From yesterday’s presser with President Obama where he defends Ambassador Rice:
“If Sen. McCain and Sen. Graham and others want to go after somebody they should go after me,” Obama said. “For them to go after the UN ambassador who had nothing to do with Benghazi…to besmirch her reputation is outrageous.”
Oooh. Game on.
Senator Graham responds:
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) today made this statement in response to President Obama’s comments about Benghazi and Ambassador Susan Rice.
“Mr. President, don’t think for one minute I don’t hold you ultimately responsible for Benghazi. I think you failed as Commander in Chief before, during, and after the attack.
“We owe it to the American people and the victims of this attack to have full, fair hearings and accountability be assigned where appropriate. Given what I know now, I have no intention of promoting anyone who is up to their eyeballs in the Benghazi debacle.”
Well, not to be the party-pooper on all of this, but can Senators Graham and McCain — in their search for the truth about Benghazi — maybe take a few minutes and ask how Congress’s oversight of the very institutions they will now investigate in hindsight missed glaring security flaws in Libya?
Oh, and as for Senator McCain, he should recuse himself from any investigation. Here’s McCain talking about Petraeus, via RCP:
“He realizes that in his code of honor that the only thing he could do was to resign. I respect that, and hope that there will be other opportunities someday for David Petraeus to contribute to this nation, which he has done with such incredible leadership,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said Wednesday morning at The Washington Ideas Forum.
How can McCain say such a thing when Petraeus is at the center of all this? The investigation is just beginning, yet McCain seems ready to give Petraeus another shot.
And if McCain won’t recuse himself as I suspect, at the very least, can he refrain from doing TV interviews while his committee is holding classified briefings on the subject? Politico:
A turf battle is brewing over Benghazi.
When GOP Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham stepped before the cameras Wednesday and renewed their calls for a Watergate-like committee to probe the Sept. 11 terrorist attack in Libya, their longtime partner — Sen. Joe Lieberman – was noticeably missing.
Lieberman later emerged from a classified, closed-door briefing with a much different message: A special congressional committee is unnecessary — at least for now. Lieberman says his Homeland Security Committee could handle a broad investigation into the deadly Benghazi assault just fine.
Dear Senator McCain and all other Republicans in Congress: your job is oversight. Try it some time.