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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PLEASE—BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

“Lying.” “Disgusting.” “Scum.” “Slime.” “Corrupt.” “Enemy of the people.” Donald Trump has always made clear what he thinks of journalists. And it’s plain now that his administration intends to do everything it can to stop journalists from reporting things it doesn’t like—which is most things that are true.

We’ll say it loud and clear: At Mother Jones, no one gets to tell us what to publish or not publish, because no one owns our fiercely independent newsroom. But that also means we need to directly raise the resources it takes to keep our journalism alive. There’s only one way for that to happen, and it’s readers like you stepping up. Please do your part and help us reach our $150,000 membership goal by May 31.

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