Press TV
May 22, 2014
Republicans, Democrats ‘exploiting’ Benghazi attack ahead of elections
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The two major political parties in the US are “exploiting” the deadly 2012 terror attack on US consulate in Benghazi, ahead of this year’s midterm elections, a political analyst said.
“Both ruling political parties in the United States, the incumbent– that is in the White House at least– the Democratic Party and the Republican Party are really playing political football with the Benghazi issue,” Rick Rozoff from Stop NATO International Network told Press TV on Thursday.
“It’s something that has been exploited by both political parties; Republicans, because they are outside the White House, to make points against the ruling party and the Democrats of course are trying to put out the fire and exonerate themselves,” Rozoff stated.
After weeks of internal debate, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday appointed five members to the newly-formed Select Committee that will investigate the Obama administration’s handling of the attack that killed US ambassador, Christopher Stevens, and three other Americans.
Rozoff dismissed the move as just a political game. “The maneuvering by the Democratic Party to dispatch a delegation to Libya is not enough to get to the truth, however much we hear that from either political party, but it’s simply a taxpayer-funded junket to do damage control for the party in the White House right now as the opposite party is trying to score political points ahead of the next presidential election.”
Rozoff described the 2011 US-led bombing campaign of Libya as “one of the more lopsided wars in history” where NATO, with a collective population of 900 million, conducted over 26,000 air missions against the government of a country with a population of just six million.
The analyst pointed out that Ambassador Stevens was himself in Benghazi instigating and later coordinating efforts to aid the rebels against Muammar Gaddafi.
“Stevens was somebody who three years ago was in Benghazi before the overthrow of the government of Muammar Gaddafi and was meeting with some of the various types of so-called rebels and securing for them weapons and other support they could use against the government,” he said.
“Rather than get to the bottom of who was perhaps negligent in protecting the US ambassador, he himself was involved in creating the debacle that now is Libya, we have to take note of the fact that even as we’re speaking there’s armed conflict occurring in the two largest cities in the country, in Tripoli and Benghazi,” Rozoff noted.
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