Sunday Morning Comin' Down

"All Fall Down" edition.

In case you missed it, the New York Times broke a very long, detailed story about the tragic events surrounding the attack on the US embassy in Benghazi over a year ago.

Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault. The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.

The violence, though, also had spontaneous elements. Anger at the video motivated the initial attack. Dozens of people joined in, some of them provoked by the video and others responding to fast-spreading false rumors that guards inside the American compound had shot Libyan protesters. Looters and arsonists, without any sign of a plan, were the ones who ravaged the compound after the initial attack, according to more than a dozen Libyan witnesses as well as many American officials who have viewed the footage from security cameras.
...

There is no doubt that anger over the video motivated many attackers. A Libyan journalist working for The New York Times was blocked from entering by the sentries outside, and he learned of the film from the fighters who stopped him. Other Libyan witnesses, too, said they received lectures from the attackers about the evil of the film and the virtue of defending the prophet.

Republican arguments appear to conflate purely local extremist organizations like Ansar al-Shariah with Al Qaeda’s international terrorist network.
...

To be clear, the story in no way exonerates the Obama Administration, but it also vaporizes several of the foundational lies on which the Grand Wingnut Benghaaaazi Conspiracy has been built, and so as you might expect, the reaction from Right has been muted and apologetic.

Just kidding.  They completely lost their shit.

And more than that: they lost that shit in that special, "Turn Rush up til your ears bleed!" way that seem to happen every three months or so, during those frenzied, screechy, free-fall interregnums between the collapse of another Foundational Wingnut Lie and the arrival on-scene of a Fox News/Hate Radio rapid response team to upload the latest Perpetual Indignation patch into Pig People's firmware.

So, unsure of how to seal this latest breach in their ideological wall through which terrible, terrible reality is pouring, they once again resort to just flinging anything they can lay their hands on at it.

For example, Fox News' Chris Wallace doesn't know that the NYT article was intended to "clear the decks for Hillary", but, as always, some people say...just as I don't know that Mike Wallace's death in 2012 was the result of heartbreak brought on by unbearable humiliation at having such a shameless hack for a son, but I hear some people say that too...

But seriously, like dogs returning to their vomit, if you have eyes to see and memory you will not fail to notice that the clowns who are now circling the Benghaaaaazi! wagons over the Treason!  of Four Dead Americans!  Murdered!  Deliberately!  By Hillary! The Butcher of Benghazi! are the same, blood-drunk chickenhawks who spent the Bush Years jerking off behind their keyboards as the lives of thousands of Americans, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and trillions of your tax dollars were shoveled down the rathole of their dreams of Neocon Empire.

A regular Operation Freedom Fries high school reunion, it is.

Ewick Ewickson:

Calling B.S. on the New York Times story about Benghazi. http://t.co/YC73fiSsAn
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) December 30, 2013

The aforementioned Fox News, hauling a little red wagon full of anonymous sources who are all "outraged".

Instacracker ads his contribution to the Right Wing media spitoon:

That didn't take long: 'Completely false': Sources on ground in Benghazi challenge NYT report. http://t.co/7uQb5pAD4w
— Instapundit.com (@instapundit) December 30, 2013

Hindrocket and his merry band of lizard children at PowerLine.

Pammy Atlas, who kinda fell off the Earth after her Ground Zero Mosque scam dried up and blew away:

Perhaps the NY Times is desperate to stave off impeachment hearings on Obama's treasonous perfidy in Libya on September 11, 2012: A Deadly Mix in Benghazi -- The New York Times

Perhaps the New York Times is trying to shore up the imploding Democrat party by deconstructing the truth on their greatest most lethal failure, Benghazi...

And, of course, Bill Kristol's malignant Neocon rag in an article written by Stephen F. Hayes, whose greatest claim to fame to-date (h/t digby) has been saying things like this --

"...there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein's Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans."

-- and writing a book entitled "I'm having al Qaeda al Qaeda al Qaeda al Qaeda al Qaeda al Qaeda al Qaeda beaked beans al Qaeda al Qaeda al Qaeda and al Qaeda!" "Baked beans are off." "Well could I have al Qaeda instead of the baked beans then?":

The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America.

All still hiding behind flag.  All still using dead Americans to move their wingnut poison.  All still paying their mortgages by calling you a traitor.

Because as the last 20 years has demonstrated, no matter hard reality slaps these freaks around it will never be hard enough to slap Roger Ailes' dick outta their mouths.  And that, in the end, is the reason they will never stop.  Because what they do is comes with enormous benefits and no downside, which is why their madness will never end until it start coming with a fearsome price-tag.

On the lighter side, we did get to observe the exact moment at which the gag-reflex of usually-reliable Conservative-sludge-guzzling tool Jonathan Karl was finally exceeded:

So there's that.

Were I a betting man, I would bet that as another of their foundational lie burns around them, we will witness a return of the Conservative "Even the appearance of impropriety" standard for Republican witch-hunts.

You might remember the ETAOI threshold last peaked in popularity back in the days when Speaker Newt Gingrich would periodically take a break from cheating on his second wife with his third mistress to make loud, swinish noises about the need to hold one more Congressional snipe hunt on the subject of the moral depravity of Bill Clinton.

It worked like a charm 20 years ago, and as you may have noticed, Conservatism's collective IQ been nosediving into the flatworm-zone ever since.

@AdamBaldwin Absolutely. If ANY doubts remain re: #Benghazi, it's US *obligation* to dig deeper, and deeper... to uncover ALL involvement...
— Barry Polis (@BarryPolis) December 29, 2013

RT if you agree...I, along with many others, call on you, @SpeakerBoehner to form a select committee NOW! #Benghazi #IRS #PJNET @tedcruz
— Patriotic American (@US_P8triot) December 29, 2013