Eugene Robinson: ‘There were 7 attacks on U.S. Diplomatic installations under Bush’

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Eugene Robinson appeared on Morning Joe Friday morning, and he was in no mood for Benghazi games.

As the panel fretted about an email and a cover up and the obsession or lack thereof by the press, Robinson shifted in his seat and opened his mouth to speak several times. When he was finally allowed to speak, Robinson pointed out that while this was a horrible thing, these things happen in the middle of a civil war due to our global footprint, and oh, by the way panel, “There were seven attacks on U.S. Diplomatic installations under George W. Bush… and how much Clinton and how many under Reagan?”

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Eugene Robinson: This Benghazi thing, it drives me crazy, right? Four diplomats, including an ambassador, first ambassador since 1979, an awful thing happened. But these things happen. Especially in a war zone, in Libya, after a civil war! After you get —

Joe Scarborough: We are not talking about these things happening. We are talking about how the white house handled it afterwards.

Eugene Robinson: Exactly. So they didn’t handle it well. They didn’t handle it as well as they should have. But there are like seven attacks on U.S. Diplomatic installations under George W. Bush and how much Clinton and how many under Reagan? I mean, these awful things happen because of our global footprint and the idea that this becomes an obsession about whether a talking point was changed here or there, when, obviously, all of the information comes out, obviously, you know it and obviously, mistakes are made because somebody died and nobody wanted that to happen.

The Republican obsession with Benghazi has been outed as purely political. Yes, a terrible thing happened, but Republicans are only demonstrating just how desperate they are when they attempt to call this “Watergate”.

The Republican talking points on the panel tried to say that if only the White House had handled this correctly, no one would be talking about it, but that doesn’t hold water.

This is the same press that ignored the epic fail of Weapons of Mass Destruction and the utter lies of the lead up to the Iraq War, but suddenly they are once again obsessed with “the cover up”. If that rings a bell, it’s because that’s how they got Clinton over his affair.

However, in this case, there is no evidence that there was a cover up. Even Darell Issa’s star witness, the so called whistleblower, failed to deliver the Republican goods on a cover up:

(D) espite Issa’s incautious promise that the hearing’s revelations would be “damaging” to Hillary Rodham Clinton, Hicks didn’t lay a glove on the former secretary of state Wednesday… Hicks, bald and with a white chin beard, said his “jaw dropped” when he heard U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice falsely claim on TV that there had been a protest at the Benghazi consulate, but he declined an invitation to challenge the veracity of the director of national intelligence, who said the statement reflected “our collective best judgment at the time.”

Also, that email? It doesn’t say what they think it says. Boehner said it referenced “terrorists” but it did not. Sigh. This might be a good time to ask these Republicans why they keep getting their accusations wrong as they scurry about hoping to accidentally land on the thing that sticks.

There is evidence that officials were cautious and worked with various intelligence agencies in order to gather information, some of which was later amended. Since this all took a matter of weeks and not years, and was done for the purposes of caution, it’s nothing but desperate to frame it as a cover up.

These people seem to forget that Gen. David Petraeus, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency, answered their “questions” about the emails and talking points last November. He testified in November “that classified intelligence reports revealed that the deadly assault on the American diplomatic mission in Libya was a terrorist attack, but that the administration refrained from saying it suspected that the perpetrators of the attack were Al Qaeda affiliates and sympathizers to avoid tipping off the groups.”

ABC has joined the Republican propaganda tour, ironically just days after Republican PR groups sent a round of emails to the media hyping Benghazi as the end of Hillary Clinton.

The danger is that in wearying response to Republican hype and continuous moving of the goal post on Benghazi, even Eugene Robinson semi conceded that the administration could have handled it better. In what way? Should they have over-ridden intelligence requests to not mention terrorists group? Should they have said, aw, screw it, here’s everything we know on day one, and given a presser like Mitt Romney did?

And why is anyone listening to Republicans when it comes to getting terrorists? They didn’t even look for bin Laden, they ignored intel about 9/11, they defunded security for diplomatic stations and the House has repeatedly outed classified documents by “accident”, due to their failure to be cognizant of the many factors involved and seeming cluelessness that the Internet is not a secret.

Lest Republicans miss Robinson’s point about the dangers in Libya, the British embassy pulled a small number of staff today, “Given the security implications of the ongoing political uncertainty, the British Embassy is temporarily withdrawing a small number of staff.”

Since Benghazi is proving so interesting to some members of the press, it’s time for the very concerned press to ask some questions about the implications of that defunding.

Sarah Jones

Listen to Sarah on the PoliticusUSA Pod on The Daily newsletter podcast here.

Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.

Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

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