Out With a Bang

Outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified on the September 2012 attack on the U.S .Consulate in Benghazi, Libya before two congressional committees, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the House Foreign Affairs& Committee - both stacked with Republicans whose idea of foreign policy experience is going to a Chinese restaurant.  Mrs. Clinton was angry and defiant (sorry, Gary Hart) in defending the State Department's efforts to secure the consulate and, also, its attempt to get out the correct information on the attacks out as quickly as possible, saying that misleading information on the nature of the attack was based on learning what had happened as events unfolded, but Republicans were having none of it.  On the Senate committee, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said that he would have fired her for her handling of Benghazi if he were President (President Rand Paul - and you thought the idea of his father in the ;White House was scary!), and noted plastics manufacturer Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) was particularly peeved that the attack was characterized as a spontaneous ;assault springing out of protests over a video rather than the planned attack it was.  

Mrs. Clinton, who had not received the requests for increased security at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi that were sent to the State Department and was quick to recommend the communication reforms designed to avoid such a lapse within the department, had a stinging rejoinder for Ron Jon's nit picking.

"Was it because of a protest?" she said.  "Or was it because of guys out for a walk one night decided they would go kill some Americans? What difference, at this point, does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, Senator."

Mrs. Clinton came across as someone who did everything she could to protect the Benghazi mission and worked with what the information regarding the attack she had at the time and someone who made her best efforts in light of a communications failure from Benghazi to get more security from the consulate.  She was also quick to say that she would follow the recommendations to prevent repeats of Benghazi elsewhere.   U.S. Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL), for his part, chastised Mr. Johnson of Wisconsin and other Senate Republicans for not having applied the same prosecutorial standards of these hearings to investigating intelligence failures that led to the Iraq War, and the need to restore State Department budget cuts was also cited by many a Democrat.  Caring only for the Republican position on budgeting, House Foreign ;Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce of California dismissed such an idea, saying that no amount of money could have fixed a communications failure in the State Department and the culture that led to it.

Republicans just don't get it.  They want maximum efficiency in our State Department and maximum security in our embassies and consulates but at a minimum cost.  They know the price of everything and the value of nothing.  And sometimes not even the price.

Anyway, this dog-piling on Mrs. Clinton - the effort to "pillory Hillary," if you will - sounded less like a real search for answers than a partisan& attempt to damage her political viability as she ponders a possible run for President in 2016 . . . or at least a venting of jealous Republican goobers contemptuous of her popularity with the American people and possibly envious of her position, which has allowed her to travel abroad and meet interesting people while they've had to deal with picayune requests from their constituent regarding grants, visits to Washington, and those pesky military academy and disaster relief applications.  Hillary deflected them like a Saturn deflecting shopping carts, and, unlike Saturn, is still running strong as she prepares to leave her position as Secretary of State and get some much-deserved rest. And she will run strong again . . . in 2016.