On yesterday’s Your World, Neil Cavuto spoke with Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) mostly about what else, Benghazi. Cavuto opened with a clip of President Nixon’s resignation speech from 1974. The headline blared, “CONTROVERSY MOUNTING OVER BENGHAZI INVESTIGATION, IRS SCANDAL.” McCain started with the IRS “scandal.” “I’m shocked, shocked that the IRS would be going after people whose political views aren’t to their liking.” Then he moved on to Benghazi and the Fox News obsession about the talking points.
McCain summarized his complaint about Benghazi:
I was deeply distressed and really stunned when the President again today in his press conference repeated what is patently untrue, and that is he keeps saying, as he did in the debate with Mitt Romney, he called the attack on Benghazi a terrorist attack on that morning. When in fact what he said was "No act of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation or let that character eclipse the light of the values that we stand for." And that very night, he was on 60 Minutes, and Kroft, Steve Kroft said, "Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word ‘terrorism’ in connection with the Libya attack. Do you believe this was a terrorist attack?" Obama: "Well it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously, it was an attack on Americans."
In fact, President Obama was specifically referring to the Benghazi attack when he said, “No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation.” Specifically, on the day after the Benghazi attack, he said:
No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America. We will not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will be done.
No correction from Cavuto. So McCain went on to complain that Obama had pointed to the anti-Islamic YouTube video as the cause. But as Media Matters astutely pointed out, it’s not necessarily an either/or possibility: “It ignores the possibility that the attackers may have been terrorists, but their reason for engaging in that particular act of terror was because they were enraged by the film,” Media Matters’ Matt Gertz wrote.
Cavuto treated it as a matter of dispute - and then used it for a further attack on Obama. Cavuto said, “Let’s take it that’s what he meant at the time, that’s what he felt at the time, so let’s say he was telling the truth to the best as he knew it, that he was out of the loop on this stuff and didn’t know what was going on. Otherwise, how could he possibly have gone to Las Vegas hours after these attacks went down if he knew that there was something much more involved to this? Then that raises the issue of just being ignorant of the facts.”
In reality, military leaders testified Obama was fully engaged during the attack. Which raises the issue of Cavuto’s ignorance of the facts.
McCain continued, “But how could you possibly, two weeks later, not know? Mr. Hicks (GOP's Benghazi "whistleblower") said his jaw dropped and he was stunned when he saw the ambassador to the UN say that this was a spontaneous demonstration, that the survivors who were pulled out the next day to Germany clearly knew that was the case.”
Cavuto dragged Hillary Clinton into the discussion. “Would you call Hillary Clinton back? She’s a private citizen now. Would you subpoena her?”
“Call everybody back," McCain said. "We need a select committee. This is just one part of it. The questions about the changing the talking points, taking out all references to Al-Qaeda and extremists. Why weren’t people interviewed that were rescued? Why is it that Mr. Hicks was chastised for speaking to the Congress of the United States? Why was it on September 11 a day that we know will live in infamy, why weren’t military assets positioned? They certainly had ample warning that the consulate in Benghazi had been threatened.”
In an excellent Washington Post column last week, Eugene Robinson wrote:
(T)he decision not to dispatch troops was made by the military chain of command, not by Clinton or anyone who reported to her. Superior officers decided this team was needed to help evacuate the embassy in Tripoli, which was seen as a potential target for a Benghazi-style attack.
The Pentagon has concluded that the team, in any event, could not have arrived in Benghazi in time to make a difference. Hicks testified that he disagrees. It is difficult not to feel his pain. But it is also difficult, frankly, to believe that he knows more about deploying troops than do the professionals.
That, too, seemed to escape Cavuto. Instead, he suggestively asked, “Do you trust this administration? Do you think that they have a serious problem with the truth?”
McCain replied, “…If this thing comes to a full investigation, they’ll be two people that I think deserve credit, one of them is Senator Lindsey Graham, and the other, may be Roger Ailes.”
Cavuto agreed. He then brought it back specifically to Watergate – and Hillary Clinton. “Between this and the IRS, some of your colleagues are saying …it’s gonna be a long, hot summer for the administration. Should be a long, hot summer for Hillary Clinton, someone should subpoena her.”
McCain thought she and “everybody involved needs to be subpoenaed before a Select Committee.” But, he added, "(F)or us to assume impeachment is on the horizon; …you are then overturning the results of an election that’s the will of the people. Look, I’m very reluctant to even talk about that until we have the full facts. ...I’m not out to get anybody.”
Maybe he isn't. But Fox News clearly is. And those two "anybody's" are named Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
You’ll have to excuse Gramps McCain; he’s been napping since the ’08 election.
McCain started with the IRS “scandal.” “I’m shocked, shocked that the IRS would be going after people whose political views aren’t to their liking.”
So am I, John; I find it shocking that under Bush, the IRS would target a CA church due to an antiwar sermon delivered there in 2004 . . .
http://www.politicususa.com/irs-targeted-liberal-churches-bush.html
That was what you were talking about — wasn’t it?
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It also makes a lot of absolutely baseless claims, like that “The Innocence of Muslims” was made by Fox News- Even going as far as to say Jesse Watters was the one who really directed it, and Michelle Malkin wrote the script with Steven Crowder. Another “gem” in there is that they had a patsy set up for if Romney won that they would baselessly identify as the mastermind, and after capture, torture into giving a narrative against Obama that would allow them to get a trial.
Why am I bringing up this theory, you ask? Because it’s the biggest load of bullshit I have ever been so much as within fifty miles of since the SFPD actually let the Tea Party tear up the Mission District, and it’s still somehow a thousand times more coherent, consistent, easier to believe, and contains a better basis in truth by precedent than the Benghazi narrative led by Fox News and Darrell Issa could ever dream.
Exactly how many times have we heard this is Obama’s Watergate, or this is worse than Watergate?
Look Fox, just like in the moral story of the boy who cried wolf when a wolf really did appear no one believed him because he lied so many times and he ended up being the wolf’s dinner at the end of the story. Who knows one day you just might get your Watergate fantasy, but since we’re heard it so many times, no one will believe you. The moral here is this is no Watergate, and you know it, you can shout it all you want but unfortunately for you the majority of the America public knows exactly that all you’re doing is throwing a fit because you lost…and they all lived happily ever after. The End.