One of the tried-and-true tactics that both political parties use to bury news they don’t really want getting to the public is the release of information late in the day before the weekend starts. This catches the public when their attention on political matters is waning for the week and doesn’t allow for the information to be debated in the usual news cycle like it normally would. 
Last Friday was no different when the House of Representatives Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, headed by Republicans, released its findings on the 7th investigation into the attacks on Benghazi, Libya, late in the afternoon. And the reason they released it then: it debunks most of their common arguments about the attacks, particularly their attacks on the Obama administration.
So, since they buried it on Friday, it’s worth bringing attention back to it on Monday. Here’s a summary of the main highlights. The quotes are directly taken from the report.
- There was not an intelligence failure. Specifically, the Intelligence Community “did not have specific, tactical warning of the September 11 attacks”.
- All U.S. personnel involved did their jobs correctly and no stand down order was ever given. “Appropriate U.S. personnel made reasonable tactical decisions that night, and the Committee found no evidence that there was either a stand down order or a denial of available air support”.
- Al Qaeda was involved but not the only persons/groups committing the attacks. (Remember, there were two different attacks at two different sites.)
- Susan Rice didn’t lie and, therein, neither did the administration about the protest. Period. “The CIA only changed its initial assessment about a protest on September 24, 2012, when closed caption television footage became available on September 18, 2012 (two days after Ambassador Susan Rice spoke), and after the FBI began publishing its interviews with U.S. officials on the ground on September 22, 2012″.
