YOUR AD HERE »

Vail Daily column: Benghazi debunked as baloney

Don Rogers
My View
Don Rogers
Laura Mahaffy/lmahaffy@theunion.com | The Union

Oh, that Benghazi thing?

Never mind.

All that posturing. All that hot air. All that dark accusation. All that conspiracy this, impeachment that. All that time.



Well, quietly as could be, the House Intelligence Committee issued a report last week.

All that stuff about intelligence failures? Missed opportunity for a military rescue? Delay in CIA rescue response? CIA covertly shipping arms? The CIA ordered to “stand down”?

Support Local Journalism



Susan Rice a liar, liar? Hillary and Obama deliberately downplaying al-Qaida’s role? And so on?

All untrue, according to the Intelligence Committee, mirroring the same findings by the State Department and other congressional committees.

This won’t silence the second-hand armchair experts, of course. Their song, like the debunked one about birth certificates or lack thereof, will remain the same. Just another slice of baloney for the Truthers to bite on.

There’s still an eighth investigation to finish, this one by the House Select Committee. From a Republican standpoint, I guess hope yet flickers they can find something combing through the same detritus.

I’m proud of the committee, dominated like the House by Republicans. You know they’d like nothing better for their own political purposes than to find scandal, anything really, that they can use against Hillary Clinton in the next presidential race, assuming she runs.

Instead their two-year investigation found that the “CIA and military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.” Their report also found no wrongdoing by President Obama or his appointees.

“We spend thousands of hours asking questions, poring over documents, reviewing intelligence assessments, reading cables and emails, and held a total of 20 committee events and hearings,” the Republican chairman of the committee, Mike Rogers, and the ranking Democrat, Dutch Ruppersberger, said in a joint statement.

In a disappointed Sen. Lindsey Graham’s words, that qualifies as being “full of crap.”

I’m cynical enough that I expected a kangaroo court, another clown show picking at any scrap that might be turned into a talking point making thrillingly suspicious suggestions if nothing real could be found.

Instead, this. I have to rethink my own dark thoughts about whatever party is in charge of the House or Senate.

It’s the clearest statement of innocence I’ve heard from a political body whose reins are held by rank partisans who seemingly would stop at nothing to slime those other dirty dogs. What crap! They weren’t rank enough for Sen. Graham.

I took for granted that Benghazi nonsense in these hallowed halls would live on and on regardless of facts and evidence. That’s the way this goes, after all.

Well, the armchair boys won’t let it go. How could they? How do you admit that everything you thought you knew simply wasn’t true and you’ve let Fox News hoodwink you, in part from your desire to see politicians you already didn’t like laid low?

Good for the Intelligence Committee. Quite against their wishes, I’m sure, they found that Benghazi turned out to be so much BS.

Makes me wonder if we shouldn’t be rethinking George W. Bush. How much of the tar on him really is just so much Benghazi?

Editor and Publisher Don Rogers can be reached at drogers@vaildaily.com or 970-748-2920.


Support Local Journalism