Time to End the Benghazi Witch Hunt
By
Carol Giacomo June 29, 2016 8:00 am June 29, 2016 8:00 am
Representative Trey Gowdy, the chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, during a news conference on Tuesday.Credit Al Drago/The New York Times
After more than two years and over $7 million, the eighth investigation into the Benghazi attacks has finally
issued its report, the culmination of a massive wasted effort that can only be seen as a Republican political vendetta against Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.
In the end, as hard as it tried, the Republican-led congressional panel turned up no great bombshell, no new evidence of wrongdoing by Mrs. Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the 2012 attack, when Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed.
In essence, the panel came to the same conclusion that the previous seven investigations had reached: that while there were serious security gaps at the American consulate in Benghazi and at a separate annex run by the CIA, American forces could not have reached Benghazi in time to save the Americans. Mrs. Clinton had taken responsibility for the State Department’s handling of the incident within months of the tragedy.
By most reasonable measures, the probe was a failure for which the Republicans and the panel chairman, Representative Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, should be publicly excoriated. But it was a political success in the cynical way that Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, predicted it would be.
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” Mr. McCarthy said last September on Fox News. “But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought.”
The issue of Benghazi has been a backdrop of the political campaign not least because the investigation inadvertently turned up a new issue to pummel Mrs. Clinton with – her ill-advised decision to use a private email server, rather than a government server, while she was secretary of state.
For further evidence of political manipulation, one only has to read a redacted transcript released by the Democrats which demonstrates how the Republicans misused their subpoena power to elicit information from Sidney Blumenthal, a friend and adviser of Mrs. Clinton. As reported by The Los Angeles Times, the investigation dug into Mr. Blumenthal’s contacts with another Clinton ally, David Brock, and forced him to disclose details of their financial
arrangement. Of course, this had nothing to do with Benghazi.
There are some illuminating and useful details in the report. One important focus of the panel’s probe was the CIA, which initially escaped public scrutiny because its presence in Benghazi was supposed to be a secret. The report broadly chastised the Defense Department, the CIA and the State Department for failing to understand the serious security risks in Benghazi and for maintaining facilities there that they could not protect.
The administration obviously needs to do better to protect American diplomats but Congress has to approve sufficient funds to underwrite the effort.
The extent of the Republican witch hunt can be seen in the fact that the committee investigation lasted longer than congressional inquiries into the Sept. 11 terror attacks, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the attack on Pearl Harbor. And it was far more partisan than those.
Now that this report is out, that should be the end of it. As Mrs. Clinton said on Tuesday, “it’s time to move on.”
Unfortunately, it’s unlikely that the Republicans, more interested in manufactured issues than real ones like health care, jobs and education, will agree.
http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/06/29/time-to-end-the-benghazi-witch-hunt/
fukk her and her qualifications
Teflon Hill won't be touched.
you mean to tell me it with all the military equipment we have, it really took us 13 hours to get there...when we have a base in Cyprus 320 miles away, basically 2-3 hour flight? 
sounds like a cop out to me....they named who's to blame...now they need to be punished 
and ironically ghadafi's former soldiers saved our asses 
