Opinion:Dear Benghazi Hearing critics: Don’t Americans deserve to learn if they’ve been lied to?

Last week’s Benghazi hearings were a disappointment. The testimony and the probing questions from the Republican members of Congress were all up to professional standards, America learned much more about what happened on 9/11/12 (although there is still more to learn). The continual bloviating and political talking points of the Democrats were at times disgusting. And as for the press, Greg Gutfeld of Fox News’ The Five said it best when he described the mainstream media as President Obama’s “scandal condom.”

For the most part, the Republican’s on the committee avoided the long political oratory of the Democrats. And the testimony provided voters with revelations about what happened that horrible day in Benghazi and how it differed from the “official” White House account. The biggest revelations were

•Not only were rescue teams not mobilized, nor was permission to fly over Libyan territory requested, one team was actually ordered to stand down. When asked what the Special Forces members’ reaction was to being told to not intervene, Greg Hicks testified:

“They were furious. I will quote Lt. Col. Gibson. He said, ‘this is the first time in my career that a diplomat has more b---- than somebody in the military.’”

•The story about the anti-Muslim video causing the attack was an administration creation. Hillary Clinton spoke with Deputy Chief of Mission Greg Hicks around 2 AM during the attack: he told her the embassy was under attack. At no time did Hicks (or any one else involved) mention a protest or a YouTube video. However, the President was still blaming that video well after the attack when he spoke to the UN.

•Not only was additional security requested prior to the attack, but also there is a law that requires missions such as Benghazi mission to have additional security. Under the law, the only person allowed to make the decision to wave the extra security is the Secretary of State. Legally the Secretary is not allowed to delegate that decision. In other words, Clinton either made the decision or broke the law.

•Witnesses were intimidated by the State Department. Hicks was told not to speak to Congressman Chaffetz alone, that a State Department attorney needed to be in the room. After Ambassador Rice gave the bull story about the video on national TV five times, Hicks called the Department to inquire why she giving that account which lead to him being reamed out and demoted.

What we learned was there was a cover-up.

But the Democrats on the Committee saw their jobs as protecting the President and the former Secretary of State.

One by one the Democrats in the room gave the exact same talking points...”we should be implementing the recommendation by the Accountability Review Board and moving on--My colleagues on the other side are politicizing this issue and if the GOP let us spend more money this kind of stuff wouldn’t happen.”

That last one was the most incredible because even after Chairman Issa reminded the panel that Charlene Lamb testified back in October that what happened on 9/11/12 had nothing to do with the budget, they persisted on raising the point. It was almost as if they had nothing else to say.

Perhaps the most disgusting was Representative Elijah Cummings who began the hearings with a tome about himself and giving a eulogy at a friend’s funeral and saying, “Death is part of life.” Almost as if he was saying…OK people died---get over it!

The he went on to reminded the witnesses that they need to “protect” their fellow employees at the State Department and he needed to protect others from scandal.

But it was the mainstream media who really showed their lack of concern for the truth.

Time Magazine’s Joe Klein said the Republicans were simply chasing their tails. In the headline of its report, the Associated Press downplayed the official hearings of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee--that has both Democrats and Republicans on it--into the failures surrounding the 2012 attacks on our embassy personnel in Benghazi, Libya. The AP characterized the official hearings as “GOP hearings,” making the proceedings seem like a mere political witch-hunt.

The AP piece written by Donna Cassata was headlined, “GOP Benghazi hearing stokes political controversy.”

The hearing on Benghazi was not a “GOP hearing,” but instead it was an official hearing of the House, with representatives of both parties sitting at the head of the proceedings.

The bias in the piece doesn’t begin and end in the headline, either. Cassata inserts her opinion into the description of the day’s events as well. Her fourth paragraph is a perfect example of that bias (emphasis added).

Nearly eight months later, Republicans continue to investigate despite an exhaustive independent review and hours of testimony from senior administration officials.

Others in the media had the same reaction if they said anything at all (Most of the mainstream media spent more time covering the Jodie Arias verdict).

A few days after the congressional hearing, Jonathan Karl of ABC News obtained 12 different versions of the Benghazi talking points with proof that they were extensively edited by the State Department, removing any link of the attack to al-Qaeda and its related group.

Over and over during the hearings we heard members of Congress say the families of the victims deserve the truth. Over and over yesterday (and today) we heard the Democrats on the committee and the mainstream media deny, cover-up, or simply ignore the truth.

The families of the victims do deserve the truth, but even more so, the American people deserve to know if their leaders lied to them.

Progressives seem to believe that Americans should learn the government’s talking points and believe every single character of every single word. That is not what America is about. We have a tradition of a healthy mistrust of government because of our omnipresent fear of tyranny. We have never followed government talking points like a line of lemmings walking off the cliff...and that’s part of what keeps us free.

We are a forgiving country...sometimes too forgiving. When someone apologizes for screwing up we forgive him or her. Look at the South Carolina special election last Tuesday that gave Mark Sanford a return to public office. The one thing Americans will not tolerate is being lied to. Watergate didn’t drive Nixon from office--it was his denials. Anthony Weiner might still be in Congress if he hadn’t spent so much time lying about his inappropriate texts.

Yes, there are questions that need to be answered to prevent another attack like what happened at Benghazi, but the question not comprehended by the Democrats on the Committee and the President’s “Scandal Condoms” in the mainstream media is were the American people lied to...and who lied?

Jeff Dunetz is the Editor/Publisher of the political blog “The Lid” (www.jeffdunetz.com). Jeff contributes to some of the largest political sites on the internet including American Thinker, Big Government, Big Journalism, NewsReal and Pajama’s Media, and has been a guest on national radio shows including G. Gordon Liddy, Tammy Bruce and Glenn Beck. Jeff lives in Long Island.