Today on Fox News Sunday, Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said they did not think the U.S. Senate should create a special committee to investigate the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, Libya on Sept. 11. Chambliss and Lieberman said the Senate currently has the capacity to investigate the matter and that a new committee is not needed.
Republican senators John McCain (AZ), Lindsey Graham (SC) and Kelly Ayotte (NH) this week called for a Watergate-style special “select committee” to investigate the attack, claiming that the Obama administration, particularly U.N. Ambasss misled the public about the attack resulting from protests against an anti-Islam video.
But Chambliss and Lieberman, both close friends of McCain and Graham (Lieberman, Graham and McCain are often referred to as “The Three Amigos”), rejected the proposal. “I respectfully separate from my two amigos on this one,” Lieberman said:
WALLACE: Do you think that we need … do we need a special committee or can your standing committees do it?
CHAMBLISS: Well first of all these two guys are two of my best friends and two of Joe’s best friends. We travel a lot together to some very dangerous places but the committees within the United States Senate are very capable of investigating this in the right way and this is one time I have a slight disagreement with my good friends.
LIEBERMAN: Yeah I respectfully separate from my two amigos on this one and I agree with Saxby. This was a tragedy but it doesn’t rise to the level of 9/11/01. Our committees can handle this and come up with answers.
Earlier in the segment, Lieberman undermined the central case McCain, Graham and Ayotte made in arguing for the special committee, namely the suggestion that Rice willfully inaccurately described the events of the Libya attack. “As I look at what we now know the intelligence community was saying that week and I look at Ambassador Rice’s statements on television on the following Sunday morning, I don’t find anything inconsistent between those two,” he said. Watch the clips: