Republican myths: Finding another innocent scapegoat after Benghazi

Fox News junkies have the equivalent of a Benghazi reactive chip, implanted by the right wing network, into their psyche.  

In other words, Benghazi has been transformed from a tragic incident where American Ambassador Stevens and others lost their lives in Libya, to mean "let's get Secretary Hillary Clinton", even if the facts prove she was innocent of wrong doing.

Now House Speaker John Boehner is promising to launch yet another investigation into the sad incident. This regurgitation of the tragedy continues, in spite of a Republican-led congressional panel that quietly exonerated the White House of any wrong doing in connection with the response to the 2012, Benghazi, Libya, attack that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three Americans, reports Kevin Drum in MotherJones.com and reprinted in The Week, December 4, 2014. 

It's just incredulous for Fox News and Speaker Boehner to waste time sensationalizing the Benghazi attack on the late Ambassador Stevens. This is especially wrong, when other problems need to be fixed, like passing the Senate's bipartisan immigration bill, for example.

Even more perplexing is how the "no wrong doing" report saw little coverage, if any, in US mainstream media.  So, here's a summary of the story: Benghazi panel: No wrongdoing, from page 3, in December 5, 2014 of The Week:
 
A Republican-led congressional panel quietly exonerated the White House last week of any wrongdoing in connection with the response to the 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. 

The House Intelligence Committee’s two-year investigation concluded that government officials, including then–U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, did not deliberately mislead the public about events surrounding the attack and that assertions that the attack evolved from local protests over an anti-Muslim video came from the U.S. intelligence community and was not politically motivated White House spin. The findings echo those of six earlier government investigations. Nonetheless, House Speaker John Boehner said that in January, he would reappoint another House committee to conduct a new Benghazi investigation.

“It’s hard to exaggerate just how remarkable this document is,” said Kevin Drum in MotherJones.com. After two years of Republicans’ poring over evidence in minute detail and holding more than a dozen hearings, “every single conspiracy theory—without exception—was conclusively debunked.” There was no “stand down” order given by the military, no intelligence failure prior to the attacks, and no CIA or State Department threats or polygraph tests to keep witnesses from testifying. “It was all just manufactured outrage from the beginning.”

(Julie's note: But that hasn't stopped the screeching or the sensationalizing.)

Don’t tell me that there wasn’t an intelligence failure, said Mollie Hemingway in TheFederalist.com. The CIA missed a coordinated, al Qaida–linked attack planned for Sept. 11, and an ambassador died. “By definition we failed.” And rather than getting to the bottom of why that happened and who was responsible, this report “whitewashes, excuses, or glosses over” gross CIA incompetence.

Republicans aren’t giving up on Benghazi for one reason: Hillary Clinton, said David Catanese in USNews.com. The GOP considers Benghazi to be “an inarguable blemish on Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state” and desperately want to use it to discredit her in the run-up to 2016. This won’t be the last we hear of Benghazi. “Not by a long shot.” 



Julie's post script:  It's hard to understand how Republicans can get away with wasting time trying to discredit Secretary Clinton about the unfortunate Benghazi attacks, when there's no evidence whatsoever to back up the hype.  

Nevertheless, Fox News makes a habit of inventing headlines in the absence of facts, which is why traction continues to be gleaned from the unfortunate Benghazi story. Republicans must eventually come to terms with how their political party relies on fear and myths to create zombie like followers.  "You can fool all of the people some of the time, and you can fool some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time,"  said Abraham Lincoln, who was a Republican.

Hopefully, it's only a matter of time until the proverbial men behind the curtain at Fox News and proxy Speaker Boehner are revealed to be hoaxes.

Nevertheless, Benghazi is probably an easy myth to debunk. 

What's more concerning is to try to anticipate other innocent tragedies Republicans will create, in the absence of ideas.  

Right wingers continue their "lack of ideas" assaults on Democrats, because they can't come up with a progressive agenda to help Americans or to improve our human condition.