GOP has Benghazi blood on hands

You know how a magician uses slight of hand to make a trick work? Well, magicians have nothing on the Beltway Republicans. They're as slippery as Turtle Wax.

For the past eight months, the Republicans have been stoking a media firestorm about the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that killed four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Here's their spin:

The attack happened, four Americans were killed, and the White House didn't call it a terrorist attack. Yep, that's it, they didn't blame it on terrorists. They all agree an attack took place, they all agree that four Americans died. The thing that most concerns Republicans, however, is what the administration called it and how long it took them to do so. Both sides, Republican and Democrat, have stated clearly that the problem began long before the attack, regarding a dangerous lack of security at the Consulate.

There are gray sides on all of those facts, but let's just look at how sinister the Republicans are. While this attack happened and they want to investigate it, why won't they also investigate the 13 Benghazis that happened during the Bush Administration? All of those people and places could have used better security. This brings us back to the other question: why wasn't there enough security in Benghazi? The answer is simple: Congress voted against allocating funds for Embassy and Consulate security. Republicans flat-out denied the White House the very thing they now criticize it for not having, something that could have saved Ambassador Stevens' life.

Last year, Dana Milbank of the Washington Post reported that: "For fiscal 2013, the GOP-controlled House proposed spending $1.934 billion for the State Department's Worldwide Security Protection program — well below the $2.15 billion requested by the Obama administration. House Republicans cut the administration's request for embassy security funding by $128 million in fiscal 2011 and $331 million in fiscal 2012. (Negotiations with the Democrat-controlled Senate restored about $88 million of the administration's request.)"

Therefore, what we have here are Republicans creating the conditions which led to the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, then grandstanding on the issue.

No matter who said what after the attack, or what you called the attack, or what talking points there were, you still had four Americans dead and they weren't dead because of any talking points. They were killed for lack of security and that was because the Republicans refused to allocate the funds to protect our own people.

Benghazigate: how Republicans allowed terrorists to kill four Americans. It's true, after all, that Republicans know how to work with terrorists. President Ronald Reagan sold arms to terrorists, in what was then called "Contragate."

Gee, that might make a good political slogan: "Help a terrorist, vote Republican."