There's an elephant in the room in Washington, and they're still looking for a mouse. Politics not only makes strange bedfellows, it seems, but makes the bedfellows strange as well. Sen. John McCain of Arizona and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina are looking increasingly like two older curmudgeonly muppets as they find less and less convincing ways to say no to President Barack Obama's Cabinet nominations, exploiting the filibuster rules.
McCain, who has admitted animus toward Chuck Hagel, seems to want only to inflict pain on the nominee for defense secretary, but to eventually let him pass. He even conceded that his goal was Republican retribution for Hagel's apostasy during the Iraq war for standing up to President George W. Bush. We all know what payback is.
As for Graham's obsession with Benghazi, where was he when the Bush administration was trumping up faulty intelligence to the point of a hoax, to get us into war with Iraq?
Did he not read the book "Hubris," by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, which lays bare the hocus-pocus manipulation of the facts which justified our invasion of a country that had not invaded us? The hubris that led us into the Iraq war, which robbed the American treasury of $3 trillion and cost almost 4,000 American lives, and tens of thousands of serious and life-burdening casualties, produced not a whimper of congressional static, let alone any hearings to get to the bottom of who was manipulating the intelligence to get into a war based on false premises.
Where was the zeal among Graham and McCain, then, to get to the bottom of why the American people were sold a nonsustainable bill of goods on Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" and alliance with al-Qaida?
Is the skulduggery and chicanery that led us to war not worthy of congressional attention?
Elevating Benghazi to the level of the "worst tragedy since 9/11" as Sen. Rand Paul put it, is straining at gnats while swallowing camels. Did he forget about the WMD deception that got us into Iraq? In the end, it is, as McCain recently admitted, all about politics. It is about cheering on your team and ignoring its flaws. To do anything less is viewed as traitorous.
Chuck Hagel, the former Nebraska senator, is a former grunt, a war hero who had the courage to stand up to his own party when it came to Iraq. And now, that same war hero is being vilified rather than lionized when he should be treated more as a hero and less as a bum.
Shame on you, John McCain. Shame on you, Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Be of good courage, Chuck Hagel. Stand up and continue the fight. The truth will eventually set you, and the country, free.
Remember the Latin maximum, "Illegitimi non carborundum." ( "Don't let the b------- get you down!")
John T. Sullivan Jr. teaches at Pittsburg State University in Pittsburg, Kan. He lives the rest of the year in Saratoga Springs. He is the former co-chairman of the New York Democratic Party. His email address is jtsullivanjr@gmail.com.