"Why not release all of the unclassified documents?" said Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. "The president has repeatedly said that when he gets new information, he'll release it to the public. Why not release — instead of the hand-picked ones — why not release all the unclassified documents?"

A spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Wednesday Republicans hoped "this limited release of documents is a sign of more cooperation to come," while the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee pressed the Pentagon for more details about military orders around the time of the attack and what military aircraft were in the region.

Four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens, were killed when militants struck the U.S. mission and CIA annex in twin nighttime attacks on Sept. 11, 2012.

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The White House had until now declined to make the documents public and had let congressional investigators review the documents without making copies.

The documents describe how the administration developed "talking points" to describe what the administration wanted to discuss publicly immediately after the Sept. 11, 2012, attack that killed U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.

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From PPP:

One interesting thing about the voters who think Benghazi is the biggest political scandal in American history is that 39% of them don't actually know where it is. 10% think it's in Egypt, 9% in Iran, 6% in Cuba, 5% in Syria, 4% in Iraq, and 1% each in North Korea and Liberia with 4% not willing to venture a guess.

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“Remember when she said, ‘well who cares how this happened,’ in a rather emotional way?” McCain asked guest host Martha Raddatz. “A lot of people care.” It’s too bad Raddatz didn’t tell the senator that no, she didn’t remember that – because Clinton never said it.

Remarkably, I’ve seen no one follow up on McCain’s misstatement today either. (I’m sure someone will correct me if I’m wrong.) Instead, reporters are breathlessly parsing each new GOP charge on Benghazi (while also decrying the very real abuse of the IRS overscrutinizing the tax-exempt status of conservative groups.) The National Journal’s Ron Fournier tweeted “Welcome to the 90s,” with no apparent irony or self-awareness about the role of the media in ginning up that decade of phony scandals that paralyzed our last popular second-term Democratic president, Bill Clinton.

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Obama was asked at a news conference Monday about recent disclosures that talking points on the attack produced by the intelligence community were later watered down to delete references to suspected ties between last September’s assault and Islamic militants.

His comments came after Republican Congressman Darrell Issa, chairman of the House of Representatives Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sought answers from the leaders of an independent investigation that absolved Hillary Rodham Clinton of wrongdoing in the much-criticized response to the attacks in Benghazi that killed a U.S. ambassador and three other Americans.

Obama, who spoke at the news conference with visiting British Prime Minister David Cameron, said it was not clear in the aftermath of the attack who was responsible and what their motives were. He again defended his administration’s actions.

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"So the whole thing defies logic and the fact that this keeps on getting churned out, frankly has a lot to do with political motivations," he continued. "We've had folks who have challenged Hillary Clinton's integrity, Susan Rice's integrity," also noting that Republicans have used the attacks on Benghazi for fundraising.

"We dishonor them when we turn things like this into a political circus," Obama said.

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Rep. Darrell Issa, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, planned on Monday to seek depositions from retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering and retired Adm. Mike Mullen. Issa, who is leading Republicans' investigations into the attacks on a State Department consulate last September, said he wants to know with whom the pair spoke to reach their conclusion that then-Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton did not direct the response to the pair of nighttime attacks in Libya.

"This is a failure, it needs to be investigated. Our committee can investigate. Now, Ambassador Pickering, his people and he refused to come before our committee," Issa said Sunday.

Pickering, sitting next to Issa during an appearance on one Sunday show, disputed the chairman's account and said that he was willing to testify before the committee.

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Now Junger has made a film without the co-directing aid of Hetherington; Junger's film, "Which Way Is the Front Line From Here," is a tribute to Hetherington, who died covering the Libyan civil war in 2011. The film, compiled of interviews and Hetherington's own footage, airs on HBO April 18.

Hetherington, who had been in Afghanistan on assignment for Vanity Fair, was not a war photographer in the traditional sense; as Junger's documentary conveys, he was far more interested in the fringes or consequences of war than in pictures of soldiers firing on their enemies, devoting his attention to children in Sri Lanka or to American soldiers sleeping after toilsome days.

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Here is something else that makes the former vice president's eldest daughter really mad: that President Obama is "the most radical man ever to occupy the Oval Office" who has "launched a war on religious freedom" and has effectively told America's enemies that they can "attack us with impunity" and "suffer no consequences."

Want the short version? Obama is making THE SKY FALL.

Barring the possibility that Cheney's editorial in Friday's Wall Street Journal is an exquisite piece of satire, it appears the former Bush State Department official lacks a certain self-awareness.

Let's consider Cheney's assessments of the Obama administration's record.

On foreign policy:

The president has so effectively diminished American strength abroad that there is no longer a question of whether this was his intent.

On Libya:

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Fantasies about the certain success of air power in transforming, even ending, war as we know it arose with the plane itself.  But when it comes to killing people from the skies, again and again air power has proven neither cheap nor surgical nor decisive nor in itself triumphant.  Seductive and tenacious as the dreams of air supremacy continue to be, much as they automatically attach themselves to the latest machine to take to the skies, air power has not fundamentally softened the brutal face of war, nor has it made war less dirty or chaotic.

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The announcement that Harun is in U.S. custody in New York may also shed light on a small part of one of the most secretive aspects of U.S. counterterrorism operations during the Bush administration: What became of terror suspects held by the CIA in its network of “black-site” prisons around the world? Or disappeared into foreign cells in extraordinary renditions?
With their indictment of Harun, prosecutors offered a basic account of how the 43-year-old Nigerian – described as “a prototype al-Qaida Operative” – spent the last decade. He fought U.S. forces in Afghanistan, prosecutors said, before leaving for Africa, where he allegedly conspired to bomb U.S. diplomatic facilities. Harun, also known by his alias Spin Ghul, eventually wound up in Libyan prison for six years before he was released amid the turmoil of the uprising against Muammar Qaddafi.

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From earlier:

Last week it was reported that a hacker going by "Guccifer" had gained access to the personal email account of former Clinton White House aide (and confidant to Hillary) Sidney Blumenthal. On Tuesday, according to The Smoking Gun, Guccifer began sharing contents found in Blumenthal AOL account (yes, Sidney Blumenthal still uses AOL mail).

In playful emails, the hacker disseminated four recent memos on Libya sent by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to a "wide array of congressional aides, political figures, and journalists worldwide." The Smoking Gun reported that, "most of the e-mail recipients were sent four separate memos that were e-mailed to Clinton by Blumenthal during the past five months. Each memo dealt with assorted developments in Libya, including the September 11, 2012 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi. One memo marked “Confidential” was sent to Clinton on September 12."

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Clinton is the sole witness Wednesday at back-to-back hearings before the Senate and House foreign policy panels on the September raid, an independent panel's review that harshly criticized the State Department and the steps the Obama administration is taking to beef up security at U.S. facilities worldwide.

Clinton had been scheduled to testify before Congress last month, but an illness, a concussion and a blood clot near her brain forced her to postpone her appearance.

Her marathon day on Capitol Hill will probably be her last in Congress before she steps down as secretary of state. President Barack Obama has nominated Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., to succeed her, and his swift Senate confirmation is widely expected. Kerry's confirmation hearing is scheduled for Thursday.

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That's the day after President Barack Obama's inauguration and the first day the Senate returns to Washington after a two-week break. Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee disclosed the date in an interview on MSNBC. There was no official word from the committee.

Clinton had been scheduled to testify last month but fell during an illness and suffered a concussion. She was recently hospitalized for a blood clot.

Clinton returned to work on Monday. She had promised to appear before the Senate and House foreign affairs panels before stepping down from her job. Obama has nominated Sen. John Kerry to replace her.

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The leaders of an independent panel issued the scathing assessment in a review that, according to Reuters, found "leadership and management" deficiencies in the department and "real confusion" in Washington and in the field over who could — and should — have made decisions involving security.

The findings of the Accountability Review Board, some of which are classified and will only be heard behind closed doors before the House and Senate foreign affairs committees, may taint the four-year tenure of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Reuters wrote.

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"Systematic failures and leadership and management deficiencies at senior levels within two bureaus of the State Department resulted in a Special Mission security posture that was inadequate for Benghazi and grossly inadequate to deal with the attack that took place," the panel said.

The report singled out the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and the Bureau of Near East Affairs for criticism, saying there appeared to be a lack of cooperation and confusion over protection at the mission in Benghazi, a city in Eastern Libya that was relatively lawless after the revolution that toppled Libyan strongman Moammar Gadhafi.

Despite those failures, the Accountability Review Board determined that no individual officials ignored or violated their duties and recommended no disciplinary action now. But it also said poor performance by senior managers should be grounds for disciplinary recommendations in the future.

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"If nominated, I am now convinced that the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive and costly -- to you and to our most pressing national and international priorities," Rice wrote in a letter to President Obama, NBC News first reported. "That trade-off is simply not worth it to our country ... Therefore, I respectfully request that you no longer consider my candidacy at this time."

"The position of Secretary of State should never be politicized," Rice continued. "As someone who grew up in an era of comparative bipartisanship and as a sitting U.S. national security official who has served in two U.S. Administrations, I am saddened that we have reached this point, even before you have decided whom to nominate. We cannot afford such an irresponsible distraction from the most pressing issues facing the American people."

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