Between Victims and Heroes: Searching for Those Things that Unite Us

by Nomad

In the aftermath of two terrorist attacks, one in Beirut and another in Paris a day later, we must take a moment for reflection, not about our differences, but about the things that unite us. 

For the last few days, the world's attention has been fixated on the coordinated attacks in Paris on Friday which left 129 dead and 352 injured. What should have been the pleasant start of a weekend, a warm autumn evening turned out to be a stage for nothing short of a blood bath and a city under siege.

A Vain Search for Answers
In every respect, it was a senseless act and yet the human mind tries in vain to make sense of it. How could it happen and why?

What kind of evil could transform a convivial scene at an outdoor cafe, with crowds of people enjoying the company of friends into a war zone massacre with bodies strewn on the streets and sidewalks?

How could this happen? To what purpose? Who actually benefited by the murder of 23-year-old Hugo Sarrade, who was enjoying a night out at a Bataclan concert? 

How did the vicious slaughter of Mathieu Hoche, Quentin Boulanger, 29, or Marie Lausch, 23, and her boyfriend, Mathias Dymarski, 22, truly further any political cause? 

These were not martyred for a great cause. These were not crusaders for their religion. And they certainly were not soldiers defending their nation. 

They were, in fact, not representatives of anything more than themselves. They were targeted simply because, like the victims on the beach attack in Tunisia in June, they were easy to kill en masse.

Let's Compare Clinton's Phony Email "Scandal" and Dick Cheney's Fetish for Secrecy

by Nomad

After searching in vain since in March of last year, wasting time and spending millions, the Republican Party still expects to find something on about Hillary Clinton's emails. They've already admitted the investigation were politically-motivated.
Too bad these tireless and principled investigators were not around when Vice President Dick Cheney was fighting to keep his secrets classified.

Things have a dreadful habit of backfiring for the Republicans. The more they blustered about President Bill Clinton's adultery the higher his approval rating climbed. By and large, the public thought it was a case of too much about too too little. 

It seems like the party has learned absolutely nothing. Take the fruitless email investigation and the search for.. what are they searching for?. Does anybody remember?

We do know how it began.

Investigation Ad Nauseum

The Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee Investigation started out, as we all know, as a search for culpability in the deaths of State Department officials in the Benghazi attacks, which left four dead. 

After two agonizing years (filled with unsupported but damaging leaks to the press) the committee found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees.  (Presumably, that would include the appointed Secretary of State.)

On the Benghazi investigation, more than $3,500,000 was thrown away. That figure exceeds the budget of the entire House Intelligence Committee. and does not include "significant expenditures made by the State Department and Defense Department to find and declassify material requested by the committee or the expense of witness travel for those who work for the government."

A miserable flop of a smear. So, what to do now, they asked? Why not a start a new investigation into Democratic candidate's use of a private email server? With the help of the media, the new so-called scandal investigation dragged on and on.

It didn't go smoothly. 

In October, false accusations by Chairman Trey Gowdy forced the CIA to step in with a rebuttal. 

Gowdy’s accusation was that Secretary Clinton had sent an email containing "some of the most protected information in our intelligence community, the release of which could jeopardize not only national security but human lives.”

Totally untrue. No apology or clarification. The investigation pressed on as it does today. 

How much will be spent on this investigation is anybody's guess. It won't be cheap. As one source noted:

Rep. Gowdy now states the committee will continue its work into 2016 raising its cost to taxpayers to more than $6,000,000, casting his inaction as the result of the Obama administration’s slow pace at producing requested documents, a questionable premise.

Critics of the committee (and the numbers are growing) have called the investigation as nothing short of a taxpayer funded witch hunt of a leading presidential candidate. 

Supporters of the Republican-led investigations say Hillary must be guilty of something. However, many in the GOP seem to forget when it came to keeping secrets. nothing could surpass the overt duplicity of former vice-president Dick Cheney. 

Benghazi 2.0 and The Republican Party in Action!

by Nomad

Nothing means success to the Congressional Republicans like last year's failure. They've just declared the wild goose chase known as Benghazi will re-commence and taxpayers can expect more time and money to be wasted.

Despite a definitive report which found absolutely no validity to any of the wild allegations made by Republicans, the GOP in House has decided to reconvene the Select Committee on Benghazi later this year. 

Using their majority, the Republican procedurally dismissed Democrat's rejections, by preventing any debate on the continuation of the special panel. Furthermore the panel was given an open budget and no limits for its work. 

As Yahoo points out, this one panel alone (there were at one time five ongoing committee investigations on this one event) cost "upwards of $1 million to operate last Congress, when the House voted to establish it."

How the Facts about Benghazi Bring an End to the Republican Lying Game

by Nomad

After two long years of investigating the Benghazi incident, the Republicans were forced to admit that all of the slanderous claims made against Obama and his administration were, in fact, untrue.
Nobody wants to talk about holding anybody to account now.

This week the last chapter in the pathetic Benghazi attack saga was finally written.

Hopefully. 
After years of constant (some said faked) outrage about the tragic events in September 2012, the final report by the Republican Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence was very quietly released. It should have been big news. The mainstream media however barely reported it. 

That's not a surprise perhaps since this report- direct from the Committee itself- absolutely vindicated the Obama administration's version of events.

The investigations really started on that night with presidential candidate Mitt Romney's famous smirk. For a president seeking re-election, the timing of the Libyan event couldn't have been worse. The tragedy allowed the Republicans to paint the entire administration as incompetent, careless, and able to react to an unfolding crisis. Weak leadership, in a word.

Unfortunately, Romney overplayed his hand and his opportunism backfired miserably, leading one commentator to call the candidate's press conference   "one of the most craven and ill-advised tactical moves in this entire campaign." 

Fox News however called Romney's remarks about the Benghazi attack a demonstration of his "Reaganesque commitment to American resolve in our might."

On that night, the battle lines were drawn.

Is This Finally the End Of Issa's Benghazi Witch Hunt?

by Nomad

While the mainstream media looks the other way, a newly declassified report from Congress seems to exonerate the president and his administration in the tragic Benghazi attack on the consulate in September 2012 in which four Americans died.

The report clears the White House of any intentional or conspiratorial wrong-doing, blowing up the wild claims made by Republicans.

A report that the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee voted to declassify its completed Benghazi report last week has made a Hindenberg of the Benghazi investigation. It had all started so nicely too. With Mitt Romney inappropriately sneering in a midnight press conference. And when the Republican- led Congress decided to investigate claims of mismanagement and a cover up shivers of delight up the spines of die-hard conservatives.

It's all over now, Baby Blue. The report concludes that there was no clear advance warning of any organized terrorist attack, and that there was no "stand down" order issued to any American rescuers. Despite Republican claims to the contrary, the report also concludes that there was no attempt to clean up the site of the attack for the sake of politics. Finally, it finds that there was no conspiracy by the Obama administration to hide the facts or to cover up wrongdoing.
Basically every one of the allegations have been shown to be fictional. 

Committee Chairman Darrell E. Issa owes the American taxpayers a  millions dollars- up to over $14 million by some estimates- as well as apologies for his the baseless claims against the Obama administration.

Most of all, Issa and others who followed him, especially owes an apology to the victims of the attack. Back in May, at a Florida fundraiser, Issa clearly attempted to exploit the tragedy in Libya. He told his audience:

It takes very little time and very little committees if the administration wants to tell the truth. If the administration wants to continue delaying, denying and lying and covering up, it takes a long time.

There was a lot of time and a lot of money spent on Watergate to eventually get to the truth about the wrongdoing of Richard Milhous Nixon.

Wait.. Nixon, you mean, the Republican president? (But then he might well have cited the Republican President Reagan's Iran-Contra scandal too.)

Many on the Left knew these allegations were ridiculous and would lead nowhere.

But there is one thing this investigation has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. This fiasco of a scandal investigation  is solid evidence that the Tea Party Republicans would rather waste time and money on baseless witch hunts than actually doing the work they are being paid to do.

Here's a syndicated post from the group, Americans Against the Tea Party