In a column posted on Monday, Ron Paul dismissed both Republican and White House talking points about Benghazi as a “sideshow” and charged that GOP attacks against the White House in regards to the issue are politically motivated.
“Republicans smell a political opportunity over evidence that the Administration heavily edited initial intelligence community talking points about the attack to remove or soften anything that might reflect badly on the president or the State Department,” Paul wrote.
“The real lesson of Benghazi will not be learned because neither Republicans nor Democrats want to hear it,” Paul went on to say. “But it is our interventionist foreign policy and its unintended consequences that have created these problems, including the attack and murder of Ambassador Stevens. The disputed talking points and White House whitewashing are just a sideshow.”
Paul has long been a vocal critic of “interventionist” foreign policy. He noted that many in the GOP had initially supported Obama’s policies in Libya during the country’s uprising that contributed to the fall of Muammar Qaddafi. Paul argued that it was those policies that were responsible for the death of American ambassador Chris Stevens, as well as three other Americans.
“Who can blame the administration for wanting to shift the focus?” Paul wrote. “The Islamic radicals who attacked Benghazi were the same people let loose by the US-led attack on Libya. They were the rebels on whose behalf the US overthrew the Libyan government. Ambassador Stevens was slain by the same Islamic radicals he personally assisted just over one year earlier.”
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