“The Republican Wrongdoing’s”: There Were Meaningful Benghazi Lies After All
Whether or not an issue is a “scandal” tends to be a subjective question — one voter’s world-changing controversy may be another voter’s meaningless distraction. Indeed, the Beltway has spent a week telling the nation that the White House is engulfed in three ongoing scandals, though many of us suspect this analysis is deeply flawed.
But if we’re going to talk about real political scandals, can we at least have a conversation about Republicans lying to reporters about Benghazi?
For those who can’t watch clips online, CBS’s Major Garrett told viewers last night something news consumers don’t usually see or hear: House Republicans gave journalists bogus information, apparently on purpose, in the hopes of advancing the right’s version of the Benghazi story.
As Josh Marshall explained, “Generally, once partisan, tendentious sources leak information that turns out to be wrong, nothing’s ever done about it. That’s for many reasons, some good or somewhat understandable, mostly bad. But on CBS Evening News tonight, Major Garrett did something I don’t feel like I’ve seen in a really long time or maybe ever on a network news cast. He basically said straight out: Republicans told us these were the quotes; that wasn’t true.”
Given what we now know, congressional Republicans saw all of these materials in March, couldn’t find anything controversial, and moved on. But last week, desperate to manufacture a scandal, unnamed Republicans on Capitol Hill started giving “quotes” from the materials to reporters, making it seem as if the White House made politically motivated edits of Benghazi talking points.
As Major Garrett reported last night, the “quotes” Republicans passed along to the media were bogus. The GOP seems to have made them up. ABC’s Jonathan Karl didn’t know that, and presented them as fact, touching off a media firestorm.
Why would Republicans do this, knowing that there was evidence that would prove them wrong?
Probably because Republicans assumed the White House wouldn’t disclose all of the internal deliberations that went into writing the Benghazi talking points. When the White House did the opposite on Wednesday, giving news organizations everything, the GOP had been caught in its lie.
And yesterday, Major Garrett was willing to say so.
Maybe this was just an innocent mistake, rather than a deliberate attempt at deception? Nope: “On Monday, Mother Jones noted that the Republicans’ interim report included the correct version of the emails, signaling that more malice and less incompetence may have been at play with the alleged alterations.”
So, it appears there’s a Benghazi scandal after all. It’s not the wrongdoing Republicans alleged; it’s the wrongdoing Republicans committed.
The question for Darrell Issa is pretty straightforward: when does the investigation begin as to which Republicans lied to journalists and when?
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 17, 2013
“Incompetent Malice”: Editing Emails While Diplomatic Security Burns
The surest sign that there is indeed no there there regarding the Benghazi “scandal”? The fact that anonymous GOP staff feeding information to reporters apparently felt the need to edit the White House emails they were onpassing. It’s a bad sign for scandal-mongerers if they feel the need to punch up their supposed evidence.
At issue is the email document trail behind the talking points the administration promulgated in the days after the September 11, 2012 attack at the U.S. facilities in Benghazi, Libya. Since virtually the first instant of the attack, the GOP has fixated on it as being sort of a scandal, with the currently popular iteration suggesting that the initial administration spin was an effort to cover up the fact that terrorist elements were involved in the attacks.
Last week a Republican operative or operatives leaked what were portrayed as quotes from emails – which the White House had not released – which purported to show that the White House and State Department had nefariously pushed to have references to terrorist involvement expunged from the administration’s talking points.
But on Wednesday the White House released 100 pages of the emails covering the evolution of the talking points (scroll to the bottom to read them yourself, courtesy of the Huffington Post). Then CBS News’ Major Garrett issued a report last night under the headline “WH Benghazi emails have different quotes than earlier reported.” Garrett goes on to detail the differences between the leaked GOP versions of the emails and what was actually written.
For example:
On Friday, Republicans leaked what they said was a quote from Rhodes: “We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation.”
But it turns out that in the actual email, Rhodes did not mention the State Department.
It read: “We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.”
He goes on to note a similar change in an email then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland sent. The GOP version has her worried about “previous warnings provided by the Agency (CIA) about al-Qaeda’s presence and activities of al-Qaeda.” But the actual email she sent doesn’t mention the terrorist group at all.
As the Huffington Post reports, CBS isn’t the first news outlet to note the differences between the real emails and the versions leaked by Republicans:
The news parallels a Tuesday CNN report which initially introduced the contradiction between what was revealed in a White House Benghazi email version, versus what was reported in media outlets. On Monday, Mother Jones noted that the Republicans’ interim report included the correct version of the emails, signaling that more malice and less incompetence may have been at play with the alleged alterations.
Of course, there’s no reason why malice and incompetence need be competing alternatives. In fact incompetent malice seems likely: This was a ham handed attempt to produce “evidence” of a scandal where there is none.
Mother Jones’s Kevin Drum sums up:
This has always been the Republican Party’s biggest risk with this stuff: that they don’t know when to quit. On Benghazi, when it became obvious that they didn’t have a smoking gun, they got desperate and tried to invent one. On the IRS, their problem is that Democrats are as outraged as they are. This will force them to make ever more outrageous accusations in an effort to find some way to draw a contrast. And on the AP phone records, they have to continually dance around the fact that they basically approve of subpoenas like this.
A sane party would take a deep breath and decide to move on to other things. But the tea partiers have the scent of blood now, and it’s driving them crazy. Thus the spectacle of Michele Bachmann suggesting today that it’s time to start impeachment proceedings.
It’s no wonder that GOP leaders are urging their colleagues to throttle back and let the scandals that flared up this week play out before, like Bachmann, calling for impeachment hearings. The real scandal regarding Benghazi, of course, doesn’t involve talking points but funding streams. As former diplomat Ronan Farrow writes in the Atlantic:
Hillary Clinton waged a losing fight with Congress for embassy security resources over the course of the first Obama administration. Some of the ringleaders of last week’s hearing were among the prominent opponents to that spending, with Representative Chaffetz and Representative Darrell Issa joining to cut nearly half a billion dollars from the State Department security accounts that cover armored vehicles, security systems, and guards. In Fiscal Year 2011, House Republicans cut $128 million from the Obama Administration’s requests for embassy security funding; in 2012, they cut another $331 million. Issa once personally voted to cut almost 300 diplomatic security positions. In 2011, after one of many fruitless trips to the Hill to beg House Republicans for resources, an exhausted, prophetic Hillary Clinton warned that cuts to embassy spending “will be detrimental to America’s national security.” Democrats, like Senator Barbara Boxer in a heated speech this week, have been quick to paint opposition to security funding as exclusively Republican. The truth is, it is a bipartisan failure, repeated through years of both Republican and Democratic control of Congress. In 2010, Democrats cut $142 million from the Administration’s requests for State Department funding.
But why would House Republicans – obsessed as they are with their twin goals of getting Obama and Hillary Clinton and cutting spending – pursue an investigation into dangerous spending cuts pushed by Congress and fought by Secretary Clinton?
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/156800521/White-House-Documents-Relating-to-Events-in-Benghazi-Libya -Courtesy The Huffington Post
By: Robert Schlesinger, U. S. News and World Report, May 17, 2013
“The Diction Debates”: To Cynical Republicans, “An Act Of Terror Is Different Than A Terrorist Attack”
Marc Ambinder explained this morning that Benghazi is “a debate about post-tragedy diction.” That’s certainly bolstered by recent Republican arguments, nearly all of which have to do with the timing of various choices of words.
If you’re thinking that genuine political controversies are supposed to deal with more meaningful issues than diction, you and I are on the same page, though congressional Republicans and much of the political world are on a very different page.
Take Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for example. On Sept. 12, 2012, President Obama described the Benghazi attack as an act of terror. McCain yesterday insisted that those comments don’t count: “The president didn’t call it an ‘act of terror.’ … He condemned ‘acts of terrorism.'”
What matters, in Republicans’ minds, is the diction. House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) was thinking along the same lines today on Fox News. Watch on YouTube
“The president sent a letter to the president of Libya were he didn’t call it a terrorist attack even when in real time the president of Libya was calling this a pre-planned Sept. 11 terrorist attack,” Issa said. He added, “An act of terror is different than a terrorist attack.”
This is amusing, in a pathetic sort of way, and not just because of Issa’s rhetorical framework. It’s also striking because it’s shining a light on what Republicans consider truly important about this story: which officials used the words Republicans like and when.
Ambinder added, “The Diction Debates aren’t real because the opponent insists he/she knows about the motivation for using/ not using certain key words.” That’s also true — McCain, Issa and others are quite animated over which official used the word “terror” on which day.
But all of this serves to remind us that the political world has defined “scandal” down to a meaningless level. Watergate dealt with crimes committed by a president. Iran-Contra dealt with a White House that sold arms to a sworn enemy to finance an illegal war. The Plame Affair, the U.S. Attorney purge, and illegal warrantless wiretaps dealt with systemic wrongdoing at the highest levels.
In 2013, though, we’re apparently stuck with, “An act of terror is different than a terrorist attack.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, May 13, 2013
“All Talk And No Stick”: CNN Blows Huge Hole In GOP Efforts To Prosecute Benghazi Scandal
CNN’s Jake Tapper has managed to get his hands on the critical White House email suggested as the proof that the White House was more interested in removing references to possible terrorist attacks in the now infamous Benghazi talking points then they were in telling the truth to the American public.
The actual email, written in the days following the Benghazi attack, reveals something else entirely. We now know that whoever leaked the contents of the email to various media outlets last week seriously misquoted the document, choosing to paraphrase the content in a way that made it appear that the White House was focused on protecting the State Department’s back and covering up information.
Recall that ABC News fueled the GOP cries of a White House cover-up when suggesting that the twelve drafts of the talking points were done with White House participation as part of an effort by the Obama Administration to back up State Department requests that references to terrorist groups be omitted from the talking points.
Here is the relevant portion of the ABC story:
“In an email dated 9/14/12 at 9:34 p.m. -three days after the attack and two days before Ambassador Rice appeared on the Sunday shows – Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes wrote an email saying the State Department’s concerns needed to be addressed. (ABC then quotes the email as saying…)“We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation. We thus will work through the talking points tomorrow morning at the Deputies Committee meeting.”
The thing is, it turns out that the actual email tells a very different tale.
Here is the actual content of the email, as written by deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes—
“All –
Sorry to be late to this discussion. We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.
“There is a ton of wrong information getting out into the public domain from Congress and people who are not particularly informed. Insofar as we have firmed up assessments that don’t compromise intel or the investigation, we need to have the capability to correct the record, as there are significant policy and messaging ramifications that would flow from a hardened mis-impression.
“We can take this up tomorrow morning at deputies.”
You can read the actual email here.
Obviously, the email reveals absolutely no effort on the part of the administration to whitewash the message regarding the possible involvement of organized terrorist groups. The email further does not, in any way, seek to support any efforts by the State Department—or anyone else—in terms of favoring one set of message points over another, including any suggestions of removing references to known terrorist groups in the region.
What the email does do is highlight the importance of countering the misinformation that had been circulating and getting all involved on the same page when it comes to sharing what was known to be accurate information.
Does anyone have a problem with that?
Or, should I say, does anyone other than Congressman Darrell Issa, Speaker John Boehner and all of those who wish to manufacture a scandal in the effort to harm this White House have a problem with that?
As Jake Tapper notes it in his article, “Whoever provided those quotes and paraphrases did so inaccurately, seemingly inventing the notion that Rhodes wanted the concerns of the State Department specifically addressed. Rhodes put no emphasis at all in his email on the State Department’s concerns.”
Greg Sargent follows up on this in his piece in the Washington Post—confirming what I noted yesterday with regard to this entire affair looking more and more like a conflict between the State Department and the CIA—
“It’s increasingly clear that this was merely a bureaucratic turf war at work, in which State wanted to get rid of the CIA’s efforts to insert into the talking points stuff that preempts blame against the agency. This new revelation from Tapper takes this even further — it suggests the administration didn’t even prioritize State’s demands and was simply looking to get agencies on the same page to prevent the spreading of misinformation.”
Clearly, someone is funneling false information to certain media outlets that are all too anxious to produce the kind of ‘scoops’ that get headlines—even if these scoops are far from accurate.
Equally clear is that Congressman Issa has built much of his case on a mountain of misinformation and poorly crafted speculation, all designed to serve the political and personal agenda that Issa has been itching to fulfill ever since ascending to the Chairmanship of the House Oversight Committee.
Darrell Issa wants very badly for you to know his name. If ginning up a false scandal is what it takes, that certainly works for the California congressman as he has tried to do it before only to see his efforts crumble beneath that very same mountain of misinformation and false speculation.
Unfortunately for Issa—and his many friends who have gone on record suggesting that Benghazi will lead to an Obama impeachment— with every bit of actual data that emerges, one thing is becoming clear—
Those politicos and pundits more interested in bringing down a president than they are in protecting those serving our country around the world from suffering a Benghazi repeat are being exposed for exactly what they will inevitably be found out to be….
All talk and no stick.
By: Rick Ungar, Op-Ed Contributor, Forbes, May 14, 2013
“A Far-Right Mob Movement”: Benghazi, Projection, And The Dark Obama Obsession
President Obama’s most fevered critics have been waiting for a national “aha” moment since he was first inaugurated more than 50 months ago. Coming off an electoral landslide, Obama was instantly greeted by a mob-like movement on the far right that denounced him as a socialist and a communist. Excited conservatives quickly reached for Nazi rhetoric and imagery in an effort to convey the dark threat the Democrat posed to the country.
Amplified by Fox News and a well-funded right-wing media industry, the “grassroots” revolt was portrayed as a sweeping rebuke of Obama. But in truth, the raging critics occupied the loud fringes, a fact confirmed by Obama’s easy re-election.
Still, professional detractors have held out hope that at some point Americans would come to see Obama as they see Obama; as a monster of historic proportions who’s committed to stripping citizens of their liberties and getting them addicted to government dependencies, like a drug dealer.
This week’s House Oversight Committee hearing into the Sept. 11 terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi was supposed to trigger that “aha” event. It was supposed to be The Day Americans Turned On Obama. Indeed, Obama wouldn’t be able to finish out his second term because the Benghazi revelations were going to be so damaging, Fox New’s Mike Huckabee told his radio listeners. And Sean Hannity warned ominously that, “This is going to be a really defining, important week in the Obama presidency, and it’s not going to be a good week.”
But none of that happened at the hearing. Instead of being the kind of “explosive” Watergate-style hearing that Fox talkers prayed for, Wednesday’s hearing sagged under the weight of stubborn facts, and didn’t even reach the level of Whitewater hearings, which under Bill Clinton established the modern-day mark for pointlessly partisan “scandal” hearings.
Not that it matters to the media players who produced the Benghazi hearings, though. Conservatives continue their Groundhog Day charade, reassuring themselves that the hearing was a hit and that scandal “bombshells” exploded on Capitol Hill. (They did not.)
The larger, common sense question that lingers though is, why? Why keep pounding a story so far into the ground that most news consumers can’t even make sense of the convoluted allegations anymore?
I think the explanation for the durability is that Benghazi serves as an all-purpose platform that allows the most hardened critics to project their anti-Obama madness. It allows them to spin their ugliest fantasies about the president and to depict him as a heartless traitor who chose to let Americans die at the hands of Islamic terrorists. It’s a way to condemn Obama for having a “reflexive impulse to blame, rather than defend, America.”
For the last eight months, Benghazi has served as a convenient vessel to ferry around the right wing’s Capt. Ahab-like obsession. Most often docked at Fox News, which has referenced “Benghazi” thousands and thousands and thousands of times since last September, the terror attack represents a way to feed that sinister fixation about the president being a Manchurian Candidate who let Americans die in Benghazi and “sacrificed American lives for politics.”
Benghazi mania is driven by a dark obsession with Obama that’s built upon the assumption that he’s capable of the very worst and incapable of anything good or decent. That the president of the United States does not deserve to sit in the Oval Office because his loyalties (not to mention his origins) are in doubt. Which is supposedly why he would abandon Americans to die in Benghazi.
Note some of the rhetoric this week, which portrayed Obama as unfit and un-American. From Fox News’ Todd Starnes:
“If Obama won’t protect four Americans under attack in Benghazi, what makes you think he’ll protect the rest of us?”
And from talk show host Mark Levin [emphasis added]:
It’s just unbelievable that our country didn’t come to the defense of these men. It makes me sick to my stomach. It’s not a natural reaction if you’re a red-blooded American. My God, send in the military! But no, we didn’t… What the hell kind of commander in chief is that? Let me go further, what kind of an American is that?
What kind of American is Obama if he won’t protect citizens under attack?
As Marc Ambinder at The Week noted, if you follow the premise of the Republican’s vast conspiracy that suggests the White House deliberately let people die in Benghazi because they feared the political fallout of a terror attack, you’d have to assume Obama “is simply and utterly evil.” Ambinder is right, and they do believe it.
Which is to say, Benghazi as it’s debated and presented today (and will be for months to come), isn’t just about Benghazi, or the four Americans who died in the attack or the dozens more injured. It’s about Obama and a blinding, uncontrollable anger that fuels his most dedicated foes, and their relentless, futile search for the American “aha” moment.
Two decades ago, radical Republicans waged an eight-year campaign against Bill Clinton because Republicans were convinced he was a crook and a scoundrel. We’re now past the halfway mark of another eight-year Republican war against a Democratic president. This one is fueled by the belief the president, as a person, is utterly beneath contempt. (It’s one reason Fox talkers so easily, and so crassly, invoke Obama’s children when launching political attacks.)
The Benghazi narrative gives the fevered swamp denizens a ready-made framework to project their fears and hatred onto Obama and to do it in the context of “news.” And that’s why, despite this week’s hearing which didn’t advance the story forward one inch, the Benghazi narrative isn’t going away anytime soon.
By: Eric Boehlert, The Blog, The Hufington Post, May 10, 2013
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