The DiploMad 2.0: "What Difference Does it Make?": Diplomad says Hillary Clinton got away with murder in her Congressional testimony about Benghazi
To the matter at hand. There is so much wrong with what Hillary said that I can only cover a few points. Her whole attitude was one of taking a victory lap. She is leaving the State Department, and she ran out the clock on Benghazi. Her phrase "At this point" sums it up. The steam has gone out of the issue, and the tactic of delay, obfuscation, and deception has worked; the administration has eluded responsibility for a major foreign policy disaster of criminal proportions. They did it before with "Fast and Furious" and they have done it again. State's Accountability Review Board report, of course, was a whitewash; it was a carefully worded truce between Chicago and Foggy Bottom. It avoided dealing with the fundamentals of the Benghazi disaster, i.e., the foreign policy of this administration, and, in exchange, the bureaucrats were not held responsible for the decisions they took in implementing that foreign policy. Nobody was to blame for anything.
As a lawyer, Hillary must know how absurd her line "what is the difference?" sounds. Here we have an administration that insists on treating acts of terror against Americans as criminal matters, e.g., call in the FBO to "the crime scene," yet here we have the Secretary of State saying it really makes no difference what motivated the "criminals" or whether the "crime" was premeditated and planned in conjunction with others. More important, however, if it made no difference why did the administration send out that horrid political hack Susan Rice to lie about it all? To blame it on a video? Where was Hillary? Why wasn't she out front telling us all on the Sunday talk shows that it made "no difference?" Why have Rice lie?
It, of course, "does make a difference." If the attack was a well-planned one, who planned it? Were any foreign states involved? Why didn't our intel pick it up? If it was a spontaneous event, why didn't it occur to anybody at State or in the Embassy in Libya that the date of September 11 was a particularly propitious one for such "spontaneous" events? Why was Stevens in Benghazi on September 11? Why was that facility still open when the security situation in the city had been deteriorating rapidly? The questions just pour forth; you can think of dozens more.
I have written many times before about the idiocy of our policy in Libya and North Africa (see my archives), and won't repeat all that. Let me just say that hearings did not explore the biggest issue of all. What did the administration think would happen in North Africa once Mubarak and Qaddafi were removed?
To the matter at hand. There is so much wrong with what Hillary said that I can only cover a few points. Her whole attitude was one of taking a victory lap. She is leaving the State Department, and she ran out the clock on Benghazi. Her phrase "At this point" sums it up. The steam has gone out of the issue, and the tactic of delay, obfuscation, and deception has worked; the administration has eluded responsibility for a major foreign policy disaster of criminal proportions. They did it before with "Fast and Furious" and they have done it again. State's Accountability Review Board report, of course, was a whitewash; it was a carefully worded truce between Chicago and Foggy Bottom. It avoided dealing with the fundamentals of the Benghazi disaster, i.e., the foreign policy of this administration, and, in exchange, the bureaucrats were not held responsible for the decisions they took in implementing that foreign policy. Nobody was to blame for anything.
As a lawyer, Hillary must know how absurd her line "what is the difference?" sounds. Here we have an administration that insists on treating acts of terror against Americans as criminal matters, e.g., call in the FBO to "the crime scene," yet here we have the Secretary of State saying it really makes no difference what motivated the "criminals" or whether the "crime" was premeditated and planned in conjunction with others. More important, however, if it made no difference why did the administration send out that horrid political hack Susan Rice to lie about it all? To blame it on a video? Where was Hillary? Why wasn't she out front telling us all on the Sunday talk shows that it made "no difference?" Why have Rice lie?
It, of course, "does make a difference." If the attack was a well-planned one, who planned it? Were any foreign states involved? Why didn't our intel pick it up? If it was a spontaneous event, why didn't it occur to anybody at State or in the Embassy in Libya that the date of September 11 was a particularly propitious one for such "spontaneous" events? Why was Stevens in Benghazi on September 11? Why was that facility still open when the security situation in the city had been deteriorating rapidly? The questions just pour forth; you can think of dozens more.
I have written many times before about the idiocy of our policy in Libya and North Africa (see my archives), and won't repeat all that. Let me just say that hearings did not explore the biggest issue of all. What did the administration think would happen in North Africa once Mubarak and Qaddafi were removed?