“Embracing Debunked Conspiracy Theories”: How The GOP Became A Party Of Benghazi “Truthers”
After a year of demanding answers about the terrorist attack that took place in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, the right wing got them in the form of a well-reported exposé by The New York Times‘ David Kirkpatrick.
And they don’t like these answers at all.
From the night of the murders, Republicans have been shamefully trying to politicize the attack that killed four Americans including Ambassador Chris Stevens, first as a means of stopping the re-election of President Obama, and then to damage the reputation of former secretary of state and possible candidate for president in 2016, Hillary Clinton.
Within hours of Stevens’ death, GOP nominee Mitt Romney accused the Obama administration of “sympathizing” with extremists, as the State Department tried to protect the lives of diplomatic personnel in the face of protests across Northern Africa ginned up in opposition to an offensive depiction of Islamic religious iconography being spread on YouTube. Sensing they had a crisis to parallel 1980′s taking of hostages in Iran, Republicans continued to wage a campaign designed to paint the Obama administration as weak on terror. The Romney campaign suggested that the president was refusing to label the attack as “terrorism” and Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) suggested former UN Ambassador Susan Rice was lying and covering up the involvement of al-Qaeda when she offered CIA-approved talking points that the video played a major role in the attack.
Kirkpatrick’s reporting substantiates just about everything Ambassador Rice said as she appeared on several Sunday morning news shows just days after the attack:
Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that al-Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault. The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.
This reporting closely echoes the original investigation ordered by Secretary Clinton and led by Thomas Pickering, an esteemed diplomat who served under Presidents Ford, Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Clinton.
It was clear that the video played a role, even before Kirkpatrick’s report. But it was unclear if it was the actual motivation for the attack or just a major factor in the unrest destabilizing the region. The Times‘ Middle East correspondent clearly asserts it was central.
It was also unclear if al-Qaeda had played a role in the killings. But this new report likely won’t settle that question, despite Kirkpatrick’s certainty, because the makeup of the terror network is so murky. ”There’s a long-running debate among experts about whether al-Qaeda is more of a centralized, top-down organization, a network of affiliates with varying ties to a core leadership or the vanguard of a broader movement better described as ‘Sunni jihadism,’” Politico Magazine’s Blake Hounshell points out.
All of this leads to a question Secretary Clinton asked when testifying in front of a Senate committee.
“What difference – at this point, what difference does it make?” Clinton said.
Republicans argue that this question disrespects the lives of those four Americans who died in Benghazi. They assert that the president expressly told the military to “stand down” instead of trying to help the men. They accuse Clinton of purposeful negligence and evasion. These claims have all been debunked — there was no stand-down order and Clinton was not directly responsible for the security of an impromptu trip Stevens decided to take on his own, yet she still took responsibility for the tragedy.
The government failed to secure diplomatic resources, as it has under both Democratic and Republican presidents. The involvement of the CIA means that some of the story will likely remain cloaked in secrecy. But no misconduct has ever been proven.
The right wing clearly is not interested in answers, only raising questions—entirely for partisan purposes.
In the aftermath of 9/11, as the Bush/Cheney administration refused a bipartisan investigation of the attacks for a year, anyone who challenged the official story of the attacks and suggested government complicity was labeled a “truther,” a smear that helped cost Van Jones a job in the Obama administration more than a half-decade later.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, told Meet the Press on Sunday, “What we do know is September 11 [2012] was not an accident.”
He defended his year-long investigation into the tragedy in Benghazi, asserting the same disproven speculation that he has helped fester for months, and concluding, “they went out on five stations and told the story that was, at best, a coverup for CIA, and at worst, something that cast away this idea that there was a real terrorist operation in Benghazi.”
The congressman is still suggesting the military may have purposely refused to help Americans under attack and the administration is covering up the truth, though what it offered, even in the fog of the immediate aftermath of the murders, closely matches some of the best reporting on the subject.
If Issa made those claims about the original 9/11 attacks, we know what he would have been called.
But since much of his party has embraced vague conspiracy theories that suggest the president of the United States either wanted a terrorist attack weeks before an election or “covered up” a terrorist attack that he called a terrorist attack several times before that election, he’s just another Republican.
By: Jason Sattler, The National Memo, December 30, 2013
“Time To Get A Life”: Republicans React To Benghazi News
The article The Times published on Benghazi this weekend infuriated many Republicans, who ran screaming to television studios.
Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, who has made a special crusade out of the attack on the American diplomatic and intelligence compound in Benghazi, was asked on “Meet the Press” to justify Republican claims that Al Qaeda agents planned and executed the operation. (The article found no evidence that Al Qaeda was involved.)
Andrea Mitchell of MSNBC put her finger on the political question when she asked Mr. Issa why Republicans “use the term Al Qaeda.” After all, she said, “you and other members of Congress are sophisticated in this and know that when you say Al Qaeda, people think central Al Qaeda. They don’t think militias that may be inspired by Bin Laden and his other followers.”
“There is a group there involved that is linked to Al Qaeda,” Mr. Issa said. “What we never said — and I didn’t have the security to look behind the door, that’s for other members of Congress — of what the intelligence were on the exact correspondence with Al Qaeda, that sort of information — those sorts of methods I’ve never claimed.”
I’m still trying to parse that sentence.
On Fox News on Sunday, Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan insisted the story was wrong in finding that “Al Qaeda was not involved in this.”
“There was some level of pre-planning; we know that,” he said. “There was aspiration to conduct an attack by Al Qaeda and their affiliates in Libya; we know that. The individuals on the ground talked about a planned tactical movement on the compound — this is the compound before they went to the annex.”
For anyone wondering why it’s so important to Republicans that Al Qaeda orchestrated the attack — or how the Obama administration described the attack in its immediate aftermath — the answer is simple. The Republicans hope to tarnish Democratic candidates by making it seem as though Mr. Obama doesn’t take Al Qaeda seriously. They also want to throw mud at former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who they fear will run for president in 2016.
Which brings us to one particularly hilarious theme in the response to the Times investigation. According to Mr. Rogers, the article was intended to “clear the deck” for Mrs. Clinton’s presidential campaign. Rep. Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia, a member of the House Intelligence Committee, said today that The Times was “already laying the groundwork” for a Clinton campaign. Other Republicans referred to Mrs. Clinton as our “candidate of choice.”
Since I will have more to say about which candidate we will endorse in 2016 than any other editor at the Times, let me be clear: We have not chosen Mrs. Clinton. We have not chosen anyone. I can also state definitively that there was no editorial/newsroom conspiracy of any kind, because I knew nothing about the Benghazi article until I read it in the paper on Sunday.
By: Andrew Rosenthal, Editorial Page Editor, The New York Times, December 30, 2013
“The Could-Be Columns”: Why The Misogynist Media Are Trying To Create A Hillary Clinton-Elizabeth Warren-Caroline Kennedy Catfight
How terrifying is it to the political establishment that a woman might actually have a clear shot to becoming the next president?
Enough that the parlor game of the moment in Washington is to start listing the Other Women – that is, the scary females (“scary” being a function of “female” in this case) who might end up challenging Hillary Clinton in a Democratic primary. Or a Jell-o fight or mud wrestling match, to go by the absurd speculation in the media.
First, we have Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who for some reason is seen as Clinton’s dangerous threat from the left. Warren is a real rising star, to be sure, and arrived to the Senate with an already-elevated status, given her knowledge of financial regulation and consistent commitment to consumer rights and other liberal causes. She’s not showy; she’s smart and a solid workhorse –like the senator who pre-preceded her, Edward M. Kennedy. There’s nothing she has said or done to indicate she has her eye on the White House in 2016. Her former national finance chairman has told donors she is raising no cash for a 2016 run, which pretty much ends it there – you can’t run a presidential campaign without money. And Warren herself has told the Boston Globe “no, no, no no” in response to the question.
Ah, but even in politics, when a woman says no, some in the media think she means yes. We have The New Republic speculating about a possible Warren-Clinton showdown. And we have the Washington Post’s Richard Cohen, always up for a woman-bashing column, talking about how a Warren presidency would be, in his mind, even worse than an Obama presidency. At least Cohen has the journalistic integrity to note parenthetically that Warren has expressed no interest in the job.
Then we have Caroline Kennedy, whom Post blogger Jennifer Rubin suggests might also be up for a run, noting Kennedy’s deft start to her new job as ambassador to Japan. That – plus the Kennedy name and experience watching family members in politics – seems to be the only justification for such random speculation. And it’s absurd on its face. Kennedy is indeed deeply committed to public service, but she is a somewhat shy person who does not enjoy being the center of attention. It’s one of the reasons she did not run for the Senate in New York. The idea that she could stomach the nonstop attention and scrutiny of a presidential run is nonsense. She is gracious and diplomatic, which makes her a perfect pick for an ambassadorship – not a presidential candidate.
So why the could-be columns? Part of it is the natural tendency in the media to find someone – anyone – to create a conflict or fight where there currently exists none. Clinton is the clear early front-runner for the Democratic nomination, should she decide to run. Vice President Joe Biden might give her a challenge, if he decides to run. But that’s not enough for the Clinton-wary, who want to diminish her potential candidacy by reducing it to some kind of brewing girlfight. Clinton with a clear path to the nomination is infuriating to this group, and a potential challenge from a man only gives credibility to her as a candidate. Ah, but present her future as one where she has to kick Warren or Kennedy with her kitten heels and scratch out their eyes to be the Democratic nominee – now that’s a storyline misogynist America finds appealing. Fortunately, the three women in question aren’t agreeing to those roles.
By: Susan Milligan, U. S. News and World Report, December 3, 2013
“Voting For Governor Is One Thing, For President, Another”: The Wrong Election Takeaways From Christie’s Win, Virginia, and More
The conventional wisdom on New Jersey: Huge Chris Christie win sets him up to steamroll his way to the Republican nomination in 2016, proving that a more mainstream conservative can win in a blue state. The conventional wisdom on Virginia: Ken Cuccinelli’s stinging loss in a purple state in an off-off-year election against Terry McAuliffe, a flawed Democratic candidate, shows not only that he was too extreme but also that Virginia is inching its way into the Democratic column. As the Times put it in its headline, “McAuliffe Win Points to Virginia Changes.”
Well, God invented conventional wisdom so people like me could beat it down. In New Jersey, Christie doesn’t emerge from his victory nearly as strong as he appears to. And the Virginia outcome isn’t really very strong for Democrats, especially down the ballot. No, I’m not buying into the right-wing spin that Cuccinelli’s narrow margin of defeat really represents some kind of loss for Obamacare. It does not. What I’m saying is something different. But let’s start with Joisey.
Barbara Buono, Christie’s Democratic opponent, volunteered for a suicide mission when she agreed to run against him. Surfing on an ocean of media hagiography, Christie seemed unbeatable just when it was time for Democrats to declare themselves. Buono couldn’t raise money, couldn’t attract much media, couldn’t get anyone to believe she could make it close, let alone win.
In such a circumstance, a lot of voters just mentally write that person off. Most people don’t care passionately about politics. Most people care…some. When they look at a race and see someone who looks as if she’s going to get clobbered, they just decide they’re not voting for her, in the same way they might decide they’re not going to let themselves get too invested in the idea of Rutgers knocking off Florida State in a fantasy matchup.
So Christie got a lot of those votes. He got high percentages from Latinos (around half) and blacks (21 percent). Does it mean he’d get them running for president? No way. Indeed, the exit poll result that showed Hillary Clinton beating him 48-44 demonstrated Christie’s national weakness, at least against her. Think about it. On the night of his greatest triumph, a smashing 22-point win, exit poll respondents walked right out of the booth and said, “For president? Are you kidding me? Hillary all the way!”
About 2 million votes were cast Tuesday. We should perhaps be careful about reading too much into exit polls, but the results suggest that running for president against Clinton, Christie, who corralled nearly 1.25 million votes Tuesday, would give back about 370,000, or roughly 30 percent of them. That sounds about right to me.
People make different calculations voting statewide and nationally. Massachusetts voters, for example, have often elected Republican governors in recent times, but they would never let a Republican get within 20 points of winning the state in a presidential election. New York had a Republican governor in George Pataki not all that long ago; Connecticut had one just recently; Pennsylvania has one right now, and Michigan, and Wisconsin, and Maine, and New Mexico. Likewise, a few red states where Democrats haven’t been winning many presidential votes lately (Kentucky, Arkansas, West Virginia, Montana) have Democratic governors. News flash: People can distinguish between voting for a governor and voting for a president.
The Clinton exit-poll number, the 61 percent of Jersey voters who backed a minimum-wage hike that Christie had vetoed, and his basically nonexistent coattails suggest to me that he will have a hard time winning his own state in 2016, especially if he does a little pandering to the right between now and then, as he’ll surely have to. I don’t deny that he is a skillful politician. What I do deny is that a blowout gubernatorial win under these circumstances means much of anything about the presidency three years hence.
As for Virginia, I mostly come away from that race shocked that someone as divisive and reactionary as Cuccinelli could get 45.5 percent of the vote. His tally, combined with the Libertarian guy’s 6.6 percent, suggests that Virginia is still fairly red. I was also staggered that Cuccinelli beat McAuliffe among white women by 16 points. Surveys before the voting indicated that McAuliffe was much closer than that among white women.
Of course, a presidential-year electorate will be different. It will be younger, more black and brown, and so forth. I would think Clinton, if she were the nominee, could beat Christie there with a large enough “on-year” turnout. But if 46 percent of Virginia is willing to vote for that little reptile Cuccinelli, a die-hard caucus in that state is going to put up a fight. I don’t see McAuliffe’s win as the “bluing” of Virginia. That’s going to take one more presidential election, and it may well be that only Clinton can do it.
Finally, it’s lots of fun to watch the sparring between Republicans about why Cuccinelli lost. The establishment types say the party should have nominated someone more mainstream, while the Tea Partiers blame the establishment for abandoning Cuccinelli too soon. The truly enjoyable thing about this fight is that both arguments have enough of a grain of truth in them to keep the quarrel going on into next year. So let the Tea people keep launching their cannonade, and let the establishment overrate Christie. That’s about as good an ending as this election could have had.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, November 7, 2013
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