Terrorists attacked the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11, 2012, and killed our ambassador and three other Americans. Congressional Republicans and the right wing blogosphere grabbed onto this tragic chaotic incident like a pit bull to use it against Barack Obama's re-election campaign.
They continue to milk it for all it's worth, presumably aiming at the 2016 presidential election in case Hillary Clinton decides to run. She was Secretary of State at the time.
Was this a spontaneous attack in response to an anti-Islamic video, or a pre-planned attack by an al Qaida type group? Was it an "act of terror" or a terrorist attack? Either way, the people were dead.
The goal should be to determine what went wrong and make sure it doesn't happen again, if we are going to send our representatives into hostile areas.
Congressional Republicans have never seemed to have that as a priority. Their priority has been to make political capital of it. The Republican-controlled House has had eight committee investigations with 13 hearings and 25,000 pages of documents, according to National Public Radio; that's up until last week when another House oversight committee hearing wasn't good enough. Now there will be a "select committee" to continue the effort. As in, select Republicans who are starting the investigation with a foregone conclusion.
Oversight Committee Chair Darrel Issa had already issued a subpoena to current Secretary of State John Kerry, apparently without asking him to come testify and giving him a chance to refuse.
If he or Hillary Clinton ends up testifying, I wonder if it will be with the same limitations as when former Bush administration official Condi Rice testified during investigations about bogus weapons of mass destruction claims before we invaded Iraq in March 2003 - in closed session only, no oath to tell the truth, no recording, and no taking of notes by those present.
The Benghazi furor brings to mind the multi-year Whitewater investigation against President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, headed by "independent" prosecutor Kenneth Starr to try (at taxpayer expense) to dig up fodder for Republicans to use against Clinton's re-election campaign in 1996. Clinton won handily and the investigation languished... until Clinton's stupid dalliance with Monica Lewinsky.
According to CNN reports in early 1999 citing General Accounting Office and Justice Department reports, Starr had spent $40.8 million as of November 1998, on top of $6 million spent by his predecessor. Overall spending on the Whitewater investigation was listed at $79.3 million as of April 1999.
At some point, Starr's investigation morphed into Lewinsky-gate to provide fodder for House Republicans who wanted to impeach Clinton, never mind that several of them were shown to have their own problems with marital fidelity; or that lying about infidelity doesn't seem to me to constitute a "high crime or misdemeanor." Compared to, say, making bogus imminent threat claims to justify that invasion of Iraq.
My thought then and now is that if Republicans want to dig up fodder for campaigns, it should be with party money, or at least their billionaire supporters like the Koch brothers or casino magnate Sheldon Adelson. It should not be taxpayer money going for partisan purposes.
