I'm thinking the most virulent GOP/TPers all suffer from advanced cases of ADHD ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

Benghazi conspiracy theories distract GOP from Syria
By Steve Benen - Mon Sep 9, 2013 8:30 AM EDT

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) appeared on "This Week" yesterday and made a reasonable observation about the debate over U.S. policy in Syria. "Listen, this is not the time for politics," the far-right senator argued. "This is a grave and serious moment. I would like to support our commander in chief. I would like to see our commander in chief focused on protecting U.S. national security."

Good. Fine. No problem. It's a perfectly fair sentiment. But then Cruz kept talking.


Immediately after saying this is "not the time for politics," the Texas Republican added:


Actually, yes, it is a phony scandal. The attack that took place a year ago this week has been investigated thoroughly and every Republican conspiracy theory has been discredited. And yet, Cruz is annoyed that a current, ongoing crisis in Syria is getting in the way of the debunked "scandal" that conservatives would prefer to talk about.

And it's not just Cruz. This has quickly become a problem throughout Republican politics, with GOP lawmakers unable to even consider questions about Syria because they can't shake their Benghazi obsession.

This was certainly true during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing last week on Syria, when Secretary of State John Kerry hoped to answer lawmakers' questions about Syria, but was instead peppered with more Benghazi conspiracy theories.

The Hill added this report yesterday:


This doesn't make any sense on a conceptual level -- one cannot lose credibility for failing to comport to a made-up conspiracy theory -- but this apparently doesn't matter. The usual suspects just can't help themselves.

The nation should be in the middle of a great debate on an important foreign policy question, but for too many on the right, this is apparently too much to ask.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/09/09/20402228-benghazi-conspiracy-theories-distract-gop-from-syria

Not ever missing an opportunity to show his deeply despicable mindset, Darth Cheney announced that Benghazi was the single-worst event in his lifetime, apparently "forgetting" that 09/11/01 happened on his watch ~ ~ honestly, preschoolers have more critical thinking skills than the GOP/TPers ~ Sooz

The conspiracy theory that just won't fade
By Steve Benen - Wed Sep 11, 2013 12:55 PM EDT

It is, of course, 9/11 and many political figures are turning their attention to the anniversary of a deadly terrorist attack.

No, not that one.


Gohmert and West are fringe figures who are easy to ignore, but note that House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is scheduling yet another round of hearings on Benghazi; a variety of congressional Republicans can't even engage in a debate over U.S. policy in Syria because of their preoccupation with Benghazi conspiracy theories; House Republicans continue to gather signatures -- they're up to 170 members -- for a special committee to investigate what other committees have already investigated; notable GOP lawmakers like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) exploit right-wing suspicions with foolish Benghazi op-eds; and Fox's obsession is never-ending.

This really isn't healthy. The questions have been answered; the deadly incident has been closely examined; and the allegations have been discredited. There's just no point in pretending otherwise. Even some congressional Republican staffers have begun openly mocking GOP lawmakers who can't let go of this nonsense.

But the usual suspects can't help themselves.

Looking back over the last several months, Republicans, most of whom seem to realize that this conspiracy theory is baseless, have periodically latched onto other shiny objects that come to their attention. But as they come and go, Benghazi has become the fallback "scandal" -- it's the one the right returns to when they have nothing else to do.

Politico reported in early July, "After months of fiery hearings and vows to get to the bottom of Benghazi, House Republicans are now barely making a peep when it comes to an issue they once couldn't stop talking about." And that was true at the time because GOP lawmakers had found other things to do. But notice that, when given half a chance, the party goes right back to the story.

It's obvious this simply won't go away. Ever. There are those who believe the Clintons killed Vince Foster; there are those who think the moon landing was faked; and there are those who argue there was a Benghazi cover-up they can neither identify nor explain.

It is a theory impervious to fact and evidence, and nothing will change that.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/09/11/20439882-the-conspiracy-theory-that-just-wont-fade?lite

No one can accuse the GOP/TPers of inconsistency ~ but just imagine what could be accomplished with the real problems we face if they brought this focus into reality ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating info in the original ~ Sooz

GOP can't take its eyes off Benghazi
By Steve Benen - Wed Sep 18, 2013 4:32 PM EDT

A government-shutdown deadline is 12 days away, and Congress also needs to tackle a debt-ceiling increase, the farm bill, immigration, and a series of other pending nominations and pieces of legislation. Naturally, then, House Republicans remain preoccupied with Benghazi questions that have already been answered.


Kennedy tried to explain that four State Department officials were already relieved of their senior positions, but Republicans' enduring outrage remained unaffected.

Indeed, GOP lawmakers will be able to keep their focus on Benghazi -- and presumably send out more fundraising letters about how they're "keeping the 'scandal' alive" -- because this was one of only three Benghazi hearings House Republicans have scheduled this week.

Imagine what would be possible if GOP lawmakers invested a small fraction of these energies in actual governing.

Since that's apparently not going to happen, let's also note that the House Oversight Committee has finally released the full transcripts of the testimony lawmakers heard from Ambassador Thomas Pickering (pdf) and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen (pdf).

And why is that important? I'm glad you asked.

Soon after the attack that left four Americans dead in Benghazi, Pickering and Mullen co-chaired an independent Accountability Review Board to scrutinize what transpired in great detail. When the House Oversight Committee launched a series of hearings, both men told Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) they'd be happy to answer lawmakers' questions.

That proved to be difficult. Issa claimed that they officials "refused to come before our committee," but the congressman was lying. Issa eventually said Pickering and Mullen could testify, but only in secret, behind closed doors, so the public couldn't hear their remarks.

Sure, Issa held a variety of public hearings in the hopes of generating headlines, but when it came time to hear from the two officials who oversaw an independent investigation -- officials with experience in the Reagan and Bush administrations -- the California Republican was afraid to let Americans hear from them. I'll leave it to you to speculate why.

But in time, Pickering and Mullen did appear, and after months of delays from Issa, their testimony is now available for public review. Why did the committee chairman delay the release of the transcripts for months? Probably because Pickering and Mullen reject and thoroughly discredit every wild-eyed theory Issa and his fellow Republicans continue to push in the hopes of creating a political controversy where one does not exist.

I realize this may seem like a dog-bites-man story -- "credible, independent voices disprove right-wing conspiracy theories" isn't front-page news -- but I think it's fair to say that if Pickering and Mullen had said anything to bolster the Republican agenda, Issa would have released the transcripts a long time ago, and it would have been a huge story.

The political media establishment shouldn't be in the habit of saying the only developments that are newsworthy are the ones that reaffirm preferred GOP narratives.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/09/18/20565023-gop-cant-take-its-eyes-off-benghazi?lite

They're losing votes through the sheer boredom of the voters.

This is reaching slapstick-humor levels, except that it proves the GOP/TPers never advanced beyond the mentality of toddlers ~ ~ emphasis/bolding below and "live links" to more/corroborating information are in the original ~ Sooz

Graham Promises To Block All Senate Nominations Over Benghazi
By Hayes Brown on October 28, 2013 at 9:40 am

Amid the sense of gridlock that has become the norm in the U.S. Senate, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) is now threatening to block every single nomination from the Obama administration until he gets what he wants on Benghazi — again.

On Sunday evening, CBS’ 60 Minutes aired a new report on the attack in Benghazi, Libya that took place last year, examining the nature of the attack, which analysts are now calling pre-planned. This differs greatly from the early days and weeks after the attack, when members of the administration were still attempting to find out what went wrong and what led to the deaths of four Americans, including Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

In that light, and still on the hunt for a White House cover-up, Graham was on Fox News on Monday, advocating for yet another look into the tragedy, echoing the demands of the most conspiracy-minded members of the House of Representatives:


“We need to get to the bottom of this and to my house colleagues, Darrell Issa has done great job,” Graham continued in his Fox interview, referring to the many House Oversight Committee hearings that Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) has held related to the attack. Issa himself, however, has admitted that he did not learn much in his last major round of public hearings.

In demanding that a special committee be convened in the House to take over the Benghazi investigation, Graham is aligning himself with many of the more conservative members of the House Republican caucus and against Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Rep. Frank Wolff (R-VA) has been rallying conservatives to press Boehner for a special committee for months now, aligning himself with outside groups who have attempted — and failed — to show that public opinion is on their side. Despite their past failures, Graham’s decision to join their ranks will surely help him fend off the Tea Party challenger he’s facing ahead of the 2014 midterm elections.

This is not the first time at all that Graham has threatened to take hostages in the Senate to get his way, nor even the first time his demands have related to Benghazi. Graham issued a warning about no nominations proceeding unless the Port of Charleston received the $50,000 needed to be deepened back in 2011. In Dec. 2012, Graham threatened to allow the U.S. to go over the so-called “fiscal cliff” unless the Social Security age was raised.

On Benghazi itself, Graham has had his exact demands change along with his targets. CIA Director John Brennan was threatened not to be confirmed unless Graham was able to learn precisely who changed the infamous “talking points” that now-National Security Advisor Susan Rice delivered the week after the attack. He also swore to not allow a vote on Chuck Hagel’s nomination as Secretary of Defense unless his predecessor Leon Panetta testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Both of those demands were met, showing that the CIA itself was the one who deleted references to al Qaeda from Rice’s talking points and allowing Panetta to chide the SASC’s Republicans for treating the military like a 911 service.

Graham’s threat comes just as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) prepares a new wave of Obama administration nominees to be brought before the Senate. Even before the threat to hold all of these nominees was issued, Senate Democrats have been mulling the so-called “nuclear option” of allowing for votes to proceed with a majority 51 votes, ending the threat of the filibuster on certain types of votes.

Ironically enough, Graham recently chastised his colleagues for blocking an up or down vote on the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, calling it the “wrong” thing to do.

http://thinkprogress.org/security/2013/10/28/2843591/graham-block-benghazi/

When all else fails return to past failures.

I know it's not funny, but I can't stop laughing ~ the crazies are so eager and desperate to blast Obama/Clinton that they can't keep their own lies straight ~ they deserve to be ridiculed and shunned like the plague ~ Sooz

Benghazi ‘witness’ may not have actually been there
11/01/13 03:04 PM
By Steve Benen

The Benghazi conspiracy theorists on the right seemed to be out of steam, right up until “60 Minutes” ran a report five days ago, which got conservative riled up all over again. Given what we learned about the CBS report today, it isn’t the Obama administration that owes the public a more forthcoming explanation.

The “60 Minutes” report, apparently a full year in the making, included one element that seemed entirely new. Viewers heard from a witness, who used the pseudonym Morgan Jones, who said he was there during the attack, scaled a 12-foot wall, beat an al Qaeda fighter with the butt of his rifle, and personally saw Ambassador Chris Stevens’ body.

Obviously, that’s quite a dramatic tale, and this man’s perspective was arguably the single most important new information in the “60 Minutes” segment. It matters a great deal, then, that the “witness” may not have actually been there. The Washington Post’s Karen DeYoung reports.


Well, that’s certainly not what “60 Minutes” said.

Davies has not explained the discrepancy – he’s reportedly “not well” and has been hospitalized, so he didn’t respond to DeYoung’s questions – though it’s worth noting that Jones is promoting a new book about the attack in Benghazi, which is being published by a company related to CBS and his story is part of a pending movie deal.

Under the circumstances, Media Matters’ David Brock has called on CBS to retract its “60 Minutes” story.

If recent history is any guide, this will not affect Benghazi conspiracy theorists in the slightest.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/benghazi-witness-may-not-have-been-there

My first reaction on reading this was that it's refreshing for the media to admit an error ~ but the intertwisting relationships behind that error, and the consequences of that error, more than overshadow that initial reaction ~ ~ Sooz

CBS backs off unraveling Benghazi tale
11/08/13 09:35 AM
By Steve Benen


It’s been nearly two weeks since CBS’s “60 Minutes” aired a report that caused considerable excitement from Benghazi conspiracy theorists. Though much of the report, a full year in the making, covered familiar ground, the segment also highlighted an alleged witness to the attack, who said he scaled a 12-foot wall, beat an al Qaeda fighter with the butt of his rifle, and personally saw Ambassador Chris Stevens’ body.

The man’s name is Dylan Davies – he used a pseudonym on “60 Minutes” for no apparent reason – and he has a book coming out about his Benghazi experience, published by a CBS-owned company that releases far-right books from conservative personalities.

Almost immediately, Davies’ story started to unravel – he’d previously told his employers he was nowhere near the U.S. consulate during the attack. Making matters worse, Davies told the FBI the opposite of what he’d told “60 Minutes.” By earlier this week, the defense was that Davies lied before, but the public should neverthless believe his dramatic tale that makes him look like a hero.

The CBS reporters involved with the story continued to defend it anyway, brushing off broad criticism as politically motivated, and insisting that their segment was accurate. On last week’s edition of “60 Minutes,” the show featured feedback from viewers who cheered the segment, but made no mention of the burgeoning controversy.

That posture collapsed last night. The CBS program said about 12 hours ago that it had “learned of new information that undercuts the account” from their alleged witness. Soon after, “60 Minutes” pulled the segment from its website.

And this morning, CBS’s Lara Logan appeared on air to say, “We will apologize to our viewers and we will correct the record on our broadcast on Sunday night…. The truth is that we made a mistake.”

It’s worth noting that the “60 Minutes” error was consequential: its report add fuel to conspiracy theorists’ fire for no reason, and led Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) to start blocking all administrative nominees awaiting Senate confirmation votes.

If recent history is any guide, far-right activists and lawmakers will be unfazed by the unraveling of the CBS report, and will continue to argue that their debunked, wild-eyed allegations are true.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/cbs-backs-unraveling-benghazi-tale

More information and much more background that combine to make this a very big and very ugly story ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

Friday, Nov 8, 2013 10:12 AM CST
CBS’ erroneous Benghazi debacle explodes
60 Minutes finally looking into new information undercutting Benghazi "exclusive"; Story removed from CBS News site.
Brad Friedman

This post originally appeared on The Brad Blog.

A full week after serious doubts were raised concerning 60 Minutes’ report on a supposed eye-witness to the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, CBS has finally issued a terse two paragraph statement to announce they are “currently looking into” whether they were “misled” by their star witness.

Here’s the full statement:


The statement coincides with new information that appears to further undercut the 60 Minutes report…

As initially reported by Karen DeYoung at the Washington Post, “Morgan Jones” is actually the pseudonym of Dylan Davies, a man who worked for the Wales-based security firm, Blue Mountain. Davies was reportedly a British supervisor of security guards protecting the U.S. mission during the attack last year. In an October 27 report this year, said by 60 Minutes to have been a full year in the making, he told CBS reporter Lara Logan that on the night of the attack he scaled the 12-foot wall of the compound, confronted an attacker “with the butt end of a rifle” and later saw U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens dead in the hospital.

That account, however, as DeYoung first reported, is at complete odds with an incident report filed by Davies with Blue Mountain on the day after the attack, when he said he had been at his seaside villa throughout the siege that resulted in the deaths of four U.S. personnel, including the Ambassador, whose charred body, Davies allegedly told his employer, he had seen in a photograph sent to him by a colleague.

CBS has, until now, refused to acknowledge the conflicting stories, saying only that they “strongly” stand by their reporting. They admitted only — just earlier this week — that they made a mistake by not disclosing that Davies’ book was being published by a CBS subsidiary. Other than that, they stood by their story, even after Davies told The Daily Beast that he had lied to his employer initially in that next-day incident report.

According to The Daily Beast interview, however, Davies said the account on 60 Minutes and in his book was the same one he supplied “to the FBI and various other U.S. agencies in the wake of the attack”.

Now, that part of the story also seems to be collapsing, and that is likely why 60 Minutes is finally beginning to question its own reporting.

In a report filed by the New York Times this evening, Bill Carter and Michael S. Schmidt are reporting that Davies “told the F.B.I. he did not go [to the diplomatic mission] the night terrorists attacked it on Sept. 11, 2012″…


Until Thursday night, CBS and reporter Logan had all vigorously defended both their report and Davies, claiming they were “proud of the reporting that went into the story.”

Davies had also been undercut by no less than Fox “News”, which has been trumpeting some form of a “scandal” at Benghazi for more than a year. Their reporter, Adam Housley, had said, the day after 60 Minutes‘ report, that he stopped speaking to Davies over the past year, “when he asked for money.”

We initially covered the questions about the 60 Minutes report last week, after Media Matters for America’s David Brock, author of the book, The Benghazi Hoax, penned a letter to CBS demanding a retraction of the story and a full investigation into what appeared to be a fabricated story by Davies.

Brock cited CBS’ response to questions about 60 Minutes‘ 2004 story on questions about George W. Bush’s Air National Guard service (which turned out to be true, though the provenance of one of the documents used in the report was never able to be verified as authentic.) Following that report by Dan Rather, CBS quickly launched a full investigation into the matter. “Similar standards must be applied in this case,” Brock said in his letter last week to CBS News chairman Jeff Fager and its president David Rhodes.

Last Sunday, the show aired letters praising its Benghazi report, but they failed to note any of the controversies that had arisen in its wake.

On the KPFK/Pacifica Radio BradCast this week we interviewed Media Matters’ Eric Boehlert who described the mess as a “slow motion train wreck”. He struggled to explain the difference between the quick action taken by CBS and 60 Minutes after the Bush/Rather report, versus the complete silence they had offered in regard to their star witness’ conflicting stories in the two weeks following their Benghazi report.

The Bush/Rather story “absolutely exploded,” he said, noting that it was front page news at both the New York Times and Washington Post two days after it initially aired and that “CBS was putting out a statement almost every day for the first five days.” The CBS Evening News, he said, was addressing it themselves night after night.

“It was full-on crisis management and eventually, about ten days later, CBS threw in the towel, slash, threw Dan Rather under the bus. And the political pressure, not only from the Rightwing media, but from the Bush campaign, the entire Republican establishment was crushing CBS at the time,” he explained.

Four CBS producers and Dan Rather all eventually lost their jobs after the investigation.

“This has been a much different timetable,” Boehlert observed, “primarily because it’s liberals who are upset. It’s primarily because it’s Democrats who are calling out CBS News. So what does the mainstream media do when they’re under attack from the Left? They just ignore it.”

Perhaps. But it appears that both CBS and the bulk of the mainstream media will have trouble ignoring the apparent failures of the story at this point. As of Thursday night, the main page for the Benghazi story at the CBS News website appeared to have been removed without explanation, offering only a “page cannot be found” error to visitors.

Investigative journalist and broadcaster Brad Friedman is the creator and publisher of The BRAD Blog. He has contributed to Mother Jones, The Guardian, Truthout, Huffington Post, The Trial Lawyer magazine and Editor & Publisher.

http://www.salon.com/2013/11/08/cbs_erroneous_benghazi_debacle_explodes/

I have not seen any media review that believes CBS/Lara Logan did an even fair-to-middling job with this "apology" ~ and there are far too many questions left unanswered for me to believe CBS spent a year on this "investigation" ~ ~ Sooz

November 11, 2013 10:13 AM
60 Minutes, 90 Seconds
By Ed Kilgore

The 90-second “apology” aired on 60 Minutes last night for the shabby reporting and conflicts of interest associated with Lara Logan’s Benghazi! report two weeks ago was, quite literally, the least CBS and its beleaguered reporter could do. Here’s the story , via the New York Times’ Stelter and Carter:


HuffPost’s Jack Mirkinson summarized the reaction of media critics as notably unimpressed:


The lack of investigative zeal exhibited by this showcase of investigative journalism—before, during and after the episode aired—is interesting. You almost wonder if the folk at CBS aren’t smirking behind their hands that they’ve finally managed to get the ancient “liberal bias” monkey off their backs in one fell swoop.

Unfortunately, a messed-up report that raises more questions than it answers provides still more cannon-fodder for congressional Republicans, particularly Sen. Lindsey Graham, who seems about ten minutes away from threatening a fresh government shutdown if he doesn’t get everyone’s attention when he regales South Carolina conservatives with his latest “investigations” of Benghazi!

As WaPo’s Emily Heil notes:


Of course not. Graham’s exploitation of the fool’s gold of Benghazi! will never end until he has won renomination in 2014 or is finally dragged out the Senate kicking and screaming. But Logan and 60 Minutes have, I am sure, earned his undying gratitude for making the subject topical again.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2013_11/60_minutes_90_seconds047740.php

This entire Benghazi thing is like masturbating to get pregnant.

Until this fiasco [including CBS honchos' behavior once the truth went public], I've always viewed Lara Logan as well-qualified and fearless ~ we may never know what really happened or why it happened, but this was just an all-around shoddy reporting effort ~ Sooz

Lara Logan and ’60 Minutes’ producer put on leave after discredited Benghazi report
By David Edwards
Tuesday, November 26, 2013 14:41 EST

CBS News confirmed on Monday that correspondent Lara Logan and producer Max McClellan had been effectively suspended from 60 Minutes after a discredited report on Benghazi that the network was later forced to retract.

“I have asked Lara Logan, who has distinguished herself and has put herself in harm’s way many times in the course of covering stories for us, to take a leave of absence, which she has agreed to do,” CBS News Chairman wrote in an internal memo obtained by The Huffington Post. “I have asked the same of producer Max McClellan, who also has a distinguished career at CBS News.”

An internal CBS review of the Oct. 27 60 Minutes report also found that “Lara Logan and her producing team were looking for a different angle to the story of the Benghazi attack. They believed they found it in the story of Dylan Davies, written under the pseudonym, ‘Morgan Jones’.”

Logan was later forced to apologize and issue a partial retraction after reports showed that her source, security contractor Davies, was not at the U.S. mission in Benghazi during the Sept. 11, 2012 terrorist attack as he had claimed.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/11/26/lara-logan-and-60-minutes-producer-put-on-leave-after-discredited-benghazi-report/

And, of course, this Davies guy gets to walk away from it... with full pockets, no doubt.

So who's lieing?

http://news.yahoo.com/exclusive--why-dy ... 02775.html

Maybe/maybe not, oskar ~ I know that printing/publication of the book he wrote was stopped immediately ~ I'm thinking that book is where he stood to gain some big $$$ ~ he might well need to change his name for real to ever work again ~ wait ~ silly me ~ some red/white/blue far right-winger is likely to see him as a hero ~

Sooz

i don't think much is @ stake here. it is probably Davies that is lying. if you think otherwise, explain why.

We may never know, oskar ~ it seems like a "convenient" excuse for someone who was just publicly "outed" as a liar ~

Sooz

Are governments/government agencies any more credible than Davies is?

qualitative assessment: no.

Does that mean I should scrape my "Benghazi - The Smoking Gun/ Impeach Obama Now!" sticker off my bumper or should I wait until Issa is out of office?

Since when have incontrovertible facts made a difference with the GOP/TPers? ~ answer: NEVER ~ their hatred is too hot and runs too deep ~ ~ Sooz

Another conspiracy theory unravels into nothing
12/30/13 08:00 AM—Updated 12/30/13 10:24 AM
By Steve Benen

The New York Times published a six-part, multi-media report over the weekend on last year’s attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, and it’s arguably the most comprehensive examination of what transpired that’s been published by a major news organization to date. It’s well worth your time, though this is the excerpt that’s understandably generated the most attention:


This is not to say the article paints the administration in a positive light; it doesn’t. On the contrary, reading the report on the deadly tragedy, it’s clear U.S. officials made poor security decisions, trusted the wrong people, and were broadly ill-informed about the nature of the threats around them.

But when it comes to the political salience, the exhaustive New York Times reporting also makes clear that conservative conspiracy theories, which have long dominated Republican thought, simply have no basis in reality.

For the White House’s far-right critics, for whom the notion of a Benghazi “cover up” is practically a foregone conclusion, the exact details of the allegations can get rather convoluted. That said, the basic gist of the argument is that al Qaeda, on the anniversary of 9/11, led the attack that left four Americans dead. The White House knew this, the conspiracy theory goes, but chose to lie and hide the truth. Why? According to the unhinged, President Obama was in the middle of his re-election campaign, during which he boasted about his counter-terrorism successes. To acknowledge that al Qaeda killed four Americans in Libya would, according to the theory, undermine the narrative, making a cover up necessary.

The problem with the allegations, of course, is that facts keep getting in the way, and the NYT report obliterates the conspiracy altogether. Republicans insist al Qaeda led the attack, but it didn’t. Republicans insist the attack had nothing to do with the right-wing YouTube video, but it did. Republicans insist the violence was carefully planned, but it wasn’t. Republicans insist the White House deliberately misled the public, but it didn’t.

Indeed, looking back, the initial remarks Susan Rice made in the immediate aftermath of the attack look pretty accurate a year and a half later.

I’m reasonably confident Rice would be gracious and accept apologies from the Republicans who smeared her, but first they’ll have to acknowledge how painfully wrong they were.

By any fair estimation, the Benghazi conspiracy theories unraveled a long time ago, but this latest report serves as a powerful coda. Republicans will be reluctant to accept this, but the right’s obsession is no more. GOP policymakers and media invested heavily in their fevered dream – even using our money for a series of baseless investigations – but the political scandal was a mirage.

It’s over. Move on.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/conspiracy-theory-unravels-nothing

Not just yet, Jab ~ still too many salivating Issa-wannabes in the wings ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating info in the original ~ Sooz

One misguided theory deserves another
12/30/13 02:30 PM—Updated 12/30/13 04:41 PM
By Steve Benen

Given how much Republicans have invested in Benghazi conspiracy theories, it’s hardly surprising to see some pushback against the New York Times’ comprehensive report over the weekend. Indeed, the coverage leaves GOP arguments completely discredited, making criticism of the report inevitable.

But GOP lawmakers will have to do better than this.

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, on Monday accused the New York Times of using its investigation into the Benghazi attack as a way to boost a potential 2016 run for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“Of course Secretary Clinton was in charge at the time, and you know there are just now a lot of rumors going and pushing about her running for president in 2016,” he said on Fox News, as recorded by the Hill. “So I think they are already laying the groundwork.”

Westmoreland, who disputed the report, said that the Times could only have written such a piece due to political motivations.

When a conspiracy theory is debunked, its proponents have a few options to consider. They can look for additional evidence to bolster their argument; they can reevaluate their theory in light of the new information; they can even accept reality and move on to something else.

But Westmoreland has adopted a far sillier posture: as one conspiracy theory is discredited, his idea is to raise the specter of an even grander conspiracy theory.

Yes, in the eyes of the Georgia congressman, the New York Times’ comprehensive report was published, not to provide the public with accurate information, but as part of an elaborate scheme to help advance Hillary Clinton’s national ambitions.

“We are not quite as used to this kind of political machine as the president and the Clinton’s have, and so I think they are just laying the groundwork and trying to absolve [Clinton] from the lack of security that was sent over there, the number of requests for security that was turned down,” Westmoreland said.

It’s not entirely clear who the Republican was referring to with “they.” It could refer to Clinton and her allies, the New York Times, or both. (As conspiracy theories get more elaborate, keeping track of details like these necessarily gets more complicated.)

It’s worth noting, of course, that Westmoreland – a sitting member of the House Intelligence Committee – has no evidence to substantiate any of this. He simply decided to go on national television and accuse one of the world’s preeminent news organizations of lying to the public as part of a broader scheme to influence a presidential election three years in advance.

What’s more, it’s not clear that Westmoreland actually read the Times piece he disapproves of. Indeed, the article isn’t exactly a gift to Hillary Clinton – sure, it leaves Republican arguments looking silly, but as we discussed this morning, it also paints an unflattering picture of State Department decision-making in the period leading up to the deadly 2012 attack.

If the newspaper were engaged in a deliberate effort to “absolve” the former Secretary of State, why would the NYT’s report cast Clinton’s State Department in a negative light? It wouldn’t.

Maybe the right should take a moment to reevaluate. When Republicans feel the need to embrace conspiracy theories as part of a defense of a conspiracy theory, it’s just not healthy. When this is the preferred course for members of the House Intelligence Committee, it’s rather alarming.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/one-misguided-theory-deserves-another

Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA), a member of the House Intelligence Committee

Candidate for oxymoron of the year?

oskar, he's got some stiff competition ~ don't forget Michele Bachmann sits on the same committee ~

Sooz

oskar, he's got some stiff competition

I suppose it's possible but I don't find Bachmann sexy at all.