This morning I nearly choked on my coffee when I saw that The New York Times' editorial board published an opinion piece with the headline, “Shut Down the Benghazi Committee.” For once, I couldn't agree more with the Times.
Two years ago, I wrote an e-book with my colleague, Ari Rabin-Havt, titled, The Benghazi Hoax. In it, we detailed the 15 most common falsehoods the Fox Noise Machine and conservative blowhards pumped out on a daily basis as they tried to politicize the tragedy in Benghazi.
Mitt Romney had failed to do so effectively in the 2012 election, so the right-wing turned its sights on the woman they thought most likely to be the next Democratic nominee for president.
Fox News was a driving force behind House Republicans' formation of the sham Benghazi Committee. In fact, the network ran nearly 1,100 prime-time segments pushing the propped-up storyline in the first 20 months after the national tragedy alone.
On May 2, 2014, House Speaker John Boehner announced the Benghazi Select Committee. In the ensuing two weeks, as Media Matters reported, Fox News provided over $124 million dollars' worth of promotion on their airwaves. Mainstream media followed suit, awaiting each and every utterance of Rep. Trey Gowdy and his committee cronies.
Two years later, the results speak for themselves.
The committee has spent $4.6 million taxpayer dollars and uncovered no new information or wrongdoing by any individual. Despite major leaks to reporters, the Select Committee on Benghazi has offered no recommendations for how to prevent similar tragedies from happening in the future.
Now, The New York Times is reaffirming what I have been saying for the past two years, after they followed committee Republicans down the rabbit hole of Hillary's emails -- another glaring red herring in this tragedy-turned-partisan-ploy.
This may be one of the ugliest abuses of taxpayer funds and exploitations of a national tragedy in modern American history.
Politicians in both parties can expect to be dragged through the mud, but conservatives should be ashamed of dishonoring men and women who try to keep us safe, solely for partisan political gain. There should be general agreement -- if nothing else, common decency should tell you -- that politicizing a tragedy such as this crosses a line.
This was a political hit-job of the highest order. Hopefully, it is the last we'll see of any kind of political attack like it.