Juan Cole: Top Ten Republican Myths on Benghazi

that justify Hillary Clinton's Anger: 1. Republican senators keep saying that it should have been "easy" to find out what happened on September 11, 2012, by simply debriefing US personnel who had been there. John McCain, Ron Johnson and the others, who make this charge, are the most cynical and manipulative people in the world. The Benghazi US mission was very clearly an operation of the Central Intelligence Agency, and that is the reason that the Obama administration officials have never been able to speak frankly and publicly about it. McCain and the others know this quite well, and they know that their public carping cannot be "simply" answered, because the answers would endanger sources and methods. The consulate was amazingly well guarded by some 40 CIA operatives, many of them ex special forces, in a nearby safe house. These were viewed by consular officials as "the cavalry." It is still not clear what Ambassador Chris Stevens and the CIA were doing in Benghazi, and unless we know that, we can't know why they were attacked. They were not overseeing the shipping of weapons to Syria. The Syrian revolutionaries complain bitterly that the US "prevents" them from getting medium and heavy weapons. Republicans keep posturing that their questions about Benghazi are intended to bolster US security. In fact, they are harming it. Republican hearings in the House of Representatives have disgracefully revealed the names if Libyans talking to the US consulate, thus endangering their lives, and harming US efforts to understand the situation in the country, since who would risk talking to the embassy, if they know about Darrell Issa's big mouth? The GOP figures keep saying, that it was obvious that there was no demonstration at the Benghazi consulate against the so called "film," the 'Innocence of Muslims' that attacked the Prophet Muhammad, but in fact Libyan security officials repeatedly told wire services on September 12, that there was such a demonstration, and that the attack issued from those quarters. An American resident in Benghazi at that time confirms that there were such demonstrations that day. The secular minded revolutionary militia that guarded the US consulate gates, that they would not have shown up in security videos. Benghazi, a city of over a million, is not dominated by "al Qaeda," contrary to what Senator Graham of South Carolina has repeatedly said or implied. The city had successful municipal elections in May, just before I got there. The number one vote getter was a woman professor of statistics at the university.