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Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Will the GOP ever give up on Benghazi?

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COMMENTS: 
*  $5.6 million for 4 days of testomony? Thats a lot of donuts.
*  Millions and millions wasted on this circus, GOP is fine with that, try to help out some struggling, less fortunate fellow AMERICANS and they act like the world is on fire. This is why they can't win in a general election if their lives depended on it. Its why they are the laughing stock of the politcal world. Its why they will end up with a joke like Donald Trump of all people as their best hope. It would be funny if it wasn't so pathetically sad.
*  We know what is going to happen with this investigation. It's a pure political event and several republicans have said so on camera. The investigation will go nowhere. Then when Clinton gets nominated this will become an issue again. Thing is it does NOT matter. Any human with any brain cells whatsoever already KNOW that this is a political scam. It will be used as a fund raising thing for right wing nut bags from weak minded brainwashed right wing nuts. It can't change the minds against Clinton because we know it's a scam. It's about money for republican liars to get elected.  We ALL know this.
*  According to right-wingers.... This walking, quacking duck... Ain't a duck.... Nothing partisan here, boys... How about that sea-front property in Fargo ya got for sale?
*  Thank you committee for spending our money on your political motivated pretend job you do. Just think how many starving people that could be feed and not the republican hate machine with all that wasted money.
*  I feel bad for republican citizens: they've been drawn into this mess by their electeds and have no choice but to support it or look like losers. But this is just a political scam because their leadership is doing anything they can to keep Hillary from being elected president. It's working, but not enough to avoid the inevitable: President Clinton II.
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The Benghazi Investigation Reaches a Dubious Milestone
By Martin Matishak, January 6, 2016

Democrats serving on the special committee examining the 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, say the panel’s investigation has passed yet another milestone and has now taken longer than the investigation into the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

The calendar gives the five Democrats on the House Select Committee on Benghazi, now in existence for 609 days, a new entry to their oft-repeated refrain that the inquiry has lasted longer those into the attack on Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President Kennedy, Iran-Contra and Watergate.

“The Select Committee’s investigation of the Benghazi attacks has been widely condemned as hyper-partisan and ineffective, and it stands in stark contrast to the bipartisan investigation and report issued by the 9/11 Commission,” ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) said in a statement.

“Republicans continue to drag out this political charade closer to the 2016 presidential election, and the American taxpayers continue to pay the price,” he added.

Panel Democrats estimate the investigation has cost nearly $5.6 million and counting.

The timing of the critique is no accident. The Benghazi panel will interview former CIA chief David Petraeus behind closed doors and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Friday, also in a classified setting, about the deadly siege that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador.

[snipped]
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COMMENTS: 
*  Republicans certainly know how to throw away a lot of good money that could otherwise be put to far reaching better use. They do it all the time.
*  Nothing else better to do. Sit around and back up to the pay window you useless republicans.
*  This "investigation" is nothing more than a taxpayer-funded attempt to undercut Clinton's campaign for President. After 608 days with no results, either there's no scandal for the Republican candidates to exploit, or the Republicans in Congress are so incompetent that they can't manage to run an effective investigation. Actually, it's most likely that both of these reasons are valid.
*  The whole process is a joke and an insult to American citizens.
*  Blah, blah, blah. ALL politicians are just that, politicians, therefore none of them tell the entire truth about anything.
*   Politicians are way better at rehashing old garbage and currying favor for votes than actually doing their job. Benghazi was 2 1/2 years ago. It's long gone and was a sidenote, except to a few rabid and incompetent Republicans who are desperately clinging to the hope they can win anything at all next year. NO ONE GIVES A RAT'S HOLE about Benghazi. You want to spend taxpayer money investigating stuff? How about the entire Iraq war?  Better yet...start fixing today's problems, geniuses
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After 608 days, the Benghazi panel by the numbers
By Meredith Shiner, January 6, 2016

Democrats have long charged that the special committee established by House Republicans to investigate the 2012 attacks on an American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, was designed to harm the party’s frontrunner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in her 2016 bid for the White House.

Now that 2016 has arrived, the Benghazi committee is back to work this week, scheduled to interview former Central Intelligence Agency Director David Petraeus behind closed doors Wednesday and former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta Friday.

To mark the occasion, the select committee’s Democrats, led by Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, are seeking to call attention to the length of the investigation (608 days and counting), its $5.5 million cost, and what Cummings and his colleagues regard as its partisanship and lack of concrete results — compared, say, to the 9/11 Commission, which took less time for a vastly more complicated investigation, and handled it in a bipartisan fashion.

The Benghazi committee, to date, has held four public hearings, compared to 19 for the 9/11 investigators. The 9/11 Commission interviewed more than 1,000 witnesses in private and had 160 public witnesses testify. The Benghazi committee has privately interviewed 62 witnesses, in addition to the seven witnesses who have publicly testified before the panel — including Clinton herself, for 11 hours in October. The 9/11 Commission had a joint, bipartisan staff, which issued 13 subpoenas; the Benghazi committee has separate Republican and Democratic staffs, and all 11 of its subpoenas came from the Republican side, with no input from the Democratic minority.

The Democratic strategy is to keep challenging the process of the panel as a means to discredit whatever final report the Benghazi committee produces, if it produces one at all. The committee has an unlimited budget and no time limit to complete its work, except the expiration of this Congress. In 2015, Republicans were content to silently approve the panel’s reauthorization in 2015 without a recorded vote.

“The Select Committee’s investigation of the Benghazi attacks has been widely condemned as hyper-partisan and ineffective, and it stands in stark contrast to the bipartisan investigation and report issued by the 9/11 Commission,” said Cummings, in a statement. “Instead of following the bipartisan model set by the 9/11 Commission, which brought our entire nation together after we were attacked by terrorists, Republicans created a highly partisan Select Committee with an unlimited budget to attack their political opponents. Republicans continue to drag out this political charade closer to the 2016 presidential election, and the American taxpayers continue to pay the price.”

Nine previous reports on the Benghazi attacks, including one each by the Republican-led House Intelligence and Armed Services Committees, have debunked most of the conspiracy theories surrounding the events that day at the consulate and the administration’s response to the attacks. Before Petraeus and Panetta were called, most of the Benghazi committee’s high-profile interviews were with State Department employees and top Hillary Clinton aides and allies, whereas other reports looked more comprehensively at the Department of Defense and CIA in addition to State.

Democrats, from the panel’s inception, have accused Republicans of refusing to define the scope of the investigation, and the House GOP has not announced a target date by which they would like Chairman Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., to complete his work. Meanwhile, new Speaker Paul D. Ryan, R-Wisc., has said repeatedly that he wants his conference’s focus in 2016 to be on ideas and policy. If he means it, then the Benghazi committee — which Ryan’s No. 2, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), insinuated had the goal of damaging Clinton’s reputation when he was running for the top job — would seem out of step with that agenda.
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