The Real Real Story Behind Benghazi

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Having pretty much failed to persuade the country that the Obama administration misled the American public about Benghazi while cravenly refusing to call it an act of terrorism, conservatives now have a new conspiracy theory. It revolves around the notion that Obama basically had a real-time video feed of what was happening; knew that embassy staffers were requesting help; knew that a fast-response team could get there in time; but ordered them not to go in, thus making himself personally responsible for the deaths of four American diplomats. Charles Woods, the father of Benghazi victim Tyrone Woods, has been retailing this story all over right-wing talk radio, and conservatives are up in arms that the mainstream media is ignoring it.

But I guess that’s old news. The latest latest conspiracy theory is that General Carter Ham, the head of AFRICOM, is being sacked because….well, let’s let James Robbins tell the story that he heard from “someone inside the military that I trust entirely”:

General Ham immediately had a rapid response unit ready and communicated to the Pentagon that he had a unit ready. General Ham then received the order to stand down. His response was to screw it, he was going to help anyhow. Within 30 seconds to a minute after making the move to respond, his second in command apprehended General Ham and told him that he was now relieved of his command.

The mainstream media is, once again, ignoring this bombshell on the pretext that the Pentagon flatly denies it. The real reason, of course, is that they’re in the tank for Obama and won’t do anything to hurt him before Election Day.

I have nowhere really to go with this, so I’ll turn it into a reader poll. On Twitter earlier, I predicted that no matter who wins, Republicans will completely lose interest in Benghazi on November 7th. What do you think?

A. Yes indeed. Peddling this nonsense will no longer serve any purpose once the election is over.

B. No siree. If Obama wins, Benghazi will mutate from election fodder into impeachment fodder.

Vote in comments!

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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