Benghazigate
May 15, 2013 — John Hinderaker
This afternoon the White House released 100 pages of emails that trace the development of the talking points about Benghazi that Susan Rice eventually used on her notorious tour of the Sunday morning news shows, and that formed the basis for much of what the Obama administration said about the attacks for weeks afterward. This is the original version of the talking points that came out of the CIA, with
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May 14, 2013 — Scott Johnson
President Obama put on a good show on the subject of Benghazi in his joint press conference with David Cameron yesterday. He expressed something like righteous indignation regarding coverage of the story and his alleged his lack of candor regarding the attack. Employing the famous Gertrude Stein quotation, he alleged that there is no there there. Maybe. As Bill Clinton might explain, it depends on the meaning of “there.” It
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May 13, 2013 — John Hinderaker
President Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron held a brief joint press conference this morning. After the introductory comments, the first questions related to Benghazi and the IRS. Here is some of what Obama had to say about Benghazi: With respect to Benghazi, we’ve now seen this argument that’s been made by some folks primarily up on Capitol Hill for months now. And I’ve just got to say — here’s
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May 13, 2013 — Scott Johnson
It’s difficult to find humor in anything related to the murder of our ambassador to Libya and his colleagues in Benghazi, but the Accountability Review Board convened by Hillary Clinton has seeds of of comedy in it. As scandal management, the Accountability Review Board (report here) amounted to something like performance art. Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing represented two of the three whistleblower witnesses who testified before the House committee
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May 13, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Victor Davis Hanson makes a point that I forgot to include in my most recent post about Hillary Clinton’s “what difference does it make” rant. Clinton testified: With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it
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May 12, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
At a Senate hearing in January, Hillary Clinton responded to questioning from Sen. Ron Johnson about the nature of the Benghazi attack with this rant: With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided to go kill some Americans? What difference at this point does it make? Given
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May 11, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Team Obama has come up with its excuse for converting the Benghazi talking points into a false narrative. It was a purely bureaucratic matter, you see. The CIA and the State Department disagreed about what happened, and the White House simply wanted to make sure the talking points represented all viewpoints. The White House has been suggesting this excuse for a few days. Today, the Washington Post’s “fact-checker,” Glenn Kessler,
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May 11, 2013 — John Hinderaker
If you want to see just how befuddled the Obama administration is by the Benghazi scandal, watch Jay Carney twist in the wind when asked the simplest of questions about his previous misrepresentations: I offer three conclusions: 1) Carney, apart from the fact that he looks like a teenager who has been summoned to the principal’s office, is utterly inept. 2) The Obama administration is unused to being questioned by
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May 11, 2013 — Scott Johnson
John has undertaken a series comparing Benghazigate to Watergate. Benghazigate is still unraveling, so the comparison presents certain difficulties, but we are still in the dark concerning some of the most basic facts regarding the Watergate scandal as well. Nixon spokesman Ron Ziegler characterized Watergate as a “third-rate burglary.” The Democrats, by contrast, characterized Watergate as something vastly greater than the crime on the surface. According to Senator Ervin, this
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May 10, 2013 — Scott Johnson
David Gelernter is professor of computer science at Yale and the author, most recently, of America-Lite: How Imperial Academia Dismantled Our Culture (and Ushered in the Obamacrats). He wrote “Why do we live in America-Lite?” for us, briefly summarizing the themes of the book. Professor Gelernter returned to expand on the themes of his book in “What keeps this failed president above water?” and in “Don’t say we didn’t warn
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May 10, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Steve Hayes takes a detailed look at the scenario that led to the scrubbing of the CIA’s Benghazi talking points to delete terrorism references and focus on the “non-event” video. Hayes’ rendition is consistent with what we’ve been saying for some time now — the State Department pushed for the talking points to be changed to cover up its pre-Benghazi malfeasance and the White House concurred, presumably to help re-elect
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May 10, 2013 — John Hinderaker
This American Crossroads video does a good job of laying out, in a simple and understated way, the basic facts of the Benghazi cover-up, in light of Wednesday’s hearing. If you have friends who haven’t been following Benghazi and don’t know what the fuss is about, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to email it to them: Whether the Benghazi lies make a difference depends in part on whether you
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May 9, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Raymond Maxwell was the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Maghreb (North Africa) Affairs at the State Department’s Bureau of Near East Affairs from 2011-2012. He also one of the three Deputy Assistant Secretaries removed due the fallout over Benghazi. Maxwell has written the following poem about his experience at the hands of “the Queen’s Henchmen”: The Queen’s Henchmen request the pleasure of your company at a Lynching – to be held
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May 9, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday’s Benghazi hearing provided important information about the cover-up that occurred following the attack, and the leading role of Hillary Clinton in that cover-up. We already knew that the talking points Susan Rice used on five Sunday talk shows had been changed to provide false information about the Benghazi attack. Gregory Hicks, the State Department’s number two man in Libya when the attack began, confirmed yesterday that there was no
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May 9, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday’s Benghazi hearing tended to confirm my view that, looking back, the four Americans who died during the attack (which occurred in two distinct phases) were doomed due to the inadequate security provided by the State Department. In other words, there probably was nothing we could have done once the attack commenced that would have saved them. However, the hearing also confirmed that the U.S. declined to take actions that,
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May 9, 2013 — Paul Mirengoff
Last night, I watched the replay of the House Oversight Committee hearing on Benghazi. The hearing enhanced my knowledge of key events before, during, and after the attack. This post focuses on events before the attack. We already knew that the embassy in Libya had requested that the State Department beef up security, and that, instead, the number of people providing security had been slashed. And we already knew that
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May 9, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Benghazi hearing before the House Oversight Committee had been previewed over the weekend in stories featuring some of the highlights of the witnesses’ testimony to staff behind closed doors. In the event the testimony of the witnesses was if anything more dramatic than we might have anticipated. The bombshells were flying Fast & Furious. Three New York Times reporters have a good story summarizing the testimony. John Podhoretz renders
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