Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

No one could have predicted…

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Usually wrong but never in doubt

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Hot air and ill-informed banter

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

In my day, never was longer.

You are here: Home / Politics / Domestic Politics / Investigative Report on the Attacks on US Facilities in Benghazi, Libya, September 11, 2012

Investigative Report on the Attacks on US Facilities in Benghazi, Libya, September 11, 2012

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In advance of Secretary Clinton’s appearance tomorrow before the House of Representative’s Select Committee on Benghazi I thought it might make a bit of sense to post the actual, definitive, and germane report on the events at Benghazi. This was produced by the US House of Representative’s Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. It is attached at the bottom of this post.

As you may recall this was the result of the 7th investigation into the events of September 11, 2012. The Select Committee on Intelligence’s report was supposed to be the definitive last word on the matter. Of course, because the US House of Representative’s Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence found that there was no there there to incriminate Secretary Clinton or President Obama or anyone from doing anything illegal or unethical, and the conspiracy theories were just that, the GOP majority caucus in the House decided it needed an 8th committee and investigation to get to the bottom of something…

Benghazi Report

Reader Interactions

60Comments

  1. 1.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Secretary Clinton’s husband once prevaricated about getting oral sex from a young Jewish woman. That must mean something.

    / GOP strategist.

  2. 2.

    Amir Khalid

    I’m a foreigner so I haven’t been following this all that closely. But didn’t Secretary Hillary testify before any of the first seven investigations? If she wasn’t called then, why call her now?

  3. 3.

    Villago Delenda Est

    No one has found out the real truth about Benghazi yet, which has something to do with Hillary doing something nefarious. We just don’t know what it is because we haven’t found it, but she had to have done SOMETHING. She is Hillary, after all.

  4. 4.

    Punchy

    Trey Gowdy has every reason to turn this into an epic, absurdly contentious shitshow. This may be their last real shot at destroying Clinton, Inc. I cannot fathom just how much lying and grandstanding will spew forth from the GOPers tomorrow…..

  6. 6.

    Amir Khalid

    Surely, Harold Watson Gowdy III needs some superficial justification to call Hillary to testify, even if it doesn’t withstand serious scrutiny.

  10. 10.

    srv

    I’ve never been interested in the events. I’m interested in what a single Foreign Service Officer was doing in Benghazi in near orbit to a CIA base with a couple dozen operatives, which was attack separately. Everyone wants to talk about what happened after, but no one is interested in the before part.

    A couple decades back, our enemies in Lebanon demonstrated an adeptness at capturing/torturing or blowing up CIA Station Chiefs who were operating under diplomatic cover. They captured one, tortured him for a year or so, and they blew up another at the very hour he was having a meeting with all the ME bigwigs. Seems…. sophisticated?

    Was the SecState responsible for their security, or was the CIA? How exactly does that work in the Statecraft/Spycraft universe?

    Gen. Patreaus must still be having a good laugh at Hillary’s expense.

  11. 11.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Amir Khalid: The Republicans in Congress managed to keep the investigation over the Clintons’ investments in a real-estate deal going for the length of the entire Clinton administration until it eventually mutated into the investigation of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. This is just version 2.0. They figure that if Hillary Clinton becomes President they’ll just keep it going until some actual scandal adheres to it.

  12. 12.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Amir Khalid: In the Doonesbury “flashback” series they’re running while he’s taking a break, the last few days has been a story line from the 1980s about politician Lacy Davenport going to an exclusive community in Florida.

    Her Congressional aide en route to join her gets pulled over and hauled in by the police for entering the area while black. The arresting officer first tells him he’s being arrested for “loitering”, and the aide replies “Loitering? At 35 miles per hour?” and the cop replies “I meant speeding” and the gags go on like that, today’s strip includes her inquiring at the police station and being told “The charge? Oh, he was rioting. I think. Something like that. I know we caught him red-handed”.

    That’s pretty much what’s going on with Benghazi, same thing. One is an hilarious, comic illustration of authorities making things up after the fact almost at random, to camouflage what their real purpose is. And the other is a Doonesbury cartoon.

  13. 13.

    CaseyL

    @Amir Khalid:

    @Matt McIrvin:

    They figure that if Hillary Clinton becomes President they’ll just keep it going until some actual scandal adheres to it.

    Shoot, some House GOP pinhead has already said if Hillary wins, he wants to impeach her on her first day in office. It’s gonna be Whitewater all over again, this time investigating everything from the Clinton Foundation to Chelsea’s marriage.

  17. 17.

    amk

    @srv:

    While Hillary is running for presidency, what is your shitcanned he-is-gonna-be-the-prezinent-some-day adulterer up to now a days? Not even wingnut welfare for this loser apparently.

    Talk about clueless true trumpeter.

  21. 21.

    craigie

    You know the definition of insanity?

    As far as I’m concerned, the definition of insanity is to repeat that same lame “definition” over and over. We’ve all heard it a billion times, FFS. It wasn’t clever the first million times, and it’s less clever now. Plus it’s not the actual definition of insanity, goddammit.

    Phew, I feel much better now. Carry on.

  23. 23.

    redshirt

    I mean, just for the most recent example, has a single Democrat ever criticized W in regards 9/11 like Trump just did? Ever? Anyone except Grayson?

    Any so called Mainstream Media? Until just the past few days has any major media outlet pointed out 9/11 happened on Bush’s watch?

  24. 24.

    redshirt

    Sorry for the multiple posts but imagine 9/11 happening during the hypothetical Gore administration. Do you think Republicans today would not blame Gore to the Nth degree? Hang 9/11 over the Democrats heads every chance they got?

    The imbalance in media coverage is staggering in America, and yet it’s not taken seriously at all.

  28. 28.

    John Revolta

    @craigie: Furthermore, it’s bullshit. I frequently do the same thing on my computer several times before it does what I want.

    Wife, too, now that I think of it.

  31. 31.

    redshirt

    @amk: Which is Bill Clinton’s.
    Which is Jimmy Carter’s.
    _________________________
    America is awesome to this point, mostly.
    Which is LBJ’s.
    Which is JFK’s.

    You see where America’s lost the game after LBJ, right?

  32. 32.

    Redshift

    @Punchy:

    Trey Gowdy has every reason to turn this into an epic, absurdly contentious shitshow.

    Well, he may think so, but since there’s no there there, if they get hysterical and nasty, they’ll be another Rick Lazio — doing their side no good and generating sympathy for Hillary among everyone outside their bubble.

  36. 36.

    jl

    @Redshift:

    Gowdy is running the hearing a few days after he had to return money to a PAC that was coordinating attacks on HRC with Gowdy’s committee. (Edit: with Gowdy’s name prominently displayed in the PAC marketing material and ads)

    Gowdy pulled an Issa in revealing a redacted CIA source in attempt to lay a gotcha on HRC, and the CIA redacted the name for privacy reasons, not security reasons, since the CIA source;s status was public knowledge.

    Gowdy’s has managed to find it necessary to attack the CIA as either incompetent at national security classification or in that bag for HRC and therefore corrupt in his recent lines of attack on HRC

    Gowdy’s committee is being sued by an ex employee who charges the whole thing is a fraudulent political smear machine aimed at HRC.

    Gowdy is a mess.

    The Democrats on the committee see their chance to out Gowdy as a corrupt incompetent poll and will be trying to regulate him tomorrow.

    So, I’ll hope for the best and read about it at the end of the day.

  38. 38.

    sm*t cl*de

    @amk:

    your shitcanned he-is-gonna-be-the-prezinent-some-day adulterer

    You’ll have to narrow things down a little.

  40. 40.

    sm*t cl*de

    @amk:
    Ah, the shitcanned he-is-gonna-be-the-prezinent-some-day security-violating adulterer…
    I know, that doesn’t really narrow things down much either.

  41. 41.

    Tommy

    I have read more on this topic than I care to admit. It hurts my head. People that were there are still alive. Heck Stevens bodyguard is still alive and he tells a horrifying story of what happened. Not sure if it was Rolling Stone that got him to talk. Can’t recall. But we had basically an American Embassy overrun. I get that is not something we are used to, heck I don’t want to become used to it. But it happened.

  42. 42.

    Tommy

    Never ceases to amaze me how little I know about the world.

    I come from Scotish lineage so, well when I hear Scot this or that I perk up. They have a unit, like our Seals. Never knew. The 4 SCOTS or the Royal Regiment of Scotland. There can be only one (movie reference anybody) and they seem to be a bad ass mother fucking group of folks.

    When they left Afghanistan they did this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8sb2UNx2VJk

  43. 43.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    The 4 SCOTS or the Royal Regiment of Scotland.

    The Royal Regiment of Scotland has six brigades; the crazy people you’re looking at there, the 4 SCOTS, are the 4th Battalion, the Highlanders. They combine what used to be three separate regiments in their own right — the Gordon Highlanders, the Seaforth, and the Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders. Family links to the last are the reason I sometimes wear Cameron of Erracht.

  44. 44.

    dmbeaster

    @Tommy: Its worth pointing out that it was a consulate that was attacked, and it was not overrun. The attackers did set one building on fire in the first twenty minutes. Ambassador Stevens was in that building in a safe room, and died at the beginning of the attack from smoke inhalation as he and others tried to escape the building. As attacks go, it was a hit and run skirmish that caught a high value target who was visiting from the embassy. It is worth reading the timeline of events in the report.

  45. 45.

    Elizabelle

    I wonder if the all Benghazi all the time! committee will err biggest in making Hillary into a sympathetic person, a woman beset by a kangaroo court.

    Thinking on how brutal the treatment of Cecile Richards at the Planned Parenthood hearing.

    Hope this blows up big in the Committee’s face. Making their intended prey bigger than they are, and putting a human and competent face on her, as well.

  48. 48.

    Elizabelle

    NY Times news alert:

    Benghazi Committee to Walk Fine Line in Questioning Hillary Clinton

    By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

    Democrats and Republicans disagree over whether the House committee is using the 2012 deaths of four Americans in Libya to harm Mrs. Clinton’s presidential bid.

    Your media, in a few words. From the paper of record yet, too.

    ETA: in the story:

    One committee member, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, said on Fox News that if the Democrats had spent as much time helping to investigate the attacks as they had trying to undermine the panel’s credibility, “Maybe we could get to the truth and actually get the answers to the American people and the families of the four individuals who gave their life for the country.”

    Pure projection from Jim Jones. It’s crystalline in its perfection. Substitute GOP and “Hillary” for “the panel” and you have it.

    Jones, you may recall, was the loudest braying ass at the Planned Parenthood hearing. Regrettably and unsurprisingly, he’s from a very safe GOP seat.

  49. 49.

    debbie

    I hope the issue of House cuts to embassy security budgets is brought up. These representatives should investigate their own culpability in the attacks.

    @Elizabelle:

    Jordan’s always been an idiot, but his ego’s less inflated than Chafetz’s, so he may hold onto his seat.

  50. 50.

    Cermet

    @srv: You really need to get back on your meds! Your not just raising very good issues with this post but even make sense. What next, no more trolling? That would be such loss since there are fewer trolls here, of late.

  52. 52.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Tommy: A Scottish line regiment is nothing like the SEALs. The Brits have the SAS and the SBS as special forces that are like our Spec Ops units.

  53. 53.

    Elizabelle

    @debbie: The other thing I hate: when Jordan et al use “the four dead Americans” as their rationale. It’s they who are trampling the graves.

    Have the families of the American dead had anything to say about the Committee’s work or purposes?

  55. 55.

    Elizabelle

    @Cermet: srv’s trolling output may be falling off, but he/she is a fine archivist. (I remember that from the Cole greatest hits posts.)

  56. 56.

    debbie

    @Elizabelle:

    The other thing I hate: when Jordan et al use “the four dead Americans” as their rationale. It’s they who are trampling the graves.

    Imagine if they’d had the same kind of fury for the 9/11 hearings! These duplicitous pigs were too busy covering their president’s ass to actually ferret out the facts.

    As true as ever: “Have you no shame?”

  57. 57.

    RaflW

    I found this New Yorker column to be helpful for some perspective, and to realize how diseased both our Congress and our media are now.

    May 5, 2014
    Ronald Reagan’s Benghazi
    BY Jane Mayer

    Around dawn on October 23, 1983, I was in Beirut, Lebanon, when a suicide bomber drove a truck laden with the equivalent of twenty-one thousand pounds of TNT into the heart of a U.S. Marine compound, killing two hundred and forty-one servicemen. The U.S. military command, which regarded the Marines’ presence as a non-combative, “peace-keeping mission,” had left a vehicle gate wide open, and ordered the sentries to keep their weapons unloaded….

    Six months earlier, militants had bombed the U.S. embassy in Beirut, too, killing sixty-three more people, including seventeen Americans. Among the dead were seven C.I.A. officers, including the agency’s top analyst in the Middle East, an immensely valuable intelligence asset, and the Beirut station chief…. (emphasis added)

    The article goes on to note that a single Congressional investigation was done, in months, on a bipartisan basis. And then a third attack happened, and the Ol’ Gipper kinda did a shrug and we pulled out of the country.

    I think we were probably a bit too sanguine about the many mistakes made in Beirut at the time. I was 18 at the time, and am about to turn 50, so I suppose many in the news industry are about as historically ungrounded as I — I certainly recalled the Marine bombing, that’s what I googled this a.m., but I had no recollection of the prior embassy bombing. I suspect most breathless reporters couldn’t recount all that Mayer can (because she was there! How amazing in today’s green-screen, fake presence ‘journalism’).

    That lack of direct experience of our own recent history lets all these media jackasses get dizzy with the thought of investigation #8, hearing #16 (or is it 20 or …). I hate the vast majority of our current media. Which I know is no news flash.

    OK, back to the Guardian live-blog of the candidate grilling, part the absurd.

  58. 58.

    Paul in KY

    @RaflW: I know a dude who was at barracks when it was blown up. He does not like or want to talk about it. Probably has some PTSD from it, as he had to help clear debris/locate bodies, etc.

  59. 59.

    J R in WV

    More embassy/consulate attacks occurred during the reign of Bush II than during President Obama’s time in office so far. More State Department staff were killed during Bush II’s terms in office than during President Obama’s term in office.

    What conspiracy in the office holders of Bush’s administration led to this sorry situation? Why did the Republican party allow the administrators responsible for this lethal combination of terrorism and politics to continue work as usual?

    Was the problem that Bush and his Republican party co-conspirators actually hated American diplomatic staff?

    Or was it that Bush wanted to give the Arabic terrorists who attacked the Twin Towers easy access to Americans abroad for additional attacks to follow-up their huge success in New York City?

    I remember seeing Bush II holding hands and kissing Prince Bandar in Crawford, Texas. It looked very suspicious to me on TV, the American President Bush making out with the Arabian Prince Bandar, in public!

    Even the current President Barack Hussein Obama never shows that kind of slavish adoration of foreign royalty.

    I think Bush II had some kind of relationship with Prince Bandar that led to the Twin Towers attack. And that relationship was so strong that Bush couldn’t help but kiss Bandar in front of TV cameras, even after Saudi Arabia successfully attacked America.

    Why won’t the House Committee take up these security breaches, instead of this minor attack on a CIA station in a small city in Libya?

    Why does the House Committee feel safe in ignoring far more serious attacks during the Bush II terms while trying in vain to find some wrongdoing in Secretary Clinton’s successful operation of the State Department?

    It is a conspiracy in plain view!

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