Originally Posted by
Julio3000
So . . . doesn't this read like some questions re: "accountability for policies and decisons in Libya and Benghazi" have been answered?
I've made mention of them in my previous posts. Some fall under the direct purview of the stated objectives of the Select Committee. For example, the bit about 'accountability for policies and decisons in Libya and Benghazi'.
That is not an allegation. That is a committee brief. I'm asking what malfeasance is being alleged, particularly on the part of HRC. Surely you aren't going to fall back on "this is just an investigation," not while this has been bandied about as a massive, worse-than-watergate scandal.
Argh, Hawk, this is where we're crossing wires. I'm asking for specificity and you're giving me broad strokes. You're asking for the executive branch to give up its inner workings to the legislative, and that's always going to be a hard sell, even without presidential politics on top of it. It's a fool's errand, and the fools' exit strategy is going to be to say that "they didn't give up all the documents," to justify all the silliness and keep hope alive that there's a white whale still swimming out there somewhere.
Again, no executive branch is going to give up the inner workings of their policy decisions without extreme compulsion. Not a Republican, not a Democrat. It sucks for the legislative branch and sometimes for the populace, but there is a pretty high wall around top-level executive decision-making.
You brought up Iran-Contra. Those hearings were structured around a specific allegation of wrongdoing. That's what I'm trying to understand. No one will cite or even paraphrase one for me.
I agree that there should be investigation and a presentation of facts, something like the 9/11 commission. The House R's have made this a Hillary-hunt from day one. I agree that if there are pertinent documents, she ought to give them up. I've always thought that it's more likely that anything she's withheld has been withheld because it is potentially embarrassing to Hillary-the-Candidate, and the House R's have given no reason for us to believe otherwise.
As for "whispers of a cover-up," you'll need to be more specific than that if you want me to accept it. A cover-up of what? Criminal activity? Or that the administration got wrong-footed? That some folks' job performance is lackluster? Christ, man. This is hardly selling arms to our sworn enemy and using the proceeds to fund a guerilla war in contravention of Congress.
Your statement about the obligation to truth? Do you think we have the full truth about how intelligence was stovepiped and manipulated in the runup to the Iraq War? Do you think the Abu Ghraib whitewash represented an objective truth? You care to cry some crocodile tears for those causes?