Brendan Smialowski/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

There are still unanswered questions about the Benghazi mission killings–remaining fine details about what happened that day, what the intelligence community knew (or didn’t know) before the attack, whether better security around American diplomats could have prevented the tragedy. It’s not surprising that, directly after the incident, there was some confusion as to what, exactly, had taken place. Just as it’s not surprising that questions remain two months later. At least it’s not surprising to serious people with a background in military and intelligence matters.

Which, apparently, does not include Republican members of Congress. I wrote yesterday that Senators John McCain and Rand Paul, who’ve been ranting to the press about Benghazi and declaring their determination to get to the bottom of things, failed to attend a classified hearing on Wednesday dedicated to demystifying the attack.

On Thursday, the Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee did manage to show up for a public hearing on Benghazi, but they turned it into a political circus. Their main, no, their sole purpose was to attack President Obama and Susan Rice, the American envoy to the United Nations. They were far more interested in going over, for the thousandth time, what public statements were made by which public officials on what day than in actually addressing substantive issues.



Among the worst offenders, and that was a tough competition, was Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California: “What is clear is that this administration, including the president himself, has intentionally misinformed, read that lied, to the American people in the aftermath of this tragedy. Now, President Obama has the gall to float the name as possible secretary of state the name of the person who is the actual vehicle used to misinform the American people during this crisis.”

I can see how Mr. Rohrabacher, who was a big supporter of President Bush when he “intentionally misinformed” the world about Iraq, using an actual secretary of state as his “actual vehicle,” might come up with that scenario. But in the case of Benghazi, it’s pure fiction and it’s impossible to imagine he doesn’t know that.

When Ms. Rice said on television a few days after the attack that “extremist elements” took advantage of a protest over an anti-Muslim video, she was reflecting the intelligence she had been given – not by political appointees, but by career intelligence officers.

Reporting by The Times has drawn a similar picture of the attack, and C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on Thursday that the intelligence community’s assessment of what happened is now roughly what Ms. Rice recounted on television.

But that was not the narrative that Mitt Romney and other Republicans settled on during the campaign. They wanted Americans to believe that Ms. Rice and others were lying about the attack, because they thought that would hurt Mr. Obama’s campaign. It didn’t work, but the Republicans can’t seem to let go.

Their star witness yesterday was Michael Courts, an official of the Government Accountability Office, who was called to testify about a report on gaps in diplomatic security. The Republicans clearly thought it would be devastating. Except it was written in 2009. One answer that pretty much summed up his testimony: “GAO does not have any information on the specific security arrangement at the consulate in Benghazi.”

Democratic members of the committee did not sit idle during the propaganda show. After Republicans repeatedly accused the White House of short-changing diplomatic security, Rep. Gary Ackerman of New York said:

If you want to know who is responsible in this town, buy yourself a mirror. Those of us who’ve been to hearings and briefings and markups hear time and again from our colleagues that this costs too much money and we have to make cuts. Well, our evil-doing, American-citizen hating administration requested a lot more money than we provided. They requested for worldwide security $440 million more than you guys wanted to provide. A quarter of a billion dollars in security upgrades that you refused to make in this committee. And then you have the audacity to come here and say why wasn’t the protection of these people provided for?

Something obviously went wrong in Benghazi. An Ambassador died. It’s necessary and appropriate to discuss what happened so as to avoid similar missteps in the future. But missteps don’t always add up to a scandal; and confusion after the fact doesn’t necessarily constitute a cover up. The more time Republicans spend going down the conspiracy path, the less time gets devoted to learning from our mistakes and rectifying them.