We've heard a lot of talk about "shifting explanations" from the Obama Administration since the Benghazi attacks. In fact, this narrative is way overdone. After all, when a tragedy like this happens, the intelligence will change as it's a fluid situation. What would you expect? If we knew everything on the spot why have an investigation?
With all the criticism against Susan Rice she said nothing wrong in her public statement back in September. What she said actually was totally in line with what the CIA was saying at the time, in fact in their "Talking Points" memo that they wrote on the same day, what she said was the same as what they wrote.
Then we heard a tortured explanation as to why Condoleeza Rice deserved a pass back in 2005 but Susan Rice doesn't deserve one now. Yet even this analogy is problematic: she didn't give out false statements as Condeleeza Rice did. Despite what you hear, what Susan Rice said-and what the CIA wrote-back in September is not so different from what the best intelligence in both the U.S. and Libya says today. Yet we keep hearing that Rice and Obama have some explaining to do.
Yesterday McCain was criticized for cutting a hearing about Benghazi to: complain to the media about the lack of a hearing on Benghazi. When he was called on this he indginantly told the media that they have no right to tell him he can't say no comment if he wants to.
Now he has his own shifting explanation about why he msissed the hearing he claimed so loudly to the media about: he didn't go because he already knows everything there is to know. Do tell. So maybe the CIA should be debriefing him?
"Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that nothing he learned in a closed-door briefing Friday with former CIA Director David Petraeus would change his criticism of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's initial public statements about the Sept.11 Benghazi attack."
"Asked Saturday at a press conference at the Halifax International Security Forum if anything he was told by Petraeus would change his assessment of what Rice knew and the statements she made, McCain said, "No, because I knew it was a terrorist attack from the beginning. People don't go to spontaneous demonstrations with mortars and RPGs."
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/mccain-im
So why have any hearings? All we need to know what happened is to use McCain's crude "common sense" that it had to be a terrorist attack. Meanwhile, no one ever said it wasn't one. Obama never said it wasn't-evidently McCain missed the debate where Romney made a big fool of himself shooting the Benghazi gun on his own foot when it emerged that Obama had used the T word the very next day.
Yet McCain continues to fabricate this issue and he and the rest of the GOP are not being called on it to the extent they should be. There has been no cover up and there have been no lies by the Obama Administration-Chris Stevens' father himself, Jan Stevens says they have been transparent and above board throughout the aftermath of this terrible tragedy.
"McCain also brushed off a letter sent to him Friday by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) in which Reid rejected McCain's call for a Senate select committee to investigate Benghazi and said it would be a "venue for baseless partisan attacks." Responding to the letter, McCain said, "I'm concerned about four Americans who died. Their families need to know the circumstances, why it happened, how it happened, and where responsibility lies. That's all. That's all that we're seeking. We're not seeing a confrontation with anyone. We're not trying to quote 'take on anyone.'"
Why do we need any kind of investigation? Just let McCain tell us what happened: he knows it all already.
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