Is Benghazi Becoming a Watergate, or Iran-Contra, or Both?

By Victor Davis Hanson May 6, 2013 6:05 PM

Benghazi cannot be dismissed with “long ago” or “what difference does it make” exasperation, given it may have the cover-up and civil-liberties aspects of Watergate and the weapon-transfers and foreign-policy implications of Iran-Contra.

1. Can a State Department be credible that on its own accord seeks to alter intelligence synopses, and deny facts to maintain a pre-election narrative? For all the criticism of the State Department under most Republican presidents, at least the tension between State and the administration kept State honest and independent. But Benghazi shows that State has now almost descended into an arm of the 2012 reelection effort, in the manner of the media itself, as we saw in Candy Crowley’s exasperation over the Benghazi dispute in the third presidential debate. In Watergate, intelligence and law-enforcement officials were pressured to change their assessments to reflect pseudo-national security concerns; but in this case, the State Department and/or administration officials themselves willingly refashioned them as the political situation apparently demanded.

2. Civil libertarians should be concerned about the free-speech/due process implications in the fate of the otherwise petty criminal Mr. Nakoula, who was summarily jailed — coincidently right after the president had to his video at the U.N. with, “The future must not be determined by those who insult the prophet of Islam.” But so far there is no evidence that Mr. Nakoula’s amateurish YouTube trailer had anything to do with the violence in Benghazi. Instead his crime seems to have been offering an ideal scapegoat for a pre-election narrative of a right-wing, bigoted Islamophobe, whose extremism prompted an understandable pushback against innocent Americans abroad, and who could make amends to the Muslim world by going back to jail, while offering a rhetorical occasion for the president of the United States to remind the Muslim world that we all suffer from the excesses of common enemies such as intolerant reactionaries like Nakoula.


--snip--

Thank you for posting.