Secretary Clinton's Benghazi Testimony And Terrorism In North And West Africa
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2013-01-24/secretary-clintons-benghazi-testimony-and-terrorism-north-and-west-africa
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before House and Senate panels about the September attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. Nearing the end of her tenure as secretary, Clinton was thanked by Democrats and Republicans for her service to the country. But Republicans gave her a tougher grilling about her actions before and after the Benghazi attack. Clinton accepted responsibility. But she also defended the way she and her colleagues handled the Benghazi tragedy and pointed out Congress's role in failing to keep U.S. diplomatic personnel safe. Assessing the Benghazi hearings and emerging terrorist threats in Africa.
Guests
Emira Woods
co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies.
David Sanger
chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times and author of "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power."
Indira Lakshmanan
senior correspondent covering foreign policy for Bloomberg News.
Comments
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I give Hillary Clinton lots of credit. She went into that "lions den" and stayed "tough". And, she was deft at giving oblique and evasive "clintonesque" answers which basically dodge the tough questions.
She didn't or couldn't read EVERY cable coming in to her??? She has no assistants who could at least screen them for her???? At a KNOWN dangerous time in those parts of the world?????
At least she has the sense to step down from this high office.
With the utmost respect for those four that gave their lives in Benghazi I have to ask myself and the panel: if the exact same thing had happened when Condoleezza Rice was Secretary of State would we be hearing these kinds of comments from Senators Johnson, Paul, and McCain? From the end of the first week post attack, these comments of outrage from McCain et al seemed to me to be disgraceful use of a very unfortunate event for political grandstanding.
No, she could not read EVERY cable coming in to her. The Republicans in the house cut her security budget significantly from the amount she requested. And now they complain about security?
We will miss her energy, brains, and perception when she is replaced in this post. John Kerry is no Hilary Clinton. Not by a very long way.
But look on the bright side. She may replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court.
Jeff Neufer wrote:
"if the exact same thing had happened when Condoleezza Rice was Secretary of State "
That's a big "if". The difference was that Concoleezza Rice was competent at her job.
On the topic of who pushed the movie as the cover-up for incompetence, her answer was "What difference at this point does it make?"!
Are you kidding me?!
Clinton's performance yesterday should have surprised no one who remembers "Travelgate" and then "Filegate".
So, what difference would it make now? Answer her question.
Jeff Neufer demonstrates the practice of obfuscation.
When you have no FACTS, use hypothethicals.
Ms. Clinton's performance was masterful and totally useless.
Just more bashing of a female Democrat by a bunch of Republicans. Why would anyone be surprised at the tone of it? Just more pastisan politics as usual.
America: the decline continues.
Budget Cuts + Privatization = recipe for failure
Lost Opportunity:
Rand Paul: Mame, if I were President, I'd have fired you.
Hillary: Sir, (with apologies to Winston Churchill) if you were President, I'd resign.
Not surprised to notice that Rand Paul the Irrelevant is still suffering with "Foot in Mouth Disease."
Benghazi had been the Obama attack subject of the day for a while now. Some like the Birther attack and Orly Taitz,grow legs and live awhile past their expiration date. We`ve witnessed dozens of these political attacks.Including some really really idiotic stuff like "Beer Gate". And to me,it just makes the T-Party/Republican NeoNutzi`s look more stupid.They`ve followed Rush Limbaugh,a paid entertainer.That`s OKAY if you want to be a paid clown,but doesn`t work so well for Public Service.
John Boehner said,Obama`s trying to destroy the Republican Party ? WHAT ???? All these daily attacks make the T-P/REP Neo`s look dumber by the day.
Tom Deacon wrote:
"So, what difference would it make now? Answer her question."
It would only make a difference to someone who is interested in truth. "Move along, nothing to see here". The American people deserve to know the truth on behalf of four dead citizens. That's why it matters.
Someone has answered her question better than I can. I have shortened and edited the following.
"Only an ice queen with total indifference to the truth could ask why the truth matters. Only a woman who spent her entire life sacrificing others around her as chess pawns could ask why the motives for terrorism matter.
What difference at this point does it make? All the difference in the world. It makes the difference between lives being spared and future deaths.
Evaluating the entire Obama administration approach to terrorism hinges on getting to the truth. The entire narrative that "al Qaeda has been decimated" has been debunked under waves of successful Islamist attacks. The very idea that the Obama approach to terrorism makes America safer than the Bush approach is collapsing. Radical Islamists murdering Americans is not a tangent to the discussion. It is the heart, soul, and spilled guts of the discussion.
And she claims she "takes responsibility," wants "accountability," and is "moving quickly?"
(cont).
(concl).
She cited "budget constraints," the typical "blame George W. Bush" response. Other State Department officials denied funding was an issue. Yet, she denied receiving a cable warning her of possible attacks. Her department was "overloaded with Iraq and Afghanistan". If she did know about the cables, she is guilty of perjury, but the truth will remain suppressed.
Four Americans were murdered by Islamists in Benghazi. Four months have elapsed since that time. Real motives are ignored to fit a politically correct narrative. The world burns as Hillary Clinton tries to ensure that nobody will remember Benghazi when she visits Iowa and New Hampshire.
We will never learn the truth about the Benghazi murders. The motives are in plain sight, yet will never be admitted to by the left, although I suspect they know the truth. Nobody died at Watergate, but Richard Nixon resigned when Republicans put party over country".
So did I just hear the panel say that the State Department personnel who were placed on "Administrative Leave" for their incompetence will keep their jobs?? If you can't be fired for something like this, what does it take?
I find it interesting that Ambassador Steven's own conduct in the incident is not being examined in this discussion. Shouldn't we consider how self contradictory his actions were? He sends a cable about security concerns, and then decides to go to a temporary consulate with little to no security? Wasn't that tempting fate, so to speak, if his security concerns were pressing?
ecgberht2 wrote:
"The difference was that Concoleezza Rice was competent at her job."
Let's see...
" "I don't think anybody could have predicted that ... they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday." *
"I believe the title was, 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.' ... Commissioner, this was not a warning. This was a historic memo -- historical memo prepared by the agency because the President was asking questions about what we knew about the inside." **
From that "historical" memo:
"...Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York.
The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives." ***
* http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-500164_162-509488.html (Ooh, CBS! You can't trust them!)
** Transcript of Rice's 9/11 commission statement
Wednesday, May 19, 2004 Posted: 12:25 AM EDT (0425 GMT)
http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/08/rice.transcript/
Don't trust CNN? It's also at the University of North Texas library site
http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/archive/hearing9/9-11Commission_Heari...
But I guess you can't trust those pointy-headed left-leaning liberals in NORTH Texas either.
*** http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/August_6,_2001_Presidential_Daily_Brief
@ecgberht2:
"The difference was that Con[d]oleezza Rice was competent at her job." Are you speaking only of her job as Secretary of State, because she had an abysmal failure as National Security Advisor, where a memo entitled "Bin Laden determined to attack world trade center using planes" crossed her desk? And, there was an ambassador killed in Afghanistan under her watch as Secretary of State, but unlike Benghazi, it got no real press coverage. So, if the measure of mere "competence" is that an ambassador should not be assassinated under the watch of the Secretary of State, either both Rice and Clinton were competent, or they both were incompetent, but only one of them actually had to go to Capital Hill to answer for it.
The description of Rand Paul as a small man living in his father's shadow and parroting parental talking points, hardly smarter than Sarah Palin, by the Kentucky caller was exactly right and very refreshing. Despite Senator Paul's ineffectual objections to the national security state (for publicity) I detest him and believe he has ties to right wing militias and conspiracies. I assess him even lower than the well-spoken caller. Thanks Diane for letting us find out how some Kentuckians measure their senator.
In the picture above, Hillary looks like George Soros with a wig.
Asking and getting any truthful answers out of this administration is just about impossible. The media is protecting Obama and by extension the people don't know what's going on and don't care.
SaminTexas: CIA machinations may have contributed to Chris Stevens' death. That's why the CIA contingent and their mission was hardly mentioned in the Clinton hearing, by either party or Mrs. Clinton.
This is a hilarious thread and the "baram-ewe" crowd are out in full force. What a laugh! We just now heard Diane say "we've just had this GLORIOUS inaugural". No , no bias here. What bias? Us? OOOOHHH.
Sam T. - You may be correct that the politically illiterate use pictures for information. (Please apologize to Mr. Soros. I know you want to. He's barely a billionaire after all, but at the near pinnacle of our "free" market.)
shakazulu: I agree that Obama should have kept his 2nd inaugural as covert as his drone killings and domestic surveillance. Budget funds would have been saved. For patriotic Diane the inauguration of President Michelle Bachmann would have also been "glorious." It's all the same in her circle, and it's only us dumb animals who believe elections matter.
shakazulu wrote: "GLORIOUS inaugural"
It was all lip synced and phoned in. The only truthful part about it was the delay caused by the fitting of the crown on Barack's giant head.
Brian Lupiani cited:
"I don't think anybody could have predicted that ... they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said Thursday."
Correct. President Bush and Conoleezza Rice both knew that terrorists were about to attack the towers with airplanes, but just ignored it. Brilliant!
The rest is woulda, coulda, shoulda and begs the question, Why did President Clinton let Bin Laden go?
The difference between 9/11 and Benghazi is that Ambassador Stevens knew the specific danger and was begging for help for months.
SaminTexas wrote:
"a memo entitled "Bin Laden determined to attack world trade center using planes" crossed her desk?"
Gonna have to bring evidence for that claim, Sam.
"And, there was an ambassador killed in Afghanistan under her watch as Secretary of State, but unlike Benghazi, it got no real press coverage."
Gonna have to bring evidence for that claim, Sam.
During the show this morning (1/24/13) there was discussion about why contractors were used as security guards in Libya. Diane and her guests evidently overlooked what may be the main reason contractors, not government employees, are used: personnel "ceilings". In order to hold down civil service employment and not add to the nominal size of the uniformed services, Congress limits their numbers. If the limits don't permit agencies to get their jobs done, well, they have to hire contractors. Quite incidentally (of course) it provides markets for companies that supply contract employees. It happens all over the Federal government.
ecgberhrt2,
You always insist on bulletproof evidence for others' entries...but dump huge volumes of innuendo, Rushisms, Hannity pearls, and O'Reilly pinhead remarks.
Condi vs. Hillary......let's see......a multi-year debacle in Iraq vs. a one-day tragedy.....years of denial vs. full acceptance of responsibility.......numerous self agrandized talk show appearances vs. literally no public or media stagecraft.
Has Condi ever, ever, ever said she took ANY blame for Iraq? How about Cheney's handshakes with Saddam Hussein? Or his predictions of showers of flowers or gratis gifts of petroleum to the US?
Gotta hand it to you - you ARE consistent. Always anti Dem.
Just before the Benghazi attack, someone in the United States had released a poorly made, inept propaganda film that inflamed the Islamic world like an out-of-control, unstoppable wildfire that Americans watched nervously. It does not seem unusual then that the State Department, preoccupied with the film fallout, might have needed some time to find out what happened in Benghazi. The Clinton hearing focused on Benghazi as an isolate event. That focus was more political than an honest effort to find answers and solutions. Armchair diplomacy is so much easier and plays so much better on television. Congress has done an abysmal job of dealing with its own problems. The hearing gave no great confidence that members of Congress could be any more effective out in the murkiness of international diplomacy.
HonestAbe wrote:
"ecgberhrt2,
You always insist on bulletproof evidence for others' entries...but dump huge volumes of innuendo, Rushisms, Hannity pearls, and O'Reilly pinhead remarks."
You know, HA, if you ever think I'm doing that, feel free to point it out and let me respond, instead of offering the vague ... you know ... innuendo as you do in this post, 'k?
As for Condi, ("Has Condi ever, ever, ever said she took ANY blame for Iraq?") I'm not with her 24 hours a day so I'm not sure what all she might have said, but I know she did say this in 2010:
"Removing Saddam Hussein from power was the right move, but the United States made mistakes in the aftermath, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told CNN on Friday.
In an interview to be broadcast Monday on CNN International's "Connect the World" program, Rice acknowledged a failure to focus rebuilding efforts throughout the country and attributed the problem to a lack of understanding.
"I do believe I would take Saddam Hussein out of power again, but of course in the rebuilding of Iraq ... I would do things differently," Rice said. "I think we put too much emphasis on Baghdad and not enough emphasis on the provinces. Perhaps we didn't fully understand the degree to which the society would start to come apart as a result of being held in tyranny for all those years."
At the same time, Rice said it is still too early to fully judge the success or failure of that war or other foreign policy issues in the administration of George W. Bush.
"Sometimes things that look terrific at the time look pretty bad in retrospect, and vice versa, so ultimately this is a story that will be written in history," said Rice, who served as secretary of state for the second of Bush's two four-year terms as president.
**********************************
"Always anti Dem."
Well ... yeah!
Seriously, I give Democrats and their leaders credit when they do something right.