Former Republican Staffer Accuses Benghazi Panel of Partisan Investigation

Vince524 · Oct 23, 2015

Like I said, a Rorschach test. We see what we want to see. I'm sure I'm as guilty as everyone else.

rugcat · Oct 23, 2015

Vince524 said:
Like I said, a Rorschach test. We see what we want to see. I'm sure I'm as guilty as everyone else.

Oh, I agree.

But I do think it helped Hillary. Those that mistrust and dislike her were never going to have a change of heart due to anything she said. But Zoombie actually articulated something I think quite a few people felt. Those who were unsure or reluctant supporters of Hillary I think will tend to support her more now after seeing exactly how the opposition went after her. It's not easy to make Hillary into a sympathetic character, but they did a really good job of that.

Vince524 · Oct 23, 2015

rugcat said:
Oh, I agree.

But I do think it helped Hillary. Those that mistrust and dislike her were never going to have a change of heart due to anything she said. But Zoombie actually articulated something I think quite a few people felt. Those who were unsure or reluctant supporters of Hillary I think will tend to support her more now after seeing exactly how the opposition went after her. It's not easy to make Hillary into a sympathetic character, but they did a really good job of that.

Possibly. But there's also the reverse. There are people who hate her and think this is just another thing that she got away with. So they'll be more willing to oppose her. I don't think it really helped or hurt her as much as it made more people dig in their heels.

You might be right that it makes those who like her root for her more against the GOP, but none of those guys will be running against her.

vsrenard · Oct 23, 2015

The thing that has coalesced most clearly from this latest round of Republican WTFery is that they are a very angry lot. They are a bunch of tentacles looking for a brain to guide them and absent that, they just lash out. Against Clinton. Against Planned Parenthood. Hell, they're eating their own.

Gregg · Oct 23, 2015

raburrell said:
I'm assuming you're talking about Charles Woods, he also believes all the debunked nonsense about stand down orders and that Obama and his closest friends watched a drone record the attack for 7 hrs straight. .

No.
Not about Benghazi events but about what Clinton told Woods: the filmmaker did it.
Which was the opposite of what she told her daughter and the Prime Minister of Egypt immediately after the attack: it was terrorists.

raburrell · Oct 23, 2015

Gregg said:
No.
Not about Benghazi events but about what Clinton told Woods: the filmmaker did it.
Which was the opposite of what she told her daughter and the Prime Minister of Egypt immediately after the attack: it was terrorists.

No, not about Benghazi but what Clinton told Woods about Benghazi? Not sure I follow. In any case, Woods isn't a reliable source, but I don't think even he claimed Clinton said the filmmaker was behind the attacks.

FWIW, your earlier post said Clinton told him the filmmaker would be arrested - he was, about 2 weeks after the attack.

nighttimer · Oct 23, 2015

William Haskins said:
republicans are a putrid, rotting die-off of a species that evolution has passed by, and they are hamfisted and small-minded in nearly everything they do.

Oh, look! A a fair and balanced blasting of the Republicans...

William Haskins said:
that said, hillary clinton is a snake of a liar. and her shamelessness is only exceeded by the shamefulness of the supporters who count as a victory the pathetically low-bar of merely having kept her composure while the evidence of her treachery was paraded before her.

...fairly unbalanced by the fang-bared fury at the hamfisted bungling of those small-minded Republicans in their complete failure To Get Clinton!

What evidence? You mean that 11-hour televised lynch mob where the rancid stink of the Trey Gowdy Gang's collective flop sweat was overwhelmed by them shitting themselves like infants as they flailed and wailed at Hillary Clinton? You mean that circle jerk where Republican witchfinders tried to shake, rattle and roll Clinton into breaking down and confessing her evildoing but succeeded only in making themselves look every bit the bumbling Inspector Clouseaus they truly were?

The Republican witch hunters paid a heavy price for their pride and hubris and the former Secretary of State smiled beatifically and made sure they paid in full:

This was a hearing into nothing. This was a hearing made up only of the empty air. What happened in Benghazi on September 11, 2012 was a violent assault in which four Americans lost their lives. There were undeniable cock-ups in the American response, all of which have been explored at length in the several previous investigations. None of them involved what Susan Rice may have said to David Gregory on NBC. None of them involved Sidney Blumenthal's opinion of Bob Gates. None of them involved anything on which Trey Gowdy wasted the Congress's time or the country's money Thursday.

Did she hand them their own asses? Of course she did. She was cool and she was poised and, by the end of the day, she was even out-arguing them about the role of the video in the attacks across the Muslim world, which was the ur-point of this fiasco in the first place.

This whole thing started because of a ginned-up controversy about what Susan Rice had said about the attacks on Meet The Press in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. (Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio is still howling about this.) Responding to a question from Cummings, HRC actually got to explain that the video at least was partly responsible for the rage that broke out from Indonesia to Tunisia. That, alas, was beside the point. So also was Congressman Adam Schiff's boot in the ass in which he pretty much demonstrated that Blumenthal's appearance before this committee—the transcript of which Gowdy refuses to release—was a fishing expedition after material about the Clintons that could be used for future ratfcking purposes.And not even Hillary Rodham Clinton's ability to stand up against the gales of innuendo and fakery will make it less so.

This was a performance piece for the people residing within the conservative media bubble—who already are hip to the lies of the lamestream media, and who already are too smart to be fooled by the Hildebeast and her alleged facts because Mark Levin has told them that they are too smart to be so fooled, and who watch their favorite TV news stars every night, where there is always Another Question, or Another E-Mail, or, for all I know, Another Witness who saw the ghost of Vince Foster wandering through the Mena Airport with Kathleen Willey's cat in his mouth. The people out in the world are one problem, but now they're pretty plainly electing each other to the national legislature. That makes it our problem.

Where was all this anger when it was revealed to the country there was NO REASON for the House Select Committee on Benghazi to exist beyond political gamesmanship? Where was this righteous fury when Republicans wasted almost $5 million dollars like Lamar Odom on a drug and herbal Viagra binge in a whorehouse? Where was the pver-the-top outrage when a wingnut Republican backbencher proclaimed they would try to impeach a second President Clinton on Day One?

All the fist-pounding, spittle-flying hysterics would carry far more heft if they were truly evenly applied to Republican fuckery and it is (and always has been) applied to Democratic fuckery. After all this time of slamming one side repeatedly with gleeful enthusiasm, it's a little late in the game to be convincing at trying to slap around the other side a bit just to make it look good. Nobody but a newbie would buy that act.

Vince524 said:
Basically, the hearings are like a Rorschach test. You see it through your own prism. If you liked Clinton, you thought she came off great and the GOP came off horrible. If you don't like her, she came off horrible, and they came off okay.

IMHO, none of 'em came off particularly well. And in the long run, it won't matter one damn bit either way.

Oh yeah, it matters. It matters more than one damn bit. It matters a whole lot because this "investigation" was as partisan as any Congressional investigation ever has been and this is what made it matter.

"Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? 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."
~ Rep. Kevin McCarthy, (R-CA) House Majority Leader

It mattered because anyone who gave a damn bit about getting to the truth of what happened in Benghazi learned the House Republicans did not give a damn. The only thing they gave a damn about was getting Hillary Clinton and trying to damage her chances of being president.

Instead, they may have made it an inevitability. That would be "a bitch", just not the kind Republicans have been plotting for years. It took Gowdy 11 hours to do it, but now nobody can legitimately question the accuracy of Clinton's crack about including Republicans among her enemies.

They are the enemy and though they're pretty butt-hurt now, they won't be any less of an enemy today, next year or Inauguration Day 2017.

Don · Oct 24, 2015

Magdalen said:
This was not good TV. I still have love for Hillary, but now it is a tainted love - once I ran to her, now I run from her and would not want to see her run the country. After 11 hours - I can't touch that..

rugcat said:
But I do think it helped Hillary. Those that mistrust and dislike her were never going to have a change of heart due to anything she said. But Zoombie actually articulated something I think quite a few people felt. Those who were unsure or reluctant supporters of Hillary I think will tend to support her more now after seeing exactly how the opposition went after her. It's not easy to make Hillary into a sympathetic character, but they did a really good job of that.

.

Williebee · Oct 24, 2015

I don't think this was a Rorschach test, at least not for the players involved. A Rorschach is designed to gather indicators that can be interpreted to reveal beliefs, inclinations, biases and such. It would appear that all of the players had those beliefs and biases already clearly out in the open.

And, if the end result is that people paying attention to it believed what they already believed and nothing is new is revealed for them either -- even as a Rorschach test it was a huge waste of money.

Diana Hignutt · Oct 24, 2015

I see this as helping Clinton. The separate email scandal will be dismissed as just more of the same Republican witch-hunting. I think the R's just gave Hillary the White House, honestly.

William Haskins · Oct 24, 2015

no doubt about it. her donations are up and the media narrative is that of reinforced inevitability.

Latina Bunny · Oct 24, 2015

For me, Clinton's still a better choice over the hateful Republican candidates we've been exposed to so far...

Gregg · Oct 24, 2015

raburrell said:
No, not about Benghazi but what Clinton told Woods about Benghazi? Not sure I follow. In any case, Woods isn't a reliable source, but I don't think even he claimed Clinton said the filmmaker was behind the attacks.

FWIW, your earlier post said Clinton told him the filmmaker would be arrested - he was, about 2 weeks after the attack.

This from the Daily Mail (one of several sources with the same story):
The father of a U.S. Navy SEAL killed in the September 2012 terrorist attacks in Bengazi, Libya has told Fox News that Hillary Clinton initially blamed a film for his son's death - contradicting sworn testimony that the former secretary of state gave Thursday on Capitol Hill.
Charles Woods is the father of Tyrone Woods, a CIA contractee who was killed on Sept. 11, 2012 along with three other Americans. He read his diary notes to Fox News from Sept. 14, 2012, when his son's body was returned to the U.S.
'I gave Hillary a hug and shook her hand. And she said we are going to have the film maker arrested who was responsible for the death of my son,' Woods told Fox News.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...rested-causing-son-s-death.html#ixzz3pVREYDEs

And yes the filmmaker was arrested - but for something unrelated to the film. He violated his probation stemming from some sort of bank fraud.

nighttimer · Oct 24, 2015

There may have been another presidential candidate who has undergone an 11-hour grilling by a hostile opposition, but none comes to mind. By any political measurement, Hillary Clinton has had a very good week and David Gergen knows how to divine the tea leaves.

(CNN)For Hillary Clinton, Republicans have become the gift that keeps on giving. Mrs. Clinton owes much of her extraordinary comeback to her own abilities, but surely she must be grateful to the GOP as well. Never in modern times has a political party done so much to rehabilitate the leading presidential candidate in the other party.

The gifts have come in rapid succession:
-- The way Republicans have converted Donald Trump into GOP front-runner. For all for their misgivings about Clinton, Trump scares the bejesus out of millions of Americans. How long before we see sprouting of groups like "Republican Women for Hillary"?
-- The assertion by two Republican House members -- one the GOP majority leader -- that the Benghazi hearings were rigged to discredit Clinton.
-- The ouster of Speaker John Boehner by hard-right Republicans because he hasn't been sufficiently tough enough, a clear signal of who is running the House. Ask Mitt Romney how damaging it was to him to be seen as a captive of the far right.
-- And, of course, this week's marathon grilling of Clinton by the Benghazi committee that fortified the widespread belief -- some 70% of people on the eve of the testimony according to a CNN poll -- that the hearings were a partisan witch hunt.

The hearings could be especially helpful to Clinton because they played out on prime-time television before a sizable audience -- some 5.24 million between Fox, MSNBC and CNN -- so that massive numbers of voters could judge for themselves. As it turned out, those prime-time hours were the ones in which Republican members, tired and frustrated, did their worst badgering.

What most Americans instinctively want are leaders who are respectful of each other, listen well and are open-minded. And for much of the post-World War II period, that was usually the norm (the McCarthy period was a great exception).

As Clinton pointed out in her opening statement, there have been numerous instances in recent years in which terrorists broke through our defenses and murdered Americans. Investigations always followed but never the kind of disrespectful treatment against a secretary of state as the nation saw this week. And never the impugning of the integrity of distinguished public servants like Ambassador Tom Pickering and Adm. Michael Mullen as we witnessed.

Do you think the Benghazi committee would have conducted itself this way if the star witness had not been Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee? The question answers itself.

A great week is no reason enough for Hillary to start measuring the drapes in the Oval Office quite yet. Another shoe could drop regarding her emails, but unless one does, I think Benghazi is something she can put in the rear-view mirror. Bernie Sanders will need more than exuberant crowds to deny her the nomination, but he can still give Clinton multiple moments of heartburn before the primaries conclude.

Biden staying out of the race means the moderate middle is all hers. The departures of Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee are meaningless and while Martin O'Malley will slog on for now (what else does he have to do?), all he's gonna get from it is a non-prime time speaking spot at the Democratic convention next summer.

The longer it takes the Republicans to settle on a nominee who doesn't scare half the country and polarize the other half into action, the better it is for Team Hillary. They can raise (and save) money for the general election. God help the GOP if they really think Trump or Carson are their best chances to deny Clinton the presidency.

BoF · Oct 24, 2015

There is some evidence, from conservative sources no less, that Trey Gowdy and his thugs weren’t racking up points the way Baylor’s offense demolishes opponents. Things were going so bad that FNC (often called the Benghazi network) ditched live coverage, so that its commentators could feed its mindless minions proper spin on what was going on.

So why did Fox News turn away from live, unfolding Benghazi content? A network spokesperson explains that Fox News doesn’t commonly cover hearings and speeches from start to finish — and that after a lengthy hearing, the network felt its viewers wanted analysis of the proceedings. Also according to the spokesperson, Fox News was prepared to break in to its programming with correspondents and producers who were tracking it.

Fair enough — the Erik Wemple Blog wasn’t disappointed to find the lively co-hosts of “The Five” doing their thing, as opposed to another round of Benghazi committee questioning. Yet the move to cut away from Capitol Hill raises the question of whether Fox News was hesitant to expose its viewers to the live-on-the-spot unraveling of many Benghazi themes that it has pushed on air.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blog...ditched-the-benghazi-hearing-and-msnbc-didnt/

Then there was this tweet from John Podhoertz, a writer at the conservative Weekly Standard.

Why doesn't [Mike]Pompeo (perhaps the dumbest buffoon on the whole panel-my insert) just go over and swear her in for president now--if he goes on like this he'll practically get her elected

https://twitter.com/jpodhoretz/status/657275010797670400

raburrell · Oct 24, 2015

Gregg said:
This from the Daily Mail (one of several sources with the same story):
The father of a U.S. Navy SEAL killed in the September 2012 terrorist attacks in Bengazi, Libya has told Fox News that Hillary Clinton initially blamed a film for his son's death - contradicting sworn testimony that the former secretary of state gave Thursday on Capitol Hill.
Charles Woods is the father of Tyrone Woods, a CIA contractee who was killed on Sept. 11, 2012 along with three other Americans. He read his diary notes to Fox News from Sept. 14, 2012, when his son's body was returned to the U.S.
'I gave Hillary a hug and shook her hand. And she said we are going to have the film maker arrested who was responsible for the death of my son,' Woods told Fox News.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...rested-causing-son-s-death.html#ixzz3pVREYDEs

And yes the filmmaker was arrested - but for something unrelated to the film. He violated his probation stemming from some sort of bank fraud.

I don't doubt that he said it; it's his reliability I question (let alone the Daily Fail), as he's pushed a number of Benghazi narratives which have been proven false. (I mentioned them in my previous post). He's an angry, grieving father, and it's understandable, but it doesn't grant him an unquestioned version of events.

The video was not the impetus for the initial attack, but there's evidence it did indeed play a role in the looting and burning of the compound once the compound had been breached. (Clinton mentioned this this in her testimony this week, and it's been the testimony of captured suspect Ahmed Khattala that this was the case as well.) I realize it's an article of faith in conservative circles that the video had nothing to do with it, but there's plenty of evidence in the record that disagrees.

nighttimer · Oct 25, 2015

How partisan was the Benghazi grilling of Hillary? Even Donald Trump knows it.

Donald Trump said in an interview broadcast Sunday that the Benghazi committee's hearing featuring former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was “very partisan,” adding that the “hatred” displayed was “unbelievable."

“It was very partisan, and it looked quite partisan,” Trump said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “The level of hatred between Republicans and Democrats was unbelievable.”"You’ve never seen anything like this."

Trump said the partisanship “hurts both parties” and “hurts the country” because it prevents the government from accomplishing anything.

The GOP front-runner painted himself as a “great unifier.”

“I’m going to unify. This country is totally divided,” Trump said. “Barack Obama has divided this country unbelievably, and it’s all hatred, what can I tell you, I’ve never seen anything like it. I’m going to unify the country.”

He said his past support of Democrats shows that he’s above partisan politics.

“One of the big knocks on me was that over the years I’ve gotten along with Democrats and I’ve gotten along with Republicans, and I said that’s a good thing,” Trump said. “As a businessman, I had an obligation to do that, to myself, to my family, to my company, to my employees. I get along with everybody. I will be a great unifier for our country.”

Trump also said he does not consider Clinton an “enemy.”

“I don’t consider her any enemy. Right now she’s an opponent. I don’t consider her an enemy.”

Former Republican Staffer Accuses Benghazi Panel of Partisan Investigation

Vince524

Are you gonna finish that bacon?

rugcat

Lost in the Fog

Vince524

Are you gonna finish that bacon?

vsrenard

Watching the Whales

Gregg

Life is good

raburrell

Treguna Makoidees Trecorum SadisDee

nighttimer

No Gods No Masters

Don

All Living is Local

Williebee

Capeless, wingless, & yet I fly.

Diana Hignutt

Very Tired

William Haskins

poet

Latina Bunny

Lover of Contemporary/Fantasy Romance (she/her)

Gregg

Life is good

nighttimer

No Gods No Masters

BoF

Cautious Daredevil

raburrell

Treguna Makoidees Trecorum SadisDee

nighttimer

No Gods No Masters