Congress' hyper-partisan Benghazi hearings: The fallout

A GOP-led committee aggressively questions State Department officials about the assault that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens. What happens next?

State Department officials are sworn in on Oct. 10
(Image credit: Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)

With the presidential election rapidly approaching, Republicans on a House oversight committee grilled State Department officials on Wednesday about allegedly inadequate security at the Benghazi consulate on Sept. 11. Two former leaders of the U.S. security team in Libya said Obama administration officials had turned down a request for more security, and argued that given previous terrorist attacks in Benghazi, it was clear the consulate was at risk. However, one of the witnesses, former Tripoli embassy security chief Eric Nordstrom, conceded that even a beefed-up protection detail wouldn't have been able to repel what the State Department called an "unprecedented attack" by dozens of heavily armed militants. Perhaps predictably, the hearing was punctuated with "partisan bickering." Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), a frequent campaign surrogate for Mitt Romney, said "we could have and should have saved the life of Ambassador [Chris] Stevens and the other people who were there." Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said House Republicans were the ones who cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the diplomatic security budget last year. Where will the political jabs and the investigation into the attack lead? Here, four likely consequences of the hyper-partisan hearing:

1. The GOP will use this to erode Obama's foreign policy edge

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