In public relations it is understood if you want to bury bad news you release it on Friday afternoon in August.
So it was the Republican-led House Intelligence Committee declassified its two-year-old investigation into the Benghazi tragedy last week, releasing its findings last Friday, August 1, at 3:30PM Eastern Time.
If you don't want people to know something, you could not pick a better date, day or time.
After all the overheated rhetoric and baseless charges made by wild eyed right wingers, the GOP wanted as few people as possible to know the facts. Here they are, as presented by Republican Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger in a statement:
- Intelligence agencies were "warned about an increased threat environment, but did not have specific tactical warning of an attack before it happened."
- "A mixed group of individuals, including those associated with al Qaeda, (Moammar) Khadafy loyalists and other Libyan militias, participated in the attack."
- "There was no 'stand-down order' given to American personnel attempting to offer assistance that evening, no illegal activity or illegal arms transfers occurring by U.S. personnel in Benghazi, and no American was left behind."
- "The administration's process for developing "talking points" was "flawed, but the talking points reflected the conflicting intelligence assessments in the days immediately following the crisis."
Rep. Mike Thompson, second-ranking Democrat on the committee, said the panel's findings "confirms that no one was deliberately misled, no military assets were withheld and no stand-down order (to U.S. forces) was given."
Oh, you conservatives didn't hear about this?
That's because your favorite "fair and balanced" news source, Fox News, completely ignored the revelations. What choice did Fox have? The findings run counter to the network's ongoing narrative that the White House was complicit in the attacks.
The House Republicans' own report blows Fox's phony narrative out of the water, not that the facts ever matter to Obama haters.
Nevertheless, this development is unfortunate for the GOP, which was counting on another Benghazi show trial this fall to divert voter attention from its own miserable record over the last two years.
They still think if they scream Benghazi loudly enough, voters will forget the 113th Congress has done practically nothing.
http://mdjonline.com/pages/full_story/push?blog-entry-GOP+bury+House+Benghazi+report &id=25559171
