Today on Face the Nation, Lindsey Graham expressed his outrage at the deficits in our intelligence regarding the Benghazi affair. Why didn’t we know what was happening there? Why did it take so long for the truth to come out? Why was the Obama administration so slow in dealing with the situation?
If we are going to do some finger-pointing about intelligence, I would like to ask Senator Graham where he was during the Bush administration when we were receiving faulty intelligence about the situation in Iraq. Where was his outrage when we found no weapons of mass destruction? Why we were not (as promised) greeted as liberators by the people whose country we were invading?
Four citizens of this great United States died because of the attack on the consulate at Benghazi. They died in service to their country, and we mourn their deaths. If they died as a result of intelligence failure, however, they are in exactly the same category as the more than four thousand American troops who died as a result of the great intelligence failures that led to the war in Iraq.
So, Senator Graham, Senator McCain, and all the other lawmakers who have their panties in a wad about Benghazi, let’s have a complete and thorough investigation of intelligence failures, starting with the previous administration. It is time to get a committee together to investigate who knew what, and when. Besides the previous President and his cabinet and advisors, let’s include all the Senators and Congressmen who voted for war in Iraq. What was the motive of the Bush administration? Did they know the intelligence was flawed? Why didn’t the lawmakers do a better job of vetting the information that was given to them before they accepted the reports they were given, and moved to support the President? This was surely a dereliction of duty on the part of each and every one of them.
I am deeply troubled by this. I want answers.
If you are upset by the unnecessary deaths of four members of a diplomatic mission because of flawed intelligence, you should also be upset by the unnecessary deaths of 4,486 members of our military who died in the Iraq war which was based on flawed intelligence.
This should never happen in a country as great as ours. The people who allowed it to happen were clearly unfit to do the jobs which they were required to do.
It is past time for an investigation. Let’s start now!