Benghazi hearings – Memphis Flyer

A couple weeks ago, I was sitting at the bar in my neighborhood bistro eating a Lyonnaise salad. They use Benton’s smoked bacon in their salad, and it’s delicious. I raved about it to the bartender, and the restaurant owner, who happened to be sitting nearby, overheard me. He told me I could order it online.

I’d had just enough wine to decide that ordering some bacon sounded like something I needed to do. I Googled Benton smoked bacon, found the website, and began trying to order it on my phone. After a couple false starts, I managed to type in my address, phone number, and credit card number. It took a while, I admit, but it was dark in there. I ordered a couple of pounds, or so I thought. Three days later, 12 pounds of bacon showed up in a savory smelling box on my front porch. Oops.

When I went back to the restaurant a week or so later, a cook came out and gave me a five-pound bag of bacon. She said it was from Glen, the owner, because he was pretty sure I’d never gotten through to Benton Farms on my phone that night.

Wrongo, mon ami! Thanks to his generous gesture, I’d pretty much cornered the local market on Benton Smoked Bacon.

A couple days later, the Internet was filled with news of a World Health Organization story that eating bacon and other processed meats increases the risk of cancer. So I got that goin’ for me.

But at least I didn’t steal 50,000 empty Pancho’s Cheese Dip containers, like that schmo over in West Memphis. It’s hard to imagine a more stupid thing to steal. What was he going to do with 50,000 empty plastic cups that say “Pancho’s Cheese Dip”? Sell them in the want ads? How does that work?

For Sale: 50,000 empty Pancho’s dip cups, valued at $70,000. Will take $6.00, OBO.

Less than 24 hours after stealing the cups, the thief returned the booty, claiming it was a “mistake.” No kidding.

And at least I didn’t decide that slow-talkin’ brain surgeon Ben Carson would be the best candidate for president, like Iowa GOP voters did. It’s true. Carson moved into the lead, ahead of Donald Trump, in the Iowa polls, proving that Iowa Republicans are not rocket scientists. Not that they have much to choose from.

All this came on the heels of the 11-hour campaign ad that the GOP House Select Committee on Benghazi gave to Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by ineptly “grilling” her on national television. It got so bad that even Fox News switched over to other programming.

It’s been a tough week for bacon lovers, dumb thieves, and the GOP. But there’s another Republican debate coming up in a couple days, and I can’t wait. I just need to find some cheese dip.

The American Psychiatric Association’s latest handbook — The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — is about to be published. It is the handbook of mental health, and if you’re not in it, you are among the fortunate few. Even though the hour is late, I beseech the DSM‘s publishers to consider one additional entry, the seriousness of which will be apparent to anyone who watches Fox News: Benghazi Syndrome.

Benghazi Syndrome is a grave malady of the noggin, the symptoms of which are a compulsion to grossly exaggerate matters and to compare almost anything to Watergate (see Watergate Syndrome, DSM-IV). Patient Zero in this regard is Senator Lindsey Graham, a usually affable Republican from South Carolina who has suggested that the Benghazi episode warrants an investigation by a special congressional committee, just like Iran-Contra and — drum roll, please — Watergate.

Others have gone even further. Senator James Inhofe, a Republican from Oklahoma and a man who once suggested the Environmental Protection Agency has something in common with the Gestapo, called the Benghazi whatchamacallit the “most egregious cover-up in American history” and possibly an impeachable offense. These charges are so serious we can only conclude that l’affaire Benghazi has the potential to bring down the Obama administration — the proverbial thread that, if pulled, could unravel the entire garment. Such drama!

So what is Benghazi? It is the place in Libya where the United States maintained two installations — a consulate and a much larger CIA outpost. Both of these were attacked on September 11, 2012, a date of some significance. The assaults, we all now know, were conducted by a jihadist group and were not — as the Obama administration initially maintained — a spur-of-the-moment thing precipitated by the airing of an anti-Muslim video. We also know that the administration either was unsure of the facts or simply didn’t like them. So it knitted together the infamous talking points that U.N. ambassador Susan Rice repeated on all the Sunday talk shows. Aside from “good morning,” little of what she said was true.

President Obama was then really Candidate Obama, and he surely did not want the words “terrorist attack” uttered during the presidential campaign. In addition, the CIA and the State Department were in a cat fight and could not agree on the wording of the talking points — or even, from a fair reading of their clashing e-mails, who the fanatical enemy was: al-Qaeda or members of Congress?

In all this, it’s almost possible to forget that four Americans died in Benghazi. The event was a tragedy, and it hardly matters, as then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vociferously maintained, if the attack occurred spontaneously or was planned. Either way, it was a success for the terrorists and a debacle for the United States.

It is good to find out how this happened — who’s responsible for the inadequate security, etc. — and it is also good to hold the Obama administration accountable for putting out a misleading statement. But the record will show that a thorough report was, in fact, compiled. Its authors were Thomas Pickering, an esteemed retired diplomat, and Admiral Mike Mullen, an equally esteemed retired chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They found the standard mistakes and snafus — but no crime.

Watergate was a crime. Iran-Contra was a crime. Government officials were convicted, and some of them went to jail. Fudging a press release is not a crime. Compromising on wording is not a crime. Making a decision — even if wrong — that there was no time to call in the cavalry is not a crime. And having inadequate security is not only not a crime but partly a consequence of congressional budget cuts.

It is not a crime either to make a mountain out of a molehill, but this particular one is constructed of a fetid combination of bad taste and poisonous politics. Dig down a bit, and it becomes clear that some — many? — Republicans suspect that Barack Obama and/or Hillary Clinton are capable of letting people die to cover up a terrorist attack. Either that, or this is what they want us to think.

In the end, it all comes down to an irrational and absolutely rabid dislike of Obama that so clouds judgment that utterly preposterous statements are uttered, usually within the precincts of the Fox News studios. This, as you might have guessed, is classic Benghazi Syndrome. There is no known cure.

Richard Cohen writes for the Washington Post Writers Group.