My Thursday column and the most ridiculous conspiracy theory of the week:
During yesterday's Senate hearing on the consulate attack in Benghazi, Senator Rand Paul grilled Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and told her that if he had been the president (please God, no) he would've fired her following the incident. He didn't really substantiate on what grounds he would've fired her because by all official accounts she didn't do anything wrong. By the way, none of the Republican senators acknowledged the 11 different consulate attacks under President Bush or accounted for why the Republicans weren't anywhere near as outraged by the dozens of casualties in those attacks and how the Bush administration really didn't "keep us safe" after all.
Anyway, Rand Paul continued by bringing up a far-right conspiracy theory torn from the headlines of Glenn Beck's ridiculous website. Specifically, he asked Clinton whether Chris Stevens, the slain ambassador killed in Benghazi, had been involved in shipping American arms to Syrian rebels through Turkey. The theory goes that Stevens was working closely with former anti-Qaddafi rebels, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which, in turn, is buddy-buddy with al-Qaeda. Through Stevens, jihadist factions within the anti-Assad forces received SA-7 heat-seeking missiles that once belonged to Qaddafi. And just before the September 11 attack, Stevens had met with the Turkish ambassador and therefore... conspiracy! So your basic "Obama is with the terrorists!" agenda. I'm not sure if this gets its own separate "Gate" suffix or if it all gets mixed in with the broader Benghazi-Gate conspiracy nonsense. Who knows.
Clinton said she wasn't aware of any such plot. Of course.
Amazingly, however, this wasn't the kookiest conspiracy theory to be churned up this week. That honor goes to a theory mentioned by Alex Jones... [continue reading]