Both the White House and House Democrats signaled very clearly today that they have no intention of cooperating with the House Select committee investigating Benghazi.
Here's House Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff, saying that House Democrats will refuse to participate in the Select Committee because it's a 'colossal waste of time' and a partisan witch hunt.
And (what a coincidence) Here's White House Press Secretary Jay Carney:
“We have always cooperated with legitimate oversight,” Carney said this afternoon during the daily White House briefing. Asked whether the panel qualified as “legitimate,” he said: “I think if you look at what even some Republicans have said, it certainly casts doubt on the legitimacy of an effort that is so partisan in nature.”
“You know, at some point, you just have to assume that Republicans will continue this because it feeds a political objective of some sort,” he added. “At the same time you have to ask, ‘What about the American people who want to see Congress work for them?’”
I have to smile at Carney talking about how the White House has always 'cooperated' with legitimate oversight..Fast and Furious, NSA-Gate, IRS-Gate, Benghazi...
The Obama Administration's meme has traveled an amazing distance, from "It was the video" to "What difference does it make" to "Who cares? That was so two years ago. And besides, this is just a partisan Republican witch hunt." Of course, calling it that when you refuse to participate is what makes it partisan, but it does make a nice talking point to disparage whatever the committee uncovers doesn't it?.
Perhaps the reason we're still talking about Benghazi is that the Obama Administration decided to lie about it for partisan political purposes to protect President Obama's re-election. That's what the Rhodes e-mail admits in black and white, the one the Administration tried unsuccessfully to hide and had to be pried out of them in federal court.
And because they've continued to lie about it ever since. For instance, here's something I dug out from the memory banks:
President Obama has changed his story on Benghazi several times. In an interview with MSNBC, the president claimed he'd been briefed but that 'the intelligence was unclear' and he was still trying to find out what had happened, but that his 'number one responsibility is to go after folks who did this, and we’re going to make sure that we get them.' This was on October 29th, well after he had been informed by the CIA that this was an organized and well planned attack by an al-Qaeda affiliated militia.
Yet, on October 28th, the day before that, he was speaking in Denver and had an entirely different story, saying "“The minute I found out what was happening . . . I gave the directive,” he said, “to make sure we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to do. I guarantee you everybody in the CIA and military knew the number-one priority was making sure our people are safe.”
Now, as I noticed at the time, what the president said about issuing a directive to the military and the CIA to do whatever they needed to do to rescue the Americans in Libya and make sure they were safe directly contradicted what then Secretary of Defense Leon Pannetta had to say to Congress, not to mention the testimony of General Martin Dempsey, Obama's Chairman of the JCS and General Ham, then the theater commander of AFRICOM whose responsibilities included Libya who all claim they never got any such directive. And if they had, there would be a written record of it. Bing West, former Assistant Secretary of Defense laid this out quite well:
So does it matter that someone's obviously lying here? If General Dempsey and General Ham actually got a presidential directive and then failed to carry it out, they're not only subject to courts martial but possible criminal action for lying to Congress under oath. And if President Obama is telling the truth about an order he gave and there's no written record of it, (and there would be, even if he gave a directive verbally) that's a gross violation of military procedure and again, Dempsey would at the very least be forced to resign.
And if President Obama is lying? If he didn't issue that directive? It would explain why no effort was made to save the four men who died in Benghazi, even though as I point out there were ample assets in place to make an attempt to do just that. It would mean this president simply left four people to die, because he had other priorities and no one else in the chain of command was going to contradict him.
Of course, that's just one of many lies we've been told about Benghazi, and only one of the aspects the administration doesn't want to delve into, although some people are starting to get a whiff of how bad this really smells. I revealed the true story about that a year ago, and I understand exactly why President Obama and his creatures are fighting tooth and nail to keep it hidden.
So what does it matter? It matters because four Americans died needlessly, waiting for help that never came. It matters because the American people deserve the truth. It matters because Americans who serve their country need to know that they're not just pawns in someone else's game, and that no man or woman gets left behind if we can help it. It matters because justice matters.
And most of all, it matters so that in the end, four good men didn't die in vain.
keep up the good work; I'm retired State (Foreign Service) and the whole thing stinks, from the SecState's silence during the Benghazi events and ever since. I don't think she had a stroke, frankly, I think the glasses were props. And I think she stayed out of the public view for so many weeks so there wouldn't be photo ops and video sound bites of her that link her visibly to Benghazi. They want to fudge it over by saying, man, baddest day of my life. Hillary hasn't seen her worst day yet, but let us hope we can defeat her ambition to reach the White House. She has a lot of dirt in her bag.
ReplyDelete