Tuesday Reads: Benghazi Will Never Die and Other News
Posted: October 20, 2015 Filed under: Foreign Affairs, morning reads, Republican politics, U.S. Politics | Tags: Benghazi, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Jim Webb 68 Comments
John Cole / Scranton Times Tribune
Good Morning!!
I’m getting a very late start this morning because of some computer problems, but as far as I can tell, Joe Biden is still playing games with the press corps. I suppose that could go on for at least the rest of the week, since Hillary is testifying before the Benghazi! Committee on Thursday. I doubt if she will suddenly implode, but apparently Biden is hoping for a major meltdown of some kind.
Last night Rachel Maddow announced that she will be interviewing Hillary on her Friday show, so that should be interesting. Meanwhile, ABC News was forced to admit that Hillary’s poll numbers have gone up against both Bernie Sanders and Biden, according to their latest survey of voters.
Hillary Clinton has followed a successful debate performance by rebounding in the contest for the Democratic presidential nomination in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll, regaining ground against Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden alike.
With anticipation surrounding Biden at a peak, Clinton has 54 percent support in interviews Thursday through Sunday, compared with Sanders’ 23 percent and Biden’s 16 percent. That’s 12 percentage points better for Clinton than her position a month ago, bringing her halfway back to her level of support in the spring and summer, before her September stumble.
In anticipation of Hillary’s testimony on Thursday, Democratic members of the Benghazi “special committee” released a 146-page report detailing the results of the investigation so far from their point of view. CBS News: Democrats: Benghazi committee interviews discredit GOP claims about Clinton.
“This report shows that no witnesses we interviewed substantiated these wild Republican conspiracy theories about Secretary Clinton and Benghazi. It’s time to bring this taxpayer-funded fishing expedition to an end,” Ranking Member Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland, said in a statement accompanying the 146-page report.
Following through on a recent threat, the Democrats released excerpts from the panel’s 54 interviews, but still called on Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-South Carolina, to release full transcripts and depositions….
Based on 54 interviews, the Democrats said the committee found no evidence that Clinton ordered the military to stand down on the night of the attacks, no evidence she personally approved a reduction in security before the attacks and no evidence Clinton or her aides oversaw an operation to scrub or destroy documents related to Benghazi, among other findings.
Documents obtained by the committee confirmed Clinton’s earlier testimony about her actions that night, the report said, as did the interviews with Mills and Sullivan.
Many more details at the link.
Pat Bagley / Salt Lake Tribune
As Dakinikat wrote yesterday, the Benghazi committee is falling about anyway, thanks to the stupidity of its chairman Trey Gowdy. At The New Republic, Brian Beutler writes: The Benghazi Witch-Hunt Against Hillary Is Backfiring Just Like Bill Clinton’s Impeachment.
When the committee began to drift from its nominal investigative purpose—the 2012 attack on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya, in which Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was killed—and focus on unrelated aspects of Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state from 2009-2013, it invited comparisons to the GOP-led fishing expeditions of the 1990s, which culminated in the partisan impeachment of President Bill Clinton, and discredited his leading critics.
The comparison became inescapable this weekend, when the top Democrat on the Benghazi committee revealed that its Republican chairman, Trey Gowdy, had fabricated a redaction to Clinton’s emails to make it look like she’d endangered a spy, and the CIA had busted her. Gowdy even mimicked intelligence community vernacular, designating the redaction as undertaken to protect “sources and methods,” without disclosing that he was the redactor or that the CIA had cleared the name he redacted for release.
This flagrant misconduct has barely pierced the consciousness of the political scribes who have treated every selective Benghazi leak with as much credulity and legitimacy as lower-fanfare congressional investigations, even after their media peers have been burned—repeatedly—by intentionally deceptive leaks. Conservatives, too, are ignoring or brushing off the impropriety. But Benghazi committee errors are piling up so rapidly, and timed so impeccably for Hillary Clinton’s public testimony before the committee this Thursday, that it seems for once like Republicans might tamp down on the Hillary misdirection of their own volition, much as they did in the 1990s when a similarly unfocused obsession with the Clintons damaged their party.
Back in 1998, House Republican leaders had to dial back an investigation into the Clintons’ campaign finance practices after then-oversight committee chairman Dan Burton tried to hoodwink the press with heavily edited transcripts meant to implicate Hillary. That botched operation forced Burton to fire his top aide David Bossie, who went on to become president of Citizens United, and prompted an angry backlash from Speaker Newt Gingrich on behalf of an embarrassed Republican conference.
The recent blows to the Benghazi committee’s self-styled credibility are at least as severe, beginning with House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s admission that Republicans empaneled it to damage Hillary Clinton’s presidential candidacy, running through well-substantiated allegations that Republicans have been using committee resources to investigate Clinton at the expense of the actual attacks on the U.S. facility in Libya.
I am sooooooo looking forward to Hillary’s appearance on Thursday!
Chris Britt / Creators Syndicate
According to CNN, Jim Webb will hold a press conference today to announce he is dropping out of the Democratic primary race and that he does not plan to run as an independent.
Jim Webb will end his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination at a press conference Tuesday, according to two sources with knowledge of the decision.
The former Virginia senator who launched a longshot presidential bid earlier this year is considering an independent run, according to his campaign. Craig Crawford, Webb’s spokesman, declined to comment on whether the senator was dropping out of the Democratic race, however.
“Jim will have the first word at 1 p.m.,” Crawford said, referring to the senator’s press conference at the National Press Club in Washington.
After a prolonged exploration of a presidential bid, Webb used an more than 2,000-word blog post to announce his run.
His campaign, however, never really got off the ground and was seen by even some close Webb aides as more of a vanity play than an actual presidential bid. In total, Webb spent four days campaigning in New Hampshire and 20 days in Iowa, far fewer than the senator’s challengers.
Webb also expressed outright frustration with the Democratic Party during his run, questioning their strategy and the support they were providing him. During the first Democratic debate earlier this month, Webb spent considerable time complaining about the amount of time he was given to speak.
John Darkow / Columbia (Missour) Times Tribune
On the Republican side, Carly Fiorina is struggling and Donald Trump and Ben Carson are still running neck and neck. Politico reports: Fiorina’s support collapses, Trump leads in CNN poll.
Carly Fiorina’s time near the top of the Republican polls may have come to an end, as another national CNN/ORC poll out Tuesday suggests. Just 4 percent of Republican or Republican-leaning voters said they would cast their votes for her in a primary election, down from 15 percent in September.
Overall, Donald Trump led the field with 27 percent, followed again by Ben Carson with 22 percent, up 8 points from last month’s survey. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio each earned 8 percent, followed by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul at 5 percent. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Fiorina pulled in 4 percent, while Ohio Gov. John Kasich earned 3 percent, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum 2 percent and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham 1 percent.
Appearing later in the morning on CNN’s “New Day,” Trump commented that he and Carson have both “hit a chord” in the electorate.
Tom Toles / Washington Post
[Trump’s] latest ugly truth came during a Bloomberg TV interview last Friday, when he said George W. Bush deserves responsibility for the fact that “the World Trade Center came down during his time.” Politicians and journalists erupted in indignation. Jeb Bush called Trump’s comments “pathetic.” Ben Carson dubbed them “ridiculous.”
Former Bush flack Ari Fleischer called Trump a 9/11 “truther.” Even Stephanie Ruhle, the Bloomberg anchor who asked the question, cried, “Hold on, you can’t blame George Bush for that.”
Oh yes, you can. There’s no way of knowing for sure if Bush could have stopped the September 11 attacks. But that’s not the right question. The right question is: Did Bush do everything he could reasonably have to stop them, given what he knew at the time? And he didn’t. It’s not even close.
When the Bush administration took office in January 2001, CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Council counterterrorism “czar” Richard Clarke both warned its incoming officials that al-Qaeda represented a grave threat. During a transition briefing early that month at Blair House, according to Bob Woodward’s Bush at War, Tenet and his deputy James Pavitt listed Osama bin Laden as one of America’s three most serious national-security challenges. That same month, Clarke presented National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice with a plan he had been working on since al-Qaeda’s attack on the USS Cole the previous October. It called for freezing the network’s assets, closing affiliated charities, funneling money to the governments of Uzbekistan, the Philippines and Yemen to fight al-Qaeda cells in their country, initiating air strikes and covert operations against al-Qaeda sites in Afghanistan, and dramatically increasing aid to the Northern Alliance, which was battling al-Qaeda and the Taliban there.
But both Clarke and Tenet grew deeply frustrated by the way top Bush officials responded. Clarke recounts that when he briefed Rice about al-Qaeda, “her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before.” On January 25, Clarke sent Rice a memo declaring that, “we urgently need…a Principals [Cabinet] level review on the al Qida [sic] network.” Instead, Clarke got a sub-cabinet, Deputies level, meeting in April, two months after the one on Iraq.
When that April meeting finally occurred, according to Clarke’s book, Against All Enemies, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz objected that “I just don’t understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man, bin Laden.” Clarke responded that, “We are talking about a network of terrorist organizations called al-Qaeda, that happens to be led by bin Laden, and we are talking about that network because it and it alone poses an immediate and serious threat to the United States.” To which Wolfowitz replied, “Well, there are others that do as well, at least as much. Iraqi terrorism for example.”
By early summer, Clarke was so despondent that he asked to be reassigned. “This administration,” he later testified, “didn’t either believe me that there was an urgent problem or was unprepared to act as though there were an urgent problem.
And so on . . . we all know the story from the 9/11 committee hearings but you can read more about it at The Atlantic. Actually all Trump really said was that Bush was president when 9/11 happened. That’s pretty difficult to deny.
Interestingly, Andrew Kaczynsky points out that Trump actually predicted that something bad was likely to happen: “Over A Year Before 9/11, Trump Wrote Of Terror Threat With Remarkable Clarity.” Read about it at Buzzfeed. Finally, The Hill reports that the DNC is using Beinart’s story in The Atlantic to “bash” poor Jeb. I wonder how much longer he can keep going?
What else is happening? Let us know in the comment thread and have a great day!
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The Republicans on that committee, along with their apologists, have no shame. Even though their true intentions have been exposed they still march on into the breach determined to find something they can pin on her. Facts have no place in their intentions.
I am sure she will do quite well facing these neanderthals. Truth and Elijah Cummings are on her side.
This nation is being held hostage by a handful of Tea Party loons which is eventually going to kill the Republican Party. More so if they make Donald Trump their nominee.
Couldn’t happen to a better group of obstructionists who took Mitch McConnell’s words to heart and plowed ahead.
I keep checking the NYT for the headlines about Gowdy fabricating evidence. Isn’t that a crime? The NYT jumped on the false FBI criminal investigation story but now not a peep about a Congressional investigating committee FABRICATING evidence. It’s almost as if there was an anti-Clinton bias. 😉
lol
I think somewhere deep inside NYT, someone said “So what if it’s fabricated? The key word is ‘evidence’!”
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/lol-picture-worth-a-thousand-words
CNN says majority of polls don’t want Joe to run. Biden is now trying to denigate Hillary’s work as SOS. Uncle Joe – the snake with ‘heart’ /s.
But, but, but…..everybody “loves Uncle Joe”!!!! He is endearing. He is authentic. He is not Hillary.
The fact that he is a brown nosing pain in the ass has no bearing on him running for POTUS.
He is Chris Matthews without the hair. A smarmy, two faced, woman hating irish Catholic. And I’ve known many like them in my day.
Trump is still a New Yorker, and I doubt you’ll find many New Yorkers who share Jeb’s sentiment that his brother kept them safe.
Oh damn I don’t know if I can handle this shit. Seriously, I am not joking. I can’t take these assholes .
Charles Pierce:
OH, ratfucking!!!! We all know how that works, especially ratfucking that is used against Hillary. I’ve been watching some of the “feel the bern” folks trying it on for size.
ABC News: Joe Biden Claims He Privately Supported Bin Laden Raid, Years After Saying He Opposed.
Apparently, he is also claiming the story Hillary told in her book is wrong. In 2012, Biden said he opposed the raid. Now he claim that he privately told Obama to go ahead–after the meeting about it. WTF?
Did you see WAPO accidently printed their story for Biden running? http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/joe-biden-washington-post-accidental-story
Yeah, I saw that. Idiots.
I’ll tell you what I think, but for sure we will know in a couple days exactly what Biden is thinking. Biden doesn’t want to be seen as being on the wrong side of history, and so he’s trying to prove different, and nobody but him and Pres. Obama knows what was said between the two of them.
What I can share with you is what Hillary Clinton said in her book Hard Choices, pages 192-194.
“The President’s top advisors were split on the wisdom of a raid. Leon and Tom Donilon, by then National Security Advisor, ultimately recommend launching the operation. Bob Gates, who had spent decades as a CIA analyst, wasn’t sold. He thought the intelligence was circumstantial, and he worried that a blowup with the Pakistanis would jeopardize the war effort in Afghanistan. Bob also carried painful memories of Operation Eagle Claw, the disastrous botched rescue attempt of hostages in Iran in 1980 that left eight U.S. servicemen dead when a helicopter collided with a transport aircraft. VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN remained skeptical.”
“There were difficult and emotional discussions. Unlike most matters I handled as Secretary of State, because of the extreme secrecy of this case there was no trusted advisor I could turn to or expert I could call. I took that seriously, as Pres. Obama found out when, after the raid was over, but before he went on television to inform the country, he called all four living ex-Presidents to tell them personally. When he reached Bill, he began, “I assume Hillary’s already told you…” Bill had no idea what he was talking about. They told me not to tell anyone, so I didn’t tell anyone. Bill later joked with me, “No one will ever doubt you can keep a secret.”
“I respected Bob and Joe’s concerns about the risks of a raid, but I came to the conclusion that the intelligence was convincing, and the risks were outweighed by the benefits of success. We just had to make sure it worked.”
“On April 28, 2011, President Obama convened our group for one last meeting in the White House Situation Room. He went around the table and asked everyone for their final recommendation. The President and I are both lawyers, and I had learned over time how to appeal to his highly analytical mind. So I methodically laid out the case, including the potential damage to our relationship with Pakistan and the risks of a blown operation. But, I concluded, the chance to get bin Laden was worth it. As I had experienced firsthand, our relationship with Pakistan was strictly transactional, based on mutual interest, not trust. It would survive. I thought we should go for it.”
“After the final meeting the President took time to think it over. The team was still divided. It was a decision only he could make. Then he gave the order. The operation, code-named Neptune Spear, was a go.”
Oh mang, he’s losing it.
Joe Biden’s been a liar for a long time, but, by golly, he’s an authentic liar!
lol
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/257454-jim-webb-drops-out-as-democrat-may-still-run-as
I doubt he’ll attract enough supporters to keep him going for long, although I suppose Republicans might contribute to him as a spoiler, as they did to Nader in 2000.
I honestly don’t see what he brings to the table. Hillary, Bernie and even Malloy are already outlining what it is they stand for and even then there is not too much difference among them.
This playing “cute” is more than annoying. Does he honestly believe that the voters will rush to his side? Is he that much a megolomaniac?
His misogyny is showing big time. The best thing he can do for himself is to not run thus protecting his “legacy” which is sure to be smashed to bits if he goes ahead with this nonsense.
This article in USA Today is even worse than the one I posted earlier. They basically say that Biden called Hillary a liar, and they mention the other dig about Republicans being her enemies.
http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2015/10/20/joe-biden-bin-laden-raid/
From the Hill, another official says Biden is lying.
Former official: Biden was against raid
Biden is already making a fool of himself, and he hasn’t even declared he’s running yet.
But this bastard is just planting more speculation into this race that Hillary is not “credible”. This is all her opponents need to hang this around her neck.
The official who disputes Biden is so far unnamed. He needs to step up and offer his version that contradicts Biden in order to clear Hillary.
Biden is going to hand this presidency over to Trump if he keeps this up since the GOP is just salivating about getting something on her even if it lacks credibility.
If they can’t get her on Benghazi they will play up this opposing version from Biden. He is a snake because he is offering the GOP ammunition to keep hammering her over and over.
I loathe this man.
Panetta is named and he says that Hillary wanted to go ahead. The unnamed source says she made a formal presentation in favor of the raid.
Ya’ll don’t need to lose too much sleep over Biden, it appears he’s attempting to sabotage his own candidacy by telling lies, AGAIN!!!! He needs to just accept his fate and fade into the sunset.
I can’t think of any response except *!!#$%)?
*!!#$%)? *!!#$%)?
Such absolute fewking idjits.
And now he’s got everybody believing that Hillary’s lying, and that speaks to Obama lying, and Biden lying. That’s want we need Joe, a clear sign to the world that we have a thing for lying.
Look at this from Chris Cillizza: Why Joe Biden must destroy Hillary Clinton
But why? Why does he hate her so much that he would do this to her?
I don’t think he hates her. He just wants to be President, and he dithered around too long. Now the only way he can win is to get Hillary out of the race. What an asshole.
Sorry bb, but what he is doing is hateful. He is making her look like a liar. The GOP will take this and run with it.
And how will they debate one another with this sludge hanging out there. Perhaps the loss of his son has left him with some severe emotional damage. Or he is just the same asshole we have always known him to be.
I loathe him. Can’t express it enough.
I agree. I just don’t think it’s about Hillary per se. I think it’s about Biden’s ambition. So why didn’t he run in the first place. I was under the impression when he got the VP nod that he wouldn’t run in 2016 because he’d be too old. Now he wants to run and it’s too f–king late. He just the same asshole he always was, as you said.
When he became the VP nominee, I was under the same impression as bostonboomer – that he wouldn’t run in 2016.
He’s a chicken shit ashol. Like you and BB, and everybody here have been saying, is that the man doesn’t have nothing to run on, except personal attacks. He has NO POLICIES! He’s on the wrong the side of the track, and he proves that when it comes down to women running, he’s all about politics, and not the party, not what is good for this country.
Haven’t we seen this show before, hell yeah.
Here is what he doesn’t have:
http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/key-bloc-black-mayors-back-hillary-clinton-n447426
CNN:
OMG! Is there no low threshold this fool will stoop to and for what? He is playing into the hands of the GOP. Few people will want to vote for him no matter what the polls say now.
He is not only dooming Hillary but himself as well. We may end up with Bernie as the nominee which spells a sure win for Trump or whatever idiot they end up nominating.
This makes me sick to my stomach.
Shut up, Joe. All your blathering and innuendos paint you as mean, jealous and vain.
Biden is just a lying blowhard. That’s all.
He seems to be doing everything he can to upset her position in the polls. He has subtly suggested she is a liar and that he is a better servant to Obama than she ever was.
He is no longer a senator. In a year he will no longer be VP. And I can attest to the fact that he will never be president.
Whatever his motives to destroy Hillary makes him one son of a bitch.
Yep, RalphB.
Joe Biden Sure Seems to Tell a Lot of Stories That Aren’t True
I am Irish and raised Catholic and I can safely say that I had never, ever heard any male Irish Catholic ever utter anything as self serving as Biden’s dad. In a million years! And certainly not at that time in history when homosexuals were arrested, fired from their jobs, or ostracized if they made their orientation known.
You would never see two men kissing on the streets in broad daylight at that time in history for fear of being arrested for lewdness.
Joe Biden is a liar and he proved that when he plagiarized Neal Kinnock’s speech during his first run for POTUS. That one ended his quest for the WH.
This is more than an exaggeration but a blatant attempt to lie his way into the WH.
Just add this to the Joe Biden Chronicles when it comes to ashol Vice President. I’ve never forgiven Sprio Agnew, and I’ll never forgive Biden.
Stop Hillary PAC and Gowdy:
http://democrats.benghazi.house.gov/news/press-releases/cummings-responds-to-explosive-new-report-on-chairman-gowdy-s-links-to-stop
http://democrats.benghazi.house.gov/news/press-releases/cummings-calls-on-gowdy-to-correct-record-release-blumenthal-transcript-after
Nine other jobs Joe Biden should consider before he decides to run for President.
#1 Walmart greeter.
Yeah, he’s just the right age for that. And he could touch women all day long and get paid for it.
Oh thanks, ageist much?
Biden is several years older than Ronald Reagan when he was elected. I think it’s a legitimate concern.
I was teasing about the Walmart remark. However, I think we are past the time of worrying whether a 73, about to be 74 year old, is too old to be president-especially if the proposed VP looks good.
Agree about the age part. It’s the individual brain, not the calendar. Hillary at age 72 should be sharp. Biden was an idiot when he was younger too.
I try not to, especially since I’m older than Hillary and younger than Biden. Still I know which age group WalMart hires as greeters, and it isn’t teenagers or middle agers.:-) Actually I find the WalMart Greeters the only nice touch in the store.
This was an excellent post BB, Thank you!
Thanks. I appreciate that.
This is interesting from the WaPo:
Ah ha! Very interesting.
Thank you for finding that bit of information.
Whooops! Talk your way out of that one, Mr. Biden.
I remember hearing Obama make that comment, but didn’t think to hunt for the source. Thanks BB. Great post.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/paul-ryan-speaker-if-gop-unites-behind-him-214985
I guess he figured out he wasn’t going to be prez this time around.
Urgh. I was hoping to not have to see his face on the news. Well, any of their faces, blathering their ridiculous Save Amurica fur the Rich Job Creators religion.
CNN reporting: “Biden To Make Statement From Rose Garden” and Obama will attend.
MSNBC says it will take place @12:10 pm ET ( now saying it will be “shortly” ).
Biden announces he will not run.
This is what I thought Biden would decide. I wish him and his family best wishes and peace.
FINALLY, he does something that makes sense!!!