After reading these, I am guessing the Left will still see her as innocent and the Right will still see her guilty or incompetent. Now there was a waste of 11 Hours...
CNN 11 Take Aways
Fox News Benghazi
Politco 13 Top Moments
ABC Benghazi
From the ABC link, these are the facts/comments that still have me on the fence. Thoughts?
CNN 11 Take Aways
Fox News Benghazi
Politco 13 Top Moments
ABC Benghazi
From the ABC link, these are the facts/comments that still have me on the fence. Thoughts?
Some of the strongest testimony so far, most likely to be seized upon by critics of Clinton, was the exchange with Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio. Jordan pointed to two emails -- the first was a note providing a readout of a call between Clinton and the Egyptian prime minister sent on Sept. 12, 2012, the day after the Benghazi attack. The email quotes Clinton as having said, “We know the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack -- not a protest.”
Clinton had a clear response: “When I was speaking to the Egyptian prime minister or in the other two examples you showed, we had been told by Ansar al-Sharia [a militia group] that they took credit for it. It wasn't until about 24 more hours later that they retracted taking credit for it," she said.
Clinton also defended herself by saying she was sorry her version of events didn’t "fit your narrative."
"Why didn't you just speak plain to the American people?" Jordan asked.
"I did," Clinton replied. "If you look at my statement, as opposed to what I was saying to the Egyptian prime minister, I did state clearly. I said it again in more detail the next morning, as did the president."
19 comments:
I think public opinion will side with the liberals that the whole investigation is highly partisan. But the goal of damaging Clinton backfired, as her poll numbers will go up due to she handled the hearing very well.
I keep thinking of that line by Jack Nicholson... "You can't handle the truth."
Just curious, would you care if the Administration thought that it was a planned Terrorist attack, and chose to go on the news shows and tell us it was something else?
Or would you just blow it off because they are Democrats?
If a Republican administration did the same thing...
Would you feel the same?
I remember Bush and the crew acting on intelligence information and being called a liar by Liberals. In this case the Obama Administration went very public with bad information and the Liberals say "Oh well, mistakes happen..."
Again the pattern holds. Accused of some scandalous behavior and faced with the choice of two explanations-- criminality or incompetetence-- the Clintons choose incompetence every time. The truth is politically neutral; what people do to hide it is not.
The timeline supports Clinton's answer regarding the Ansar Al-Sharia claim of responsibility. And the talking points provided to Susan Rice (written by the CIA) all pointed to the video.
But more broadly, I guess I wouldn't be surprised if in the hours following such an incident that our SoS would be discussing intelligence with a foreign head of state that they might not be ready to share with the public. Certainly the Bush Administration didn't reveal all of the intelligence they had about Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in the first few hours after 9/11.
And even more to the point, the current 8th investigation of Benghazi hasn't revealed any new information that wasn't uncovered in the first seven investigations. And, despite Gowdy's protestations to the contrary, yesterday's hearing was a witch-hunt, not a search for truth.
Ronald Reagan refused Caspar Weinberger's advice to move the Marines out of Beirut (or at least to a safer position). 241 Marines later died in a suicide attack. A bipartisan Congressional panel wrapped up that investigation in a couple of months.
"that they might not be ready to share with the public."
That is fine, however you don't go out and tell everybody that it was just random chaos related to some video. I am pretty sure they were playing games with the American Public... I am just not sure if the public cares. Remember the old joke...
"How do you know when a politician is lying? Their lips are moving..."
I personally think Hillary is a manipulating dishonest conniving life long power hungry politician. The problem is most of her competition is similar... So I am not sure it matters.
"That is fine, however you don't go out and tell everybody that it was just random chaos related to some video."
The reality is that "random chaos related to some video" was indeed a plausible explanation at the time. While this was going on, 3,000 protesters were surrounding our embassy in Cairo and over the next three days we had major incidents at diplomatic facilities in Yemen, Greece, Sudan, Tunisia, India, Indonesia, and Pakistan plus attacks against our military in Afghanistan that were attributed to the video.
And whether the talking points were intentionally misleading or just wrong tells us nothing about the incident itself. And isn't that what the committee is supposed to be looking into -- how it happened and how we prevent such things from happening again? Instead, they're grandstanding about what happened after the attack.
Or is it to determine if the Obama administration lied to the American people for political gain?
It seems you've already determined that to be true, anyway, so maybe they should have hired you as a consultant.
Basically, you're suggesting that David Petraeus carried the water for President Obama and Hillary Clinton.
As I said earlier, I am on the fence. I don't nearly enough to go either way.
As for Petraeus. Do you think it would below his good judgement?
about "if the Administration thought that it was a planned Terrorist attack, and chose to go on the news shows and tell us it was something else?" why would they do that? I think your Hillary hatred has made you very irrational.
The three years and 20 million dollars spent investigating Benghazi was a big waste. This so called discrepancy is very minor and has been explained adequately.
I think your time would be better spent looking into Iran contra or the Iraq war if you if we want to find presidential guilt of huge significance.
keeping in mind the self awareness purpose of your blog I am providing you with a link that might help you to understand the roots of your Hillary hatred:
Why Hillary Makes Right-Wingers So Crazy
"Why would they do that?"
Now don't be naïve... Power...
Cover Up
Let me repeat AGAIN... I have no love or hate for Hillary... To me she is just another power player doing what she needs to to get to the next rung.
I see absolutely no difference between her and Jeb Bush... (except positions that is) The question is why are you so in love with her that you are able to overlook some decisions and actions that clearly show questionable character. She is a politician, not Mother Teresa...
As for your link... Did you and every Liberal dislike Palin and Bachman because they were women? That really has to be the most foolish article I have read lately.
I disliked Palin and Bachman because they seemed somewhat crazy. I question Hillary because scandal has followed her and Bill around for decades... Maybe Elizabeth Warren would have been a better candidate.
"... the current 8th investigation of Benghazi hasn't revealed any new information that wasn't uncovered in the first seven investigations." Now that's just not true. We know for fact that thousands of pages of previously-unseen (and seriously damaging) documents were released only two days before Hillary's appearance. We didn't know until yesterday how many times requests for more security were refused. We didn't know for certain that SoS KNEW it was Al Qaeda and not the video. We therefore now know that the administration lied like a rug in blaming the video, for crass political advantage, for the six weeks prior to the November election. After all, one of the big "sales pitches" for Obama was that Al Qaeda was "dead."
As for hatred of Hillary, I wouldn't waste my time and energy. I do hope she wins the nomination.
The cover up conspiracy is really lame as 3 years worth of investigation has turned up very little evidence, but more importantly even if it were true it would not be very scandalous that the Obama administration investigation of the incident and release of information took more than 2 months. Here is a much bigger scandal for you which is being widely reported in the msm rather than on a right wing blog.
Benghazi Biopsy: A Comprehensive Guide to One of America’s Worst Political Outrages
Prior to this month I was no big fan of Hillary, as maybe the nonstop investigation of her and Bill over the last 20 years influenced me, but my opinion of her has gone up a great deal recently. Funny how she has never been found guilty of anything other than occasional bad judgement. For a politician I think this is pretty incredible. btw, she she gave a good interview with Rachel Maddow last night.
" 3 years worth of investigation has turned up very little evidence..."
Now why do you suppose that is? Might it have anything to do with Hillary wiping her private email server, the refusal of the State Dept. to turn over subpoenaed documents until last week? Hillary's appearance only last week? It still seems to me that the recently-revealed evidence is damning and near-conclusive. I won't argue that it was criminal, only grossly incompetent and politically motivated. Investigators aren't guilty of wrong-doing if they EXPOSE wrongdoing, but that's the kind of backwards world the Democrats would have us live in.
And I don't give a whoop about what failings Reagan or Bush or Bill Clinton may have had, this matter stands on its own and must be judged on its own demerits.
Here is another, more detailed, explanation of why your cover up scandal is lame:
"As is often the case, reality is a bit more nuanced than Republicans try to paint it. We learned that when one of the leaders of the Benghazi attack - Ahmed Abu Khattala - was captured.
Despite extensive speculation about the possible role of Al Qaeda in directing the attack, Mr. Abu Khattala is a local, small-time Islamist militant. He has no known connections to international terrorist groups, say American officials briefed on the criminal investigation and intelligence reporting, and other Benghazi Islamists and militia leaders who have known him for many years…
On the day of the attack, Islamists in Cairo had staged a demonstration outside the United States Embassy there to protest an American-made online video mocking Islam, and the protest culminated in a breach of the embassy’s walls — images that flashed through news coverage around the Arab world.
As the attack in Benghazi was unfolding a few hours later, Mr. Abu Khattala told fellow Islamist fighters and others that the assault was retaliation for the same insulting video, according to people who heard him. (this part an excerpt from the NYT)
In other words, one of the leaders of the attack had no known connections to international terrorist groups and used the video as a tool to recruit fighters to join in the attack. On the other hand, it was not a spontaneous reaction from protesters. It was a planned attack. People like Rep. Jim Jordan seem incapable of grasping that kind of nuance. Here he is lecturing former Secretary Clinton:
“You picked the video narrative. You picked the one with no evidence. And you did it because Libya was supposed to be…this great success story,” he said during one of his filibusters. “You can live with a protest about a video. That won’t hurt you. But a terrorist attack will.”
That, my friends, is the best distillation of Republican confusion about Benghazi that you’ll find anywhere."
I still don't see any problems with the information provided to the public by Obama and Hillary or the timing of the info.
The same blog post What I learned from watching the Benghazi Hearing does a good job also commenting on how the hearing helped Hillary:
"The other thing I learned from watching the hearing is all about Hillary Clinton. I’ve always known that she is smart. But two things I’ve heard about her - especially during this campaign - is that her age is an issue and she tends to be evasive rather than direct when she feels challenged. Those two critiques were banished as completely irrelevant on Thursday.
The kind of stress a president deals with is only secondarily physical. It is mostly emotional. We need to know that the person we elect to that position is capable of keeping their cool when a lot of difficult things come their way. At 67, Hillary Clinton just withstood 11 hours (minus breaks) of people coming at her with every kind of attack and negative insinuation they could find. She did something I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have done under those circumstances…kept her cool and answered every question with intelligence and patience.
People will continue to have their policy differences with Clinton. But no one can doubt that she’s got what it takes to do the job."
Wow. Amazing that the two of us can have entirely different perceptions of Hillary's fitness for office, just based on what we saw in this one hearing. I didn't see that she "answered every question," except in the sense that she spoke. What she said didn't make sense, didn't necessarily respond to the question asked, used facts not in evidence and ignored facts that were. As for her being smart, I think her failure to send the security repeatedly requested answers that question.
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