I think what gets me about Benghazi!™ is the chutzpah of people who cheered on the invasion of Iraq rending their garments over the deaths of 4 Americans in Libya. It’s so morally obtuse that you have to assume they are trying in some fashion to gain absolution for their bloodthirsty insistence on taking revenge against a nation that didn’t attack America.
Lord knows Digby’s far smarter than me about such things, and her point is certainly an interesting one. Though it assumes the morally bankrupt — not “obtuse”, bankrupt — people in question have any sense of self-awareness whatsoever.
To date, I’ve seen no evidence of that.
UPDATE: Case in point…
So, how did the cable news networks cover it?
…”The White House releases a dire report on climate change,” Laura Ingraham announced as guest-host of the O’Reilly Factor, “Is it trying to distract its critics from Benghazi and other problems?” She did not clarify during the course of the segment that a 1990 Congressional mandate required that the assessment be released every four years.
Fox News coverage did not discuss the contents of the report, focusing instead on disputing the reality of climate change, disputing the possibility of addressing it, and labeling the assessment a distraction or gift to Obama’s supporters intended to help Democrats in November’s midterm elections.
UPDATE 2: Okay. Just one more case in point. Via Tommy Christopher…
I’m with you. My guess is that it has nothing to do with absolution. These people are living some kind of strange pathology where they have given up critical thinking. They’re locked into their own head loops for their own psycho-emotional reasons and until something alters their worldview flow, no different ideas need apply, fuck you very much.
It feels like the same sort of motivation behind the endless attacks against Bill Clinton, which, if memory serves, started almost immediately upon his taking office. Same with Obama. It seems like some sort of extremely fear-driven, constantly projecting groupthink that is threatened beyond belief when someone other than their guy is in office.
I dunno. I think motive is extremely important in many, many cases in the many, many things we all do. It’s also often extremely difficult to ascertain.
The GOP is into magical thinking. They have their own reality where what they say and think is the truth. Like all compulsive liars they tell untruths so often they start believing it themselves or become unsure what is the truth (except deep down they know that whatever is the truth it is not what they are saying), and if they keep telling us the false idea someone will eventually (magically) believe it.
All I know is if the GO(t)P spent JUST HALF the time and energy (too much to ask for?) that they have on 4 Dead Americans in Benghazi from a few years ago, on us hundreds of millions of living Americans here in the US right NOW, we MIGHT have a chance in heck.
Utterly obscene.
What did they not get the first 8 investigations?
Meet the new inve$tigation, same as the old inve$tigation.
Was Benghazi a McCain, Graham, sy op intended to discredit the Obama administration? They have made it known that they wanted to supply arms to the terrorist, so who’s to say they didn’t.
The GOP voted to spend less money on embassy security. How are they not as complicit as anyone concerning Benghazi?
This Benghazi charade is rotten to the core. If only we had a goddamn mainstream media who knew how to do their jobs and brought up all the points that are so completely fucked up in this cynical GOP ploy. Here’s some more info from Juan Cole along those lines-
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/05/09-1
And how much has the reign-in-government-spending-party spent on this fucking goose chase?
Here is my take on this, FWIW. It’s “Spiraling out of control” because…
Right after Benghazi, Republicans were simply doing their “attack President Obama for everything wrong” schtick. That’s how it started.[1]
As time went on, Republicans found that they would get a good response from their base and their colleagues, most every time Benghazi was brought up. So anytime they wanted to “get a good response” they just had to say, “Benghazi”.
And in saying “Benghazi” if they added just a little bit more rhetoric, like: “Hero,” “Dead hero,” “Sodomized,” Sodomized dead hero,”[2] etc. they would get an even greater response.
So, like a bunch of unsupervised children in a room trying to “Out gross each other” to remain the center of attention they keep on saying grosser and grosser things…
That is where they are now, each one trying to “One up” the others in how far they can go. (“Yeah, you tell’em!” “That’s a good one!” “Even better!” …)
Hopefully it is a death spiral.
Notes
1. Republicans morbidly like bad things happening just so they can blame Obama/Democrats.
2. Like that “subliminal” guy on SNL.
How does a cult keep their members believing what they tell them. We are the truth tellers and everyone else is wrong. That is FOX news. Until the other media start to really point out every time Fox misinforms their viewers there is not going to be a change. I hear people everyday tell me they get the truth from Fox and you can”t tell them different. I watch C-Span and they will have a segment and then you watch it on FOX and they will completely rearrange what the person said so it changes the context of it. FOX is dividing our country and their cult will not change. Sad
Unfortunately the comments here reflect a childish view of reality that says to ask questions concerning how the circumstances directly related to Stevens knowledge and distaste for the gun running to rebels that led to the tragic deaths in Benghazi is somehow driven by whose side you are on. I forgot how such things could never happen though. Forgive me, or maybe look into it yourself, unless, of course, you are a Democrat, then you mustn’t.
I think both you and Digby are overthinking this. The Republicans have found an issue that plays into their ages-long fiction that Democrats are weak on defense, and in which their accusations are so vague that they are in the end un-rebuttable. They know that if they keep repeating them ad nauseum, many people will conclude that where there is this much smoke, there must be at least a little fire. And that’s that. They are long past caring about having been wrong in the past.
Mark said @ 8:
Um…not sure what is “childish” here at all. But to your central point, where is you evidence (or the suggestion of evidence) to support the claims that a) Stevens had knowledge of or distaste for “gun running” and b) that it was “directly related to” (or even indirectly related to) his death?
Who ever said “such things” couldn’t happen? Of course they could. Though without evidence to support such allegations, making them and criticizing people for not caring about them is, um, kind of a childish view of reality.
Wow. Speaking of childish. If crimes were committed here, above and beyond the tragic events revealed by the State Dept’s investigation and the 4 different, years long Congressional investigations led by Republicans, and the many different media investigations — all of which have turned up nothing more than we pretty much knew in the first week or two, I’d be delighted to see more investigation.
Such that there appears to be no there there, I think we’d all much rather have investigations (and prosecutions) of known law breakers, like Bush and Cheney, who have gotten off scot-free for the deaths of thousands of Americans, more than a million Iraqis and war crime torture of who knows how many. But you, it seems, are interested in partisan politics, rather than actual accountability.
Please prove me wrong and call for accountable for the above. Oh, and for these as well…