To begin with, an aside. I wrote all this last night and in the final minute before publishing Internet Explorer closed down with a crash! Cue: demented old Englishman frothing at the mouth, leaping about like a Dervish in a hornets nest with a stream of filth issuing forth from his lips! However, this morning all is calm and peaceful - and it had bloody well better stay that way!
Now, a couple of days ago 'The Kraut' in The National Review issued a stern injunction to Rep. Trey Gowdy (R), the man chosen to lead the special committee of enquiry into the Benghazi atrocity:
The select committee will be headed by Representative Trey Gowdy, a skilled 16-year prosecutor. He needs to keep the hearings clean and strictly fact-oriented. Questions only, no speechifying. Every sentence by every GOP committee member must end with a question mark. Should any committee Republican instead make a statement ending in a period, the chairman should immediately, by button, deliver an electric shock through the violator’s seat.
That is absolutely spot on! I always think our MPs are totally useless as interrogators as they waffle endlessly around the point whilst trying to score cheap political points but they are nothing when compared to US Congressmen (and women) who are the biggest collection of blowhards you could ever wish to avoid! I know where-of I write because I watch them on 'Farx Noos' from time to time - well, my social life isn't up to much, you see - and no crucial point ever passes their flapping gobs that is not either missed or ignored. Oddly enough though, I do remember Rep. Gowdy, not just because he stuck to the point but because, with his spiky hair and thin-lips, he looked like a demented ferret. I hope and pray that he sinks his teeth into his forthcoming victims and does not let go.
So, you may be wondering, if you haven't already decided that filling in your tax return is a better way to spend your time than reading this, what is so important about yet another enquiry into the Benghazi affair, particularly as 'The Kraut' only a few weeks ago had advised the Republicans to drop the subject because it was obvious that the stone wall erected by the White House was proving to be impervious and anyway 'The Great American People' didn't give a rat's arse - er, my words, not his! However, he has been proven wrong - and great chap that he is, he admits it - because persistent action through the courts has at last produced a 'smoking' e-mail:
We’ve already seen what a single piece of new evidence can do in reviving
interest in a story that many (including me) thought the administration had
successfully stonewalled. The “PREP CALL with Susan [Rice]” e-mail from Ben
Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser, was withheld eight months until
revealed by court order. It advises the U.N. ambassador to focus on an
anti-Islam Internet video, thus contradicting the perennial White House claim
that Rice’s blame-the-video five-show fable came just from
intelligence-community talking points and not from a White House in full
campaign mode.
Now the Republicans, at last, have a foothold - hence the formation of a House Select Committee and so worried are the Democrats that they are threatening to boycott it. Once they can get these apparatchiks on the stand and under oath we will see whether they are prepared to risk all in defending (= lying) a President who is already on the way out. But, as 'The Kraut' insists, the questioning must be forensic, not political, and he lays out the three areas to be explored:
The areas of inquiry are obvious. They are three: before, during, and after.
Before:
Where and to what extent was there dereliction of duty as memos, urgent pleas, and mounting evidence of danger were ignored and the U.S. ambassador allowed to enter a deathtrap?
During:
What happened during the eight hours of the Benghazi attack, at the end of which the last two Americans (of four) were killed by mortar fire? Where was the commander-in-chief and where was the responsible Cabinet secretary, Hillary Clinton? What did they do?
The White House acts as if these are, alternatively, either state secrets or of no importance.
For President Obama, we have three data points. At 5 p.m. EDT, he is briefed on the attack by the secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
At around 8 p.m., Obama spends an hour on the phone with Benjamin Netanyahu to tamp down a breaking, politically injurious story that Obama had snubbed the Israeli prime minister. The White House then issues a readout saying the two leaders had agreed there had been no snub.
So the White House is engaged in campaign damage control quite literally in the middle of the Benghazi events — at a time when Ambassador Chris Stevens is still missing and the final firefight that killed two other Americans is still three hours away. We’ve just learned that Obama was not in the Situation Room that night. Then where, doing what?
We know, finally, that at 10 p.m. Obama called Clinton to get an update. What did they discuss, decide, order?
As former prosecutor Andrew McCarthy has pointed out, a half-hour later, State issued a statement deploring the video, setting the premise for the video excuse. Were Obama and Clinton working on a cover story — even before Glen Doherty had joined Tyrone Woods on the roof of the CIA annex where they were to die minutes later?
Yes, that’s speculation. Well, then, give us facts. After all, the White House provided a cascade of hagiographic facts about Obama’s involvement in the Osama bin Laden raid. Yet regarding Benghazi — the most serious operational challenge of his presidency — he is nowhere to be seen.
After:
We now know the White House was pushing the “video made them do it” cover-up, lest the blame be placed on administration policy. Who was involved in that decision, obviously designed to protect a president campaigning that al-Qaeda was “on the run”?
The impeachment of President Obama is a dream too far, and anyway, as I wrote earlier, he's already yesterday's man. However, tomorrow's woman, 'HillBilly', is a prime target. She intends to run for the presidency in 2016 and her screechy, callous outburst at a previous hearing on Capitol Hill - "What difference at this point does it make?" - will undoubtedly feature heavily in Republican TV ads during the campaign. As Secretary of State at the time, and as today more facts come to light, she has some very tough questions to answer on her own conduct during the murderous assault on one of her own consulates, to say nothing of her part in the cover-up and in absenting herself from media questioning.
So, young Gowdy, go to it - but listen carefully to what 'Uncle Kraut' tells you!
