May 23, 2013

Conspiracy Theory Watch: Hillary Sold Stingers to Al Qaeda!

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Seriously. This is the latest fever dream from the right. They believe that the reason Ambassador Chris Stevens was in Benghazi on September 11 was to negotiate the return of Stinger missiles that Hillary Clinton had sold to Al Qaeda groups over the objections of the CIA.

I am not making this up.

Why couldn’t the wingers be happy with their old complaint: that Obama had done too little after the Libya war to secure Muammar Qadafi’s arsenal of shoulder-mounted antiaircraft missiles,1 thus allowing them to fall into the hands of assorted bad guys in the Middle East? That’s at least based on a kernel of truth. Beats me. Because it didn’t involve Hillary Clinton, I guess, and therefore wasn’t a perfect conspiracy theory.

1For the record, old Russian SA-7s, not Stingers. More here.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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