Last year, on the 11th anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, a group of about 150 militants — armed with rocket-propelled grenades, assault rifles, machine guns and truck-mounted heavy artillery — launched a late-night attack against an annex of the United States diplomatic mission to Libya, in the Mediterranean port city of Benghazi. 

It was sudden and swift and deadly.

They entered the compound under the cover of a grenade barrage and moved toward the main building, inside of which was the U.S. ambassador to Libya, J. Christopher Stevens. The attackers poured diesel fuel over everything in sight — furniture, walls, floors — and lit them on fire. Agents from the nearby CIA outpost attempted soon after to secure the area, but it was too late for four of our own: Glen Doherty and Tyrone Woods, security guards and former SEALs; Sean Smith, a Foreign Service officer; and Ambassador Stevens, who died of smoke inhalation while trapped inside the compound.

It’s been five months since the events of Sept. 11, 2012, and the chickenhawks have officially lost it.

Chickenhawks are elected officials perpetually inclined to wage war without ever having participated in military activities, and the Republican Party seems to have an unfortunate surplus of them. 

Chickenhawks pushed for an invasion of Iraq based on, at best, shaky evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. 

For the last five months, the same Republican chickenhawks that have been advocating for an unnecessary war with Iran — most vocally, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte — have promoted another incredibly dangerous set of theories. They claim that Susan Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations, propagated false information on the attack and its causes to cover up incompetence on the part of the Obama administration; that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did not even make an attempt to save those wounded and killed in Benghazi; and, most stupendously, that President Obama himself had remained idle while his own diplomatic agents were murdered.

On last Sunday’s Face the Nation, Graham (who once claimed to be a Desert Storm veteran, despite his never having left reservist status) told CBS’s Bob Schieffer that he would place a senatorial hold on the confirmations of former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel as defense secretary, and of John Brennan, President Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, as CIA chief. And what, pray tell, is Graham’s rationale for this latest round of obstructionism? Benghazi. Obviously.

“I don’t think we should allow (a vote) … until the White House gives us an accounting,” Graham said. “What did the president do?”

Is he serious? We’re not going to let such a perfectly mundane senatorial task as voting on a cabinet appointment happen because a few crazy people think there’s a giant conspiracy. 

Yes, sir, said Graham. “I want to know who changed the talking points. Who took the references to Al Qaeda out of the talking points given to Susan Rice? We still don’t know.”

Sen. Graham, would you like to know why the talking points were changed? Because the intelligence community did what it was supposed to do when four Americans are murdered: They gathered further intelligence. This is my biggest gripe with the chickenhawks.

They still don’t get the fact that stories change. 

It seems, in this Internet-driven age of instant gratification, that we have an inability to understand that when huge, incredibly important events on the scale of what happened in Benghazi transpire, perfect reporting is difficult. It’s impossible for our news media to accurately and immediately encapsulate their every single detail. Couple that with media organizations’ desire to be the first to print (or tweet) every story and our national penchant for conspiracy theories, and we have a very messy situation on our hands.

The mishandling of the situation in Benghazi — a confusing series of events that even now hasn’t been fully understood — by the press and by politicians is indicative of a larger problem. According to the Pew Research Center, 66 percent of the public believes that news stories are often inaccurate. Trust in the media’s ability to be fair and unbiased has never been lower. The mainstream media is constantly accused of having a “liberal” bias and outwardly biased news outlets like MSNBC and Fox News have grown quickly in their place. People like Lindsey Graham can now go on Face the Nation and spread bald-faced lies and the public will believe them. Because who can else can they trust?

Adam is a freshman in LAS. He can be reached at [email protected].