I'm still trying to understand what the outrage about Benghazi is. What is being covered up?
I understand the IRS thing. That's bullshit and some people should be fired. I don't know if that's criminal behavior or not but it should be.
In a nutshell...
1. The government lied to the American people about the cause of the attack. We now know that the CIA and the State Department knew more or less immediately that the attack on the consulate was a premeditated act of terrorism committed, conveniently, on the anniversary of 9/11. However, political hacks at the State Department (i.e., Hillary), revised the CIA's "talking points" (which are distributed to government officials so they can report accurate information to the media) to remove the references to terrorism and instead blame the attack on a spontaneous reaction to a youtube video. President Obama, SoS Clinton, Ambassador Susan Rice and others peddled this pablum for weeks. The truth matters. Not only did the falsehood directly contradict the Libyan president, who acknowledged it was an act of terror, it feeds into the narrative that America was somehow to blame for the attack, and if we would only be a little more respectful to Islam, all this could have been avoided. It was all bullshit.
2. The State Department insisted that no additional security was ever requested for the Benghazi consulate in the months leading up to the attack - now revealed as bullshit.
3. The State Department insisted that nothing more could have been done from a military standpoint to assist the embattled consulate - now revealed as bullshit. We still don't know who exactly gave the order to the military to stand down.
This is just a brief synopsis. The details are worse. Don't take my word for it, even hard core leftists are now outraged (after dismissing the GOP's efforts for months as a political witch hunt):
- http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/12/opinion/sunday/dowd-when-myths-collide-in-the-capital.html?_r=1&
- http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/05/benghazi-cia-talking-point-edits-white-house.html?mobify=0
May 12, 2013 11:00 AM
Gates: Benghazi-Obsessed Republicans Have 'Cartoonish' View of Military Capability
By David
Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told CBS News that Republican lawmakers who are blasting President Barack Obama's administration for failing to take military action during last September's surprise attacks in Benghazi have a "cartoonish" view of the military.
"I listened to the testimony of [Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta] and [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey]," Gates explained to CBS host Bob Schieffer in an interview that aired on Sunday. "And, frankly, had I been in the job at the time, I think my decisions would have been just as theirs were."
"We don't have a ready force standing by in the Middle East -- despite all the turmoil that's going on -- with planes on strip alert, troops ready to deploy at a moment's notice. And so, getting somebody there in a timely way would have been very difficult, if not impossible."
He continued: "And, frankly, I've heard, 'Why didn't you just fly a fighter jet over and try and scare them with the noise or something?' Well, given the number of surface to air missiles that have disappeared from [former Libya dictator Muammar] Gaddafi's arsenals, I would not have approved sending an aircraft, a single aircraft, over Benghazi under those circumstances."
Gates pointed out that others had suggested that the military could have sent in Special Forces or some other small group.
"Based on everything I've read, people really didn't know what was going on in Benghazi contemporaneously, and to send some small number of Special Forces or other troops in without knowing what the environment is, without knowing what the threat is, without having any intelligence in terms of what is actually going on on the ground, I think, would have been very dangerous," the former defense secretary observed. "And personally, I would not have approved that."
"It's sort of a cartoonish impression of military capabilities and military forces. The one thing that our forces are noted for is planning and preparation before we send people in harm's way. And there just wasn't time to do that."
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/david/gates-benghazi-obsessed-republicans-have-car