“Conspiracy Theories Abound”: The Five Biggest Republican Lies About Benghazi
In case you missed it, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held yet another hearing on Wednesday concerning the September 11, 2012 attacks on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya which resulted in the deaths of four Americans. House Republicans were hoping to find some type of damning evidence that would reveal a scandal or cover-up of information by the White House and State Department.
The terrorist attacks in Benghazi have been highly politicized by Republicans since the day after the attacks took place. Before President Obama was able to make a formal statement on the incident, GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney leapt at the opportunity to indulge in a political attack. “I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi,” he said. “It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”
Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA), Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, vowed from the day he took the gavel to hold over 200 hearings throughout the year to confirm that President Obama is “one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times.” Wednesday’s hearing was just one of Issa’s attempts to try to associate the administration with a right-wing-generated conspiracy theory.
It seems as though the grand inquisition into finding a smoking gun may actually linger for a while longer. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), who up until a weekly press conference on Thursday has remained silent on the issue, called on the White House to release email correspondence related to the attacks, “Last November, the president said he was ‘happy to cooperate in any way Congress wants. This is his chance.” Boehner continued, “The State Department would not allow our committees to keep copies of this email when it was reviewed. I would call on the president to order the State Department to release this email so the American people can see it.”
Republicans are so desperate to find something, anything, that they continue to obsess over the same talking points that have all been previously set straight. Here are five biggest lies expressed by Republicans regarding the Benghazi attacks.
Hillary Clinton Personally Signed Cables Denying Security
During Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s testimony before the House Foreign Relations Committee in January, she vowed to have no knowledge of a request for added security at the American compound in Benghazi. Fox News fueled Republican hysteria with an allegation that a cable denying additional security, which has yet to be seen, was in fact signed by the former Secretary.
Representative Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) asked the three witnesses during Wednesday’s hearing if this was standard protocol–all three agreed that Secretary Clinton’s signature appears at the bottom of all cables regardless if they reach her desk or not.
The Media Is Ignoring These Allegations
Fox News likes to grant itself credit with being the only news network to cover and reveal the “facts” surrounding the “Benghazi-gate” “scandal.”
On his Sunday show last October, Brit Hume lashed out against the mainstream media, “One of the problems we’re having here is that it has fallen to this news organization, Fox News, and a couple of others to do all the heaving lifting on this story. And the mainstream organizations that would be on this story like hounds if there were a Republican president have been remarkably reticent.”
The reality of this allegation is that all news networks were covering the attacks in Benghazi–Fox News is simply angry that the other networks weren’t politicizing the attack and condemning President Obama as they were. Even Fox host Geraldo Rivera had words for his friends at the network: “People, stop, I think we have to stop this politicizing. … [T]hese preposterous allegations –- reckless allegations that paint a picture of some fat bureaucrat watching TV –- I think that’s really beyond the pale.”
Fox News should have been more careful during its coverage of Wednesday’s hearing after being so quick to criticize other news outlets following the September attack. Host Megyn Kelly criticized her own network when she admitted they were a bit “lopsided” in their coverage of the hearing after cutting to commercials during Democratic questioning of the witnesses.
Obama and Clinton Watched The Attacks In Real Time
Fox News host Sean Hannity claimed in at least eight different circumstances that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Obama watched the Benghazi attacks in real time from the situation room. “And if the State Department is now saying they never believed that this attack on the 11th of September against the U.S. consulate was a film protest gone awry, think about it — then, it’s nearly impossible to believe that President Obama didn’t know.” Hannity said. “Oh, and did I mention the State Department was watching this unfold in real time?”
In a response to a question from Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) about this fictitious viewing party, the former Secretary stated, “There was no monitor, there was no real time.”
What seems to have caused confusion for conservatives is the difference between Clinton and Obama receiving real-time updates from Benghazi, which was in fact the case, and watching real-time video.
Teams Were Prepared To Deploy But Given Orders To Stand Down
Republicans were up in arms upon learning that a Special Forces team stationed in Tripoli was ready to deploy to Benghazi during the attacks and was instead given orders to stand down.
The former Deputy Chief of Mission in Libya, Gregory Hicks, who was one of the witnesses at the hearing on Wednesday, confirmed that the team told to stand down was never meant to deploy to the site of the attack. Instead, they were intended “to secure the airport for the withdrawal of our personnel from Benghazi after the mortar attack.” Hicks also stated that another team was deployed before this specific one was told to stand down — the first did in fact report to Benghazi and all officials were taken to Tripoli within 18 hours of the attack.
Accountability Review Board Is Part Of The Cover-Up And Their Report Can’t Be Trusted
After the September 11 attacks in Libya, the State Department’s Accountability Review Board was prompted to review the handling of the attacks by officials. Republicans clearly not pleased with the fact that the report didn’t condemn President Obama and former Secretary Clinton decided it wasn’t credible and launched their own investigation.
The result was a congressional report aimed at Republicans, which criticizes the administration for failing on just about every level — failing to acknowledge the need for heightened security at foreign consulates on the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, failing to realize that Benghazi would be a site for post-Gadhafi demonstrations, and the administration’s attempts to mislead the American people with flawed information. The report states, “In sum, the events in Benghazi thus reflect this administration’s lack of a comprehensive national security strategy or effective defense posture in the region…Congress must maintain pressure on the administration to ensure that the United States takes all necessary steps to find the Benghazi attackers.”
Unfortunately for House Republicans looking for outside approval for their report during Wednesday’s hearings, not only did the witnesses not come to their defense, but also weren’t overly critical of the ARB report. Eric Nordstrom, the Regional Security Officer for Libya said of the ARB report, “I had an opportunity to review that along with other two committee reports. I think taken altogether, they’re fairly comprehensive and reasonable.”
By: Allison Brito, The National Memo, May 9, 2013
“Muting Women”: Like A Sailboat On A Lake With No Wind, The Status Of Women Is Stuck In A Lull
What a surprise. Men are drowning out women in the public conversation, a new report from the Women’s Media Center tells us.
Actually, it is a surprise to learn just how bad it is, as if there never was a women’s movement launched by Betty Friedan’s classic, The Feminine Mystique, 50 years ago, which decried the quiet desperation of domestic suburbia.
Fifty years ago is long enough for a cultural forgetfulness to fall over us and long enough for a hostile camp of enemies to make their living mocking women’s empowerment—and yes, I mean you, Rush Limbaugh, most of all. You are the self-appointed keeper of the patriarchy’s keys. The medieval archbishops of the Catholic Church are vigilant in the war on women. The mean-spirited men of the Supreme Court can be counted on, too, ready to usurp our human rights if the “right” opportunity presents itself. Meanwhile, Michelle Obama has new bangs.
In other words, ladies, things are not getting better for us in the 21st century. The recession has been rough on everyone, but especially for our place in the workplace world. As a journalist, let me share some numbers that show you how the conversational monopoly works. In the 2012 presidential campaign, male bylines outnumbered female bylines by nearly three to one, according to he Women’s Media Center. Newspaper decision-makers are usually male in these tight times, as are the subjects of most front-page stories, even obituaries. Then the echo chamber takes effect, because men are far more likely to be quoted than their female colleagues in public discussions—especially on politics.
The Sunday talk shows, the power listening posts of the Washington establishment, predominantly invite men as their guests. But here’s the thing: only 14 percent of the interviewed guests and 29 percent of the roundtable guests are women, according to the report. The hosts conducting the dialogue are predominantly male. Avuncular, authoritative Bob Schieffer of Face the Nation is by far the best of ’em.
Women protested this state of affairs at the ballot box last fall. Twenty women senators are now serving, more than ever before. Is this a critical mass that will change the conversation, or the conversationalists? Let’s see.
I remember being in a panel cable interview after the State of the Union with two good guys—Howard Fineman and Steve Roberts. I had something sparkling to say but even I was drowned out by these older silver-tongued pros, who later apologized for being “the two biggest airhogs in Washington.” It’s a salty slice of memory. Men are just used to talking over women, just as boys talk over girls, like breathing. It happens all the time in Washington. What made Hillary Clinton’s verbal victory over her attacking jousters in her valedictory Senate hearing so extraordinary was because it was, well, extraordinary in this talkative town. She lifted morale all over for Washington women.
To our rescue comes Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook, who is lighting a match to start a “Lean In” movement. More on that another day as it gets underway. Consider the Oscars: Daniel Day-Lewis was honored for playing the greatest president and humanitarian in our history while Jennifer Lawrence won for playing a wifely female stereotype. As I listened to two male critics from the New York Times website comment on every single Academy scene in the show, it felt relentlessly normal. We are such good listeners.
The status of women is stuck in a lull, like a sailboat on a lake with no wind. And we are the ones who have to start speaking our views and telling our stories—to borrow from radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison—so that we will be heard.
By: Jamie Stiehm, U. S. News and World Report, February 25, 2013
“The Real ‘60 Minutes’ Revelation”: Democrats Are Now The Regular Guys, Conservatives Are The Weirdos
I can actually see, to some extent, the point of conservatives’ complaints about the Obama-Hillary 60 Minutes interview. It was softbally, and Steve Kroft’s one real question—to Clinton, about whether she felt any guilt or remorse over Benghazi—she totally didn’t answer. But here, conservatives, is what you are missing and what you need to reckon with. Americans—except you—like these two people. Most Americans look at the pair of them—this black man who is still remote in some ways and this so-familiar woman who is now aging before us and allowing herself to look just a little frumpy—and feel reassured. Most Americans are cheering for them, and hence, most Americans probably wanted a softball interview. We have thus passed an important portal in American politics: Democrats are now the regular guys. Conservatives are the weirdos.
First, about the interview. These are not two of your more forthcoming interview subjects. I’ve never sat with Obama, but I have interviewed Clinton on a number of occasions, including one big 90-minute-or-so sit-down back in 2000. She told me some very interesting things: she likes Thomas Hardy, she was overwhelmed by her visit to the Olduvai Gorge, she takes a keen interest in ancient civilizations, she loves the Three Stooges, and she knows the theme song to The Flintstones. But on policy, she gave me nothing. A total Heisman. My heart sank to the floor as I listened back over the tape and realized that answer after answer wasn’t going to make news after all. Obama is no different. Rare is the interview that finds him saying anything genuinely arresting.
But he did say something interesting to Kroft, and she did too, which was this: they were both wholly believable and ingenuous when they were talking about their own political relationship. When Obama said, in reference to repairing the ruptures of 2008, “I think it was harder for the staffs, which is understandable, because, you know, they get invested in this stuff in ways that I think the candidates maybe don’t,” I thought: that rings really true. And I’d bet most Americans did too.
Obama and Clinton talked, in other words, like mature adults, and they sold it as genuine because it was genuine. And I’d contend that it made most people watching feel something like: Well, these are very smart and self-assured people, and they’re mostly pretty likable, too, and agree or disagree with this or that decision they make or action they take, I feel like my country is in pretty good hands with them. And yes, to invoke the hackneyed litmus-test question—I’d drink a beer, or a pinot, or in HRC’s case a shot of Crown Royal, with them. To everyone but right-wingers, that was the vibe Sunday night—a victory lap, and a victory lap that no one begrudged them.
They’re the real Americans now. It’s not that they have changed, but that America has. The measures for real Americanism are no longer clearing brush, hunting elk, hopping on top of various animals, dropping one’s g’s (in speech, I mean), and speaking in intentionally ungrammatical apothegmatic frontier “wisdom.” The new measures? Not completely sure yet. But we do have now the collective realization that those were fake measures—some Harvey Mansfield–inspired Potemkin Village of “real America.” Also, the collective realization that it’s probably on balance not at all a bad idea for the president not to be “just like us,” which was the folk wisdom of a decade ago, but in fact a little smarter than most of us.
The Republicans? It’s not just the extreme ideology. Of course it’s that, but it’s more. The whole shtick is old. Where once the Middle American ear may have been soothed by that low Cheney rumble belching out its grave assessments of the world situation, today it is accosted by all those caliginous Southern accents warning of socialism and collapse, and thinks: will these people ever shut up? Georgia Congressman Paul Broun told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week that Obama “upholds … the Soviet Constitution.” On any given week, I could fill a whole column, or two, with such nuggets. Enough already.
While Obama and Clinton were speaking, so was Paul Ryan, to a conservative gathering, where he said: “There are two ways to respond to defeat: Either you can deny it, or you can learn from it. I choose to learn from it. The way I see it, our defeat is all the more reason to lay out our vision with even more specifics—and with a broader appeal.”
What he’s saying there, and throughout the speech, is that the GOP isn’t going to change its stripes a bit. “Broader appeal” means I suppose better (read: more dishonest) packaging for a bunch of reactionary policies that Americans don’t want.
Conservatives, you can call me and others like me all the names you want, and you can whine about the evil CBS all you want. But Kroft and his network were actually in touch here with the pulse of the country, which wants Obama to succeed and Hillary to go have a nice long rest (and, maybe, get ready for 2016). Meanwhile, even Roger Ailes has gotten sick of Sarah Palin. Get the picture?
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, January 29, 2013
“Warped Childlike Minds”: An Abrupt End To Another GOP Conspiracy Theory
During a recent trip to Europe, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton contracted a stomach virus, and two weeks ago, her ailments left her dehydrated. It reached the point at which Clinton fainted, struck her head, and suffered a minor concussion.
Except, many on the right refused to believe it. For Fox News and many other Republicans, Clinton was pulling a Ferris Bueller — pretending to have health trouble in order to avoid testifying on Capitol Hill about the September attack in Benghazi.
As Josh Rogin reports, Clinton is returning to work, and in the process, knocking down yet another silly GOP conspiracy theory.
Clinton’s ongoing recovery will still prevent her from flying abroad, but will allow plans to move forward for her to testify in open hearing on the Sept. 11 attack on Benghazi, testimony that she was unable to give — as per her doctor’s orders — on Dec. 20. Her return to a public schedule could also end the weeks of conspiracy theorizing and wild speculation about whether or not she was faking or misrepresenting her illness to avoid testifying.
“The secretary continues to recuperate at home. She had long planned to take this holiday week off, so she had no work schedule. She looks forward to getting back to the office next week and resuming her schedule,” Clinton aide Philippe Reines told The Cable.
And as part of that resumed schedule, Clinton has pledged to appear before both House and Senate foreign relations committees in January.
Referencing Rogin’s fine list, it’s unclear whether the New York Post, the Daily Caller, hosts on Fox News’s evening shows, Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), the conservative website Pajamas Media, the Investors’ Business Daily website, conservative blogger Lucianne Goldberg, and others are prepared to apologize for spreading the so-called “concussiongate” nonsense.
As for the larger context, we can also add this absurdity to the lengthy list of Obama administration conspiracy theories that the right took seriously but which never panned out.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, December 28, 2012
Heritage Foundation-Fox News Purity Police: “It’s As If Hillary Clinton Was Auditioning For “The Jersey Shore”
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is having quite a month. After a photo of her spawned its own internet sensation, new images from a nightlife hotspot in Colombia that show Clinton sipping on a beer and dancing have ignited a fresh wave of gossipy commentary.
The New York Post ran one photo on its front page under the banner headline “Swillary,” apparently upset that she imbibes the same liquid as much of the rest of humanity.
But perhaps the best reaction to the shocking news that Hillary Clinton can have a good time goes to Nile Gardiner from the Heritage Foundation, who appeared on the Fox News show Your World with Neil Cavuto to attack Clinton for “embarrassing” herself:
Hillary Clinton is a public servant, she’s out to serve the American people, to advance US interests. And I think that conducting herself in this way, as a senior US official on the world stage, doesn’t advance American interests in any way. In fact its downright embarrassing. It’s as though she’s auditioning for the sixth series of Jersey Shore rather than representing America on the world stage as the Secretary of State.
Watch it: http://youtu.be/NUC9lo7gOx4
Gardiner’s remarks stunned even guest host Stuart Varney, who was filling in for Cavuto. Varney asked Gardiner if he would support a rule stating that no senior public official must ever be seen in a bar with a drink and/or dancing, to which Gardiner responded that he thought it was “a pretty good idea.”
Fortunately, Varney promised to give his viewers “both sides” of Hillary Clinton drinking a beer, so he invited on GOP strategist Dee Dee Benkie. To her credit, she defended Clinton, saying that “she deserves a few beers.”
But if you’re Hillary Clinton, you can be attacked by conservatives for both being too uptight and for having too much fun.
By: Adam Peck, Think Progress, April 16, 2012
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