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Less than four months after Barack Obama's inauguration, the right-wing propaganda machine is already promoting the only imaginable conclusion to a Democratic administration that dares to achieve a second term: impeachment. Once confined to the ranks of the birthers, the fantasy of removing President Obama from office is starting to fester in supposedly saner minds.

Certainly impeachment is on the mind of Mike Huckabee, the Fox News commentator who — as a former governor of Arkansas and political antagonist of Bill Clinton — can be expected to know something about the subject. On Monday, he predicted that the president will be forced from office before the end of his term by the controversy over the Benghazi consulate attack last September. According to Huckabee, while the Watergate scandal was "bad," Benghazi is worse because four Americans died there, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens.

The proximate cause for impeaching Obama, he suggested, is the "cover-up" of the facts concerning Benghazi. Moreover, he said, if the Democrats "try to protect the president and their party, and do so at the expense of the truth, they will go down." When "the facts come out," predicted Huckabee, "something will start" and ultimately the Democrats will lose "the right to govern."

Presumably Huckabee believes impeachment would be easier than winning a national election. He isn't alone in ruminating on the removal of a president who just won re-election last November — not on Fox News, anyway. (The ever-crafty Huck hedged by noting, however, that none of this will come to pass if Democrats win the midterm elections next year.)

Meanwhile, former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, whose cranky pronouncements continue to embarrass responsible conservatives, upped the ante by confiding what Huckabee left out — namely, that like every desperate Republican, he yearns for a Benghazi scandal that will stick. If there was no cover-up, Bolton insisted with characteristically twisted logic that would prove Obama (the president who dispatched Osama bin Laden) simply doesn't understand the ongoing threat from al-Qaida. "If it was merely a political cover-up," he noted with satisfaction, "then there can be a political cost to pay."

No doubt both Bolton and Huckabee — not to mention Rep. Darrell Issa, whose House Government Reform Committee maintains an ongoing Benghazi probe — plan to charge that cost not only to Obama but to a certain woman who now leads every 2016 presidential poll.

The meager substance of the "cover-up" canard was debunked months ago —and to date nothing has emerged to change those facts. (Indeed, even some of the most gullible denizens of Fox Nation have rejected the attempted frame-up lately.) Were the Republicans interested in constructive change rather than invented conspiracies, they might consult the Benghazi testimony of former general David Petraeus and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, as well as the unvarnished report by former ambassador Thomas Pickering and Admiral Mike Mullen.

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Short answer: the Repub's and right wingers are STILL trying to get even for NIXON; they want another scalp besides Bill Clinton; they can't WIN a Presidential election without STEALING it; and this is a partisan campaign tactic for 2016.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:


Nothing remotely partisan here,

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Originally posted by AURaptor:


...and why was security scaled back by Hillary ?

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Benghazi hearing's real target: Clinton in 2016
By David Rothkopf, Special to CNN

Editor's note: David Rothkopf writes regularly for CNN.com. He is CEO and editor-at-large of the FP Group, publishers of Foreign Policy magazine, and a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Follow him on Twitter.

(CNN) -- Rep. Darrell Issa must be ruing his bad luck. The hearing he carefully orchestrated to pick at the scab of Benghazi was stepped on by the verdict in the Jodi Arias murder trial and by the story of three women held captive and brutalized for a decade in Cleveland. He was out-sensationalized and out-tawdried this week despite his own best efforts and those of his committee colleagues and staff members.

That is not to say that the tragic events that unfolded last year in Benghazi are not worthy of serious investigation. They just didn't get them from Issa's committee. As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in her passionate testimony in December, we need to know what went wrong to prevent future tragedies. That's why she began an investigation immediately after the attacks. But Issa and his co-inquisitors were more interested in the arithmetic of 2016 presidential politics than with the events of last September 11 in Libya.

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O’BRIEN: Is it true that you voted to cut the funding for embassy security?
CHAFFETZ: Absolutely. Look, we have to make priorities and choices in this country. We have — think about this — 15,000 contractors in Iraq. We have more than 6,000 contractors, private army there for President Obama in Baghdad.
And we’re talking about can we get two dozen or so people into Libya to help protect our forces? When you’re in tough economic times, you have to make difficult choices how to prioritize this.

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The “whistleblowers” at today’s House Oversight Committee hearing on what really happened in Benghazi, Libya last September were supposed to break the dam that would lead to President Obama’s eventual downfall, in the eyes of conservatives. Instead, these witness actually served to debunk several theories that the right-wing has pushed on Benghazi, leaving the hearing a fizzle for the GOP:
1. F-16s could have been sent to Benghazi
Part of the prevailing theory surrounding the events the night of the Benghazi attacks is that the Obama administration did not do enough militarily to respond to the crisis. Gregory Hicks — a Foreign Service Officer and the former Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Libya — claimed during his pre-hearing testimony that fighter jets could have been flown over Benghazi, preventing the second wave of the attack from occurring.
Ranking Member Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) questioned that statement, asking Hicks whether he disagreed with Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Gen Martin Dempsey’s assessment that no air assets were in range the night of the attack. Hicks didn’t disagree, saying he was “speaking from [his] perspective” and what “veteran Libyan revolutionaries” told him, rather than Pentagon assessments.
2. Hillary Clinton signed cables denying additional security to Benghazi
House Republicans came to the conclusion in their interim report on Benghazi that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lied to them about what she knew and when during her testimony this January. This includes her statement that at no time was she aware of requests for additional security at the diplomatic facility in Benghazi prior to the attack.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) used her time to take issue with this claim, asking all three witnesses about standard protocol for cables leaving the State Department. All three agreed with Maloney, that the Secretary of State’s name is placed at the bottom of all outgoing cables and telegrams from Foggy Bottom, whether the Secretary has viewed them or not, shooting down the GOP claim.
3. A Special Forces Team that could have saved lives was told to stand down
One of the most shocking reveals in the lead-up to today’s hearing was that a team of Special Forces in Tripoli were told not to deploy to Benghazi during the attack. That decision has led to an uproar on the right, including claims of dereliction of duty towards Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey for not taking actions that could have saved lives.
During questioning, Hicks confirmed that the team was ready to be deployed — not to join the fighting at the CIA annex — but “to secure the airport for the withdrawal of our personnel from Benghazi after the mortar attack.” Hicks also confirmed that it was the second such team to be readied for deployment, with the first having proceeded to Benghazi earlier. Despite the second team not deploying, the staff was all evacuated first to Tripoli, then to Germany, within 18 hours of the attack taking place.

4. The State Department’s Accountability Review Board isn’t legitimate
Republicans have been attacking the State Department’s official in-house review of the shortcomings seen before, during, and after the assault in Benghazi. That criticism prompted House Republicans to write their own report. When asked point blank about the recommendations of the Board, however, the witnesses didn’t cooperate with the GOP narrative. “Absolutely,” Eric Nordstrom, the Regional Security Officer for Libya prior to the assault in Benghazi, answered when asked if he believes implementing the recommendations would improve security. “I had an opportunity to review that along with other two committee reports. I think taken altogether, they’re fairly comprehensive and reasonable.” Hicks, when questioned, said that while he had some issues with the process by which the Board gathered its information, he demurred on criticizing the report itself.

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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-Qaida 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-Qaida 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-Qaida 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-Qaida-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.

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Fox News host Megyn Kelly admitted on Wednesday that the conservative network’s coverage of that day’s Benghazi hearings had been a “little lopsided” after Democratic lawmakers were repeatedly cut off for commercial breaks.

Following opening statements, Fox News aired all of the questions House Oversight Committee Chair Darrel Issa (R-CA) had for the witnesses he had called, but the network cut to former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton for reaction when Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MA) began presenting his questions.
Users on Twitter complained as they noticed a pattern each time Fox News cut away from the hearings.

“HILARIOUS Fox News taking a commerical break during Democrats #Benghazi questions…,” Unitedliberals tweeted. “Fox News instead of airing Carolyn Maloney’s questions during #Benghazi hearing they are RE-airing clips from 20 minutes ago #LOL.”

“Fox News coverage @ Benghazi hearing/ no interruption of Republican spkrs, commercials and commentary ovr Democrats. Fair and balanced? BS!” Kevin Larkin wrote.

After over three hours of hearings, Fox News Megyn Kelly acknowledged that the coverage had not been fair and balanced.

“We’re trying to get in our commercial breaks here and now we’re getting a little lopsided in terms of the Democrats versus the Republicans, so we’re going to try to rectify that for you after the break,” she promised.

In fact, Fox News only provided another 10 minutes of live video from the hearings during the next hour. Instead, the network asked Bolton and Fox News host Oliver North to comment.

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Washington (CNN) -- President Barack Obama's been in the bull's eye of Republicans and conservatives since 2008, but after Wednesday's hearing on last September's terror attack in Benghazi, Libya, many on the right are shifting their aim at former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Soon after the hearing by the GOP-led House Oversight Committee looking into the events surrounding the death of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans, a recently formed pro-Republican opposition research group blasted out an e-mail with the headline "Benghazi Hearing Raises Serious Questions About Clinton."

America Rising PAC then followed up Thursday with a Web video which it says outlines "the serious questions raised about Hillary Clinton's leadership yesterday in a House Oversight Committee hearing."

The Republican National Committee and American Crossroads, the Karl Rove-backed pro-GOP super PAC, also issued e-mails critical of Clinton, America's top diplomat at the time of the attack last September 11. And Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, a possible 2016 GOP White House contender, criticized Clinton in an interview on Thursday on Fox News Channel.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

So, just because the GOP want nothing more than to oust, defeat, and politically bludgeon the President and the Dems, that means there's NOTHING the Dems can do that can't be scrutinized or questioned ?

That seems to be the basis for your argument here.

Fact is, one has nothing to do w/ the other.

Those in charge dropped the ball, on purpose, and then lied about it to the American people. They put their own politics well above the good of the nation and the good of those in Benghazi.

Unbelievably heartless, is just the start.


And Kwickie, you're again, mixing apples and oranges. How many ambassadors were murdered ? How many Americans ? And how many hours did those attacks last, where help could have been sent, but none was given, because a President had already declared bin Laden dead and didn't want to be bothered by trivial details of the real world, when he had an election to get ready for in just about 2 months? You lie, you twist the story, you try to equivocate to explain away the actions of this admin, and pretend that Bush did the exact same thing, ( when he absolutely didn't) as if that makes it ' O.K. '.

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I know Jon Stewart is your hero. You really wish you could be just like him. A court jester, unaccountable to the facts, just spewing out random comments, and then making funny faces, or using silly accents, and thinking he's made any valid points.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

I know Jon Stewart is your hero. You really wish you could be just like him. A court jester, unaccountable to the facts, just spewing out random comments, and then making funny faces, or using silly accents, and thinking he's made any valid points. He hasn't, or have you.

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( some snipped )
Democrats are quick to suggest it is Rubio playing politics, noting his own interest in a possible 2016 presidential campaign. Democrats make the same argument when asked about the harsh criticisms of Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul, another potential 2016 Republican contender.

Paul calls Clinton's handling of Benghazi a "dereliction of duty" that, in his view, disqualifies her from higher office.

( some snipped )

Among the conservatives urging House Republicans to demand answers from Clinton directly is former Vice President Dick Cheney.

On Thursday, Cheney spoke to the weekly "Theme Team" meeting organized by House conservatives and two people present at the breakfast said the former vice president said if Clinton declined to voluntarily answer questions, then she should be subpoenaed to testify.

Another veteran of the George W. Bush administration also weighed in Thursday, in a way that highlights the intersection of Benghazi oversight and Benghazi politics.

In an e-mail sent to conservatives, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said, "What happened with Benghazi is not how it's supposed to be handled and I think it could be a hinge point for the Obama administration."

The Bolton note was distributed by the House GOP's campaign arm -- the National Republican Congressional Committee -- and asks for political contributions to the GOP. In fact, if you click on the links in that Bolton e-mail, it takes you to an NRCC fund-raising website that declares "Benghazi was a cover-up" over a photograph of Clinton and President Barack Obama.

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Jonathan Karl, who's own the politics-of-Benghazi beat all week, obtains a campaign ad that the RNC designed but never release in the fall of 2012. It's simple, which lends its some emotional punch.

Because it broke in the final stretch of the election, Benghazi was always covered as a political story -- something that could beat Barack Obama. Hence the outrage over the administration's early talking points, and the questions about why "terror" sliced out of them. "We have a pretty good gut feeling as to why the talking points were changed," said Sean Hannity after Wednesday's hearing. "It was in the heat of an election."

But why are Republicans convinced that this would have altered the election? Four Americans died in the attack in Benghazi. For the first time since the Carter administration, a diplomat was among the fallen. That was unspinnable. That did a certain amount of damage to the Obama campaign, like it should have. Where Hannity et al lose people is on the "cover up" -- why would the phrasing of talking points have ended the outrage? Why, because the administration was telling voters that the death of Osama bin Laden effectively ended the war on terror, and that there was nothing new to fear, so we could go on not talking about "Islamism" and be perfectly safe.

This was never going to work. We learned why not during the election, but during the weeks around the George W. Bush Presidential Center dedication. Bush, you'll remember, was president during the deadliest terrorist attack ever on American soil. Yet Bush's defenders credited him with Keeping America Safe. How? As Jennifer Rubin put it (though you could quote one of dozens of pundits) "there was no successful attack on the homeland after 9/11" while Bush was at the wheel.

This is mockable (Charlie Pierce calls it the "great mulligan") but astute. Bush got re-elected on this theory. Americans are fretful about terrorism only to the extent that it might kill them in America. The Bush-era response to terrorism led to two fitfully successful land wars in central Asia, with thousands of military deaths; more relevantly, when we're talking Benghazi, the Bush years saw 64 attacks of varying scale on American diplomats and embassies. None of them hurt his re-election. A terrorist attack of the same scale in, say, Indianapolis would have. Not overseas.

As a pure election-time issue, Benghazi reminded me of the 2004 "Rathergate" controversy. The common attack on CBS News at the time, after it ran stories about George W. Bush's National Guard service, was that it was trying to "bring down the president." That assumed a lot of voters who'd elected Bush once, knowing he'd merely served in the Texas Air National Guard during Vietnam, but would be so angry at the new details that they'd reject him. Was anyone in the Obama administration, in September 2012, worried that classifying the Benghazi attack as "terrorism" would hurt their jobs? It seems that way, though I guess the president undercut them on September 12 by putting the attack in the context of "acts of terror."

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Originally posted by AURaptor:


Unbelievably heartless, is just the start.


And Kwickie, you're again, mixing apples and oranges. How many ambassadors were murdered ? How many Americans ?

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Originally posted by Niki2:
No wonder people are leaving the party in droves...what HAPPENED to the Republican party in this country??

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source familiar with the exchange said then-State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland raised concerns over the CIA's first version of the talking points, saying that they went further than what she was allowed to say about the attack during her briefings and that she believed the CIA was attempting to exonerate itself at the State Department's expense by suggesting CIA warnings about the security situation were ignored.

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Originally posted by Storymark:
Golly, they didn't call it a terror attack until the knew for sure?

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And you wonder why no one but hard right wingnuts give a shit...

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
The facts made Georgie boy look a lot worse. AND YOU LOOK BAD B/C YOU SUPPORTED HIM! Too bad about those facts.

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After Benghazi revelations, heads will roll

There's new evidence, obtained by ABC, that the Obama administration did deliberately purge references to "terrorism" from accounts of the attack on the Benghazi diplomatic mission, which killed four people including the US ambassador to Libya.

Conservatives have long maintained that the administration deliberately suppressed the truth about the attacks.

This is the first hard evidence that the state department did ask for changes to the CIA's original assessment

There's little doubt in my mind that this will haunt Hillary Clinton if she decides to run for president, unless she executes some pretty fancy footwork.

State department spokesperson Victoria Nuland is directly implicated, and the fingerprints of senior White House aides Ben Rhodes and Jay Carney are there as well.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22483768

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Originally posted by Geezer:

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

I know Jon Stewart is your hero. You really wish you could be just like him. A court jester, unaccountable to the facts, just spewing out random comments, and then making funny faces, or using silly accents, and thinking he's made any valid points. He hasn't, or have you.

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Looks like someone let Mike have two cups of coffee today. He's really crankin' it out.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

Can't you address the issue here ? Deal w/ the FACTS ?

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
"Can't you address the issue here ?"

The issue of your double standard and lame finger-pointing pretending to be impartial assessment? I already did.

BTW, as I recall, when we were objecting to what your buddy Georgie was doing, you were calling us traitors. Maybe you should look in the mirror and say that word aloud a few times.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:
This incident was unprecedented. We had an ambassador, who called for back up, and got none. We had warnings as to the security issues in Libya, and they went unheeded. Then, for absolutely no reason ( other than political ) we had an administration lie to the American public about WHY this happened, when they and everyone knew from the start it was a terrorist attack.

Traitor only applies to those who do what Obama and Hillary did.

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Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
Nothing unravels unless there is the possibility of people going to prison. Nothing is historically meaningful without there first being a crime committed. Otherwise it's just the spin of politics and bureaucratic ineptitude.

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Originally posted by AURaptor:

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Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
Nothing unravels unless there is the possibility of people going to prison. Nothing is historically meaningful without there first being a crime committed. Otherwise it's just the spin of politics and bureaucratic ineptitude.

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If the excuse making and dismissing we see from the Left truly are what we've made of this world, that doesn't speak very well for us, now does it ?

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Originally posted by Jongsstraw:
The funding issue for Benghazi has already been debunked, but irrational zealots like Kwiko just can't get past it.

"Issa went on to note that Charlene Lamb, the State Department official who fielded security requests from the Libya U.S. diplomatic officials had said that money wasn’t the reason for the slim security in Libya. Consider this exchange from the congressional hearing on Libya last week:

“It has been suggested that budget cuts are responsible for a lack of security in Benghazi, and I’d like to ask Miss Lamb,” said Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R., Calif.). “You made this decision personally. Was there any budget consideration and lack of budget which lead you not to increase the number of people in the security force there?”

“No, sir,” said Lamb."

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2012/10/15/libya_isn039t_about_fundin
g_cuts_293141.html

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