I get letters:
Set the effort to blame a YouTube movie aside for the moment. Set whether a “stand down” order was given during the attack or not aside for a moment. Why wouldn’t the U.S. government that pledges to bring the Benghazi terrorists to justice do so little to actually bring those terrorists to justice? What do they know that they’re still not willing to tell about that attack?
We’re going to need a select committee, maybe a special independent prosecutor, to get to the bottom of Benghazi. It will take strong subpoena power and needs to be outside the usual House or Senate committee processes and investigations. What we know or can surmise about Benghazi at this point indicates that the cover-up involves at least two cabinet level departments, Justice and State, a former cabinet official and two current ones, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Eric Holder. This indicates that the intentional failure to investigate is ultimately being ordered and coordinated above both — in the White House. […]
Why stop at a select committee or independent prosecutor? If Benghazi reaches as deep and wide as this person says, only a tribunal sponsored by the Pope will have the kind of far-reaching power to get to the bottom of this.
This is from some Pajamas Media clown, but it’s not the only theory being pushed out lately (more here). Benghazi conspiracy theories are the birtherism of Obama’s second term.
c u n d gulag
I’m starting to suspect that “Benghazi” is Libyan for “Monica.”
c u n d gulag
Or, “Benghazi” is Libyan for “Whitewater.”
debbie
If these same people had had a fraction of this kind of outrage at the previous administration whose neglect and inattention led to 2,900 deaths, Benghazi would never have happened. I blame it on them.
reflectionephemeral
Benghazi conspiracy theories are the birtherism of Obama’s second term.
It makes just as much sense. The old conspiracy theory was that the president’s mother secretly fled to Kenya to give birth, then placed a fake birth announcement in the Honolulu newspaper because [??????]. This one is based on the idea that the administration knew that the Benghazi attack was linked to Al Qaeda, but withheld that information because… they wanted to void an unfair “rally ’round the flag” bump in the polls, presumably.
Redshirt
I wish some Democrat would turn this Benghazi “issue” back onto the Republicans and question their patriotism. Ask them why they “blame America first”. Ask them why they don’t support their Government during a time of war. Etc.
But no.
Baud
@Redshirt:
The minute a Democrat does that, we’ll have a slew of trolls come out and argue that Democrats are authoritarians just like Republicans.
Valdivia
yep. this is all about Hillary now. I think they are ‘done’ with Obama–I mean, they will obstruct him forever but the whole Kenyan things is old hat right?– and are getting ready to start destroying the Clintons again.
c u n d gulag
@Redshirt:
We could begin by asking the Republicans in Congress why they agreed to cut the budget for embassy security a few years ago, which affected the security IN Benhazi?
And then follow that up by asking them if they’re aware that while they’re screaming about Benghazi, that the Sequester is further cutting the budget for securing the security at all of our embassies?
I was making a joke earlier in this comment string, but I suspect they’re screaming “Benghazi” as some sort of thing to keep in the public’s eye, because they know that if Hillary Clinton runs, she’s got a great chance of winning. And if she wins big, then she may well have broad and long coat-tails, and the Republicans will lose the House and Senate for decades.
Benghazi is a pre-emptive attempt to create another “Whitewater” scandal, which they can beat to death until Election Day 2016. And if it doesn’t stop her, and she wins, it’ll give the few Republicans left in the House and Senate something to do, since Obamacare will, by then, have been well-entrenched as the law of the land, for a few years.
But, by then, they’ll as powerless to investigate Benghazi further, as they are to stop the implementation of Obamacare – no matter how many time the sociopathic assclowns in the House try to do that.
amk
wingers troll the emmessem 24×7 with poutrage and the third rate fourth estate will in turn, troll the stupid voters with that poutrage 24×7.
amk
@Redshirt: You can only wish. Dems will always suck at messaging.
Comrade Jake
I think the best part of this whole Benghazi thing has got to be Hillary’s testimony.
Shorter Hillary: “YOU ARE ALL FUCKING MORONS!”
dr. bloor
@c u n d gulag: This. I’m sure Ken Starr is out there somewhere with a giant stiffy, ready to go at the drop of a hat.
Omnes Omnibus
@Valdivia:
This works as an explanation for me. I had been wondering why the right was latching onto this so fiercely. I am not enamored of the idea of Hillary running in 2016 for a number of reasons, but, god damn it, I don’t want these assholes cranking up the crazy to affect the process.
c u n d gulag
@dr. bloor:
And if he doesn’t have a stiffie, no matter how much the Republicans whine about Obamacare and women’s contraception, and they bitch about what Planned Parenthood does for women, or, Plan B for girls, they’ll always be glad that V*agra is always covered for men.
Always.
JPL
The repubs would never, ever use the deaths in Benghazi, to advance their own political agenda.
Tokyokie
@dr. bloor: Ken Starr is now president of Baylor University. The school has billboards with his face with the single word, “Integrity,” (or some similar homily) in huge type next to it. I do a spit take every time I drive past one.
fuckbrain
Not coincidentally banging a dead horse is also the only way balloon juicers get laid. ever.
aimai
@Baud: bingo.
AnonPhenom
@c u n d gulag:
This.
This crap has nothing to do with Obama and everything to do with a Ken Starr Redux smearing of the Democratic Party’s next presidential nominee. The cherry on top is that it’s another Clinton. That’s giving them some serious wingnut wood.
Brother Machine Gun of Desirable Mindfulness (fka AWS)
@Omnes Omnibus:
As if that was ever *not* going to happen.
aimai
@Omnes Omnibus:
I highly recommend Joe Conason and Gene Lyon’s book “The Hunting of the President: The Ten Year War on Clinton”–not only is it incredibly funny in a Molly Ivin’s Lege kind of way but it argues what we now know to be the case: the “vast right wing conspiracy” was attempting to knee cap Clinton very early on for fear that he would take the white house. These guys have the money to play a very long game and in the case of Hilary its not that long a game. They Are going to be digging up dirt and trying to set the terms of the debate about everyone who even looks like they could be a contender for 2016.
ericblair
@Tokyokie:
It’s like the old “Democratic People’s Republic of X”: anything that has to have titles like that explicitly shoved into it is nothing of the sort.
pluege
Benghazi conspiracy theories are the birtherism of Obama’s second term.
Keeping Benghazi cooking has little to nothing to do with obama. The Benghazi clown show is all about damaging Hillary Clinton in 2016.
(note, if obama is collateral damage over Benghazi that’s fine too with wingnuts – a twofer.)
Valdivia
@Omnes Omnibus:
I too am ambivalent about her being the candidate (I love me some Biden!) and we can see that already they are getting ready to define her and it’s not even the midterms. just wow.
WereBear
They have to have something to scream about. It never does make any sense, does it?
I have cast my mind back over all the Right Wing Screaming, and it is utterly baseless. Every time.
Omnes Omnibus
@aimai: Thanks, aimai, but I read read it when it first came out.
I should perhaps clarify my earlier comment. For whatever reason – lack of sleep, overabundance of faith in mankind, insufficient supply of psychotropic chemicals, etc., I just had not connected the Benghazi frenzy with Hillary’s ’16 prospects. Now that I have, it makes perfect sense. I am not surprised that they work this way; they have shown over and over again that this is who they are. I am just profoundly disappointed and disgusted by it. I appreciate that log-rolling and compromise are a part of the system and are necessary to move an agenda forward. I even understand that cynical and brutal tactics are also sometimes necessary. But, for the love of god, can’t it at least be in the service of something good and decent?
Tokyokie
@ericblair: Pretty much. I’m not sure why you’d want to call attention to the character facet that your school’s hatchet-man leader absolutely lacks, but then, I’m not a wingnut.
Tokyokie
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not if it’s being promoted by the contemporary Republican Party. When this nonsense first arose and the spotlight quickly focused on Hillary, I knew what was up and figured that it was so obvious that everybody else would as well, but I guess it helps to figure the worst motives possible into any calculus involving the GOP.
Omnes Omnibus
@Tokyokie: I know that one must always be cynical and assume the worst motives wrt the GOP – hell, I’ve frequently noted that they have used up any benefit of a doubt with me – but it is tiresome.
WereBear
The compromises and moral dilemmas you cite make sense in the service of something good and decent. However, we are talking about the puppets of billionaire maniacs who must recruit a zombie army of the resentfully insane for their Dark Lords.
It never was in the service of something good and decent, and never will be.
Comrade Jake
You guys may be right about the motivation behind keeping Benghazi cooking, but it’s so misguided. The public is already largely sick of hearing about it.
cmorenc
@Baud:
What difference would that make? There are already an army of trolls out there firing at the Dems from the right and firbagging at them from the left.
dmsilev
@Valdivia: I have to wonder how well ‘trying to define Hillary Clinton’ will work. I mean, it’s not like she’s (lets say) John Kerry, someone who was well-known in one state but not so much nationally. She was First Lady for 8 years, a high profile Senator for another 8, runner of a very-nearly-successful primary campaign for President, and 4 years of Secretary of State. Not to mention recipient of umpteen years worth of right-wing attacks and slanders.
Just about anyone who could be susceptible to a “Hillary let Benghazi happen!” campaign probably already thinks she had Vince Foster whacked.
Mike Lamb
@c u n d gulag: Or asking what current active military unit could’ve helped the situation considering that the most elite unit in terms of rapid deployment has a mandate to go from receipt of orders to wheels up of something like 12 hours. And then you have to factor in travel time.
Valdivia
@dmsilev:
oh I agree. But I do think that the Hilary has 70% approval rating thing is an inflated number that will come crashing as the partisan fires get stocked. And this is what the Benghazi thing is about. To get her back to where she was when the primary happened. Think of it as the reverse PUMA move.
debbie
@Valdivia:
I think this is Republicans’ attempt at playing 11-dimensional chess, and like their crusades for right-to-work and voting purity, it is too obvious and blatant to fool anyone outside of their own loyal and blind followers.
Woodrowfan
as bogus as this story is, the righties really believe it. Fox and Rush said it, it must be true libtard! (eye roll)
Baud
@cmorenc:
It means that the Dems never have a clear strategic path they can take.
NotMax
@Valdivia
Brutality of the calendar suggests that, realistically, not gonna happen. He’ll be 74 in 2016, older than Reagan was when he ran for the 2nd term.
Mike in NC
@Redshirt: Local rag has a front page article on Senator Lindsey Graham-Cracker’s obsession over Benghazi-gate and how it has absolutely nothin’ to do with his desperate reelection campaign. Hilarious.
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
There’s one thing wrong with their theorizing:
1) Kill four Americans in Benghazi
2) ???
Step 3 seems to be missing.
Bubblegum Tate
@c u n d gulag:
I’d say we’re about 6 months from Dan Burton shooting a watermelon.
AA+ Bonds
Because the militia that likely carried out the attacks is still the #1 source of security in Benghazi . . .
AA+ Bonds
Old animosities thrive in post-Kadafi Libya
Emphasis mine. I know all Good Little Children don’t read news about what a shitty state Libya is in right now but come on, people.
Johnny Coelacanth
@fuckbrain: “Not coincidentally banging a dead horse is also the only way balloon juicers get laid. ever.”
You’re mom’s a dead horse?
Johnny Coelacanth
“your” damn it.
Matt
Remember when Shrub ignored intelligence warnings, got 3k Americans killed, and then refused to testify before Congress at all, insisting on only speaking off-the-record and with his co-conspirator Cheney present, AND THEN all the wingnuts freaked out about a need for a special investigation?
Yeah, me neither on the last part. Funny thing, that…
Patricia Kayden
But Benghazi is boring. And since it did nothing to lessen President Obama’s chances of winning re-election, I don’t see how it will impact Senator Clinton’s chances of winning election in 2016. By 2016, people will be asking, “Benghazi, who?”
Jay
“This is from some Pajamas Media clown…”
Please, please, PLEASE tell me it’s Roger L. Simon. I’m still waiting for Charles Johnson to complete his own personal transformation and publicly air all of Simon’s nuttiness, but I’ll bet the two of them have a “Mutual Assured Destruction” pact.
cat48
I would like to know what really happened in Bengahzi because it wasnt’ an embassy or a consulate. It looks like a CIA “listening post” as they’re called.
That means that Petraeus, Director of the CIA at the time, was running it. I want to know about that part because that’s the juicy part of the story. Maybe Chris Stevens was really an Ambassador on a field trip; maybe he was never an Ambassador, but a CIA agent. I wouldn’t mind an Investigation of this part of the story the wingnuts tell. They always avoid the Petraeus part……I have questions, lots of them and they have nothing to do w/emails the idiots in Congress wanted to see or Talking Pts changes.