By Elaine Magliaro
The Associated Press reported on Friday that the House Intelligence Committee’s two-year investigation into what happened in Benghazi in 2012 found that the CIA and the military had acted properly when responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound there. The committee asserted that there was no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees. According to Lauren French (Politico), the committee dismissed “a number of the most persistent myths about the 2012 terrorist attacks at a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.”
French said the committee “found the U.S. government didn’t fail to send assistance to the Americans under siege by Islamic militants and there was no ‘stand down order’ from the State Department.” She said that the committee also dismissed the notion that there was an “intelligence failure” that allowed the attacks to occur. French added, though, that the committee, chaired by Republican Chairman Mike Rogers of Michigan, ruled some “individuals involved with Al Qaeda were involved with the attacks and Abu Sufian bin Qumu, a Libyan national, ‘probably played some role’ in the attacks.” She noted that Qumu had been a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay before he was transferred to Libya in 2001.
The AP said that the investigation report debunked “a series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies…” Evidently, there had been no delay “in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.”
Rogers and Maryland Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the committee said, “We spent thousands of hours asking questions, poring over documents, reviewing intelligence assessments, reading cables and emails, and held a total of 20 Committee events and hearings. We conducted detailed interviews with senior intelligence officials from Benghazi and Tripoli as well as eight security personnel on the ground in Benghazi that night. Based on the testimony and the documents we reviewed, we concluded that all the CIA officers in Benghazi were heroes. Their actions saved lives.”
But…it appears that this investigation won’t be the end of the House delving into the attacks on the diplomatic compound in Benghazi. French said that the House established a select committee to investigate the attacks earlier this year. She said that a “spokesperson for the panel said on Friday that Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) would incorporate the Intel Committee’s findings into the Benghazi panel’s work.”
The spokesman was quoted a s saying, “It will aid the Select Committee’s comprehensive investigation to determine the full facts of what happened in Benghazi, Libya before, during and after the attack and contribute toward our final, definitive accounting of the attack on behalf of Congress.”
French added that the House Intelligence Committee’s report will likely “spur criticism against the State Department over the shape of its security protocols as the agency knew it was unprepared to defend the outpost in case of a well-organized and heavily armed attack – a high probability in highly volatile region.”
French:
The report said State Department agents felt “ill-equipped and ill-trained to contend with the threat environment in Benghazi.”
The AP said that many of the committee’s findings “echo those of six previous investigations by various congressional committees and a State Department panel.”
It was noted by some members of the media that the House Intelligence Committee report was released “with little fanfare” on the Friday before Thanksgiving week.
SOURCES
GOP Intel Report Debunks Its Own Party’s Nutty Benghazi Theories (TPM)
House Intel Committee dismisses some Benghazi myths (Politico)
Nicole Plyler Fisk
Gene Howington
FFS Guest Blogger
Joy of Fishes
Chuck Stanley
shortfinals
Terry Welshans
ann li-summers
wordcloud9
Flowers For Socrates 
This will not be reported on RIL or FAUX news.
The Republican Party has once again displayed the triumph of the cynical lie. They made Benghazi into a national issue, when there was obviously never an issue at all. Today’s conservative movement has learned well from their mentor Joseph Goebbels and sadly what passes for mainstream media in this country, would have been right at home in NAZI Germany.
the House Intelligence Committee = HIC-up
The Fox News crowd has now moved on to Gruber and Obama and immigration although I guess they still talk about BENGHAZI!!!!!!!!, too.
swarthmoremom,
You beat me to the punch, but…BENGHAZI!!!, forever, anyway!
swarthmoremom & Bob,
I posted this Mark Fiore “Learn to Speak Benghazi” video months ago. Don’t know if you saw it.
Well,the GOP has had a bad couple of days:
” The committee asserted that there was no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees. According to Lauren French (Politico), the committee dismissed “a number of the most persistent myths about the 2012 terrorist attacks at a diplomatic outpost in Benghazi.”
When it rains it pours,the repubs(small R) were in the midst of conniption # 1 after the Presidents speech on immigration Thursday night and then this came Friday already running around with their briefs in a wad and their hair on fire at the same time.My.my,my.
”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Sunday refused to accept that the new House Benghazi report cleared the Obama administration of any wrongdoing in its response to the Benghazi attack.
“I think the report is full of crap,” Graham said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
The senator insisted that members of the administration altered the Benghazi talking points after the attack.
“I’m saying that anybody who has followed Benghazi at all knows that the CIA deputy director did not come forward to tell Congress what role he played in changing the talking points,” he said. “And the only way we knew he was involved is when he told a representative at the White House, I’m going to do a hard review of this, a hard rewrite.”
CNN host Gloria Borger then told Graham that the House report concludes that the administration received bad information at first and did not lie.
“That’s a bunch of garbage,” Graham shot back. “That’s a complete bunch of garbage.”
GOP-Commissioned Benghazi Report Debunks GOP Conspiracy Theories About Benghazi
BY ANNIE-ROSE STRASSER POSTED ON NOVEMBER 22, 2014
http://thinkprogress.org/world/2014/11/22/3596042/republican-benghazi-debunks/
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/house-intel-panel-demolishes-benghazi-conspiracies “The substance of a story is what matters, but sometimes, when a story breaks is nearly as important. The Republican-run House Intelligence Committee, for example, waited until late on a Friday afternoon, the week before Thanksgiving, to announce the results of a two-year investigation into the deadly attacks on a U.S. outpost in Benghazi, Libya.
For the right, the findings were simply devastating: all of the Benghazi conspiracy theories, the GOP-led committee found, are completely, demonstrably, and unambiguously wrong. From the Associated Press account:
A two-year investigation by the Republican-controlled House Intelligence Committee has found that the CIA and the military acted properly in responding to the 2012 attack on a U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, and asserted no wrongdoing by Obama administration appointees.
Debunking a series of persistent allegations hinting at dark conspiracies, the investigation of the politically charged incident determined that there was no intelligence failure, no delay in sending a CIA rescue team, no missed opportunity for a military rescue, and no evidence the CIA was covertly shipping arms from Libya to Syria.
The report, which is available in its entirety here, is an unflinching summary of the available evidence, which utterly destroys everything right-wing conspiracy theorists have been pushing for more than two years about the deadly attack. For conservatives, there’s no sugarcoating any of this – literally every accusation has been debunked. No exceptions.
And for Republicans, who’ve invested so much in the ugly exploitation of the terrorism for partisan gain, that obviously posed a problem. For House GOP lawmakers, the solution was to release the findings late on a Friday, shortly before a major national holiday, in the hopes the American public wouldn’t hear the facts. For the most part, the tactic worked exactly as intended: much of the national media overlooked the findings, which were also largely forgotten on the Sunday shows.
Which is a shame, because this seems like an important accountability moment.”
GOP’s Benghazi nightmare: How they intend to repurpose the entire government over idiocy
Conservatives know in their hearts that Benghazi is a huge cover-up — no matter what the evidence says
http://www.salon.com/2014/11/24/gops_benghazi_nightmare_how_they_intend_to_repurpose_the_entire_government_over_idiocy/
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/obama-moves-forward-guantanamo-releases“The traditional rules say a president whose party struggles in a midterm election is supposed to act a certain way in the aftermath: chastened, meek, and conciliatory, preferably while hanging his head in a way pundits find satisfactory. President Obama just doesn’t seem to care about those rules.
He’s governing on immigration; he’s talking to Iran; he’s striking historic deals with China; he’s taking the lead on net neutrality; and he’s even quietly reducing the population of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.
A Saudi citizen who has spent the past 12 years detained at Guantanamo Bay has been released, the Pentagon said Saturday, amid a push to whittle down the prison population at the U.S. base in Cuba.
Muhammad al-Zahrani was sent to his homeland based on the conclusion of a U.S. government board that has been re-evaluating the need to continue holding some of the men as prisoners, the Pentagon said in a statement. He will take part in a Saudi program to rehabilitate militants…. The board cleared him for release in October, citing a number of factors including his willingness to participate in the Saudi rehabilitation program. He left Guantanamo on Friday.
As Carol Rosenberg reported, Muhammad al-Zahrani had been categorized as a “forever prisoner,” held at the prison for a dozen years without ever being charged with a crime.
Republicans, not surprisingly, aren’t happy – House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon called the administration’s policy “dangerous and, frankly, reckless” – but the White House is moving forward anyway.
Indeed, Zahrani’s departure came on the heels of a U.S. decision to send five other Guantanamo detainees to Europe – three to Georgia and two to Slovakia – with more on the way. Rosenberg’s reporting added, “More transfers are in the pipeline, including another six captives who can’t go home to Middle East trouble spots and are approved to go to Uruguay, perhaps in December.”
According to the Associated Press’ tally over the weekend, 13 prisoners have left Guantanamo Bay this year – seven in the last two weeks – leaving 142 men at the facility. Roughly half of them have already been cleared for release.”