system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I think Republicans' focus on the Benghazi attack is nothing more than a two-fer attempt to tar Obama and Hillary Clinton with a "scandal." CMV

I'm a pretty "high-information" voter and, though I lean left, I'm no Obama shill, and not a Hillary fan at all. Yet I've been reading about Benghazi for more than a year now, and I still don't even understand what it is that conservatives are alleging. 

I've read a few variations of the following:

a) **Obama didn't call it a terrorist attack/blamed it on a video when he knew it was an al-Qaida plot all along.** Because...why? Admitting terrorists were behind it (as opposed to random assholes) would hurt his re-election chances? This isn't a plausible motive to me. How many people would've really changed their votes over something that happened in Libya? In an election that was all about the economy? And considering that Obama/Hillary helped topple Gadaffi and liberate Libya six months earlier without a single American dying? What's the point of lying and obfuscating about it? Isn't it more likely they were simply reacting to bad information in real time?

b) **Obama and Hillary are hiding the facts about their prior knowledge/incompetent response that resulted in unnecessary and preventable deaths.** I would agree that this would be a scandal if proven, but many inquiries have been conducted by Congress, the media and the State Dept., and none have found any evidence that this is true. In fact, "60 Minutes" had to take the highly unusual and embarrassing step of retracting a story that alleged this. Yet conservatives remain *absolutely convinced* that there's something being hidden from the public. What is being hidden, and why? I'd really like to know what the point of this so-called conspiracy is.

c) **Obama wanted Americans to die because he's a secret Muslim and al-Qaida supporter.** This is what I think about 33% of Benghazi obsessives actually believe, and this is what scummy right-wing pundits and politicians are darkly hinting at on talk radio and beyond. (You honestly can't CMV on this one)

I think Benghazi was a tragic fuck-up and I'm glad people got fired and publicly shamed for it. However, it's not a scandal, and conservatives need to move on. CMV.
gpt
C is absolutely ridiculous and no conservative actually argues that.

Going on the rest, though, it is fair to argue that Obama's administration did know about the incident before it happened. There was unrest going on at the time and the ambassadors had asked for help. Hillary gave none and that caused the needless deaths that happened. 

Since Obama was so close to the election and his strongest asset was his foreign policy, he had to do everything to protect that image. If people know what had really happened, that is to say that the Obama administration had spread the military too thin and was unable to give the help to the ambassadors that they had specifically requested for, then he would pretty much have very little to show for his first term. 

He had to be that guy that fought a successful war in Libya, killed Bin Laden, and pulled us out of Iraq. The scandal in Benghazi would have destroyed that image completely and he would have likely lost the election if he could not minimize the damage and cover it up in time, so that is what he did and there is plenty of evidence to suggest so, particularly in the emails that were sent to Obama asking for help that he did get, but ignored for whatever reason.

The problem is that you are looking towards the government to exonerate itself from its own wrong doing. The government has never once taken accountability when they have been caught doing something wrong. Not during NSA, Watergate, and definitely not during Benghazi. They have always masked the facts and even made up fake reports to justify themselves, so looking to the government investigating itself as "evidence" that the Obama administration did nothing wrong doesn't hold up.