Obama administration lies about Benghazi documents released by Issa

On October 19th, Oversight Committee chairman Darrell Issa publicly released 166 pages of documents, 45 photos, and the 10-page letter he had sent to Barack Obama. The letter included ten questions Issa wanted the president to answer. It also implicated Obama as being personally responsible in his role as chairman of the National Security Council, which Issa identified specifically as the entity that likely made the decisions that put Americans in danger.

The Obama administration quickly attempted to say that by releasing this information, Issa has put a human rights activist in danger. In a press release, Issa's team debunks this feeble attempt by the administration to shift the focus of the debate by using a female activist as a political prop (which is apparently supposed to feed the 'war on women' narrative).

Here is a portion of Issa's statement:

“The Libyan rights activist who was highlighted by the Obama administration in news accounts as having not been, ‘publicly associated with the U.S.’ until the Oversight Committee released documents had actually been brought to the U.S. in December 2011 by the State Department and her trip is highlighted on the Internet. President Obama should be ashamed of yet another example where his administration has been caught trying to mislead the American people about what happened in Libya.”

“Obama Administration officials and their surrogates are clearly reeling from revelations about how the situation in Benghazi was mishandled and are falsely politicizing the issue in a last ditch effort to save President Obama’s reelection effort.  To see such prominent officials as Sen. John Kerry, Sen. Dick Durbin, Sen. Carl Levin, Rahm Emanuel, and Obama Senior Advisor David Axelrod paraded out over to weekend to make false charges about the Oversight Committee putting Libyans in danger only shows their desperation to hide the truth. As the Committee had previously indicated, the State Department has had these documents for two weeks but never contacted the committee about making specific redactions. The Libyans noted in these documents worked in positions where their interactions with westerners would not be surprising.”

The Obama administration attempted to portray this woman as someone who isn't associated with the U.S. except for the cable that mentions her, which it says puts her in danger. Issa's staff is pointing to a video that features this activist as well as a public State Department event in late 2011 for the International Visitor Program of the World Affairs Council, at which she was hosted.

Here is the video of her on the internet, speaking out against the Libyan transitional government and she is wearing a badge that clearly says, "United States Department of State".

Audio: Today's Show Podcast

On today's show...

Binder-gate vs. Benghazi-gate.
What do Joe Biden's gaffes sound like when played backwards?
Darrell Issa's strong letter to Barack Obama.

Is John McCain throwing stones from a glass house when he criticizes Obama over Benghazi comments?

One of the loudest voices in Congress to go after Barack Obama for saying, "if four Americans get killed, it's not optimal" has been Senator John McCain. While McCain is right in this instance, his positions up to this point leave him very little high ground from which to speak.

Via POLITICO:

“Even from someone like the president, who has never known what these kinds of tragedies are about and the service and sacrifice that people make, it’s still just — I can’t even get angry,” Sen. John McCain, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Thursday night on Fox News’s “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.”

“It’s just so inappropriate,” McCain continued. “And I’m sure that the families of those brave Americans are not amused.”

A problem for McCain is that he supported Obama's policy in Libya, the same policy that has allowed al-Qaeda to flourish in places like Benghazi.

Remember when McCain referred to the Libyan rebels as "my heroes" during his visit to Benghazi in April of 2011, when many of us knew better then (pay attention at the 1:05 mark)?



Also during that visit, McCain walked right by a Benghazi courthouse that only weeks earlier had been the site of a black man being beheaded by rebels. Here is video of McCain walking past the scene of that atrocity. None other than Christopher Stevens can be seen walking behind him.



Here is a photo of McCain with Stevens taken during their walk past the Benghazi courthouse, captured in the video above:

Here is a photo of McCain with Stevens in Tripoli:

McCain is taking the right position when it comes to arguing that the Benghazi consulate should have been more secure. Unfortunately, the position he took in 2011 was absolutely the wrong position. As bad as Gadhafi was, al-Qaeda was kept at bay and if he had remained in power, it's a safe bet that Stevens would still be alive. McCain advocated for the rebels and took a position then that put Americans in greater danger.

The Senator from Arizona also sits on some powerful Senate Committees. He is the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee and serves on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. McCain was wrong about Libya then and he's wrong about Syria now; he continues to be among the loudest voices in support of rebels there as well.

It's important to note as well, that McCain has been one of Huma Abedin's most powerful and vocal supporters. Abedin, Deputy Chief of Staff to Hillary Clinton (someone else who has tough questions to answer over the Benghazi attack), has familial ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, which overtly supported the Libyan rebels.

McCain is on the wrong side of practically every debate over the Middle East and although he's right about calling Obama out on the lack of security in Libya, he doesn't have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to backing policies that got us here.

Until McCain has a mea culpa about his position on Libya in 2011, the Arab Spring generally, and individuals like Huma Abedin in particular, he'll be throwing stones from a glass house.