The Democratic and Republican Congressional reports on the Benghazi attacks have been released. More time and money have been spent into Congressional probes into the Kennedy assassination, the Watergate scandal, and the September 11, 2001 terrorists than the Republican controlled House Select Committee on Benghazi probe. The new GOP report found no new culpability in the September 11, 2012 attacks that killed the lives of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. The select committee’s report can as a product of the ninth investigation into the events in Benghazi. There have been also seven previous congressional probes and one by the U.S. State Department. 800 pages long and involving interviews with 107 witnesses as well as the examination of 75,000 pages of documents make up this new report. It sheds little new light on the bloody events of nearly 4 years ago. The report criticized the Obama administration, the State Department, and the Pentagon including the CIA for failing to predict the violence, adequately securing the U.S. facilities in Benghazi, and responding rapidly once they came under attack. The report ignores about the prevailing silence of the US government, both major parties and the corporate media on the real roots of the debacle in Benghazi. These lie in “blowback” from Washington waging wars for regime change in the region, utilizing as its proxies Al Qaeda-linked militias armed and backed by the CIA. From the beginning, the creation of the select committee and its operations represent a partisan affair. It was driven by the Republicans to exploit the Benghazi killings as a way for them to oppose the Presidential candidacy of Democrat Hillary Clinton. She was the secretary of state during the time of the attacks. This was openly admitted in September of 2016 when Representative Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, boasted that, “we put together a Benghazi special committee” and, as a result, Clinton’s poll “numbers are dropping.” While the probe inadvertently uncovered Clinton’s use of a private email server for her official communications, a matter that is under separate investigation by the FBI, it produced no evidence of specific wrongdoing in relation to the Benghazi affair.
In their own report, issued a day earlier, Democrats on the select committee accused the Republican leadership of “grave abuses,” including the exclusion of Democratic members from interviews, leaking false information and using “exploiting the deaths of four Americans” for political fundraising. The Republican drafted report criticized the Pentagon harshly. It questioned, “why the world’s most powerful military was not positioned to respond,” adding, “What was disturbing from the evidence that the Committee found was that at the time of the final lethal attack, no asset ordered by the Secretary [of Defense] had even left the ground.” Even that report admitted that there were no U.S. military units capable of reaching Benghazi in time to have prevented any of the deaths. There is new information in the report. One is that the U.S. ambassador Stevens (who was in Benghazi at the time of the attacks) was preparing to turn a diplomatic office there into an official U.S. consulate (this was part of the preparation for a planned visit to Libya in the following month by the secretary of state). Hillary Clinton was one leading person in promoting the US/NATO war for regime change in Libya. She celebrated the lynch mob murder of the country’s leader Muammar Gaddafi with the infamous statement, "We came, we saw, he died.” She wanted to have a trip to prepare for her planned run for the Presidency. After the deaths of four Americans, the plans was quickly and quietly shelves. Also, there is the new revelation that the Americans who survived the attacks (most of them agents and contractors of the US CIA) were able to escape Benghazi airport thanks to the arrival of “50 heavily-armed security vehicles” belonging to “Libyan Military Intelligence.” “Libyan Military Intelligence,” the report continues, “were not part of the Libyan government, nor affiliated with any of the militias the CIA or State Department had developed a relationship with during the prior 18 months since the Libyan revolution took place. Instead, Libya Military Intelligence—whom the CIA did not even know existed until the night of the attacks—were comprised of former military officers under the Gadhafi regime who had gone into hiding in fear of being assassinated... In other words, some of the very individuals the United States had helped remove from power during the Libyan revolution were the only Libyans that came to the assistance of the United States on the night of the Benghazi attacks.” The report doesn’t probe more strongly into this situation where U.S. officials were attacked and murdered by their Libyan allies (made up of a collection of Islamist militias linked to Al-Qaeda) and they were rescued by those Washington had waged a war to overthrow.
Clinton’s principal culpability in the Benghazi massacre lies not in issues of security of the US facilities, response to the attack or distortion of what transpired, but rather in her promotion of wars of aggression to topple regimes in both Libya and Syria, using “human rights” as a pretext for furthering US geo-strategic interests in the Middle East. We know how the U.S. directly backed Islamist militias in Libya led by former members of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). LIFG is an Al-Qaeda affiliate and the LIFG was given arms and funding and assuring their advance through a relentless bombing campaign. Christopher Stevens, who became the US ambassador, was at the center of this operation from April 2011 on. The report doesn’t show an examination of why the CIA had established the so-called Benghazi annex staffed with dozens of agents and contractors. The reality is that, in the aftermath of Gaddafi’s overthrow, the focus of the agency’s operation turned to Syria. The annex was employed to organize—in conjunction with the Turkish government—the transfer of both massive amounts of weapons from the Libyan government’s stockpile along with Islamist fighters into Syria to carry out a far bloodier war than one waged in Libya. The situation in Benghazi was a result of a falling out between the U.S. officials on the ground and the Al-Qaeda linked militias they had backed against Gaddafi. The West is using these militias in fighting a war in Syria. Both parties of the Democrats and the Republicans have an interest in continuing the imperialist crimes in the Middle East. These crimes have caused thousands of Libyans and Syrians to die and turned millions of people into refugees.
I heard some enlightening words from a middle aged black woman many weeks ago. She said that there are always going to be someone who needs medical assistance, folks need to be taught, and things ought to be build. Therefore, I do encourage people to join the medical field, join the educational field, and join jobs dealing with STEM fields if they desire to do so. It is up for the individual to go into college or not. If anyone wants to get a bachelor's degree or higher, that person should be financially prepared (in forming economic accounts, having even a business plan, and gaining as many scholarships as possible). We live in a new age (where many manufacturing jobs are shipped overseas and workers internationally are suffering unfair labor standards and economic exploitation). The super wealthy have record tax breaks while the poor and the middle class in many cases are one to two pay checks away from abject poverty. Also, I believe in investments in vocational fields. Tons of people are set for life (i.e. having their car, house, and debt mostly paid off) by being plumbers, restaurant managers, electricians, computer specialists, IT representatives, etc. Back in the day, tons of vocational training existed nationwide. That is why many companies really want people to join STEM related jobs. There is the call for us to build our own businesses and I have no problems with this. Networking is also great since collaborations lead into further progress. I also believe that we have to address systematic poverty in our communities. We have to fight poverty if we want to get into the next level. We have to follow what we love doing. The pursuit of happiness is a great goal to embrace.
This discussion has been going on for a while. To his credit, Jesse Williams has exposed the evil, massive colorism in the world (and about how darker skinned black people have been degraded by evil people a lot worse on average than lighter skinned black people & biracial people. That's documented by many studies too). Jesse Williams has paid his dues by working in the education field helping students, by working in a civil rights advocacy organization, and by standing up for the human dignity of black women (which is something that misogynists refuse to do). Jesse Williams respects and honors his black wife. I have more respect for Jesse Williams than Tommy Sotomayor, Jesse Lee Peterson, Allen West, and other folks with 2 black parents but they spew far right, ignorant views all of the time. We are in a crossroads in our journey as black people. We face many issues from police brutality, systematic racism, misogynoir, imperialism, poverty, violence, and other problems. We have to address these complications in order for us to reach into the Promised Land that we all desire. There are biracial people who aren't down for the cause and other biracial people who are down for the cause of justice. That distinction should be emphasized. Jesse Williams is a man who is down. About the Irish, many Irish people back then were called racial slurs (and experienced intolerance), but many Irish racists brutalized black people in the 1860's draft riots (where Irish racists killed innocent black men, women, and children in New York City). Therefore, European imperialism wasn't just done by the British (or WASPs). The Italians, the Germans, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and other Europeans were complicit in the Maafa and the slave trade throughout the Earth. As black people, we want the same goal (which is justice and liberty for our people). Jesse Williams have eloquently spoken about the necessity to end the nefarious system of oppression and believing in the liberation of black women (which many celebrities are afraid to speak about in private and in a public forum). I have great respect for Jesse Williams. Also, I have great respect for the unsung black people who are helping kids, who are building in their communities, and who are doing the right thing. Unsung black heroes deserve all of the credit in the world.
By Timothy
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