Trey Gowdy news conference on Benghazi

originally posted by: buster2010
Actually the nitwit admitted the reports were a failure.
Trey Gowdy Just Accidentally Admitted That The House Benghazi Report Is A Total Failure

First... You won't find one post of mine in the entire time that I've been a member that I've used terms like "nitwit", "moron", "idiot", etc... I've also never told another member (& I'm not saying that you have, either that I know of) to "Quit lying." Derogatory terms directed at someone you disagree with not only fail to strengthen your side of the argument, they also have a negative effect on how a percentage of those reading your posts will view you, whether fairly or unfairly.

Second, from your own link:

Gowdy said, “You read the report, and if you think it is an overzealous prosecutor. We mention Secretary Clinton’s named less times than the Democrats do despite the fact the report is twice as long. So I would ask you and all my fellow citizens. Put aside what the Democrats say the report is going to be like. It’s actually out. Read it for yourself, and read all the new information that we found, and what our focus is on. It is not on one person. It’s is on four people whose political ideations. I have no idea what they are.”

That is something that actually was said by Mr. Gowdy. Quoting the negative opinions of a third party doesn't bolster your point of view.

One thing that we Do Know that we wouldn't have if this extra look into what actually went on had never been done is that a survivor that the CIA attempted to keep from testifying got to finally tell of the desperate phone calls that were made trying to arrange evacuation. The clip I saw this afternoon was from CNN and when Mr. Gowdy got to they point where he explained that, rather than what we'd been led to believe, none of the local militias assisted the Americans needing medical evacuation or helped with flights out of the country.

Rather, (and I found this interesting) Mr. Gowdy went on to explain that eventually Libyans who had been supporters of the man [Glitch!!!] helped rescue injured personnel and get them on two planes, one of which was private.

Isn't it just AMAZING that a "Glitch" happened as Mr. Gowdy said the words, "we deposed?" (There is the possibility what didn't come through was even worse considering that, "We came, We saw, He died! Cackle, Cackle, Cackle!)

You probably have nothing to worry about. The sheep can't be bothered with facts and are unlikely to even consider reading anything 800 pages long.

So, unsurprisingly, when the NINTH investigation showed exactly the same conclusions as the previous EIGHT, the Right pivots to "well, it's Obama's fault anyway."

Here's the facts that are not "so new."

1. Republicans have stated, repeatedly, that these investigations were intended to damage Hillary Clinton's political career.

2.

Still, even Gowdy declined to say that the two Americans who died later in the attacks — Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, members of that six-man team — would have lived if the administration showed better coordination. “I’m not going to make a reckless allegation that [they] could have been saved,” Gowdy said. Asked directly if Gowdy thought Americans who read the report should find culpability for Clinton, Gowdy declined to say so. (Source)

3. This insanity lasted longer than the investigations into: 9/11, Pearl Harbor, the Kennedy Assassination. Watergate, and Iran-Contra. THINK ABOUT THAT! (Source)

How afraid are Republicans of one old lady in a pantsuit? Absolutely pee-in-the-pants terrified it seems.

a reply to: Gryphon66

So you dont care how corrupt or bad Hillary is, just that Republicans lose?

originally posted by: StoutBroux

I suggest people quit being lemmings and read the report.

Well, as you copied and pasted this off the first page ... how far have you gotten into the actual report?

a reply to: Gryphon66

For anyone with half a brain, these should have damaged Clinton's career. Her State Dept. was woefully mismanaged and all parties were more concerned with the optics of the situation than the lives on the ground. There were multiple experts who warned the State Dept. repeatedly that Benghazi was a disaster waiting to happen because of the way it was being handled months out from the incident and nothing was done to change that or try to avert anything.

This happened on Clinton's watch.

So the conclusion is that power matters more than people to her and those she will put in power with her. So if you want an administration that cares more for its own power and the perception of what it is rather than the truth, sure this vindicated her.

originally posted by: TheBulk
a reply to: Gryphon66

So you dont care how corrupt or bad Hillary is, just that Republicans lose?

So you don't care what the facts are, what nine investigations have now demonstrated, that Clinton is not at fault and the four Americans could not have been saved ... just that Republicans have one more item on the laundry list to condemn her?

I'll be honest with you, I've listened to 20 odd years of lies from Republicans about the Clintons, so much that it's impossible, truly, to ferret out much of the truth at this point, aside from the fact that you guys will do anything to discredit them.

So at this point, I guess I'd have to say that Hillary must be doing something worthwhile, as she seems to be scaring all the right people.

a reply to: CB328

Being held up Obama, of course.

a reply to: Gryphon66

I said quite a long time ago that it wouldn't matter if these investigations cleared the administration and the SD of any wrongdoing. The Right Wing conspiracy has been created, refined and set in to the minds of the brainwashed.

They desire her to be guilty of something and through that conspiracy, they will twist and weasel around the facts to create and justify guilt in their own minds.

originally posted by: ketsuko
a reply to: Gryphon66

For anyone with half a brain, these should have damaged Clinton's career. Her State Dept. was woefully mismanaged and all parties were more concerned with the optics of the situation than the lives on the ground. There were multiple experts who warned the State Dept. repeatedly that Benghazi was a disaster waiting to happen because of the way it was being handled months out from the incident and nothing was done to change that or try to avert anything.

This happened on Clinton's watch.

So the conclusion is that power matters more than people to her and those she will put in power with her. So if you want an administration that cares more for its own power and the perception of what it is rather than the truth, sure this vindicated her.

Don't even try your lackluster, insipid insults Kets. The State Department was not "mismanaged" any more than any other Administration, and the continual repetition of the lie about "optics" is just that. Your own people have spent MILLIONS to try to land something and you can't. Your own people have stated now NINE TIMES that there was NO WAY to save those people on the ground. It's blatant untruth to claim any different.

Yes, it happened on Clinton's watch. It's a dangerous world. Thank goodness nothing worse happened, eh?

You are going to draw the same tired conclusion that you always do. You don't like Clinton, and that's that.

Good enough. You don't' like Clinton. Whoop-tee-doo. What difference does it make? The fact that this political agenda has drawn this out for four years and found, again, that Hillary Clinton did nothing wrong and that there was no way to save those Americans bares out the blatant truth ... you support a treasonous group of partisan hacks who are terrified of one little old lady.

PPfft.

originally posted by: introvert
a reply to: Gryphon66

I said quite a long time ago that it wouldn't matter if these investigations cleared the administration and the SD of any wrongdoing. The Right Wing conspiracy has been created, refined and set in to the minds of the brainwashed.

They desire her to be guilty of something and through that conspiracy, they will twist and weasel around the facts to create and justify guilt in their own minds.

Yep. It'll be the same when she's "cleared" of any email wrongdoing.

Thing is, the American people are getting more clear every day on the rank failures of the Republican party.

They never learn.

5 Things to Know About It

1. Administration Misled Public Immediately and Continually

Remember the video? How it was all the video that caused the attack? Spontaneous anger?

The report indicates that political considerations were on the minds of State Department officials learning about the attack. Before the Benghazi attack even ended, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland sent an email to two other, high-level Clinton aides, Jacob Sullivan and Phillipe Reines, that noted top Obama aide Ben Rhodes was worried or upset about Mitt Romney’s comments on the attack. As Jordan and Pompeo put it:

"And so on this highly charged political stage — just 56 days before the presidential election — events forced the administration to make a choice about what to tell the American people: Tell the truth that heavily armed terrorists had killed one American and possibly kidnapped a second — and increase the risk of losing the election. Say we do not know what happened. Or blame a video-inspired protest by tying Benghazi to what had occurred earlier in the day in Cairo. The administration chose the third, a statement with the least factual support but that would help the most politically."

Obama’s reelection campaign was a prominent consideration, but Hillary Clinton’s signature policy achievement was her push to invade Libya, so the political ramifications were serious for her as well. As her Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Policy Jacob Sullivan characterized it in 2011, Clinton had “leadership/ownership/stewardship of this country’s Libya policy from start to finish.” Buddy Sidney Blumenthal, who had business interests in Libya, praised Clinton for following his advice on invading Libya and encouraged her to take full credit for the invasion.

Oh, look ... Ben Rhodes ... he's the guy who laughed about how easy the press is to dupe and it seems he had a hand in this narrative too.

Rhodes said, “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns… They literally know nothing.” Thus they will believe what he tells them. He also tells friendly non-governmental organizations and think tanks what he is telling the journalists. Those outlets produce “experts” whose expert opinion is just what Rhodes wants it to be. These ignorant young journalists thus have quotes that look like independent confirmation of the White House’s lies.

You'd think the press would be fed up with getting fooled by Ben by now.

But getting back to it: Clinton went on to tell everyone in the world, except the American public, the truth about what happened in Benghazi: her family, foreign governments, etc., as did many other admin officials.

2. Weak Benghazi Security Points to Clinton’s Political Considerations

According to the summary report, “Some blame the deplorable security conditions in Benghazi on the facility’s ‘made up’ State Department designation. To them, the fact the Department labeled the facility ‘temporary’ excused shortcomings in the compound’s physical security. A ‘temporary’ designation enabled the facility to skirt a host of written internal security requirements that applied to more permanent locations. We also learned it was an improvised designation not used at any of the State Department’s other 275 facilities around the world.”

Did you catch that? Benghazi was given a designation that was unique to it. No other installation in the whole list of 275 had it. It allowed the State Dept. to skirt the rules where security are concerned. I wonder who at State did that and why?

In addition to Ambassador Chris Stevens’ pleas regarding security made before he was killed, Clinton received a memo about the danger of keeping Americans in Benghazi in August 2012. The memo was alarming, for something so bureaucratic. It used words such as “urgency,” “lawlessness,” “unpredictable,” “lack of effective security,” “limited success,” “widespread violence,” and “act with increasing impunity.” Clinton, who was in charge of American policy in Libya, chose not to remove Americans from Benghazi or beef up security.

And on top of the warnings from security experts, Stevens himself begged and pleaded for extra security before the worst happened. You can see the words his memo used. But of course, Hillary cares. She really does. As Libya was one of her babies she pushed for, she cared more for the optics of abandoning the region than a few lives. What difference does it make?!

3. Military Never Sent Men or Machines to Help

I think this has already been covered, but the most relevant point of all is that there was no plan in place to begin with! It's all well and good to say nothing could be done if you had actually tried, but no one made any evacuation plans as if the region were completely stable ... My jaw drops.

Finally, we learned troubling new details about the government’s military response to the attack. Until now the administration has led us to believe the military did not have assets — men or machines — close enough or ready enough to arrive in Benghazi in time to save lives. As one earlier committee put it, ‘given their location and readiness status it was not possible to dispatch armed aircraft before survivors left Benghazi.’ The first asset to arrive in Libya — a Marine ‘FAST’ platoon — did not arrive until nearly 24 hours after the attack began. What is troubling is that the administration never set in motion a plan to go to Benghazi in the first place. It is one thing to try and fail; it is yet another not to try at all. In the end, the administration did not move heaven and earth to help our people in Benghazi, as Americans would expect. The contrast between the heroic actions taken in Benghazi and the inaction in Washington — highlights the failure.

4. Terrorists Weren’t Brought to Justice

I think only 1 person has been caught.

5. Administration Obstructed Investigation

Republicans on the committee reveal that the Obama administration did not cooperate with the investigation but “stonewalled at virtually every turn.” The committee did manage to uncover Secretary Clinton’s breathtaking use of a private email account and server, something no previous investigative or oversight committee had known. But “the White House in particular left large holes in the investigation by denying the Committee access to documents and witnesses.” The Obama administration wouldn’t let the committee speak with anyone who was in the White House Situation Room on the night of the attacks or see the email communication between White House staffers.

We still don't even know where Obama was for the entire 8 hours the attack was in progress and this is part of why. And if the Admin had been more cooperative, perhaps they never would have uncovered the bathroom server. Who knows? Or, even scarier, perhaps the bathroom server is the lesser scandal here.

But the Democrats put out their own report and revealed that Sidney Blumenthal got paid off and they mentioned Donald Trump more often than the victims.

WASHINGTON— Today, a Democratic spokesperson for the Select Committee on Benghazi issued the following statement in response to Republicans’ decision to leak versions of their partisan report to reporters and continue to keep the full report secret from all committee members and the public: “There is a reason Republicans leaked pieces of their report in the middle of the night and continue to hide it from Democrats even now -- they don't want us to fact check it against the evidence we obtained.

Based on press reports, the Republican Benghazi report seems like a conspiracy theory on steroids -- bringing back long-debunked allegations with no credible evidence whatsoever. To this day, the Republicans are still withholding transcripts from Democrats and the American people that contradict their conspiracy theories. Republicans promised a process and report that was fair and bipartisan, but this is exactly the opposite.”

BACKGROUND: Democrats issued their report yesterday along with all the available transcripts so that the American people-- and reporters-- can see the underlying evidence first hand to ensure the accuracy and integrity of our work.

Source

Select Committee on Benghazi - Report of the Democratic Members

Republican Abuses in Benghazi Investigation Scandal
A. Republicans admitted that their purpose in establishing the Select Committee was to attack Secretary Clinton’s candidacy for President. 262

B. Republicans targeted Secretary Clinton from the beginning. 263

C. Republicans proceeded with no Select Committee rules. 264

D. Republicans proceeded with an unlimited timeline and budget. 265

E. Republicans refused to define the scope of their investigation or identify the questions the Select Committee was trying to answer. 266

F. Republicans abandoned their own hearing plan to focus on Secretary Clinton. 267

G. Republicans excluded Democrats from interviews and concealed exculpatory evidence. 268

H. Republicans selectively released Sidney Blumenthal’s emails after proclaiming that “serious investigations” do not make selective releases. 271

I. Republicans subpoenaed Sidney Blumenthal to conduct political opposition research that has nothing to do with the attacks in Benghazi. 273

J. Republicans blocked the release of Sidney Blumenthal’s deposition transcript showing numerous questions about the Clinton Foundation. 276

K. Republicans leaked inaccurate information about Cheryl Mills’ interview, forcing Democrats to release her transcript to correct the public record. 281

L. Republicans began withholding interview transcripts in violation of House rules to retaliate against Democratic efforts to correct the public record. 282

M. Republicans inaccurately accused Secretary Clinton of compromising a covert CIA source. 285

N. Republicans held an 11-hour hearing with Secretary Clinton that was widely condemned even by conservative commentators. 286

O. Republicans inaccurately inflated their interview numbers to counter criticism of their glacial pace. 288

P. Republicans inaccurately claimed the State Department had not provided a single “scrap” of paper. 288

Q. Republicans inaccurately claimed that no other committee had ever received Ambassador Stevens’ emails. 289

R. Republicans issued a unilateral subpoena to retaliate against the Department of Defense for exposing the Select Committee’s abuses. 290

S. Republicans exploited the attacks in Benghazi to raise money for political campaigns. 292

T. Republicans threatened to withhold $700 million in State Department funding supposedly to speed up document production. 294

U. Republicans ignored a letter from 33 current and former U.S. ambassadors explaining how the State Department actually works. 295

V. Republicans abandoned the Select Committee’s final two hearings on improving security. 297

W. Republicans took a costly and unnecessary congressional delegation to Italy and Germany. 299

X. Republicans used taxpayer funds to conduct one of the longest and most partisan congressional investigations in history. 300

Y. Republicans drafted their partisan final report in secret with no input whatsoever from nearly half of the Select Committee’s members. 301

Z. Republicans forfeited any credibility by delaying their report until the eve of the presidential conventions. 302

Source

originally posted by: ketsuko

1. Administration Misled Public Immediately and Continually

President Obama, White House Rose Garden, September 12, 2012, Day After Benghazi Attack -Source - CNN

"No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.

originally posted by: ketsuko

2. Weak Benghazi Security Points to Clinton’s Political Considerations

The Hill, September 18, 2012

House Republicans did not meet the president’s request for the department’s worldwide security protection program, which funds local guards and security enhancements such as bollards to restrict vehicle traffic, according to an aide familiar with the debate. Embassy security, construction and maintenance funding covers structural renovations, such as increasing a building’s distance from a public road and reducing vulnerability to car bombs.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.), who formerly headed the subcommittee with jurisdiction over the State Department, has worked to improve the security of diplomatic facilities since the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. That effort has resulted in the completion of 94 new diplomatic facilities and the transfer of 27,000 people to more secure places, according to a House GOP aide. But the GOP aide acknowledged, “In these tight budget times, the committee has had to make some tough choices to prioritize funding.”

originally posted by: ketsuko

3. Military Never Sent Men or Machines to Help

Huffington Post

Democrats pointed to at least one hearing in 2013 where former-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta admitted that forces did not embark for Benghazi because they could not get there in time, although a six-man embassy security team did arrive from Tripoli, Libya. Still, even Gowdy declined to say that the two Americans who died later in the attacks — Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, members of that six-man team — would have lived if the administration showed better coordination. “I’m not going to make a reckless allegation that [they] could have been saved,” Gowdy said.

originally posted by: ketsuko
4. Terrorists Weren’t Brought to Justice

Benghazi 'mastermind' captured without a single shot fired - CNN -June 17, 2014

Benghazi attack suspect Ahmed Abu Khatallah was watched by U.S. commandos, law enforcement and intelligence for days before his capture, several U.S. officials said Tuesday.

originally posted by: ketsuko
5. Administration Obstructed Investigation

Considering how poorly the investigation was run ... how would anyone know?

Republican Abuses - Special Committee

a reply to: Gryphon66

Ouch.

Well, that kind of turns the tables around just a bit.

a reply to: Gryphon66

Not only did he refuse to blame Clinton, he stated clearly that there is no way those four Americans could have been saved.

There WAS a way to save Stevens, and the others.

Was for Obama not to bring 'freedom and democracy' to Libya.

originally posted by: Wardaddy454

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: Wardaddy454

Well they called a press conference.

They were right there. The cameras were already rolling, and you cannot be telling me that there were not some VERY right wing media people there waiting to hang Clinton like a piñata, and swing like they were at the batting cages later. If one network had failed to carry it, you can bet your last shiny dollar that someone in that room would have been transmitting live till the end of the show.

Your argument seems to have only a little less weight than the report itself, if what we know of its contents so far are anything to go by.

I don't think you understand the MSM climate in America..

the republicans only have themselves to blame....maybe refusing the press credentials of the Washington Post, and threatening other media outlets that they could also lose there press credentials might have something to do with it......the "media" takes seriously the threats to "freedom of the press" in the 1st amendment, just like the NRA takes seriously threats to the 2nd.....

originally posted by: neo96
a reply to: Gryphon66

Not only did he refuse to blame Clinton, he stated clearly that there is no way those four Americans could have been saved.

There WAS a way to save Stevens, and the others.

Was for Obama not to bring 'freedom and democracy' to Libya.

Wow, pickins are getting really slim at this point, eh?

Perhaps Obama should have just stood under a banner on a ship and claimed "Mission Accomplished."