Last updated on February 8th, 2013 at 03:14 pm
John McCain went on the friendly airwaves of Fox News Sunday, and proceeded to completely embarrass himself with a factually inaccurate and desperate attempt to further his Benghazi witch hunt.
Here is the video:
Transcript via Fox News Sunday:
WALLACE: The director of national intelligence now says that he was responsible for watering down, editing, the talking points that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice used when she went on those five Sunday talk shows — here’s the picture, the famous picture of it — to talk about Benghazi. But you say that a few days before his office said they were responsible for editing the talking points, that in a closed-door hearing, the head of intelligence, James Clapper, told you and other senators he didn’t know who was responsible.
Question — two questions: where does the investigation stand? And how do you get to the bottom of it?
MCCAIN: Well, it is like any other — assuming the proportions of any other major scandal in this town, there are many layers to the onion, there’s all kinds of questions that have been raised. The most recent is the one you mentioned. I saw the director of national intelligence say he didn’t know where these talking points were edited and now he’s saying he did it. We’ll be interested how that — all that transpired. But, the biggest aspect of the whole thing is, it has to be really looked into is why there was such a failure on the part of the administration in light of events, the attack — the two attacks on our embassy, the assassination attempt on the British ambassador. They closed their consul. All these long train of events that made our consulate in Benghazi a death trap. And then during that, why didn’t we have military capabilities close by, especially on September 11th?
WALLACE: Is there anything that ambassador rice can do to change your mind?
MCCAIN: Sure. She can — I’d give everyone the benefit of explaining their position and the actions that they took. I’d be glad to have the opportunity to discuss these issues with her. Why did she say that — why did she say that al Qaeda has been decimated in her statement here on this program?
Al Qaeda hasn’t been decimated. They’re on the rise. They are all over Iraq. Their training camps are in Libya. They are all over Syria. They are on the rise everywhere in the Middle East. So, there’s a lot of questions that we have for Ambassador Rice and she would — I’m sure that I’ll have the opportunity to discuss this with her.
WALLACE: But you are saying that she could conceivably get your vote for secretary of state?
MCCAIN: I think she deserves the ability and the opportunity to explain herself and her position, just as she said. But, she’s not the problem. The problem is the president of the United States, who, on — in a debate with Mitt Romney, said that he had said it was a terrorist attack. He hadn’t. In fact that night on “60 Minutes”, he said they didn’t know what kind of an attack it was and continued to say —
WALLACE: He didn’t say that night. He said in an interview with “60 Minutes”, which we didn’t see until —
MCCAIN: We didn’t see until after the election, I’m sure, that it was such an inconsequential statement, that it didn’t deserve the attention of the American people before the election.
After weeks of telling the nation that Susan Rice was the problem with Benghazi, McCain has now hopped on board with those in his party who are hoping to use Benghazi as a reason to impeach President Obama. McCain’s attacks on Amb. Rice were completely demolished by a CBS News report confirming that it was the Director of National Intelligence who removed the al-Qaeda references from Susan Rice’s talking points, so he took to Fox News floundering and desperately looking for anything to keep his scandal alive.
What else outside desperation could explain McCain’s claim that al-Qaeda is on the rise?
An August report from the State Department found that al-Qaeda is on the decline. Earlier in the year, a study by the Rand Corporation found that, “Al Qaeda’s operational capabilities have been reduced. The architects of 9/11 have been captured or killed. Al Qaeda today is far more decentralized than it was ten years ago and far more dependent on its autonomous field commands, its affiliates, its allies, and its ability to inspire homegrown terrorists.”
Except for pulling it out of his backside in order to justify his political witch hunt, what information does McCain have to support his claim that al-Qaeda is on the rise?
As Rachel Maddow put it, McCain is the Republican’s foreign policy expert because there really is no one else. The Republican Party as a whole is completely tainted by the foreign policy blunders of the Bush years, which McCain has been able to withstand because he had an undeserved and media created reputation as foreign policy expert long before George W. Bush.
John McCain’s level of foreign policy incompetence is only matched by his ego. The genius of John McCain’s phony foreign policy is that on the surface he sounds like he knows what he is talking about. Unless the audience is aware of the facts, they have no idea that McCain has no clue what is doing. As long as as there are Sunday morning shows willing to put him on the air, John McCain will continue to humiliate himself every time he discusses foreign policy.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
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