Why Benghazi doesn't matter as much as they want it to

There's a video that's making the rounds, by a guy named Bill Whittle, who is something of a tool; he's worked for conservative groups such as Pajama's Media, the National Review and Fox "News" (all of which, you might notice, are openly anti-Obama). But let's not attack the messenger - let's look at his message.


First of all, he is wrong from his opening statement. Benghazi isn't irrelevant, but it is, in fact, both trivial and a witch hunt. In his efforts to make the president look bad, he commits both the sins of omission and commission - he lies, and he ignores any facts that he finds inconvenient.

For example, Whittle tries to ignore the fact that attacks on American embassies overseas have gone on for years, by using a fascinatingly cherry-picked graphic which refers to ten attacks and sixty people dead. As Politifact has pointed out, there have been 39 attacks or attempted attacks on US embassies and embassy personnel during Bush the Younger's reign.

Of these attacks, 20 resulted in at least one death. But even if you only count attacks on embassies or consular property, you still get thirteen incidents with fatalities, not the ten he claims.

If you count fatalities from the 20 attacks, the death toll was 87 people; only if you restrict yourself to the 13 attacks on embassy personnel on embassy ground does the number of deaths drop to 66. So he was only off by 10%, right?

But that kind of margin of error is OK, in Whittle's world. Because apparently none of those deaths matter, whether they were American or not.

He makes the claim that "It is not the responsibility of the US State Department and the President of the United States to protect the lives of foreign nationals, no matter how tragic or common these attacks may be. Their job is to protect American citizens and especially Consular personnel living abroad."

That, in and of itself, is complete and utter bullshit. If a person contracts to work for the US State Department, then that person is then under the protection of the State Department, whether they are American, Iraqi, or Dutch refugees to Lichtenstein. They have agreed to work for the United States, so the United States is obligated to keep them as safe as possible.

(On top of which, it's adorable how he refers to "the responsibility of the US State Department and the President of the United States." Because the President himself should strap on a gun and personally fight the terrorists, like Harrison Ford in Air Force One. Sorry guys: just because Bush slipped into a flight suit and codpiece, he was no action hero.)

Even if Whittle is only concerned about American deaths, why is it that he only mentions one diplomat (David Foy) by name? Why doesn't he talk about Edward J. Seitz, the first State Department employee killed in Iraq? What about Jim Mollen, U.S. Embassy senior consultant? What about any of the other Americans killed?

Because they don't fit the narrative he wants to present.

Whittle presents a long and convoluted "timeline," which he apparently thinks proves that the Obama administration covered up the fact that this was a terrorist attack, and that they lied by blaming everything on an American-made online video.

What poor little Bill Whittle couldn't count on was the fact that within a week of his putting out this web-only episode of the Firewall, that same Obama administration that he hates (or more accurately, the US special forces that he masturbates over) would capture Ahmed Abu Khattala, the mastermind behind the Benghazi attack. And Abu Khattala told everyone who would listen that he had planned the attack as retaliation for that same insulting video.

It was a terrorist attack. AND it was due to the video in question. Just because you don't like facts, Mr Whittle, you don't get to ignore them. Life is more complex than you want to admit.

Incidentally, though, the special forces who captured Abu Khattala? They were working for the US military. Which, by the way, is headed by the Commander-in-Chief, President Barack Obama. If he was personally responsible for the response to the attack on Benghazi, then he is equally responsible for the capture of the terrorist Ahmed Abu Khattala. And the death of Osama Bin Laden. And untold other successful attacks on terrorists and their strongholds. You have to be consistent in these things, after all: if you're going to give him the blame when things go wrong, you also have to give him the credit when things go right.

On a side note, Whittle also wants to bring up the claim that Obama skipped the daily intelligence briefings leading up to the attack. This is a popular narrative with the Benghazi Birthers. It's based on an opinion piece published in the Washington Post, which claimed that Obama skips most of them.

Unfortunately, that's the difference between an opinion piece and an article. The WaPo fact checker eventually had to weigh in on the subject; he pointed out that Obama gets his Presidential Daily Briefing in writing every day. Bush wasn't a strong reader, so he preferred to get it in person. Every president has gotten their briefing differently: Reagan skipped his briefings 99% of the time.

(While we're on the subject, should we mention the Presidential Daily Briefing of August 6, 2001? The one that was completely ignored, entitled "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US"? No. No, we shouldn't; that could be considered "using the deaths of Americans for political purposes," couldn't it?)

And finally, in his efforts to lay all of the blame for the failure in embassy security on the President, Whittle completely ignores the fact that Congress, in votes led by 100% of the congressional Republicans, voted to cut nearly $300 million dollars from the US Embassy security budget. Money that might have been used in increase their security, and could have saved the lives of all of the people killed in Benghazi.

So overall, this video ignores the facts completely, in an effort to attack the President of the United States. The only truth that we can get from this video is that Bill Whittle is a dishonest douchebag, who should be ignored by any patriotic American citizen. And by anybody with a basic grasp of logic.

Such are all their wicked works, and there is no truth in them.

Although most Democrats already know that most Republicans are, as a group, pathological lying sacks of shit, perhaps it will be the government shutdown that brings this fact into focus for most of America.

I doubt it - much of the country is blinded by partisan hatred of our president, and the many of the rest will stick with the "both sides do it" cop-out. But a guy can hope, right?

This tiny-minded Koch-sucking group of overwhelmingly Caucasian males has, for the most part, stopped even trying to tell the truth, because they know that any lie they tell will be twisted by a compliant press to extract what few grains of reality might have accidentally been included.

Alternatively, when there isn't a passing relationship with the truth in whatever ignorant statement they vomited up, Fox "News" and the right-wing blogs will simply repeat it over and over, louder. And through sheer repetition, the hope is that the inbred paste-eaters making up their "base" will come to believe it anyway.

And sadly, this tactic all too often works.

The GOP has turned the act of making ridiculous untruths a standard move in their playbook. They've been lying about the Affordable Care Act for so long, and in such idiotic ways, that they can't even make lucid arguments any more. They just devolve into random spewings of illegitimate talking points and mindless babble.

These "fiscal conservatives" who are so worried about passing along the costs to our children? They're costing the country $300 million per day that the government is shut down.

John Boehner's latest mantra is that he won't even allow reopening the government to come to a vote, because it couldn't pass. Which is an open and blatant lie, as just a little math will tell you. But it doesn't matter. Why would Boehner want to allow the government to reopen? There is ample evidence that the GOP has been trying to shut down the government since at least 2010.

The GOP has lied about the Affordable Care Act so hard, and for so long, that the drooling illiterati don't even know what they want any more. In poll after poll, they show that they support every aspect of Obamacare; they just hate anything named "Obamacare." This is so universal that late night comedians can create viral videos around the concept.



One of the GOP's current talking points is that Obamacare must be defeated because it was "rammed through in the middle of the night without a single Republican vote." Which, of course, ignores an entire year of committee meetings, and dozens of compromises and changes to make it palatable to the Republicans who joined in voting for it.

But the brightest zit on the GOP nose, the puddle of puke that they keep returning to, is "he won't meet with us." Which is eyeball-meltingly stupid. He's met with them multiple times - he just hasn't caved in to their demands. Because you don't negotiate with terrorists.

In fact, that's probably the one fact that's driving them into the most stroke-inducing paroxysms of rage. Obama has been compromising and negotiating with them for so long that, now that he's standing firm on a position, they don't know what to do.

So they've shut down the government, after planning on it for so long. And now that they've done it, they don't even know what they actually want. The few who realize that defunding "Obamacare" is a losing proposition don't care. Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind) accidentally let slip the fact that they really don't care about the American people any more - they govern with the calm logic of a six-year-old throwing a temper tantrum. "We're not going to be disrespected. We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is."

The lunatics have taken over the asylum. They've taken their hostages and are screaming about what they're going to do to them. It may be time to reactivate Seal Team Six.

Logic 101

Let's say it's because the truth hurts, but I really hate to be taken for stupid by people who don't know me from Adam. I would at least prefer to be given the opportunity to say or do something to prove it.

So they tried to take me for a fool last night. When my Caller ID screen flashed "Opinion Poll"  I was suspicious.  It didn't say something like Zogby or any name I would recognize, so I paused the TV and picked it up hoping to have an opportunity to express my displeasure at the illegally late hour.  I soon detected that "David" from the "polling company" was actually a computer. Didn't take any Holmesian deduction really.  If the Voice on the phone does not stumble or pause at my assertions as to his oedipal relationships it's likely that old Dave is a new Dell.

But I went along, hoping to have my shot, answering that yes, I was going to vote, yes I was certain I was going to vote, am a registered Democrat and no I wasn't going to risk divine retribution by voting for some tin horn torturer  like Allen "deport the commies" West,  but noticing that the questions all compared the Republican Party with the "Democrat" Party, I began to lose patience.

You probably aren't old enough to remember how easy it was to determine political polarity by noting how the speaker pronounced Vietnam. It rhymed with Pete Ham if you were for the glorious crusade to protect American freedom.  Curiously, the same dialect discrimination obtained with our invasion of Iraq.  If it was Eye-wrack, you were for it.  But these chuckleheads can't bring themselves to acknowledge the Democratic Party by saying it right and they're too smugly stupid to notice that I might notice. They always and steadfastly and in the face of cannon fire, call it the 'Democrat' Party. 

But I digress. One might expect a careless listener of some intelligence to miss this point, but when Digital Dave asked whether my preference might lie with the Republican plan to create jobs, build prosperity and bring on a new dawn of American world domination in Jesus' name amen, by getting rid of crippling business regulation and those unnecessarily Marxist corporate taxes --- or whether I might somehow, perhaps accidentally, make the thoughtless mistake of  destroying the fabric of the space-time continuum by letting the top bracket rise to the point where Ronald Reagan shocked us by lowering it -- and voting for the Democrat agenda?

So would you vote for peace and prosperity or for disaster?

Somewhere in a primary school class where they teach basic reasoning skills; ( they do do that, don't they?) or somewhere in the beginning pages of Logic for Dummies, there must be mention of forced choice questions. No, I don't have advanced degrees and my Greek doesn't exist. My first grade teacher thought I was not first grade material and I only had three years of calculus in College, but really.  If this reeks of stupid even to me, is this the best these bozos can do?

 Somewhere in Hell, just south of the place reserved for cannibals and mass murderers there's a parking spot with a nice tin sign that reads:  THIS SPOT RESERVED FOR THE TREASONOUS BASTARDS AT ELKHURST COMMUNICATIONS.

PS:

 I posted this to Human Voices last week and although I sent an extremely and obnoxiously aggressive e-mail and a complaint to the FCC, they keep calling me and calling me and of course they'll keep doing it and no government agency will ever do anything to stop the lies or the intrusion. The bastards.