You can tell that it’s an election year. This week, Lois Lerner has been held in contempt of Congress for exercising her Constitutional rights. Then, there’s the go-to, defacto, base rousing scandal known as Benghazi.
It seems that the original accusation by Republicans that accused the Obama administration of playing politics with the death of 4 Americans has flipped 180 degrees with Republicans now playing politics, using dead Americans as fundraising tools. Here’s three different screen captures that I took less than an hour ago.
National Republican Senatorial Committee
Just click the green button in the upper left hand corner. There’s nothing political about this.
National Republican Congressional Committee
Who knew that demanding answers from Congress would set you back $25 at a minimum?
The American Center for Law and Justice
If you demand the truth from the ACLJ, they’ll save you $5 or more off the current Congressional rate.
The common thread between those three screens has to do with the word “DONATE”. If you’re very passionate about demanding answers, you can turn your donation into a monthly tax-deductible gift. How can you claim that the Obama administration was playing politics with this attack when you’re using it as a fundraising tool? Did anybody stop long enough to contemplate the optics of this, or does the GOP operate in a vacuum-sealed, logic-free environment? I see that Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) did, but obviously, he doesn’t hold any sway within the decision-making apparatus of the GOP.
What happened in Benghazi was a tragedy, nobody’s debating that. What I don’t understand is why there is such a focus on how the talking points were formulated as opposed to what should be important, finding and capturing the people responsible for this. To date, it’s reported that eight different congressional committees have looked into the Benghazi attack. There have been more than a dozen hearings, 50 briefings, and more than 25,000 documents have been examined while investigating the attack. Now, we’re going to have a select committee do another investigation based on an email that talked about the talking points.
When does America get to hear what Congress is going to do to ensure the safety of our fellow citizens abroad? What legislation have they enacted to put programs in place so there is a quick response force within distance if one is ever needed? When do we hear about the great programs enacted to defuse tensions between America and other countries all around the world? What has the president done to reassess and reinforce security for our personnel in dangerous and threatening environments?
I can’t speak for any other Americans, but I can honestly care less about damn talking points. I want to know what has been done to avoid another situation just like this. To date, I don’t recall any type of security legislation that has been passed by Congress to actually address security and safety issues for Americans working overseas, but please continue to dazzle us with bullsh*t and use the death of Americans as a means to pad your campaign coffers. That’s the new age American Exceptionalism at work.
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The Mind of Brosephus 
That’s why they call politics a blood sport.
Both sides exploit death for political gain.
http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2014/05/before-criticizing-fundraising-off-of.html
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Just because they both do it, that doesn’t make it right. At some point, voters have to demand better, or else we end up with what we ask for. I haven’t asked for this. I can’t answer for anyone else.
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It’s not just the talking points, although that lying liar lied lied lied lied lied.
It’s also the force of US commandos who could have teleported in and saved those dudes from the fire at the very least. But no, they were ordered to stand down. By Obama himself. Because it was time for him to go beddy-bye, so he couldn’t be bothered any more. He needed his beauty sleep before flying to Las Vegas the next day to party with campaign donors.
The problem is Watergate. It shocked the whole nation. The Republicans are beyond angry. They have been trying for 40 years to find something a Democratic White House has done that’s big enough so the Rs can finally say, “See, everybody does it.” So anytime there’s any possibility of a screw up from a Democratic administration, the Rs just can’t take, “Our bad. We did the best we could at the time” for an answer. They want to shout and conflate and tar and feather in the hope that people will finally agree, yes, that was as bad as Watergate. That’s why the Obama lied, people died meme — which doesn’t even make any sense, because the talking points certainly didn’t cause the deaths — has such staying power.
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I never understood the “Obama lied and people died” stuff. If Obama told a lie about the video (which most of this is about), his lie didn’t cause their death. That reeks of prepubescent minds that cannot deal with reality.
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What really gets me about our conservative brethren is that they still seem to cling to a fragment of wishful thinking. That thinking appears to be that they would have really liked to have had a shootout with the bad guys in Benghazi, concurrent with rescuing the consular staff. There are a few things wrong with that approach, though.
First, embassy and consular security is a *host nation* responsibility. Yes, there are Marines garrisoned at most of our embassies, but they’re not there for the purpose of repelling armed incursions. Just look at the size of the force and the number of embassies they’re tasked to cover — a force of ~1000 Marines covering +/- 150 facilities? On average, that’s less than eight Marines per embassy or consulate. Marines are tough customers, to be sure, but eight guys aren’t going to be able to face down a mob of armed and determined bad guys. So the task of the Marines — in the event their embassy is likely to be penetrated or overrun — is to destroy classified comms and equipment. Simple as that. Save some of the cookie-pushers if you can, but above all, make sure that secret and top secret messages and commo gear does not pass out of US control.
Secondly, the notion that deploying a couple of AC-130s, based in Italy, would have been a good idea. As it stands, the consular facility in Benghazi was located in a rather nice residential neighborhood, so it occurs to me that shooting up Libyan Buckhead with 105mm cannon and belt-fed, rapid-firing 40mm grenades might not have generated the kind of response hoped for from the Libyan people.
Thirdly, the conservative-advocated course of action in Benghazi sets a bad example. If we’re going to argue that we have the right to slam nearby civilian targets whenever one of our diplomatic missions is threatened, then we shouldn’t be surprised if another nation uses the same argument on *us* someday.
I suspect Governor Deal is with me on that last point; after all, his mansion’s riiiiiight across the street from the Frainch consulate, don’tcha know.
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LOL @ the third part. I can understand wanting to investigate the incident to see where we went wrong as to avoid making the same mistake again.
Wanting to investigate just because someone MAY have been playing politics is stupid. They all play politics in DC as well as in the states. I would think that we’re smart enough to learn from our past, but reality slaps me out of that daydream.
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Totally agree with investigating in order to avoid repeats of the same mistakes. I have no objection whatsoever to that. Unfortunately, I think the GOP mating cry of Benghazi-Benghazi is going to experience a resurgence as the cry of Obamacare-Obamacare is falling out of favor and isn’t attracting as much attention as it used to.
It does tickle my funnybone though, watching the GOP drop the ACA and pick up Benghazi as their #1 current talking point. It’s almost like watching an toddler become enraptured with a new toy that’s just come into view — and in so doing, said sproutling forgets the interesting toy he was *already* holding and just drops it to the floor. The kid’s already forgotten about that toy before it hits the ground.
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*making note of the toddler analogy
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This is an interesting column on this:
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/Navarrette-Political-spin-continues-to-cloud-5460872.php
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Can’t get the full article there. I’ll have to try when I can get to my desktop
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It was there earlier. Try here, same article:
http://www.newsday.com/opinion/these-are-the-rules-for-discussing-benghazi-rubin-navarrette-1.7940945
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Navarette hits a home run every now and then, and this one is a tape measure shot. I see it as an impossible task, at this point, to remove the politics from the debate. I think most Americans want to know that we’re doing the best we possibly can to protect our people overseas.
That said, I have little to no confidence in any significant investigation being accomplished by this particular Congress. They’re more interested in scoring points with the base instead of doing their jobs.
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What I continue to remind people is that there is, simply, no equivalent from the other side, not from the official party anyway. The DNC continues to allow itself to be bullied and brings a squirt gun to a nuclear attack, and wonders why they don’t have a majority in the House and are en route to losing the Senate. These Democrats can’t count on the dirty fucking hippies to do their dirty work for them any more. (and yes, I’ve been typing the same thing for at least a dozen years on the intertubes.)
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It’s the basics of physics. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The Democratic Party is failing physics.
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To me, both sides played politics with this. Six of one; half dozen of the other. A pox on both their houses.
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While not agreeing with their tactics I can’t say I get too worked up about groups like ACLJ doing this type thing. Without having any stats I’d say both left and right wing groups engage in this crap. And do it often.
Now when it comes to elected politicians and their respective party it is a whole other story. These scumbags should be ashamed of themselves but sadly they are probably proud of themselves.
One thing to say we need to get all possible information relating a tragic incident like Benghazi, yet another to raise money of that incident.
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I’m sure that a serious search would turn up left leaning groups engaging in behavior like this. I am disappointed with the blatant hypocritical actions of the very Republicans who are claiming that Obama and his administration played politics with the death of Americans.
Likely you, I want to know that we’ve figured out what happened so that we can avoid making the same mistake again. Since no one in Congress appears to want to engage the 800 lb gorilla in the room otherwise known as the CIA, I don’t have faith that we will learn from this at all.
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