Author Tom Ricks was just on Fox to talk about Benghazi. According to Politico, Ricks “writes a blog for Foreign Policy magazine and is a best-selling author of books such as ‘Fiasco’ and ‘The Generals’.”

Fox apparently didn’t like what Ricks had to say.

RICKS: I think that Benghazi, generally, was hyped by this network especially. And now that the campaign is over, I think [McCain’s] backing off a little bit… FOX HOST: When you have four people dead, including the first US ambassador in more than thirty years, how do you call that hype? RICKS: How many security contractors died in Iraq, do you know? FOX HOST: I don’t. RICKS: No, nobody does, because nobody cared. We know that several hundred died, but there was never an official count done of security contractors dead in Iraq. So when I see this focus on what was essentially a small firefight, I think number one: I’ve covered a lot of firefights, it’s impossible to figure out what happens in them sometimes. And second, I think that the emphasis on Benghazi has been extremely political, partly because Fox was operating as a wing of the Republican party. FOX HOST: All right. Tom Ricks, thanks very much for joining us today.

Suddenly, after only a minute and a half, the segment was over. Now you’d have to ask Ricks how long his segment was supposed to go, but usually things like this, if you’re the sole guest, would go a good 4 minutes. Not one minute 30.

Here’s the clip – more from me after:

Ricks raises an excellent point. We lost a lot of people in Iraq and Afghanistan. And suddenly, when four people die in Libya, it’s the end of the world as we know it and Republicans are p-ing their pants wondering if America has been permanently emasculated by four deaths.

Might have been nice for Fox and the GOP to have cared as much about the 6,610 US service men and women who died in Iraq and Afghanistan, especially the 4,474 who died in Iraq because a Republican president, and all of his propaganda organs on TV and the radio and in the Congress, lied.

Here are only 10% of the American men and women who died in these two Republican wars. It’s amazing that Fox, and the Republican party, suddenly figured out that Americans were dying in the Middle East and environs.