Gregory Hicks has been characterized as a whistleblower and a hero by the right wing for bravely stepping forward and telling "the truth" about September 11, 2012 and the Benghazi attacks. To listen to him, you wonder how he managed to survive it all, but somehow he did only to claim he was demoted in retribution for speaking out.

Not so much, it seems. Other embassy personnel in Libya at the time spoke to ThinkProgress Friday, and their story is quite different from Hicks'.

A second State Department employee present in Libya before and during the Benghazi attacks confirmed the meetings occurred. Assistant Secretary Jones’ meetings with the staff prior to Oct. 2 were “entirely” focused on Hicks’ performance, according to this second employee, who also believed that Hicks should be removed from his position. “The group of us who were here during the attacks, we sat here two nights ago and watched [the hearing] with our jaws dropped,” the staffer said, referring to Hicks’ claim that he was demoted out of retribution for speaking out.

“He was removed from here because he was a disaster as a manager,” the second employee went on to say, expressing the belief that Hicks’ reassignment had “nothing to do with him being a whistleblower, it had everything to do with his management capacity or lack thereof.” This statement contradicts the narrative promoted onconservative media outlets that Hicks was being forced to remain silent and being punished for speaking out.

Well, maybe he was a crummy manager but a hero anyway, right? Even incompetent people can rise to an occasion. Once again, it appears not to be so.

When speaking about the night of the attacks, the employees ThinkProgress spoke with described Hicks as being in a daze while other senior Embassy officials organized the evacuation from Tripoli to Germany. “At one point [Hicks] wandered past the huddled State evacuees, muttering to himself, and just sank into a couch,” the first employee relayed to ThinkProgress.

Hmmmm. It seems the Great Hero of Benghazi, to conservatives at least, is no hero at all. Why doesn't this surprise me?

Oh, my. The whack jobs really are off the leash lately, aren't they? A little drunk tweeting? I guarantee you this: Nothing Rohrabacher (famous war-loving chickenhawk) says will ever be bad enough to ban him from the Sunday talk shows -- because that's just how they roll!

The Kookville Express and its happy, wild-eyed conductor, Dana Rohrabacher, has shifted routes in yet another attempt for a cheap two-fer ticket: to derail President Barack Obama's second term and sabotage Hillary Clinton's potential future White House run.

Rohrabacher, Orange County's senior career politician and a man known for shameless self-promotion, has made it his mission for the last four months to prove Obama and Clinton masterminded something evil and pro-Islamic terrorist during the Sept. 11, 2012 lethal attack on Christopher Stevens, U.S. Ambassador to Libya.

First, the Costa Mesa Republican declared (without possessing any supportive facts) that the events of Benghazi were "worse" than the felony-rich Watergate scandal that brought down President Richard Nixon in 1974.

That absurd comparison didn't go far except with faithful Kookville passengers.

Stymied, Rohrabacher changed strategies.

Benghazi is apparently no longer worse than Watergate.

Now, he is trying to take sly advantage of massive, pre-Oscar publicity for Argo, Ben Affleck's film.
Rohrabacher claims Benghazi is like President Jimmy Carter's failed 1980 helicopter attempt to rescue American captives in Iran.

"Maybe Prez thought failed rescue = no re-election, like Carter in 1980," the congressman theorized on Twitter late Tuesday night.

In other words, according to Rohrabacher's mental machinations, Obama knowingly allowed Stevens to be murdered so that he could win re-election.

It's time for some Clinton Derangement Syndrome after a long absence on this front by the wingnuts who inhabit the intertubes and it comes from Hillary's big testimony day on Wednesday. Leading the charge of those severely infected was John Nolte of Breitbart.

When Hillary Clinton was a young lawyer in 1974, she earned her bones in DC as a member of the impeachment inquiry staff during the Watergate scandal. But why? What difference did a little burglary make when thousands were dying in Vietnam?

Poor Condi Rice. Why didn't she pull this during the 9/11 hearings? "What difference does it make what we knew and when we knew it, Senator? 3,000 Americans that September morning! "Yeah, that would've have gone over real well with the media. But Rice never would have done such a thing, because she and the Bush Administration had nothing to hide.The Obama administration, however, cannot say the same.

This is the one of the the douchiest political paragraphs I've ever read. It's rife with untruths along with nonsensical correlations about things that never took place. First of all the whole BenghaziGate faux scandal was perpetrated to help Romney win the White House, but even with Conservative media screaming nonstop for weeks on end, Americans didn't buy their lies. It wasn't some Nixonian political scandal that was used to cover up some nefarious criminal activity and they've never explained what the conspiracy is all about that's worthy of the 'gate' extension.

OK, now back to some of Nolte's false equivalencies. Watergate was a story about a Republican political criminal gang composed of Nixon's own people. I won't explain it here since most people know the story, but please click on the link for a quick refresher. However, this was about Nixon's reelection plan and not, let's say, a group that dug up false intel and fed it to the UN to persuade the world to go to war with a country that had WMDs just ready to be detonated against us all. (Sorry, that's part of Iraq's history!) Nixon's WH covered it up because people would go to jail and or be impeached.

The idea that Watergate is the same as Benghazi is Huckabeeridiculous.

As for the 9/11 Commission, the Bush administration did all it could to not have one at all, because they did have things to hide. Condi Rice had to admit to Congress that she received a PDB that said Bin Laden wanted to fly planes into US buildings a month before the Twin Towers happened. She also was exposed for her lies about those pesky aluminum tubes. which also aided in helping getting Bush's Iraq war off the ground. Bush, Condi and his entire warmongering cabinet had a lot to hide as we know and so should Nolte. Then Nulte spins his version of reality by saying BushCo had nothing to hide about the Iraq war, but the Obama administration is as guilty as those who perpetrated Watergate without actually telling us what they are guilty of.

I guess they feel they can use this if Hillary runs for office in 2016.

Steve over at NMMNG writes:

But, of course, the ripped-from-context quote is "What difference, at this point, does it make?" It's already being seized on by National Review andFox News and The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard and Glenn Beck's Blaze and Michelle Malkin's Twitchy and the Free Beaconand, of course, Breitbart. There's already a popular hashtag, #whatdifferencedoesitmake.

This is the state of Conservatism and its faux storytellers.

Malkin's got a twitch: Hysterical Hillary: ‘What difference does it make’ why 4 Americans are dead?

Glen Beck's Blaze buddy thinks Susan Rice's talking point gaffe is as bad a illegally selling weapons to Iran TheBlaze.com: It makes a big difference, Madame Secretary

There are many more nutty examples of Clinton Derangement Syndrome here if you want to check them out.