The Republican-led House Intelligence Committee sold out the United States’ proud Benghazi truthers on Friday, when it released the results of a two-year investigation into the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Libya. According to the House panel, the U.S. military, the CIA, and the Obama administration responded “properly” to the assault, which left four Americans dead. In other words: There was no Benghazi scandal.
In the aftermath of the attacks, Republicans criticized the Obama administration and its then-secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is expected to run for president in 2016. People in and out of government have alleged that a CIA response team was ordered to “stand down” after the State Department compound came under attack, that a military rescue was nixed, that officials intentionally downplayed the role of al-Qaida figures in the attack, and that Stevens and the CIA were involved in a secret operation to spirit weapons out of Libya and into the hands of Syrian rebels. None of that is true, according to the House Intelligence Committee report.
The report did find, however, that the State Department facility where Stevens and Smith were killed was not well-protected, and that State Department security agents knew they could not defend it from a well-armed attack. Previous reports have found that requests for security improvements were not acted upon in Washington.
The House Intelligence Committee’s investigation is the sixth government inquiry to fail to uncover evidence of American wrongdoing or conspiracy in Benghazi, which will, of course, mean nothing to Fox News viewers or John Boehner. Keep those acrostics coming, people.
