What We Learned From the Benghazi Investigation - Bloomberg View

What We Learned From the Benghazi Investigation - Bloomberg View
by Jonathan Bernstein

We also found out that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and all politicians everywhere try to present the best possible version of events to the public. I don’t like criticizing the cost of congressional investigations -- it’s good for the House and Senate to spend money on executive-branch oversight -- but determining once and for all that politicians spin likely isn’t the best use of resources.

Mostly, what the repeated investigations into Benghazi prove (again) are the dangers of getting caught in a closed information loop. For years, Republicans have been fixated on a theory that never made any sense in the first place -- that the Obama administration and the 2012 Obama re-election campaign believed news of a planned attack in Benghazi would have been politically toxic, while somehow the same deaths as a result of a spontaneous local uprising would have been no big deal. Those fully trapped inside the information loop even came to believe that Obama actively chose not to rescue the Americans in Benghazi, because it would be politically disadvantageous for him to do so.