Benghazi: What's the Charge Again?

[DeistPaladin]

Either way...you shouldn't be shocked stunned or amazed they are being called out for it....and they should.

I'm not shocked, stunned or amazed. This is the Clinton playbook, dusted off for a new administration. It is as predictable as it is transparent.

I'm underwhelmed.

If I have to explain why, understand these acts of calling out come from the same people who shushed me throughout the entire W Bush administration regarding W's war in Iraq. Centrists told me I was being "shrill" and "rude" in saying the president lied us into a war. Right wingers shrieked I was being treasonous. "How dare you harshly criticize a sitting president during a time of war?"

The mainstream media in the aftermath of "Mission Accomplished" established a strict moratorium on the words "lie" or "liar". Anyone who used these words was to be immediately marginalized and condemned as a petulant and irresponsible verbal bomb thrower. This banning of the "L" words continued well into the Obama administration, which was a problem dealing with GOP claims of "death panels" and other nonsense. Joe Biden finally came up with a solution to roll his eyes and chuckle when Lyin Ryan spoke. Evidently, your only allowed to call someone a liar when they are have a "D" next to their name.

No amount of evidence of the W administration's lies could compel any serious discussion, never mind investigation, never mind talk of impeachment. Yellow cake, Downing Street memo, Gen. Clark's testimony, none of this was enough evidence to warrant an accusation of dishonesty. We were continually dismissed with "well, maybe he just had bad intelligence."

Such an admission of mistakes due to bad intelligence never came directly from that administration, only its apologists. W Bush got up on the podium at the RNC in 2004, months not days after reports were in that Saddam had neither WMDs nor any links to the attacks on 9/11, and he told the crowd of his anguished decision to invade Iraq, that we had to because we'd been attacked on 9/11. He repeated this lie at a White House press conference in 2006, years afterwards, and said we invaded Iraq because we'd been attacked on 9/11. When he was told Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, he shushed the reporter and moved on to the next question.

The War in Iraq has cost America 5K of the lives of our finest, 2 Trillion in treasure, countless wounded, maimed, brain injured, PTSD cases, our credibility, the dead and wounded our allies suffered, the dead and displaced in Iraq to say nothing of the opportunity costs in resources that could have crushed Al Qaida and captured Bin Laden. These lies had dire consequences for the entire world but were most profitable to businesses linked to the administration. They made a lot of money while the rest of the world suffered.

Let me not mince words here. There are some nasty words for an administration that pursues such aggressive warfare under false pretenses for personal profit. These words are "crimes of war", "crimes of aggression", "conspiracy to commit aggression" and "crimes against humanity." If these terms sound familiar, they were the charges against the Nazis at Nuremberg. The punishments were a little on the stiff side. But of course, American leaders have no need to worry about ever facing such a trial.

More than 10 years later, there have been no investigations, no congressional hearings, no formal accusations or indictments, there was no talk of impeachment except to condemn any discussion of it as "shrill", and there has never been any outrage expressed except among "foul-mouthed vituperative bloggers on the left".

This and the outing of Valerie Plame and the negligence in failing to heed intelligence reports on the coming attacks on 9/11 and the botching of the war in Afghanistan.

After the GOP did all that, they not have the nerve to shriek about and endlessly investigate claims that the Obama administration may have done a little spinning after Benghazi to try to look better. They have no sense of shame and they have no business doing it. And if you voted for W Bush in 2004, neither do you.