BENGAZI HEARING DISGRACE

Some will think of the Benghazi hearings as the opening salvo in the 2016 presidential campaign. All indications are that the Republicans are ready to play dirty, which is exactly what all Democrats expect. After listening to the hearings, my conclusion is that Rep. Darrell Issa is doing everything he can to start a forest fire where there isn’t even a bush let alone a forest to burn.   

It is simple. Terrorist used the tumult invoked by an anti Islamic film as cover to stage an attack on a U.S. Embassy. The Muslim world was embroiled in unrest over this film, which means massive numbers of “boots on the ground” would have been needed to cover all embassies; a very, very expensive endeavor. The Republicans blocked Secretary Clintons request for more funds to protect the embassies. Even I am not so cynical as to think that senators like McCain and Graham hoped that something like this would happen so they could criticize her. However, these are precisely the people who directed funds away from State and into the pentagon while promoting privatization of the arm forces that protect our embassies: the Blackwater privatized military types who cost a lot more than Marines. Generally, I do not like Jeremy Scahill as an author but he did a good job in writing his book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (National Books NY. 2007).  

Benghazi was the result of privatization. The rush to privatize everything has as it main purpose to direct taxpayer’s money into the pockets of private citizens. The privatization of embassy guards was no different. It wasn’t done to protect the embassies but was done for more profit for mercenary armies. Many things are wrong with this; the government loses control of the military and the services are poor. The private company owners, who benefit, starting with Eric Prince and Blackwater, are rich and greedy friends of the congressional representatives who generously reward these operations, while civilian welfare programs go wanting. In addition, the Republican congressional representatives treat the Department of State as a country cousin to the “can do no wrong” Pentagon. The Secretary of State did not have control of these forces nor did she have the money to “buy” sufficient numbers of them to cover all the embassies in this time of area crisis caused by the Islamic film. They were private companies; therefore, she had not way of knowing their state of readiness. The protectors of the embassies were not low cost high value marines as they should have been; they were mercenaries. I trace Benghazi right back to McCain/Graham radical right wing politics. They put the hearing in the hands of a hate mongering Republican, Darrell Issa, for fair and impartial investigation: obviously, the hearings turned out to be a cruel joke. 

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