The right-wing is panicked. They have spent the better part of the last five years extolling the virtues of both Bill and Hillary Clinton in their attempts to belittle President Obama by comparison.
It did not work. President Obama won a resounding reelection victory, adding seats in both the House and the Senate.
And, in the process, the right-wing has created what for them is a monster -- a potential presidential run by Hillary Clinton, enjoying the adulations of the world and the American people, immunized against right-wing hogwash.
So, the media needs another food-fight story, and, if there is no real one, just allow themselves to be sucked in by right-wing propaganda.
Hence, Benghazi. Again.
One must hand it to the right-wing. They certainly know how to lather a story so that words and events get so mixed up that everyone forgets simple matters such as time, causes and effects.
The right-wing would have us believe that that Ambassador Susan Rice's initial statements, that she reiterated were preliminary, caused the deaths of four Americans. Former Governor, now Fox entertainment host, Mike Huckabee, who is supposedly a minister and ought to have some responsibility to his Lord to tell the truth, said that the Watergate cover-up did not result in any deaths, but that four people died at Benghazi.
Huh? Four people died from the alleged cover-up that occurred, if it occurred at all, after the event?
Watergate is the wrong analogy anyhow. More like Whitewater -- $70M of taxpayers' money to find a stain on a blue dress.
And yet, without stopping for a moment to realize how ridiculous this entire premise is, the lamestream media itself is asking about "impeachment" as if the president had violated a law.
Just for perspective, here are some recent impeachable offenses:
1.George W. Bush lied us into the Iraq War. 4,600 Americans died, and ~10 times that many were gravely wounded. At least 100,000 Iraqis lost their lives. This was a series of deliberate lies, with false stories placed in newspapers that the administration then quoted as if they were independently discovered.
George W. Bush lied not only to the American people, but also to Congress. He certified that:
(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and (2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
There was no threat to the national security of the United States from Iraq, and Iraq had nothing to do with the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. [Indeed, every one should pause here for a moment. Remember how Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld kept insisting that they never actually-really-truly-consciously-deliberately-specifically-directly-explicitly linked 9/11 with Iraq? Here it is, my fellow Americans, in black and white, in a certification Bush signed and sent to Congress].
2.Ronald Reagan violated U.S. law first in illegally selling arms to Iran, and then in using that money to arm the Contras in Nicaragua in violation of the Boland Amendment. The enterprise included mobster money launderers and numbered Swiss bank accounts to complete the transactions.
3.Ronald Reagan violated U.S. law (the Solarz Amendment) by not reporting to Congress when he knew that Pakistan was developing a nuclear bomb (aka, the "Islamic Bomb"), and by funneling military aid to Pakistan while he knew this nuclear development was occurring.
Now, those are some serious infractions of the United States Constitution, the president's duty to faithfully execute the laws and damaged to the security of the United States. Yet, nary a peep from the media about impeachment in any of those cases.
What about the allegations of Benghazi "cover-up"? It is a clever ruse, because countless examples suggest the act is not as bad as the cover-up. The problem with that formulation is that there has to be something to cover up in the first place. So, throwing around the "cover-up" allegation suggests there really is something to cover up.
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that words were removed or changed from the initial reports of the events that night in order to manage the damage it might have done to the president's re-election campaign. (More likely: changed to protect admission that we had CIA in Libya). Within a few weeks, the information became more accurate.
OK, and.... What is the huge issue? Ambassador Rice repeated at each of her interviews that the information was preliminary and could change.
Long before the election, it did.
Compare for its calamitous impact, for example, the famous "16 words" in President Bush's 2003 state of the union stating that British intelligence had learned that Saddam Hussein had tried to purchase uranium in Niger. The CIA had taken the words out because they had grave doubts about their accuracy. Someone put it back in. We still await the mea culpa.
On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being cataclysmic and 1 being of small consequence, one would have to conclude that the "16 words" was a 9.8 or 10, and the words changed/removed on the first report about Benghazi were about a 0.1 that then declines to 0 when the more accurate information was publicized in less than a few weeks.
Perhaps memory fades, but I do not recall John McCain (R-AZ) or Darrell Issa (R-CA) or Lindsey Graham (R-SC) getting at all exercised about the outright lie that was used to scare the American people and Congress into voting for war.
John, Darrell, Lindsey... am I wrong? Did you get the country lathered about George W. Bush's outright lie?
And, of course, the latest joke is Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney accusing anyone of incompetence, lying or of not heeding intelligence warnings is like Attilla the Hun complaining that others trampled his newly-seeded lawn.
The right-wing is trying to do to Hillary Clinton what it did to Susan Rice. Because the lamestream media is so pathetic, they will aid and abet this nonsense. Makes for a good food-fight.
It won't work.