WASHINGTON, D.C. May 12 (DPI) — Reader comments on almost every American news site – including Fox News — are criticizing Congressional Republicans for their plans to hold yet more hearings on the 2012 Benghazi debacle in which the U.S. Ambassador to Libya was killed.
The Republican leadership, readers are saying, is taking another political fishing expedition, this one more embarrassing than the last. Readers declare that the GOP is simply trying to bolster the party’s 2014 election prospects by “beating the Benghazi drum” and hammering away at the administration’s somewhat clumsy – but hardly criminal – response to the tragedy. Moreover, many readers recognize the GOP leadership is merely trying to weaken Hillary Clinton’s bona fides as she mulls a run for the presidency.
Trey Gowdey, a South Carolina Republican who is a former prosecutor, is chairing the 12-member committee, made up of 7 Republicans and 5 Democrats.
On September 11, 2012, Libyan Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others Americans were killed in a compound that came under attack from Islamic terrorists, who may – or may not — have been acting on the direction of Al Qaeda. In the weeks that followed Undersecretary of State Susan Rice went on Sunday talk shows and jumped to various conclusions – many inaccurate – about the circumstances of the incident.
Even Fox News’s comment board was loaded with comments with a cynical understanding of the purpose of the hearings:
Right. A Truth issue. Because we’ve been so concerned with the Truth in the past. And we’re going to continue to investigate until we reach a version of the Truth that will help us in the next election.
WashingtonPost.com comments:
If the Democrats weren’t concerned, they’d welcome this select committee as an opportunity to humiliate the Republicans going into the midterms. Instead we get “doth protest too much”-type hysterics, I suspect because they’re relying on the honestly and forthrightness of the WH on this matter. Not a promising proposition.
Like shutting down the government, this Benghazi obsession is going to backfire badly on Republicans. How many committees and hearings, involving the same people’s testimony, do Republicans plan to hold before 2016?