Disband the Benghazi Committee
By ADAM B. SCHIFF, NYT, SEPT. 4, 2015
Washington — NOT long after it was formed last year, members of the Select Committee on Benghazi gathered to meet privately with family members of the four Americans killed on that dreadful night in Libya in 2012. The meetings were emotional, and the chairman assured those present that the committee would be scrupulously nonpartisan and devoted to finding out the truth of what had happened.
Instead, the Select Committee became little more than a partisan tool to influence the presidential race, a dangerous precedent that will haunt Congress for decades. This is all the more painful when you consider how grievously the committee has let down those families, along with the rest of the American people.
On rare occasions, Congress has determined that an issue is of such surpassing significance that a focused, resource-intensive inquiry is called for, and it creates a special investigatory committee. Among the very first was one formed after the election of George Washington in order to investigate the disastrous defeat of the St. Clair expedition in the 1791 Battle of Wabash. Since then, Congress has convened select committees to investigate everything from Teapot Dome to Pearl Harbor, from Watergate to Hurricane Katrina.
(More here.)
Washington — NOT long after it was formed last year, members of the Select Committee on Benghazi gathered to meet privately with family members of the four Americans killed on that dreadful night in Libya in 2012. The meetings were emotional, and the chairman assured those present that the committee would be scrupulously nonpartisan and devoted to finding out the truth of what had happened.
Instead, the Select Committee became little more than a partisan tool to influence the presidential race, a dangerous precedent that will haunt Congress for decades. This is all the more painful when you consider how grievously the committee has let down those families, along with the rest of the American people.
On rare occasions, Congress has determined that an issue is of such surpassing significance that a focused, resource-intensive inquiry is called for, and it creates a special investigatory committee. Among the very first was one formed after the election of George Washington in order to investigate the disastrous defeat of the St. Clair expedition in the 1791 Battle of Wabash. Since then, Congress has convened select committees to investigate everything from Teapot Dome to Pearl Harbor, from Watergate to Hurricane Katrina.
(More here.)
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