The Benghazi attack is a political controversy. Republicans claim the administration watered down the facts in talking points given to U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice for television appearances while Obama was running for re-election. Republicans on Capitol Hill claimed they found proof in White House emails that they leaked to reporters last week. It turns out some of the quotes were wrong.Josh Marshall notes: "Generally, once partisan, tendentious sources leak information that turns out to be wrong, nothing's ever done about it. ...But on CBS Evening News [last night], Major Garrett did something I don't feel like I've seen in a really long time or maybe ever on a network news cast. He basically said straight out: Republicans told us these were the quotes, that wasn't true."
Republicans have charged that the State Department under Hillary Clinton was trying to protect itself from criticism. The White House released the real emails late Wednesday. Here's what we found when we compared them to the quotes that had been provided by Republicans.
One email was written by deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes.
On Friday, Republicans leaked what they said was a quote from Rhodes: "We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don't want to undermine the FBI investigation."
But it turns out that in the actual email, Rhodes did not mention the State Department.
It read: "We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation."
Republicans also provided what they said was a quote from an email written by State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland.
The Republican version quotes Nuland discussing, "The penultimate point is a paragraph talking about all the previous warnings provided by the Agency (CIA) about al-Qaeda's presence and activities of al-Qaeda."
The actual email from Nuland says: "The penultimate point could be abused by members to beat the State Department for not paying attention to Agency warnings."
The CIA agreed with the concerns raised by the State Department and revised the talking points to make them less specific than the CIA's original version, eliminating references to al Qaeda and affiliates and earlier security warnings. There is no evidence that the White House orchestrated the changes.
If there's a scandal here, it's that elected Republican officials used bullshit information in order to try to take down the President of the United States and smear a former Secretary of State, spreading completely false information throughout the media in a meritless partisan attack.
And then there's this: USians' attention to the Benghazi "scandal"—and to the IRS "scandal"—is low. Just over 50%, "well below the average for news stories Gallup has tracked over the years." There's a partisan divide in how closely people are paying attention: Republicans are more likely to be following these stories than Democrats and Independents.
That's not a good thing. That's indicative of how little trust non-conservatives have in the GOP to be an effective and ethical opposition party, to hold a Democratic administration accountable for things that matter. By investing so much time and energy in unjustifiable scandal-mongering, the Republican Party is the Opposition Party Who Cried Wolf. If something happens (P.S. something has happened) that needs serious investigation, very few but the most resolute conservative partisans trust the Republican Party to do it.
The Republican Party has abdicated its role as a serious opposition party. That should be of concern to anyone who doesn't want any administration to be able to operate with impunity. Which is to say nothing of distracting the entire executive branch and gobbling Congressional resources with nonsense that has no benefit for the US people.
They're not just being petty, indecent assholes. They're making the country less safe and less functional. This has to stop.
(But it won't.)
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