Let’s do the Time Warp again…

Posted by: prolixous on: October 21, 2015

• In: Benghazi | Open Thread
• 128 Comments

In preparation for tomorrow’s theater of the absurd at the Benghazi Bijou, I thought some preparation might be helpful given the stakes and the cast of interlocutors.  Since it is theater of the absurd, there will be a complete rejection of reality while embracing fantasy and all the possible contrived catastrophes flowing from it.

In the Rocky Horror Picture Show, there is a line in Time Warp that says, “It’s astounding, time is fleeting, madness takes its toll…”  Madness has indeed taken its toll upon the Republican Party since they have abandoned all manner of logic, fairness, decency, and ethics surrounding the Benghazi events.

There is a time warp caught up in this madness being directed by Trey Gowdy and it is this:  There are two tragic events both carrying the date of September 11th, but they are separated by eleven years and a great gulf of hallucinatory mythology.

Let’s compare the two tragic events.  September 11, 2001, was a singular, unique terrorist event.  Its scope and breadth is unique by all standards associated with terrorism.  It occurred in the financial capital of the world at the crossroads of cosmopolitan civility.  It was foretold by more than a half-dozen intelligence warnings.  The most sophisticated nation on the planet with the most powerful military in the history of mankind could not stop the attack.

September 11, 2012, was one of 501 attacks against U.S. diplomatic facilities between 1998 and 2013.  Those attacks occurred in 70 countries and resulted in the deaths of 586 people, of which 67 were Americans.  During the Bush administration alone there were 166 attacks that killed 116 people, including 18 Americans.  The 2012 attack occurred in a dusty diplomatic outpost some 400 miles from the capital city of a failed nation-state lacking organized law enforcement.

The divergence in the amount of study afforded the two events is staggering.  While there were tertiary studies concerning torture and intelligence, there was only one all-encompassing National Commission empaneled for 9/11.  By contrast, there have been at least eight committees investigating Benghazi.  A single Commission for the most potent and deadly attack on American soil since the Civil War opposed to eight committees to investigate one isolated attack out of 500 similar ones.

Another notable difference between the two events, no one dared fundraise off the September 11, 2001, tragedy.  Conversely, September 11, 2012, has been a gold mine for Republicans.  It seems significant dollars can be ginned up when blame is encapsulated into an ad such as the one aired during the Democratic debate where four dead Americans made accusations from the grave.

That blood money was welcomed until the connections came to light of the various associated players.  Those same dollars became radioactive when it was disclosed Trey Gowdy was the beneficiary of not one, not two, but three donations from the PAC airing the controversial ad.  Even more galling is the treasurer of this gutless, dock-headed PAC was also the treasurer of a fundraising committee personally associated with Gowdy.

Then there’s the money having been spent for this political witch hunt.  The latest incarnation ramroded by Gowdy sports a price tag of $4.5 million.  There have been seven published reports costing additional millions of dollars.  Those reports have been led by nonpartisan notables like former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mike Mullen, Ambassador Thomas Pickering, and Republican House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers.

The Intelligence Committee Report was textbook in its efforts to seek camouflaged obscurity.  While it completely exonerated the Obama administration and in particular, Hillary, how was the report released?  The answer: In a Friday night news dump and in particular, the Friday night before the Thanksgiving week holiday.  While it got little to no coverage, here is what it specifically found:

The CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya.  The report concluded there was no wrongdoing by Obama administration officials.

Debunking a series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies, the two-year investigation determined there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.

Immediately after the attack, intelligence about who carried it out and why was contradictory, the report found. That led Susan Rice, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to inaccurately assert that the attack had evolved from a protest, when in fact there had been no protest.

But it was intelligence analysts, not political appointees, who made the wrong call, the committee found. The report did not conclude that Rice or any other government official acted in bad faith or intentionally misled the American people.

There is one area that the Benghazi Committee dare not study.  You can rest assured there will be no investigation whatsoever into the draconian budget cuts House Republicans made to security at our embassies, consulates, and diplomatic outposts around the world.

One final comparison demonstrating how morally bankrupt this entire process is and has been.  While a random embassy attack could never be foretold with any consistent accuracy, there is an undeniable, unmistakable effect of deliberate, peremptory war.  As has been uncovered, the inevitable march toward the Iraq War began in the very first National Security Council meeting in the first week of the Bush administration.  By some estimates, the lies underpinning that colossal mistake cost a half-million lives and Two Trillion Dollars.

Conversely, the lies associated with the Benghazi weren’t committed prior to or on September 11, 2012.  The lies associated with Benghazi began two years later on May 8, 2014, the day the Special Committee was created.  Those lies will continue tomorrow.

Be not afraid my Widdershin friends because the curtain will eventually come down and the house lights will erase the suspension of belief associated with this fanatical absurdist theater.  Unfortunately, as they sing in Rocky Horror it is too late for the damage already done since the madness has indeed taken its toll.

Enjoy your Wednesday.  Martial your strength for tomorrow and send good energy to Hillary.  Feel free to take this conversation in any direction you might like.

Given the season, here’s the Time Warp video from Rocky Horror for good measure.

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Tags: Benghazi, Benghazi Committee, Hillary Clinton, Mike Mullen, Mike Rogers, Obama, Rocky Horror, theater of the absurd, Thomas Pickering, Time Warp, Trey Gowdy