source of the killing stroke to democracy in America. We should never forget what Goebbels was able to achieve in Germany, once the free press was silenced
grandpa john
@Kay: What? You expected these exhalted poobahs to actually do the hard work themselves?