Only three weeks ago, American voters solidly backhanded the Republican Party. It's already clear that the Republicans aren't chastened by President Obama's 51% to 47% reelection victory, or the Democratic Party gains in the House and Senate. For the Democrats, it's good news if the GOP can find no reason to correct what isn't working for it, and it's bad news, too.
Being wrong about everything is the only thing that Republicans are getting right. As a minor example, take the words that fell out of Senator Lindsey Graham’s mouth today.
Here’s what I can tell you: The American people got bad information on 16th September. They got bad information from President Obama days after. And the question is should they have been giving the information at all? If you can do nothing but give bad information, isn’t it better to give no information at all. So my belief is not only is the information bad – and I’m more convinced than ever that it was bad – it was unjustified to give the scenario as presented by Ambassador Rice and President Obama three weeks before an election.
Sheesh Graham! Can’t you get anything right? Ambassador Susan Rice’s appearance on the Sunday morning talk shows last September 16th was seven weeks before the election, not three weeks. You criticized the accuracy of what she said and you can't even get your own story straight. Why did you change the length of time between her interviews and the election from seven weeks to three weeks, anyway? What was your agenda?
This is what happens when you decide to parse the words of your political opponents. Someone may decide to return the favor. What did Ambassador Rice say, anyway, that would make anyone imagine the Obama administration handled the Benghazi incident incorrectly?
Nothing!
Outrage junkies in the Republican party may be too high on the Spinghazi nontroversy to see that they’ve headed down a blind alley. They’ve been wrong before and they’ll be wrong again.
Out of Ambassador Rice's appearances on September 16, I chose the transcript from "Face the Nation" because Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf and Graham’s partner in outrage, Sen. John McCain, also appeared on the show that day. The transcript is below.
In considering what Ambassador Rice said and what she should have said, what she knew and what she should have known, the Benghazi attack could be compared to an attack on the US Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan on March 2, 2006. After that attack which killed David Foy, a member of the US diplomatic corps, it took almost a year for an investigation to determine that Al Qaeda was involved. The Karachi consulate had been attacked in 2002, 2003 and 2004, too, but there was no outrage about the lack of security or precautionary measures there in 2006 when Foy was killed.
Here's an excerpt from the New York Times:
KARACHI, Pakistan, Feb. 22 — The suicide bombing that killed an American diplomat here last March, just before a visit by President Bush, was organized by a small cell of Pakistani militants and masterminded by an operative of Al Qaeda based in the Pakistan’s tribal areas, Pakistan says. The charge is being made by Pakistani officials as they present evidence — the result of months of investigations by the police, assisted by F.B.I. investigators — at the trial of two men accused in the plot.
The aftermath of a suicide car bombing in Karachi, Pakistan, that killed a United States diplomat on March 2, 2006
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