UK: Silly season and Benghazi

PJ:  If my staunch republican father was alive today, he would deride this conservative publication, claiming incorrectly that it had changed into a liberal publication. I mention that only because there are a lot of American conservatives who will do the same. When the facts or opinions deviate from their own, they claim fowl and bias.   The assessment that The Econmist has turned liberal would, of course, be incorrect. The Economist remains a very conservative magazine.  What my father and many of today's republicans would have missed is that the magazine always tries to give rational voice to issues, even if that voice deviates from the strict talking points of America's conservative movement.  Perhaps it's time to put partisan bickering aside and work together?  Heavy sigh.

Right now, members of the GOP are beating the conspiracy drums with respect to what happened in Benghazi and claiming some far-fetched cover-up conspiracies in the process. Senators such as McCain and Graham have repeatedly demanded that the administration release information.  Why then have they skipped security briefings in order to hold press conferences to claim that they are not being briefed?  Another heavy sigh.  
It's all very sordid and sad and unfortuneately the norm in Washington, D.C.

The Economist

Susan Rice

Benghazi-gate gets even more ludicrous

Nov 15th 2012, 14:18 by M.S. 

REPUBLICAN senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham devoted an appearance at the Washington Ideas Forum on Wednesday to vowing to filibuster if Susan Rice, the current UN ambassador, is nominated to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state. They're apparently ticked off over her statements on talk shows on September 15th about the Benghazi attacks. Barack Obama got pretty incensed about this at his press conference later in the day, and Kevin Drum argues he was right to be incensed. As Mr Drum says, everything Ms Rice said on September 15th was in fact the judgment at that moment of American intelligence agencies, and she relayed that judgment accurately. The only thing that was even arguably wrong in those intelligence assessments was the claim that there had been a copycat protest over those anti-Muslim YouTube videos in Benghazi; intelligence agencies didn't start calling this into question until some time later. "Berating Rice, who had nothing to do with Benghazi aside from representing the administration on these talk shows, is nuts," Mr Drum writes. "The intelligence community was wrong about one relatively unimportant fact, and Rice passed along that mistake. That's it. There's no coverup, no conspiracy, no incompetence, no scandal."

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2012/11/susan-rice