Benghazi, the exposé

No, not of Secretary Clinton’s misdeeds. Nope. Not at all.

Kurt Eichenwald at Newsweek expresses what many Americans feel about this committee, I think:

The historical significance of this moment can hardly be overstated, and it seems many Republicans, Democrats and members of the media don’t fully understand the magnitude of what is taking place. The awesome power of government—one that allows officials to pore through almost anything they demand and compel anyone to talk or suffer the shame of taking the Fifth Amendment—has been unleashed for purely political purposes. It is impossible to review what the Benghazi committee has done as anything other than taxpayer-funded political research of the opposing party’s leading candidate for president. Comparisons from America’s past are rare. Richard Nixon’s attempts to use the IRS to investigate his perceived enemies come to mind. So does Senator Joseph McCarthy’s red-baiting during the 1950s, with reckless accusations of treason leveled at members of the State Department, military generals and even the secretary of the Army. But the modern McCarthys of the Benghazi committee cannot perform this political theater on their own—they depend on reporters to aid in the attempts to use government for the purpose of destroying others with bogus “scoops” ladled out by members of Congress and their staffs. These journalists will almost certainly join the legions of shamed reporters of the McCarthy era as it becomes increasingly clear they are enablers of an obscene attempt to undermine the electoral process.

He goes on to cite numerous disingenuous remarks and outright lies on the part of committee members, up to and including the chairman, Representative Gowdy.

He then pivots to telling the story of what actually happened that night in 2011, in Benghazi and across the Middle East. There were uprisings and riots across the entire region, which Republicans and their sympathizers have conveniently forgotten or deliberately ignored.

It’s quite an essay.