Quick Note: Beleaguering Benghazi -- Oversight vs. Armed Forces

Last week, Retired Air Force Brigadier General Robert Lovell gave testimony before the Republican led House Oversight Committee, "There are accounts of time, space and capability, discussions of the question, 'could we have gotten there in time to make a difference?' Well, the discussion is not in the 'could or could not' in relation to time, space and capability--the point is we should have tried.  As the saying goes: 'Always move to the sound of the guns."

When asked if the White House had ever issued orders to "go save the people in Benghazi", Mr. Lovell replied "Not to my knowledge, sir."

(Signal the Republican happy-dance music.)

In the latest effort to use the Benghazi tragedy for political gain, the Republican led committee immediately seized on his testimony as proof that the White House was to blame for the four American deaths there.

In an attempt to take the air out of the Republican jubilation over Mr. Lovell's testimony, Representative Gerald Connolly, (D-Virginia) asked for some clarification.  "There might be some who, for various and sundry reasons, would like to distort your testimony and suggest that you're testifying that we could have, should have done a lot more than we did because we had capabilities we simply didn't utilize."

Mr. Lovell, a former deputy director of intelligence at Africa Command who was on duty in Germany at the time of the Benghazi attack, replied, "That is not my testimony.  No, sir.  What I'm speaking to is that, as a nation, we should try to do more."

Which sounds a lot like trying to play both sides of the argument to me...otherwise known as covering-my-butt.

Buck McKeon (R-California), chairman of the House Armed Forces Committee--a man certainly in a position to know whether military intervention could or could not have made a difference--told the investigating committee that Brigadier General Lovell was an unreliable witness.     
"(He) did not serve in a capacity that gave him reliable insight into operation options available to commanders during the attack....The Armed Services Committee has interviewed more than a dozen witnesses in the operation chain of command that night, yielding thousands of pages of transcripts, e-mails and other documents.  We have no evidence that Department of State officials delayed the decision to deploy what few resources (they) had available to respond."

Taking into account his own committee's investigation, along with the months and months of testimony that fellow Republican Darrell Issa's investigation has collected, Mr. McKeon said, "I'm pretty well satisfied that given where the troops were, how quickly the thing happened, and how quickly it dissipated, we probably couldn't have done more than we did."

Ignoring Mr. McKeon's assessment, Mr. Issa has decided to subpoena Secretary of State John Kerry and, not to be outdone in the GOP's on-going witch hunt, Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) announced he plans to appoint an additional, more select committee to further investigate Benghazi.

Because, if they can't keep their frenzied search for a Benghazi conspiracy alive, they're afraid that Hillary Clinton will be moving into the White House in 2017.