Jan24
Hillary On Benghazi
on January 24, 2013 at 3:53 pmThree incredibly outrageous evasions.
Not surprising, to anyone who’s been observing her for the past couple decades. Rose Law Firm billing records? Cattle futures?
[Update a couple minutes later]
Kicking off the campaign.
[Friday morning update]
Using the video of that sentence (“What difference does it make?”) properly and repeatedly will be the weapon of mass destruction of Clinton’s presidential hopes.
The ads write themselves.
I strongly disagree. Her supporters will claim that the particular statement was in response to her irritability arising from post-concussive syndrome. Use of it by her detractors will be shown in the light of political opportunism of her temporary medical condition. She will not be held accountable.
Great political ad video. If the Republicans will just use it. There was plenty on Obama that they never used. Whose side were they on, now?
I wish we could take a poll of the State Dept personnel currently stationed in high-risk posts in the Middle East and Northern Africa, to learn how many of them were happy to hear their boss ask “What difference at this point does it make?”, regarding the root cause of the Benghazi attack.
Indeed, what difference does it make whether an attack on US ambassadors was a random act of a crowd or the deliberate, planned action of an enemy that the US has been at war with for nearly two decades? And why should the Secretary of State, of all people, care about the causes and geopolitical implications of attacks on the US? Things happen, people die, soldiers die, ambassadors die, civilians die, what difference does it make?
Also, if it made no difference, why bother spending so much effort at the time to publicize the now known to be incorrect explanation of it? What difference does it make to push a certain explanation through statements and news conferences? Why bother going out of the way to try to string together a chain of events that comes back the the mohammad video if it makes no difference?
It made a difference at the time because it could have lost Obama the election. Now he’s back in the White House, what do they care? Most people will have forgotten by the next election.
However, it’s good to see the left red in tooth and claw blatantly demonstrating their disdain for the rest of us. Particularly for those in the government bureaucracy who keep them in power and are usually the first against the wall when the Glorious Peoples’ Revolution comes.
At this point we may have to go through the Glorious Peoples’ Revolution before we can come out the other side. Dark days ahead.
What has Hillary ever accomplished?
Looks like she’s accomplished avoiding any accountability and blame for the lack of adequate security assets at the Benghazi post, and for allowing the Ambassador to be there with inadequate security assets on 9/11/13 for a still unknown purpose. She’ll accept the “responsibility,” but the accountability and blame? Not so much.
Also appears she’s accomplished not punishing her underlings who failed to provide the security resources the Ambassador requested, and who failed to notify Hill of his multiple requests for more security assets. If she can’t fire them under Civil Service or Executive Branch senior executive rules, has she taken or initiated any punitive actions against them? Surely she could give them a fails to meet critical performance elements evaluation, setting them up for dismissal in the future, and could initiate immediate action to reduce them in grade or rank, and could transfer them to a State Dept post in Mongolia or Greenland. Maybe she’s done some of those things, maybe not. I’m guessing she’s not even going to try to punish them in order to keep them quiet.
Of course it doesn’t make any difference to Hill. They were just Americans, after all. And ‘little people’, to boot. Doesn’t anyone remember 1992-2000?
I hadn’t considered that the 4 dead Americans might have been from ‘fly-over’ and not worth her limited time or finite energies. Well h3ll, she’s COMPLETELY changed my mind with this testimony!
Yeah, and monkeys might fly outta….
I think people are entirely missing a point.
I truly believe that Secretary Clinton cares deeply for the State Department people and others who lost their lives and for their family members. I am not joking or snarking, I believe this seriously.
I also read an account of how the Secretary promised a father to somehow “avenge” the death of his son “by going after” the people responsible. In the United States. For that putative blasphemous film.
OK, Jim, wheel out the talking points about the filmmaker being a felon-on-probation who has no rights worth worrying about, and wheel out the conspiracy theories that the film was an act of provocation by the very sort of terrorists we have been fighting with the intent of harming Americans, a kind of false-flag operation.
Churchill famously said that every state secret needs to be protected with a bodyguard of lies. Yes, Jim, as you mentioned on another thread, every Secretary lies, Secretary Rice lied, Secretary Clinton lied, but unlike others on both the Left and the Right, I am willing to assign honorable motives to those lies.
So what were Secretary Clinton’s honorable motives that merited throwing the First Amendment under the bus, and not, it wasn’t just the filmaker dude, anyone who wanted to speak about this question was “shouted down”, including President Obama shouting down Presidential Candidate Romney in the second debate. Everyone now kinda sorta admits that the offensive film story was cover, but cover for what?
And what was the emotional outburst from the Secretary in response to Senator Ron Johnson’s questions but another form of “shouting down”? If the response is “Senatory Johnson, you can’t handle the truth”, Secretary Clinton, tell us in your own words what that truth is in terms of “men patrolling that wire” between the free and unfree world.
The second point besides the seeming contempt for the First Amendment is the “what really happened that night”? Yeah, yeah, Bush sacrificed thousands of Americans in his ill-planned Iraq War whereas the toll on Obama’s Libya War I guess stands at four. A President calls upon our men and women to take that step forward and put their lives on the line for a national interest, all the time.
But however soldiers and other citizens you sacrifice, there are certain matters of honor, especially with respect to “leaving our people behind.” Yes, Jim, this is all from the Right Wing echo chamber and fever swamp, but the innuendo and rumor is driven by leaks from people on the inside with an agenda, where that agenda may be a sense of dishonor regarding what they saw.
What about the two men with a morter, who were holding off a small army to let their fellow Americans escape? Were they ordered to stand down, and did they save their compatriots by disobeying orders? Were they “left behind” inasmuch that “resources” could have been brought to bear and were not?
So much is left unanswered that we have even forgetten what questions to ask.
Sure she cares but why does that matter?
She used Obama’s how dare you defense. “How dare you ask me about how these people died and our lies about it when I met with their grieving families”, while choking back fake tears. “There are four dead Americans, how dare you ask me about how they died, why we didn’t do anything to help, and what the ambassador was doing there in the first place.”
Caring isn’t a defense especially when it is devoid of remorse.
Bush cares about the troops, would any Hillary defenders let him off the hook because he cares?
It is totally disgusting that she would hold up these dead people to shield herself from criticism. I am not sure if you saw that part of her testimony but it was horrible.
“She used Obama’s how dare you defense. ”
Isn’t that the same as the (fictional, but everyone regards it as a real even) “You can’t handle the truth!” defense?
But that gets me to asking, “So, what then is the truth?” At least Jack Nicholson/Colonel Jessup gave us his version of the truth.
But I guess for asking that you become a Truther, a Birther, or worse.
Doesn’t anyone remember 1992-2000?
The peace? The prosperity? Heaven forbid we have them again!
Peace?
You flush all the war down the memory hole? Kosovo? Somalia? No-fly zones? Oil for food starving millions of Iraqis? World Trade Center?
You still giving Clinton credit for Newt’s balanced budget? Dreamy days of an economy in a tech bubble?
If only we could go back to the days before the war on women where a president could sexually assault an intern and survive numerous allegations of rape.
War is Peace. Ignorance is Strength. Freedom is Slavery.
Does that mean there is a liberal constituency for a world without the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit? For Year 2000 levels of Federal spending?
The missing FBI files found in the First Lady’s rooms? The three missed attempts to kill Osama Bin Laden before he murdered 3000 Americans, one of these because Bill Clinton was too busy watching golf? The pardon of Mark Rich, against the advice of the DOJ, because his wife had been generous withthe bribes in the most bribable administration to that date? Slaughering children at Waco, to save them from molestation (guess Janet thought they were better off dead)? The “Shoot-On-Sight” order at Ruby Ridge, which the Clinton Admion stood fully behind? “The meaning of the word ‘is’” and a Presidenty of the United States, on network television, asking if oral sex was really sex?
“The peace?”
Apparently all we need for “Peace on Earth!” is a blackout hood and people stupid enough to wear it.
It is incontrovertible proof that they do exist though.
Jim, as I’ve said before, I know about as little about foreign policy as you know about economics or logic. But can you try at least to give some sort of logical case about how the Clintons caused the prosperity of 1992-2000?
Let’s join the club, ha ha! -
“I think I’ll max out my credit cards and never pay. And same for the mortgage too. After all, ‘What difference does it make?’ “
What I find odd is that was obviously a planned response. Yet the whole reason she was there was to explain the administration response and apparent disinformation campaign. It certainly matters to Congress and to many citizens. Even the media has paid some attention to this.
Leaving aside the questions of the government failing to adequately protect its personnel, which also makes a difference.
What is going on with our media? While that shooting and lockdown too place in Texas was taking place CNN was tweeting someone inside asking for pictures. They parade the parents of Newtown victims on TV and talk to the survivors from Algeria within days but still not a peep from the survivors from Libya.
It’s amusing to recall that just three months ago the right was indignantly rising to defend Hillary against Obama’s (imagined) plan to throw her under the bus over Benghazi. Now that Obama’s re-elected, and Hillary is an obvious 2016 frontrunner, it’s all Hillary’s fault. None of the facts have changed, just the GOP’s political priorities.
I wouldn’t say indignant, rather just noting that the buck apparently no longer stops with the President. Indeed, anyone remember when Hillary claimed the blame for Benghazi stops with her? Now it’s, “what does it matter?” Of course, we can’t say its amusing, because of the Secretary’s casual disregard for the death of an ambassador, the nations envoy for peace with any nation. I’m certainly not surprised Jim, that you find this funny. Really ha ha stuff, eh?
Apparently, the buck doesn’t stop at Clinton either.
the Secretary’s casual disregard for the death of an ambassador
Huh? How has she shown disregard for anyone’s death?
Back during the Fast and Furious hearings, you, Jim, claimed they didn’t mean anything because no one had been held accountable. Then Holder was found in contempt. Well, Jim, who has the Secretary held accountable for Benghazi? Who? Who has been arrested and tried or alternately, who has been listed as most wanted for taking part in the murder? If none of this has occurred, exactly what regard has the Secretary shown to the ambassador’s death?
What do you find amusing about this?