{"id":9152,"date":"2012-10-15T11:14:03","date_gmt":"2012-10-15T18:14:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=9152"},"modified":"2012-10-15T11:14:03","modified_gmt":"2012-10-15T18:14:03","slug":"republican-witch-hunt-on-libya","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/15\/republican-witch-hunt-on-libya\/","title":{"rendered":"Republican Witch Hunt on Libya"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Republican Party, supported by some of the wing-nut fringe on the left, have accused Barack Obama of a coverup regarding the terrorist attack on the Benghazi Consulate that took place on September 11.  To be sure, I don\u2019t have enough information to completely satisfy me that there was no coverup, but I think I have enough to give Obama the benefit of the doubt, at least for now.  Furthermore, the Republican hypocrisy on this issue is beyond blatant.<\/font><\/p>\n

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\"15Security\"There are many unanswered questions about the vicious assault in Benghazi last month that killed four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. And Congress has a responsibility to raise them. But Republican lawmakers leading the charge on Capitol Hill seem more interested in attacking President Obama than in formulating an effective response<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t take a partisan to draw that conclusion. The ugly truth is that the same people who are accusing the administration of not providing sufficient security for the American consulate in Benghazi have voted to cut the State Department budget, which includes financing for diplomatic security<\/strong>. The most self-righteous critics don\u2019t seem to get the hypocrisy, or maybe they do and figure that if they hurl enough doubts and complaints at the administration, they will deflect attention from their own poor judgments on the State Department\u2019s needs. <\/p>\n

At a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform last Wednesday, Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California and the committee\u2019s chairman, talked of \u201cexamining security failures that led to the Benghazi tragedy.\u201d He said lawmakers had an obligation to protect federal workers overseas. On Sunday, he said more should be spent on diplomatic security. <\/p>\n

But as part of the Republican majority that has controlled the House the last two years, Mr. Issa joined in cutting nearly a half-billion dollars from the State Department\u2019s two main security accounts<\/strong>. One covers things like security staffing, including local guards, armored vehicles and security technology; the other, embassy construction and upgrades\u2026 [emphasis added<\/em>]<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Inserted from <NY Times<\/a>><\/p>\n

Photo Credit: Facebook<\/a><\/font><\/p>\n

It is true that the Obama administration first reported the terrorist attack as arising out of a demonstration over a hate video.  At the time, the intelligence community was dealing with such demonstrations at US diplomatic facilities in several Muslim countries, including a partial occupation of the Cairo Embassy.  It is not surprising that intelligence officials conflated these events, early on.  The Obama administration continued to denounce the hate video, not because of Libya, but because it was putting dozens of US facilities at risk.  It it true that there had been a request for additional security forces.  However, there were literally hundreds of of requests for more embassy security on Sept. 11.  It is true that junior State Department employees did testify that they knew of the requests from Libya.  However, especially since the US is popular in Libya, it\u2019s highly unlikely that the request had percolated through many layers of the State Department bureaucracy to the White House, let alone the President’s desk.  It is more likely that the request would have been honored had funding for embassy security not been cut.  Furthermore, the request was for more security at the Embassy in Tripoli, not for a small Consulate far away from the capitol.  It is true that Ambassador Stevens had no security with him at all that day.  However, Stevens was one of those wonderful diplomats that does not like a security detail interfering with his closeness with local people.  He often left his security detail behind.  He could have taken a security detail with him, but he opted not to do so.<\/font><\/p>\n

Melissa Harris-Perry covered the Libyan controversy with a panel.<\/font><\/p>\n

<\/embed><\/object><\/font><\/p>\n

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news<\/a>, world news<\/a>, and news about the economy<\/a><\/p>\n

Note how the Republican lied by calling Benghazi the "embassy site".<\/font><\/p>\n

In short, given the information available, there is insufficient justification to conclude that there has been a coverup, while there is more than sufficient evidence supporting a Republican witch hunt with the most extreme hypocrisy!<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Republican Party, supported by some of the wing-nut fringe on the left, have accused Barack Obama of a coverup regarding the terrorist attack on the Benghazi Consulate that took place on September 11.  To be sure, I don\u2019t have enough information to completely satisfy me that there was no coverup, but I think I […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9152\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}