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[BballTim]

Typical John McCain grandstanding buffoonery: he skips a closed-door two-hour briefing on Benghazi to appear before cameras in a political attack on the Obama administration.

  He's a senator, grandstanding buffoonery is second only to squandering taxpayer money on his job description.

[IndeedProceed]

I think its a shame that GOP leaders are trying to make this into a scandal that can define a presidency.

They're blocking any overtures for Susan Rice doing anything ever again. I believe they recently sent McDonalds a very strongly worded letter stating plainly that if they ever did receive a resume from her, they should burn it and then pee on it to put out the fire, and failure to do so would result in boycott. And this is all over some misinformation that she spread almost certainly on someone else's orders, likely to cover-up CIA involvement.

They're looking for 'Water-gate Style Hearings' for an attack that while terrible, was hardly one that was obviously avoidable, and had serious (as yet unknown) CIA implications.

All this coming from a party that had a campaign which basically boiled down to them calling you on a phone and screaming JOBS JOBS JOBS for a few minutes.

All the while Syria looks like its going explode, Israel is about to pimp-slap Hamas, and we still have a fiscal cliff and an economy that needs more action to be truly prodded back to life.

It just seems so petty, and counter-productive. Four Americans died, and that's terrible. But it doesn't mean it should be turned into a spectacle by opportunist carrion birds looking to score politically against a President they can't vote out of office. Its surreal.

[BballTim]

They're blocking any overtures for Susan Rice doing anything ever again. I believe they recently sent McDonalds a very strongly worded letter stating plainly that if they ever did receive a resume from her, they should burn it and then pee on it to put out the fire, and failure to do so would result in boycott.

  If the parties were reversed and Obama sent the letter to McDonalds, people here would claim that telling them to pee on the fire to put it out was evidence of bipartisan compromise.

  But I digress.

[IndeedProceed]

They're blocking any overtures for Susan Rice doing anything ever again. I believe they recently sent McDonalds a very strongly worded letter stating plainly that if they ever did receive a resume from her, they should burn it and then pee on it to put out the fire, and failure to do so would result in boycott.

  If the parties were reversed and Obama sent the letter to McDonalds, people here would claim that telling them to pee on the fire to put it out was evidence of bipartisan compromise.

  But I digress.

If the parties were reversed, republicans would be talking about how petty the democrats were acting.

[LooseCannon]

  If the parties were reversed and Obama sent the letter to McDonalds, people here would claim that telling them to pee on the fire to put it out was evidence of bipartisan compromise.

But the parties would never be reversed.

[IndeedProceed]

  If the parties were reversed and Obama sent the letter to McDonalds, people here would claim that telling them to pee on the fire to put it out was evidence of bipartisan compromise.

But the parties would never be reversed.

Eh, never say never. Democrats can conduct witch hunts and petty revenge scandals as easily as republicans can, and they're just as able to engage in petty political scoring as republicans.

The important thing to the survival of this thread however is that they're not reversed. So let's talk about the actual thing, instead of engaging in distracting and irrelevant hypotheticals.

[BballTim]

  If the parties were reversed and Obama sent the letter to McDonalds, people here would claim that telling them to pee on the fire to put it out was evidence of bipartisan compromise.

But the parties would never be reversed.

  Why, because all the Libya-type incidents happen when democrats are in the white house?

[IndeedProceed]

  If the parties were reversed and Obama sent the letter to McDonalds, people here would claim that telling them to pee on the fire to put it out was evidence of bipartisan compromise.

But the parties would never be reversed.

  Why, because all the Libya-type incidents happen when democrats are in the white house?

That was a nice zinger you did there, politicizing the Libyan attacks into an implied deficiency within the democratic party's presidential leadership. And you're not wrong, Libya, Pakistan, Egypt, Lebanon under Clinton, attacks by Al-Qaeda in Kenya and Tanzania, all under the watchful eye of democratic presidents. That's excellent partisan gamesmanship right there. Textbook.

You'd be forgetting about the..let me see...two attacks on the Yemen embassy in '08, Turkey, Greece, both in 08 as well, raid on Syrian embassy in 2006, carry the two...

12 total terrorist attacks on US embassies and consulates during President Bush's two terms. But I'd assume somehow those are different?

[nickagneta]

These things don't happen because a Democrat or Republican is in the White House. They happen because religious extremists hate our country. Implying anything other than that is simply absurd.

[Donoghus]

These things don't happen because a Democrat or Republican is in the White House. They happen because religious extremists hate our country. Implying anything other than that is simply absurd.

Pretty much.

[BballTim]

  If the parties were reversed and Obama sent the letter to McDonalds, people here would claim that telling them to pee on the fire to put it out was evidence of bipartisan compromise.

But the parties would never be reversed.

  Why, because all the Libya-type incidents happen when democrats are in the white house?

That was a nice zinger you did there, politicizing the Libyan attacks into an implied deficiency within the democratic party's presidential leadership. And you're not wrong, Libya, Pakistan, Egypt, Lebanon under Clinton, attacks by Al-Qaeda in Kenya and Tanzania, all under the watchful eye of democratic presidents. That's excellent partisan gamesmanship right there. Textbook.

You'd be forgetting about the..let me see...two attacks on the Yemen embassy in '08, Turkey, Greece, both in 08 as well, raid on Syrian embassy in 2006, carry the two...

12 total terrorist attacks on US embassies and consulates during President Bush's two terms. But I'd assume somehow those are different?

  I was just wondering why the parties could never be reversed.

[LooseCannon]

Yeah, this is going to be a spectacle.  At a House Foreign Affairs hearing on Benghazi:

Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN) began by saying he was not going to attack the White House or malfeasance at the State Department. But he then instead spoke for six minutes and didn't ask a single question of the GAO witness.

[BballTim]

Yeah, this is going to be a spectacle.  At a House Foreign Affairs hearing on Benghazi:

Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN) began by saying he was not going to attack the White House or malfeasance at the State Department. But he then instead spoke for six minutes and didn't ask a single question of the GAO witness.

  I can't imagine that there are more than a handful of congressmen that do their job better than a trained monkey would.

[Brendan]

Progressives / liberals / democrats on this board are getting more irritable about Libya. Therefore I conclude Republican pressure on the issue is the correct political play. Democrats, including the current president, played politics with the Iraq war, and went on a relentless attack of Scooter Libby, who was ultimately cleared of wrong doing. Remember "Bush Lied, People Died"? Game theory insists that Republicans return the favor now.

If the Democrats in Congress want to play proper statesmen on the next issue, Republicans should be forgiving and go along, but they have to return hard ball partisan politics with the same fervor, or be subject to the downside of Democratic hard ball, without the upside of Republican hard ball.

That being said, I think this issue deserves direct oversight. The president sent his people out to lie (we can now say it was an outright lie - CIA knew within 24-72 hours that attack was terrorist with probable AQ connections, yet Rice was on shows saying "video" 5 days later.) There are a lot of unanswered questions, including: why were Patreus' talking points changed and by whom? (Speculation: OfA staffers had access to material they weren't cleared for and changed the talking points for political campaign reasons. This would be a serious violation of security rules AND explain how NYT had detailed break down of events so soon. Just speculation, but probably enough to justify strict oversight and investigation into the matter.) Additionally our inability to meet security requests of our diplomatic leadership at State (we know 100% that this had been requested for months and there is speculation that the site was a black ops site, so request should have been taken very seriously) is a matter for congressional oversight. The Senators basically can only grandstand since the president's party controls the Senate, any oversight and investigation is likely to be a sham (same would be true if the letters were switched) all the Senators can do is rally public support to bring populist political pressure to enable oversight. The choice of McCain makes sense - his credibility with Republicans isn't great, but he's seen as having both integrity and foresight from both parties on national defense.

[LooseCannon]

Progressives / liberals / democrats on this board are getting more irritable about Libya. Therefore I conclude Republican pressure on the issue is the correct political play.

Does this mean that I should opt for posting content on this board that is most likely to get conservatives/Republicans here in a tizzy?