Rand Paul And The Republicans’ Massive Hypocrisy On The Benghazi Attack

By Yashwanth Manjunath

Rand Paul and Hillary Clinton had an epic clash of 2016 Presidential hopefuls yesterday during the Benghazi hearing at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. There were a couple of gems in particular from the exchange that assaulted the brains of anyone interested in objectivity.

First was Rand Paul’s claim that the terrorist attack was “the worst tragedy since 9/11“. So, we’re just ignoring the Iraq War then? There’s no doubt that what happened to Ambassador Chris Stevens and those three other Americans was tragic, but it gets trumped by the deaths of 4,488 American soldiers and more than 100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians. His next point was even more asinine.

Paul went on to say:

Had I been president and found you did not read the cables from Benghazi and from Ambassador Stevens, I would have relieved you of your post. I think it’s inexcusable.

Does Rand Paul not remember what the Bush administration was doing in the lead-up to 9/11, or does he just not care? Bush was handed a memo from the CIA on August 6th titled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US”, and he told the briefer delivering it “All right, you’ve covered your ass, now.” Upon receiving said document at his Crawford ranch, Bush stayed on vacation for another month.

Funny how Rand Paul didn’t bring any of that up. Make no mistake, Benghazi did expose a very real problem that needs to be addressed, a lack of adequate embassy security in politically unstable regions. And who was it that cut embassy security funding by $128 million in 2011, and $331 million in 2012? The House Republicans.

But Rand Paul didn’t bring that up either.

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