The Senate intelligence committee made headlines this week by reporting that the 2012 attack in Benghazi was preventable. But frankly, we knew that. The deeper message of the bipartisan report was that Republicans in Congress wasted a year arguing about what turned out to be mostly phony issues. [snip]
The Republican tirades about Benghazi were unfortunate not just because they were based on erroneous speculation but also because they distracted policymakers from the real challenge of framing coherent policy in the Middle East. Sometimes, it seemed as if Benghazi finger-pointing was the only issue that leading Republicans cared about.In between the selected paragraphs above, Ignatius indicates how the (bi-partisan) Senate report refuted more than a year's worth of Republican witch-hunting and character assassination, led by the execrable Rep. Darrell "Grand Theft Auto" Issa (R-Arson). What Ignatius omits is the "why," i.e., the real issue "leading Republicans cared about." Let's fill in that blank for him in two words: Hillary Clinton.
The minute Barack Obama became a lame duck President, Republicans shifted their strategic focus to roughing up the strongest Democratic contender for 2016: Hillary Clinton. It must have scared the bejezus out of Fox "News" (GOP-TV) that Clinton was leading every potential Republican contender by double digits, hence their drumbeat of "coverup!" that began the year-long obsession:
Driving the Republican jihad was a claim, first reported in October 2012 by Fox News, that CIA personnel had wanted to respond more quickly to the Benghazi attack but were ordered to “stand down,” perhaps by political higher-ups. Although this claim was promptly rebutted by CIA officials, it was repeated by Fox News at least 85 times, according to a review by the liberal advocacy group Media Matters. This barrage fueled Republican charges that the Democrats were engaging in a coverup.They might need to manufacture a new diversion, though, because Hillary's lead over her closest Republican rival, once-Great White
