Thursday, May 09, 2013

Gnawing on the Benghazi Bone

In his 1950s heyday, Sen. Joe McCarthy snagged headlines with committee hearings on questions ranging from trivial (“Who promoted Peress?” an Army dentist in New Jersey) to global (“Who lost China?”). The subject was never the point. Uncovering “plots” and “traitors” was.

Darrell Issa is taking us back to that era. No doubt mistakes were made during the chaos of four American deaths in Benghazi, as they almost always are when there are no clear battle lines or enemies, but like McCarthy, Issa is on a mission of prosecution, not investigation.

Now John Boehner, sniffing political paydirt, joins the hunt by calling for release of White House e-mails to breathe new life into an attack on Obama’s reelection and a pre-emptive strike against Hillary Clinton in 2016—-a demagogic twofer if there ever was one.

Prosecutorial slickness has been upgraded since McCarthy’s days of blurting conflicting estimates of Communists in the State Department. Instead of a low-rent hack, we have Issa, the richest man in Congress who is smooth enough to banter regularly with Bill Maher despite iffy Wiki bread crumbs about his own past while amassing a fortune from car alarms.

With help from new aspirants like Marco Rubio and the old team of John McCain and Lindsey Graham, the GOP will wring the Benghazi sponge dry in media that still sees equivalency in two sides of every political argument without weighing their merits.

 In coming days, hearings will continue to produce a string of what blogger Kevin Jones calls “Nothingburgers” while hinting at deep dark plots. Those with long memories will recall that Joe McCarthy eventually ran out of prosecutorial gas and was censured by the Senate.

But his spirit lives on.


6 comments:

GrammaX4 said...

As a US citizen I want (and need) to know why the White House for days and days said the Benghazi disaster was a result of a You Tube video when they knew--THEY KNEW damn well it was a terrorist attack....and why the Administration refused to send help for those at the Embassy. And why don't YOU want to know that too? If GW Bush had been President, everyone at the NYT would have been on this disgraceful episode of incompetence.....and that's one thing you DO know. Appalling accompices to this debacle.

Anonymous said...

GrammaX4, well stated. What is the White House afraid of? Oh...perhaps they need privacy - to ward off the truth.

Anonymous said...

let me guess...you identify with the democrat party? Isn't it the job of our congress to know why Rice misled us on countless occasions?

Anonymous said...

paranoia is scary

Lois

GRCOH said...

Go Gramma. No really, just go.

John said...

How about explaining why 15 are dead and 100 injured in a West Texas fertilizer plant that hasn't been inspected since 1985.

Talk about a disgraceful episode of incompetence..