GOP Senators Call For Joint Select Committee To Investigate Benghazi (Again)
Just days after House Democrats demanded an end to the House Oversight Committee’s “partisan investigation” into the 2012 attacks on the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, three Republican senators requested a new inquiry into the incident.
“We are once again calling for the appointment of a Joint Select Committee to investigate the terrorist attacks on our compounds in Benghazi,” Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC), John McCain (R-AZ) and Kelly Ayotte (R-NH) said in a statement Monday, as reported by Talking Points Memo. “It is imperative that we learn everything that happened before, during and after the attacks. A Joint Select Committee should be established.”
The senators previously called for the appointment of a Joint Select Committee last April, citing still-unsubstantiated claims that witnesses were “afraid to testify,” and a false accusation that military assets could have been deployed to stop the attack after it began.
This latest call to expand the investigation comes less than a week after the 17 Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent a letter to committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-CA), demanding that he “put a halt to the Committee’s partisan investigation of the September 2012 attacks in Benghazi and begin focusing instead on conducting responsible oversight to implement constructive reforms to protect our diplomatic corps overseas.”
Citing Congressman Issa’s false accusations that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton lied to Congress about personally authorizing security reductions in Libya and ordered then-Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to “stand down” during the attacks, the Democrats charged that “continuing this reckless pattern of launching wholly unfounded accusations on national television…is undermining the credibility of our Committee and the seriousness of our work.”
Issa’s crusade has thus far failed to uncover any wrongdoing by Clinton or any other senior members of the Obama administration, but according to the Pentagon has cost millions of dollars and thousands of hours of personnel time.
Photo: Secretary of Defense via Flickr
