World News Korner

Benghazi might not be over as an issue in 2016 after all. At least not if Rand Paul has anything to say about it.

Courtesy of The Hill:

Paul, a likely 2016 presidential contender, criticizes potential rival Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of State during the attacks, and vows to seek the truth about Benghazi.

"This new Benghazi ‘intelligence’ report is little more than a C.Y.A. attempt designed to protect incompetent politicians and government agents at the expense of justice for the victims of September 11, 2012," Paul writes in an op-ed for Breitbart, a conservative website, using an acronym for "cover your ass."

The report in question was issued by the House Intelligence Committee before Thanksgiving, and counters several claims made by some Republicans critical of the Obama administration's handling of the 2012 attacks that killed four Americans in Benghazi.

The report found that "there was no intelligence failure prior to the attacks," "no evidence" of a stand down order to U.S. personnel responding to the assault and no CIA operation to secretly ship arms from Benghazi to Syria.

Paul expresses skepticism at the report’s findings.

Now this is important because lately Rand Paul has been working pretty hard to portray himself as far less wingnutty than we know him to be. (Remember Paul has a fifteen year relationship with professional lunatic Alex Jones, and was once a frequent guest on his radio show.)

So for Paul to ignore the fact that this is just the latest of several investigations into Benghazi, all of which turned up no evidence of malfeasance on the part of the White House, nor any attempt to launch a coverup.

Now personally I expected certain individual to speak out against these findings, and so they have including Senator Lindsey Graham ("Full of crap!"), former Congressman Allen West, and various other Right Wing types. However I thought that Rand Paul was attempting to resist the conspiratorial whispers from the voices in his head and continue straightening his hairpiece and trying to play the grownup.

However I believe I may have given him too muhc credit. Take a look at how he justifies his reticence in accepting the findings of the report:

"None of these accusations contain even a modicum of truth?" he asked.

He points to a Fox News report that U.S. security personnel said the top CIA officer in Benghazi prevented them from responding faster, and to multiple articles on arms smuggling from Libya to Syria.

"The Obama Administration has tried to paint members of Congress who ask these questions as somehow being extreme or crazy — and perhaps the House Intelligence Committee will now follow suit," Paul writes. "But remember, this is the same administration that called the investigation into the IRS scandal a product of a 'conspiracy theory.' "

So to support his faith that there really is a Benghazi scandal, despite the fact that his has been debunked, Paul turns to the IRS "scandal," which has also been debunked.

Awesome plan.

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