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Health & Fitness

Benghazigate-gate

Here we are, almost 17 months out from the September Eleventh attacks on the United States consular office and CIA compound in Benghazi, Libya, last year.  Republicans in Congress are still crying foul, but they have yet to produce an indictment.

Sure, they have their denunciations, but where are all their press conferences to announce the progress they've made in getting to the bottom of the affair?  We hear fulmination after fulmination, but we don't hear about progress.  It really seems like the Republicans are going nowhere.

"There's a cover-up.  The information is classified."

Republicans in Congress control one of its chambers, the House of Representatives, and they have the power of subpoena.  They can get any information they want, including information classified "Top Secret."  The chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican.  The majority of committee members are Republican.  If there was anything our government knew that it didn't tell the American public, Republicans in Congress could get it.

And they've tried, but they've gotten nothing.  They've gotten nothing because there's nothing to get, and if they had found something then we'd know about it because they'd be crowing it from the rooftops.  National security intelligence isn't classified Top Secret to protect politicians.  State Department and CIA officials don't put their professional careers on the line to protect or attack political parties when Congress and White House administrations are susceptible to changes in partisan hands.  That could too easily come back to haunt them.  Regard the career of George Tenet.

So here we are, seventeen months later and still nothing - except more recent evidence from a New York Times investigation that Benghazi was a local event unconnected to al-Qaeda and stimulated by a flareup of anti-Americanism caused by anger over "The Innocence of Muslims," an offensive anti-Islamic video made in the United States.  So it turns out that, yes, a YouTube video was influential in prompting the attack after all.

Republicans are very bitter that they lost the election of 2012.  They're angry because they're so sure that they're right and the Democrats are wrong that any situation in which the party loses to Democrats is an injustice even if it's the outcome of a fair election where the majority has decided against them.

But they had their chance.  They selected a candidate, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, a man widely distrusted by a large swath of Republicans, who had a number of political problems of his own.  He was a person with conflicting narratives for just about every situation.  First he was for universal healthcare, then he was against it.  His campaign slogan was "Believe in America" but he offshored chunks of his wealth in Swiss and Cayman Island banks.  He was a three-piece suitor who wore blue jeans to woo the regular folks.

So a huge part of the Republican Party knew Romney was a phony but they had to get behind him anyway.  He wasn't exactly beloved, but Republicans still thought they could win because "Obama is just so awful!"  So convinced were they of Obama's awfulness that they disbelieved all the polling to show they hadn't made their case.  It was skewed polling reflecting the pollsters' desired outcome, they were sure, so they invented their own metrics to discover the outcome they wanted, the inaccuracy of which amazed them when it was all done and Romney lost.  Even Romney was surprised.

But his campaign had been a shambling disaster from the beginning.  His personal ineptitude had been on display since the earliest days of the primaries with awful comments that showed how out of touch he was with mainstream America.  My favorite out-of-touch illustration is the theme of the party's nomination convention: "You didn't build that."

Taken out of context from some of President Obama's commentary, it was the convention's kickoff theme.  The president was talking about national infrastructure and how entrepreneurs benefited from work the government did.  The president, talking about the infrastructure, said "You didn't build that."  Republicans deliberately misinterpreted his statement as referring to private businesses instead of public infrastructure.

Here was the entire party convinced that it was something that would get ordinary Americans worked up against the president.  Never mind that they took his comment out of context.  Let's say that their interpretation was right.

We live in a democracy.  It's not a pure democracy, but it's still a democracy.  Outcomes of elections where the results conflict with majority rule are the exception.

So what percentage of voters are business owners and entrepreneurs?  Are they 10%?   I don't think they're more than 15%.  I once found a number online that said they're 13%.  Whatever it actually is, please bear with me.  You know that in essence I'm right: The major property interests in this country are a minority of voters, and they're a small minority, not a large one.  And, of those people who own businesses, how many of them truly started from scratch?  They're a minority of a minority.  Most business owners inherited their advantages if they didn't inherit the business itself.  And, yet still, plenty of business owners are Democrats.

So here's the entire Republican Party screaming about a comment taken out of context, "You didn't build that," and expecting the majority to get all worked up about an imagined slight to a minority of people who need no special sympathy.  They've got money.  They can take care of themselves.  They can absorb such a slight with aplomb while they sip their cocktails - unless they're Republicans.  Then, of course, it's "This means war!"  Right.  Like they weren't already worked up.

So the Republicans made a whole series of missteps in the 2012 primaries.  They had their ugly debates.  Romney said a lot of stupid things.  The GOP convention was a flop.  Clint Eastwood talked to a chair.

Then a couple of weeks later came "The Innocence of Muslims."  That was their big chance!  When protests in Cairo against the video turned to Molotov-cocktail throwing and the embassy condemned the video, the Romney campaign jumped on it as the situation continued to unfold region-wide.  Mitt Romney accused the president of sympathizing with America's enemies.  It was a ridiculous thing to say, and he was roundly criticized for exploiting a sensitive foreign policy situation in the heat of the moment.  The attack on Benghazi was happening almost at the very same time as Governor Romney was speaking.

But Romney had to persist.  President Obama had a big public-opinion advantage on him with foreign policy experience, and he had to knock it down, someway, somehow.  Benghazi was his last chance.  The election was weeks away.  If he could use it to prove that the president's foreign policy advantage was hype, then he could narrow the distance by a good bit.  Or so he thought, and so he tried.  it was a last-ditch effort and he failed.

Republicans had their chance and they lost.  They refuse to accept responsibility for their own poor performance.  They picked a candidate they didn't much like.  They all said a lot of stupid things.  And, yes, they lied.

So what?  Right?

Let's take it from the Republican point of view: They had to lie in the election because the president is a liar, and the president is a liar because they're lying about him.  He exaggerates his strengths.  They exaggerate theirs.  He exaggerates their flaws; they exaggerate his.  It's a vicious circle that no one can stop.  What Republicans are really upset about is that he's a better liar than they.

This is not to concede that the president is a liar.  It's to lampoon their own point of view.  They know Romney lied about Romneycare.  Before it became Obamacare, he was all for it, then the Democrats took it national and he was all against it.  Baloney.  But if Obama lies (again, their point of view), then it's the crime of the century.

This is not to say that Obama lied about Benghazi.  What the New York Times has discovered is that initial assumptions were right.  There are some caveats, but the skeleton of the story stands.  No one can prove that any inaccurate statements were deliberately false rather than initial confusion, and the NYT's story shows that any initial inaccuracies were not that far off.

Benghazigate is a phony scandal.  There is no cover up.  If there was then we'd know about it because Republicans in Congress have the power of subpoena.  Seventeen months later and they ain't got diddly because there ain't diddly to get.

And that's the real scandal.  The American public has been lied to about Benghazi, and it's the Republicans who are doing the lying.  It's a hoax.  It's "Benghazigate-gate" - or it should be.  It's against the law to use the powers and duties of official public office to defraud the United States.  There should be an investigation.


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