Most adults have been in the very uncomfortable position of sitting in a meeting, around the dinner table, or at a social function and listen to a person lie through their teeth when everyone within earshot knows the person is lying. In those cases, the only person who is not uncomfortable is the clearly pathological liar that psychologists describe as compulsive lying on a regular basis and unable to control their lying despite the inevitable negative consequences or ultimate disclosure of the lie. On Sunday, the biggest liar in America, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee Darrell Issa, compulsively lied to Fox News host Chris Wallace without remorse, and for once it was refreshing to see Wallace challenge Issa and reiterate a recent Washington Post fact check accusing him of having the “highest level of falsehood” for his obsession with the attacks in Benghazi.
Issa was still spreading the blatant lie that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to “stand down” and let the four diplomats fend for themselves instead of alerting the military to “spin up” assets to fight the Benghazi attackers. Wallace reminded Issa that last year a Washington Post fact checker concluded that “Issa is crossing a line when he suggests there was no response — or a deliberate effort to hinder it.” The Fox News host reminded Issa that “for the second time they gave you ‘Four Pinocchios,’ which is their highest level of falsehood.” Issa attempted to defend his lie saying he just quoted “something that was in somebody else’s report” as if it exonerated him for repeating a persistent year-and-a-half lie. One thing is clear; if Issa read “something in someone else’s report,” he also read, or heard in person, several Department of Defense personnel at the highest levels tell Issa they were not given an order to stand down.
In the Republican House’s Majority Interim Report: Benghazi Investigation Update released last month, there are detailed descriptions of actions taken by the Department of Defense (DOD) including directions from President Obama to “use all available assets to respond to the attacks to ensure the safety of U.S. personnel in Libya.” Not only was the President, like former-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, clearly engaged in the unfolding events, he was in contact with Defense Secretary Panetta and General Dempsey immediately upon learning of the attack on the diplomatic outpost in Benghazi. Still, Issa cannot help himself from continuing to lie, in public and on national media that the President and Clinton were at fault for the deaths of four diplomats. However, Wallace would not let up on Issa and said, “But to be honest, you do not have any evidence that secretary Clinton told Leon Panetta to stand down” to which Issa replied he was not using the term “stand down” as it normally applies to military operations and lied again and said the President and Clinton were guilty of “the failure to react.”
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According to a report from the Republican House Armed Services Committee that Issa certainly read and is aware of, Lieutenant Colonel Gibson replied to a statement that “he and his team were ordered to stand down” with “I was not ordered to stand down.” As far as Issa’s assertion the President and Clinton were guilty of a failure to react, the Committee’s report clearly explained in detail that the Defense Department “did, in fact, begin ‘spinning up’ assets immediately” contrary to Issa’s accusations there was a failure to react. Issa also knows for a fact the report said that when the State Department learned the Benghazi outpost came under attack, the DOD’s National Military Command Center immediately began allocating various assets and forces to the crisis. The response decisions were based on which forces were available and could readily be brought to bear on the situation contradicting Issa’s lies. Ramping up assets and forces to respond to the attack on Benghazi is not, under any possible interpretation, remotely related to Issa’s assertions that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to “stand down.” Besides, Issa must think Americans are stupid enough to believe that after the Commander in Chief of the nation’s military ordered Defense Secretary Panetta to “use all available assets to respond to the attacks to ensure the safety of U.S. personnel in Libya,” that former Secretary of State Clinton overruled the President and told the DOD to “stand down.”
Issa is very well aware that the DOD, immediately of learning of the attack, redirected the nearest Predator drone that was approximately an hour’s flight time away to Benghazi. At the same time Secretary Panetta consulted with three top generals and authorized three specific actions. First, two Marine FAST platoons in Spain were ordered to prepare to deploy to Benghazi and Tripoli, a European Command special operations unit was moved to a U.S. Naval Air Station in Italy for rapid deployment, and a special operations unit stationed in America was dispatched to the region. The report also reiterates that the President ordered Panetta and General Dempsey to use “all available assets” to ensure the safety of U.S. personnel in Libya and “to protect U.S. personnel and interests throughout the region.” Issa is aware of the DOD’s response posture and yet he cannot, and likely will not, stop lying regardless he is called out as a liar on national television and in the press.
Americans get it. Issa is a rank liar and a racist who has spent the past three years looking for a scandal in the Obama Administration. Issa also told Wallace that there is real evidence the Obama White House is guilty of wrongdoing in the Issa-created I.R.S. scandal and told the Fox host “there certainly is real evidence that there was wrongdoing and that wrongdoing was not in Cincinnati, but, in fact, in Washington, DC.” Now on that point Issa is absolutely correct. The wrongdoing in Washington D.C. was while Issa met in secret and conspired with Treasury inspector general J. Russell George instructing him to focus on teabagger groups’ applications for 501(C) social welfare organizations. Two House Democrats filed a 22-page formal complaint against George for giving Issa precisely what he asked for; a “fundamentally flawed performance audit” that was “incomplete” and “outright misleading.” It is noteworthy that Issa’s own investigation into the phony I.R.S. scandal, like the phony Benghazi scandal, cleared the Obama Administration of any wrongdoing whatsoever.
Issa is vacant of any morals or ethics, and his persistent lies about the President and former Secretary Clinton are without merit and a monumental waste of taxpayer time and money. However, Issa’s lies are not borne of pathology; they are driven by an intense hatred of an African American sitting in the Oval Office and little else; except maybe Issa’s impotence in failing to find a scandal even when he creates them of his own accord. Issa’s criminal past is well-known and he personifies the repeat offender mindset that defines career criminals unable to stop their life of crime. Darrell Issa is as worthless a human being as he is a representative in the House of Representatives, and it is not something a Secular Humanist is inclined to to say, but unlike Darrell Issa, a Secular Humanist is predisposed to to tell the truth and there is no greater truth than Darrell Issa is a pox on the United States Congress and America.
Audio engineer and instructor for SAE. Writes op/ed commentary supporting Secular Humanist causes, and exposing suppression of women, the poor, and minorities. An advocate for freedom of religion and particularly, freedom of NO religion.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn’t look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
