While John McCain was busy picking fights with President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice yesterday, his Senate colleagues were receiving a briefing on the very information McCain is demanding more of.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has been the leading congressional critic of the administration's handling of the Benghazi attack and what he sees as the administration's lack of candor with Congress on the matter. On Wednesday, he pledged to block the potential nomination of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to replace Secretary of State Hillary Clinton due to Rice's statements on the attack. That drew a sharp rebuke from President Barack Obama at Wednesday's press conference.
But although McCain had time to speak on the Senate floor and on television about the lack of information provided to Congress about the attack, he didn't attend the classified briefing for senators Wednesday given to the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, of which he is a member.
According to Foreign Policy, the briefing McCain chose not to attend included represetantives from the State Department, the Department of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the FBI.
Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and Susan Collins (R-ME) both criticized McCain for not attending the event and for calling for a "Watergate style" special committee to investigate the matter and stated that such a committee isn't necessary.
Libertarian boy wonder Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) also did not attend the briefing yesterday but did find time to complain about the lack of information.
John McCain's spokesperson claims McCain's absence was due to a scheduling error, to which I would say "no shit." The error is obviously that he decided to conduct a press conference and participate in interviews to complain about a lack of information while said information was being disseminated.