Darrell Issa's appearance on Meet the Press to attack Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration over Benghazi was full of lies and half truths. Raise your hand if that surprises you in the least.

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This from Think Progress: 

Issa claimed that the administration leaned heavily on the CIA to change its draft of the now infamous set of unclassified talking points on what happened in Benghazi to better fit a political narrative and hiding the true nature of the attack from the American people:

ISSA: The fact is, we want the facts, we’re entitled to the facts. The American people were effectively lied to for a period of about a month. That’s important to get right. And – 

GREGORY: I just want to be clear here what you believe the lie was. 

ISSA: This was a terrorist attack from the get-go. The attack succeeded extremely quickly, because in no small part because the consulate or the diplomatic facility in Benghazi was not given the support it needed or quite frankly the decision to leave which might have been just as good. Either way, they were in fact covering up an easy attack that succeeded that was from the get-go about a terrorist attack. It was never about a video. 

Counter to Issa’s claim, however, the evidence shows that while the administration acted cautiously in what it put forward, it ultimately told the public just what it knew to be fact about the attack. President Obama himself referred to the assault in Libya as an “act of terror” at least twice within 48 hours. 

U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice delivered the final draft of the talking points on Sept. 16, 2012, appearing on all five Sunday news shows. Rice gave what was at the time the administrations’ best knowledge about what caused the attacks, saying that it was the result of a demonstration that mutated into a coordinated attack. Those appearances lead to her being the target of a Republican smear campaign in the weeks and months ahead. 

From the CIA’s original draft of the talking points, however, the intelligence community believed that what occurred in Benghazi was “spontaneously inspired by the protests at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.” The Cairo protests were, in fact, spurred on by an anti-Islamic video as Rice ultimately wound up referencing in her appearances. In another draft, before the document was provided to the rest of the government for input, the word “attack” became “demonstrations,” showing that the very claim that Republicans have accused the White House of lying about came from the CIA itself. The view that the video had at least some part to play in the attack’s genesis has been borne out in later reporting.

Ambassador Thomas Pickering was also a guest on MTP and he refuted virtually all that Issa claimed as well. What's more is that Pickering has essentially absolved Hillary Clinton, who is clearly the target of this GOP smear campaign, from any culpability for the decisions made the night of the Begnhazi attack.



You know every once is a while I watch somebody on TV that almost puts the survival of my prized flat screen television at risk. Such was the case while watching Darrell Issa this morning.

His smarmy attitude and transparently partisan attacks on Hillary Clinton and the President made me crazy. And I mean CRAZY!

I work very hard to maintain my composure these days, but if I had been in the same room with that POS I swear I would have made a very bad choice for both of us.

But then after I got mad at him, I got mad at the Democrats.

No not for Benghazi, or the talking points afterward, or how ineffective they have been in defending themselves against this blatant smear campaign.

No I am mad because here are the Republicans making this huge deal out of what is, in the great scheme of things, essentially a minor tragedy, while the Democrats NEVER used the overwhelming mountain of evidence which indicated a jaw dropping level of criminal, unethical, and incompetent behavior demonstrated by the Bush administration to bring any of those bastards to justice.

Not fucking one of them!

If the Obama administration had done one tenth of the things the Bush administration had done, or been responsible for even one percent of the deaths our citizens and soldiers, the Republicans would NEVER have stopped making them pay for it. But instead those motherfuckers walked away free, and then have the nerve to turn around and hold this President to such impossibly high standards.

Like I said, it is a good goddamn thing we were not in the same room.

Update: Perhaps we could a couple of containers of this to ease the Republican butthurt over Benghazi.

(Source)