For a “phony” scandal, Benghazi seems pretty compelling

Victor Davis Hanson very carefully lays out the known facts (surprisingly few, due to administration stonewalling), and concludes that there’s nothing phony about the scandal at all:

Until these questions are answered, we are left with the strong possibility that the lethal attacks might have been deterred with adequate security, or even neutralized in mediis rebus: that high administration officials subsequently and deliberately misled the public, the U.N., our allies, and the relatives of the dead; that the president of the United States did not consider the attacks a crisis, or at least a crisis that could offer political opportunities, and subsequently and knowingly lied about the causes of the attack; that the U.S. government deliberately jailed a U.S. legal resident for reasons other than those alleged; that a U.S. election was influenced by administration deception; that the U.S. government was engaged in covert actions that might have been connected to the violence or were themselves ill conceived; that top intelligence officials did not tell the truth; and that almost immediately top administration handlers chose to construct a fantasy in lieu of reporting the facts about the death of four Americans.

At this stage, my disgust is no longer even directed primarily at the Obama administration; lying, corrupt, narcissistic, cowardly douche bags will do what lying, corrupt, narcissistic, cowardly douche bags always do. No, I am far more troubled by the extent to which the manipulative, mendacious hyper-partisan poison of this administration has been so shamelessly embraced by what appears to be the entire Democratic Party and its so-called “progressive” allies in the media. I am equally troubled by a citizenry huge numbers of which can’t be bothered to focus their attention and reasoning abilities (if any) for more than ten minutes on the cumulative effects of the present government’s lawlessness, perfidy and incompetence. I am not optimistic about America’s ability to survive the plague of big government, crony capitalism, proliferating “victim” groups, ideological indoctrination cloaked as “education”, and cultural fragmentation. I believe, in the words of the song, that we are facing “long hard times to come”.

Yet I shall be of good cheer, and will take as many of the bastards down with me as I can before finally climbing the gallows, from which platform, to borrow from H.L. Mencken, “my last word will be a hoot at socialism”.