Huckabee Suggests Impeaching Obama Over Libya Embassy Attack
Who could have seen this coming? Here we go with the next step in the ridiculous, drummed up, non-scandal, Benghazi-gate that the right wingers have all been losing their minds over for the last couple of weeks at Fox -- Huckabee Suggests Obama
Fox News host and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) compared the administration’s handling of the consulate attack in Libya to Watergate, during an appearance on the network Friday morning, and hinted that the president should be impeached for not immediately attributing the violence to terrorism.
“We have been flat-out lied to,” Huckabee told Fox’s Bill Hemmer. “They know they lied. As if airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center said those were just accidents. Anybody with two eyes and an IQ above plant life knows what happened in Libya was not a spontaneous reaction to a 13 minute video on YouTube”:
HUCKABEE: It was a planned orchestrated attack led by terrorists, terrorists, Bill. And this White House has to explain why it hasn’t owned up to that. Why it can’t say it. I think frankly, if this issue really gets traction that it deserves, and let it say it deserves, go back. Richard Nixon was forced out of office because he lied. And because he covered some stuff up. I will be blunt and tell you this. Nobody died in Watergate. We have people who are dead because of this. There are questions to be answered and Americans ought to demand to get answers. [...]
HEMMER: Just one more thing here. What you’re describing, comparing events of today to Watergate.
HUCKABEE: I sure am….Bill, i’m not saying this just out of some political interest. I’m saying that our trust as a nation is built on our ability to know that when our president, whoever he is, Democrat or Republican, looks us in the eye and tells us something, we ought to know he is telling us the truth.
Fox News, Republican lawmakers, and conservative pundits have for weeks hinted at an administration cover-up, naming it Benghazi-gate, and alleging that Ambassador Susan Rice misled Americans, when she initially claimed that the attacks were a “spontaneous reaction” to a movie trailer disparaging the Prophet Muhammed.
And while some administration officials expressed concern that “the White House began pushing the line that the attack was spontaneous and not the work of terrorists,” officials began labeling the incident the work of terrorism after investigating the incident. Read on...
Media Matters has more on the attack here -- Myths And Facts About The Benghazi Attack And Protests In The Middle East :
Right-wing media have pushed numerous myths about the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and protests in the Middle East, from distorting the Obama administration's response to the attacks to misleading about the nature of security at the Benghazi consulate.
Check out the full report at their site.
And here's more from Steve at No More Mister Nice Blog -- No, Obama is Not Going to Lose the Election Because of Benghazi:
The Obama administration initially described the lethal attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi as the result of a protest against the online Innocence of Muslims video; the administration now says it was a terrorist attack. Obama opponents want to make a big deal of the change in the administration's story (although Obama did use the phrase "act of terror" in an allusion to the attack the day after it occurred); they're not making much of an effort to conceal the fact that they're doing this for political gain in an election year, while accusing Team Obama of a cover-up (although if it was that, it was a short-lived one).
But sorry, Republicans -- this isn't going to get Mitt Romney elected. There are several reasons for that.
First of all, while Republicans think they're taking the high ground by accusing the administration of turning the Innocence of Muslims filmmakers into scapegoats, the Republicans are doing pretty much the same thing themselves: they're blaming the administration for the killings. At first they accused the administration of not placing the blame where it belongs -- on the actual killers. But they're deflecting blame away from the actual killers, too.
Now, there does seem to have been a failure to anticipate the attack and provide adequate security. (There's also plenty of unrest around the globe that actually can be ascribed to anger at that video, although it seems not to have played a part in the Benghazi killings.) But if Republicans are blaming the administration while the administration is blaming the actual killers, it's the administration that has the high ground. Read on...
I'll just leave everyone with a clip of Thomas Roberts on MSNBC this Thursday, shooting down former Bachmann and Santorum spox, Alice Stewart, when she suggested that the attacks there are a big deal and are going to come up in the debates.
As Roberts noted, we just had an administration that lied us into invading Iraq and in light of that, we could give the Obama administration a little leeway with figuring out what the truth is about who's responsible for the attack in Libya. Politicizing the attacks in just looks petty and desperate.