Republicans seek blame rather than solutions on Benghazi
By Jackson Diehl, WashPost, Published: May 12
Remember the scandal of “the 16 words”? If you do, you’ve probably been inside the Beltway too long, literally or figuratively. If not, the quick version is this: A former ambassador named Joseph C. Wilson IV charged in 2003 that President George W. Bush had included in his State of the Union address a (16-word) allegation about Iraq that his top aides knew to be false — that Saddam Hussein had sought to purchase uranium from Niger. Wilson then amped up the ensuing partisan uproar by claiming there had been a White House conspiracy to punish him by deliberately blowing the cover of his CIA wife.
Most of what Wilson said was later proved to be grossly exaggerated, or simply false. But that didn’t stop Democrats and partisan media from devoting years to conspiracy-spinning and attempts to pin political and criminal responsibility on Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney or Karl Rove. Blustered Wilson: “It’s of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.”
A decade later, we have the right’s answer to Joe Wilson: Benghazi. Once again the obsessive focus is on a public statement — this time by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who appeared on news programs five days after the armed attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya last Sept. 11 and said that it had grown out of a demonstration against an anti-Muslim video. Again the theory is that this assertion was the product of a high-level conspiracy to twist the truth. Last week Republicans produced their own Wilsonesque figure: former Tripoli deputy chief of mission Gregory Hicks, who claimed he was punished after he questioned Rice’s words.
The common thread here is not just the climate of intense partisanship in which media and politicians from the left dismiss what the right insists is a scandal of historic proportions — or vice-versa. It is the diversion of what should be serious, bipartisan discussion about government failings. The Bush administration, after all, did wrongly conclude that Iraq was hiding chemical weapons and trying to revive its nuclear program. For its part the Obama administration didn’t provide enough security to the Libya mission or adequately prepare for an emergency in post-revolution North Africa.
(More here.)
Remember the scandal of “the 16 words”? If you do, you’ve probably been inside the Beltway too long, literally or figuratively. If not, the quick version is this: A former ambassador named Joseph C. Wilson IV charged in 2003 that President George W. Bush had included in his State of the Union address a (16-word) allegation about Iraq that his top aides knew to be false — that Saddam Hussein had sought to purchase uranium from Niger. Wilson then amped up the ensuing partisan uproar by claiming there had been a White House conspiracy to punish him by deliberately blowing the cover of his CIA wife.
Most of what Wilson said was later proved to be grossly exaggerated, or simply false. But that didn’t stop Democrats and partisan media from devoting years to conspiracy-spinning and attempts to pin political and criminal responsibility on Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney or Karl Rove. Blustered Wilson: “It’s of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.”
A decade later, we have the right’s answer to Joe Wilson: Benghazi. Once again the obsessive focus is on a public statement — this time by U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, who appeared on news programs five days after the armed attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya last Sept. 11 and said that it had grown out of a demonstration against an anti-Muslim video. Again the theory is that this assertion was the product of a high-level conspiracy to twist the truth. Last week Republicans produced their own Wilsonesque figure: former Tripoli deputy chief of mission Gregory Hicks, who claimed he was punished after he questioned Rice’s words.
The common thread here is not just the climate of intense partisanship in which media and politicians from the left dismiss what the right insists is a scandal of historic proportions — or vice-versa. It is the diversion of what should be serious, bipartisan discussion about government failings. The Bush administration, after all, did wrongly conclude that Iraq was hiding chemical weapons and trying to revive its nuclear program. For its part the Obama administration didn’t provide enough security to the Libya mission or adequately prepare for an emergency in post-revolution North Africa.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
So, if someone from the left side of the aisle mentioned the word solution in connection to Benghazi, does that infer that those on the left side of the aisle are finally, just maybe, seeing a potential problem with Benghazi? Progress!
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