A Return to Benghazi

It seems typical in politics that once time passes after a major event -- or in this case especially when the event in question would be detrimental to a liberal administration and a possible second term of a president -- we usually never seem to hear anything about the event in question ever again.  But thankfully things seem to be different with regard to the terrorist attacks in Benghazi in which four Americans were murdered.

Since it has been some time since my last post on Benghazi, it is useful to remind oneself of some of the major facts surrounding the attack and what occurred shortly afterwords.  To begin this series of posts, I will quote Scott Johnson, who has a good summary of the administration's equivocations on the reasons for the attack:

As the massacre of our fellow Americans in Benghazi returns to the news in a big way today, with the hearing scheduled in the House, it is well to remember the promotion of the Muhammad video by President Obama and Secretary Clinton in this context. It shows the politicization of the massacre by the Obama administration from the first moment on. The Obama administration’s attribution of responsibility for the massacre to a mob enraged by the Muhammad video was deeply deceitful from the outset. It was a complete and utter fraud. 

Upon reception of the caskets at Andrews Air Force Base, Clinton remarked: “This has been a difficult week for the State Department and for our country. We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing do to with.” And, she might have added, that had nothing to do with the men whose bodies lay before her. Instead, she added this, reiterating the connection of the massacre to a mob enraged by the Muhammad video: “The people of Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia, did not trade the tyranny of a dictator for the tyranny of a mob.”
Two weeks after the massacre Obama was still yammering about the Muhammad video. Among other things, Obama declared that “there are no words that excuse the killing of innocent” and that there is “no video that justifies an attack on an embassy.” Obama decried the video as “an insult not only to Muslims, but to America as well.” I doubt the video was an insult to America. If so, Obama’s speech itself constituted a far greater insult to the United States, and to the truth as well. 

When Clinton appeared before the Senate panel to testify about these events this past January, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin made the perfectly appropriate comment that has been vindicated by subsequent investigation: “[W]e were misled that there were supposedly protests and that something sprang out of that — an assault sprang out of that — and that was easily ascertained that that was not the fact, and the American people could have known that within days and they didn’t know that.” To which Clinton responded:

With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they 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. Now, honestly, I will do my best to answer your questions about this, but the fact is that people were trying in real time to get to the best information. The IC has a process, I understand, going with the other committees to explain how these talking points came out. But you know, to be clear, it is, from my perspective, less important today looking backwards as to why these militants decided they did it than to find them and bring them to justice, and then maybe we’ll figure out what was going on in the meantime. 

It is hard to imagine a less fitting question to be asked, rhetorical or otherwise, than “What difference does it make?” It should be her epitaph, if not that of the Obama administration.