Speaker of the House John Boehner [R- OH 8] announced the formation of a special committee to probe the 2012 terrorist attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in eastern Libya that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens as well as Ty Woods, Sean Smith and Glen Doherty.
Boehner said that he had held off on calling a special committee on Benghazi since he believed the House Oversight committee hearings were sufficient, even though many of the CIA and State Department documents they were given were heavily redacted. However, watchdog group Judicial Watch was able to obtain emails from White House and national security officials from the night of the attack that weren't redacted- emails that show a cabinet more concerned with protecting the President's image less than two months before the election than taking any action in response to the attack on the diplomatic compound on Benghazi.
Speaker Boehner said that in light of the emails released to Judicial Watch and the possibility of perjury by administration officials before previous hearings, he decided to form a select committee.
The Obama Administration wasn't helped any when former National Security Council aide Tommy Vietor appeared on FOX News' Special Report With Bret Baier on Thursday and flippantly dismissed questions about the attack and Obama Administration's response with a flippant "Dude, that was two years ago".
Besides coming off as a snide hipster douchebag, Vietor apparently let slip that President Obama never made it to the Situation Room that night- he left for a Las Vegas fundraiser the following day in Las Vegas.
The day before Vietor's less-than-inspiring Special Report appearance, White House press secretary Jay Carney was grilled by ABC News' Jon Karl after Carney alleged the White House emails that Judicial Watch had obtained weren't about Benghazi- Karl pointed out that they had 'Benghazi' in the subject line.
The attack came during the 2012 Presidential election, and for weeks President Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton blamed a spontaneous demonstration over an internet video even when it became apparent the attacks on the US Diplomatic compound in Benghazi were carried out by terrorists from Ansar-Al-Shari'a using mortars and heavy machine guns mounted on trucks while blocking off the roads around the compound nearly two hours before the attack. The date of the attacks also coincided with the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, Pentagon and United Flight 93 that killed nearly 3000 Americans.
While there were similar protests attributed to a YouTube video called The Innocence of Muslims elsewhere in the Middle East that night, there were no US fatalities as a result of those protests. After the attack photos began circulating of men, some of them presumably from Ansar-Al-Shari'a, dragging a dead or dying Ambassador Stevens through the street- some accounts said he was rushed to a hospital under Ansar-Al-Shari'a's control.
Officially Ambassador Stevens died of asphyxiation from smoke inhalation during the attack, however, the US State Department has not released any postmortem information detailing the nature of Ambassador Stevens' death.
Within hours of the attack, it was apparent that Ambassador Stevens and the others were killed in a well-planned assault on a US Diplomatic compound by a heavily armed Islamist group. However, then-ambassador to the UN Susan Rice made the Sunday morning talk show circuit and continued to blame the 'Innocence of Muslims' video while Hillary Clinton was standing next to the caskets of the four murdered Americans at a memorial service at Andrews AFB as she also blamed the video.
In fact, the only person who has been imprisoned over the Benghazi terrorist attacks to this date was Nakoula Basseley, an Egyptian-born Coptic Christian residing in California who made The Innocence of Muslims. Basseley had prior convictions for bank fraud and intent to manufacture methamphetamine, and was arrested less than two weeks after the Benghazi attacks by Los Angeles County Sheriff's Deputies since posting videos online was apparently in violation of his probation.
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