It turns out that the “evidence” provided by Republicans to show that the Obama administration watered down the facts about the Benghazi attack were (to put it bluntly) lies. For example, an email from White House security advisor Ben Rhodes said:
We need to resolve this in a way that respects all of the relevant equities, particularly the investigation.
But the Republican version of the email said:
We must make sure that the talking points reflect all agency equities, including those of the State Department, and we don’t want to undermine the FBI investigation.
adding the phrase about the State Department to make it look like the White House was trying to protect Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In another quote, Republicans changed things to make it look like the White House orchestrated changes to the talking points. But looking at the real emails shows, as CBS News put it “There is no evidence that the White House orchestrated the changes.”
This is the scandal that Republicans claim is “worse than Watergate”? Not only is it a tempest in a teapot, it sure looks like the Republicans manufactured the tempest. Where’s the guy who now stands up to the GOP and says “you lie!”?
5 Comments
It is outrageous. When parties blatantly lie and forge documents they should be removed from office immediately. Exaggeration, obfuscation, and straw man arguments are the bread and butter of politics, but this isn’t politics – this is CRIME.
Seems to me that changing official correspondence to support one’s own political point of view falls somewhere within the concept of high crimes and misdemeanors. Luckily for the Publicans, no one probably “knows” who altered the emails. Probably someone at Faux News or a low paid staffer looking for a promotion or – I guess I’m saying they are smart enough to cover their tracks with enough plausible deniability scams to hide the truth forever. No?
Forgive me for not being surprised one bit by this. Sadly this is what I have come to expect from the right wingers.
Outrageous if true. There should be a senate hearing to grill whoever modified the emails.
For some strange reason I almost had a female moment at a dog that died at the end of a futurama show.
Now I got to catch a man movie to make amends for my mistake.