The Benghazi lie.

 “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed.” 
~  Adolf Hitler ~

"It is an unfortunate human trait to look for some kind of moral wrong or legal malfeasance in specific events to incite general public outrage either to benefit someone or to cast aspersion on someone else. Shortly after Republicans won a House majority in the 2010 midterm elections a corrupt Republican, Darrell Issa, promised his only job as chairman of the House Oversight Committee was to have “seven hearings a week, times 40 weeks” investigating the Obama Administration when the 112^th Congress began. Issa was desperate to find a scandal to take down President Obama and has investigated everything from the 2009 federal stimulus program to fabricating President Obama’s part in the scandalous Republican government shutdown two months ago.

Issa has wasted taxpayer time and money for three years looking for Obama Administration scandals he subsequently never found, including the tragic deaths of 4 American diplomats in Benghazi Libya on September 11 2012. Issa’s scandalous investigations aside, it was revealed yesterday that an extensive investigation into the attack on the diplomatic outpost that claimed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three diplomats’ lives found no involvement of al-Qaeda or other international terrorists groups whatsoever like Republicans have claimed for over a year. Instead, the attack was precipitated by, as first reported, extremist Christians in the United States.

A lengthy and comprehensive New York Times investigation informed what Republicans are desperate to keep under wraps because it revealed the Benghazi attack was “accelerated in part by anger at a U.S.-made video denigrating Islam.” The report parroted what any American with half-a-mind has known since Republicans began their relentless propaganda campaign that the Obama administration attempted to cover up al-Qaeda’s alleged role in the attack. According to the chairman of the House Intelligent Committee, Republican Mike Rogers, who kept the al-Qaeda meme alive last month on Fox News, “It was very clear to the individuals on the ground that this was an al-Qaeda-led event.”

However, according to the Times, “The only intelligence connecting Al Qaeda to the attack was an intercepted phone call that night from a participant in the first wave of the attack to a friend in another African country who had ties to members of Al Qaeda. But when the friend heard the attacker’s boasts, he sounded astonished and had no prior knowledge of the assault.” The report said militants surveyed the U.S. compound at least 12 hours before the assault started, but “the violence also had spontaneous elements fueled in large part by anger at the (anti-Islam) video that motivated the initial attack.” It is important to note that the video, titled “Innocence of Muslims,” was made by an American and “had also prompted protests for hours the day before at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.”

The report continued that “Dozens of people (in Benghazi) joined in, some of them provoked by the video and others responding to fast-spreading false rumors that guards inside the American compound had shot Libyan protesters.” According to a suspect who denied participating in the attack, “the video insulting the Prophet Mohammed might well have justified the killing of four Americans.”

Still, Congressional Republicans continue to assert that Stevens and three diplomats died in a carefully planned assault by al-Qaeda because they sought to undermine President Obama’s claim that al-Qaeda was decimated after killing its leadership including Osama bin Laden. Republicans assailed Susan E. Rice for announcing that based on early intelligence reports; the attacks were inspired by “spontaneous street protests that got out of hand as a result of the video denigrating the prophet Mohammed.” Susan Rice was mercilessly condemned by leading Republicans for allegedly lying about the attacks that led her to withdraw her name from consideration as President Obama’s Secretary of State." [More]

I think blaming American Christians for the attacks- like the author of the article- is a bridge too far, but clearly republicans went on a fishing expedition and there was nothing in the lake.

They should have quit while they were ahead.

And while they focus on a tragedy thousands of miles away in a land known for tragedies, children are being accidentally killed here at home by weapons of destruction that are made too easily available because they choose to turn a blind eye to the obvious.

09-11-11

"You remember that morning, a Tuesday. You remember the weather being too perfect, if such a state exists, the brilliant blue, cloudless, postcard sky, the September day of dreams.

You remember that morning, and all that came after, the volcanic smoke, the fires, the torrent of ash, the deaths.

In minutes, Lower Manhattan was transformed into Dresden, the Pentagon into a battered fort; a field near Shanksville, Pa., became a scorched grave.
You remember because the horror was replayed over and over, on video and in memory, analyzed, debated, manipulated, interpreted, abused.

Everything about that morning, and almost all that came after, was characterized by speed: the planes crashing, the buildings falling, the deaths mounting, the rush to a wrongheaded costly war.

Has there ever been a moment so swiftly memorialized? Has there ever been a tragedy - immediate, brutal, and universally shared at record velocity - that so perfectly mirrors its times?

There were astonishing acts of bravery and kindness, yet stupid things were said, and dumber things were done. Sept. 11 represented the death of irony, and defined bravery and cowardice. The moment was used to explain all. The day marked the end of the old America, said more than one person, a day that changed everything.

Conspiracy theories proliferated. Saddam Hussein was connected, as was Niger yellowcake. Torture was defended. Wars were launched. Homeland Security entered our lives. Also, color-coded threat levels and duct tape.
Fear became the new contagion, and anti-Arab sentiment exploded. Travel, long synonymous with freedom and velocity, became neither.

Statements and acts were executed in haste while people were still wounded, angry, confused. The day has been repeatedly politicized, appropriated, and misappropriated, all with astonishing alacrity.

The Manhattan memorial to Sept. 11 will be dedicated Sunday, a decade after the tragedy. The Martin Luther King Memorial was dedicated last month, 43 years after King's murder.

In the midst of a lumbering recession, partially caused by the punishing cost of two wars launched in the urgency to do something, Manhattan developers rushed to rebuild skyscrapers, an emotional but fiscally unsound impulse. There's a paucity of tenants, and taxpayers are subsidizing $11 billion worth of government-sponsored projects.

Artists and historians often require decades to filter history, the distance and time necessary for thoughtful interpretation. We're still distilling Vietnam, and both world wars. We may never recover from slavery and the rifts of the Civil War.

But the need to interpret Sept. 11 was immediate, a rush to judgment. The day became a symbol before the fires were extinguished.

A decade later, we have a vast trove of theater, movies, music, art, and fiction, and an exhausting amount of journalism. There is no end in sight.

Much of where we are today is because of what happened on that morning, but grief, shock, anger, fear, and loss, all reactions to that moment, take their toll.
Reflection, silence, and patience are needed for greater insight.

Now, because we maul any anniversary, we're experiencing Sept. 11 overload. The tributes and memories are a necessary support for many people, but we need to take a break.

We think we know what happened. I argue that the consequences are still playing out, and our understanding will come only later." [Article]

Karen, like most most of us, I remember exactly where I was on that day: A conference in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, just hours from where United Flight 93  went down. I was up early and ready to play a round of golf, and as I waited for my playing partners in the hotel lobby, I started watching as one plane, and then next, flew into the World Trade Center. It all went downhill from there. Shock. Horror. Disbelief. I remember calling the Mrs. to make sure that she was alright, but I don't even remember what I said.

So, here we are, ten years later. And all the promises of unity and coming to together have been broken. One could argue that an unnecessary war to hold on to power which half of us disagreed with, and the other half supported, is the reason that those feelings after September 11 faded so quickly. I couldn't disagree with that. In fact, it seems that we are even more divided now than we were before that tragic day.

If you are one of the leaders of Al-Qaeda hiding in Pakistan somewhere, what are you thinking? That you won? That you succeeded with your mission? Or that America took your best shot and is back; bigger and better than ever?

Actually, the true "consequences" of that day will probably depend on what is going through the mind of those men and their supporters.

I am with Karen Heller; it's still too early to tell.