NYT: Shut Down Benghazi Committee, or rename it Inquisition of Hillary Rodham Clinton (HRC GRP)
House Republicans may be disinclined to disband the Select Committee on Benghazi with the presidential race heating up. But at the very least they should rename their laughable crusade, which has cost taxpayers $4.6 million, “the Inquisition of Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, a leading candidate to become the next speaker of the House, acknowledged last week that was the point of burrowing into the details of the 2012 attacks on government facilities in eastern Libya that killed the American ambassador and three colleagues.
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” Mr. McCarthy said in an astonishing moment of candor that was clearly a gaffe, rather than a principled admission. “But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today?”
Lawmakers have long abused their investigative authority for political purposes. But the effort to find Mrs. Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time of the Libya attacks, was personally responsible for the deaths has lost any semblance of credibility. It’s become an insult to the memory of four slain Americans....
Mrs. Clinton is scheduled to testify before the committee on Oct. 22. The hearing will give Republicans another chance to attack the credibility and trustworthiness of the leading Democratic presidential candidate. It will do nothing to make American embassies abroad safer or help the relatives of the four killed in Libya.
The hearing should be the last salvo for a committee that has accomplished nothing. If the Republicans insist on keeping the process alive, the Democrats should stop participating in this charade.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/07/opinion/shut-down-the-benghazi-committee.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur via NYTimes Editorial
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