To anyone who didn't follow the whole Fox News Benghazi-Gate story all that closely, this interview ought to have them scratching their heads in confusion. What is it Senator Lindsey Graham expects to discover about Benghazi that we don't already know?
Via ThinkProgress:
BOB SCHIEFFER (HOST): I’m not sure I understand. What do you plan to do if they don’t give you an answer? Are you going to put a hold on these two nominations?
GRAHAM: Yes…How could Susan Rice come on to your show and say there’s no evidence of a terrorist attack when the Secretary of Defense and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs said they knew that night? I think that was a misleading narrative three weeks before our election.
How does this make any difference at all? Would there have been some advantage to downplaying terrorism in Libya? It's one thing to make a squawking fuss about attacks in your own country, but Libya was hardly considered safe territory. What would have changed? Would Romney have attacked Obama for an attack on American diplomats in a foreign country? I think he did that, along with Fox News and all the other right wing channels.
Graham and McCain got Kerry as Secretary of State after playing out their bogus Benghazi farce with Susan Rice. Still, he seems to be undeterred:
SCHIEFFER: Let me just make sure, because you’re about to make some news here, I think. You are saying that you are going to block the nominations — you’re going to block them from coming to a vote until you get an answer to this? Now, John McCain has already said he doesn’t think the Republicans ought to filibuster this. What will you do? You’re just going to put a hold on it? [...]
GRAHAM: I want to know who changed the talking points. Who took the references to Al Qaeda out of the talking points given to Susan Rice? We still don’t know…. I want to know what our president did. What did he do as commander in chief? Did he ever pick up the phone and call anybody? I think this is the stuff the country needs to know.
Let's say for the sake of argument that President Obama did change the talking points. What difference does THAT make? It robs terrorists of the glory they get when they actually land a punch. It doesn't change the body count or the fact that an attack took place that killed an ambassador.
Sounds like Graham is just pulling excuses out of thin air to keep a block on nominations. The thing is, he could just sit back and shut up and let Democrats do that. In Chuck Hagel's case, confirmation is likely. I'm not sure the same can be said of Brennan. Still, it seems to me that this is some kind of bogus stall to score a few more political points over something that in the end, just isn't a coverup.
Senator Graham, you might consider a different tack. This one just makes you look petty and stupid.
