Sen. Graham on Brennan: No Confirmation For CIA Until Benghazi Questions Are Answered
Source: TPM
Sen. Graham on Brennan: No Confirmation For CIA Until Benghazi Questions Are Answered
TOM KLUDT 10:16 AM EST, TUESDAY JANUARY 8, 2013
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Tuesday released a statement on President Barack Obama's nomination of John Brennan to serve as the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency, arguing that the administration's counterterrorism adviser should not be confirmed "until our questions are answered" on the September attack in Benghazi, Libya that killed four Americans.
The statement:
I have not forgotten about the Benghazi debacle and still have many questions about what transpired before, during and after the attack on our consulate.
In that regard, I do not believe we should confirm anyone as Director of the CIA until our questions are answered - like who changed Ambassador Susan Rices talking points and deleted the references to Al-Qaeda? My support for a delay in confirmation is not directed at Mr. Brennan, but is an unfortunate, yet necessary action to get information from this Administration.
I have tried repeatedly to get information on Benghazi but my requests have been repeatedly ignored....
-snip-
Read more: http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/sen-graham-on-brennan-no-confirmation-for-cia
Botany
(70,281 posts)You are not the King of the World.
valerief
(53,235 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)In March 2001, Brennan, a longtime CIA Middle East expert, was named deputy executive director of the agency. For the next several years he was in a position to learn about the counterterror "dark side:" extraordinary renditions, CIA black sites, waterboarding, and other methods euphemistically described as "enhanced interrogation."
Brennan's role in internal CIA debate over those tactics is not fully known, and will almost certainly be plumbed during the nomination process. An October 2012 report by The Washington Post found that "several colleagues
could not recall" him voicing criticism of the tactics. By 2006, when Brennan was working in private industry, he was making news as a vocal critic of waterboarding, which he told the New York Daily News "goes beyond the bounds of what a civilized society should employ."
When then-Sen. Barack Obama began a presidential run, Brennan signed on as a national security advisor and quickly befriended him. After Brennan's name was floated as a potential pick for the CIA post in November 2008, however, liberal critics and human rights advocates erupted in anger. Brennan, blogger Grenn Greenwald noted, had not only worked within the Bush administration. He had also publicly declared that "enhanced interrogation" techniques not including waterboarding had "saved lives."
The psychologists penned their letter and the influential blogger Andrew Sullivan wrote, "If Obama picks him, it will be a vindication of the kind of ambivalence and institutional moral cowardice that made America a torturing nation."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/07/john-brennan-cia-nomination_n_2428282.html
The nation deserves to know Brennan's record on torture before his nomination is ratified.
I do not want a torturer in the CIA. Do you?
niyad
(112,424 posts)do not recall you demanding investigations then.
Mass
(27,315 posts)Nothing new. Graham being Graham,.
KansDem
(28,498 posts)liberal N proud
(60,298 posts)n/t
The Wizard
(12,482 posts)our national security is endangered by the Senator's sex life. The gentleman from South Carolina is easily compromised and subject to extortion by enemies of the United States.
DonViejo
(60,536 posts)IthinkThereforeIAM
(3,072 posts)... we got a winner!
albear
(33 posts)Last edited Tue Jan 8, 2013, 12:15 PM - Edit history (1)
These idiotic republicants are like rabid dogs locked onto their prey! Why wasn't Bush W's security top personnel forced to testify after their massive 9/11 failure?
Lochloosa
(16,018 posts)hobbit709
(41,694 posts)sinkingfeeling
(51,274 posts)Last edited Tue Jan 8, 2013, 12:47 PM - Edit history (1)
in the USA? Where are the hearings? Where are the Congressional reports?
olegramps
(8,200 posts)denverbill
(11,489 posts)UP OR DOWN VOTE!
Not Me
(3,398 posts)The American public is not with you on this one.
Renew Deal
(81,801 posts)I don't think his requests have been "ignored."
AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)AtheistCrusader
(33,982 posts)Is there lead in the water or something?
samsingh
(17,571 posts)Obama a 1 termer?
so, they are willing to weaken the CIA unless they can create some political points over Beng.
FreeBC
(403 posts)Graham is his own worst enemy.
Festivito
(13,452 posts)I'd like to know how why and who in CIA did this to our potential Sec of State.
Giving her bad information she then used on TV.
Republicans then shouted her down simply saying Benghazi.
For that we lost a Senate seat: Kerry.
So, NOW he wants to know!
reteachinwi
(579 posts)so he is compelled to bear down on conservative crazy.
With conservative groups such as the Club For Growth signaling their intent to challenge Sen. Lindsey Graham in the 2014 Republican primary, South Carolinas moderate senior senator needs to boost his conservative credentials if he wants to survive for another term.
http://palmettopublicrecord.org/2012/11/16/lindsey-graham-john-mccain-distorting-facts-on-benghazi-attack-to-obstruct-obama-agenda/
EC
(12,287 posts)and I hope Reid will do something about the holds these guys have been using when he works out the fillibuster rules.
Zambero
(8,954 posts)Any new CIA appointee not associated with that agency under the current administration would have had no connection to prior events at Benghazi or otherwise. Just another excuse to practice obstructionism GOP style.
Spirochete
(5,264 posts)is not Ms. Lohan.
leveymg
(36,418 posts)julian09
(1,435 posts)JoePhilly
(27,787 posts)Lindsey is trapped in a singular masturbatory fantasy.
Rob H.
(5,340 posts)...he did it after Rice was responsible, in part, for one of the largest intelligence failures in American history and after she said, "We don't want the smoking gun to be mushroom cloud" to gin up support for invading Iraq. (She was also a member of the White House Iraq Group, "the propaganda arm of the White House whose purpose was to sell the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the public."
Graham and John McCain were of the same mind on Rice's nomination, namely that she should have been made Secretary of State despite her mendacious claims that there were WMDs in Iraq.
"Yes, that's even more unfair. Because it was all in terms of weapons of mass destruction and misleading us about the war and what was in Iraq. Well, every intelligence agency in the world was misled. And to connect those two to say that (Condoleezza Rice)'s a liar is very unfair, over the line."
Before the vote, McCain noted from the Senate floor that the chamber had enough votes to confirm Rice to the job, questioning why Democrats wanted to debate her nomination.
"So I wonder why we are starting this new Congress with a protracted debate about a foregone conclusion," he said, adding that Rice is qualified for the job. "I can only conclude that we are doing this for no other reason than because of lingering bitterness over the outcome of the election." (Emphasis mine--Rob)
As I've said before, if Graham seriously believes that "every intelligence agency in the world was misled," I have three words for him: Downing Street Memo.
liberal N proud
(60,298 posts)This dweeb has objected to absolutely every nomination the Obama has presented in the last 4 years.
Doesn't he think his approach is a little stale?
Purveyor
(29,876 posts)xxqqqzme
(14,887 posts)You have worn out that recording.
Why are these rethugs willing to take this script to the airways? I don't get it. Are their seats so safe, they become the bat shit crazy person of the month?
blueclown
(1,869 posts)Lindsey's seat isn't safe, so he must be bat shit crazy, because that is what his primary base demands.
It's important to recognize that all of Graham's actions over the past few months have been complete theater to win his primary in 2014.
Nanjing to Seoul
(2,088 posts)Assholes. . .and again, it's South Carolina. Should have let them secede.
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(107,063 posts)Isn't he a rapper?
Alamuti Lotus
(3,093 posts)The clear direction Barry is taking with these appointments is a distinct pattern and well beyond disturbing--a Republican for Secretary of Defense (the wholly contrived furor over this notwithstanding) and the commander of the drone wars for the top CIA position?
Brennan has been bold and strident in his defense of torture and the drone wars--such a man should be shipped off to The Hague, not promoted to be Director of the CIA.
Nobody is asking the right questions about these appointments. The message being delivered from the top is clear, and the direction being taken is a direct line maintaining the erstwhile reviled Bush foreign policy (which was really just a slight amplification of what has been business as usual for decades, but that is neither here nor there).
Even though Lindsey Graham (R-Scumbag) is, of course, not acting from a remotely valid or principled position (--the Benghazi "questions" are basically as contrived as anything else from these brainless, obsessive Republican bastards--), I hope it becomes permanently tangled, even by nonsense like this (though this kind of "opposition" is really not opposition at all, and will prevent nothing). Maybe the CIA will suffer from the lack of administrative clarity in the meantime, that awful agency certainly deserves the trouble.