Well, that was long and painful

Long and painful. For the GOP, I mean. Grilling Hillary Clinton in front of cameras where people could see how they worked was incredibly stupid and right up their precious little epistemic-closure alleys--right? In the steamy fever swamp of Benghazi conspiracy theory, publicized on blogs and shit-show media like FOX Mushroom Farm, the idea operated that there was some nefarious underbelly that the Benghazi Committee was going to uncover was always supposed to suddenly make the principals involved look like utter shit.

It never could though, because those media and that conspiracy theory culture was always wrong. They harangued Secretary Clinton. They yelled at her. The grandstanded at her. They kept it up for hours, and she just gave the facts.

There was a conflict in Libya where rebels against the Gaddafi government were on the verge of being slaughtered, and our many allies asked us to help them intervene. We sided with our allies. We did not have a distinctive exit plan as such, because we were not involved with nation-building, but wanted democracy for Libya. Despite the deposition of Moammar Gaddafi, the region remained unstable--which by no means meant we should end our diplomatic interests there, so long as we had political and business interests keeping our countrypeople there. Ambassador Stephens, like the CIA agents who also served in that region, understood the risks of working in a politically and militarily charged environment, and served with merit and bravery. Their sacrifice is a testament to their commitment to service to the US--and although it is tragic, it demeans their service to suppose that they would consider their lives made somehow glorified by a partisan shit-show.  When the reality is that we would have tried to save them if we could--

But that "if". A lot of people live and die on "ifs" every day in this country. People take their lives, or the lives of others, on "ifs". People can go in a heartbeat. A strike can come like lightening, and we hear the reality later like thunder. First reports from a crime are almost always a little wrong. They say there might be more than one shooter, when there isn't. They say something completely off about the number of dead and wounded. Then they make up some shit about motives, which never become clear until you actually have your shooter, and all the previous stuff is cancelled out. That's the "fog of war" situation in Benghazi. Yeah, people might have had speculations that weren't exactly what happened because they weren't there and we didn't have real-time data because that isn't how life works. I still blame the Libyan terrorists.

Who is to blame for the idea that we have a diplomatic interest in how Libya turns out, and how are we to decide not to participate in the quick end of a noted terrorist sponsor and bonzo tyrant like Gaddafi who was pummeling rebels in Benghazi before we even decided to go there?

Sometimes, all your second-guessing is just sorry foreign policy fanfic, and nobody cares how mad you are that the world is complicated and you don't understand the half of it. Which seems to be the position the House GOP has. It was complicated, and they resent it. They didn't either read earlier reports because.  Is Benghazi even in Libya?

I never got the idea that this was about fact-finding. It was about creating narratives and dropping facts into rabbit holes. If people paid attention, this did more harm to GOP in the House than Clinton. She looked poised, They looked indisposed.