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Benghazi Tag

It hasn't been a good month for Hillary Clinton. It has been a very very bad month, in fact. This was supposed to be a great month with the launch of her new biography "Hard Choices." The book tour had her featured on every major television news and entertainment program in the country. Hillary's face was popping up across the fruited plains from Albuquerque to Zanesville. Things were looking good for Hillary Clinton's 2016 preview. But then the wheels came off. Here are the five horrible stories that slowed down the Clinton Express in the last few weeks:

Hillary Clinton and her closest allies know that Benghazi spells big trouble for her in 2016, especially with a select committee poised to launch a new investigation with a fresh round of questions. With that in mind, it's no surprise that Clinton is trying to cut them off at the pass by addressing the subject in her new memoir. It's just an attempt to claim that all the questions surrounding the attack have already been answered. They haven't. Jim Geraghty of National Review weighed in recently...
Politico obtains the Benghazi-related chapter of Hillary Clinton’s forthcoming memoir, and describes it here. You are unlikely to be surprised to learn that she attacks the motives of her critics, contends the intelligence community believed the attack started as a protest — even though she was the one who first issued a statement declaring the attack video-related, while it was still going on — and contends the government did everything it could to rescue those under attack.
Stephen F. Hayes of The Weekly Standard offered this...

Eleanor Clift, who is a “key member of the political team” at Newsweek and regularly appears the television program, The McLaughlin Group, declared last week that Ambassador Chris Stevens was not murdered in the September 11th terrorist attack in Benghazi.
I would like to point out Ambassador Stevens was not murdered. He died of smoke inhalation in the safe room in that CIA installation.
According to her bio, Clift has followed the Clinton family as a journalist since the early nineties, and it appears she may have grown a certain fondness for the former Secretary of State, as that is the only logical explanation for making such a outlandish statement on purpose. But Clift didn’t stop there. After being challenged by others on the panel, she spouted off the same lines that were spoon fed to the media in the immediate aftermath of the attack, that we all now know are completely untrue.
PAT BUCHANAN: It was a terrorist attack, Eleanor. He was murdered in a terrorist attack. CLIFT: It was an opportunistic terrorist attack that grew out of that video. BUCHANAN: The video had nothing to do with it. SUSAN FERRECHIO: She’s still talking about the video? CLIFT: There were demonstrations across the world. BUCHANAN: Not in Benghazi. There was no video related to it at all. CLIFT: It was still opportunistic… If we’re going to put people on trial we should put David Petraeus on trial, not Hillary Clinton.
So, if I follow Clift’s logic, Ambassador Stevens wasn't murdered in the Benghazi terror attack because the coordinated mortar bombardment he was seeking shelter from that night did not land a direct hit. Instead, maybe Clift thinks they were a series of warning shots, one of which accidentally created enough smoke to suffocate the late Ambassador? Contrary to Clift's intent -- which was to say the Benghazi investigations are overblown and redundant -- her outlandish and downright false statements demonstrate the critical need for the special committee on Benghazi. The Administration's misleading talking points, and the media's general refusal to even slightly scrutinize them in the lead up to the 2012 election, demand a full inquiry into the truth of the matter. Perhaps the this investigation will clear some things up for Clift, who seems incapable of absorbing the reality that this attack was not the result of a YouTube video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0eDDyQwOpk One final note: Clift also repeatedly characterized the attack as "opportunistic," which is essentially another way of saying it was spontaneous (like the protest about the video that never actually occurred).

Looks like the Select Committee headed by Trey Gowdy will be Bipartisan! Politico reports, Benghazi panel to have 7 GOPers, 5 Dems:
The select committee that will probe the attacks in Benghazi will have seven Republicans and five Democrats, according to sources familiar with the GOP leadership’s plans. A resolution to create the committee will come to the floor Thursday and is expected to pass by a wide margin. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) tapped South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy to chair the panel.
And it's pretty obvious that Hillary will be a primary focus:
On  May 7, 2013 during one of the many House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearings on Benghazi, Rep. Trey Gowdy, his voice slightly shaken with emotion, had the following ringing words to say –  and for their sake, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama better have been listening: “so if anyone wants to know what difference does it make, if anyone wants to ask what difference does it make (in reference to the now infamous Hillary Clinton quote) – it always matters whether you can trust your government – and to the families of the victims – we are going to find out what happened in Benghazi and I dont give a damn who’s career is impacted – we are going to find out what happened.” Rep. Gowdy will now be able to completely fulfill that promise, and in the process, could destroy the political careers of one or both of the most powerful Democrats in America.
Rand Paul is encouraging the focus on Hillary:

Obama adviser David Plouffe appeared on ABC's This Week today and in a classic case of liberal projection, he tried to blame the GOP for politicizing the attack in Benghazi. Conservative talk radio host Laura Ingraham was also on the panel and took Plouffe to task. Transcript via ABC News...
David Plouffe, you're actually on that email that caused so much trouble this week. It was an email to you and several others from Ben Rhodes. And everybody keying on this line in the -- in the -- in the email, to underscore -- this is the goals of the Sunday morning appearance -- "to underscore that these protests are rooted in an Internet video, not a broader failure of policy." A lot of Republicans saying this is the smoking gun. I know you dismiss that, but was it a mistake not to release this email earlier? DAVID PLOUFFE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: No, I think, you know, lawyers have spoken to this and it's out now. I think, listen, what Benghazi was was a tragedy. What we need to do is figure out how to prevent it from happening again and to try and hold those accountable, as we did bin Laden. Took a while, but after 11 years, we did. I think what you see wasn't the U.S.S. Cole bombing, 17 of our sailors died. The weeks before the 2000 election. What did then-Governor Bush say? It's time for our nation to speak as one voice. Now you couldn't handle that in this party. This has been politicized like we've never seen before.

Last night on Bret Baier's Special Report was a moment dudes will remember for ages. It summed up the smug, Washington D.C. insider's attitude as well as, dude, anything. It also gave rise the the hashtag, #ReplaceFamousQuoteWithDude Here are my contributions:

As controversy over newly released documents pertaining to the 2012 Benghazi attack continues, there was a tense exchange between White House press spokesman Jay Carney and FOX News reporter Ed Henry in Thursday’s press briefing. The exchange began when Henry asked Carney about a September 14th,...