Benghazi is a tragedy, but...

Along with the rest of the country, I've been listening to and watching this story unfold. The right immediately pounced on it trying to use it as leverage to put the Obama campaign off its stride, well before anything was known about it. The right-wing media, a.k.a. Bullshit Mountain News, a.k.a. FOX News, jumped on this story like a pig jumps on a pile of corn cobs, cynically using parents of dead servicemen to its own ends, to its own craven advantage. 

I do feel badly for their loss. I watched my in-laws lose their two sons. Parents should not have to attend the funerals of their children, but these military sons knew the risks they took in the work they chose and obviously accepted them. We have to honor their service, but not by reflexively and blindly jerking knees to get at answers.

The right's opportunistic pounce was prompted by Mitt Romney's pre-emptive strike mere minutes after the attacks happened and an hour or so before the administration responded to them. Mr. Romney was speaking without regard to facts --- after all, who could know facts so soon --- but this tendency for ready-fire-aim and proven disregard for facts continued unabated. Then, after the outcome of the election was clear --- that the president was re-elected and that the right received a sound thrashing --- the collective and pent-up spite and mean-spiritedness, whose poster-boy is Sen. John McCain, surfaced in earnest. 

Now, it has escalated into speculative reports about possible impeachment hearings, calls for Watergate-style panels, and cries for vengeance. 

Yes. We lost four Americans in Benghazi. 

Yes. They were outnumbered and outgunned.

Yes. The consulate could have been better protected. (But let's not forget that an asked-for appropriation to bolster foreign/embassy/consulate security was voted down by a Republican-controlled congress.)

And Yes. The intelligence (an ironic use of the word by any measure) was probably not the best it could be. 

But didn't we lose thousands of American lives in Iraq based on faulty, if not entirely false, intel and "mushroom-cloud" rhetoric? 

Where were the voices on the right then? 

Didn't that same intel and rhetoric subsequently lead to tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths as well, indirectly and directly? 

Who at FOX News was asking "Why"? 

Didn't we at that time have these same senators, McCain and Graham, among others, defending Condaleeza Rice, purveyor of the mushroom-cloud-laden imagery? 

Who besides the "liberal media" took issue with her claim?

Look, two wrongs add up to two wrongs, and nothing more. But rather than bypass common sense and logic and instead run straight to speculation and irrationality and conspiracy and cover-up, isn't it also possible that this was simply a tragic accident, a clusterf%#k, an unfortunate incident that is now being used for political gain by many, but also by a man who is sad to have lost his friend, Ambassador Stevens, but who is also petty enough to still be sore at the man who beat him so soundly in the 2008 election and now sees a chance to attack the president once again? (And let's not overestimate Sen. McCain's sincerity: he missed an informational Senate meeting even as he was complaining to the press about a gross lack of information. The man has never met a microphone or a camera into which he refused to speak.)

Isn't it possible that these four Americans died because in foreign service, Americans will occasionally die? How many embassies and consulates were attacked and how many Americans were killed under previous administrations?  

Isn't it just as possible that this story is now being used as a rallying cry by those on the far right who are not happy the election went the way it did? 

Isn't a political agenda in all this at least possible?

Yes, it could be argued that political motivation has led to some people being less than forthcoming in the reporting of this story, but Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham, and their echo-chamber, need to take a few steps back and a few deep breaths, and they need to get some perspective. Even four years after we invaded Iraq, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton said "all the facts were not yet in" on whether the WMD claims were true or false.

In this most recent episode, we similarly don't yet know who is at fault, if any one person is. But it's clear from even a cursory examination of the record that Ambassador Susan Rice is not at fault here. She's the Ambassador to the UN and has nothing to do with embassy security! She was asked to speak on this first, she did so based on the intel everyone --- including Senators McCain and Graham --- had at the time, and she did so essentially verbatim. Senator McCain gave Condi a pass, so why not Susan?

Cool heads on the right need to prevail here. The Republican Party is already down as a result of the 2012 election, and taking to its most illogical extreme this perceived opportunity to try to damage President Obama will do nothing but further damage the Republican's credibility as a viable political party. 

Let's get to the bottom of this, please, but let's do it methodically and patiently, within the parameters of congress's already established, and not inconsiderable, oversight powers.

Update 11/17: As of this writing, Mr. Patreaus has testified and the result of his testimony seems to have caused Senator McCain to tone down his sharp comments... a little. But I don't think this issue will be dropped anytime soon. The right is angry and seems to want President Obama to be to blame, regardless of the facts.