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| LINDSEY GRAHAM, BENGHAZI YOU SAY? |
On Monday we wrote about Lindsey Graham wanting to hold presidential nominees hostage - until he vetted the Benghazi issue just one more time. And now the rest of the story:
Sen. Lindsey Graham on Wednesday made clear that President Obama’s nominees to become the Chair of the Federal Reserve and Secretary of Homeland Security would be his latest hostages in his ongoing quest to unearth the “truth” about Benghazi.
Since the attack last year that ended in the death of four American citizens in Benghazi, Libya, Graham has been a stalwart crusader on the hunt to expose the supposed White House cover-up that he knows exists. On Monday, he indicated that a new push would be coming, warning on Fox News, “I’m going to block every appointment in the United States Senate until the survivors are being made available to the Congress.”
Graham followed through on Wednesday, announcing at a news conference that he would be placing a hold on Janet Yellen’s nomination to become the new Federal Reserve Chair and Jeh Johnson’s to replace Janet Napolitano at DHS. “That is the only leverage we have,” he told the assembled reporters. Yellen’s nomination is also being threatened by Sen. Rand Paul over different demands.
“Before you can close the books on Benghazi, I think Congress needs to look over the administration’s shoulder,” Graham told CNN on Thursday, “it’s called oversight.” Graham insisted that he’s “not asking for too much” in holding up the nominations. “Is it really too much for me to want to talk to the people who were in Benghazi independent of the administration?” he asked rhetorically, refusing to answer critiques asking if his Tea Party challengers had anything to do with the singular focus on the issue.
The facts are: As Media Matters points out, the crux of Graham’s demands have already been met. Two “key witnesses in last year’s terrorist attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya, were summoned to Capitol Hill this month and grilled for hours in separate legal depositions,” the Los Angeles Times reported just days ago. The Department of Justice, however, has urged House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa to keep the interviews under wraps to prevent them from corrupting ongoing prosecution efforts.
This is not a new modus operandi for Graham, as he has opted to use these same tactic in the past, and like most hostage taking scenarios, the results have not always come out in Dear Lindsey's favor. When he got his wish to have the names revealed of who deleted references to al Qaeda from then-U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice’s talking points in the days after the attack, the released emails showed clearly that the CIA itself was the one who did so, not the White House, thus debunking the right-wing myth that the changes were political. Likewise, when Graham demanded that then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Panetta took the opportunity to chide the SASC’s Republicans for treating the military like a 911 service and debunk many of the rumors about available military assistance at the time of the attack.
Remember when readers, remember when 13 Benghazi's occurred on George W. Bush's watch without a peep from Lindsey Graham or the GOP? For the record, here are Bush's 13 Benghazi's:
January 22, 2002. Calcutta, India. Gunmen associated with Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami attack the U.S. Consulate. Five people are killed.
June 14, 2002. Karachi, Pakistan. Suicide bomber connected with al Qaeda attacks the U.S. Consulate, killing 12 and injuring 51.
October 12, 2002. Denpasar, Indonesia. U.S. diplomatic offices bombed as part of a string of "Bali Bombings." No fatalities.
February 28, 2003. Islamabad, Pakistan. Several gunmen fire upon the U.S. Embassy. Two people are killed.
May 12, 2003. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Armed al Qaeda terrorists storm the diplomatic compound, killing 36 people including nine Americans. The assailants committed suicide by detonating a truck bomb.
July 30, 2004. Tashkent, Uzbekistan. A suicide bomber from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan attacks the U.S. Embassy, killing two people.
December 6, 2004. Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Al Qaeda terrorists storm the U.S. Consulate and occupy the perimeter wall. Nine people are killed.
March 2, 2006. Karachi, Pakistan again. Suicide bomber attacks the U.S. Consulate killing four people, including U.S. diplomat David Foy who was directly targeted by the attackers. (I wonder if Lindsey Graham or Fox News would even recognize the name "David Foy." This is the third Karachi terrorist attack in four years on what's considered American soil.)
September 12, 2006. Damascus, Syria. Four armed gunmen shouting "Allahu akbar" storm the U.S. Embassy using grenades, automatic weapons, a car bomb and a truck bomb. Four people are killed, 13 are wounded.
January 12, 2007. Athens, Greece. Members of a Greek terrorist group called the Revolutionary Struggle fire a rocket-propelled grenade at the U.S. Embassy. No fatalities.
March 18, 2008. Sana'a, Yemen. Members of the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic Jihad of Yemen fire a mortar at the U.S. Embassy. The shot misses the embassy, but hits nearby school killing two.
July 9, 2008. Istanbul, Turkey. Four armed terrorists attack the U.S. Consulate. Six people are killed.
September 17, 2008. Sana'a, Yemen. Terrorists dressed as military officials attack the U.S. Embassy with an arsenal of weapons including RPGs and detonate two car bombs. Sixteen people are killed, including an American student and her husband (they had been married for three weeks when the attack occurred). This is the second attack on this embassy in seven months.
Even if Lindsey and his band of banshees never arrive at their goal, they have in their possession a cudgel formed of horseshit - a means of flogging the dead horse yet again.
Very seldom do these teahadists discuss the truth or history- not to mention dubiously sourced chunks of "truth" proffered by radio and cable news conspiracy theorists who, if nothing else, are masters at telling angry tea baggers precisely what they want to hear: that this Muslim Koran thumping president is the main source of failure for the Benghazi incident. And so they'll keep repeating "Benghazi-Gate, Benghazi-Gate, Benghazi-Gate!" without any regard for history or reality. All to well we have come to know nothing else from the American Taliban - which is to forget all history prior to 2009. When in doubt, at all costs, invoke "Bushensia"!
NFTOS
Editor-In-Chief
Roger West
