A number of Congressional Republicans have strongly criticized House Intelligence Committee Mike Rogers (R-MI) for a report that did not fault the Obama administration in the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Rogers, on Friday, brushed off that criticism saying the critics didn’t read the whole report.
In particular Rogers pushed back on comments by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) who said the report was “crap.” That, Rogers joked, “is a technical word meaning a bipartisan, well founded, well sourced report.”
The Weekly Standard also published a piece quoting a number of members arguing that the Bengahzi report was incomplete. Rogers said those comments were just because the outcome wasn’t what those members wanted.
“First of all, they didn’t read the report. And unfortunately people wanted this report to be the expansive Benghazi report,” Rogers told TPM and other reporters right after the Christian Science Monitor Breakfast. “I told everyone, including some members on my committee that it was not going to be an expansive Benghazi report. My jurisdiction — the committee’s jurisdiction was the lane of the intelligence community. So I think they wanted a report to come out to go after the State Department or the White House. That was not my goal. I put no piece of information in a finding if we couldn’t corroborate the information. So one piece of testimony is not corroboration. I had to have other corroboration in order to do it.”
Rogers said that none of the criticism has been on the findings.
“So if you notice, not one person has laid claim to any of the findings. They haven’t said I don’t like the findings, or the findings are inaccurate, or the findings are wrong — they said ‘I don’t like the findings.’ Well there’s a difference,” Rogers said.
The outgoing chairman added that some of the critics never accessed the classified information related to the Benghazi report.
“Other members, who did participate, who did offer alternative views, they’re not condemning the report. They participated in the report and when they had a chance to offer alternative criticism of the thing, they did,” Rogers said. “
(Photo credit: Michael Bonfigli/The Christian Science Monitor)
Now Mr. Rogers has a sense of how it feels to be outside the RWNJ Bubble™. The air is cleaner, purer, and doesn’t make you quite so stupid.
I never thought I’d be saying this, but “Three cheers for Mike Rogers!”
So, Congressman, when Darth Cheney calls the Senate report on torture, “crap,” he “is using a technical word meaning a bipartisan, well founded, well sourced report”? Thanks for the clarification!
MikeRogers speaks with truthiness…
wonder if the election results had anything to do with it?
If Republicans read more they might understand science, math, history, ethics, etc., etc.